Murder Abroad (15 page)

Odd, Bobby thought, that abstruse scientific theories should be confirmed by the testimony of a blind beggar, for, though he had not touched the tree or been nearer to it than they both now stood, it was certainly much the biggest in the whole grove.

They picked their way through some bushes and on the further side, comfortably seated on a protruding root that made a kind of chair, was Camion, by his side the stump of a cigarette he had just thrown away, and a revolver.

“Good morning, Monsieur Camion,” the old man greeted him. “It seems you are an early riser.”

“What has that to do with you?” Camion retorted. “You are too fond of poking your nose in other people's affairs, my friend. Why have you brought the Englishman with you?” He looked challengingly at Bobby. “What are you here for?” he asked.

The old beggar was turning his head from side to side. One could almost see his ears twitching as he tried to catch any sound the soft air might bring. He said:

“Where is Volny?”

“Concern yourself with your own affairs, not other people's,” Camion answered angrily.

“Young man,” said Père Trouché severely, “all my life, and I have no longer my first youth, all my life I have concerned myself with the affairs of others. It is necessary if one is to know how to beg wisely and well, and if one does not know that, one should seek some other way of living. I ask you again: Where is Volny?”

“That is his business, not mine. He isn't here, anyhow.”

“That I can hear for myself,” said the old beggar, still more severely. “You are not being wise, my little Camion, when you answer me like that. You had arranged here a meeting with Volny?”

“At any rate, if I did, he has not kept it.”

“There was a pistol shot we heard not many minutes since.”

“You hear too much, too often,” retorted Camion. “That is known.”

“You have a revolver,” Bobby said, speaking for the first time. “Do you usually take pistols with you when you go out for walks in the morning? Was it you who fired the shot we heard?”

Bobby, as he spoke, made a movement towards picking the pistol up, but Camion was too quick for him and in a moment had it in his hand. He looked at it a moment and put it in his pocket.

“It would serve you right if I did fire a shot or two with you for targets,” he said with a formidable scowl.

He got to his feet and for a moment or two stood staring at them in that darkly prideful manner of his, in which however now there mingled with the arrogance and the defiance a touch of unease as well. Then abruptly he turned on his heel and strode away. Père Trouché said:

“That, I do not like. No.”

“You don't think anything's been happening, do you?” Bobby asked anxiously.

“I do not know as yet but presently I shall,” answered the blind beggar. “We know all that goes on in Citry-sur-l'eau, God and I, but God, He knows it as it happens, and I, I only when I have found out. There I am at a disadvantage.” He shook his head, as if making the admission only under pressure and a little as if afraid that he had gone too far. Then he said: “Once again, it seems there is a real advantage in possessing sight. Watch, monsieur, and tell me if when he is out of hearing he turns aside or if he goes straight on.”

“He is going straight back home so far,” Bobby said, watching Camion's figure swiftly receding towards the village.

“It would be possible for him to turn again when he is beyond sight as well as hearing,” muttered Père Trouché.

“He is keeping straight on, walking fast, too,” Bobby repeated. Then he said doubtfully and uneasily: “We heard a shot. I wonder if we ought to have a look round?”

“Useless,” answered the blind man with decision.

“Camion's voice was angry, sulky, furious, uncertain, what you will—but not excited, not the voice of one who has just been concerned in violence. I listened carefully. Nothing of serious in that voice.”

“Yet serious things have happened in this village and not so long ago,” Bobby remarked.

“It is true. The shadow is upon the village. Sometimes I think there is more to happen before that shadow lifts.”

“You say you know all that goes on here,” Bobby said slowly. “Are you sure you don't know something about that, too?”

“Hé, Mr. Englishman, did not the police conduct a full inquiry? True, they asked little of the old blind beggar, but that was because they felt there was nothing an old blind beggar could tell them. But every one else in all the village they questioned—eh, how they questioned. It is the only way they know how to find things out.”

“Not a bad way, either,” Bobby suggested. “Did they question also your schoolmaster, Monsieur Eudes?”

“Why do you ask that?” Père Trouché asked in his turn and his voice sounded a little troubled. “There was no need, since, as it happened he was away all that week —a conference of the parties of the Left at Dijon. He was a delegate, he spoke. So they knew where he was, the good police. It was a question they never thought of asking the blind old beggar, where he was?”

“Where were you?” Bobby asked sharply and again the old man gave that weird, unnatural chuckle of his.

“Hé, hé, you ask questions, too? But, you understand, to ask is one thing, to be answered is another—the good God and I, we know, but no others, at least, none that are alive.”

He spoke with a sudden gravity as he added these last words. Bobby looked at him doubtfully, wondering what he meant, wondering if really he knew something.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “None that are alive,” he repeated, wondering if this referred to one who was dead recently, to Miss Polthwaite herself. Had she known? If so, how, in what way? Père Trouché, not answering Bobby's question, said:

“There will be no need, monsieur, to say anything of this morning's happenings in the village. You agree?”

“I suppose not, if nothing's happened,” Bobby said. “All the same, I think I'll take a look round.”

“As you will,” answered the old man indifferently. “For me, I can trust my ears and I think there is nothing of interest for you to find—except perhaps a good appetite for your early breakfast.”

“How did you find out about all this business?” Bobby asked.

“Eh, I know, always I know, even if I do not always tell. One hears this. One hears that. Did not the young Camion say to you yourself that something might happen to him?”

“Why, yes, so he did,” agreed Bobby, a little taken aback. “You heard that, too, did you? I never dreamed he meant this sort of thing, though.”

“I kept it in my mind. I wondered. I did not think it was grave; for the young Volny, he is not so full of courage as all that. With the fists, yes, for there his strength gives him confidence, his fists are his big battalions and he knows God is on their side. But when it comes to pistols, eh, Mr. Englishman, there is a difference. I have noticed it before, the big man, he is very brave with his strength, but often when it is a question of guns and bullets, the big man loses his confidence, the little man is readier. It may be that he feels now he has the advantage, being a smaller target. It is not always so, but I think that it is true of the young Volny. All the same, I was not very happy, for with the young pride and folly often take the place of courage, and Volny has the youth, not of his twenty years but of his ten. So when I found that he was not sleeping at home, I was uneasy. When I threw a little earth against the window of Camion's room and again there was no answer, I was more uneasy still. If they were both out, these young men with their hot heads and their folly, at such an hour of the morning, well, one drew one's conclusions. So it seemed to me the best thing I could do was to waken you. My faith, you responded on the instant. You have then the habitude?”

Bobby ignored this last question. He certainly had ‘the habitude', for at home he always slept, knowing that at any moment the 'phone might go, bringing an urgent summons. But that he was not anxious to explain. He said instead:

“How did you know which was my window?”

“But that was simple. I could hear your breathing.”

“Do you want to tell me,” asked Bobby incredulously, “that you could recognize my breathing?”

“I did not say so. I said I heard breathing. Therefore the room was occupied, and, since I could hear anything at all, the window must be wide open. Therefore the occupant must be an Englishman, and since I knew that only one Englishman was staying in the hotel, I knew that Englishman must be you. That is all. The simple logic.”

“So it is,” agreed Bobby admiringly.

Therewith they parted, Père Trouché returning to the village by way of a farm where he expected to be regaled with a drink of fresh milk and some bread, and Bobby to walk up and down for a time, making sure there was no sign of any untoward happening.

“One shot needn't mean anything serious,” he told himself. “A try to see if the thing was in good order, a practice shot, anything.”

Presently he returned to the village, now fully astir. Lucille was at the door of her aunt's shop as he passed, but when she saw him she retired within, barely acknowledging his salute. At the hotel where his absence had just been discovered, he explained he had been for an early morning stroll, and that presently he meant to see what he could do towards getting these glorious Auvergne sunrises down on canvas.

Later on, after breakfast, he went out again to do some sketching, taking care, however, not to go too far away in case of any further developments. Nothing happened, except that various small children came to look on, and that he won the heart of one, a pretty little thing, by making a sketch of her and presenting her with the finished result.

Not till much later in the day, after dinner in fact, did a remark he overheard inform him that young Volny was missing and that his father was furious, since this was the second time recently on which the young man had absented himself for a whole day, in spite of all the work that at this season of the year cried out for attention.

The next day, too, Bobby spent quietly sketching. He saw no more of Père Trouché, he noticed once or twice Williams hovering at a distance, black and scowling, and almost expected he was about to receive from him some new threat or warning. But Williams wandered away again with anything he had wished to say still unuttered. Perhaps, Bobby thought, he had been merely watching, though for what purpose Bobby found it difficult to guess. From some of the passers-by who occasionally stopped to look at his work—often with intelligent interest, not merely with the amusement English people feel on seeing a grown man occupy himself with brush or pencil —he learnt that the elder Volny was fulminating threats against his absent son, who was, it appeared, to be disinherited, forbidden the house, married to some strong- minded, sensible, not-too-young woman, who would know how to keep him in order, and generally to suffer various other pains and penalties as soon as he reappeared, which so far he had shown no sign of doing. Also it seemed that Monsieur Volny had visited Lucille, accused her in a stormy scene of being privy to his son's disappearance, and announced that if she tried to follow him, unpleasant consequences would follow. This last threat no doubt was vague, but it had greater force than Bobby realized, for he did not quite understand how formidable parental authority can still be in France, especially in rural France. All the same the final upshot had been Monsieur Volny retreating from the shop before a flourished broom wielded by the Tante Simone, while all the village watched and wondered. 

Bitterly did Bobby regret that he had missed this scene which he felt would be historic in the village annals. Not that he felt much inclined to be unduly concerned by Volny's disappearance. His own little encounter with the young man on the hill-side had left him with a strong impression that Henri Volny had a considerable respect for the safety of Henri Volny's skin. Perhaps, too, he had realized that Camion was of a different type, utterly heedless of every consequence once his emotions were deeply aroused, certain to take a duel ‘au grand sérieux'.

Two youngsters deeply interesting in their contrasting types of character, Bobby thought: Volny with a dogged determination on ends and yet a shrinking from risk in the means for achieving those ends; Camion with his readiness to face the immediate issue but hesitation in seeking his final ends. A young man with such ambitions towards conquering the hotel world should, Bobby thought, be already seeking the larger fields offered by the great towns. Quite possibly that was what Volny had now done.

All the same Bobby's mind was busy enough, as he sketched and gossipped with his occasional visitors and ate his lunch he had brought with him, and stretched himself out to bask in the warm, scented sunshine of Auvergne. Late in the afternoon he packed up his sketching materials and made his way back to the village for the dinner for which his long day in the open air had given him good appetite. When he reached the church he went inside and looked again at the little shelf before the black Virgin. It was quite bare now, without either flowers or diamonds, and Bobby made up his mind that the time had come to ask the curé a few questions.

He left the church accordingly and went across to the presbytery. One of the village women was coming out of the house. She said to him:

“Monsieur the curé is not there but he always leaves his door open so that one may enter and wait or write a message for him if they will.”

“He is not afraid of thieves, then?” Bobby said.

The woman smiled contemptuously.

“They say he would shave an egg,” she remarked, “but a thief would have to shave closer than that to get anything here worth the taking.”

She went on and Bobby, finding that in fact the door was open, crossed the threshold, though not without some hesitation. The room in which he found himself did in fact present a markedly poverty-stricken, uncared- for appearance. A table, in bad repair; two or three chairs, all a trifle unsteady on their rickety legs; a shelf with a few old and worn devotional books; a clock with one hand broken; a buffet, very old, but in better repair than most of the other things in the room, provided the chief furniture. There were one or two religious objects as well, a crucifix, a picture of the Sacred Heart, two or three small statuettes, but the general impression was of poverty and neglect. The rough wooden boards of the flooring had no covering, for instance, and though they had been recently swept they showed many stains and marks, as though it were long since they had been scrubbed. Bobby strongly disapproved. He had heard that the curé lived alone, his housekeeper having recently left him on the ground that she was not prepared to face another winter without sufficient firing, but all the same Bobby felt that the use of scrubbing brush, soap, and hot water is open to any man, nor are such things hard to procure.