Girl at the Lion D'Or Read Online Free PDF

undergrowth out on to the sandy paths and ordered flowerbeds of the main part of the garden.
    Here Mattlin and Hartmann said goodbye, Mattlin adding to Anne, ‘I’ll call in later, probably.’ The two men walked off, sweaters over their shoulders, rackets swinging by their sides as they made their way to where Hartmann’s old black tourer was parked.
    When they were out of earshot, Hartmann said, ‘Was that the girl you were talking about the other day?’
    ‘Yes. Don’t you think she’s charming?’
    Hartmann shrugged.
    ‘Well, I certainly think so.’
    ‘What are you going to do about it?’
    ‘Lay siege. She’ll come round before long.’
    ‘The Mattlin charm. Persistence.’
    ‘It has a good record.’
    Hartmann opened the gate from the park and stood back to let Mattlin pass.

4
    I T WAS A pleasant day with only a whisper of wind coming off the headland when Hartmann stood in front of his house and explained to Roussel what he wanted done. He made large, suggestive movements with his hands, but found that Roussel kept asking awkward technical questions.
    The Manor was an isolated house, some five kilometres from Janvilliers, surrounded by acres of woodland. In his last ten years Hartmann’s father had quarrelled with most of his staff and had sacked both groundsman and gardener. The appearance of wildness had increased. The house was dominated by two towers with conical grey slate roofs. The rectangular section which joined them formed the main part of the Manor, though at its junction with the towers it extended backwards, away from them, as well as forwards, into them.
    ‘Now have you got that?’ said Hartmann.
    ‘Ye-es. I think so.’
    ‘I can’t think why there wasn’t a cellar built in the first place.’
    ‘Yes, it’s unusual in a house like this, Monsieur.’
    Hartmann senior had had a hole driven sideways into the bank at the rear of the house and had stored his wine in the resulting damp burrow whose roof was held up by shaky-looking planks. One day it had caved in when a storm caused a displacement of the earth in the woods behind it. Later, when the rain had eased, the bottles were dug out like the victims of a mining disaster. The rain had washed off or defaced many of the labels so that dinner at the Manor often had an air of suspense; to his irritation the old man frequently found he had treated his guests to a rare burgundy he had been meaning to save.
    The house was built from pale stone, and the windows and shutters were painted grey. In the middle of the long slate roof was a triangular protuberance, also slate-covered, into which was let a brick-surrounded dormer window. This had been boarded up with wood and now looked rather like the door half-way up a barn through which bales are loaded. On either side of it reared two thin rectangular chimneys in what appeared to be an unwise defiance of gravity. Some of the building was covered with a dense creeper, spangled green and red, which helped to counteract the bleakness of the pale stone and the house’s isolated position on the headland. Theoretically it was sheltered from the sea winds by the finger of land that stuck out and by the dense pine forests on the far side of the lake it overlooked. In fact, on bad days the wind seemed to accelerate off the bend of the land and funnel itself through the woods before sucking and tearing at the shutters and shaking the windows in their frames.
    ‘You think you’ll be able to manage a cellar, then?’
    ‘Oh, I think so, M. Hartmann. I’ll let you have an estimate.’
    ‘That’s wonderful. My father would have been pleased to think of someone bringing the old place back to life. We’ll have a party when you’ve finished. We could have it out here in front of the house, and people could go swimming in the lake.’
    Hartmann saw in his mind a covered walkway, hung with candles, leading from the house to a marquee with tables at the water’s edge. He would have all his own wine