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IN THE MORNING AN ORANGE sun hung heavily to my left. Yachts wobbled in the pink water below waiting for somebody to come out and play. Beyond a rock jetty two fishermen slowly tugged on a net, their small, wooden boat the only speck on a silvery blend of water and sky.
Barefooted, I stood watching multi-colored miniature sailboats inch out of the yacht basin, break apart and begin to flop around in different directions. Sailing school was in session.
I put on some shorts, a tennis shirt, and running shoes and set out to explore until breakfast. The kitchen was empty, but I found Tom in the dining hall all crisp and alert and drinking coffee. My watch indicated it was only quarter to eight.
"For a newlywed, you’re up early," I teased. "Been getting too much rest?"
"The price of gold went up thirty-two American dollars yesterday," he announced as if I’d asked. Then he set aside his newspaper and suggested I have some breakfast.
"Mind my own business, in other words," I observed then helped myself to coffee, juice, and a croissant from the spread on the buffet.
After I sat down, Tom stared at me a long moment before he waved his head. "Sorry, Sport. Marie makes me feel so...so damn protective." Then he laughed a little into his coffee and admitted, "She told me to get the hell out so she could sleep."
I smiled and offered a change of subject. "Why don't you concentrate on something that really needs protection?"
"Still worried about the chateau, are you?”
"Just doing my temporary job. Will you show me what security you have?"
"Sure, if it'll make you feel better, but every window and door is wired."
"Upstairs and down?"
"Yes. As long as the windows are closed when the alarm is set. It'll bypass any that might be open for ventilation. The system's the best, Richie–put in when we still had money."
"Still had money?"
"Yeah." He sighed and seemed to consider whether to continue. Eventually, he looked me in the eye. "I told you about the foundation that supports the place..."
"...and the excess profit goes to Marsford's relatives."
"Right. Well, their allowances got cut off five months ago. I did everything I could to prevent it, but you know how the economy has been going. Everything but blue-chip investments have been taking it in the neck..."
"The relatives, of course, owning blue-chips?"
"I wouldn't doubt it, but they're not my worry. The chateau is, though. A corporation that gives generous donations to the arts has become scarcer than a modest movie star. Without those donations it'll be all I can do to keep the chateau open another year."
"Does Marie know?" I asked, wondering if his realistic streak stretched that far. He shrugged and looked me in the eye.
"She knows pretty much. Not about closing in a year, but she doesn't have many illusions. I dream up schemes to tell her how I'm going to put this place on the map. She just smiles and hugs me and says I can do it if anybody can." Tom huffed a short, sad laugh. "Almost convinces me she believes it."
Another thought occurred to me. "Would your financial status account for the rumors at the Miquon School?"
Tom shook his head. "I don't think so. The real trouble is more in the future than the present."
"Nobody who got paid a little slow, or perhaps part-time help you had to let go?"
"We paid a couple bills a little late last month, but Marie handled the tradesmen like a pro. The French are really marvelous, Richie. I'm a lucky man."
"I agree. Now how about introducing me to a Welsh ghost? I want to know more about Hugh Marsford."
"Red carpet tour coming up." Tom cheerfully pushed back his chair.
The eccentric artist's irreverent sense of humor was disconcerting at first, but it quickly became endearing. The dining hall’s carved walnut doors were the best example of his provocative visual jokes. Inside, the panels depicted a worldwide family of fat aristocrats glutting themselves at a groaning board. In poignant contrast the outside of the doors showed nearly skeletal animals from behind as if they were straining for a glimpse of the opposite scene.
I remarked that more than a few of Marsford’s dinner guests must have lost their appetites before they ever sat down.
Tom grinned. "This door is easy on the food budget."
Beyond the dining hall lay a smaller room with the same lofty, castle-like feel. Heavily carved Medieval-style furniture was softened by brocade cushions. Wrought iron gates adorned two glass doors overlooking the water, and set between them was a cozy fireplace of sculpted stone.
Turning our backs to the sea, we entered an elegant foyer constructed of cream and salmon colored marble complete with columns and a curving stairway. The walls of the stairwell featured powerful paintings of pirates at sea. Tom followed my gaze to the most impressive–battling ships on windblown water with a crumbling castle in the foreground.
"Recognize it?" he inquired.
"The chateau?"
Tom nodded. "The front tower is eleven-hundred years old, built by Romans. It isn’t safe anymore, but you’ll love the designs in the mortar. Gives you a sense of history just to look at it."
The bedrooms upstairs were unremarkable except for the one Marsford had occupied with his wife. There the walls were lined with elaborately carved wooden cabinets, which still contained Claudine’s many gowns.
"Hugh and Claudine dressed formally for dinner every night, often in costumes of the world," Tom explained. "Although they rarely went out, they entertained groups of friends two or three times a week. Marsford hired a chamber ensemble to play dance music from the dining hall gallery. He wanted Claudine to be admired, but he also worried she would become bored without other young people around. He probably understood her very well."
I tried to imagine a couple with a twenty-three year age difference reading by the light of the room’s ornate fireplace, sleeping side by side in the cramped-looking double bed beneath the headboard of golden Chinese silk.
Tom misinterpreted my expression, because he said, "Yes, that's the bed where Marsford died. It belonged to his parents."
I was surprised Hugh’s well-grounded, Welsh parents would have chosen such an elaborate Chinese piece for their home, but Tom assumed I was still stuck on Marsford’s death. "Hugh believed there was something spiritual about dying in the bed in which he had been conceived. But you’re right. It is a little creepy."
Downstairs again we exited through the front portal into sharp sunshine. After the shadowy silence of Marsford's deathroom, I welcomed the earthy crunch of the courtyard stones under my feet.
While Tom fumbled with the keys to the low building beside the dismantled stone wall, I read the brass plaque leaning against the wall.
Some toil remains though some does not
Art endures while wealth is forgot.
1948
"Interesting verse. Did Marsford write it?" I asked.
"Not much of a poet, was he? He graced a number of his special yearly projects with those things. That one used to be set into those stones over there.”
The key worked at last, and Tom gestured me into an artist's studio the size of a triple garage. An astounding amount of unfinished work cluttered the thick wooden tables scattered throughout the vast room. Tools filled several shelves, and blocks of stone were piled in a corner. It took a moment to take it all in.
“Marsford’s creativity was a faucet he couldn’t turn off,” Tom remarked. “He had so much going on at once that he hired local workmen to do some of the labor. Still, whenever he could manage a project by himself, he did."
"Must have been some life," I remarked with more than a little envy; financial concerns often interfered with my art.
"He wasn't completely happy, you know," Tom pointed out, uncannily reading my thoughts.
"Why do you say that?"
"The suicide, Richie. Don't forget the suicide."