The Prisoner of the Riviera (The Francis Bacon Mysteries) (19 page)

As we demolished course after course, the thin, young racers doing us proud with seconds and thirds, I could not help thinking of the folks down below—Gaston and the Napoleonic chef and the shaky kitchen boy who had made my foray into dishwashing so exciting. The boy would have little to do tonight, as our plates went back bare. After my third glass of excellent Champagne, I told Hector that the party was a brilliant idea and after my fifth, I really believed it.

“You are a comrade for all occasions,” Hector said. Possibly he meant it, too, because although he hadn’t lost his alert expression, he had joined me in his admiration of the fine wine. We got back to town late and full of merriment, and I must say that Paul Desmarais treated me to the finest dinner I’ve ever had

“Now we wait,” said Hector the next morning. He’d insisted that I stay at his house, where he presented me with a MAS 1873 revolver, an officer’s pistol from the trenches of World War I—wouldn’t Nan be impressed by that. He regaled me with its long history and widespread use, ending with recent service to the police and the Resistance, and showed me how to use it.

“Double action,” he said. “You can’t fire it by mistake.”

I found this detail comforting, and he assured me it was easy in the hand, which I hoped I wouldn’t need to discover. Then he insisted on coffee at the local
tabac
, where we fielded questions about the dinner party, already a subject of speculation.

“Eh, Hector. You’ve dug up the
Boche
gold!” called one old gaffer.

“In a manner of speaking.” Hector winked. He was happy to confirm all the details of our gala, while skillfully deflecting any questions about how such a party had been funded. This tactic ensured that everything from the wine list to the tips for the waiters would be a subject of discussion as soon as we were out the door. “Paul will hear of it,” Hector said with satisfaction. “Before the day is out, I would guess.”

“You think he is still in the area?”

“Why not? He wants that case—we’re not even sure what’s in the other one. Might be personal effects for all we know.”

“No, too heavy. If I were him, I’d cut my losses and leave France.”

“But you’re not him. I think Joubert betrayed him. Therefore, he will want to kill Joubert. And Brun and his friends killed Madame Renard. Therefore, he wanted to eliminate them. That is how his mind works.”

“Suggesting that I am next on the list.”

“We have joined a select group,” Hector admitted. “But do not worry. This time we will get him. He escaped us at the end of the war, but now there are no Yanks with trucks for him to hide among. I am not the only one looking for him, either.” He patted my shoulder again. “The MAS is a fine weapon. Keep it with you.”

“I am worried about Pierre,” I told Hector. “He could hardly be more visible.” We were maintaining our high profile for a second day, eating lunch at a good hotel restaurant on the main boulevard. We sat out on the terrace, ordered up three courses, and finished with liqueurs. Hector indulged in a cigar, and we looked the picture of prosperity. Untroubled prosperity, I might add. Despite Hector’s confidence in his plan, we had not heard from Paul Desmarais. No mysterious shadows had appeared beneath Hector’s windows, and when I’d lingered in the café until late, the MAS tucked into my waistband, no one had accosted me on the way
back to Hector’s small house. Here we were lazing under the plane trees, while Pierre, having joined his Sud-Est team, was up in the hinterlands with the cyclists racing toward us from the Alpes-Maritimes .

“There is no reason to think Pierre is a target. And he is surrounded by the team and the other mechanics.” Hector watched the fragrant blue smoke of his cigar ascend against the pale underbellies of the leaves. “I could learn to enjoy this.” He smiled sadly. “When I was with the Sûreté, I considered that evidence was sacred. The war has left us all more flexible.”

“And you are no longer a policeman.”

“True, still …” He paused, and I wondered if he had developed some doubts about his plan.

“Was there any alternative?”

“Hardly. I don’t think you could fund dinners at the Negresco.”

“The only other time I was there, I was washing dishes.”

“Really? I’m sure there’s a story.”

“One I’m not going to tell just yet.” I took another sip of my crème de cassis and saw, to my regret, that the glass was empty. I would have liked another, but Hector said that we had to start walking. The racers would not turn onto the coastal road until the next town, and though he knew the best spot to see the cyclists, we had to be in good time to get a place.

Hector paid the bill, tipping the waiter enough extra to be notable, and we set off along the handsome palm-lined boulevard. I thought it unfortunate that the race had not chosen such a splendid street, but Hector pointed out that its sudden narrowing in the twists and turns by the casino would be too dangerous for a mass of cyclists. Instead, the racers would drop down out of the hills, turn onto the main street of Fréjus, and head along the coast. His chosen viewing spot was right near the bottom of the hill leading to the shore. There, we could see the descent, the turn onto the main street, and even catch a glimpse of a sprint point in town.

Other aficionados had the same idea, and we had to search for a spot. We finally settled on a low wall on the land side of the road where one frail tree provided a tiny patch of broken shade. Then we waited. Once in a while the sea breeze stirred the hot, still air; cicadas called monotonously from a patch of scrub. Out on the Mediterranean, sailboats drifted like butterflies, and the water turned from turquoise to deep blue in the distance.

An enterprising gent brought his cart of Italian ices up from the beach and set up shop just across the street from us. As I watched him dealing out the multicolored scoops, I decided that the heat would be unendurable without an ice. Hector declined, but I crossed the road and joined the line moving slowly toward the vendor’s brightly painted handcart.

Customers wanted
fraise
, they wanted chocolate, they couldn’t decide between
limon
and cassis. They needed a cone for themselves and another twenty relatives. A gendarme passed in a police car, the first indication that the race was approaching. Customers now wanted their cones faster, and there was a bit of shoving in line. I was pushed into the man behind me, who caught my shoulder and kept me from falling just as we heard the roar of the motorcycle escorts. Far up the hill, the first of the racers, still just bright flecks of color at this distance, shot down the slope.

“Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Merci.”

The man behind me patted my shoulder.
“C’est toujours comme ça,”
he said and stepped to the side to give me a little more room in the queue. That’s when I saw Paul. He was standing farther back on the sidewalk with his right hand in his jacket pocket, and he’d seen me. Yes, he had, and though I had that excellent weapon, the MAS 1873 revolver, my immediate impulse was to leave the area. I heard the whir of derailleurs as the breakaway riders slowed a fraction for the turn then charged onto the street to cheers and shouts. The peloton was in pursuit and closing fast, but I dashed across the street, bouncing into fans on the other side, who angrily shoved me back through the crowd. Hector jumped down from his perch on the wall. “What in hell are you doing? You could have hit a racer.”

“I saw Paul; I’m sure he’s armed.”

The words were barely out of my mouth before we heard a crash and shouts and the nasty rattle, whir, and thump of bodies and machines in collision. I followed Hector as he shoved his way to the street. A dozen or so racers had gone down. A couple were already struggling to their feet and trying to right their machines. Others lay on the pavement or sat holding bleeding heads or cradling injured arms. Paul lay among them, not moving. He had one hand outstretched and his legs were entangled with the wheel and frame of a damaged machine. There was blood on his face, and he was lying at a bad angle.

I moved to examine him, but Hector clutched my shoulder, more riders coming. Their brakes squealed as they wove back and forth to avoid the fallen cyclists, and some unlucky competitors joined the injured in the street. The rest bent over their machines and accelerated away. Mobile riders began moving their damaged bikes to the side, or, if the machines were operational, climbed on again, their legs and arms scraped and bleeding, while fans got behind and pushed to give them a start.

With all this confusion and the support vans approaching, it was a minute or two before Hector could step into the street and shout for a gendarme and an ambulance. Then the crowd noticed the fallen man, dressed in a jacket and trousers instead of the bright uniforms of the Tour. Hector shouted everyone back, but I moved forward. Life had gone into reverse, and I was back at the portico of the gambling club with a man in a blue overcoat bleeding in the road.

“He is alive,” I said. “I need something for the blood. Towels, handkerchiefs.”

“The race doctor will be here soon,” Hector said, and though the crowd wanted to move Paul, we resisted. Support vans with honking horns were backed up along the road. Calls for the doctor were passed up the line of vehicles, and various mechanics and team managers jumped out of their cars and trucks to see what had happened and where their racers were. Some of the riders were shouting for spare wheels or spare bikes, and frantic mechanics were running with new equipment. The gendarmes’ car couldn’t get by, and Hector pushed through the crowd to find them.

I stayed with Paul, trying to stanch the blood that poured from his head wound with my pocket handkerchief and shouting for the doctor. At this moment, Pierre appeared, carrying two spare wheels and wearing a garland of new inner tubes. “Francis! What’s happened?”

At that moment, I felt Paul move; he lifted his hand, still in his jacket pocket, and there was a short, sharp sound. Pierre staggered and cried out in pain; someone in the crowd screamed a warning. Paul had a dark, snub-nosed pistol out of his pocket now, and I grabbed for his wrist and held on while he struggled to get off another shot, the pistol waving up and down. The crowd scattered with shouts and cries, pushing and shoving and stumbling against the wall and over the curbing, before one of the mechanics, wheeling in a fresh bike, saw what was happening and kicked him hard in the side.

Paul’s body jumped against me, before I felt him go limp. The pistol dropped to the tarmac, and I shoved it beyond his reach. Paul Desmarais was never again to see the light, but at the moment all my concern was for Pierre, who sat on the pavement, his eyes wide with pain and surprise, blood streaming over the shreds of the inner tubes around his neck. I pulled off my jacket and ripped off my shirt. One of the spectators pulled the bits of rubber away from the wound, and I pressed the shirt against what seemed a flood of red. Had Paul’s wild shot hit the carotid artery? Was this to be his revenge on the most innocent of us all? With trailing cyclists still maneuvering around us, I pressed frantically on the wound, but now Pierre winced. “I think it broke my collarbone,” he said with a gasp. “Cyclist’s injury and I wasn’t even on the bike.”

“Stay still, stay still. We need to get the bleeding stopped,” I said, but I was heartened that he was making even feeble jokes. Perhaps the thick rubber tubes had dampened the force of the bullet, but even so, there was a lot of blood. When Hector saw it, he went quite white. “I’m so sorry,” he said to Pierre. “So very sorry.” Then he jumped up to find the race doctor, who finally arrived, wheezing and puffing from a long run down the line of backed-up support vehicles. He sloshed water on the wound, revealing a red furrow running from the collarbone up along the neck muscles, a large, nasty wound but fortunately not deep.

“He thinks the bone may be broken,” I said.

The doctor, elderly and stout with long white hair and little gold-rimmed glasses, poked and probed before pronouncing his assent. He took bandages and a sling from his medical bag and soon had Pierre’s right arm immobilized and a thick white bandage affixed to his neck. By this time, the gendarmes and ambulance men had arrived. One of the medical men checked for Paul’s pulse then shook his head. A few minutes later, the body was loaded onto a stretcher. When a gendarme recovered the pistol and began to collect statements from the crowd, I took the opportunity to ask if I could accompany Pierre in the team car. “I will see that he gets home from the railroad station.”

Pierre looked set to protest that he was fine, just shaken up, that he wanted to accompany the team. Then he saw the gendarmes with their notebooks and their eager curiosity and said, “That would be good. I don’t need an ambulance but I feel quite sick.”

I took one arm and the old doctor took the other. “Later, later,” he said to the gendarme, and we led Pierre back up the road to the Sud-Est truck and helped him in. The cop might have protested, but Hector drew him aside. They were still talking earnestly when we drove past the heap of damaged bikes and the bloodstained pavement.

My passport, my own passport, was in my pocket along with my tickets and a wire from Arnold promising to meet my train and informing me that Monsieur Joubert, aka László Bencze, had been arrested on a charge of threatening and that Nan was enthusiastic about a civil prosecution. You can see why I am reluctant to leave her alone for any length of time, but Hector and Pierre agreed that this was very satisfactory news.

We had all gone north together to Caen so that Pierre could see the start of the final day. He had been bitterly disappointed to miss the coastal stages, having been judged too weak to ride in the uncomfortable Sud-Est support van. This trip was the consolation prize. On the way, Hector filled us in with all the new information he possessed. Of course, the police—or at least some of them—were pleased. Paul and Serge Brun were not only gone, but several outstanding cases had been cleared. There seemed little doubt that Brun was responsible for the body at the Villa Mimosa and no doubt at all that Paul had shot him.

Several other well-known thugs had disappeared without a trace and, perhaps wisely, the authorities had decided to treat this as a bonus, not a puzzle. I was relieved at that and Pierre was, too. I was only sorry that Cybèle did not know. “Cybèle will not be back,” Hector told us. “Not for a while, I don’t think. She’s all right,” he said, seeing my expression. “She wanted a new life, a new start. Now she has it.”

“She seized Paul’s account, then?”

“I believe so, but I will know more when the Chavanel ladies return.”

I was sorry to have missed them. “But will they be safe? There’s still Madame Lambert.”

“I doubt she will return with warrants for her arrest in France.”

Pierre seemed to think this was right and turned our conversation to the race. Though the experts gave the nod to the Italian, Brambilla, who’d taken the lead with the nineteenth stage time trial, Pierre still cherished hopes of a French victory, especially with the start at Caen. “That will be worth a minute or two to any Frenchman,” he said confidently, but when the train pulled into the shattered and rubble-strewn center, he and Hector were stunned. The south had seen nothing like the Allied bombing of Caen. I came from a different place, and though horrified, I recognized familiar territory, right down to the smell of pulverized brick and stone, and the omnipresent scaffolding, excavations, and cranes.

“The whole city is like the dockyards,” I told them. “It is like the dockyards during the Blitz.”

Against the pale, bleached rubble, the water-filled bomb craters, and blackened timbers, the colors of the racing strips seemed almost unnaturally brilliant. Spectators were arranged in little groups all along the roads. They cheered and shouted for Brambilla and Robic, Ronconi, Vietto, and Fachleitner, for Italia and France and Pierre’s Sud-Est squad—and for the hopes of an ordinary life where cyclists again whirred down intact streets. A rush of pleasure accompanied the riders, many of whom waved as they passed, yet the atmosphere was very different from the festive crowd in Fréjus. There was something solemn underneath, a mix of determination and exhaustion that made me feel at home, too.

Then in a moment, the bright peloton was gone, along with the motorcycles, support cars, and trucks. Pierre looked so white and tired that we took him directly to the station. I had a connection for Rouen and Dieppe, and they hoped to get to Paris in time for the final sprint on the Champs-Elysées. I hugged them both, and we promised to write, though I think all of us doubted that would happen.

“I will keep you informed,” said Hector.

As I made my way to my compartment, I wondered about that as well. There were, from first to last, a number of things I hadn’t been told and too many loose ends remained for me to feel entirely happy. How could I be with three Madame Renards, a Monsieur Renard who never was, five corpses, one not yet identified, and a man literally returned from the dead? What didn’t I know? Let me tote it up: Why had Paul entrusted his documents to a rascal like Joubert, or alternately, how had Joubert gotten the notebook and letter away from him? And what of Serge Brun of the protection racket and dodgy clubs? Another man with a history to make you dizzy.