Hunting Ground by J. Robert Janes Read Free Book Online Page B

last weekend of October 1939, the train had brought them from Paris in the early morning. We’d been to the palais , the Château de Fontainebleau so deserted our steps had echoed. Jules knew the owners of Vaux—the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte—so we had gone there, too. Such beautiful things, so many of them.
    Now our guests sat about two picnic tables that had been placed end to end among the pear trees so as to catch the sun. Jules was at the far end, with Janine on his left, everyone eating, drinking, endlessly discussing politics and the war. Oh, for sure, it was good to see Simone and André de Verville again, nice of Jules to have included them, Simone, in particular, for she was special to me, but the others … Apart from Marcel Clairmont, whom you know I didn’t trust and would rather not have had as a more-or-less permanent house guest, I simply didn’t know them.
    In secret, from behind the parted curtains of Jean-Guy’s room, I looked down at those tables. Louis and Dominique Vuitton were thin, stiff, greying, black-haired, and from the Ministry of Culture and the Louvre, respectively, and wasn’t it nice how some couples could have their fingers in so many pies?
    As is often the case with a married couple, it’s either the one or the other who is dominant. A strand of ancient Egyptian beads was held out from that long, skinny neck, those little bits of history fiddled with as if nothing. Worn in a tight ponytail, that woman’s hair had been stabbed by an antique silver barrette, which flashed in the afternoon sun. Carnelian and agate signets of spice traders had been made into bracelets, others into rings. A bitch draped in antiquity. Nefertiti? I remember thinking. The hawklike nose, pinched face, hard dark narrow eyes, pencilled-in eyebrows, mascara, rouge, and lipstick, made me wonder what she was after. Little boys or little girls, for her eyes kept returning to my children. Am I being too harsh? A Royalist if ever there was one, a Fascist anyway, and bitter enemy of the Third Republic.
    Those two were friends and associates of my husband, and mustn’t business always be combined with pleasure, especially at a time of war? They were very influential, and paid servants of that same Republic.
    The rest were young—friends of Janine’s. Michèle Chevalier was the baby and absolutely exquisite. Twenty years of age? Ah, no, eighteen I think. Deep brown eyes that were so serious at times, shoulder-length wavy light brown hair in which there were reddish tints. A manner of delicately tracing the tip of a forefinger under the soft, warm curve of her chin when in thought. This I found touching. Superb breasts, lovely kissing lips, an absolutely unbelievable figure—I was to see it later. Naked, you understand.
    A musician, a violinist and a good one, too, or so Janine had told me. A student, of course, but when would my Jules try to seduce her? Nini’s dark flashing eyes kept flicking to Michèle who sat some distance from her on the opposite side of the tables. Had overtures already been made?
    Vuitton also had an interest in Michèle, that wife of his encouraging this. She would touch the girl’s hand and say something while looking to her husband for agreement. He would then study Michèle and gravely nod or delicately knuckle his thin grey moustache then give a tight little smile or say something profound to which his wife would respond. From the room up here, he looked to be about sixty-five, she on the tired side of fifty and trying hard to hide it, and I became afraid for Michèle, something that would only increase as time went on.
    Henri-Philippe Beauclair was a tall, thin, and bespectacled Socialist. He had asked me to show him the house and when confronted by the embarrassment of a marriage bed he had known was being betrayed, had confessed that though he liked restoring paintings at the Louvre, and was worried about his job, as a chemist he was probably of far more use making