The Hotel Riviera(47)
“How was it?”
“Good. It made me feel…good.”
“Now you know why I like being on a boat.”
She sat up and ran her hands through her tousled hair. “Don’t look at me, I’m a mess,” she said, knowing it was true.
“I’m not looking,” he said. “I’m just the room-service guy.”
Lola looked at the tray he was carrying. A pot of coffee, two mismatched mugs, two boiled eggs propped up in shot glasses, a paper plate with toast, cut into “soldiers” and oozing butter. She looked back up at Jack.
“It’ll make you feel better,” Jack said.
She nodded, smiling. “It will,” she said. “I promise.”
Chapter 45
Miss N
Miss Nightingale rather enjoyed the tiny Fiat she’d rented for her trip up the coast. It reminded her of her own Mini Cooper, though her little car was a daring red, not the everlasting silver like this one. She hadn’t hesitated about the color when she’d bought her car a year ago, though she’d imagined Tom saying, now why do you want to get red, you’ll catch the eye of every cop from Blakelys to London, and with your speeding, Mollie, you’ll have more tickets than a theater kiosk. But of course Tom had not been thereto caution her, and anyhow she rarely went to London anymore. When she did she took the train from Oxford to Paddington. It was so much easier than trying to park in the city these days.
So, red it was, a nice flashy scarlet that everybody in the village recognized. They waved to her, smiling the way they used to when she roared past on the back of Tom’s turquoise Harley, probably showing more leg than was proper for her age, though her face was hidden by the safety helmet that always gave her claustrophobia. She hadn’t been able to bear to get rid of the Harley; she polished its chrome every week until it looked as though it belonged on the showroom floor and not in her own little stone garage that had once been a gardener’s shed.
She was thinking of Lola though, not Tom, as she drove along the autoroute toward Cap-Ferrat, where she planned to take another look at the old Leonie Bahri villa, abandoned and almost lost under an invasion of clambering vines. There was a “Private, Keep Out” notice tacked to the big iron gates but Miss N ignored it in the belief that no one could accuse a woman of her years of planning on stealing anything, other than a cutting or two from some of the plants that still flourished in the chaotic gardens. She made no attempt to get inside the villa; that would have been wrong. And since the windows were dirty and obscured by vines she couldn’t even see in.
Leonie’s villa intrigued her almost as much as did the disappearance of Patrick Laforêt, though of course, without the ominous present-day consequences of what might have happened to Lola’s husband. Leonie Bahri was part of the past, but her story had been written up in the local newspapers and preserved in their morgue for any researcher to read. There were even pictures, soft focus and too old and blurry to make out very clearly, other than that Leonie was a tall woman with a torrent of blond hair rippling to her waist, like the women in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s paintings. Some pictures showed her dressed in what must have been the latest Paris fashions, hatted and gloved but still somehow looking like the “wild child” of her reputation.
Leonie’s villa had once been La Vieille Auberge, white, foursquare and green-shuttered, set amid a riotous garden on a rocky olive-studded slope leading to the sea. Now it was abandoned, pillars crumbling, roof tiles missing and no doubt letting in the winter rains.
Still, there was something magical about this place, Miss Nightingale thought, as she wandered the half-hidden paths through the once spectacular terraced gardens. It was a place of peace and silence, its secrets hidden forever.
She knew that Leonie had planted these gardens herself. She had also transformed the old place into a charming hotel just the way Lola had; and Leonie had been abandoned by her lover, the way Lola had. Were there more similarities between the two women? Miss Nightingale wished she knew more about Leonie’s story than just the ones in the local papers, that said Leonie had been a star of the musical stage, a woman with a reputation, a woman with a powerful lover; a woman who had loved too often and too unwisely.
No matter, she put all thoughts of Leonie out of her head, swept the clutter of dried leaves from an old stone bench, and took a seat in the shade of an old flowering jacaranda tree. The only sounds were of birds and the faint thud of the sea against the rocky shore. She closed her eyes, at peace with the world.
When Miss Nightingale awoke the sky had changed from early morning gold to the hard bright blue of a hot afternoon. Refreshed, she got to her feet, not without a creak or two of the knees. Goodness, she thought, it must be lunchtime and you know how the French are. If you’re not there by ten minutes to two they’ll refuse to serve you. Going off to have their own lunch, she supposed. Still, perhaps she’d be a little more adventurous today, press on over the border into Italy. It wasn’t a long drive and nobody ever refused a woman a meal in Italy, regardless of the time.
As she turned to leave, she caught sight of a small marble slab beneath the jacaranda tree. Getting onto her creaky knees, she dusted it off with her linen handkerchief and put on her glasses.
A little cat was carved into the marble. Small and slender with pointed ears and a triangular face, it lay, half-curled on its back, paws akimbo, head coquettishly to one side. It was so charming it made her smile. She leaned closer to read the inscription. “Bébé,” it said. “Always in my heart.”