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because of Marc?”
    “Marc’s cuisine, yes. But Marc had no head for figures. It wasn’t until he won his third star that the fabric of the building itself was really transformed. That’s when Guy came to join us, and it was Guy who achieved that transformation.” She stood up, then, and wandered toward the window. She wore black pants that stopped several inches short of the ankle, and black leather boots beneath them. Over her white blouse she wore a long black shawl that she gathered around her now, as if cold, folding her arms and gazing from the window at the view of the Massif. “We had worked hard, with limited resources, to turn the
auberge
into a place that would impress a Michelin inspector, but it was Guy who really made the difference. He has a wonderful business sense, Monsieur Macleod. He used Marc’s reputation to raise the money needed to turn us into a hotel-restaurant that would one day be rated fifth in the whole world.”
    Enzo heard the pride in her voice, and saw it in her eyes as she turned back to look at him, arms still folded imperiously across her chest.
    “And the multi-million euro business it is today,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
    “Do you have children, Madame Fraysse?”
    “Two, yes. A boy and a girl. Both away at university.”
    “Training to follow in their father’s footsteps?”
    Her laugh betrayed genuine amusement. “Good God, no! They grew up seeing first hand just what a damned hard life it is running a hotel and restaurant. It’s much more than a career, you see, monsieur. It’s your
life
. And no escaping from it.” She laughed again. “And like most of the younger generation today, my children don’t really want to work at all. They’ll probably be perfectly happy to fritter away the next few years in education before inheriting a business that will keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. No doubt they will either sell up or get others to run it for them.” She met Enzo’s gaze directly. “Do you think me very cynical?”
    Enzo gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders. “You know your children better than I do, Madame Fraysse.” Yet he couldn’t help wishing that he had been able to persuade his own daughter to finish her degree rather than go to work in a gymnasium. Generalisations were dangerous things. “But I think that in order for me to make any real progress in this investigation, I am going to have to get to know your husband as well as you did.”
    “Not an easy thing, when he has been gone seven years.”
    “That’s why I have to rely on you. And Guy, of course. How did you first meet Marc?”
    She smiled, and her eyes glazed over with distant memories. “We were just kids, really. I think I was seventeen, and training to be a nurse at a hospital in Clermont Ferrand. Marc and Guy were in the middle of their apprenticeships with the Blanc brothers, and having a pretty hard time of it from all accounts.”
    For a moment, Enzo felt as if she had left the room, transported back in time to relive those precious memories of a youth long lost. There was a lengthy silence, but he didn’t dare break it. Then she smiled again, as if returning from a journey that had taken only seconds in reality, but hours in her mind. She was back.
    “Some of the other girls and I used to sneak out of the nurses’ home at night to meet up with the boys from the restaurant. They all lived in the hotel in some horrible cramped rooms up in the attic, and they had to sneak out, too. There was a park near the university, Jardin Lecoq, and an old boat shed on the lake. That’s where we used to meet up and have secret meals. The boys always cooked for us. Best food we’d ever had.” She laughed. “There were a lot of teenage hormones being given free rein in those days. But Marc was hopeless. So shy. Guy was much bolder, much more sure of himself. But it was Marc I always had the soft spot for.”
    “You were married young, then?”
    “Good