Page 11 of The Paris Trip

‘Well,’ he murmured, head on one side as he considered that possibility, ‘maybe a little.’

‘Oh, un peu?’

‘Peut-être,’ he agreed smoothly, his lips twitching.

‘You are insufferable.’

‘It has been said.’ Unexpectedly, Leo slammed on the brakes and reversed at speed into a tiny parking space, leaving the car bumper to bumper with others in the narrow Parisian side street. ‘Here we are. Château Rémy is just around the corner. I’m afraid we sold off the parking area to generate cash, so we have to park wherever we can now.’ He got out of the car, and she scrambled out after him, peering about the dark street in confusion. ‘Follow me, mademoiselle.’

They walked across the road from his parking place and up a steep, narrow, cobbled alleyway. Maeve blinked. Could she see turrets up ahead?

Sure enough, the looming shapes in the darkness were revealed to be turrets, surreal and unlikely in a busy Parisian street, somehow squeezed in between stately apartment buildings and modern office and shopping blocks. The turrets, picked out by multiple spotlights set at ground level, were topped with red-tiled circular roofs above high stone walls blanketed in thick, ivy-like creepers.

Like something out of a fairy tale, she thought, glancing at her host’s back.

Who was he?

CHAPTER FOUR

Leo Rémy… The artist.

That was what the gendarme had said on the street near the Louvre, his expression one of recognition and perhaps even grudging respect.

So Monsieur Rémy was well-known in Paris, at least. And as an artist.

But what kind of artist? The traditional sort who painted portraits and landscapes? Or the wacky experimental type who bunged a load of bricks in a wheelbarrow and called it ‘art’?

Maeve knew which sort she preferred. A painter who stood musing for hours in front of an oil painting, a paintbrush between his teeth… That was the old romantic image of an artist, and one she revered and instinctively approved of. That kind of art was born from many hours of hard work, endless canvases painted and thrown aside in despair, alongside a lifelong study of the great masters…

But there was something unsettling about Leo Rémy that made her suspect he was the other type. A wheelbarrow of bricks artist.

She followed in silence as he trod swiftly up the uneven cobbled path, picking his way unerringly in the dark where she found herself stumbling. Then he ducked his head through a crumbling, narrow archway and led her around the back of some enormous building – the château itself, she guessed – while she trailed after him, feeling weary and a little lost, constantly missing her footing in the dark.

Where on earth was he taking her?

The path went on and on into gloom. High walls glowered down on them from all sides. Eventually, she realised they were skirting a garden. In fact, her eyes gradually adjusting to the darkness, she realised it was not even a garden. Just a narrow strip of yard separating the massive château from its nearest neighbours, consisting of a few ironwork benches and chairs set beside plants in troughs to lend a splash of greenery.

At last, they passed a row of tall, cream-shuttered double windows at ground level before reaching another arched entranceway, this time opening on an inner courtyard.

‘This way,’ he told her without glancing back.

This inner space was also cobbled, but made more welcoming by adequate lighting, allowing her to see several huge-leaved fig trees growing up against the walls, while bushy geraniums sprawled from stone urns set in pairs at intervals, marking out a pathway that led to a dilapidated-looking door.

Around the periphery of the courtyard, spotlights dazzled her eyes as they picked out a dozen or so windows on upper storeys.

Above their heads, the Parisian night sky glowed a soft dark orange, and she caught the muffled beep of a car horn on one of the streets below, the only reminders that they were in the heart of a great European city and not in the countryside.

Maeve stopped and turned on her heel, taking in these beautiful surroundings with surprised awe. So this was Château Rémy? ‘It’s very big, isn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘Though I suppose that’s why you call it a château.’

Leo, who was wrestling a large key out of a small inner pocket, flashed her a bemused look. ‘I don’t call it a château. It is a château. It’s been a château for some four hundred years.’

‘Goodness. And have the Rémy family owned it all that time?’

He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘No, you’ve got me there. We did change the name. The Rémy family bought this place a few generations back. But it’s a very old building.’ He was wrestling again, only this time with the lock of the dilapidated back door. Cursing in French under his breath, he rattled the door handle and struggled with the iron key, which was long and ornate, looking like something out of the eighteenth century. ‘And bits of it… keep… not working.’ As he said this, the ancient-looking door handle came off in his hand. He bared his teeth, staring down at it. ‘Or simply fall apart.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Ah, the English and their mastery for understatement.’ Leo bowed his head for a moment as though gathering his strength, and then pulled a mobile phone from his pocket. The screen lit up as he made a call. Somebody answered at the other end and he had a rapid-fire conversation in French with a woman. Who then hung up.

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