Murder Abroad (11 page)

Along the Nosière road Bobby accordingly took his way, making an early start. By eight, he was already a mile or more beyond the village, keeping as he walked a sharp look out. All the same he would have passed Père Trouché unknowingly, but for a chuckle he heard coming from the road-side, from the shelter of a clump of trees and bushes. Bobby stopped and made his way Père Trouché, stretched out at full length on the warm turf as he basked in the morning sunshine.

“He, the little Englishman once more,” he greeted Bobby. “Yet not so little either.”

“How did you know who it was?” Bobby asked.

The blind beggar chuckled again.

“I have ears, have I not?” he asked. “When one sees nothing, one hears all.”

He relapsed into silence. Bobby sat down beside him and produced his cigarettes. He lighted one himself and offered one to the blind beggar who accepted it with dignity. After they had both been smoking for a little, Bobby remarked:

“You heard me going by?”

“But naturally,” Père Trouché answered. “Why not? Ah, the poor deaf ones, unhappy that they are. To lose the hearing, it is to lose everything. It must be insupportable, to be shut out from all the sounds that make up the world. Consider, monsieur, from here, where we sit, could you see who came along the road?”

“No, you couldn't,” agreed Bobby, for in fact the trees behind cut off entirely all view of the road.

“But one can hear,” Père Trouché said. “I heard a step. Ah, the steps, all a man's mood, all his character, all his past, one had almost said, all his future, too, it is there in his steps. I, who speak, I know, have I not been listening to them all my life?”

“You mean you knew me by my step?” Bobby asked.

“Naturally. I know the steps of all or else I know it is a stranger. Your step, it is one to remember. It is distinctive. Your shoes also. They are excellent quality, of the best leather, new, for they have not been mended. Is it so?”

“Why, yes,” agreed Bobby.

“It means then,” Père Trouché went on, “that you understand that the feet must be taken care of. You are then of a profession that requires you should spend much time upon your feet? Not a soldier, you say, and yet a man of action, of movement. That gives furiously to think. Certainly not the step of an artist.”

“What is the step of an artist like?” asked Bobby, a little disconcerted by the old man's remarks that seemed to be getting near a truth he did not wish revealed.

The Père Trouché shrugged his shoulders.

“It is difficult to describe,” he said. “A step of wonderment, perhaps, of one who marvels at all around. The step of monsieur, it is the step of one who searches. For what does monsieur search? Is it the same thing that he sought on the hill-side yesterday?”

“You know about that, too?”

“Monsieur,” replied the blind man with dignity, “the good God and I, we know all that happens in the village of Citry-sur-l'eau.”

“Do you though?” said Bobby thoughtfully. “That must be useful sometimes.”

“Very useful,” agreed the other. Then he gave again his harsh, unmirthful chuckle. “For example,” he said, “I know the name of the rake that sprang up when it was trodden on and hit young Henri Volny in the eye.”

“Really?” Bobby said. “Well, then, in that case, and since you know people by their step, you know who it was went by you so close the other night near the Pépin Mill when you told me you were blind but not that you could hear so well?”

For a little the Père Trouché seemed a trifle disconcerted and it was a moment or two before he replied. Then he said slowly:

“The question of an examining magistrate. Perhaps monsieur, too, is of the police?”

Bobby ignored this. He said:

“You do not answer my question.”

“Ah, monsieur, a blind beggar, what does it matter what he knows or thinks he knows?”

“It might matter a good deal,” Bobby said.

He took out his wallet and began to finger some of the bank notes it held. Purposely he made them rustle between his fingers. The blind man chuckled once more and Bobby had the impression that for some reason he felt now less disturbed, less uneasy.

“Money,” he said. “Money. All men's price. What would it not mean to me? For example: leisure? Freedom from work? From worry?” He stretched himself lazily. “Ah, well,” he said, “but then I never work. As for worry, why should I when I possess nothing? Worry only comes with possessions. The good sunshine and the air? Alas! They are not for sale and when they are there I have them, I, who sit within no four walls, toiling for no master. Freedom? Who has money has a master. Respect? Bah, the respect of fools for folly. Health? Why, when one has money one visits the doctor and then one has neither money nor health. Power?” He chuckled again. “I have it,” he said. “Half the neighbourhood trembles for fear I may tell what I know. Safety? Only the poor are safe, only on the ground are you sure you won't fall from the ladder. What does money mean except work, worry, responsibility, more work, all that I have fled from all my life as the devil flies from holy water. Monsieur, money is man's supreme stupidity.”

“I see you have ideas,” Bobby said.

“Monsieur,” replied the old man, “in seventy years on the road, one has time for ideas. But that reminds me, time passes. It is time I got to my work.”

“I thought you did none,” Bobby said.

“It would be good for no man,” answered the Père Trouché severely, “to be entirely idle. I, too, should deteriorate like others, if I had nothing to do but sit under a tree and wait for food to come. No, I recognize that it is better for me that I should have to go and ask for it and I do not complain. Fortunately, none refuse the poor blind beggar. They have pity for him and they know well that if they had not, then the good God would punish them. Their poultry would die, their beasts would stray, their secrets become known. Why, I even heard of a man who had no pity for the blind and somehow a goat got loose in his garden one night and ate all the young lettuce, all the young peas, till none were left. The justice of heaven!”

“I wonder how the goat got loose,” observed Bobby.

“Probably an angel from heaven freed it.”

“A blind angel,” Bobby suggested.

The old man chuckled once more.

“That, only the good God knows,” he said.

“But not, for instance, the garde-champêtre?”

“The garde-champêtre,” the old man repeated disdainfully. “He, he knows nothing, that one. Bah!”

“There was an English lady died here a little while ago,” Bobby said slowly. “In a well. A cruel death.”

There was silence for a little. The old man got to his feet. He said, and now his voice was different:

“A cruel death. Yes. I would not wish to die like that I, who have lived in the sunshine and the open air. A cruel death.”

“Will you tell me what you know about it?” Bobby asked. “You, who know everything.”

The Père Trouché answered slowly:

“I have blasphemed. I said that I and the good God, we knew all that passed in Citry-sur-l'eau. What happened at the Pépin Mill that night, He knows but not I.”

“Are you sure there is nothing you could tell me?”

“Ask rather Monsieur and Madame Williams who have gone to live where some would not much care to be.” With that, with no form of farewell, the blind beggar went quickly away, feeling his path with marvellous accuracy and speed, so that it was difficult to believe he could not see.

Bobby made no attempt to follow him. If he could be got to talk some day, it would be in his own time. It was nearly the lunch hour now and Bobby went back slowly to the hotel. After that, sketch book in hand, he took a walk in the Pépin Mill direction, for he was curious to know what Madame Simone had meant by the remark she had let drop the night before.

It was in a spot well hidden among the trees around the Pépin Mill, and yet commanding a clear view of the path that led across the plank bridge to the mill door, that Bobby established himself with his sketching materials. Artistic pursuits, he reflected, provide useful cover, and as he worked away busily he kept a sharp look out.

Near the mill itself no sign of life appeared. Lazily it drowsed in the warm afternoon sunshine. On the road there was an occasional passer-by, and now and then a vehicle, either a farm wagon or a motor car. About three o'clock he saw Lucille Simone approaching. She turned from the road towards the little plank bridge and when she reached it stood there for a time in the full glare of the sun, apparently hesitating. Then as if suddenly making up her mind she came on briskly.

Her arrival had evidently been expected, for as she came to the door of the mill it opened to her before she had time to knock. No one appeared. It was just that the door swung back. Perhaps some one called to her to enter but Bobby was too far away to hear any such summons. For a moment or two she stood still, staring at the open door; and then, again with that air of abruptly and resolutely making up her mind, she went forward. The door closed immediately behind her, nor could Bobby tell why there seemed to him something ominous, something of a strange and deadly significance in this quiet, as it were, unseen, reception.

He began to put away his sketching materials. It was, he supposed, impossible to imagine for a moment that real harm threatened the girl. Her aunt, for instance, would know she contemplated making this visit. Yet what could be its meaning? Why had she had that air of hesitation? Conscious of a distinct uneasiness, certain that Lucille's presence here must have some significance, Bobby began to draw nearer to the mill. Trees and shrubs afforded shelter of which he took full advantage, and he hoped, too, that those within would be too busy with their own affairs to be on the look out.

When he was as near as he judged it prudent to attempt to approach, he crouched down behind some bushes and set himself to the old familiar, tedious task of the detective, that of watching and waiting. He would look an awful fool, he supposed, if some one found him there and wanted to know what on earth he was doing, squatting there on the ground behind a clump of bushes. One has to take one's risks, though, and fortunately artists are supposed to be eccentric. He reflected ruefully that here he had no official standing, no warrant card to produce with a flourish, that here the magic words ‘Scotland Yard' had no efficacy. Nor any superiors in the background to whom he could go for instruction when he wanted to dodge responsibility.

For almost the first time in his life he realized, with a touch of astonishment, that after all senior officers really have their uses. A chastening thought!

It was nearly an hour that he waited there when suddenly the door opened and Lucille appeared. Bobby was conscious of a touch of relief. He had not actually believed she was in any real danger, but all the same one could never tell. Then he saw that her arm was being firmly held in a grip that might be friendly or might not. It was Williams who held her thus, with his huge hand grasping her arm, but even as Bobby watched, on the point of showing himself but anxious, too, to see if anything more definite happened, the girl turned sharply, snatching her arm from Williams's grip and standing still to face him. She said something. Bobby could not catch the words, though he could see that her attitude was defiant and even challenging, her head held back, her slender form drawn to its full height.

Williams seemed to mutter some response and then they both began to move down the path, his bulky form towering above her, his long strides keeping pace easily with her hurried walk. When she tried to go straight on towards the bridge, he interposed a huge arm and seemed to make some remark. She shrugged her shoulders and together they turned aside towards the well.

Bobby was watching them closely, ready to spring and run should the need arise. They reached the well and stood there, the girl erect and quiet and still, Williams appearing to watch her intently. He stooped and lifted the cover, exposing that dark shaft which went down and down to where the dull gleam of the water showed so far below. He seemed to invite the girl to look, but she shrank away. Bobby thought it time to show himself. Williams could hardly contemplate murder—and such a murder—in broad daylight, and yet how easy for that huge man with his powerful muscles to seize the girl and thrust her into those black and horrid depths and then to replace the cover, leaving no sign of what had happened, no possibility of any cry reaching the upper earth.

Of an incredible audacity, if such a deed were contemplated. Yet something of the sort had already happened here and the possibility of a repetition could not be ignored. It had to be remembered, too, that once the thing was done, and it could be quickly done, once the cover replaced, then rescue in time would be impossible.

On his feet now, Bobby hurried towards where they stood together by the well, its black chill narrow mouth gaping and grim in the sunlight. They did not at first hear him. Lucille had moved a step or two aside, turning her face away as she did so, and Bobby could see how pale she looked, how terrified. Williams took her by the arm again and pulled her nearer. Bobby began to run.

They heard him then, as indeed he meant them to. They both turned, Lucille evidently astonished by his sudden appearance, but with an air of great relief as well; Williams equally surprised, angry and scowling, too, though hardly, Bobby thought, looking like a man surprised in the act of attempting to commit a murder. Yet what else had he intended and why was relief even plainer than surprise in Lucille's expression?

“Oh, how do you do?” Bobby said amiably.

Lucille began to giggle as if she thought this greeting funny. Williams glared and scowled more formidably still, but said nothing. Bobby heard the door of the mill open, and, looking round, saw the meek little form of Mrs. Williams appear. Apparently she had been watching. Bobby wondered why? Had she also been afraid of what might be going to happen? She began to walk towards them. Lucille said: