The Butler(39)

When they arrived at the address, there were huge gates between two imposing stone posts, and a small forest of trees obscured any view of the chateau, so the owner’s privacy was ensured. They punched in the code and the gates swung open. There was a slightly eerie feeling as they followed the driveway. The trees were thick, and one somehow sensed that the property was uninhabited. There were stone outbuildings along the way, and more recently built stables, in contrast to the eighteenth-century chateau. The previous owner had owned racehorses. The property had been foreclosed on a year before and was sold by the bank.

    Joachim was observing the property closely with a practiced eye. “They need groundskeepers,” he commented. The place hadn’t been kept up, and she could see that he was right.

The keys to the chateau and the stables had been delivered to Olivia by the realtor who had made the sale. When they got out of the car, and walked up the front steps, there was a keypad. They put in the code they’d been given, and then turned the big old-fashioned key, and the door creaked as it swung open. Olivia looked at Joachim.

“I feel like we’re going to be attacked by ghosts,” she whispered, and he smiled.

“Or something worse.” The chateau hadn’t been lived in or renovated in a long time, and they were glad they had come in daylight. There were no lamps or working light fixtures anywhere. The electricity had been turned off. They walked through a front hallway into a massive living room with high ceilings and a fireplace Joachim could stand up in. There were handsome ceiling beams, and carved wood paneling. You could see that the chateau had been beautiful but not for a long time. Olivia understood why Audrey hadn’t wanted to take on the project. It was going to be a lot of work for someone, and would have been nearly impossible to manage from New York. It would have been hard enough from Paris, let alone Moscow, where the new owner lived. One would need to be near at hand to make constant decisions and communicate with the contractor one chose, hopefully a reliable one.

    When they looked closely, they noticed the beautiful details. The main living room and several smaller ones beyond it had good proportions and many windows. The aristocrat who had built it originally must have been a very rich man, judging from the exquisite craftsmanship, carved moldings, wood paneling, and many windows. There was a wood-paneled dining room that looked like a banquet hall. She could imagine a long table running down the center of it, for fifty people or more.

“I hope he has a large family, or many friends,” Joachim said. The kitchen was a huge room with nothing in it. They looked at each other and said at the same time, “Ikea!” And they both laughed. It was daunting, but not quite as overwhelming as it had looked from the outside. There were two floors of countless bedrooms, which led into one another, and seemed to turn into a maze. Many bathrooms, but probably not enough. They all needed to be modernized. The servants’ rooms were on the top floor, and there were utility rooms and a vast wine cellar in the basement. Audrey was right, Olivia realized. It was going to be a huge amount of work. But she loved the idea of turning something so ancient and unloved into a beautiful home for its owners to enjoy. She could imagine house parties there, and music and dancing, exuberant meals in the great hall, and ancestral portraits that the Russian didn’t own, but could buy. They went for very little at Drouot, particularly the enormous ones that would have been the right scale for a house that size. People sold their relatives for only a few hundred euros. They would add dignity to the entrance. Olivia could see many things she would do if she took the job. What the place needed was to have a lot of money thrown at it, and a good contractor. It wasn’t destroyed or badly damaged, it was just very old and hadn’t been lived in for a very long time.

    Joachim could sense her mind going at full speed as they walked around. She jotted down a few notes and made some sketches, which he glanced at over her shoulder. And he took photographs for her with his phone. They saw a dead bat on the floor, which made her shudder.

“Oh God, I hope there are no live ones.”

“They sleep in the daytime,” he said to reassure her.

“That is not comforting.” She scowled at him.

“You’d have to have the place cleaned up by a professional company before you start any work.” But it all looked feasible. The windows weren’t broken, the leaks didn’t look recent and had been repaired, the floors needed buffing but were in decent condition when one looked closely. She looked at the views from all the windows. There were lovely trees all around the property, and orchards in the distance. After a thorough walk through the house, which took them an hour, they locked up, set the alarm again, and went to explore the stables, which were relatively modern and had been expensively built.

There was a good spot for a very large, modern pool and patio area closer to the chateau. There were guesthouses, and some cottages. It was practically a village of its own. Joachim could imagine seminars there, or a school, as many great houses in England had been transformed into for more practical use. Turning it into a vacation home for one man seemed excessive to him, and he wondered if he’d ever use it. Many of the Russians who bought property renovated it and never even came to use it. They just liked knowing they owned it and could arrive at any time. It seemed sad to Olivia to treat it that way, and if she did take the project on, she hoped he would spend time there and enjoy it. Otherwise, it seemed like a waste to her too.