“Luca, Patrice, and Solange,” he said promptly. His sailing friends—but none of DB’s abrasive guests. Luca was a pleasant young man Terry had taken up with in Venice. Patrice was a friend from Terry’s university days, and Solange, his wife. The five of us had contrived to give the slip to the Stella’s other passengers in nearly every port we’d visited.
I laughed. “Then yes, I’d love to join you in a half-deserted, baking-hot, off-season hotel. Though just for a day or two. I do have a life to return to.”
“Books,” he said dismissively. “Rot your brain.”
Terry knew nothing about my other life—the real one, with Sherlock Holmes. In Venice, people had known my husband as “Mr Russell,” amateur violinist, in a bohemian sort of marriage to a much younger and somewhat idiosyncratic bluestocking. Which were not difficult rôles to play, since we were both precisely (if not exclusively) that.
One night on the Stella Maris, under the spell of moon and friendship and more than a little alcohol, I had come near to blurting out the truth. Solange had been reading a detective story, and the others began proposing alternative solutions to the mystery. The name Holmes was on the very tip of my tongue—until Terry said something jolly that made me actually picture him in an investigation: stepping in the foot-prints, pocketing a vital clue, and refusing to believe that one of his friends could do anything so dashed unsporting as commit murder.
At that, I remembered the threat of endless prying discussions about the mythic, near-fictional character Sherlock Holmes, and firmly shut my mouth.
But despite the mild effort of keeping up the act, spending a day or two on the French coast was not a bad idea. If nothing else, it being a land of Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Ligurians meant that it would provide any number of aqueducts, amphitheatres, rural museums, and quaint villages for me to visit. It would give my muscles time to recuperate, and give me a chance to let Holmes know where I was. And yes, to see what I could do about locating Mrs Hudson in the nearby principality of Monaco.
Of course, it was always possible that the straw I was so eagerly grasping at was a complete delusion. That the word “fond” had been not a hint, but a vague reflection, or even a deliberate ruse. That our housekeeper with the racy history had in the end gone to another place altogether.
* * *
—
The Stella Maris was headed to Cannes, a few miles along the coast, but the captain put in first to the more workaday harbour at Antibes, to take on fresh provisions for lunch. This was convenient for us—doubly so, because enough fishing boats were out at sea that we were given a berth at the docks rather than having to be tendered ashore. As usual, the boards underfoot seemed to sway more than the boat had, so I paused to make a nonchalant survey of the view while my equilibrium ceased its spinning and grabbing at nonexistent walls.
The view was worth admiring. To the south, a piece of rocky land extended out into the appropriately azure water. Along the eastern horizon lay the long line of the Alpes Maritimes, while north of the harbour stood the high, stark walls of a castle. The town itself was a typical Mediterranean jumble of red-tiled roofs, smelling of dust and fish.
Terry paused beside me to study the rocky promontory south of town. “That might be the Cap d’Antibes.”
“Didn’t you say there was a beach?”
“P’raps it’s on the other side.” He turned his sun-glasses at the waterfront road. “You see anything that looks like a hotel car?”
The hotel car proved to be two ancient taxis with five good tyres and a pair of unbroken head-lamps between them. Those who were staying on the Stella Maris thought this was hilarious, but the affection between DB and Terry, a bit strained during recent days, returned as we took our leave. They waved us off, we waved them good sailing, and we piled into the taxis as the drivers, cigarettes hanging from their lips, tossed the last bags and valises in on top of our sweating bodies, strapped Terry’s new and peculiar-looking skis onto the roof, and ground their motors into gear.
We stopped three times along the way: the first time to let Luca out to be sick (the previous night had been a raucous one on board); the second time while a small boy herded some goats across the road; and the third time for what remained in Luca’s stomach.
The promontory we had seen from the harbour was indeed the Cap, although the larger part of it was hidden from view. The Hôtel du Cap proved to be on its far side, set in a cultivated pine forest overlooking the Mediterranean. A palm-lined entrance drive led to an establishment both large and grand—more luxurious than I had expected.
During the winter, I had no doubt that its halls would ring with the accents of those escaping the cold of the European north and the American east. Now, in the sweltering heat of midsummer, the voices inside the doors were a mere echo of its high-season glory. Luca, for one, welcomed the relatively cool silence, and was quickly ushered away to our rooms, as were our bags. The skis did cause the porter momentary puzzlement—not only were they strangely wide, but July was not the usual time for hotel guests to take a jaunt up into the Alps. However, any luxury hotel is accustomed to the peculiarities of guests, so the man merely checked that Terry did not wish to keep the skis in his room, and took them away.
When the lobby was empty again, Terry suggested we take a look at the sea. The four of us wandered through the grounds to the centre of the summer merrymaking, and looked down.
“Good heavens,” I said.
The hotel was on top of a cliff, but it had embraced its rocky setting—and got around its lack of a beach—by gouging a large swimming bath into the cliff itself. Above the pool stretched a brilliant white pavilion with arches and shades, stairs leading down to the open sea below. Halfway along the stairs lay the pool and its terrace, the geometric edges making for an odd contrast with the organic stone, although the people below—be they splashing, drinking, or lounging on pool-side chaises, fully exposed to the beating sun or sheltering under the striped umbrellas—seemed untroubled by the unnatural symmetry. For those who wanted actually to swim, diving-boards thrust out into the open sea, where floating platforms were decorated with lounging figures.
The hotel was where Edwardian formality lay. Outside, it was all Twenties.
Solange declared her intention to don her bathing costume and join them. Patrice amiably agreed to accompany his wife (they were newly wed, so he tended to be amiable about most of her demands). To my surprise, Terry was less enthusiastic, merely telling his friends that he’d see them in the bar later.
When they had trotted off to chivvy the maids into digging their costumes from the trunks, he turned to me. “Fancy a walk?”
“Absolutely. Though I may need a hat.”
I had lost five hats on the way from Venice, since the wind on board a ship will pluck off all but the most robustly anchored head-gear. Here it was not only dead calm, but uncomfortably hot, without a breath stirring the leaves.