"And staying with him, in the Tower? While on leave from Paris, he said?" D'Auberon's handshake was firm and dry, and neither too strong nor too weak, like the man himself.
Roche found himself recalling another of Bill Ballance's obiter dicta, on the Anglo-French love-hate complex: ' the best Frenchman is the one you can admire as an enemy if you can't have him as a friend' .
But meanwhile he had replied again, one half of his brain working automatically to make the necessary conversation along lines already planned while the other half tried to betray him.
"Ah, yes—our bastides. And there is nothing recent written on them in English? You are lucky David Audley hasn't thought of that. He is a most able historian . . . but then his interests are strictly Merovingian, aren't they?"
Far beneath the surface of the words Roche sensed the truth of what he already knew, that d'Auberon and Audley admired dummy5
each other in enmity, not as friends.
He replied once more, and saw d'Auberon smile, and the smile hurt him. For d'Auberon was another name in the list of his betrayals, as surely as if there had been a bomb in that brief-case. And if there was another thing that was sure, it was that this man would never be in the business of betraying anyone—Audley had been wrong even to imagine it as a possibility, and Genghis Khan had been right to reject the idea. He didn't know how he knew it, but he knew it.
More pleasantries and agonised conversation. And then d'Auberon's eye fell on Chases et Gens.
"I see you have my little book. Not a great work, I'm afraid—
it bears the stamp of too many official reports, without style. . . it is just another pile of facts, without interpretation." D'Auberon gestured round the room, and towards the window. "All this is beautiful. . . but what does it mean?"
The pretentiousness of the question surprised Roche: it seemed out of the man's character. But at last it broke the spell, enabling him to unite the two parts of his brain. What did it matter, what happened to a stranger, compared with what happened to him?
"I thought it was fascinating—how one of your ancestors led the king's huntsman to kill 'the Beast of Gevaudan'. . . and about the château itself, of course."
"Would you like to see the house? And then a glass of dummy5
something?"
The predictable responses hardened Roche's heart finally. He looked at his watch guiltily, to confirm that enough minutes had elapsed to run d'Auberon out of time. "That's very kind of you . . . but—most unfortunately—I am required to be back at the Tower. I merely wished to make myself known to you ... if perhaps you could provide me with some introductions—particularly in Monpazier and Villereal . . .
there's no hurry—" the words tumbled out as he scooped up the book and the bastide papers, blocking off d'Auberon's view of the table leg "—another time, perhaps?"
His bad manners creased a tiny frown on to d'Auberon's forehead. "Another time—of course, Captain."
It was a little more difficult to force the Frenchman into leading the way out, so that he could still mask the case, but he managed it with a mixture of English clumsiness and lack of savoir faire, and the genuine nervousness and reluctance he felt in abandoning the most precious object on earth.
In the end d'Auberon positively strode ahead, out into the entrance hall, irritated by his gaucheness, and Roche's last view of the room was agonisingly rewarded with the sight of the thing poking out from under the table like a sore thumb.
The little bald door-keeper was hovering in attendance at the entrance.
"I will see m'sieur out, Martin," said d'Auberon brusquely.
Roche hurried after him into the courtyard. "The trouble is, dummy5
you see . . . my car broke down by the river, where I was bathing with Lady Alexandra—" (another strike against d'Auberon was that he hadn't zeroed in on Lexy, as any sensible man should have done, and as her father and Madame Peyrony might well have intended; or was that a strike for him, damn it?) "—so I had to get a lift here . . . and that's why I'm so late, you see—"
"A lift?" D'Auberon was halfway across the courtyard already, eager to get rid of Captain Roche from the premises.
"With Lady Alexandra's garage man. He's waiting for me, to take me back to the Tower," said Roche breathlessly.
D'Auberon stopped alongside the pile of cement bags.
"What?"
I had to get a lift here." Roche feigned embarrassment. " Oh—
damn!"
What?" The vehemence of Roche's damn caught d'Auberon's attention. "What's the matter?"
"I'm an idiot!" Roche turned embarrassment to apology. "I've left my brief-case behind—with all my other stuff in—I put it down somewhere—" he looked around him helplessly, and finally back towards the door of the château "—it was by the table, I think—"
D'Auberon regarded him with a suggestion of weariness, which was then overtaken by good-mannered tolerance as Roche grimaced apologetically at him.
"I'm so sorry." The words put the matter beyond argument.
dummy5
"It is no matter. I will go and get it." D'Auberon shrugged and turned on his heel.
Roche's legs, still programmed by Genghis Khan, carried him on past the cement bags, into the light beyond the arched tunnel of the gate-house. The lorry had gone, and the parking area was empty except for the little grey Citroen. He could see Raymond Galles' face turned towards him.
He felt almost played out, but in the last minute of the game, when the team which was going to win was the one which forced itself to play harder. Facing Galles, he raised his hand across his stomach and damped down the man's expectations with a palm-down signal.
The light had lost its brightness, which he had first seen this morning dissipating the mist on the road from Neuville to Cahors. It was like the field where he had been sick the evening before, just in advance of Lexy's arrival. Now he felt sick again—sick with all the different prospects ahead of him, in which Lexy could never take part.
But really there were only two prospects; either d'Auberon would come back, or he wouldn't.
When he did—he had to think only of that— when he did, all that remained was to drive back to Audley, and fob him off with success. . .and that would win him another day, at the least—maybe more, since both sides trusted him, and when he didn't surface each would worry first about what the other one might have done to him, and by the time either of them started to smell a rat he'd be long gone to ground, and ready dummy5
to deal for his survival—
Long gone, Julie—
And long gone, Lexy—
And long gone, all the rest of them—the man on the beach in Japan and all his successors down to Genghis Khan; and the man in the British Embassy in Tokyo, and all his successors down to Sir Eustace Avery and Colonel Clinton; and David Audley and Etienne d'Auberon—and the hell with all of them!
No more self-pity, just self-interest and the future—no longer the past or the might-have-been, no more deluding himself with silly ideas—there was no more time for any of that—
In the stillness he heard the door under Solum perfectum me attrahit close again behind him in the distance, through the arched gate-house and the courtyard.
Raymond Galles, and whoever else was there to witness the transaction, was still watching him. And the only thing that worried him was the faintest suggestion of doubt which had been in d'Auberon's eyes as he turned away.