by Rachel Rhys
‘Yes, of course, that as well. But this is not some sappy romantic film. We are realists, you and I. We lived through a war, for heaven’s sake. That’s what I liked about you. You seemed so level-headed. Not the type of girl to expect life to be all roses and chocolates and then fall to pieces when the nine-to-five routine set in.’
Clifford hesitates, kicking aside a stone with sudden ferocity.
‘But, dash it, if roses and chocolates are what will make you happy, I’ll do that. Look here, I know I’ve been preoccupied with work, and perhaps life has seemed a little dull, but I’ll make more of an effort. I promise. We could go to the pictures once a week. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just come home and we will pick up our lives and all this will seem like some absurd dream. We’ll have a good laugh about it all one day, once those silly cuts and bruises of yours have faded. You’ll see.’
It is this that finally convinces her. Her total failure to picture she and Clifford sharing a good laugh about anything. Indeed, her inability to conjure up a single instance in which such an event has ever taken place.
‘Clifford,’ she begins, turning to look at him.
But whatever she was about to say is cut short as the rain, which has been threatening all morning, now begins in earnest, prompting a cry from her mother, who is still huddled on the bench some distance behind them.
By the time they have hurried back to her, all three of them are wet through.
‘I told you we should not have come out in this weather,’ Eve’s mother says, wiping the rain from her face. ‘And now we must walk back to the house. Really, Eve.’
As if Eve has deliberately laid on the weather to vex her.
They set out along the coast road towards the villa. It is not far, but it seems to Eve as if every waterlogged step lasts a lifetime.
Conditions are far from conducive to meaningful conversation, focused as they all are on reaching shelter as quickly as possible. However, Eve finds she cannot quite let the opportunity slip. She has not yet had a chance to speak properly to her mother. After she and Clifford arrived at the beach earlier from their hotel in Cannes, complaining that the taxi driver had driven them a very long way round, her mother had lost no time in announcing her intention to rest a while on the bench on account of not having slept the night before, leaving Eve and Clifford to take their walk together.
‘Now that you’ve had time to think, are you sure you don’t recognize the name Francis Garvey?’ she asks her mother now, panting as they hurry along the puddle-pitted road. ‘Nor Guy Lester?’
‘No. I already told you.’
Her mother stops to brush angrily at her stocking, which has become splattered with mud. Her head is bent, revealing the pink scalp showing through hair that was once dark but is now liberally threaded with grey, and set so tight that it does not yield even in this rain.
But Eve saw her expression before she bent over.
Her mother is lying.
They are soaked to the skin when they arrive back at the villa. Despite the best ministrations of Mrs Finch, who offers to fetch warm tea and to dig out clean clothes from the upstairs wardrobes, Clifford and Eve’s mother insist on returning to their hotel to change, ferried there by an agreeable driver Mrs Finch summons from a neighbouring house.
They will return with Bernard later in the afternoon when the Lesters are once again convening to sign the documents, and then Eve and her mother and husband will catch the evening train back to Paris, and onwards to London.
Over. It is over.
Sully arrives not long after the others have left, having once more visited the hospital hoping for word of Gloria. He is disconsolate at having been again refused entry.
‘Do you know what the hospital spokesperson had the gall to tell the press?’ Sully rages. ‘That Gloria Hayes is suffering from “post wedding-fatigue”. Post-wedding fatigue? Do they think we’re all imbeciles? Luckily I managed to corner a friendly nurse. Well. She wasn’t friendly to start with, but five hundred francs made her a lot friendlier. She says Gloria is at least alive, although she is very weak. She said something else but I didn’t understand it. Her French was very vulgar.’
It does not take long for Eve to pack up her things. There are so few of them, after all. When her case is full, she sits on her bed and looks around the room that has been hers for the last week. Her eye lingers on the green curtains, bleached by the sun, and the peeling paint of the window frames.
Gloria’s blue dress is laid out on the bed. Eve glances down at her silk blouse and navy woollen skirt. Sighs.
She is tired out from the effort of trying to escape herself.
It is just as well that she is leaving now. Before she becomes attached. She will always think of Sully and Gloria and Libby with fondness, but really they belong to a different life. Duncan, Diana and Clemmie will just be relieved to have her gone. Such an unnecessary vexation she has been, while they are trying to deal with their own private grief.
About Noel she does not allow herself to think.
Restless, she gets to her feet and flings open the window, staring out at the rain and the surface of the sea, which crawls with tiny white waves.
The air outside is thick and heavy and throbbing, as if waiting for something to happen. Eve notices some cracked tiles on the terrace floor, and the way a section of the balustrade is crumbling. Victor Meunier will have his work cut out.
It is only when she closes the window again that Eve becomes aware of a faint clanging sound. Puzzled, she goes to the door of her room and listens. The clanging is louder here, echoing tinnily up the stone staircase.
Padding down the stairs on her stockinged feet, Eve pauses in the bottom hallway. ‘Sully?’ she calls, before remembering the American is out at a luncheon he claimed not to be able to get out of. Though he had gone off complaining bitterly, it was still a painful reminder to Eve that the world of the Riviera would continue long after she was no longer here to observe it.
The noise seems to be coming from the direction of the kitchen. Eve follows the hallway around behind the stairs, finding the kitchen empty. ‘Mrs Finch?’ she calls out. Only when the noise strikes up again does she realize it is actually coming from beneath her. She wonders what Mrs Finch can be doing down in the cellar. Whatever it is, it sounds very physical. Perhaps she could do with a hand.
In the back of Eve’s mind, there is also the awareness that this is a chance – her last chance – to poke around in Guy’s old junk while someone else is there to keep her company in that ghastly damp place.
At the top of the steps leading down to the cellar she hesitates. Here in this part of the house that never receives any direct light, the temperature is ten degrees cooler than everywhere else, and Eve shivers in her thin blouse. The memory of the last time she went down these stairs is still vivid in her mind. That particular wet-earth dankness. The heart-stopping fear of finding herself trapped, alone, in the dark.
The clanging starts up again, coming from the junk room whose door stands ajar but not wide open enough for Eve to see inside. She turns on the light at the top of the stairs, making sure to leave the door to the hallway open. The bottom half of the stairs is plunged into a gloom that the thin yellow glow from the overhead bulb fails to penetrate, and she descends gingerly. Down here, the noise is much louder, and the clangs have increased in frequency, so that when Eve calls out ‘Mrs Finch?’ her voice is lost in the clamour.
In the small vestibule, Eve once again pauses. What if Mrs Finch tells Diana and her stepsons that Eve has been nosing around? For a split second she almost turns back. Then she remembers that she is leaving today; what does it matter what the Lesters think of her? She nudges open the door and steps inside and—
Oh.
For a moment she frowns, unable to process what she is seeing, because standing hunched over, his curved back facing her, wielding a pickaxe that clatters again and again against the brick wall at the far end of the cellar, is Victor Meunier.
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It is dark in here, but there is a flashlight on the floor and in its weak beam Eve sees that the shelving that had covered the back wall has been dismantled and all the junk that had been leaning against it moved to the side. Where Victor is swinging the axe, he has created a jagged black hole in the brick, under which loose masonry has piled up on the stone floor.
Before Eve can start to wonder what it might mean, Victor stops and mutters something in French. There follows a sudden, sickening silence in which the air particles themselves seem to stand still. Frozen to the spot, Eve tries not to breathe, but that familiar chill coming from the cellar works its way into her nostrils, infiltrating her bloodstream until her very bones feel damp.
Without being able to identify exactly why, she has a strong feeling that she should not draw attention to herself, at least not until she has worked out what is going on. While she simply cannot imagine the charming Frenchman engaged in anything untoward, she equally cannot come up with one good reason why he should be here in this cellar trying to knock a hole in the wall.
Moving slowly, she pulls herself back into the shadows and is rewarded when he once again hefts the axe above his head and swings it at the wall.
Every instinct tells her to turn and hurry back up the stairs. She could wait for Sully. Tell him what she has seen. Or she could just leave well alone. Stop minding everyone else’s business, her mother would say. She could just go back up to her room and pick up her case and leave the dramas of the Riviera behind. There is bound to be a straightforward explanation. Perhaps Victor has already somehow taken ownership of Villa La Perle. Perhaps it was all agreed last night after the others left and nobody thought to tell her.
Yet still she remains, unable to shake off the feeling that whatever Victor is up to is somehow tied up with all the strange things that have happened to her since she arrived here.
What if someone really did deliberately remove the handle of the cellar door the last time, trapping her inside? What if someone has been trying to harm her, or at the very least scare her away?
Who hates me so much?
Her racing thoughts are brought up short by the sound of metal on stone as Victor casts the axe to the floor. Breathing heavily, he picks up the flashlight and shines it into the black cavity through the part-demolished wall, where there seems to be a second, much smaller chamber.
‘C’est où? C’est où?’ he mutters, moving the beam around, until, finally, it comes to rest on a bulky shape that looms in the corner.
He gives a grunt of triumph and starts squeezing himself through the hole in the brickwork, sending more loose masonry clattering to the floor.
Inside the hidden chamber, he crouches down as low as his stiff leg will allow and starts fiddling with the bulky shape. Then he says something that sounds to Eve like ‘intact’.
Victor reaches out his hands wide and grasps the mysterious object, which is as high as his waist and almost a yard across. Half lifting, half dragging, he wrestles it through the gap in the wall, while Eve shrinks back until she is all but hidden by the open door.
She wants only to see what is in the package. Eve knows she has always been too curious, too interested in other people’s lives, as if by dipping into them she can somehow make up for the deficiencies of her own. But one glimpse is all she needs.
Victor manhandles the package back into the main room, letting it rest against the wall directly in Eve’s line of gaze.
Eve cranes forward in her eagerness to see what it is.
The mystery object is wrapped in a blanket, tied around with string again and again. Victor reaches into his pocket and produces a penknife, which he flicks impatiently open. Eve flinches as the knife severs the string. Slash. Finally he lifts a corner of the covering and Eve sees from the shiny surface, as it catches the thin light, that it is an oilskin, not a blanket. With this pervading damp it makes sense.
He unwinds the oilskin, which appears to have been wrapped several times around whatever is inside.
There is a sense of breath being held as the thick, greasy material falls to the ground, revealing its contents. A stack of paintings in tarnished gold frames, the uppermost a discordant jumble of colours with intersecting lines that form irregular shapes in which different body parts are painted – a sweep of hair in this one, an eye in that, all seemingly unconnected to those next to them – the overall impression being one of visual cacophony, yet so compelling you cannot look away.
Eve gasps, so softly it might in other circumstances have sounded like the air shifting and changing. But in this place, every slight noise is amplified. Victor looks up sharply, and before Eve can register what has happened, he is across the room, his limp all but forgotten, and Eve is turning to leave, but he has hold of her blouse.
There is a tearing sound as Eve tries to pull away. Now he grabs her arm and he is so much stronger than she thought.
‘Eve, stop,’ he says, urgency accenting his English more strongly than ever before. ‘I want only to talk to you.’
But his fingers are digging into her arm, and Eve knows in some deep primeval place inside her where fear is generated that she has to get away.
‘Go away!’ she shouts.
There is a noise. Footsteps on the stairs. Relief engulfs her as the comforting figure of Mrs Finch comes into view.
‘Mrs Finch. Thank God!’
Victor, clearly sensing the game is up, drops his hold on her and Eve lunges forward, gripping the housekeeper’s hand in gratitude.
‘Mr Meunier has gone mad. I don’t know what it’s all about, but we must go upstairs at once and call the police.’
Mrs Finch does not move. ‘What on earth is going on?’ she asks.
‘I told you,’ says Eve, by now desperate to get away. ‘He was doing something he shouldn’t, knocking holes in walls, and now he has gone mad.’
‘I did not know she was there.’
At first Eve cannot understand why Victor should be addressing Mrs Finch like that, as if Eve wasn’t present, or why Mrs Finch is still standing there, gripping her hands, instead of hurrying back up the stairs. But when the housekeeper advances into the cellar, yanking Eve along behind her rather than heading back up to safety, the realization dawns.
Whatever Victor is involved with, Mrs Finch is in on it too.
25
VICTOR MEUNIER AND Mrs Finch. What kind of bizarre pairing is this? Eve tries to remember the occasions when she has seen the two together. Were there any clues she missed that hinted at more than a passing acquaintance?
Without letting go of her grip on Eve’s hand, this new unsmiling Mrs Finch begins a heated conversation with Victor in French. Eve, her mouth dry as dust, chest tight, struggles to follow it.
‘Why couldn’t you have waited? She would have been gone by this evening.’ Mrs Finch’s cheeks are stained pink, and her hazel eyes are wide with reproach.
‘That damned boy recognized me. The one with the glasses.’
‘Recognized you from where? How is that even possible?’
‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do with her now.’
Finally the two of them turn their attention to Eve. Mrs Finch is flushed and agitated, Victor dishevelled from his earlier exertions and looking very unlike his usual self. Eve cannot imagine what it was about Victor that she had found so attractive at first. His eyes now seem to her to be lacking in depth, his face too narrow, as if life has pinched the pleasure from it.
Eve’s skin prickles under their hostile scrutiny. She swallows, trying to find her voice.
‘Whatever is going on here has nothing to do with me. I insist you let me go.’
How squeaky her voice is. She tries to shake her arm free from Mrs Finch, but the housekeeper is deceptively strong, and anyway Victor has now manoeuvred himself so he is blocking the door.
‘I only wish we could let you go,’ he tells her in English. ‘But alas.’
‘What do you mean, alas?’ Mrs Finch asks him sha
rply. ‘Look here, you told me no one would get hurt. You told me it was risk-free, that no one would ever know. I would never have involved myself if—’
‘And yet here you are.’ Victor smiles.
There’s a pressure in Eve’s skull as if it is being squeezed by a giant hand. Nothing makes sense. Not Victor, nor Mrs Finch, nor that stack of paintings leaning against the wall, nor the hidden chamber behind the wall in which, she now notices, there are other packages, also wrapped in oilskin.
‘Why didn’t you just go when you were supposed to? Why did you even have to come?’ Mrs Finch is almost crying, her chest and neck blotched purple.
‘I don’t understand,’ Eve says, trying not to cry herself. ‘What have I done? Why shouldn’t I be here?’
But Victor has heard enough.
‘There is no time for this,’ he tells Mrs Finch. ‘There is a boat arriving any moment now. We must take what we can. The rest of it, the ones in the garden, we will have to leave.’
‘And her?’
Victor shrugs.
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ Eve says stupidly. ‘I have no idea what’s happening, so how could I tell? Just let me go and I’ll get on my train back to England and you’ll never hear from me again.’
She is talking too fast and too loud, hoping someone might hear her, even though she’s well aware no one is expected back to the house until later. Her brain races this way and that, trying to find a solution, or at least an explanation, but none is forthcoming.
‘Come,’ says Victor finally, grabbing her roughly by the top of her arm and pulling her with him towards the back of the room where the jagged black hole gapes.
Eve struggles, trying to break free.
‘Hold her,’ Victor calls to Mrs Finch.
‘I don’t want—’
‘Do you want to go to prison? Is that what you want?’
A red vein pulses in Victor’s neck and those navy blue eyes she’d once thought so fine are like hard balls of glass.
Mrs Finch moves to stand behind Eve, holding her arms still. Her fingers shake and Eve realizes she is crying in earnest now.
