The Dave Bliss Quintet (13 page)

“So zhat is why you spy on Johnson's wife and zhe boy,” she says, laughing.

“I didn't spy,” he cuts in. “I just happened to be in the garden early one morning and saw him.”

“And zhen you stare into his window?”

“All right. I know it sounds bad, but he was behaving strangely.”

With his apparent interest in the château out in the open, Daisy's face clouds again as she solemnly warns him. “People who go zhere disappear.”

“Seriously?” he asks. “What people? When?”

It is only a rumour, apparently, but, as Daisy puts it, “Zhere is no evidence against it.”

That's the obstinate nature of rumours, he explains. The supporting facts may be filmier than plastic wrapping, but, without contradictory evidence, some folks will believe it. And, like most rumours, there seems little to prove that the old château is some sort of black hole.

“So,” he pushes on, still waiting for an answer, “how many have disappeared? When? Who?”

Her vacant look gives him the answer.

“Sounds like a good way to keep trespassers out, as far as I can see,” he continues dismissively, thinking the rumour is probably fostered by the uniformed goons whispering menacingly to curious children: “D'ye wann'a know what happens to kids who go in there?” And he certainly knows what the guards in the vicinity of the estate are like. He met a few the previous afternoon.

After leaving Daisy in Cannes (“I have zhe little business,” she explained), he tried the library and the tourist information office for particulars about the Château Roger. There's more than one way to handle a snappy crustacean, he thought, but the reaction from the attendant in the tourist information office, on the promenade of St-Juan, was so alarming that Daisy's warning about a basket of crabs seemed mild.

“It is private,” the bald-headed, beaky-nosed man snapped, scowling at Bliss's off-hand enquiry.

“Yes, I'm aware of that —” he started conciliatorily, but he was rudely cut off as, with colour and voice rising, the little man laid into him. “I said private. Private … don't you understand?”

“Yes. I —”

“Listen to me,” he ordered, teacherly. “You cannot go there.” Then, almost pushing Bliss out the door, he raised a finger angrily, shouting, “It is private.... Private.... Private. Why don't you listen to me? It is not for tourists.”

Feeling he might have got a friendlier reception had he asked for directions to the municipal brothel, he slunk off to the local library. “
Fermé
,” declared the sign on the bolted door, so he sought the museum instead.

The female curator, uncharacteristically frothy with her bouncy blond curls and laughing eyes, was gushingly unhelpful. “I'm sorry. I wish I could help you. But zhis museum is dedicated entirely to Napoleon Bonaparte,” she explained, adding proudly, “He landed here in 1815, you know.”

“I know,” Bliss said, though he doubted the locals take the event so significantly, considering the trivial commemoration stone, on the promenade, that he'd seen several tourists trip over, not to mention the memorial in the town park: a soaring fluted stone column with solid pedestal and elaborate capital, surmounted by a pathetically small bust of the Emperor looking more like a plaster-cast “mantelpiece model” of Elvis.

The curator must have caught the look of disappointment on his face, and, fearing it to be an expression of distaste for one of England's greatest bugbears, she pursed her lips and whispered disdainfully, “He wasn't really French. His name was Napoleone Buonoparte. He was actually a Corsican.”

No further ahead, but still determined, Bliss spent the afternoon under the glare of security men, walking around the perimeter of the château's estate looking for some other entry, and exhausted himself in the sweltering
heat. But many stretches of the fence hide behind the walls and surveillance cameras of villas that abut the grounds, so that he couldn't be sure he hadn't missed some gateway more modest than the main portal. There had to be a tradesman's entrance somewhere, he assumed, retracing his steps. He eventually concluded that it had to be in the leg of the fence where a uniformed, and conspicuously armed, guard sternly warned him that the entire street was “
privée
.”

“Bloody nerve,” mused Bliss, moving off. “So much for
liberté, egalité, et fraternité
. I wonder what the
prolétaires
of the revolution would think of that?” But, knowing the uselessness of arguing with any security guard, let alone a foreign one, he skulked away. Behind him, the guard made a point of pulling out his radio to loudly broadcast that a
crétin
was in the area.

Forced to take to the hills, well away from the château's grounds, he climbed a steep, twisting road into an area where the view alone would fetch more than the average 4 bed. suburban Des. Res., and he began to understand the guards' concern. Who but a
crétin
would walk here?

Another week is slipping by, but at least he's making progress. With Marcia exposed, though God knows where she is, and the
Sea-Quester
identified, even if he had only caught a glimpse of Johnson and young Miss Grimes as they scrambled aboard, Friday dawns with the bright promise of another glorious day.

From his balcony Bliss looks down on the garden and the lemon tree. The fallen lemon still sits on the grass, but it has lost some of its attraction as it wilts in the relentless sun and he decides that, until he figures out a plan to deal with the man in the cage and Morgan Johnson resurfaces, he may as well concentrate on the perplexing case of the Château Roger.

Although not ideally situated, his apartment's balcony gives him a view across the thickly wooded promontory at the other end of the bay, and he scours the lush hillsides with his binoculars, knowing that
obscured somewhere deep inside the jungle of eucalyptus and palm trees should be a mansion. Defeated by distance, and a feathery drape of early morning mist, he gives up for awhile and spends time tweaking grey hairs out of his moustache, but then, returning to the binoculars as the warmth of the sun burns away the haze, his eye catches the glint of metal amongst the trees, and he realizes he's been deceived. The château is there — has been there all along — an imposing edifice, lost in the tangled greenery, with only the multitude of steeply angled roofs jutting skyward, marking its spot. Camouflaged by centuries of verdigris, which has taken the sheen off the copper and blended with the surrounding verdure, the roofs hint of the enormity and grandeur of the building beneath, but, try as he might, he cannot even glimpse the structure through the dense woodland.

The ancient château, hidden deep in the forest, has a certain fairytale quality that sets him daydreaming about enchanted castles — though he doesn't picture himself as the handsome prince coming to rescue an imprisoned damsel. And, despite his long blond hair, the young man in the cage downstairs would never count as sleeping beauty — not in Bliss's mind, anyway.

With the château's existence and location now established, Bliss leaves his balcony, heads for the
boulangerie,
then sits in his usual place on the seawall, hoping that Marcia will show up with news of Johnson's whereabouts. Then, peering out over the bay through his binoculars, seeking the
Sea-Quester
, he is suddenly struck by a way to get a better view of the château.

“Stupid,” he chides himself, for not realizing sooner that, whilst the building may be obscured from the prying eyes of landlubbers, it was obviously built to take advantage of the expansive vista of the bay and the offshore islands.

With two croissants, a baguette, and a bottle of Perrier, Bliss heads to the marina, where numerous signs dot the quayside offering boats for hire, but he is quickly disappointed and his plan starts to unravel. Without proof of his maritime skills, and an accompanying certificate, nobody will rent him anything more seaworthy than a kiddie's
pédalo
, unless he also hires the service of a duly qualified skipper.

He could — it's not that his credit card won't take the strain — but he doesn't want anyone standing over his shoulder demanding, “Why you look at zhe château all day?
Regarde les bateaux
, zhe fish, zhe sea, zhe sky, and zhe beautiful islands.”

The thought of the islands gives him an idea, and he races to the far end of the quay in time to catch the passenger ferry that chugs its way across the bay, three or four times a day, with happy boatloads of paraphernalia-wielding picnickers heading for the beaches and crystal clear waters of Île Sainte-Marguerite.

As they steam out of the harbour and head for the cobalt of deeper water, Bliss turns back and is rewarded with an ever-expanding view of the Château Roger. Though still deeply nestled in the thick tangle of undergrowth, its shape and grandeur is unmistakable — like a maharajah's palace rising majestically out of the Bengal jungle. Bliss turns to his fellow passengers, wanting to sing out, “Quick — look at the château,” but they have their faces and minds turned to the island ahead.

Realizing that no one else sees the château, he momentarily, and quite seriously, questions himself. Maybe it is a fairytale. What if I'm imagining it? What if it's an apparition, a hallucination, a mirage? What if it's the ghost of a château long demolished?

Is that possible? Do razed buildings leave ghosts?

Maybe.

What if it's a ghost in my mind — a remnant of memory from a past life?

You don't believe that garbage …

I didn't before!

A slight jolt as the little ferry trips over the wake of a passing speedboat jump-starts his brain, and he swings the binoculars back to shore.

It is definitely real, he tells himself, though now he's farther out in the bay, and as more of the facade becomes exposed, the individual aspects become more indistinct. By the time the top floors, with their swooping balconies and sculpted canopies have been exposed, even through his binoculars the features are melting, and when the grand entranceway, with its colonnade of Corinthian pillars, has risen to view, the château is just a smudge in the landscape. The monumental building, raised on a giant plinth to give the aristocratic occupiers the most spectacular view in the world, is absorbed into the surrounding foliage and disappears from sight as they reach their destination on the island.

With time to kill before the ferry's return, Bliss tacks onto the mule-train of holidaymakers as they hump hampers, inflated toys, beach mats, picnic tables, and kids up the steep paths and head for secluded bays with hundreds of others. At least cars and motorbikes aren't
allowed, he is thinking, as he idles along a sandy path, his mind still on the château, when he's almost run down by a speeding forestry truck.

“
Putain
,” he swears at the fleeing vehicle, emerging from the dust cloud with a fleck of grit in his eye.

He wanders through the groves of giant eucalyptus, almost deafened by the screeching cicadas, until he comes out on a headland and is surprised to find himself almost on top of a fortress.

Like the Château Roger, the imposing cliff-top castle appeared insignificant from a distance. It is only when he has crossed the stone bridge, entered the archway where the portcullis once dropped, along with buckets of boiling oil and burning pitch, and walked up the cobblestone road into the main courtyard that he comprehends its size and significance.

Typically French, he thinks immediately, surveying the construction of le Fort Royal and its buildings. The thick walls are just a jumble of rough rocks slapped together with powdery mortar and stuccoed with sandy plaster — none of the accurately milled stone blocks with cushioned facings and paper thin joints of their uptight English counterparts. The seventeenth-century buildings appear as slapdash as the
pétanque
courts to Bliss, though he has to admit they seem to stand, and inside the fortress he finds an entire town, with houses, barracks, a church, and even a primitive laundromat — a giant stone wash basin fed from a well. A dusty parade square, overlooking the mainland, takes him back to his marching drills at police college, and he wonders how many
légionnaires
wished they'd never signed up for the crossing over the narrow straights from Cannes as he winces in memory of the blisters and sore knees.

Signs point him to the water cisterns — essential on an arid Mediterranean island — built by the first inhabitants, the Romans, two thousand years earlier. Displayed inside the roman cisterns are enormous hand-wrought terracotta amphorae. Some are streaked with iron oxide, and all are partially encrusted with barnacles.

“Amphorae from the wreck of the
Tradeliere
discovered in 1971,” proclaims the legend, and, despite the ubiquitous “
Ne pas toucher
” signs, Bliss reaches over the electronic tripwire and transports himself backwards through two millennia. Lightly stroking a finger across the sandpapery surface of a giant double-handed wine pot, he feels a tingle of consanguinity as he connects with the Roman potter — a man, Bliss senses, probably not unlike Greg Grimes, with ambitions of creating award-winning ceramic pieces, who was forced by the economics of the time, or a slave-master's whip, to knock out practical pots. At least his were fired and used, Bliss is thinking, when an Australian woman catches her husband's arm and exclaims, “Geez, Bruce! Just look at the size of that.”

“Yeah,” Bliss mutters in all seriousness, “I wouldn't wanna try stuffing one of those babies down a toilet.”

But Bliss has only a few moments to absorb this potter's work. As he looks around the relatively modern building that houses the antique amphorae, everything suddenly slots into place in his mind. This was a prison — a feared prison in the time of Louis XIV — but this is also a place of legend, a place that has housed the spirit of one of the world's greatest unsolved mysteries for more than three hundred years, and, as a modern-day detective, Bliss walks the corridors and cells with an incredible feeling of déjà vu.
Then, “
Crac
!” he exclaims, the plot and characters of his novel falling into place in his mind with such clarity that he can hardly constrain his pen.