The Critic

II

Enzo followed Paulette Lefevre up the broad stone staircase, sunlight spilling through arrow-slit windows to fall in zigzags across the steps of the old chateau. The swing of her hips was emphasised by the fullness of her calf-length skirt. There was something innately sexual and provocative in it. He wondered if she was aware of it and decided she probably was. In his experience, women were almost always aware of the signals they sent out. Her heels clicked sharply on the stone flags of the first floor landing, then she turned right, through a huge, studded, wooden door, into a vast salon filled with a clutter of old furniture and cardboard boxes. Some of the pieces were covered with dust sheets. An old rocking horse, its paint eroded by time and history, stood in front of an enormous, moulded cheminee, the centrepiece of which was a faded fresco in the process of restoration. Motes of dust hung in the shafts of sunlight squinting in through small windows. Pierric Lefevre looked up from a long, wooden table littered with papers and maps and ancient books with curling yellowed pages. He was riffling through an old ledger of some kind, mottled and stained by centuries of damp.

‘I’ve been going through all this stuff ever since you called. We found most of it, you know, in an old armoire in the east turret when we first bought the place. God knows how it survived.’

Enzo had seen the photographs downstairs in the great dining hall. Pictures Pierric had taken showing the restoration of the Chateau des Fleurs at all its stages. But it was the earliest photographs which were the most dramatic. There had been no floorboards on the first or second floors, and it had been possible to stand in the dining hall and look straight up twenty-five metres to see torn pieces of sky through the roof.

He approached the table, and Pierric turned the age-brittled tome towards him so that he could see it. ‘I think I’ve found what you want. It’s a kind of employment ledger, listing the estate workers, where they lived, how much they were paid.’ He flipped carefully back a couple of pages, and ran his finger down a list of names written in a flamboyant, old-fashioned French script. The ink had faded considerably and was in danger of being lost in the fog of discolouring paper. ‘There.’ He stabbed his finger at an entry. ‘Georges Petit, estate manager. Lived with his family right across the way there in what is now the gite. Right up until 1789, when his employment was terminated.’

Enzo peered at the final entry, which was dated August 12, 1789. It said simply, Emigre. Emigrated.

‘Probably to the New World,’ Pierric said. ‘A lot of people left France for the Americas at the start of the French Revolution.’

Paulette was regarding Enzo with considerable curiosity. ‘How did you know?’

Enzo took a photocopied wad of papers from his bag. ‘Gil Petty’s curriculum vitae, as presented to the Ordre de la Dive Bouteille, to whom he was obliged to reveal all. He took that requirement literally, it seems. Because in it he disclosed that his interest in Gaillac was not just wine-related. His roots were here. His family had emigrated to the United States, he thought early in the nineteenth century. The name Petty is just a corruption of Petit. His ancestor was Georges Petit who lived, as your ledger attests, in the very gite Petty rented when he came here four years ago. For him it was a voyage of discovery. A man in search of his history. Gil Petty was coming home. Although I doubt if he realised for one moment that he was coming home to die.’