Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [11]
‘Stephen, come here.’
The man disputing his bill turned and called across the foyer. I’d been wrong to think his black hair might be dyed because his eyebrows, which joined in a single bar over dark and angry eyes, were just as black. His head could have modelled in outline for one of the Roman emperors with its great wedge of a nose and square jaw, but his lips were thin and drawn inward like a man sucking on something sour. He was looking at the brother and sister. As he turned back to the desk I saw them give each other that rueful grimace children exchange when in trouble with parents, their argument instantly forgotten in the face of a shared opponent. It had been a father’s command, although there was no obvious likeness between the two men. I watched as Stephen crossed the foyer, obediently but none too quickly.
‘Did you really order two bottles of claret on Sunday?’
I heard the older man’s impatient question, saw the younger one bending over the bill, but nothing after that because, shamingly, my eyes had blurred with tears. That look between brother and sister had caused it. I felt suddenly and desperately how I needed Tom and how far away he was. I ran behind one of the pillars to hide myself and bent over gasping as if somebody had punched me in the stomach, hands to my face, rocking backwards and forwards to try to ease the pain.
‘Is … is there anything wrong?’
A soft English voice, with the hint of a lisp. Through my fingers I saw pink satin, smelled perfume of roses. A gentle hand came down on my shoulder.
‘Are you ill? Perhaps if you sat down …’
I stammered that I was all right really. Just a … a sudden headache. She was so soft and kind that I had to fight the temptation to lean on her and cry all over her rose mantle.
‘Oh, you poor darling. I suffer such headaches too. I have some powders in my room, if you’d let me …’
I straightened up, found my handkerchief and mopped my face.
‘No, it’s quite all right, thank you. I have … I have friends waiting outside. I am grateful for …’
And I simply fled, through the foyer, down the steps and out to the street. I couldn’t risk her kindness. It would break me down entirely.
I walked around until I’d composed myself, then began inquiring at the lodging houses and smaller, less expensive hostelries in the side streets. There was a different spirit to this part of the town, away from where the rich foreigners stayed. The narrow streets were shadowed, shutters closed, eyes looking out at me through doors that opened just a slit and then shut in my face. People here did not care for questions because Calais had so many secrets. Forty years ago those streets would have sheltered cloaked and hooded aristocrats, trying to escape from the guillotine, paying with their last jewels for the secrecy of the same brown-faced men who now looked at me with wary old eyes. Not much more than twenty years ago, in the late wars with Napoleon, spies from both sides would have come and gone there, buying more secrecy from the men of middle years who now leered from behind counters. Their many-times-great grandfathers had probably taken money from spies watching King Henry’s army before Agincourt. Whatever had happened to my father was only the latest in a long line of things that were never to be mentioned. A few people opened their doors and were polite, but always the answer was the same. They regretted, madame, that they had knowledge of no such man.
And yet my father must have stayed somewhere, or at the very least drunk wine or coffee somewhere. In his last