He was being ridiculous! Scotland Yard’s ace man-hunter creeping about a French cemetery in fear of the mayor’s secretary’s umbrella poking him in the ribs? And then he saw what his instinct had surely been telling him was there. At one of the graves close by, work seemed to be in progress. A canvas sheet of the kind that gravediggers use was stretched over the plot and another was hanging casually over the granite stone. A wheelbarrow was propped against it to keep it in place. But there were no spades, not a crumb of displaced earth. Joe strolled over, eased back the wheelbarrow and tweaked aside the covering.

He read on the stone words he was clearly not intended to read. ‘Idiots!’ he thought. ‘Should have left well alone!’ By this ill-conceived attempt at a literal cover-up his attention had been drawn straight to the gilt letters: Thomas Tellancourt soldat de la grande guerre. 1890–1916. Mort pour la Patrie.

For one moment Joe wished that he had Dorcas by his side to enjoy the revelation.

‘Well, well,’ he muttered, replacing the cover. ‘I wonder who exactly we have down there? How interesting it would be to find out.’

Shaking his head, he hurried back to his car and moved off as smoothly as he could.

Chapter Fifteen

Didier politely held the door of the lift to allow two people from his floor to dash in. An Englishman and a young girl. The usual strained attempts at conversation between strangers in the confined space of a lift ensued: ‘Ground floor all right for you? . . . Thank you, yes, we’re bound for the dining room . . . Your first night here? . . . You’ll enjoy the food . . . Ah, here we are.’

Seated by himself at a table in the corner, Didier gave his full attention to the menu and then settled to look covertly at the other guests. Inquisitive by nature, he always enjoyed a little mischievous speculation about his fellow men. No surprises here: mostly men on business associated no doubt with the champagne trade and mostly, like him, solitary. There were one or two couples, the silent ones he presumed to be married to each other, the animated ones almost certainly to someone else. These were far more interesting. But his eye was continually taken by the Englishman and his companion. And here was a puzzle. The man was obviously too young to be her father and treated her with none of the paternal froideur you might expect of an Anglo-Saxon parent. Brother and sister? Hardly. The age gap was too great. And yet, superficially there was a family resemblance. They had dark hair and complexions though on second glance the man had the misty grey eyes of a northern land while the girl had the unmistakable warm brown marron of the Mediterranean.

Didier recognized a fellow soldier. The Englishman, even without the give-away wound to the forehead, was easily identified as such by his confident stride and watchful eyes. He seemed, as far as Didier could gather from a distance of three tables, to be recounting his day. A day full of incident, judging by the reactions of his audience. The girl was fascinated, responding one moment with horror, the next with laughter. With not too distant memories of his own daughter and her friends at the same age as this girl Didier realized that what was missing was the element of adolescent playing to an audience, of flirtation. His Paulette would have been excitedly eyeing the waiters and the more youthful of the other diners and passing salty comments. This girl was completely absorbed by the conversation. At ease with her companion, she leaned over and brushed a crumb from his sleeve and refilled his water glass without a pause in her sentence. And Didier smiled. He had it. These two were partners. In what, he had no idea, but whatever their business, and it was clear to him that they had a business, they were conducting it on equal terms.

The Englishman had it right: the food was indeed very good. His doctor’s advice set aside for the duration of his stay, Didier decided to treat himself to the rich northern dishes he really enjoyed and had for so many months forgone and he selected a bottle of Chablis and a bottle of burgundy to accompany them. So near the end of his road now, why not? Towards the end of the meal, familiar twinges made him begin to regret his indulgence. The trouble was he had regularly in the last year or so passed off what Christophe told him was angina as indigestion. And now – could he any longer tell the difference? Was one a trigger for the other? He wished he had listened more carefully to his doctor’s explanations. He gripped the edge of the table as the crisis seized him, gasping for breath and trying to hold firm, battling with the band of steel which tightened across his chest. He must not black out here in public among strangers. He must not collapse so near to his goal.

‘Are you all right, sir? Pardon my intrusion . . . my niece noticed you seem to be in some difficulty and sent me over. Look, you’re obviously not all right. Shall I get the manager to call a doctor?’ The Englishman leaned over him, shielding him from curious eyes, concerned but discreet.

Head to the wind, Didier crashed through a final wave of pain and managed to speak. ‘It’s all right. Thank you. An old problem. Brought on by over-indulgence, I’m afraid. As you say – the food here is indeed very good. Too challenging for my decrepit old system. I have pills somewhere . . .’ He scrabbled in his pocket for his pill box and shook out two. ‘I’ll be all right again in two ticks.’

The Englishman handed him his glass of water and steadied his hand as he swallowed. ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ But the man did not leave at once, duty done, as Didier expected. He slipped on to the chair next to him, one hand comfortingly on his arm, and sat through the crisis with him. Finally, ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Less blue about the gills, I think! But, all the same, old chap, I’d see a medic in the morning if I were you.’ He held out his hand in an English gesture. ‘How do you do? Sandilands, Joe Sandilands from London. Policeman and busybody.’

Didier managed a faint smile. ‘Marmont. Didier Marmont from the Ardennes. Mayor and gourmand. Thank you for your concern, monsieur, and I’ll certainly take your advice. Oh, and thank your lovely niece, would you,’ he bowed his head in acknowledgement of Dorcas whose eyes had not left them across the room, ‘for her awareness and her kind heart.’

‘Well, your Mayor Marmont actually seems to have taken your advice, Joe.’

‘I’m surprised you sound surprised! But what makes you say that?’ said Joe, intrigued by the gleam of secret knowledge in Dorcas’s eyes.

‘As we were leaving the hotel just now, I saw him at the reception desk using the guests’ telephone. Did you know you can overhear anything people are saying if you stand behind them – the partition’s quite inadequate.’

Joe groaned. ‘I left you alone for half a day yesterday and I’ll bet you’ve produced a notebook full of potential blackmail material.’ He had been, since their first meeting, aware of Dorcas’s eavesdropping habits. A necessary tool for survival in her difficult domestic circumstances, he allowed, but it could be an embarrassment if used in more civilized surroundings.

‘I had more useful things to do yesterday,’ she said primly. ‘But listen – your new friend the apoplectic mayor was talking to a doctor as we were coming out.’ Joe remembered she’d slipped back into the hotel with a muttered excuse about checking their pigeon-hole for messages. ‘And I wondered if you or someone or other should help him? He seemed to be having no luck . . . “But doctor, it’s rather urgent,” he said. “Surely you can see me before next Monday?” Think, Joe! Next Monday – that’s ages! And then his shoulders slumped and he said: “Oh, well then, if that’s the earliest appointment you can give me, I suppose I shall have to accept it.” And he wrote it down in his diary. We shan’t be here tonight to keep an eye on him – we’ll be at the château.’