Thunder On The Right (13 page)

Thankful now for the noisy darkness, Jennifer stole from the doorway and set off in pursuit.

The wind was not strong, but it came in flying gusts that took away the breath and made balance uncertain on the rocky path. Celeste headed, at a remarkable speed, straight up the side of the valley toward the edge of the pinewood belt, and soon she and her pursuer were plunged into its still and inky depths. Here the wind, faded to a far sighing overhead, did not impede progress any more; now it was the thick felting of pine needles that silenced their going. But it was dark, a deep, velvet, heavy darkness that would have confounded Jennifer in a moment, had it not been that the path, running straight through the belt of pines, showed a glimmer of the paler night at its end, like the light at the end of a tunnel. As she hurried, almost running along the soft dry track, she caught a glimpse of her quarry outlined momentarily against a patch of lighter sky, before the figure turned to the left, and was blown on a gust of rain out of her sight.

When she reached the edge of the wood, she found, indeed, that the path turned sharply up the hill to the left, joining a widish track that ran up the mountainside south of the pine belt. Up this crude track Jennifer stumbled, not thinking coherently about where this was leading her, or what she was going to do, but simply determined to find out where Celeste was going, so secretly and so fast. Any lead into her mystery, however tenuous, was to be followed.

And this midnight sortie was, surely, mysterious enough? So she held the damp skirts of her coat above her knees, and toiled through the gusty rain, hoping fervently that Celeste was still moving ahead of her, and not awaiting her in the lee of the next rock.

Presently, however, she was reassured by the sight of the shadowy figure against the skyline above her, as it gained the summit of the track. A minute later Jennifer, too, breasted the last steep little rise, and stopped short.

The figure had vanished. But there, ahead, and a little to the right of the track, was a light. A little cluster of buildings huddled in the shelter of a low rock face, and in the central building a wide chink of light glowed between rattling shutters. Somewhere a chain clashed, and a dog growled, and then fell silent.

So this was where Celeste had come. And Jennifer, with the memory of something Stephen had said, felt suddenly tense and excited, as if she were at last on the edge of discovery.

"There's a man lives in your valley," he had told her, "at a farm above the convent; he's called------" What had he been called? Bussac, that was it; Pierre Bussac. . . .

She said the name to herself, staring at the lighted window, and then started as yet another memory hooked itself on to the name. The waiter at the hotel—he had mentioned Pierre Bussac, too; Pierre Bussac, who had been down in the village on the night of the bad storm, three weeks ago. The night that Gillian's car had crashed into the Gave, and Gillian------

Jennifer was trembling violently. It need not mean anything, of course, but if instinct were any guide, it did. And having come so far, fear or no fear, she was going to finish her mission. She had to find out, if possible, what was Celeste's business with Pierre Bussac. She began to edge forward across the short wet turf toward the lighted window, taking care not to cross the narrow path of light it threw, and moving cautiously because of the dog. The wind, with its accompaniment of creaking doors and rattling shutters, must have disguised her progress effectively, or else the dog was used to nocturnal visitations, for it did not hear her, or at any rate it gave no warning.

She softly crossed the weedy strip of rough cobbles below the window, and, pressing herself well back against the wall to one side of the frame, craned her head till she could see in through the crack in the shutter.

And got her second surprise of the evening.

It was not Celeste, the black figure which was advancing into the lamplit room of the cottage, shaking the raindrops from the voluminous folds of its cloak.

It was the Spaniard, Doña Francisca.

This, then, would be the explanation of how she had stumbled so easily across her quarry's trail. Celeste, as she had thought, must, by the time Jennifer had reached the garden gate, have been well started on her furtive journey. On the other hand, Jennifer realized with a slight quickening of the breath, she herself must have almost followed Doña Francisca out of the convent. Whether the bursar was ignorant of Celeste's pilgrimage, or whether something was arranged between them, Jennifer could not, of course, guess, but for the moment she was fully determined, if possible, to hear and see what was going on in the cottage kitchen.

She pressed closer, straining her ears through the flurries of the wind.

Doña Francisca had taken off her cloak, and flung it down across the table which stood in the center of the little, low-raftered room. She stood facing the flickering light of the fire, talking rapidly to someone just outside Jennifer's range of vision.

Jennifer, to her chagrin, found that she could hear practically nothing of what was being said: the French was rapid, and the wind snatched at the sound and whirled it away in the whine and rattles of the night. But one thing was plain, that Doña Francisca was furiously angry. Her face, more drawn and sick-white than ever, was consumed from within by a passion of anger that frightened Jennifer, and made her picture that night flight up the mountain as the avenging rush of a fury.

She had stopped speaking, apparently on a snapped question. From somewhere beyond Jennifer's sight, near the fire, came an inaudible reply, in a man's sullen growl.

Then, in a sudden lull of the capricious wind, the woman's voice came clearly, and what she said was significant enough to set Jennifer's blood tingling.

". . . her cousin," said Doña Francisca, "asking questions. I fobbed her off, but she was thoroughly suspicious, and now she thinks she's got this proof that she's right she'll not let go." Her voice rose sharply. "What's more, she's staying at the convent, and if I can't think up some tale that'll satisfy her------"

The man muttered something, but Doña Francisca lashed back as quickly as a striking snake.

"But can't you see what you've done, you fool? You stupid, lustful fool!" The epithets came clearly, barbed with contempt. "Obscine
bete! Animal!
Can you not see what you may have lost? If she------"

The wind took the rest, but now Jennifer, by straining a little further, could see the woman's companion, who had taken a quick step forward, and stopped, growling something which, again, she could not hear. She saw a powerfully built man of perhaps forty-five, with the dark, secretive face of the Pyrenean peasant. Black eyes scowled under thick straight brows; the nose was straight, too, the mouth hard and angry-looking. It was a face that might, in its harsh animal way, have been handsome, but the man's whole being was disfigured by his anger and hatred. Eyes and mouth were sulky and cruel with it, and passion betrayed with its violence every movement he made.

Facing him, Doña Francisca looked all the more patrician, her thin, high-bred face, with its gleaming fanatic's eyes, betraying no fear of his angry approach, only, as he moved closer still, a faint distaste. She began to speak again, her mouth biting off the words as if they were twisted and tinged with acid. But, although Jennifer nearly fell through the window in her attempts to hear, the wind defeated the voice almost completely.

". . . Only one thing to do, and you know it! Who knows how long this English girl will choose to stay, prowling about? She'll come this way—ca se voit—and she's bound to see her cousin!" The listener shut her eyes and leaned against the wall, while the night rocked around her with a roaring that was not of the wind; a roaring that subsided slowly with her own heartbeats into a lull where that bitter voice was still speaking: "What you've done was folly in any case, but now, it's suicide!

Comprenez, imbecile, le suicide!"

The man said something in reply, but his voice was pitched so low that to Jennifer it was all but inaudible. Doña Francisca hardly paused for him, but flung her mordant contempt again into his face, and this time there were threats patently mingled with it.

Jennifer strained her ears to catch the torrential French:

"Vous feriez bien de vous rappeler
. . . Don't forget, Pierre Bussac, what I've got in my possession! You should know by now that you can't play this sort of game on your own! There's only one thing to do, and you know it—
you'll get rid of her!"

Pierre Bussac lunged forward at that, almost as if he would have struck her, but she never moved. He paused by the table, leaning his great fists on it, and snarled something across at her.

She said coldly, watching him, "But you know I'm right, don't you? I usually am. If you thought with your brains instead of your body, you'd know that the only safe course is for us to get rid of this woman. Madame Lamartine"—her voice crisped a little, and the listener felt her nerves tighten —"Madame Lamartine is dead of a fever, and lies in the convent graveyard. She must stay there. . . . One question, one doubt, one spade in the side of the grave—and the hue and cry would be on in this valley—and the end of you, my friend!"

"And of you!" he countered fiercely.

She laughed. "Oh, I don't think so. I was an innocent party. All I stand to lose is my private income."

He raised his head at that. "All? All?" He gave a hard little laugh. "All you stand to lose, my fine lady, is the dream you live for—the dream of the power and the glory that money's going to bring you! Why else do you stay in this God-forsaken valley if it isn't that you're afraid to lose your •private income'? Do you think. I don't know the plans you hug to yourself in that chapel of yours, señora Francisca, waiting—ay, and praying for the old Mother to die . . . waiting and hoping that when there's nobody left who knows you as well as she knows you, you'll get where you want to get? That's it, isn't it? Madam Prioress of Notre-Dame-des-Orages. Not a humble little orphanage any more, oh, no! but a grand place with its new buildings and its fine and famous chapel that folk crowd from all over the world to see!" His voice thinned into a sneer. "No, you'd never want to leave the pipeline from Spain that pumps the gold into your pockets and the power into your hands that it'd kill you to be without!"

She had listened without moving, but at this the heavy lids dropped over her eyes.

He laughed again. "Ah, I know you, you see! Power, Doña Francisca . . . that's what your money spells to you. . . ." His voice dropped to a vicious whisper that came clearly in the lull. "And what do you care if it's sticky with blood?"

She moved at that, but stilled herself immediately. Her face seemed to hood itself, to become again the wooden mask that Jennifer had so mistrusted. The hooded lids lifted. "Tomorrow night. You'll get rid of her tomorrow night." The black eyes burned through the mask.

The man moved then. He was shouting something. He had raised his great fists, and seemed to be shaking them in sudden rage, but she still held him away, it appeared, by the sheer strength of the personality that blazed from her eyes.

She said, still in the same clear, bitter tones, "I shall come up tomorrow night, after Compline, at the usual time, and see it's done. And you'll do it, my stupid friend!"

He said, hoarsely. "How?"

She lifted her shoulders. "That's your affair."

"There's nowhere—you know as well as I do that I've nowhere to send her!"

Her eyes held him She did not speak. The wind still lay quiet. Jennifer could see Bussac, still leaning on the tabletop, his head thrust forward, staring at the woman.

His back was toward the window, but there was about his still pose some powerful suggestion of horror. And the horror was in his voice when he spoke again.

He said, "Are you suggesting—murder?"

She said sharply, "I'm suggesting nothing. I told you it was your affair. You got into it: well, now you get out of it. I know nothing."

"I'll not do it, damn you!"

Her lip curled. "You credit me with your own evil, friend. All I demand is that you get her out of sight, out of France.
Jesus, Maria,
you, of all men, know the way to do that!"

"My bridge? Take her up there and show her the road to Spain? The way she is?

That would be murder and you know it! You might as well cut her throat and have done."

"You exaggerate. If she's fool enough to lose her way, what concern is that of yours—or mine? If she were given her freedom, and the road to Spain, I should certainly not feel that her murder lay at my door! I repeat, all I'm asking is that you get her out of France. What happens after that . . ." She paused. The black eyes glinted at him. "You're mighty nice all of a sudden, aren't you? Who are you to prate of murder? What's another to you, more or less?"

He said nothing, but stood staring at her. There was a pause, then across the silence the wind began to whine again, clawing at the shutters, and whipping Jennifer's damp skirts flat against the cottage wall.

Doña Francisca's voice came again, clearly. "Then you understand. Tomorrow night. And if you refuse . . ." For the first time she moved nearer to him, and, though her body was still held stiffly upright, it was as if she had lowered her voice and leaned forward in hideous confidence: "If you refuse--"

The wind screamed through the broken eaves. Jennifer, in a fury of frustration, saw the bursar's lips moving dumbly. The man was shaking his head; he took a step forward and brought his fists down on the table as if in a passion of refusal. Doña Francisca, ignoring the gesture as if he had never moved, flung at him one last, contemptuous, vitriolic phrase. Then she turned her back on him and picked up her cloak.

Jennifer waited for no more, but fled into the shadows and down the stony track faster than even the wings of the furies would have carried her.

As she crept through the stone tunnel that led between chapel and refectory, she was halted by a faint sound, which seemed to come through the unlatched west door of the chapel. She hesitated a moment, then, reckoning that she had sufficient lead from Doña Francisca, she moved soundlessly to the door, pushed it open a further crack, and looked in.