Chapter 12
DIANE
Dr. Muller, whom I imagined to be an old gentleman with a white beard and a cane, is in fact a pretty woman in her early thirties.
With a powerful flashlight in her hand, she gives us a private tour of the Darcy Grotto, a large complex of interconnected caves just a fifteen-minute walk from the castle.
Under normal circumstances, anyone can visit the Grotto even if, like most caves in France, it’s on private land.
We follow Dr. Muller through stalactite galleries and halls.
Here and there, icicle-like stalactites meet with stalagmite mounds in passionate embraces.
They’re called columns, Dr. Muller explains.
We’re headed to the Mammoth Hall, which hosts the oldest prehistoric rock paintings in France.
Dr. Muller says they’re forty thousand years old.
As we trek behind her, I can’t help thinking she looks like someone you’d expect to tread catwalks, rather than cave galleries, for a living.
Her knee-length trench coat and snug little boots do a great job of drawing the eye to her slender and exceptionally well-shaped legs. I bet Darcy is ogling them right now.
Even I—a one hundred percent heterosexual woman—am ogling them right now.
There’s no denying Dr. Muller is the bomb. She’s smart, good-looking, and classy. Unlike the perky me, who doesn’t have a nanogram of class, according to my future ex-husband.
Why didn’t he ask her to be his fake girlfriend?
Maybe he’s reserving her for when the coast is clear of his nemesis and he can have a real relationship with a suitable woman.
“Et voilà,” Dr. Muller says, turning around. “We’ve reached the Mammoth Hall. I invite everyone to study the ceiling and the walls.”
Striking images of mammoths, lions, and reindeer painted in ochre and charcoal adorn the cave. They’re simple and yet perfectly drawn, the animals full of grace and easy to recognize despite minimal detail.
“I don’t see any rabbits or foxes,” Raphael says. “Why’s that?”
Dr. Muller smiles. “The Paleolithic Man didn’t draw the animals he hunted.”
“So these paintings had a ritualistic function?” Genevieve asks.
“We believe so.” Dr. Muller brushes a strand of hair from her face with the elegance of a ballerina. “But the truth is we don’t really know.”
I raise my hand. “Did you find any paintings of people?”
“We found a few representations of women. But no men. That is, no complete men.”
“What do you mean?” Raphael asks.
“I mean this.” She points her torchlight to a familiar-looking drawing on the ceiling.
I peer and realize it’s an erect penis. Or, should I say in this context, a phallus.
I give Darcy a wink. “A forty-thousand-year-old cock and balls graffiti, huh? Some things never change.”
Just before we climb out of the cave, I spot a distinctly Asian sculpture submerged up to its neck in a small pond formed by water dripping from the ceiling. It looks completely out of place in this prehistoric cave.
“Oh, it’s a Buddha,” Dr. Muller says matter-of-factly, following my gaze.
I stare into her eyes. “A Buddha.”
She nods.
I clap my hand to my forehead. “But of course—stupid me! It’s the famous Ice Age Bathing Buddha of Burgundy.”
Darcy grins.
He actually stretches his lips and opens his mouth wide enough for this smile to qualify as a full-fledged grin, the first one I’ve ever seen on him.
It nukes me to a pile of rubble.
“I can explain,” he says. “The Buddha is on loan from Le Louvre. The curators there wanted to see what the special variety of bacteria in this pool will do to him.”
“He’s been here for fifteen years now,” Dr. Muller says.
I turn to her. “And?”
“Nothing.” She spreads her hands. “No effect whatsoever.”
“You need to have a word with your bacteria,” I say to my beau. “Le Louvre counts on them.”
“Oh, that reminds me!” Dr. Muller scurries over to Darcy. “I must discuss an urgent matter with you.”
“Of course,” he says. “We’ll talk after dinner.”
She adds something in a hushed voice, clearly unwilling for anyone to overhear. Must be business related, I tell myself. And confidential. Maybe she caught someone on the team cheating or she wants to negotiate an additional guide position.
Regardless, I’m rattled… and annoyed for being rattled.
But then I catch Genevieve watching me watch Dr. Muller talking with Darcy. Am I being prejudiced and way off the mark to read her expression as gloating?
Elorie can’t come here soon enough.