Murder Abroad (13 page)

He shook his head gloomily at himself. It had been his hope and his intention to avoid in every way attracting the notice of the inhabitants of the village and he could not help feeling that in that respect he had not succeeded very brilliantly. This man, Eudes, for instance. On the very first day of his arrival Eudes had made an excuse to talk to him. Then there had been that visit by the artist, Shields, who afterwards had gone on to call on Eudes. Bobby found himself suspecting that Eudes had asked Shields to come over on purpose to test Bobby's claim to be an artist. If so, Bobby hoped that the unexpected excellence of the sketch he had made that day had satisfied Shields and, through him, Eudes. At any rate, since then he had not seen Eudes again till now.

Thoughtfully Bobby asked himself what reason Eudes could have for showing such an interest in him and he remembered the touch of fanaticism with which Eudes had spoken of the journal of ‘enlightenment' he hoped to found and of his need of money for that purpose. Now here was Eudes again, talking privately to young Camion, and appearing anxious to keep out of Bobby's sight. Curious, Bobby thought, and he was not much surprised when, the meal over, Camion, instead of disappearing as usual, came to the table in a quiet corner where Bobby had chosen to sit. Seeing him coming, Bobby pushed out a chair.

“Nice evening, isn't it?” he said. “Do sit down.” Camion, whose expression had not been amiable, scowled even more heavily. Nor did he accept the invitation. Leaning over the back of the chair, he said: “Monsieur, I trust I am right in believing you do not contemplate making a long stay?”

Bobby did not answer at first. He looked thoughtfully at Camion, wondering what this new move meant and if he owed the making of it to Eudes. But then why should Eudes be anxious to get rid of him? Camion said:

“It would in fact be a convenience if monsieur would vacate his room.”

“I took it for two weeks,” Bobby said. “I even got a reduction in terms as it was for that long certain. I may stay longer. I am not sure yet. What's the idea?”

“Monsieur,” said Camion, looking more haughty and dominating than ever, “if you by any chance prefer to leave to-morrow, no charge will be made for the time you have already stayed here.”

“My dear friend,” said Bobby in his most amiable tones, “it is evident that we are neither of us good business men. If you were, you would not make such a suggestion. If I were, I should accept it. Let us sympathize with each other on our common misfortune.”

“You mean you refuse?”

“Guessed it in one,” said Bobby approvingly.

“You force me then,” said Camion, “to inform you that I am well acquainted with your identity, your profession, your purpose in wishing to stay here.”

Bobby felt slightly ill. If Camion knew, all the village knew. The authorities would soon know, too, and then he would be asked to explain his errand here and that would certainly mean an end to all his hopes of success. Very likely he would receive a polite hint that there are many other districts of France equally attractive to the tourist. It might even get back to Scotland Yard that he had been indiscreet.

“Oh, well,” he said moodily, “no use asking you to hold your tongue, I suppose?”

Camion's gesture might have been that of one of the Borgian guests refusing the customary parting cup of poison.

“Who told you?” Bobby asked.

“I am not at liberty to say.”

“Oh, aren't you? Well, then, run away and amuse yourself.”

“It is understood that you leave in the morning?”

“No, it isn't,” snapped Bobby, who had no intention of quitting till he was actually booted out—and only then if the boot was too big to resist.

Camion drew himself to his full height. His glance was fiery, his nose was as that one of which it is said that once British soldiers thought a glimpse of it worth ten thousand men. He flung out one hand.

“Monsieur,” he announced, “I shall give instructions to the hotel porter to bring down your baggage in the morning. I shall see that the door of your room is locked.”

“Monsieur,” responded Bobby, “if the hotel porter tries to remove my baggage from my room I have taken for two weeks certain, I shall throw the hotel porter out of the window. If I find my door locked against me, I shall break it open. Understand? Hang it all, this is an hotel, isn't it? And I'm paying for my room, aren't I?”

“Very well,” said Camion. “Very good. I had wished to keep your secret, but now all the world shall know it. Ah,” he added triumphantly, seeing Bobby wince, “you do not like that? Naturally. Very well. You go or all the world shall know you are a married man, that in Nice last year you persuaded an unhappy girl at the hotel where you stayed to accompany you to San Remo, where you deserted her in a foreign and unfriendly country without a penny.”

Bobby fairly gasped. He struggled for speech but none came.

“We are simple here, in our village, but we know the morality of the artist,” Camion went on. “You did not, I imagine, dream that all this was known?”

“I shouldn't have dreamed it,” said Bobby earnestly, “even if I had been living for a month on nothing but lobster salad and cold boiled rice. Who on earth has been telling you all these fairy tales?”

“Yes, I was warned you would deny it,” Camion said darkly. “I warn you, here in Citry-sur-l'eau, we have ideas, we others. When our honour is touched, we—kill.”

“The dickens you do,” murmured Bobby thoughtfully, for Camion looked as if he meant what he said.

“Question of honour; question of life; question of death,” said Camion.

“It's a sentiment worth remembering,” Bobby said, still more thoughtfully.

“Useless to deny,” said Camion. “I have proof.”

“So have I,” said Bobby cheerfully. “Proof that while you want to manage a chain of big hotels in all countries of the world—”

“What's that?” interrupted Camion, gasping in his turn, “Who... what... I never...”

“You haven't enough sense or knowledge or experience,” swept on Bobby relentlessly, unheeding Camion's dismay at this exposure of ambitions that he probably thought were locked deep in his own breast, “to manage a—” Bobby had been going to say ‘peanut stall' but not being sure of the French for ‘peanut' altered it to “—a gingerbread stall in a country fair. Some one's been stuffing you.”

But here Bobby rather spoilt the effect by using the word ‘farcir', which is chiefly employed in a culinary sense, instead of some equivalent French colloquial term for our slang ‘stuffing'—se payer la tête, for example. Camion looked bewildered at this sudden reference to the kitchen and its operations, of which he could make nothing. He let it pass and said:

“It happens that I have a photograph of your children, their names and yours written on the back.”

“Children?” said Bobby, growing interested now. “How many?”

“Three. The twins and another.”

“Twins?” Bobby almost shouted. “Twins, did you say? Oh, well, thank God, it's not triplets.”

Camion produced a photograph. It showed three small children. On the back was written: ‘John, Henry and Mary Owen, children of Robert Owen, artist.'

Bobby studied it with great interest. Then he put it in his pocket.

“Can't deprive a loving father of his own offspring,” he said. “Listen, I said just now you hadn't sense enough to run a gingerbread stall at a country fair. Optimistic, that was. I expect when it comes on to rain, they have to send some one to tell you to come in out of the wet?”

“I don't know what you are talking about,” Camion said, but beginning to look a little uneasy.

“About your intelligence,” explained Bobby, “or rather your total, complete and absolute lack of it. I suppose Williams told this pretty yarn to Eudes and Eudes told you?”

“How did you know?” Camion asked.

“By using my brains,” Bobby told him. “Probably you've never heard such things exist. They are used for thinking but if you can't think, I suppose you don't need them.” He paused and looked again at Camion: “Is all this because I've been buying postcards at the shop where Mademoiselle Lucille Simone—”

Camion started to interrupt but Bobby checked him.

“Probably her aunt began it,” Bobby went on, “she looks a bit like that, looks like an old body with a tongue she can't help using. And then I daresay you heard I had been in the shop before dinner and that mademoiselle seemed disturbed afterwards. You know it's silly but it has its interesting side. Williams wants to get me out of here and Eudes is willing to help. Why? It was your jealousy they thought they could work on.”

“I am not jealous, I have no right to be, it is nothing to do with Mademoiselle Simone, her name should not have been mentioned, it is insufferable,” Camion cried angrily.

“I expect she'll say that and a bit more if she gets to know,” agreed Bobby. “Has she any friends or relations about here?”

“No, she only came to live here a year ago, there is only her aunt she lives with.”

“So you thought you had to take her under your protection,” Bobby observed. “Well, I hope she will be grateful, but I doubt it. She might want to know why you were butting in?”

“If anything happens to me,” Camion muttered, “there would be for her no one even to notice, no one to know, to protest.”

“Perhaps the young lady may prefer to look after herself rather than trust to a silly, meddling, thick-headed, conceited, ignorant prize imbecile from the last house in imbecile town. And you,” said Bobby, “who want to establish a chain of hotels in all the capitals of the world! You mean perhaps a chain of cat's-meat barrows?”

Camion wilted under this version of a commination service, Bobby pronounced very slowly and thoughtfully, pausing every now and again for reflection in his search for the ‘mot juste'. Camion tried to interrupt once or twice but Bobby's upraised hand checked him. Bobby said: “Another thing, what do you mean? ‘If anything happened' to you? Why should it?”

“That at least,” Camion answered, “is my affair. They are not true, then, the things I was told about you?”

“Silly rubbish,” Bobby answered. “Only a boy like you, without sense or experience, would have paid any attention to such a tale. I don't suppose you would either, in a general way, only you're a bit rattled; upset, I mean. Not quite yourself just now, are you? what with murders happening round here and general excitement and jealousy. Do you good if you put your head in a bucket of water and kept it there every night for an hour or two. Williams would like to clear me out. So he thought he would have a try. Clumsy. The fellow's a fool. Look here, what's this about something happening to you? Has Williams asked you to pay a visit to the mill for a talk?”

“How do you know?” asked Camion bewilderedly. “You know then everything?”

“I've a few brains,” Bobby explained. “You know. Brains. I mentioned them before. First time you knew such things existed? Not that I mean I've got so many myself. At least, I know that's what they think where I work over in London. See here, you keep an eye on Williams.”

“I am not afraid.”

“It's always wise to be afraid,” Bobby said quietly.

Camion began to look scornful and haughty again.

“That is not our idea here,” he said. “If anything happens to me, it will not be through Williams.”

“Through whom, then?” Bobby asked, but Camion only shrugged his shoulders and then after a pause walked away.

“Now, I wonder,” Bobby said to himself, “what the young fool means. Something upsetting him so badly he can't think straight. Only what?”

Useless though to try to guess with so little to go upon, since even a guess must have some starting point.

It was a warm fine evening, and, having nothing else to do, Bobby went for a short stroll. Coming back, he turned in again at the café he had visited before. The first person he saw was Williams sitting alone at a table, before him an empty glass and a bottle nearly empty. Bobby at once went towards him. Williams scowled and, pouring out what was left in the bottle, drank it off. Bobby said with his most amiable smile:

“Oh, about that photo. I just wanted to thank you for not making it quins. You know I really could not have endured quins.”

“Think you're funny, don't you?” snarled Williams.

“More a faint and far-off hope than an actual thought,” explained Bobby. “But people I have to do with often laugh—only sometimes it is on the wrong side of their mouths.”

Williams scowled again and went angrily away. Bobby watched him leave the café and then sat down at the same table, took out his sketch book and began to make a drawing of the bottle and the glass.

“It is a most superb composition,” he explained to the waiter. “Whatever you do, don't move them. A superb still life. Ah, they could only have been arranged like that either by genius or by happy chance. Ask the patron if I can have them—the bottle and glass. I'll give you twenty francs for them—the composition. It is perfect.”

The waiter smiled tolerantly and told the patron. The patron came himself to see if it were really true that such an easy twenty francs was coming his way. Finding that Bobby seemed to be in earnest, he asked twenty-five francs, which Bobby paid on the spot and was only just in time to prevent the waiter from seizing his purchases and taking them away to wrap them up.

“No, no,” protested Bobby earnestly. “They must not be touched.” He explained gravely: “Only an artist, a real artist, can understand how perfect a composition in still life they make together.”

He looked at it admiringly, and then, picking up bottle and glass with great care, went off with them in triumph, promising though to return shortly for a glass of wine in which to drink to his good luck in having discovered so superb a subject for his pencil. When he reached the hotel he noticed that old Madame Camion, at the reception desk, was sound asleep. His arrival broke her slumbers though she did no more than open one eye, see who it was, and fall again to slumber. Bobby, instead of going straight to his room, wandered into the back premises, found them deserted, collected another bottle and another glass, as closely resembling those already in his possession as possible, and ascended to his room. There he put the bottle and glass he had taken possession of very carefully away in a drawer. The other bottle and glass, those from the café, he packed with even greater care, and addressed to Olive in London. He took the package downstairs and woke Madame Camion, sleeping more soundly than ever, and asked her to put it in the hotel safe. Much experience of the whims, the fancies, and the eccentricities of hotel guests, whom she had come to look upon as a race apart, had long ago exhausted all the good lady's curiosity anent their doings, and she complied with Bobby's request as just another item in the day's work. Then she resumed her slumbers, and he went back to the café where by this time every one had heard of this fresh proof of the general, all-pervading eccentricity of artists.