Murder Abroad (22 page)

I had a good look round,” Bobby said. “I saw nothing.”

Père Trouché looked a good deal relieved. Changing the subject, he tried again to induce Bobby to tell him what Williams had said.

“For there was trouble in your footsteps, monsieur,” he repeated, ‘and since it was not because of this talk of Volny and the young Camion, what was it they said to you? Tell the old blind beggar,” he said, falling into a kind of professional whine, “for there is so much he knows, so much he can explain to clear away troubles and misunderstandings.”

“Very likely, but we'll leave it at that,” Bobby said and went back to the village, leaving Père Trouché sitting there with in front of him that hundred-franc note of which so far he seemed quite unaware.

In the village when Bobby reached it, he noticed even more of the inhabitants than usual clustered in small groups and talking together. At the door of the shop kept by Lucille's aunt, Lucille herself was standing. As he drew nearer Bobby saw that she was looking at him and when he lifted his hat, she gave a slight bow in acknowledgement and went back quickly inside the shop. Somehow Bobby thought that an invitation was intended. He entered accordingly. Lucille was standing just inside and now that he could see her more plainly, it was easy to make out that she was looking very pale and troubled. She said nothing and he began to occupy himself with the postcards as if his sole purpose was to buy some more. She remained silent, though watching him intently, and presently he said:

“I hear, mademoiselle, that there is gossip in the village. One talks.”

“It is not true,” she burst out. “It is not true what they are saying.”

“That Volny is dead?” Bobby asked. “I hope it is not true, but is there news of him?”

She shook her head and then murmured in a low, choking voice:

“I cannot believe that he is dead.”

“Have you seen Charles Camion to-day?” Bobby asked.

“Ah, that, it is a lie,” she cried. “Even if Volny is dead, it is not Charles who killed him. Ah, it is wicked that they should say such things. Monsieur, it is not true that you and Père Trouché—that you know, that you saw...?”

“Is that being said, too?” Bobby asked. “We only know what I suppose plenty of others know—that Camion went out early one morning. Why is every one so ready to believe such a story? Is it because there was a murder here before when also his name was spoken of?”

“They told lies about him before,” she said vehemently, “and so they tell more lies about him again and then it sounds as if it must be true.”

“What does Camion say himself?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “He is mad. He wraps himself in himself. He says nothing. I do not think he understands that it is real.”

“Perhaps that is it,” Bobby said thoughtfully. Lucille's remark had flashed out suddenly, as if it had broken spontaneously from the depths of a half unconscious understanding, but it seemed to him that possibly it shed light on a good deal he found puzzling. But how it affected the main problem in his mind, he was not sure, for a man who dramatizes himself too much may sometimes dramatize himself in strange ways. He said presently as Lucille still watched him:

“Do you think Mademoiselle Polthwaite was murdered?” She became very pale, her eyes grew large and terrified. Though she did not speak, made no sign, he understood. He said:

“It is what I think, too.”

“It was not Camion,” she burst out. “He was foolish, he was worse, it was shameful what he did. I told him so. I said that never would I have more to do with him. It was a quarrel when we were both so angry that we did not know what we said.”

“And now?” Bobby asked.

“Now,” she said proudly, lifting her head, “now I have sent him word that if he wishes to, he can arrange our fiangailles.”

She was less pale now. Her eyes had lost their fear and were bright and eager and defiant, so that for the moment it was a light, clear beauty that hung about her, like a garment. Bobby remembered a little sadly how often women had put in men they loved an eager faith for which there proved in the end to be but small justification. He did not say that, but watched her as she glowed there in her perfect trust and then he said:

“If Miss Polthwaite was murdered, some one murdered her. Who was it? To-day I have been told it was Père Trouché.”

Lucille's surprise was evident. She forgot for the moment her anger and her fear over the gossip about Camion. She stared with open mouth and then she said:

“Oh, no, why should he? He is not like that, though he says himself that once—but others say it is only that he loves to boast.”

“What is it he says?” Bobby asked.

“Those who follow the road,” she answered, using the expression ‘faire la route' Bobby had heard before and that perhaps is best translated by our expression ‘tramp', “are angry if others, who are strangers, try to follow the same roads. Those who were the first think they have the best right and join together to drive away intruders. Père Trouché has always been jealous to allow no other on what he calls his territory. Years ago when I was a child a stranger tried to push himself in and presently he was found dead at the foot of a steep rock. It was thought that he had lost his way and fallen, but afterwards the Père Trouché boasted that he had struck him with his staff and then thrown him over. But some said it was only a story Père Trouché told to scare others away.”

“That was a long time ago?” Bobby asked and before Lucille could answer old Madame Simone came in hurriedly.

“The commissaire of police has arrived,” she said. “Look, there is his car. Monsieur Volny père rang for him on the telephone—eh, to think that in these days a functionary can be rung for like any maid of all work. Well, if the young man has been murdered, now we shall soon know all about it.”

When Bobby went out again into the village street, he found it strange to see how great a change there was, how utterly the general atmosphere and feeling of the place had altered, how oddly visible was the uneasiness and common fear now prevalent. Even the children had ceased to play and run about and were gathered near their elders, listening and alarmed. No longer were the little groups of older people chattering together in pleasant and excited comment, each member eager to express his own ideas and to contradict those of others. Now for the most part they stood in silence, or exchanging only muttered observations to which most often no reply was made. But the eyes of all were turned towards the car standing before the door of the Hotel de la Belle Alliance, de la Victoire, et des États-Unis. What had been before a subject for amusing gossip or malicious speculation had now become a common dread, as into the general silence and reserve, as a stone into some deep and quiet pool, was dropped from time to time the one word: Volny.

In the distance, down a side turning, Bobby caught sight of Eudes, the schoolmaster. He was almost running, like a man pursued, and in his progress there was something, Bobby thought, that seemed furtive and alarmed. Eudes vanished from sight round a corner of one of the houses. Bobby turned and found he was not the only man who had been watching Eudes, for by his side was the curé. The curé said:

“That was Monsieur Eudes.” Bobby made no answer. The curé said: “Monsieur the commissaire is here. That has not happened since Mademoiselle Polthwaite's death. Before that, never had it happened in living memory. Now he comes again. It is as though the reign of Satan had begun. It is because the teaching of the church is neglected and that of Monsieur Eudes and his like is preferred.”

“Monsieur Eudes,” Bobby remarked, “never I think received a present of diamonds from Mademoiselle Polthwaite?”

“It was not because he did not desire it, work for it,” retorted the curé. “I know for a fact, because he had heard she was an artist, and therefore he thought she must be of a loose and careless life and an enemy of the Church, that he spoke of trying to obtain money from her. It was an intrigue he contemplated—ah, these intrigues that are the curse of France, that lead people astray before even they are aware of what they do.”

“But surely,” Bobby protested, “Miss Polthwaite was a foreigner here, she would never have given money for any political purpose?”

“Eudes schemed to secure it under pretence of educating children of special promise. It would have begun in a small way. It would have continued. It was to be in the end support of a weekly journal Eudes dreams of establishing. If ever he succeeds in carrying out his cunning schemes to publish here such a journal as a fresh centre of degradation and atheism—”

He paused, apparently unable to find words in which to express his horror at such a prospect, and then, without saying anything more, he walked away.

Bobby went back to the hotel. There was no one at the reception desk, no one in the entrance hall. A thing unprecedented. He went up to his room and sat for a time at the window, smoking a cigarette. When the hour came for dinner he went downstairs. There were fewer guests than usual. Curiosity, no doubt, was strong, but prudence was stronger still, and for that evening many had preferred to seek their evening meal elsewhere. At one table sat a man Bobby had not seen before, a small, stout, smiling man Bobby guessed must be the commissaire by his alert, authoritative air. He wore a close-cropped beard and had grown a little bald, and Bobby did not think that smile of his had much of mirth in it; assumed, Bobby thought, in an effort to put witnesses at their ease. He seemed to be enjoying his meal but behind his glasses his eyes were quick and watchful, and Bobby noticed, with little pleasure, that more than once they flashed a rapid glance in his direction.

“Going to put the hat on it,” Bobby thought, “if I'm to be mixed up in a fresh murder mystery. I hope to goodness Volny turns up all right.”

But he remembered with an inner chill how the name, Volny, had been whispered down the village street as in a kind of secret dirge.

The serving doors opened and Charles Camion came in, though that is but a tame way of putting it. Effected an entrance would be a more suitable description. Anyhow, there he was, drawn to his full height, fully aware that everyone was looking at him, himself looking at no one but with a stern and haughty glance fixed challengingly upon a spot several feet above the commissaire's head.

“The young ass,” Bobby said to himself. “He's enjoying it.”

An exaggeration, no doubt, and any enjoyment the young man felt was probably quite unconscious, more justly indeed to be described as a sort of profound inner satisfaction in a knowledge that it was about his personality that events were clustering. At any rate his whole bearing seemed to proclaim a kind of gloomy yet deep satisfaction in his knowledge that though Fate had chosen him to launch her thunderbolts against, yet none the less he was showing under that assault a proud tranquillity. The manner, too, in which he stood for a moment or two, quite still, then removed his eyes from the wall above the commissaire's head, gave a slow look all around, finally resuming his progress down the room, told clearly that his every movement was carefully, though perhaps instinctively, studied. Bobby found himself wondering what had happened to the limelight man, and had to check an impulse to applaud.

“Entrance of misunderstood and persecuted hero,” he thought to himself. “Hang it all, the boy's a born actor.”

Indeed the way in which Camion managed to suggest tragic innocence, the victim unjustly laid upon the altar of vengeance, and yet at the same time preserved the air of a desperado it would be imprudent to offend, was really magnificent.

“Monsieur is not content,” he said once, bending darkly over a guest who had ventured some sort of trifling criticism; and the poor man went quite pale and hurriedly stammered out an expression of the most complete satisfaction to which Camion listened with an air of gloom that plainly said it was well for them both no complaint was intended.

“The young fool,” Bobby muttered again, “he'll act himself to the guillotine if he isn't careful,” and then was startled to notice the commissaire's alert, intelligent eyes turning thoughtfully from him to Camion and back again.

The commissaire was the first to finish his meal and leave the dining-room. Bobby purposely lingered over his coffee but when he went into the entrance hall he found the commissaire there, talking to the elder Camion. The hotel keeper vanished, the commissaire turned to Bobby, introduced himself very politely, and explained that there seemed to be a certain uneasiness over the disappearance of one of the young men of the village—‘un nommé Volny, Henri'.

“His father,” he explained, “the elder Volny, is not without his importance. He is in politics of the centre, a good republican, and a strong opponent of the Church.”

“Oh, yes,” said Bobby cautiously. “I know so little about French politics. Are all good republicans strong opponents of the Church?”

The commissaire waved this aside, and Bobby thought he looked a little disappointed as though he had hoped that this reference to the elder Volny's hostility to the Church might have elicited something interesting, though what, Bobby could not imagine. The commissaire went on:

“At present, I see no reason to open a formal inquiry. Often in these days young people and their elders have very different ideas. The old family tradition is weakening. It is a pity. Not so long ago a father could arrange his son's marriage and if the son ventured to ask for whom his hand was destined, the father could reply by telling him to mind his own business. To-day that young man in the question of marriage would say the same to his parents. Then perhaps a family scene. The young man—or sometimes the girl—takes himself off. Even with a daughter it might happen. The parents are in despair. They seek our assistance. What can we do? Presently no doubt the truant returns, or a letter arrives. Then all is well and our inaction has proved the best for all. Yet there is always the possibility that it is more serious; and it may be, monsieur, that I shall have to ask you for a statement, since it seems you and another were so uneasy one morning that you left your beds at a very early hour.”