The Fiat swung sharply, through 180 degrees, under a cliff of ancient stonework, towards a tiny fortified gateway, under a cascade of flowers which reminded her insanely of old Mr Willis's cottage far away in soft green England, which was so near in time, but so desperately and helplessly far away in miles.
'Where are the ruins?' She heard her own voice almost with surprise, it was so sharp and confident.
'What ruins?' Richardson slowed to negotiate the gateway.
'St Servan-les-Ruines?'
'Search me.' He changed gear once he was through. 'It all looks fairly ruined to me. I never thought to ask.'
Just as unexpectedly as they had arrived in the village, they were unexpectedly out of it again, into an area of stunted old oaks and scrubby vegetation, but with an equally sudden view of a fertile and well-cultivated valley below, bathed in hot sunshine.
Yet not quite out of it after all, maybe: the narrow road fell gently towards a final huddle of houses perched on a flat shelf in the hillside amid a cluster of shade trees.
'Prepare to abandon ship,' said Richardson. 'Dale's people will have their eye on you from up there.' He pointed up the hillside, to a modern house almost on the crest of the ridge, not unattractive, but sited with fine (and presumably French) disregard for an otherwise unspoilt landscape. 'He was lucky to pick that up, it overlooks the old dog's kennel perfectly… They're supposed to be a honeymoon couple. But I won't tell you any more, just in case the worst comes to the worst.' He twisted towards Elizabeth as he slowed down. 'Honeymoon couples inspire a certain delicacy even in the worst and most nosey of people, Andy Dale reckoned, Miss Loftus. And they keep themselves to themselves.'
Where had she heard that before, just recently - ?
'Out,' said Richardson, just as she remembered. And the remembrance of Haddock Thomas dummy2
and his bride here all those years ago, and in the very year which mattered, was a cold and desolate thought, quite unwarmed by its irony.
But Audley was already out of the car, and had skipped round to open her door with uncharacteristic good manners.
'Good luck - ' Richardson's glasses were black in the glare ' - to us all, Miss Loftus.'
The house was very old, and not very large though unnaturally high for its size, but sturdily restored up to the iron water-spouts under its pantile roof.
The car accelerated away, leaving Audley standing somewhat irresolute before the choice of a front door and the wrought-iron gate in a shoulder-high garden wall. Then he resolved his irresolution simply by peering over the wall on tip-toe, and choosing the gate for her.
There was a little shady garden, under a pergola of some sort of vine, with all the light and colour concentrated on the edge of a terrace, where a man in a panama hat sat amidst a blaze of red flowers and scatter of books and newspaper pages, with a glass in his hand and a puff of blue-grey tobacco smoke above him.
But the gate had squeaked, and the man changed the picture as it fixed itself, turning towards her.
'Dr Thomas?'
'Hullo there - ?'
Slow, gravelly voice, the sound filtered through many years and many bottles. But years of what else? wondered Elizabeth: just many years of hie, haec, hoc, and Caesar's Gallic Wars?
Or many years of treason?
She felt Audley's large presence at her back, pushing her forward, overawing her from behind even in the shadow. And in that instant she steeled herself against disappointment.
For, whatever he was, and whatever he had been, Haddock Thomas could only be an anti-climax in the flesh, innocent or guilty.
'Hullo there?' He peered towards them over his spectacles, which had slipped far down his nose.
Elizabeth advanced. Just for this brief moment she might be as beautiful as Helen of Troy for all he knew, and that wouldn't do at all.
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'Dr Thomas?' She whipped off her dark glasses and entered a shaft of sunlight which cut through the canopy above.
'Yes.' He placed his glass carefully on the table beside him, rose to his feet, and finally removed his panama. 'Once upon a time, anyway.'
The light had half-blinded her for an instant, but her next step took her into shadow again.
Nothing very special, indeed: neither horns nor halo, neither Caliban nor Hyperion in retirement. Just another old man.
'Forgive me, Dr Thomas.' In that moment of half-blindness she had missed his first reaction to her. Now she saw only that he wanted to recognize her, from his gallery of wives and sisters of long ago, but couldn't do so. 'Elizabeth Loftus, Dr Thomas.' Just another old man: younger than old Mr Willis, but much taller and thinner, and sun-browned (sun-browned with perhaps a hint of dear Major Birkenshawe's whisky-flush, maybe), leathery-tanned by age and sun and alcohol. 'We haven't met.'
'Until now.' He smiled the correction at her, and pushed his spectacles up his nose with his index finger. And then smiled again, without embarrassment at what was in sharp focus at last.
'But we have met,' said Audley from behind. 'Back in the deeps of time, Haddock.'
Haddock Thomas stared past her, frowning slightly, but only with the effort of memory, with no outward hint of any emotion. Yet then, if he wasn't what he had seemed all these years, he would be good, thought Elizabeth bleakly. Too good, in fact.
'Don't tell me, now.' For the first time there was the very slightest hint of Welshness beneath the gravel. 'My eyes are not what they were - ' The eyes, faded china-blue, came back to Elizabeth ' - too much staring into the sun, you see, Elizabeth Loftus. Long ago it was a matter of life-or-death to look into it - "The Hun in the Sun" behind you was very likely to be the last thing you ever saw, with no need to worry about old age. But from this terrace I have watched the sun over too many cloudless days, and the moon rise over starlit nights of dreams - Axel Munthe was right, he knew the price of sinning. But, of course, he also knew that the price was worth paying, for the sin. And that's one of the world's troubles today: the crass belief that we have a right to something for nothing.
When, in fact, we have no rights at all - and even nothing is expensive. Indeed, nothing may prove to be the most expensive commodity of all -even more costly than the sun itself.'
'He was always like this, Elizabeth,' said Audley. 'Or, perhaps not quite so philosophically pompous when he was younger. But quite bad enough, as I remember.'
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Haddock Thomas continued to look at her. 'It's the voice, you see, Miss Loftus - Mrs Loftus
- ?'
'Miss, Dr Thomas.' She mustn't like him: they had all succumbed to him - his pupils, his equals, even his interrogator and the friend whose girl he had taken - they had all liked him.
'Miss Loftus. The eye can be a great deceiver. Not merely in the present - not merely the picture which lies, or the quickness of the conjuror's hand - it deceives memory too. Smell is much better, perhaps best of all, so long as it lasts. But sound now… "a tinkling piano in the next apartment" and the cry of John Peel's hounds, and the leather on the willow…' He placed his cigar on an ash-tray beside his glass and then offered her his hand. 'And now I believe they've proved that every voice has its print, as unique as every finger, Miss Loftus.'
Audley loomed in the corner of her vision, in full sunlight.
'And David Audley?' He relinquished her hand and offered it to Audley. '"Dr Audley, I presume?" should I say?'