The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [32]
“Did he never go back to Périgord?”
“Not that I know. But I can’t say I followed his movements closely,” he said. She did not know him well enough even to guess whether this straightforward, rather bluff manner of the plain-speaking officer and gentleman was real, or just a surface skin he wore, like a uniform. She had never known any soldiers. Perhaps they were all this way; what you saw was what you got. But Manners had a quick mind, possibly even a subtle one. She suspected there was more to him than he wanted to display—at least, she cautioned herself, display to her.
“What about Paris?” she asked him. “Catching up with his friend François Malrand, the rising political star. Did he keep up with his old comrade-in-arms, de Gaulle’s protégé?”
“Maybe he went when I was at school or when he was serving in NATO. I think he was stationed there in some staff job when the HQ was still at Fontainebleau. before de Gaulle kicked them out to Brussels in the 1960s.” He shrugged and fell silent as the waiter came with their smoked salmon. “He went off to the races at Longchamps from time to time, I seem to recall. He won a lot of money once.”
Remember his father, she told herself. There was obviously a lot more to old Colonel Manners than he had ever allowed to meet the eye. Working underground with the French Resistance, staying on the run from the Germans. That must have meant something to do with Intelligence, a skill at keeping secrets. Perhaps his son was the same way, hidden depths.
“Fathers can have a lot of privacy in our kind of family,” he went on. “I was away at school, and he’d retired before I went to Sandhurst. Maybe they sometimes met in London. I wouldn’t know. But that friendship didn’t seem to play a big part in his life. He said nothing when Malrand won the election. I found no letters among his things, and I was as surprised as anyone else when the French ambassador rang to say that the President planned to come to the funeral. I’m slightly surprised you knew. It was kept very quiet.”
“Until the newspapers got hold of it, you mean.”
“Yes, until then.” He ate neatly, she noticed, without paying much attention to the food. Lydia was getting rather tired of foodies; men who made exaggerated talk of sauces and dishes and treated fashionable restaurants as if they were something to do with art.
“Did Malrand come to your house after the funeral?” she asked, making the question casual. She felt uncomfortable, turning the conversation into an interrogation.
“Of course, took a drink, said some gracious things. Stayed about ten minutes. He’d said a few words at the grave, about my father being a great friend of France. That sort of thing. Spoke very good English.”
“Did he look around the house, go to your father’s study? I’m wondering whether he may have seen the rock—I presume it was on display in your father’s room.”
“No, I don’t recall him being anywhere but the hall and the main drawing room. He strolled around the garden with me a bit, saying he remembered it from the war. Apparently he’d been to stay with my father. He spoke about my grandmother and her garden, made me walk him up the drive to the lodge, where she lived when the Americans took over the house.” He put down his knife and fork, finished his champagne.
“But I see what you mean. If my father had picked it up in France, that was the time they were working together in Périgord. He may have known something about it. But if my father was up to no good and pinching bits of France’s glorious heritage, then the President of France would hardly have gone out of his way to honor the memory of someone he suspected as a thief. As for the old man’s study, it was