—So! And now . . . there were clarets and Sauternes (Madame swept a glance over her wines, and dismissed them all, and came back to Roche fondly). . . but here in the south-west there were other wines of character, delicate and fine, of Bergerac and Cahors, of Rodez and Conques—pressed from the pineau grape—for M'sieur . . . and for Milady, the Monbazillac, sweet and perfumed—
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"God, David—I've never seen anything like it!" Lexy surveyed the loaded Volkswagen with disbelief after the dried-up shrimp, sweating and terrified at his wife's command, had transported the cases to the little car under the trees. "What did you say to her? What did you do to her?"
Roche shrugged modestly. "I didn't do anything. I just smiled at her."
"Smiled at her! Wait until I tell Jilly and Steffy—she positively drooled over you, darling! Do you know what you've done—do you?" Lexy brushed ineffectually at the blonde tangle which had fallen over her eyes. "That was Madame Goutard—La Goutard in person! No one's ever unfrozen her— not even David Audley, le Grand David."
"Madame Goutard?"
"La Goutard—Madame Peyrony's bosom friend. They get together three times a week at the chateau, allegedly for tea ... I think they swop spells and work out who's next for the evil eye and the ague. But you charmed her. . . I swear she even almost smiled at me! And she'll be on the phone to La Peyrony, with a bit of luck, telling her that at last we've rustled up a decent and respectable young gentleman to look after us, and that'll put us in good with La Peyrony—she thinks the sun rises and sets by what La Goutard says . . .
What did you say to her?"
Roche spread his hands. This was evidently one of those days when he could do no wrong. "I just talked to her . . ."
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"Well, you said the magic word." Lexy brushed at the tangle again, with a hand only a little less grubby for its immersion in the Dordogne river. "And like a native too—perhaps that's what did it. The Great David knows all the words, but half the time no one seems to understand what he's saying . . . and one look from La Goutard and I just dry up completely. But you were absolutely super!!" She gave Roche a huge, dazzling smile. " And you paid for everything—" She plunged the paw into her handbag, which was the size of a haversack, and rummaged among its contents until she had gathered a fistful of creased and equally dirty banknotes.
Roche shook his head. "That's my contribution to the housekeeping, Lady Alexandra. I insist."
She blinked at him. "Please don't call me Lady. My umpteenth great grandmother—great times ten, but not good
—was one of Charles II's innumerable mistresses, that's the origin of Father's title, and every time anyone calls me Lady it only reminds me that I'm a lady neither by merit nor inclination—especially as Father says I'm a throwback to the founding mistress of our line ... At least I can pay for the wine, yes?"
She was gorgeous, dirty hands and tangled hair and every other buttgn still undone, thought Roche protectively.
Cleaned up and well-dressed. . . if she was a ringer for one of the Black Boy's playmates then no wonder the King had succumbed to her ancestor. As she was, she was no less irresistible, dirt and tangle and all.
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But he had work to do. And dirtier and more tangled work too. He waved away the banknotes. "I thought I might take a few bottles to—what's his name?—David Audley and his friends, if they're giving me room to pitch my tent among them—"
"A few bottles?" Lexy laughed. "Darling, that'd be coals to Newcastle— they're permanently awash in booze at the Tower, they live in an absolute haze of alcohol and intellectual conversation. But you don't need to worry, because they can be jolly—and when I tell them about La Goutard fetching over you they'll welcome you with open arms . . . and open bottles." She grasped the door handle of the Volkswagen. "Did you make your rules-and-regulations phone call okay? Because I can't wait to tell Jilly and Steffy the great news of your conquest."
Roche looked at his watch. "Ah... I had a bit of trouble there—
the lines all engaged, or something—so if I could try again in a few minutes . . . You can show me the sights of the town in the meantime, maybe?"
Lexy shrugged. "A few minutes is about right, darling . . .
because there isn't anything worth seeing, except the church, so they say . . . but I've seen it, and it isn't worth seeing either
—it's more like a castle than a church—"
Roche kept a straight face. That, of course, was why the church of Saint-Maur was worth seeing, precisely: it was a perfect bastide church, with its four flanking towers and parapet walks, and the downward-slanted loopholes with dummy5
their stirrup-shaped bases giving the defending archers wider fields of fire—an innovation (according to the Thompson notes he had studied on the train) which a bastide-expert like Captain Roche would unerringly identify as a legacy of 12th century crusading experience.
But all that would be lost on Lexy, whose historical knowledge most likely ended in King Charles II's 17th century bed . . . and who was now reaching half-proprietorially, half-shyly, for his hand with one of those grubby paws of hers.
But at the last moment she thought better of it. Instead she raised both the paws for his inspection.
"Oh God—just look at me! Father always says that I attract grime . . . but this is thanks to David, damn him!"
Roche couldn't avoid examining the hands of Lady Alexandra Perowne, which at close quarters resembled those of a garage mechanic, black-stained and calloused, and broken-nailed.
"That's bloody David's bloody engine oil!" exclaimed Lady Alexandra hotly. "He thinks bloody cars run on petrol, faith and hope, and never a drop of oil or water, that's what he thinks! He's the cleverest man I've ever met—and he's an absolute bloody idiot with cars."
So here was another curious and unexpected insight into David Longsdon Audley, then.
In itself it was hardly important—that the man didn't have the skills one might have expected of an ex-tank commander.
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But—what was important—it warned him of how little he really knew about the man even though he knew so much that others didn't know.
He looked up for a moment, away from Lexy's oil-stained hands which the river had failed to clean, and caught a glimpse of one of Saint-Maur's towers through a gap in the roof-line. Then he forced his eyes and his mind back to the hands.
"You do his car maintenance for him?"
"Well, he can't do it. And the others won't—not even Davey Stein, who's supposed to know all about aeroplane engines. . . and Mike's even worse— he was in the engineers during the war, he's always telling us, too—but he won't even hold a bloody spanner for me. I tell you, darling—they'll have me sweeping the chimney and rodding their drains for them before they've finished . . . Not that I couldn't do both those things—the trick is to keep turning the rods clockwise." She frowned at him suddenly. "Or is it anticlockwise?"
Roche couldn't help smiling at her. The three men had quite obviously got her hog-tied into doing their dirty work, but an informed guess suggested that she had held the ropes while they tied the knots—that what Lady Alexandra needed most was to be needed in some role other than in bed; and if that involved crawling under a car, rather than into the back seat of it, then she'd require even less encouragement for the former than the latter. Protests notwithstanding, Lexy was doing what came naturally, and was happy with it.
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And David Roche still had work to do, natural or unnatural.