"... the outer courtyard, reached by way of a ruined gatehouse of formidable proportions, leads the visitor to a second and more attractive gateway, built in the dummy5
Renaissance style, bearing the family motto 'Soln in perfectum me attrahit' intertwined among delicate devices..."
So he had two gateways to pass—
". . . the interior of the château, soon to be opened to the public for the first time, comprises a succession of noble rooms, furnished with the everyday objects of life in the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries, including priceless tapestries, furniture and family portraits..."
Either the château had somehow escaped the excesses of the French Revolution, or the present owner was lying through his teeth! But here, once again, was illustrated that unrivalled ability of the French to triunph over adversity . . .
and he could only hope that his own diluted French blood would do the same for him.
"We are close, m'sieur."
Roche craned his neck to take in the view. They had left the last houses of Laussel-Beynac behind among the trees, and had twisted and turned in a series of hairpin bends to rise above a great cingle of the river, to bring into view the towers of the château ahead.
The last turn opened up the new parking area, bulldozed out from the hillside on the peasants' side of a great dry moat which had been cut across the limestone headland on which the castle itself had been built to command the river valley.
The medieval defences of the castle lay directly ahead, dummy5
wreathed in scaffolding, with a lorry in the foreground from which men were even now unloading bags of cement, and with the delicate conical towers of the Renaissance château he had glimpsed earlier rising in the background.
He was oddly reminded of The Old House, which was so absolutely different and so English, but which was the same for all that: possession of these things—Le Château du Cingle d'Enfer and The Old House at Steeple Horley—could twist some men out of true self-interest, just as any abstract ideas could delude others, like himself and Genghis Khan, who had no such things of their own, into other follies.
The distant sound of a motor-cycle, somewhere behind him in the trees on the twists and turns, recalled him to reality.
He picked up Choses et Gens and his own bastide nonsense, and walked round the Citroen to the driver's window.
"Just you keep your eye on that gateway. When I come out of there I don't want to hang about admiring the view—you understand?"
He didn't wait for Galles to acknowledge the instruction, but launched himself straightway towards the first gate.
" The visitor will observe the gun-ports, pierced low in the gateway by Jean d'Auberon, who died with 'obert de Montal at-the battle of Pavia in 1525 . . ."
He observed the gun-ports.
And he also observed the cement-bag carriers, who took no more note of him than the peach-box carriers outside dummy5
Neuville.
Under the shadow of the archway ahead—" rebuilt by Etienne III d'Auberon, who led the best shots in France in the hunt for the last wolf of the Dordogne, in 1774" —there was a pile of cement bags, laid away safe from any August rain, as Genghis Khan's man had said they would be.
He paused halfway down, out of sight of everyone, as though to adjust the tightness of one shoelace, and picked up the brief-case planted between the bags.
It was dusty with a fine powder of cement, and the key was in the lock. He turned the key and put it into his trouser pocket, dusted down the case with his hand, as he straightened up, and stepped out briskly into the light of the inner courtyard beyond.
It was only a matter of ten seconds, but he had it now— King, Cawdor, Glamis, all—he could turn round and run now!
He continued on towards the 'Solum perfectum me attrahit'
doorway, tucking the d'Auberon book and the bastide material more comfortably under his arm. A thing done right was a thing done well, Mrs Clarke had said.
There was a heavy bronze dolphin knocker on the great door.
He looked back across the courtyard and saw that the cement carriers were back on their job.
A small grill clicked open in the door, startling him.
"Captain David Roche—for M'sieur d'Auberon." He projected the password into the grill, slightly off-put by the pink scalp dummy5
which was all he could see through it. "M'sieur Audley has telephoned, I think?"
Heavy bolts echoed on the inside. Getting into the château, with all its ancient treasures and its more lethal post-Suez objets d'art, was not just for casual callers.
There were three steps forward, and then two steps down, over white Carennac marble into the hall, while the great door crashed shut behind him.
". . . and its greatest architectural beauty is the splendid Renaissance staircase, which comprises a superb transition between the spiral and the stair in flights, as at Montal. . ."
"If M'sieur le Capitaine will come this way?" The little bald man who had peered up at him through the grill, grey-coated and black-trousered, indicated a door to his left.
Roche regretted desperately that he had come so far, but he was trapped now beyond all thought of retreat.
". . . a succession of noble rooms. . ."
Here he was in one of them, complete with tapestries on one side, and a breath-taking view beyond the river on the other!
"M'sieur d'Auberon will attend you here shortly, M'sieur le Capitaine."
dummy5
The second door closed behind him.
Door—enormous windows, with five-mile views across the river—vast carved fireplace . . . and an immense faded tapestry picturing heavily-armed Renaissance Romans martyring naked Christians in ingenious ways. . .
But he hadn't come to admire d'Auberon's treasures. There was a huge oak table in the centre of the room, on heavily carved legs. He walked towards it quickly, first dumping the bastide notes and Choses et Gens on top, then tucking the brief-case down out of the way behind one of the legs, feeling for all the world like Stauffenberg planting his bomb under the table in the Fuehrer's bunker.
Only, unlike Stauffenberg, the moment he'd abandoned the brief-case he wanted to pick it up again. The thought of letting it out of his grasp even for a second left him desolate, clenching the empty hand which had relinquished it into a tight fist in a reflex against temptation.
He felt the temptation grow. It wasn't really necessary at all, this charade—he was still obeying Genghis Khan when the man's orders no longer mattered—when nothing mattered except the possession of that brief-case—
A sound outside the room straightened him up just as his hand started to unclench.
"Captain Roche?"
Roche turned slowly towards the sound.
"Captain Roche—what a pleasure! You are David Audley's dummy5
friend? Or, more accurately, Miss Baker's friend?"
He hadn't consciously tried to imagine what Etienne d'Auberon would be like, beyond vague instinctive images founded on what Lexy and Madame Peyrony had let slip, crossed with his own experience of superior Quai d'Orsay types.
"M'sieur d'Auberon." He mouthed some sort of reply, letting the Frenchman come towards him while moving only slightly himself so as to mask the brief-case more effectively.