Murder Abroad E-Book

E. R. Punshon

• Herausgeber: Dean Street Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Perhaps the victim had not been unconscious but had known her fate, had sent upwards from the black pit a cry that none but murderers had heard. Bobby takes the rare opportunity for a holiday - albeit a working one. Prompted by his fiancée Olive, he sets off to France, charged with finding out what happened to Miss Polthwaite's diamonds - and why her dead body was discovered at the bottom of a well. The local police have a ready-made suspect, it appears, but Bobby soon forms theories of his own regarding what happened to the unfortunate spinster. Murder Abroad, originally published in 1939, is the thirteenth novel in the Bobby Owen mystery series. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans. "What is distinction? The few who achieve it step - plot or no plot - unquestioned into the first rank… in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time." Dorothy L. Sayers

Leseprobe

E.R. Punshon MURDER ABROAD

Perhaps the victim had not been unconscious but had known her fate, had sent upwards from the black pit a cry that none but murderers had heard.

Bobby takes the rare opportunity for a holiday – albeit a working one. Prompted by his fiancée Olive, he sets off to France to find out what happened to Miss Polthwaite’s diamonds – and why her dead body was discovered at the bottom of a well. The local police have a ready-made suspect, it appears, but Bobby soon forms theories of his own regarding what happened to the unfortunate spinster.

Murder Abroad, originally published in 1939, is the thirteenth novel in the Bobby Owen mystery series. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“What is distinction? The few who achieve it step – plot or no plot – unquestioned into the first rank… in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” Dorothy L. Sayers

INTRODUCTION

During the Golden Age of detective fiction, the country of France proved a popular literary destination for British mystery writers making occasional excursions to foreign crimes. At the dawn of the Golden Age, Freeman Wills Crofts set much of his landmark debut detective novel, The Cask (1920), in France, while Agatha Christie’s third published mystery, The Murder on the Links (1923), sees Christie’s series sleuth Hercule Poirot (Belgian, not French!) competing with the Paris Sûreté to solve a baffling slaying on a French golf course. According to Christie biographer Laura Thompson, the Queen of Crime based The Murder on the Links on an actual crime in France. E.R. Punshon likewise drew on real-life criminal inspiration from across the English Channel in Murder Abroad (1939), his thirteenth Bobby Owen mystery, which is set in the rugged Auvergne region of south central France and has a plot that the author partially based on a then notorious unsolved crime, the murder a decade earlier of Englishwoman Olive Branson at the scenic mountain village of Les Baux-des-Provence.

On 4 May 1929, Edith May Olive Branson (1884-1929), an artist and cousin of English High Court judge Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson (future grandfather of English businessman Richard Branson), was discovered dead in a cistern on the grounds of her villa. She had been slain by a single bullet to the forehead that was fired, neighbors believed, around nine o‘clock on the previous evening. Initially local police theorized that Branson had committed suicide, but in England her family balked at this claim. Within a few days, however, Chief Inspector Alexandre Guibal of the Marseilles police judiciaire had taken charge of the case; and Guibal, a recipient of the O.B.E. (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) who had worked for British intelligence during the Great War, announced that the family’s darkest fears were correct: Branson’s mysterious death was indeed a case of foul play. Guibal had discovered bloodstains within Branson’s villa and he surmised from this, reasonably enough, that the artist “could not have shot herself and then walked to a tank 20 yards away in stockinged feet and a nightdress.”

Both Branson’s gardener and his brother-in-law, Francois Pinet, manager of the local Hôtel de Monte Carlo, were arrested and subjected to what newspapers referred to as a “gruelling third degree interrogation,” after which the gardener was released, but Pinet was committed to trial. Although Pinet, 25, was two decades younger than the 44-year-old Branson, police theorized that the “handsome athletic young man” had been the artist’s lover and that he slew her after she had promised to bequeath to him the Hôtel de Monte Carlo, which she had purchased from Pinet’s parents. (Despite this assurance, Branson later made a will leaving her entire estate to a cousin in England.) In an echo of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze,” Chief Inspector Guibal noted that Branson had owned four large watchdogs, not one of which had barked on the night the artist was slain, indicating that the murderer was someone familiar to them. Guibal also established that, contrary to Pinet’s claims, he and Branson had stayed together in several Marseilles hotels, registering under assumed names.

The wealth and social prominence of the victim, coupled with the titillating idea of a well-bred, middle-aged Englishwoman carrying on a sexual affair with a much younger French hotel manager, made Francois Pinet’s murder trial a press sensation, with accounts of the affair appearing in newspapers around the world, in France, England, Australia, the United States and presumably other countries as well. Emphasis was laid upon Olive Branson’s “eccentricities,” which seemed mostly to boil down to her inclination to live independently and her active interest in attractive members of the opposite sex. (“[N]o girl was ever easier for a man to meet,” one newspaper feature article observed snidely of Branson.) When Pinet’s case came to trial nine months later, the press seems to have taken the certainty of his conviction as a matter of course, but, in a shocking turn of events, the young man—who, it was reported, “looked almost a dandy in the dock,” with his hair oiled and his clothes nicely pressed—was acquitted.

Counsel for the defense maintained to the end of the case that Olive Branson had done away with herself. After Pinet’s stunning acquittal the mystery around Branson’s death remained officially unsolved a decade later, when E.R. Punshon published Murder Abroad. (Indeed, it remains unsolved today.) One can surmise how the case might have proved irresistibly tantalizing to the mystery author, who had written about outré murder in France three years previously, in an essay on the infamous serial killer Henri Désiré Landru (aka Bluebeard), published in The Anatomy of Murder (1936), a Detection Club true crime anthology.

In Murder Abroad Detective Sergeant Bobby Owen is cast into a freelance investigation of the strange death in France of an eccentric, socially prominent Englishwoman at the instigation of his fiancée, Olive Farrar, owner of a chic West End hat shop, who has despaired of her and Bobby ever being able to save though their regular occupations sufficient money upon which to marry. Fashionable as her hat shop is, business has not been particularly remunerative, Olive having found it rather challenging to persuade more than a few of her hoity-toity customers actually to pay for their purchases; and Bobby’s salary as a police sergeant is a comparative pittance. However, Olive informs her fiancée that one of her best customers (“she pays cash”), the socially-connected Lady Markham (“she was at school with the Home Secretary’s wife”), stands poised to come to their rescue, in return for Bobby’s rendering of certain investigative services.

Lady Markham has promised Olive that through her politically prominent husband she will secure Bobby’s appointment as private secretary to the elderly chief constable of a Midlands county, on condition that Bobby determine what really happened to Lady Markham’s late sister, a fifty-five year old amateur artist discovered drowned in a well on the grounds of her domicile, an old converted mill in Citry-sur-l’eau, a charming village in the Auvergne. The French police have concluded that the sister, a Miss Polthwaite, likely committed suicide, but her family firmly rejects this answer. Lady Markham has confided further to Olive that the eccentric Miss Polthwaite, certain that “a revolution was coming, with guillotines in Trafalgar Square and everyone with any money shot at dawn,” was known to have converted most of her cash assets into diamonds, which have since vanished, and that there is a substantial reward--most providential for a newly-married couple--that Bobby can claim if he can locate them.

Given a month off from his job (a bit of Lady Markham’s string-pulling, that), Bobby soon is on his way to France to find out what he can about the demise of Miss Polthwaite and the whereabouts of her missing diamonds. Once arrived in Citry-sur-l’eau, he harvests a bumper crop of murder suspects, including both French natives and English expatriates of long and recent standing. Readers now familiar with the Olive Branson case detailed above doubtlessly will cast suspicious glances at the youthful and extremely good-looking Charles Camion, son of the keepers of the local hotel, whom villagers deridingly termed Miss Polthwaite’s gigolo; yet there are additional intriguingly dubious characters lurking about the lanes of Citry-sur-l’eau, including a preternaturally sensitive blind beggar known as Père Trouché.

The case is a pleasingly tricky one and Punshon’s sense of local color in a French village is assured, so that readers of Murder Abroad should derive some of the same pleasures from the novel that may be found in contemporary works by the crime writer Georges Simenon, a French-language author whose mystery tales, duly translated, were starting to win at this time popularity within the English-speaking world. As Maurice Richardson perceptively wrote in the Manchester Observer, in the novel Punshon “combines ingenious yet sound detection with lively, natural writing in a way that is admirable and all too rare….The atmosphere…is full of dark forces, yet not too strained, and local colour is most skillfully applied.” With Murder Abroad fans of classic mystery will find that a sojourn in France can be amply rewarding. Read on to see whether Bobby Owen finds it so too.

Curtis Evans

CHAPTER ITHREEFOLD MISSION

“Bobby,” said Olive Farrar, a trifle nervously, “do you think you could ask for a month’s holiday?”

Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen, of the C.I.D., Metropolitan Police, answered tolerantly:

“I could. I could also ask for the Crown Jewels and promotion to Assistant Commissioner. It would be quite a toss up which drew the largest, loudest, most emphatic ‘No’.”

Bobby and Olive were engaged. Bobby had his weekly pay as a police sergeant. Olive owned a hat shop which just about paid its way. If she sold it now, most of her small capital she had sunk in its purchase would be lost. Nor do the police authorities much care about their men interesting themselves in any way in business activities. Business interests and official duties might clash. And though the pay of a sergeant of police is enough for two to live on, the margin is not great. In point of fact Olive and Bobby had just been holding an informal committee meeting of two on Ways and Means and had found the conclusion arrived at a little depressing. Bobby indeed was quite ready and willing, even anxious, to make the hat-shop business a present to anyone who would accept it, but had to admit Olive’s point of view when she hesitated to face the loss of her small capital. Olive said thoughtfully:

“You speak French, don’t you?”

“I wish it was German,” Bobby said. “Nowadays German’s your only wear in the Special Branch.”

“Lady Markham is a customer of ours,” Olive told him.

“Who is Lady Markham?” asked Bobby. He added: “Cash customer?”

Olive nodded impressively. In small Mayfair hat shops cash customers are appreciated.

“Well, what about her?” Bobby inquired next as Olive seemed lost in a somewhat awed contemplation of her real live cash customer.

“She’s rather nice,” explained Olive, rousing herself, “and she was at school with the Home Secretary’s wife.”

“Look here, Olive,” said Bobby uneasily, “don’t you get trying to pull strings.”

Olive looked at him gravely and then pronounced the following profound and awful truth:

“The whole art and conduct of life in England consists in pulling strings.”

Bobby gasped. Then he said suspiciously:

“Who told you that?”

“I thought of it myself,” said Olive, though native honesty compelled her to add: “After I had been talking to Lady Markham—at least I mean after she had been talking to me.”

“Oh,” said Bobby. He asked: “Who is Mr. Lady Markham?”

“Her hubby? Oh, he’s an M.P. At least, I think he is, or else he’s one of the people who say who are to be M.P.s. It’s something to do with politics anyhow.”

“Means he’s expert in string-pulling, I suppose,” observed Bobby.

“What,” asked Olive, “is twenty per cent on £40,000?”

Bobby was beginning to look a little dazed.

“Olive,” he said, “I know I have only a slow dull masculine mind—”

But Olive was not listening. She answered her own question.

“Eight thousand pounds,” she said slowly.

“Correct,” said Bobby. “I expect you worked it out before, though. Anyhow, what about it?”

“If you had eight thousand pounds,” Olive pointed out, “you would be in a position to propose to me.”

“I shouldn’t think of such a thing,” Bobby declared firmly. “Never take your fences twice. What’s this about eight thou, though? Know where it’s to be picked up?”

“Lady Markham does.”

“Well, why don’t she?”

“Do you remember some months ago there was a lot in the papers about an Englishwoman found dead in an old mill where she had been living somewhere in the Auvergne?”

Bobby stared and frowned.

“I think I do. Suicide, wasn’t it? Didn’t they find her in a well? I forget the name?”

“Polthwaite. Lady Markham’s name was Polthwaite before she married. It was her sister. There’s another sister and two brothers. They believe she was murdered. One of the brothers is a lawyer. He went over there when it happened. He says the French police admitted as much privately but they didn’t want to say so for fear of harming the tourist trade. He says they know perfectly well who killed the poor old soul. But there was no proof. Nothing they could act on.”

“Well, it’s like that sometimes,” Bobby admitted. “We know all right often enough. I’ve heard a crook telling our people just exactly how a job was brought off and then defy us to prove it. You’ve got to satisfy a jury within the rules and within the rules—well, it means within the rules. I expect it’s much the same over there. Besides, they might think it a good idea to let it pass as suicide while they went on trying to dig something up. Where’s the eight thousand come in?”

“Miss Polthwaite was the rich one of the family. She had money left her by an aunt. She was a good business woman, too, Lady Markham says, and made some good investments. The lawyers have been through her papers and say the estate ought to be worth nearly fifty thousand pounds and instead there’s hardly anything at all.”

“Investments gone wrong?”

“No, she had been buying diamonds, uncut stones chiefly.”

“Had to sell at a loss?”

“They know exactly what she bought. She kept a full record. There’s nothing to show she ever sold any.”

“Well, then,” said Bobby, puzzled.

“It was her way of investing her money, Lady Markham says. She thought it was safer like that. She didn’t trust the Stock Exchange.”

“Well, who does?” asked Bobby. “All the same, there’s gilt-edged government stocks.”

“She didn’t trust governments, either,” said Olive.

“Well, there’s that,” admitted Bobby.

“Her idea was that diamonds are always value—you can demonetize gold but not diamonds. Also diamonds are portable; you can put diamonds in your pocket or your handbag but not lumps of gold. And she thought their value would never fall because De Beers wouldn’t let it. Even if it’s true they have packing cases stuffed with diamonds filling their warehouses in South Africa, both De Beers and the South African Government will take precious good care the market’s never flooded with the things. So long as they’re not too big you can always sell diamonds and she only bought small ones—worth about £20 or £30 each, never more than £50 or less than £10. Mostly uncut or unset stones, but a good many rings and brooches and so on as well. Uncut stones are easier to carry about and keep hidden, but people can see the value of a cut stone set in a ring more easily.”

“Old lady does seem to have been a bit cracked,” remarked Bobby, still feeling a little puzzled. “Did she hand over a diamond ring every time she wanted a new hat or a pound of sausage?”

“Lady Markham says she bought herself a small annuity, too. Four hundred a year, I think. She lived on that and only spent half.”

“I still don’t see the big idea,” Bobby said. “If she wasn’t merely cracked, that is, and that would make the suicide idea seem likely.”

“No, it wasn’t that,” Olive explained. “She got excited about Bolshevism and revolutions and that sort of thing. So she sold out her investments, gave up business, and took to painting instead. When they found her in the well, she was still holding a paintbrush in one hand. There was a picture on her easel and she must have been working on it up to the last moment before she jumped down the well—if that’s what really happened.”

“Did she know anything about diamonds—perhaps she got done down and bought a lot of duds?”

“Oh, no, she was quite an expert. Old Mr. Polthwaite had a jeweller’s shop in London—it’s still there with a branch in Paris. He sold out to his partners years ago and opened an office in Hatton Garden for dealing in precious stones. The Polthwaite family haven’t anything to do with Polthwaite’s, the jewellers, now, but Miss Polthwaite did most of her buying through them—partly for old time’s sake, but chiefly so that no one should know, especially the Bolsheviks, I suppose, and then Lady Markham says she was always very secretive. Especially lately. She was sure a revolution was coming, with guillotines in Trafalgar Square and everyone with any money shot at dawn.”

“But not people with diamonds?” Bobby asked. “Did she think they would be let off?”

“Lady Markham says her idea about diamonds was that they could be—hidden,” Olive answered with just the faintest touch of emphasis on this last word.

Bobby looked thoughtful. He was beginning to understand. He said:

“You mean they think that’s what she did with the diamonds and that they’re still hidden,” and in his turn he laid the least possible emphasis on this last word.

Olive nodded.

“That’s where the eight thousand comes in, is it?”

Olive nodded again.

‘‘Lady Markham,” she explained, “said they would go equal whacks with you. Her two brothers, her sister and herself, and you, one fifth each. Twenty per cent. If you could find the diamonds.”

“Why me?” Bobby asked. “Doesn’t seem much chance anyhow. Why don’t they take on the job themselves?

“They think you’ve experience. There’s another thing,” Olive added. “They feel a bit bad over the poor old soul being murdered and nothing done about it.”

“If she was murdered,” Bobby said. “Anyhow, I couldn’t help there. Not likely. Not after all these months. Not in a foreign country.”

“Lady Markham thought if you could find out what had become of the diamonds, then perhaps that would show who was the murderer and the French authorities would be ready to take action.”

Bobby sat thinking. Eight thousand pounds! A small enough chance perhaps but how much it would mean if it came off, to him and to Olive. Olive went on:

“Lady Markham says the chief constable where they live is wanting a private secretary, because he’s getting a bit old. She says her husband has a lot of influence though of course she couldn’t promise anything. Only she said they would be grateful, and I think she meant it. Even if you didn’t get the diamonds back. Just for trying.”

“Strikes me,” declared Bobby, “there won’t be much more than trying to it. Ten to one some crook got to know, and that’s why she was murdered and the diamonds stolen. All sold in Amsterdam probably by this time.”

“Lady Markham says not. They all think Miss Polthwaite wouldn’t have let anyone know. They only knew themselves when Mr. Polthwaite went through her papers after her death. Even her lawyers had no idea. Nor her bankers. They knew she was doing something with her money, but that was all. She always managed her own affairs. At the inquiry in France nothing came out about any diamonds. They called her a rich Englishwoman but in the Auvergne they would call anyone rich with four or five hundred a year. The French police had a theory. They made that quite plain, too. They think she had a quarrel with one of the young men in the village and he killed her. They think he was her lover.”

“I thought you said Miss Polthwaite was an elderly woman?”

“Yes. It’s rather horrid. I think really that’s what’s upsetting Lady Markham more than anything. The French police spent most of their time smiling and looking down their noses and saying what else could you expect when an old spinster—Miss Polthwaite was about fifty-five—takes a hot-blooded young man as her lover? Lady Markham says it’s a foul lie. She began to cry about it. She says she and the others want their sister’s name cleared. I think really they mind more about that than about the money. If you show she was murdered and the diamonds stolen, they would be more pleased than if you got the diamonds back but didn’t prove there was nothing nasty about her being friends with the boy the French police think was her lover and murdered her.”

“Who is he? Is there anything to go on?”

“His name is Camion, Charles Camion, Lady Markham says. His father keeps the hotel in the village. Poor Miss Polthwaite lived in an old converted mill just outside. He is very good looking, Charles Camion, I mean. There seems no doubt about Miss Polthwaite having taken a great fancy to him. She was painting his portrait.”

“Was she really an artist or only playing at it?” Bobby asked.

“I don’t know. Lady Markham said she went there partly so as to be near a Mr. Shields, who really is well known and quite successful and who has a studio somewhere about. Young Camion was at the mill a good deal and there was a lot of talk. The general idea seems to have been that the young man was doing very well for himself. I daresay the village people couldn’t understand an elderly, unmarried woman taking an interest in a good-looking boy without there being anything more than friendliness in her mind. I don’t see why, but I expect it would be like that anywhere. Why shouldn’t she just have taken a fancy to the boy, thought she would like to paint his portrait, and then the poor old thing gets murdered, and everyone believes all sorts of nastiness. I don’t wonder Lady Markham feels a bit sick. Anyone would. Lady Markham says Miss Polthwaite was a bit silly in some ways and rather mean and secretive, but they were all very fond of her. I think I should want it cleared up if I were in Lady Markham’s place. She has heard of you. She asked me to speak to you.”

“What do you think yourself?” Bobby asked.

“It’s horrid to think of people saying things about a poor old dead woman who can’t defend herself,” Olive answered.

“It may be true,” Bobby told her slowly. “I mean what they are saying. Elderly, unmarried women do go a bit queer sometimes. Not often, but it happens. If you read modern novels you would think every elderly spinster was necessarily boiling over with all kinds of suppressed sex and spent all her time sitting in a corner and letting it fester. It’s nasty rubbish only nasty people believe. Maiden aunts aren’t like that.”

“I know,” said Olive. “I had one. She was a dear. The worst thing she ever did in her life was to slap a little boy for swinging a cat round by its tail. She always felt she ought to have explained, not slapped. It troubled her a lot.”

“I’m all for slapping,” said Bobby. “Hard and frequent. We all know our maiden aunts even if the psycho-analyst people don’t. All the same, that suppressed type does exist. Perhaps this Miss Polthwaite was one. No telling.”

“You see, Bobby,” Olive explained, “that’s exactly what Lady Markham and the others want cleared up. They want the diamonds back all right if they can get them, but I don’t think they expect to and I don’t believe that’s the chief thing. It’s more the horrid things being said. There were hints in the English papers, and all the people they know whisper about it and Lady Markham knew about us and she began talking about it last time she was here.”

“Well, what’s the idea? What’s she want me to do?” Bobby asked doubtfully.

“Go there and see what you can find out. The mill where it happened is to let. The man who owns it lets it out to visitors in the summer but no one will want to spend a holiday there so soon after a murder, so it’s sure to be vacant still. Lady Markham thought you could rent it and look round. The diamonds may be hidden there still, she thinks. And some of the people in the village may know something.”

“Was there anything to suggest the suicide theory or was that an afterthought when the police were at a dead end? Was there any letter, for instance? Suicides nearly always leave a letter behind. They feel they’ve got to defend themselves.”

“There was something,” Olive admitted. “A sort of letter, only it wasn’t addressed to anyone. In French. Mr. Polthwaite had a copy. They wouldn’t give him the original.”

“Do you know what it said?”

“Lady Markham said it was only a few words: ‘J’en ai des écus jusqu’aux yeux, en avoir peur.’ I don’t see that it means much, do you? ‘Avoir des écus’ is a sort of idiom —means you’ve got more money than you know what to do with. One of the French police, an inspector or something, his name was Clauzel, argued it meant she had worked herself into such a state of nerves over her diamonds and things that she went clean off her head and decided to end it. Of course, she was a bit funny, hoarding it up like that instead of using a bank or a safe deposit like everyone else. Lady Markham says she was convinced the first thing when the revolution came would be seizing the banks.”

“If the police think it was a case of suicide, why did they talk about this Camion chap?”

“That was largely the gossip in the village. They didn’t know about her having valuables by her. Mr. Polthwaite made the Clauzel policeman person admit the note she left might have meant she was afraid not of her money but of someone she thought might be planning to rob her. He had to leave it there. He doesn’t talk French very well.”

“Could the diamonds and stuff be identified if I did come across them?”

“They have a list of what she bought, numbers, weight, everything.”

“Ought to be good enough,” Bobby agreed. “Don’t see much chance of being able to do anything though. You have to be on the spot at once, not months late. Probably the diamonds and the rest of it have been got rid of already. You can always sell small stuff safely enough if you do it by degrees.”

“You might find out enough to clear Miss Polthwaite’s name?”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t,” Bobby said slowly. “Perhaps I should find out the other way. Perhaps it was like that. Perhaps she had fallen for this Camion bloke. Old spinster ladies do go off the rails sometimes.”

“I think Lady Markham was facing that. She doesn’t believe it, but she knows it’s there. She said if you found the diamonds, there would be the reward. If you didn’t, but just got at the truth, whatever it is, then they’ll try to get you the private secretaryship with the chief constable they know.”

“Sporting,” agreed Bobby. “If she sticks to it. Do you think she will?”

“Well, she pays cash,” said Olive simply.

“Good enough,” agreed Bobby. “Sort of a threefold mission—the diamonds, the murderer, the truth. All right, I’ll take it on if she can wangle that month’s leave she talks about.”

CHAPTER IICITRY-SUR-L’EAU

Lady Markham proved even better than her word. Evidently it is not for nothing that one has attended school with the future wife of a Home Secretary. The leave granted Bobby was not for a month merely. It was for six weeks. The more simple-minded among Bobby’s colleagues understood that it had been granted because he had not fully recovered from the effects of a slight concussion received in a recent case during the course of which he had been knocked out by a former amateur boxing champion. His other colleagues—a large majority—looked down their noses and muttered to each other about favouritism. Another sergeant was appointed to the squad formerly in Bobby’s charge and Bobby wondered uneasily whether that portended promotion when he returned or banishment to one of the outer suburbs. Or whether there was anything in that vague hope Lady Markham seemed to have held out of her ability to wangle him a job as private secretary to a county chief constable.

All three possibilities were present in his mind as a few days later he sat sipping his after-dinner coffee outside the Hotel de la Belle Alliance, de la Victoire, et des États Unis, in the village of Citry-sur-l’eau in the ‘Massif Central’ of France, a little to the south of Clermont. Upon his thoughts a voice broke suddenly, startling him, for he had not heard anyone approach. It was a tall, thin man who was speaking, a man with a thin, eager face and eyes that burned but yet that had a trick of veiling themselves behind heavy, slightly swollen lids. His hands were thin and eager, too, almost transparent, and gesticulating easily. He had been standing when he spoke first but now he seated himself at an adjacent table, and Bobby noticed how quick and silent were his movements, how efficient those thin delicate-looking hands of his. If he walked as silently as he seated himself, no wonder, Bobby thought, that he had not heard anyone approach. He said now:

“Monsieur is an artist? Monsieur then will understand that we of Citry-sur-l’eau are a little proud of our view.”

“With reason,” Bobby agreed amiably, for there was nothing he desired more than to establish friendly, chatty relations with the local inhabitants.

Indeed the view was magnificent. In front, to the west, where the sun was sinking in a riot of glorious colouring, lay a wide and lovely valley, one of those rich vales by whose soft beauty Nature has seemed to wish to throw into greater relief the bare, tormented splendour of so much of the Auvergne. Through the valley, past the village, ran a small stream, probably the ‘eau’ from which the village took its name, on its way to join one of those rivers that, fed by the snows and rains of the Massif Central, issue from it to water the wide land of France. North, in the far distance, the great round summit of the Puy de Dôme hung in the evening air as though it floated in the clouds, detached from any earthly base. East and south hill rose behind hill in a series of never-ending rocky ramparts, rock heaved upon rock, here a solitary pillar starting up like a finger thrusting at the sky, there a great bare wall like that of some enormous castle, then again a gigantic crag balancing in apparent insecurity almost as if at any moment it might topple over in dreadful ruin, everywhere such a medley of crag and gorge, of ravine and rock, as though it were here the Titans had started to build their tower wherefrom to storm the heavens and these were the relics of their defeat. Over the whole scene hung a red glow from the setting sun, so that now it seemed all things were seen through a haze of blood. Magnificent indeed, Bobby thought, and yet with about it something of the ominous, of the sinister, as though here lurked dark forces of nature man had not yet conquered, perhaps would never conquer.

“Magnificent,” Bobby said, this time aloud. “A little terrifying, too. One would say here Nature had been at war and might one day begin again.”

“Not war, but birth,” smiled the other. “Yet perhaps they are the same. Here in the Auvergne we have traces of the pangs of Nature before she gave birth to her child, the earth. Here where we sit, here first the interior fires began to cool and solid land to form itself from fire and steam. Perhaps some day all that will re-commence. Who knows? Quiet without, but fire within. Like the society man has made for himself. All so calm above, so different below—but one must not talk politics. In the meantime, Monsieur, you look with the eye of the artist and see beauty, I with the eye of the scientist and see the story of the earth’s formation.”

“I’m afraid I’m not much of a scientist,” Bobby admitted. “How did you know I was an artist? I’ve always flattered myself I had not the air.”

“Monsieur,” said the other, “all the village knows.” He got to his feet and bowed. He said: “Permit me to introduce myself. Eudes. Schoolmaster in this village of Citry-sur-l’eau. Jacques Pierre Eudes.”

Bobby in his turn rose and bowed.

“Owen,” he said. “An artist, yes, but, alas, it would be truer to say—trying to become one.”

“Monsieur,” said Eudes gravely, “those who try to be, already are.”

It was an echo of a famous saying of Pascal’s, but Bobby did not recognize it. He said in return and with equal gravity:

“Monsieur, I perceive you are a philosopher.”

Eudes was plainly gratified by the remark, and those eager, yet half-hidden eyes of his opened into a smile of appreciation. He went on talking about the village. Bobby was content to listen. He had a feeling that he was being discreetly pumped, but he answered fully all the questions delicately dropped at intervals, even though he was careful to give in reality very little information. Simply an artist, impressed by the austere beauty of the country and anxious to do some sketching, was the impression he wished to leave of himself. Later on, it would be his turn to ask questions. For the present, it would be best to show no more than the casual and natural interest of the newcomer. He did make a smiling remark about the interest his arrival seemed to have caused in a village, where surely tourists, artists, too, for that matter, came frequently enough. But Eudes began at once to talk of something else. Bobby remembered that his welcome at the little inn with the long name had been cordial even beyond the usual cordiality of a welcoming landlord and yet had been touched with a certain quality of reserve and hesitation, as though this welcome had in it some unusual element of doubt. Perhaps it was simply that the villagers had been uneasy lest the tragedy of Miss Polthwaite’s death might keep visitors away and he was welcome as a proof to the contrary and yet was feared as possibly bringing fresh trouble. When presently another reference was made to his supposed status as artist, he laughed and said:

“I wonder how that was known so quickly. Disappointing when I always try so hard not to look like one.”

“You have not indeed the air,” agreed Eudes, and gave Bobby so quick a look from those sharp, restless eyes behind the heavy lids that Bobby wondered uncomfortably if Eudes entertained any suspicions. A bad beginning if that were so. Eudes went on: “But the true artists never do. If nowadays there is someone with sandals and no hat, with a velvet jacket and a tie like a hand-towel; well, then all the world shrugs its shoulders and knows what to think. Monsieur Shields, for example—”

Eudes paused for a moment. Bobby guessed he was watching to see if the name were recognized and connected with the Polthwaite tragedy of which as yet no mention had been made. Bobby gave no sign and Eudes continued: “A lion of a man, Monsieur Shields. A figure of a Goliath. One would say probably a boxer of the first rank, renowned. My faith, how the farmers would jump at him for the harvest field in days when all the young men go off to the towns and farmers are glad of any old crock to help in the harvesting. And dressed always like a real bourgeois. Yet an artist of the first rank, famous indeed, one understands. One can believe it, for his work is superb. At the first glance it can be told what it represents, almost like a photograph in colours.”

“But what made you think I was an artist?” Bobby insisted. “I’m not famous by any means, and you haven’t seen any of my work, though I hope you will let me show you some presently.”

“That indeed will be a privilege I shall value,” declared Eudes, “and for the rest, Monsieur, you must make allowances. These are troubled times. Spies. Refugees. Agitators. Conspirators. The police smell a plot everywhere. Before the ink was dry in the hotel register, our good Nicholas David was there, making his inquiries.”

“Who is he?” asked Bobby.

Eudes answered that David was the ‘garde-champêtre’. Bobby knew the word but had only a vague idea of its significance. Eudes explained that a ‘garde-champêtre’ was an officer of the judicial police stationed in rural districts. He seemed indeed to be a kind of village watchman, acting chiefly on the instructions of the mayor, used also for making all necessary public announcements, available as well, apparently, for private individuals who wished to make anything known, a sale, the loss of a purse, the arrival of a circus or anything similar. Bobby decided that Nicholas David might be worth cultivating. Presumably he would know the details of the Polthwaite tragedy and it might be possible to get him to talk. Eudes said frowningly and abruptly:

“A tool of our government of bankers and capitalists.”

The phrase seemed to have slipped through the self-control Bobby felt Eudes habitually exercised. He had been cautious before when referring to politics but this time there had been an edge to his voice. Evidently anxious to cover up the words and tone he had used, Eudes went on talking about trivial matters. Bobby began to watch him more closely. A nervous, excitable man, Bobby thought, secretive as well. One of those perhaps who hide their thoughts behind a screen of words. Bobby remembered, too, how quietly, almost secretly, Eudes had come up. Was it possible, Bobby wondered, that behind Eudes’s apparent frankness, his readiness to talk, the occasional questions he dropped with so casual an air, there was something more than the natural curiosity and interest it was only natural should be felt towards a stranger in this quiet and somewhat remote village where most likely any such appearance furnished matter for a week’s gossip?

Eudes’s flow of chatter slackened a little, and Bobby noticed a tall, unusually good-looking lad, black hair, black eyes, dark strongly-marked features with a nose like a great thrusting beak, coming striding up to the door of the hotel. He carried his head a little thrust forward, too, as if to emphasize the dominance latent in that great curved nose, and he had about him an angry and frowning air. He gave them a quick look as he passed, exchanged a half-hostile, half-hesitating salute with Eudes and passed on. A girl came to the door of the hotel as if she had been waiting for him. Bobby had not seen her before and wondered if she were one of the staff. She was dressed simply and wore no hat. Without being strikingly handsome, she had pleasant, well-formed, somewhat large features, with eyes of clear grey below a broad, smooth forehead. Her hair caught Bobby’s attention. It was twined in thick masses about her head and was of a rich dark brown that had somehow a reddish tinge to it, so that a stray beam of the setting sun caught in it lay there as if at home. But then Bobby saw that when she spoke to the new-comer, who had quickened his step on seeing her, they both looked at him, and that the young man’s expression grew even more dark and angry than before. The girl laid a hand upon his arm and drew him within. They vanished from sight so, and Bobby said carelessly to his companion:

“Two good-looking youngsters. Who are they?”

“The girl is Mademoiselle Simone. Lucille Simone. She has come recently to live with her aunt, Madame Jules Simone. Madame keeps the little shop there.” Eudes pointed down the street. “The young man is Charles Camion, the son of the proprietor of the hotel.”

The name, Bobby remembered, of the suspected murderer of the unfortunate Miss Polthwaite!

“Oh, indeed,” he said indifferently.

He had seen Monsieur and Madame Camion on his arrival, a smiling, comfortable, pudgy pair, like two well-fed, friendly spaniels. Difficult to believe they could have produced this haughty-looking off-spring with his eyes of an eagle and his step of a leopard.

“He hasn’t too amiable an air,” Bobby added after a pause. “Doesn’t he like the hotel or is it just guests he disapproves of?”

“Ah, no, it is probably something else that has displeased him,” Eudes answered. “He is perhaps too easily displeased but then he is young. He will change all that presently.”

He shrugged his shoulders and got up to go, saying something as he did so about preparing lessons. Bobby asked if he might accompany him part of the way and Eudes expressed his pleasure at the suggestion and added a compliment about the quality of Bobby’s French. He wished, he said, he could speak English, but not a word did he know of that admirable language, the language of Shakespeare and George Eliot, a collocation of names that slightly staggered Bobby who had not known before how much George Eliot was still admired and remembered in France. They walked together, the schoolmaster with a word to everyone they met, and a little outside the village passed a field where men were still at work, late as it was. Eudes stopped and pointed to one of the workers whom Bobby had already remarked for his different dress and from the fact that even a glance showed he was having some difficulty in keeping up with the others.

“Our curé,” Eudes said, making no effort this time to disguise the contempt and dislike in his voice. “Monsieur, the Curé Georges Granges. He has here a fat living, with his regular salary from the bishop, his fees for the masses fools pay him to say, the christenings, the marriages and the rest of all that flummery. It is well known, too, that he has his little investments, his income in addition. And yet he hires himself out to work in the harvest field where any pair of hands is welcome. A scandal, though the Church takes no notice. Ashamed of it, they admit over there at the diocese headquarters, but they do nothing. Even they understand that a miser who would shave an egg for what he could get from it, does their precious Church little credit.”

“I gather you are no great lover of the Church,” Bobby observed.

“It is,” said the schoolmaster firmly, “the eternal enemy of the people. Remember Voltaire. Wipe out the Infamy! How wise. How true. How necessary. Yet the task has not yet been accomplished. Why? Because,” said Eudes, still more firmly and without giving Bobby any chance to answer, “because we have been too high-minded, too scrupulous, too honest to fight the Church with her own weapon.”

“What is that?”

“Money,” declared Eudes, and for once he forgot to hide those fierce and eager eyes of his and let them blaze with fanatic fervour from behind their heavy, slightly swollen lids, “and it is money we need—money wherewith to establish a journal of liberty and enlightenment. Oh, I know there are those published in Paris, but here in the Auvergne we do not think so much of the Paris gentlemen, we have our own ideas. Let me have money to establish here a journal of the Auvergne for the Auvergnats and very soon you will see the Church upon the run.” He paused and apparently recollected himself, looking at Bobby a little uneasily. He went on: “But I am taking it for granted that you do not believe? You are English. You are an artist. In England the Church has not such power as here. And artists—artists are at least free. We others—no.” He came to a standstill before the gate of a small and pleasant cottage in a well-kept little garden. It contained an arbour with a table and bench, shaded by a freely-growing vine. With a gesture towards it, Eudes said: “You will enter? You will drink a glass of wine with me?”

The invitation was given with a touch of hesitation and Bobby guessed that Eudes was feeling a little nervous at having spoken so freely to a stranger. On the excuse that he would like to continue his walk before returning to the hotel for bed, Bobby declined the invitation. He bade his new friend good night and then asked, pointing in front and a little to the right:

“Isn’t that an old mill over there? I suppose it isn’t used now?”

“Oh, the Pépin mill,” Eudes answered. “No, it is long since it was used as a mill. Now it is used for summer visitors. The Père Pépin to whom it belongs had it restored and fitted up, and every year he lets it in the holiday season. At present there are two of your compatriots there—a Monsieur and Madame Williams. Very often our little village has had the privilege of welcoming English visitors. Even up there—” Eudes pointed upwards to the bare, desolate expanse of hill and scrub that lay to the north towards Clermont, and, as he did so, a light shone out suddenly, high up on the slope of the hill. There, he said, “the beacon. When our good peasants see it, they cross themselves. Amusing?”

“Why? what is it?”

“Another of the black army, another of the flock of crows,” Eudes explained darkly. “But that one up there, he has perhaps some glimmering of enlightenment growing in him. Possibly it comes from his English blood.” Seeing that Bobby looked puzzled, Eudes went on: “It is a priest who lives there, the Abbé Taylour. For a year, nearly a year, he came late in the autumn, he has been there, by himself, in a hut he has rented. It is said that he is under excommunication. That, one does not know, but it is seldom he comes to the village and never to mass. It is true his hut is more than three miles from the church. One says, too, that he is an Englishman, but it seems he has his papers, for our good David went up to investigate.” Eudes smiled gently. “It is an experience he does not talk of. But since a boy of the village was lost on the hill—he was dying when they found him, he had been lost three days, and to be lost up there, it is as dangerous as to be lost in the desert or on a raft at sea—the Abbé Taylour hangs out always that lamp at night we see from here.” Eudes bade Bobby good night again and entered the cottage, and Bobby walked slowly on, his eyes lifted towards the lamp upon the distant, bare hillside that shone out so plainly now the evening shadows had fallen and night had come.

CHAPTER IIIBLIND BEGGAR

From the spot where Bobby had left the Citry-sur-l’eau schoolmaster it had seemed as if the Pépin Mill, the scene of the Polthwaite tragedy, stood not far from the road, between it and the stream that ran the length of the valley. In actual fact, as a result of bends both in the road and in the course of the stream, the mill stood on the farther bank, about a quarter of a mile from both it and the road which here nearly met each other. A rough track, little used apparently, so rough indeed as hardly to deserve the name even of path, branched off nearly at right angles from the road, crossed the little stream here only a foot or two deep by a somewhat unsteady plank bridge, and went on to the mill. As the bridge would clearly not carry wheeled traffic, Bobby supposed there must be other means of access. In this he was wrong. The mill had not been used as a mill for at least a century and had been nearly a ruin before its present owner had had the idea of fitting it up to be let to visitors in the holiday season. In former days there had probably been a more substantial bridge, or another road now ploughed up and cultivated, but to-day everything destined for delivery at the mill had to be carried across by hand.

The mill itself was surrounded by trees. A windscreen of poplars sheltered it from the current of wind that often blew down the valley through a gap in the hills to the south-west and that in times past had been the reason for the selection of this site. North of the building again were more trees, chiefly chestnuts and oaks, and to the east lay an orchard, though one that did not look as though it had ever been very fruitful. Through a gap in this sheltering circle of trees, Bobby, from where he stood, had a clear view of the mill. He could see there was a light, so the tenants were evidently at home.

A little strange, he thought, that the mill had been occupied so soon and by English people. Generally there is a tendency to avoid the scene of a recent tragedy. It put an end anyhow to the idea Lady Markham had suggested that he should rent the mill himself. Unless, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Williams were only making a very brief stay. He found himself wondering who they might be as he walked slowly across the rickety little plank bridge. Nearer the mill he halted in the shadow of some trees. He wondered if some time he might venture to call. They were English and visitors, like himself, and he could make the excuse that he wished to sketch the mill. All the time the thought was running in his mind as he stood there watching this aloof and solitary building, half hidden in its encircling trees, where an old woman had met a death still unexplained, that there was something strange in this prompt appearance on the scene of other English people.

Something doubtful, too, and menacing in the long, heavy shadows that lay all around, in the silence and the solitude, as though the mill stood there in the circle of its trees withdrawn and apart from the common healthy intercourse of everyday life, as though it lurked and crouched there in the night for purposes hidden from the day.

He was growing fanciful, he told himself, and then he heard footsteps, firm and confident steps, as of one who knew the way and his purpose and his destination. Bobby drew back into the shadows further still. He did not wish his interest in the mill to be remarked. The footsteps drew nearer. A tall and bulky form became dimly visible. Bobby made out that it was a man, walking fast and swinging a stick in his hand. He aimed blows at the shrubs and plants he passed as though to strike them down gave him a certain pleasure. He swung by at the same brisk pace without noticing Bobby and went on towards the mill. The Mr. Williams who was the new tenant, Bobby supposed, and then he became aware of another figure slipping by, stooping and silent, following the first.

So silently this second figure flitted by, so softly and so quietly, one shadow among others, that Bobby almost doubted if he had really seen it, or if his imagination had not betrayed him. Yet he knew it had not, and he wondered uneasily what this might mean, this silent pursuit through the night.

He wondered, too, whether to wait developments or to take action of some kind. He made up his mind to wait the return of the unknown watcher and then to speak to him. He would say he had strayed from the road and inquire what was the best way back to the village and his hotel.