Naughty In Nice (40 page)

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Authors: Rhys Bowen

BOOK: Naughty In Nice
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“He looked at me and laughed again. ‘How melodramatic. And how do you plan to accomplish this? Steal the plans for the car back from me?’ He actually walked ahead of me out toward the pool. I picked up a rock and I hit him hard over the back of the head. ‘Like this!’ I said. Then I pushed him into the pool. And you know what? I’m not one bit sorry. He was a poor excuse for a human being who deserved to die. I am sorry about the others, though. I’m not a born killer. But they were sure to have remembered something if the police questioned them, something like the motor being parked that gave away that I was there.”
He looked in my direction again. “It seemed so easy. I waited until the road was empty then drove back into town again. Made sure people noticed me at all the shops. Perfect alibi, wouldn’t you say? Except that you were determined to find the girl who looked like you.” He stiffened suddenly, glancing in the rearview mirror. A large sleek sports car had swung into view. It was still far behind but gaining on us.
“I think we’re being followed after all,” he said. “It’s not the police. Who can it be?”
The only person I knew who drove a car like that was the marquis. Hope was tinged with fear. If it really was Jean-Paul, was he coming to save me or to finish me off?
“No problem. We can go faster.” He put his foot down. The engine whined in protest. The rocks shot past us as a blur. The big car was keeping pace. A rock wall loomed up ahead of us. I think I screamed as we shot into the darkness of a tunnel and then out again the other side without slowing at all. We approached a small hamlet where a stream tumbled down to the sea below, its course marked by a line of greenery. Suddenly a farm cart, pulled by a great yellow horse, lumbered out from between two buildings. Johnson shouted and jammed on the brakes. Tires squealed as the car skidded, hit the low wall and bounced back into the road again. Johnson cursed, jamming the car into a low gear as he tried to steer around the terrified and rearing animal.
I had been waiting for the slimmest of chances to escape. Even though the car was still moving, I saw the bushes beside the road, instead of that forbidding wall. I threw open my door and fell out, rolling onto the spiky plants beside the asphalt. I had expected it would hurt but I hadn’t anticipated how much. I felt stones cutting into me and the breath knocked out of me as I hit the ground and rolled. I came cannoning into the bushes, which yielded under my weight, then I felt myself sliding down into nothingness. I grabbed wildly as branches slipped past me, scratching at my arms and face. Somehow my hands managed to hold on to a small branch and I came to a halt, half suspended, half dangling out over the most horrendous of cliff faces.
My position was so precarious I wasn’t sure what to do next. Leafy branches were in my face. Some kind of stump was sticking into my back, holding me out from the cliff, as my hands clutched at a branch that was bending with my weight. When I looked down all I could see were rocks, hundreds of feet below. At any second I expected to feel the thud of a bullet into me, or to feel the slender branch finally yield and crack beneath my sweaty fingers. Instead I heard a great boom far off, then I spotted a fireball somewhere below me. Fire raced up the cliff, consuming the scrub it met. As it came upward it spread. Through the leaves and twigs below me I could see orange flames licking their way out toward me, like a hungry dragon devouring everything in its path.
I was hanging facing out, away from the cliff face, and I couldn’t work out how to turn myself around to use that stump that was digging into my back. I wished I had been more diligent in gymnastics classes at school. The fire was directly below me now and I certainly didn’t relish the prospect of being burned alive. This spurred me into taking the leap of faith and letting go with one hand. The branch bobbed dangerously as I swung myself around. I thought I heard the sound of a branch cracking over the crackling of the fire, but I managed to turn enough to grab hold again with my body now facing toward the cliff. I pulled up my legs and struck out in all directions, trying to find something firm enough to take my weight. My right foot hit a rock. I scrabbled madly and it held firm. Holding my breath, I transferred some of my weight to it, then inched my way back up the branch until I was standing on the rocky outcropping. There was another branch above me. I made a grab for it and tried to haul myself upward. Pebbles showered down around me. I found a clump of grass or weeds growing from the face and dug my other foot into it. Then inch by inch I was making my way upward. I could see the road above. A big racing car had stopped.
“Help!” I yelled, in English. I suppose it would have been more sensible to have shouted in French but one tends to forget logic at times like this. Two men had been walking ahead of me, presumably hurrying toward the site of the fireball. At the sound of my voice they spun around and ran back to me. Hands grabbed at me and I was yanked back up to the road just as the bushes below me burst into flame.
“Merci, monsieurs.”
I remembered my French this time, and I looked up at my rescuers. They were the Marquis de Ronchard and Darcy.
 
Chapter 34
 
At a peasant cottage, somewhere high above the
Mediterranean
January 28, 1933
 
“My God, you look terrible,” Darcy said at the same moment as the marquis said in French, “
Mon Dieu
, you look terrible.” He ran back to the car.
“Of course I look terrible,” I snapped, the tension of the past hour spilling out. “So would you if you’d been kidnapped by a murderer and nearly fallen down a cliff and been singed to death.”
“I didn’t mean that.” Darcy had dropped to his knees beside me. “I was just horrified by what had happened to you. But you’re safe. That’s the main thing. Rather, it’s not the main thing. What was the last thing I said to you when we parted? Was it not ‘go straight home and stay there’?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts,” Darcy said angrily. “What were you doing in that man’s car in the first place?”
“I didn’t realize he was the murderer until I was in the car with him. I tracked down Jeanine—the one who looked like me—and someone started shooting at us and . . .” I looked up at the marquis. I still wasn’t completely sure that he hadn’t fired that shot.
“Jeanine is dead,” he said flatly. “That brute shot her. I wish I could have caught up with him. I’d have strangled him with my bare hands.” He handed me a silver flask. “Drink that. It’s cognac,” he said. “And we should try to move you. The fire is getting rather too close.”
Other people had gathered around us—the carter from that farm wagon, and various inhabitants of the cottages. At a word from the marquis they picked me up between them and trundled me across the street into the nearest open door.
“I’ll go for help,” Jean-Paul said.
“I’m sure you don’t have to,” Darcy replied, looking up at him coldly. “There will be a telephone somewhere around.”
“I don’t want to risk those flames coming too close to my car,” Jean-Paul confessed. “And Georgie needs a doctor right away.”
He came over to me and bent to kiss me gently on the forehead.
“Adieu, ma petite,”
he whispered. I didn’t take in until later that he had not said
au revoir.
He was not planning to see me again.
People fussed around me, tucking a rug around me, offering coffee, soup and hot water and a cloth to clean up my wounds. It wasn’t until then that I noticed the extent of my injuries. My arms and legs looked as if I had been wrestling with a tiger. Blood was trickling down my face. But I moved my hands and feet experimentally. Nothing appeared to be broken. The warm water stung as an old woman dabbed at the worst of the cuts and scrapes, making clicking noises with her tongue at what she saw.
“What happened to her?” someone asked.
“She fell out of a motorcar,” Darcy said.
“I jumped out,” I corrected. “I had been kidnapped by a murderer. He was taking me as a hostage. When the horse and cart came out in front of us he had to brake. I took my chance and flung myself out. I thought those bushes would break my fall. I hadn’t realized they were growing over the edge of the cliff.”
Darcy shook his head as if nothing I could say would surprise him.
“Who was that man?” he asked.
“Sir Toby’s valet. He called himself Johnson, but his real name was Sherman. His father was the one Sir Toby cheated out of his share in the design of the Fearless Flyer. He came to get revenge. Did he get away?”
Darcy shook his head. “His car went over the cliff,” he said. “That was what caused the fireball. He lost control, swerving to miss that horse. Ironic, isn’t it? He has no qualms about killing people but he wasn’t about to hit a horse. How typically English.”
I was shivering. I pulled the rug up around me and accepted the coffee someone was offering. Another thought struck me. “What were you doing with the marquis?”
“As you knew, I’d been keeping my eye on him for a while. We finally thought we had enough to bring him in, but just as I caught up with him, someone was shot. He’d been coming to spirit her away, apparently. He saw me and yelled that you were in danger so we hopped into his car and gave chase. Another irony, don’t you think? Life seems to be full of them these days—like the man you chose over me turning out not to be a marquis but a slick international thief and forger.”
“I didn’t choose him over you,” I said hotly. “I chose him because I was flattered that he’d be interested in someone like me. . . . And because I knew I wasn’t exactly number one in your affections.”
He frowned now. “What made you think that?”
“I found out about your secret family—well, not so secret, since I saw you playing with the child on the beach. And I heard two women talking on the train about how much you adored him.”
“Well, of course I adore him. He’s the only nephew I’ve got so far and he needs a man in his life.”
I stared at him. I don’t think I fully took in the words for a moment. “Your nephew? That woman with you . . . ?”
“My sister, Bridget. Her husband was an officer with the British army in India. He was killed last year in the North-West Frontier. Bridget’s had a hard time of it—suddenly having to cope with life in England on a small pension after having had all those servants in India. So I’ve been helping out when I can. Since I had to come to the Riviera on a small matter of business, I suggested she come along too and give the little chap a holiday.”
“Your sister.” I stammered the words. “Of course.”
“You saw her once with me in London, didn’t you?”
“I only saw her back.” I felt my cheeks burning.
Darcy was looking at me strangely. “Wait, you didn’t think—?”
“I thought she was your mistress and that he was your child,” I said. “I feel so stupid.”
“You could have asked me,” he said quietly. “Do you think I wouldn’t have told you about something as important as a child?” Then that wicked grin spread across his face. “Besides, I don’t make enough money to keep a mistress. They’re an expensive proposition.”
“My father had one,” I said, staring at the steam rising from the cup of coffee. “Here on the Riviera. And we never knew. I had a half sister I never knew about until today. We looked so alike, Darcy. We might have become friends, but she was shot.”
I felt the tears welling up again. Darcy nodded and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Maybe it was better that she died,” he said. “Better than spending years in prison.”
“Will the marquis spend years in prison?” I asked.
“If we can make any of his crimes stick,” Darcy said. “That’s why I was sent over here—that, and to recover a few valuable pieces of artwork that had vanished from British stately homes.”
“Then we were sent on similar missions.” I actually laughed. “I was sent by the queen to recover a snuffbox that Sir Toby took from her.”
“Sir Toby? Then they were all as bad as each other, weren’t they?”
I nodded.
“And we’re well rid of them.” A long pause followed in which he looked at me with those dangerous bright blue eyes. “And you and I—well, should we start over from square one, do you think? If you can trust me not to have more mistresses hidden away.”

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