The House Above the River (20 page)

Miriam's dark eyes flashed.

“In the river? Oh, then I shall see Giles again!” She clasped her hands in her lap to hide her agitation. “I was ill when he came before. Sick with fear and worry and uncertainty. I talked a lot of nonsense to him. I want him to see that I have recovered, now. I am more resigned. Poor Henry. He never told me what he meant to do. He was always so reserved. So withdrawn. I could have helped him, but he would never let me do so. He made up his mind alone, as always.”

“What do you mean?” Phillipa asked.

The gentle voice wavered a little, but she went bravely on.

“I am sure now that my poor Henry has taken his own life. He was beginning to find things too much for him, you know. He was always ill. He could do less and less with his hands, and his heart was affected.”

She repeated all she had told Inspector Renaud, only reversing the Paris specialist's verdict on Henry's heart. Also the detail was firmer now: there were added touches of observation. It all sounded most convincing.

“But you can't be certain,” Phillipa protested. “His body has not been found. Or has it?”

Her voice was harsh, and her question most unsuitably abrupt. Miriam's eyes opened wide at such unexpected boorishness.

“No. He has not been found—yet. But I am sure. I feel it— here.”

She pressed her hand against the black bodice of her dress. “I feel certain,” she said. “Both that he is dead, and that he took his own life.”

While the Marshalls sat looking at her, incapable of continuing this outrageous conversation, the door opened, and with exultant speed Giles and Susan came in, their faces glowing, radiant.

“Good morning, Miriam,” Giles said, losing something of his exuberant manner in that sombre presence. “I'm sorry if this isn't the right moment to make an announcement, but I can't keep it back. Sue and I are going to be married.”

Tony and Phillipa jumped up to kiss and congratulate the happy couple. But Miriam, making no sound, lay back in her chair, eyes closed, the colour draining slowly from her face.

There was an embarrassing silence. The four who stood round Miriam, watching her consciously prolonged recovery, were filled with a most uncomfortable guilt. Their English sense of fair play was outraged. They knew that Henry was alive, probably quite near at hand, and they were forced to withhold their knowledge. Away from Miriam, it had been easy to say she herself was the guilty one, and had deserved the situation in which she was now placed. But in her presence, watching her struggle for control, her white face more sharply beautiful in her real distress than it had ever been in the false roles she had played to them before, they forgot the would-be murderess, and saw only a suffering immature woman, alone among enemies and unwilling betrayers.

But not yet beaten. She rallied with surprising speed. As always, she recoiled furiously from reality, her imagination stimulated and fortified by the energy of her refusal. She ignored altogether the news of the engagement. She said politely to Giles, “I do hope your boat is all right now. They didn't take very long to mend it, did they?” Then she turned to Phillipa and Tony and began a trivial conversation about the limitations of the shops in Penguerrec. Giles turned abruptly and walked out of the room. As he shut the door he heard her say, “Susan dear, I have one or two things I want Francine to do for me. I've got a list somewhere. Don't go just yet.”

He was both sick at heart and furious with Miriam for her implied insult. Also with himself for his own helplessness. He cursed himself for interfering at all. If he had not rushed off, looking for Henry, he would have had nothing to tell the police and could not have been forced into his present unwilling collaboration with them. He had discovered nothing Inspector Renaud had not found out for himself.

As he stood in the hall, hoping that Susan would find an excuse to join him, or that Pip and Tony, at any rate, would end their visit, Francine came through the door from the kitchen premises. As usual she was wearing an apron over her black dress, and wiped her hands on it when she saw him. He noticed that her cheeks were very pink, and she was slightly out of breath, as if she had been hurrying. Her first words confirmed this.

“I was afraid I might miss you,” she said. “You have seen Madame?”

“For a few minutes, yes.”

“Then she knows you are here again, with your yacht?”

“Yes. My friends called a little before I did.”

She looked at him, steadily.

“She is very ill, monsieur.”

This agreed with his own uneasy conclusion. But he did not want to discuss Miriam with the old woman.

“She is naturally very anxious and upset,” he said, unwillingly.

“It is more than that. Look how she brought in the police with her hints that Mademoiselle had committed a dreadful crime. She is saying now that Monsieur Henri took his own life.”

“Is she, indeed?”

“Yes, monsieur. But I think she does not really believe that. I think she has the intention of taking her own.”

“Of committing suicide?” He was indignant. “Nonsense. It's the last thing she'd do.”

Francine's eyes narrowed.

“Why do you say that, monsieur?”

“Because she is in love with herself, and always has been, and always will be! Because she spends her time inventing new parts for herself to play, in which she is the heroine. Painful parts, very often, but all false. So false that she has only to stop playing them for the whole thing to disappear. She would never do anything to cause herself actual pain. Certainly not
death
.”

He stopped speaking, appalled at what he had said, but knowing it to be true.

“You are very bitter, monsieur. Very hard. I appeal to you for the last time. Take her away from here before it is too late.”

Stung beyond measure by Francine's blind persistence, Giles threw away his promise to the inspector.

“It is already too late,” he said. “What you suggest is now impossible.”

Francine stared at him without moving. Her dark eyes widened a little as he spoke, but the light in them was dulled almost at once. Her broad face, as always, held no expression. He wondered what she was thinking, hoping she had not really understood what he meant. He had not actually mentioned the police. Or Henry. Anyway, what business was it of Francine's? Why did her curiously formidable presence always have this effect on him? Of a hidden weight behind all her words; a persistent double meaning that was hidden from him. She was the housekeeper; the cook, too. An excellent cook. He realised that she must have come straight from the kitchen to intercept him in the hall. Those pink cheeks, that fishy smell about her. Yes, oysters. She must have been opening oysters for lunch. He noticed a small strip of bright green seaweed on the elbow of her dress as she lifted her hand to her hair. Fresh oysters straight from the hard. He had seen them there that morning, in baskets, with seaweed and sand clinging to them. He remembered, at once, that the village must know by now of Henry's return, and therefore Francine. Why, he might be already in the house. That must be why she was urging him again to save Miriam.

Francine tucked a stray hair into the bun at the back of her head.

“I have done my best,” she said. “I have done all I can.”

Susan came out of Miriam's room. She went towards Francine, but Giles caught her hand.

“Madame,” he said, formally. “Mademoiselle and I are going to be married. Now do you understand?”

The old woman bowed stiffly.

“Felicitations, monsieur, mademoiselle,” she said, and turned away. Susan pulled her hand free.

“Darling, I must go after her. If they'll let me I'll come down to the hard this afternoon. Watch out for me.”

He kissed her swiftly, and she ran away after Francine as Tony and Phillipa came into the hall.

The three friends walked back down the main drive to the gates. Here they were stopped by the policeman on guard.

“I have a message for you from Inspector Renaud,” he said. “The inspector says you and your friends must not be in the château or the grounds or the woods by the river after two o'clock this afternoon. Not on any pretext whatever. That is understood?”

“Perfectly,” said Giles.

“Thank you, monsieur.”

He stood aside. They all said goodbye to him politely and made their way back to
Shuna
.

It was a scorching day. They bathed from the yacht, and dried themselves afterwards in the sun.

Giles said, “Susan's going to try to get out later on. It looks a bit doubtful after what that chap at the gate told us. Unless of course Miriam makes a grand confession when she sees Henry.”

“I don't see what follows from that,” Tony said. “Unless Henry really has a case, and charges her.”

“If the police have a case, they can charge her themselves—with attempted murder.”

“I don't think she'd ever confess,” said Phillipa. “I think she'll simply have a superlative attack of hysteria and they'll all feel terrible, as we did, every time, and then sorry for her. As we all do now, don't we? In spite of everything?”

The men would not agree, but in their hearts they knew that Phillipa was right.

“I'm going to take the dinghy and try fishing the mouth of the creek,” said Giles. “I can watch out for Susan from there. The tide will be right down between two and three. You two coming?”

“No. I've some postcards to write up for the kids,” Tony answered, guessing that Giles would prefer to be alone.

“And I want to clean the stove,” said Phillipa. “I haven't done it properly since we started this trip, and it looks as if we are going to be travelling non-stop from now on.”

So Giles exchanged his bathing trunks for a pair of shorts and rowed slowly about among the rocks and little bays near the opening of the creek. At times he drifted, his fishing line trailing behind him. He had one or two bites, but each time the fish, whatever it was, got away. He caught one or two heavy pieces of seaweed. He did not mind his lack of success at all, for his mind was not on the job. Gradually, however, the gentle rocking of the boat, and the sound of the water all round him, and the bright sun burning into his naked back and arms and glittering from the many-coloured rocks, drew out the barbed thoughts that had tortured the end of his morning, almost killing his fresh joy. He was at peace again, and thankful that he had been forbidden to visit the château. He rejoiced to think he need never see Miriam again. His uneasy, reluctant feeling of responsibility for her vanished at last.

It was slack water now, and the mud, drying in the sun, began to smell too strongly close in-shore. Giles took the sculls and rowed further out into the river.

Inspector Renaud arrived at the house early that afternoon. His plans had been carefully laid. He had had a little trouble with Henry when he had explained them soon after the latter landed at Penguerrec; but in the end he had prevailed. Henry was still a sick man; that was obvious. He had not been capable of much resistance, at two o'clock in the morning, after a tedious uncomfortable passage in the
Marie Antoine
, even though the sea had been smooth. Inspector Renaud had soon persuaded him to put himself entirely in the hands of the police. What they proposed to do was all directed to his own safety and full recovery. He had only to rest, and then appear before Miriam at a given moment. Rest and sleep, the Inspector said, and we will do the rest.

In the hall of the house Inspector Renaud sent Marie away and gave final instructions to his subordinate.

“You will stay here,” he said. “I will interview Madame first in her boudoir. Then I will take her upstairs to her bedroom. The communicating door with Monsieur Davenport's room is unlocked, as it has always been. When we have passed through the hall and mounted the stairs, you will follow and take Monsieur into his own bedroom. He is now waiting in the housekeeper's room with Madame Francine. I will explain to Madame Davenport all that we have discovered about the drug. Then we fling open the communicating door, and he is there, dressed in his usual clothes. Understood?”

“Perfectly,” answered the other.

Inspector Renaud knocked at the door of Miriam's sitting-room, and without waiting, opened it and went in.

She was once more sitting by the open window, alone, and as the door opened she turned her pale, lovely face towards it. She did not speak or get up, but she gave the inspector a sad little smile of welcome that went straight to his heart and even shook his resolution a little. He noted, with pleasure, that black became her: softened, somehow, the theatrical impact of her appearance and personality. Besides, he was accustomed to think of black as a correct and chic colour for women's clothes.

After greeting her, Renaud asked where Susan was at that moment.

“I don't know,” Miriam answered. “We lunched together and then she went upstairs. Probably to her own room. She will want to see you before you go. To ask permission to go out. She is engaged to be married to Mr. Armitage.”

“I know,” said the inspector. “Mademoiselle will want to leave soon for England, then?”

“Very soon, I imagine.”‘

There was a pause. This was not the way Renaud had intended the conversation to go. He did not know how to deal with this new, calm, relaxed pose Madame had adopted. It was not in character. For one heart-chilling moment he wondered if Henry had succumbed, either to his illness, or to some fresh devilish attack on her part. But no, he had provided guard enough. Henry had been watched from the moment of his arrival. He pulled himself together.

“Following my instructions,” he said, in his most official manner, “I must report to you that I am far from satisfied with your explanations. With any of your explanations. You have told me too many lies. You have also concealed too much. Those twenty-four hours in Paris after you left your hotel. You did not explain that before leaving you made a telephone call to a certain Paris number. That two hours later a man called to see you. We have traced this friend of yours, madame. This old friend. He lent you money, not for the first time. He understood from you that you were going to leave your husband on grounds of cruelty. He had heard this story very often before. You spent some of that day going round various travel agencies together, because you intended to leave France altogether. Nothing was settled, I understand. But the intention was plain.”