Chapter Two
Two
It was clear from the pristine staff quarters that Blake and Elise had spent little time there.
The guest accommodation was another matter entirely.
The rumpled sheets in every bedroom suggested they had either played host to a series of friends, or simply moved their own belongings from room to room whenever they felt the urge for clean sheets.
There were dirty cups and half-drunk glasses everywhere.
Baxter moved methodically throughout the house, stripping beds and gathering crockery on a large oak tray.
Help came an hour later in the form of a French couple with whom Baxter had worked many years previously, before he had taken a permanent position as the Ashcombes’ butler.
One of the advantages of being freelance again was having the freedom to handpick one’s team, and Baxter had been delighted to discover that Miriam and Thierry had been available for the week.
Miriam stared open-mouthed at the carnage in Villa Sérénité. “La vache!” An attractive woman in her late thirties, she had thick dark hair held with a tortoiseshell clip at her nape. She was already dressed in the simple navy shift dress that would be her uniform for the next six days.
“Indeed,” Baxter said drily. He dispatched Thierry to the kitchen, then swept Miriam to the end of the long hallway on the first floor, where he had straightened and made up the first of the villa’s eight bedrooms. “Each one must look precisely like this.” He flipped up the coverlet to show the tight crisp corners of the bedsheets, before pointing out the precise angle of the pillows and throw cushions.
Miriam’s sharp eye took everything in. “Water?”
“Carafes,” Baxter said. “Refilled twice a day. Glasses upside down on the nightstand, and always—always—on a coaster.”
Miriam walked toward the bathroom. “Toilet paper?” she called over her shoulder.
“Full rolls only,” Baxter said. “Folded to a point.”
She made a tutting sound. A moment later, she emerged from the bathroom to pick up her housekeeping box, shaking her head admonishingly at Baxter in response to some detail he had presumably overlooked.
He smiled to himself and left her to it.
Miriam’s attention to detail was perhaps even better than his own.
In the kitchen, Thierry had donned his chef whites and was checking the pantry. “We’ll need eggs for the morning, and lots more bacon. Okay if I phone through an order?”
“Please do. I’ve opened an account with Le Petit Gourmet. I’m going to town now to buy flowers and the oysters for tonight, so give me a list with anything we urgently need.”
With Thierry’s list tucked safely into the pocket of his cream linen jacket, Baxter walked back around the swimming pool, stopping briefly to adjust a parasol leaning at a slightly different angle from the rest. He was somewhat trepidatious as he unlocked the garage—had Blake and Elise made merry in here too?
—but his fears were unfounded; the fleet of cars was untouched.
It was common for clients to provide the butler with a little runaround, but Anya had simply passed him the code to the garage and told him to take his pick.
Baxter bypassed the enormous Range Rover, the bright yellow Lamborghini, and the McLaren Senna with its iridescent purple finish, and took from the safe the keys to the smallest car: a glossy black Porsche 911.
The engine gave a throaty roar as Baxter navigated the twisty bends down toward the bay.
Cannes was a city of contrasts, where historical charm rubbed shoulders with new-money luxury, and billion-dollar yachts bobbed lazily in the marina.
Baxter walked through the narrow, winding streets of the old town with its pastel-colored buildings and paint-peeled shutters.
Tiny restaurants spilled onto the pavements, their chalkboard menus promising fresh seafood and Provencal delicacies.
Baxter stepped aside as a waiter darted past with eight plates on a huge tray balanced on one hand.
Down by the Croisette, Cannes became something else entirely.
Here were wide boulevards lined with palm trees, and flagship stores for Chanel and Dior.
Baxter took it all in. He checked for restaurants that had opened or closed since he’d been here last, and for new boutiques and jewelry stores.
A good butler had recommendations at his fingertips and could secure a reservation at the hottest joint in town with a single phone call.
In the market, Baxter bought orchids for that evening’s tablescape, then joined the queue snaking through the doorway of a tiny boulangerie.
The clientele was almost entirely made up of domestic staff—butlers, housekeepers, a nanny with her charge—but toward the front of the line, a pink Disney T-shirt heralded “tourist” even before Baxter spotted the belt bag, and the phone case strung around the woman’s neck.
Behind her, a girl in denim shorts and an oversized sweatshirt was trying to see into the glass-fronted cabinet.
“Excusez-moi,” she said, almost toppling into the tourist in her eagerness to examine the pastries. The girl’s hair was the color of the foxes that visited Baxter’s tiny London garden. A cocktail waitress, he thought, from one of Cannes’s many bars.
“No problem.” The tourist smiled warmly, but the girl had already turned to leave. She was disappointed by the boulangerie’s range of delicacies, Baxter supposed, but a moment later, it became clear the redhead’s quest had been somewhere other than in the glass-fronted cabinets.
“My wallet!” the tourist wailed. “It’s gone!” The zip of her belt bag gaped open, showing the distinctive green leather fob of a Belle Epoque Hotel room key. Immediately, Baxter stepped out into the street, but the red-haired girl was nowhere to be seen.
Half an hour later, Baxter was standing on the corner of Rue d’Antibes and Traverse Marceau, checking over his list. Thierry had asked for lemons and rosemary, and Miriam needed a fresh supply of the chocolate truffles she would place in each room at turndown.
In the large wicker basket at Baxter’s feet were five dozen oysters, to be served on crushed ice at tonight’s welcome dinner.
Satisfied that he had everything, he was just about to pick up his basket when he became aware of someone behind him.
The hairs on the back of Baxter’s neck stood to attention as he pretended to scrutinize his list, and in his peripheral vision, the figure behind him moved in. A hand edged toward his pocket …
But Baxter got there first.
“Ow!”
He spun around. Wriggling like a fish on a line was the girl with the fox-red hair, Baxter’s fingers clamped around her slim wrists. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“Je ne parle pas anglais,” she spat.
“Pas de problème,” Baxter said smoothly, and repeated his question in rapid French.
She glared at him. “Get off me! This is an actual assault.” Her English was fluent, with no discernible foreign accent.
“I think you’ll find it’s a citizen’s arrest. Ah, but look!” Baxter pointed to a trio of police officers who had rounded the corner at the far end of the street. “I’m sure these gentlemen will know which of us is correct.”
“No!” The girl stopped struggling. She turned beseeching eyes on Baxter. “Please.”
Baxter studied her face. She was even younger than he’d initially thought, perhaps nineteen or twenty at most. And although he’d taken her for a cocktail waitress, he saw now that her hair was in need of a wash, and her nails were ragged and unvarnished.
No self-respecting bar in Cannes would employ this young woman as anything other than kitchen staff, yet she didn’t have the reddened, cracked hands of a pot washer. A professional pickpocket, then?
“Please,” she said again. “Just let me go.”
“What’s your name?”
“What’s it to you?”
Baxter made to signal to the gendarmes, but she snatched at his arm.
“No! My name’s Red.”
Baxter sincerely doubted she had been christened “Red,” but he didn’t have all day. He made a decision. “Empty your pockets.”
“No.”
“Either you empty your pockets or I turn you over to the gendarmes. Your choice.” Baxter held her gaze patiently, as though he had all the time in the world, which he most definitely didn’t.
Thierry and Miriam would have everything in hand back at Villa Sérénité, but it would be unthinkable for Baxter not to be there to greet his clients in person.
Red stared at him, then her shoulders dropped.
“Fine.” Using her free hand, she pulled out the contents of her pockets and dropped them onto the pavement.
A crumpled packet of cigarettes, a book of matches, and a Mickey Mouse wallet with a Velcro fastening.
The vivid blue cover of the matches tugged at Baxter’s mind for a second, but it was the wallet that had his attention.
He released Red’s wrist and bent to retrieve it.
She was gone before he was fully upright, her trainers scuffing the pavement as she turned and ran, light-footed, in the opposite direction of the gendarmes. Baxter shook his head. Off to rob some other poor unfortunate, no doubt.
He made a brief detour to hand the wallet in at the Belle Epoque Hotel, giving the concierge a description of its likely owner, then returned to the car.
It was only a few minutes later, when he was climbing the hill back to the villa, that Baxter remembered why the blue matchbook had seemed familiar.
He had seen the same design—looping white initials on the same vibrant blue of the C?te d’Azur sea—on a matchbook in the kitchen, when he was confronting Blake and Elise.
V.S.
Villa Sérénité.