The Greengage Summer (12 page)

After Mademoiselle Zizi stopped screaming a horrible calm lay over the house, the house not the garden; the garden was full of police, and Rita and Rex bayed frantically in the kennel. Each time
their noise rose it meant a fresh batch of police had arrived. Monsieur Armand saw us looking out of the windows and came up and shuttered them. “Better not to look,” he said gently,
but we could not help looking through the cracks, all except Joss, who sat as if she had been frozen on the bed.

A dark-blue van drove up.

“What’s that?” asked Willmouse fearfully.

“I expect it’s some stores for the kitchen,” I said, trying to soothe him, “only some stores.”

“It’s the dead car,” said Vicky, who was not supposed to know anything. “It has come for Paul.”

The truth spoken so flatly shocked us and we stayed perfectly still listening to the tramp of feet. “He’s on a stretcher,” said Vicky, peering, “all covered
up.”

I had a hiccough that shook me from my heels to my head. Hester began to cry. “Paul saved up for his lorry,” she said. “Why? Why did God do it?”

“God didn’t,” said Vicky, “it was Eliot. Monsieur Armand said so.”

“It was all my fault,” said Joss. Sitting on the bed, she twisted her hands together. “If I had gone on painting. Cecil told me to but I would go to the party.”

“We went to the party too,” said Hester loyally.

“If I hadn’t smiled at him . . .”

“Well, if we had never talked to him . . .” I could say that.

“. . . he would never have come up the ladder,” said Joss, not listening.

“Did he come up a ladder?” Hester and the Littles asked. “Why?” they asked round-eyed.

“To . . . look at Joss.”

“Why?”

“Men do at women,” said Willmouse.

I told them how Eliot came. “He needn’t have come. It was because he thought we were in trouble. He could have gone,” I said. “He shook the ladder and Paul
fell.”

“Nobody meant it, it happened,” said Hester; she added mournfully, “And now Eliot has gone.”

“I saw him go.” They all turned to me, listening carefully as I told them.

“That was how he was dressed,” said Willmouse, nodding when I described the clothes. “But . . . I can’t believe it,” said Willmouse. He looked stunned.

“I can,” said Hester, and, feeling our surprise, she explained, “Eliot always said, ‘I’m sorry. I had to do that.’ If you are all right really, really all
right, you don’t do things that are sorry.”

Presently Madame Corbet appeared. “He wants to see you.”

“Who?”

“Inspector Cailleux.”

“In our scarecrows?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Madame Corbet as one who savs. ‘Nothing matters now.’

She drove us downstairs, all except Joss, who was not to be ordered. “I shall come when I’m ready,” she said.

Inspector Cailleux was in the little salon. We had never been allowed to enter it; now we were to go in, in our scarecrows, and sit on the yellow satin chairs, but first we had to wait. The door
was open; we could see Monsieur Dufour and the tweed-coated man. When we peeped round we saw that Inspector Cailleux, in his funny-coloured suit, was sitting at the pretty centre table with its
painting of Cupids and ribbons; it seemed terrible it should be used for this. Another man was at a table carried in from the bar and put in the window. He was writing, but the other three were
talking; by straining every sense I could just keep up.

“I can
not
believe it,” Monsieur Dufour was saying. He was walking up and down. “Everyone knew Monsieur Eliot. Why, he was here, dining at this big dinner with us all
that night. He must have a nerve of iron.”

“He has,” said the clipped soft voice of Inspector Cailleux.

“What does he say?” whispered Willmouse.

They must have heard Willmouse whisper, for Inspector Cailleux asked, “Can those children understand French?”

“Very little,” said Monsieur Dufour, “except the big one perhaps.” He came to the door and glanced at us. “She is not here yet,” and he asked, “Shall I
close the door?”

“No, leave it. It’s too hot,” said Inspector Cailleux.

The talk went on. “But how?” Monsieur Dufour was saying. “How? Monsieur Eliot was here all afternoon. You have heard.”

“I have heard. That does not mean to say he was.”

“But he was. We have evidence. Here all afternoon. Then how was he in Paris, in the Rue Dumont d’Urville, at three o’clock. If this were his work he had an
accomplice.”

“He had no accomplice,” Inspector Cailleux’s voice sounded tired. “He works alone, or practically alone; there may be a man hired to drive a car or to telephone, but then
he is discarded. We have caught them, Dufour, and they know nothing. Often they don’t know who he is. He’s too clever to have accomplices; sooner or later one of them would give him
away. No, never accomplices, only tools, simple people; especially women.”

“Especially women.” I knew Monsieur Dufour was thinking of Mademoiselle Zizi; I was thinking of the simple people, of us.

“But how? How?” said Monsieur Dufour again. “I don’t understand.”

“If we could understand, it would not be Allen.”

“What are they talking about?” asked Willmouse, and I lost the rest until Inspector Cailleux said slowly, “I know that man’s work as if it were my own.”

“Tell us,” Willmouse commanded me urgently and I translated sentence by sentence as best I could, but it was hard work listening and telling.

“But . . . right under our noses!” said Monsieur Dufour.

“Under your noses,” said Inspector Cailleux. Then he threw down his pen. “What’s the good? He has had thirty-six hours. He is hundreds of miles away by now.”

“I don’t think he is,” said Willmouse when I had translated.

“What do you mean?”

“I know where Eliot is.”

“Where?”

“On the barge,” said Willmouse, “the
Marie France
.” The
Marie France
had gone and I remembered that soft strange hoot in the night.

I gazed at my little brother. “But how did you know?”

“He was dressed for it,” said Willmouse simply. He added, “Barges go very slowly, but I don’t suppose they will think of looking for him there.”

“Cecil!” said Hester urgently.

I looked up. Mademoiselle Zizi had come into the bar. I had seen her once without her make-up, but now her face seemed to have come through it. She was a strange grey-white colour and her face
was knotted as if it had cords in it, and her hair was tumbled half down on her shoulders. She looked at us, then into the little salon and pointed to it enquiringly and then at us again.

We shook our heads.

Her eyes turned from one to another of us; they seemed to be asking us, and she put her fingers to her lips. Slowly, solemnly, we nodded.

Madame Corbet’s quick voice was heard in the hall and Mademoiselle Zizi turned almost in a panic to go. In the doorway she met Joss.

Joss stopped when she saw Mademoiselle Zizi. For a moment they faced one another. Then Mademoiselle Zizi spoke.

“They have told me. So! It was you who sent the photograph.”

“Of course.” Joss crossed in front of her and said, “Let me sit down, Hester.”

In the little salon the voices grew louder. We listened and I said, “They’re talking about us.”

“We have seen everyone now,” Monsieur Dufour had said.

“Except the children.” That was Inspector Cailleux.

“They cannot be very important. At least, only the big girl.”

“They may be very important. Call them in. I shall take the small ones first; and remember,” ordered Inspector Cailleux, “don’t speak to the big one. Ignore
her.”

“It will make her nervous.”

“I want her nervous,” said Inspector Cailleux.

Monsieur Dufour came to the salon door and beckoned us in. He started when he saw Mademoiselle Zizi. “Zizi,” he said, “you should be resting.”

“Resting!”

“Well, something. Don’t stay here. Please,” and he said, “Irène, take her.” Madame Corbet put her arm round Mademoiselle Zizi and led her away as we filed
in.

“Asseyez-vous, mes enfants.”

Because we knew our scarecrows were very dirty we sat on the edge of the yellow chairs. Last of all Joss, her chin high, spots of red in her cheeks, took a chair by the door.

“Must the little children be in this?” asked Monsieur Dufour in French.

Inspector Cailleux did not raise his head. “They are in it,” he said.

He wrote for a few minutes, then suddenly he sat up and looked at us, one after the other. I felt myself go hot, then cold. I think we all had blanched faces. Hester looked like . . . like a
peeled nut, I thought; as for Joss, it seemed she had put on her mask painted with those two bright spots.

“Which of you took this photograph?”

It was said so casually, and in English, that we started. I do not know what we had expected—to be bullied, asked our names and ages, or have our thumbs twisted—but he was simply
holding the snapshot up.

“I did,” said Hester with modest pleasure.

“And you are . . .” he looked at a paper, “Hester?” She nodded. “Ten years old?” Hester’s curls bobbed again. “Ten years old,” said
Inspector Cailleux in French to Monsieur Dufour, “and she has succeeded in doing what no one else has ever done, getting a photograph of Allen.” Then in English, “I must
congratulate you, ma p’tite. It is most valuable.”

“Valuable?” The pleasure was wiped from Hester’s face. “You mean . . . my photograph
helped
you?”

“Helped me! It brought me straight here,” and to Monsieur Dufour again he said, “I am one of the few, the very few, who have seen Allen. I had him once . . . for an
hour.”

“He got away?” Monsieur Dufour sounded almost pleased.

“He got away.” Inspector Cailleux’s voice forbade any more questions and I remembered how the newspaper had said: ‘. . . whom the police failed to catch.’

“I must ask you for the negative”—Inspector Cailleux was speaking to Hester again—“but we shall give vou something very pretty in exchange. A doll. You would like a
doll?”

“No,” said Hester, her eyes horrified.

“Eliot gave me a doll,” said Vicky. “We don’t want yours.”

“Listen,” said Inspector Cailleux, “I am going to speak to you as if you were not children but grown up. You know this man Allen?”

We shook our heads.

“You know Monsieur Eliot?”

We nodded. “He’s our friend,” said Willmouse.

“Your friend is a thief,” said Inspector Cailleux. Hester and the Littles were listening to him solemnly and he warmed. “A thief who stole in many countries, deceived people,
took their money and was often cruel to them. I must tell you that sometimes he killed them.”

“Like he did Paul?” asked Vicky, interested.

“Vicky, you are not to say things like that,” Joss cut in from where she sat by the door.

“If you please, Mademoiselle . . .” said Inspector Cailleux.

“But . . .” began Joss hotly.

“I must ask you to be quiet. I shall come to you . . . later.” He made that sound so frightening that I had to press myself down on my chair not to gasp.

Inspector Cailleux returned to the Littles. “He killed Paul,” he said. “Are you going to like him after that?”

Hester, Willmouse and Vicky said instantly, “Yes.”

Inspector Cailleux looked nonplussed and perhaps a little angry. When he spoke again his voice was sharp. “Like him or not, you have a duty. You know what duty is?”

We all nodded. Eliot was our friend . . . but when a friend kills a friend? And with a paperknife. I felt sure now it was the paperknife, or what we had thought was a paperknife. A rift was
being torn between us and Eliot; each word that Inspector Cailleux said made that rift more.

“If you know anything, have seen anything strange or out of place, about this man Allen or Eliot,” he was saying, “it is your duty to tell me.”

Dead silence.

“Your duty,” said Inspector Cailleux and his eyes went over each of us again. I dared not put my hands down on my chair in case they left marks as they had left them on the
windowsill.

Hester was the most honest of us and the most easily worked upon. I had guessed she would feel she had to say something and in the silence she put up her hand.

“Well?”

“He . . .” said Hester as if her throat were dry, “he . . .”

“Yes?” said Inspector Cailleux encouragingly. “He?”

“He lay in the cove . . .” said Hester.

“Yes?” said Inspector Cailleux again, but I had pinched her and she shut her lips.

Again there was silence, but this, of course, could not go on; they were the police. I thought Inspector Cailleux had seen that pinch; detectives saw everything or they would not be detectives.
He was looking at me without appearing to look, and it was borne in on me afresh that I was the only one who knew . . . everything, I thought. I could not help another little gasp, and this time
his eyes looked straight at me for a second. They looked away at once, but I knew I was marked; quite rightly, not even Joss, who had been so quick to guess, knew all the pieces that fitted
together. Each of them knew something, but I knew it all. What was I to do? Here in front of Inspector Cailleux all dreams and wishes fled. These were the police. Soon I should have to tell.

It was beginning to come out.

“You were the one who had the sleeping dose.” Inspector Cailleux had turned to Willmouse and he asked Monsieur Dufour, “You think Allen gave the dose to him?”

“The chef, Monsieur Armand, says Monsieur . . . Allen took up a tray for the boy. We think, but we do not know.”

“We can guess,” said Inspector Cailleux, and to Willmouse, “What was on the tray you were brought?”

“Food,” said Willmouse, “banquet food; chicken and party toast and a meringue. A beautiful meringue,” said Willmouse, remembering.

“Anything to drink?”

“Grenadine.”

“The supper things were washed up,” said Monsieur Dufour, “so that, of course, we do not absolutely know.”

“We can guess,” said Inspector Cailleux again and his pale eyes studied Willmouse. “This child knew something.”

“What could a child of his age know?”