The Color of Night by David Lindsey

Author:David Lindsey [Lindsey, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 0446523615
Publisher: Warner
Published: 1999-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 32

ANTIBES, FRENCH RIVIERA

Charles Rousset cautiously made his way along the stone path that for a few meters clung to the curve of the precipice above the Cap d’Antibes like a swallow’s nest glued to a cliff before it gained solid ground again and ascended toward the old house. He paused a moment and turned to enjoy the view of the Mediterranean. There was a haze over the water today, an impressionist’s interpretation. How could one help but be romantic about such a stunning perspective?

Reluctantly he turned back again to the path, which, like the house to which it led, was in a state of neglect, not from indifference, but from a lack of the proper funds to maintain it. At one time it had been a pristine piece of real estate. In the 1950s it had been purchased by a London banker who lavished a great deal of his fortune on it. In those days the footpath had been lined with brilliant bowers of saffron sepiara and the blindingly bright cerise bracts of the bougainvillea. Exotic flowering cycas marked each turning of the way, and pastel perennials of every color snuggled in among the crevices and corners.

Those were former days. The banker and his wife were long since gone, as were the flowers and the blooming trees. Common cactus and weeds had now overgrown the edges of the footpath, and unforgiving rocks gouged up through the flat stones to make walking a precarious effort.

The house was large but could not be called a proper villa. It was sited handsomely above the blue-and-green bay, and though its stucco was cracked and stained, though the stones of its courtyard and terrace were loosened and hosted sprays of dried native grass, and though some of its terra-cotta roof tiles were slipping and askew, the style and beauty of the house still gave Rousset a thrill as he rounded the last turn in the footpath and came upon it, silhouetted against the ageless Mediterranean.

Edith Vernon was the only child of the banker who had built the house, and when her father died, in much reduced circumstances, the house was the only thing he left her. Though it was debt free, Edie, who was now in her early sixties, was hard-pressed to keep it up and pay the proper taxes. When her father was in his financial heyday, Edie was in hers as well. An art student in her university years, she fully partook of Rome’s la dolce vita, and her beauty opened what few doors her father’s money would not. Though the memories of those days remained, they were all that remained, and Edie had scratched out a poor living during the last two decades, trying to live off her art. Like many artists, she was a better copier of others’ work than she was a creator of her own. At this she was brilliant.

“Good God!” she exclaimed. She was standing solidly in the kitchen doorway, her hands on her hips, looking out at him.

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