A Perfect Paris Christmas - Mandy Baggot Page 0,40

but I would prefer it if you did not. Sometimes I can completely lose my flow on a tour when that happens and if these guests are important to the hotel then…’

‘You go,’ Ethan replied, more than a little put out. ‘I will ring the accountant if I need to.’ He watched Noel leave the restaurant and then pushed his croissant away from him. His appetite was completely lost.

He didn’t have long to mope however as Silvie and Louis were being greeted by the maître d’ at the door. He sat a little taller in his chair and tried to resurrect some of the simple triumph he had felt after watching the video of Pepe. His two guests were walking swiftly. There were no smiles on their faces. Ethan quickly got to his feet, not liking the feel of this approach.

‘Bonjour, Silvie. Bonjour, Louis. Welcome back to Paris!’ Ethan stuck his hand out to Ferne’s brother.

‘Sit down, Ethan,’ Silvie ordered.

He hesitated, wondering whether to obey or not. He remained standing but retracted his arm now the handshake wasn’t forthcoming.

‘Is something wrong?’ Ethan asked. It was then, as the words left his mouth that he took a better look at Louis. The man’s complexion was covered in harsh red welts, his eyes glazed, one of them a little closed like he had done a few rounds with Anthony Joshua. What had happened to him?

‘Of course there is something wrong!’ Silvie snapped. ‘Look at Louis.’

Ethan didn’t want to look at Louis. He’d rather Louis was where he should be – on the other side of a very large body of water. He carried on with his visual inspection though, his brain desperately attempting to come up with something to say that would sound concerned and completely innocent. Because this – whatever it was – couldn’t be because of a penguin, could it?

‘Mon Dieu! Pickpockets are getting more and more violent these days,’ Ethan said in sober tones. ‘Did they get away with anything?’

‘Ethan, this is not—’ Silvie started.

‘No,’ Louis interrupted, his face a picture of fury. ‘They did not get away with anything. Nor will they while I am here.’

The man couldn’t have been clearer. Louis knew what he had done. Ethan couldn’t explain the state of the guy’s face, but Louis knew that the penguin arriving in his suite had been down to him. Ethan continued quickly. ‘We thought about putting notices up to warn the customers but you do not want to scare people. Customers in fear of having their valuables taken are not customers who will linger and relax over the cocktail menu.’

‘This is an allergic reaction,’ Silvie said, finally sinking into a dining chair as if the weight of the world was hanging from the beaded pearls at her neck. ‘A severe allergic reaction.’

‘Oh?’ Ethan exclaimed in his best slightly surprised voice. He didn’t want to ham it up too much. He settled for ‘faintly astonished’ rather than ‘reaction to a shock pregnancy’.

‘Someone put a penguin in Louis’s room.’

‘A what?’ Maybe pretending he didn’t even know what a penguin was a little over the top.

‘You know exactly what my mother is talking about.’

Louis’s face was reddening even more considerably now, but Ethan suspected that was down to anger rather than a second strain of the reaction.

‘Sit down, Louis,’ Ethan urged. ‘Take the weight off your feet. Ease your…’ He paused briefly. ‘Boils.’

‘This was you!’ Louis said. ‘I know it was you!’ He wasn’t sitting down and he was pointing now. Ethan stood his ground, trying to look a little overwhelmed by the reaction.

‘You knew that I was allergic to penguins,’ Louis continued, ‘So you arranged for one as a welcome committee.’

Ethan put a hand to his throat and set his face to aggrieved. ‘I do not know what you mean.’

‘You came,’ Louis said. ‘Back then, that day we all went to the zoo as a family. We fed the penguins and then…’ He stopped talking like the topic of conversation was becoming too much for him.

‘Then?’ Ethan urged. He didn’t remember Louis being allergic to the creatures, only that he had run away from them, slipping and sliding on the ice, his gloved hands over his ears. Ethan had laughed. Ferne had laughed too. Until Silvie had told them both to stop. That had been a little after Monsieur Durand had died. At that time, the laughs were few and far between. Pierre Durand had been tough but fair. The man had a hard exterior that was instantly