The Numbered Account (7 page)

‘It is a little inconvenient, only to have one bathroom, especially when the children are at home,' she observed; ‘but you see this house is Church property, so it is not easy to have alterations made.'

Julia asked about the children. There were eight, all grown-up except Marcel, aged 15, who went daily to a
Lycée
in Lausanne; five were married, and living near by; two others were in jobs in Geneva, but already
fiancés
. ‘Our children come to see us frequently—I hope you will meet them all while you are here,' Mme de Ritter said, and then excused herself. ‘I have to see to the
déjeuner;
it will be at 1.30, as my husband is late today. When you are ready, do sit in the
salon
or the garden; make yourself at home.' It was borne in on Julia that her pretty hostess, so girlish-looking that seven adult children seemed an impossibility, probably had to do the cooking—she learned later that she did the entire work of the house.

Julia unpacked her dressing-case, installed herself, and then went down to the garden. Here she found a curious mixture of beauty and utility. Fine fruit-trees bordered a well-kept lawn, there were seats and wicker chairs on a flagged space under some pleached limes, and beyond these a kitchen-garden, well stocked with asparagus, lettuces,
spinach and young beans, and new potatoes. But the flower-borders along the paths beside the kitchen-garden were rather neglected, and clothes-lines, from which hung an array of snowy sheets, ran down two sides of the lawn. Julia went across and felt these; they were perfectly dry. She went back to the house and found her way to the kitchen, where Mme de Ritter was busy with pots and pans on a huge stove.

‘The sheets are quite dry—shall I bring them in?' she asked.

‘Oh, how kind you are! Yes, do. The linen-basket is in there'—she gestured with her head towards a door—‘and the bag for the pegs.' Julia went into what had obviously once been a scullery, but now housed a vast white-enamelled washing-machine, some wooden towel-horses, and several old-fashioned wicker linen-baskets; she gathered up one of these and the peg-bag, and went out again to the garden, where in the warm sunshine she took down the sheets from the lines, folded them, and laid them in the basket. As she was carrying this load back into the house she encountered her host.

‘Ah, Miss Probyn! You are very welcome. Please let me take that—Germaine has already set you to work, I see.'

‘No, I set myself,' Julia replied, surrendering the basket, which the Pastor carried through into the wash-house.

‘Ma chère
, is luncheon ready?' he asked. ‘I must be oft again rather soon.'

‘In five minutes, Jean-Pierre. You said 1.30, and at 1.30 you will be served.' His wife was perfectly tranquil, and equally firm. Laughing, the Pastor led Julia into the big cool
solon
, where the numerous chairs and settees were all stiff and rather upright—there was nothing to lounge in. On the walls were some rather attractive portraits in pretty old frames, covering, Julia guessed, at least the last three hundred years—several of them bore a striking resemblance to her host. Jean-Pierre de Ritter was a man of medium height, but he gave the impression of being small, partly because he was so excessively lightly built, with very fine narrow feet and hands; partly because of
the squirrel-like rapidity of all his movements. He was handsome; clean-shaven, with merry brilliantly-blue eyes under a massive forehead, the only big thing about him; and this peculiar combination of figure and feature was repeated all round the room, on the panelled white-painted walls, looking out from dimly gilt frames in a variety of dress that spanned the centuries.

‘We will not talk about my god-daughter until this evening,' he said at once. ‘I have to go the moment after
déjeuner
to the Court at Lausanne, to give evidence in a most distressing case—probably murder, a thing so rare with us.'

Julia of course said the evening would do perfectly. She looked hopefully round for drinks, after her early start; but none were in evidence, and none were offered. Her host asked suddenly—‘Do you speak French? Easily?'

‘Yes, very easily.'

‘Then we shall speak French. It is simpler for me, and even more so for Germaine; she is French, a French Protestant from the Loire valley, where as you probably know there are a number of Protestant communities.'

Julia didn't know—however, French they talked at lunch, to the manifest relief of her hostess. It was all highly political and intellectual, and Julia was quite unable to answer many of her host's questions on what the English thought about the raid on the Rumanian Legation in Berne, the suicide of the Swiss Chief of Police, Dr. Adenauer's attitude to NATO, and the value of the activities of Moral Rearmament in Morocco. His own remarks on these and other subjects were shrewd, witty, and at the same time restrained—Julia remembered that Herr Waechter had called him a brilliant man. When he left at the end of the brief meal he already commanded Julia's respect.

In the afternoon Henriette, one of the married daughters, arrived in a station-wagon with the whole of her weekly wash, to be done in the vast
Pharos
in the ex-scullery. In theory she merely used her mother's washing-machine; in fact Germaine did all the actual work, pouring in the
soap-powder and bestowing the linen; then rinsing and taking-out while Henriette, in the garden, kept a maternal eye on her two pretty little girls and her toddler son of 2, and did a little desultory weeding. She too talked, endlessly and very well, to Julia, who had undertaken to pick the spinach for supper; crouched over the hot crumbly earth between the rows of succulent green plants, Miss Probyn tried to make reasonably intelligent responses about the works of Kafka and Romain Rolland, and Gon-zague de Reynolde's
Qu'est-ce que l'Europe?
This last she had read—and praised, throwing leaves into a basket as she spoke; Henriette was pleased.

‘Oh, I am glad!—for really he was a formidable writer. But later he became rather Fascist, and I think annoyed the English.'

‘Yes—I remember that he wrote some terrible nonsense about the Italians and
Mare Nostrum
and all that,' Julia said, rising to her feet and moving two steps further along the green rows. ‘But that didn't prevent
Qu'est-ce que l'Europe?
from being a splendid book.'

Henriette, much encouraged, asked if Miss Probyn admired Rilke? ‘You know that his
belle amie
lived at Sierre, and he visited her daily?'

Julia didn't know—she felt rather out of her depth in the rarefied intellectual atmosphere of La Cure. She had always imagined Calvinists—surely the Swiss National Church was Calvinist?—to be terrific theologians, but completely
bornés
and inhibited otherwise; and here she was, being utterly stumped on politics and literature by these same supposedly rigid people. Having piled her basket with spinach, she took it in to Germaine. In the wash-house were two more of the big linen-baskets, full of clean wet sheets and towels. ‘Are these to go out?' she asked.

‘Yes—but I will take them,' her hostess replied.

‘What rubbish!' Julia exclaimed. ‘Henriette!' she called through the window, ‘Come and help me out with your
linge
!' Turning, she surprised a rather startled and happy smile on her hostess's face. When Henriette came
in they carried out the two heavy baskets, and pegged the wet linen in the sun and breeze along the lines beside the lawn.

‘Rilke my elbow!' Julia thought to herself. ‘Why not do one's own
work?
' She was becoming quite a partisan of her beautiful hostess. Henriette, as they stretched out sheets, continued to talk, now about her family, and from her lively chatter Julia learned yet other aspects of Swiss life. The Iron-workers' Guild in Berne had given Henriette a small
dot
when she married, and were going to do the same presently for Marguerite, who was already
fiancée;
and they were helping to pay for Marcel's education, as they had done for that of his two elder brothers. Julia was much more interested in this than in Rilke. Were there still Guilds in Switzerland? she wanted to know. Henriette was a little vague.

‘Well at least there were, and there are funds still existing, to help those whose families have always belonged to the Guild. It is an hereditary thing—for of course Papa is not an iron-worker,' Henriette said, with a disarming girlish giggle. ‘But he is really a Bernois, and his family have belonged to this Guild for—oh, for centuries; so they help with the boys' education, and our dowries. It is very convenient,
en tout cas
, for we are so many, and Papa and Maman are not rich.'

However, there was Kirsch, locally made and excellent, with the coffee after supper, before the Pastor bore Julia off to his study, where a business-like desk with a typewriter and two shabby leather armchairs were looked down upon by shelves-ful of books going up to the ceiling: masses of theology, but also plenty of modern stuff in French and German, and in English too—Winston Churchill, Osbert Sitwell, Virginia Woolf, and of course Galsworthy, for whom Continentals have such a surprising enthusiasm. ‘But this Miss Burnett—why has she such
réclame?'
the Pastor enquired, fingering a row of modern novels. ‘Clever dialogue, yes; but it is needlessly confusing if one does not know who speaks. And it seems to me that she has little to say except that children often disagree with
their parents, and that governesses may be more intelligent than their employers! This last the Brontës told us long ago, and with greater simplicity—and genius.'

Julia already delighted in the Pastor, and would have asked nothing better than to spend the evening discussing books with him, but the urgency of Colin's letter was strong on her; also she had been greatly struck by the welcome and hospitality so freely shown her, without any explanation of her presence being given. She agreed hastily about Miss Burnett, and then pulled out of her bag the copy of Mr. Thalassides' will, and the letters from Aglaia's lawyers and bankers. ‘As she is still technically “an infant”, and as I was coming out to Switzerland anyhow, I was asked to look into it,' she said, realising how lame the words sounded even as she spoke them.

M. de Ritter drew up one of the old armchairs for her; then he spread the papers out on his desk, and studied them.

‘The authorisations are quite adequate,' he said at length. ‘But I am a little surprised that my god-daughter's lawyers did not come to deal with this matter themselves.' He looked up at her, with a shrewd gaze.

‘For one thing, I'm not sure that they even knew of the existence of this numbered Konto till they were told,' Julia said bluntly.

‘Who told them, then?' he asked quickly.

‘Aglaia, I imagine.'

He tapped on the table, thinking; then he gave a sudden laugh.

‘And if they do not know, how do
you
know? And why did they authorise you?'

Julia laughed too—she liked him so much. But as she laughed she was thinking. Yes, obviously she must come out into the open—nothing could be done without him.

‘Oh, why indeed?' she said cheerfully. ‘Monsieur de Ritter, it's no good my fencing with you. In fact there is more to this than Aglaia's fortune.'

‘The oil question, I suppose?' he said. ‘Oh dear yes, that was bound to come up. But again'—he looked at her,
in her cool summer frock of lime-green silk, sitting so beautiful and relaxed in the shabby leather chair—‘Why you? Are you a very close friend of Aglaia's?'

‘No. I told you a lie about that—I'm sorry. I've never even met her,' Julia said candidly.

‘Tiens! De plus en plus drôle!
Well, there must be a reason—even for your telling a lie! What is it?'

‘Her fiancé is a cousin of mine, and as I was coming out here, he asked me to undertake this errand.'

The Pastor pounced on the fiancé aspect.

‘Your cousin, you say, is her fiancé? What is he like? Is he well-off?—rich?'

‘Yes, he's quite well-off; he has a very large property in Scotland. He doesn't need Aglaia's money in the least, Monsieur de Ritter,' Julia said crisply.

He smiled at her disarmingly.

‘Très-bien!
You see I have to make these enquiries; there is now no one but myself to guard the interests of this child—the aunt she lives with, her poor father's sister, is a kind woman, but
peu capable
. And your cousin directs his
bien
, his property, himself, as my sons-in-law do?'

‘No, not at the moment. His sister and her husband are running it for him.'

‘Oh?
Pourquoi?'

‘Because he has a job that keeps him abroad a good deal of the time,' Julia said carefully.

The Pastor considered, again tapping the table; then he gave her a look so shrewd as to be almost sly.

‘Abroad. And you say he assigned this task to you? Including the oil affair?' Julia nodded—but the Pastor's next remark came like a bomb-shell. ‘Is your cousin by any chance an agent of your Government?'

Julia had to take a lightning decision. She had seen enough of Colin and Hugh Torrens to know that in their job Rule I is never to admit to Secret Service activities, if it is at all possible to avoid this. But here speed was essential, and de Ritter was the key to the whole thing; she was really at the point of no return. To cover her hesitation she laughed.

‘Monsieur de Ritter, what a man you are!'

‘Yes, but is he?' the Pastor insisted. ‘You see, when Aglaia was staying here last year she confided to my daughter Marguerite that she had recently met a young man who acted as a British Government agent, and that they were much drawn to one another. So naturally I am wondering; is this individual and your cousin the same person?'

‘Yes, undoubtedly,' Julia said, thinking what a clot Aglaia must be to have spilt these particular beans, and what an even greater clot Colin was not to have told her not to! ‘But to put your mind at rest, my cousin Colin is much more worried about the official side of this affair than about your god-daughter's fortune.' She carefully added a little praise of Colin—his simplicity, his charm, his conscientiousness, his enthusiasm for his work.