Thunder on the Right

by Mary Stewart

  He released her, and she stood for a moment in the circle of his arms, blinking up at him. He laughed down at her, but the blaze was still there at the back of his eyes, and she could see the thudding of his heart where the soaked shirt clung to his body. He was breathing like a runner. He said: ‘We’ve an audience, darling. Do you mind?’

  She blinked again, and turned her head a little dazedly. The men who had come with him were standing round the two of them, much as cattle will gather in a curious circle round any strange phenomenon that invades their pasture. And twelve pairs of dark eyes watched them steadily, without the slightest trace of embarrassment – watched them, indeed, with approval, envy, and the passionate interest of born connoisseurs.

  Mrs. Silver’s only daughter flushed, laughed, and turned back into Stephen’s arms. ‘Mind? Not a bit,’ she said happily, and lifted her mouth to his again.

  26

  Finale: Tranquillo

  It was cosy in the cottage kitchen. Outside, the storm had abated, and the exhausted wind scarcely moved the shutters. Jennifer, exhausted too, lay back in a chair by the blazing fire, with the warmth of Doctor Lebrun’s brandy lapping through her veins.

  The memory of her arrival at Bussac’s cottage was as hazy as the dreams that now invaded her. She had a vague recollection of having her soaked outer things torn off her, of being wrapped warmly in dry blankets, deposited in the big chair beside the fire and plied with hot coffee liberally laced with brandy.

  She blinked round the too-familiar little room, now decidedly overcrowded by a host of purposefully moving shadows that she took to be the police. But she was beyond worrying or even wondering what was going on. Her eyes drooped again. A sleepy warmth invaded her. Her body in its nest of blankets began to relax as the heat from the fire reached out to her, her muscles one by one slackening towards sleep …

  … Someone was asking questions, and Stephen’s voice, quiet and very tired, was answering them. She opened her eyes again, to see him just beside her, sitting on the floor with his shoulders against the front of her chair and his dark head near her knee. His legs, lamentably clad in crumpled, newly dried flannels, were a-sprawl across the front of the fire.

  He was smoking, talking with a sort of controlled weariness to Jules Médoc, the Superintendent from Luz, who, perched on a small stool facing the fire, yet managed to give the impression of presiding in a court of some administrative importance. His black eyes were eager and alive, his gestures sharp and in startling contrast to the heavy, even reluctant movement of Stephen’s hand as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth.

  He drew on the cigarette almost fiercely, and expelled the smoke like a long sigh.

  ‘So there you have it.’ With a dismissive gesture he flicked the butt into the fire. ‘I’ve told you all I know. Most of it was guess-work, but according to what Bussac told you tonight, it was substantially correct. The only thing I couldn’t make out was why a man like Bussac should submit to being blackmailed over such a long period. It wasn’t in character. But from what you say she had more or less cut herself in as a partner.’

  Jules Médoc nodded. ‘That’s so. It appears that she really did enter the business innocently in the first place. She’s used Bussac once or twice, many years ago, to help her own friends out of Spain. For all I know it was Bussac who originally helped her own escape. Then she discovered just how much he was making out of the traffic during the Occupation, and conceived the idea of helping him with that and taking her cut. She was in a position, through her Spanish connections, to help him out on the other side … I mean, if he could hand his “passengers” over to guaranteed help in Spain he could count on more “trade” and in fact charge more. I honestly believe she started the business in good enough faith, and fooled herself for a time that she could touch pitch and not be soiled.’

  ‘And when she discovered what had happened to Isaac Lenormand she was too far in to pull out?’

  ‘Perhaps. But I don’t think so. I gathered from what Bussac said to us that he’d have been glad if she had. But once she had something “on” him she was in a position to demand more. And did.’

  ‘And condoned Lenormand’s murder in the process?’

  Jules Médoc said: ‘One can’t guess how by this time she managed to justify herself to her conscience. I think the greed for money and power had gradually tightened its grip till in the end she couldn’t stop. It happens. Demand begets demand. She must still have tried to persuade herself that the end justified the means. Perhaps she was successful, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘You mean that conscience catches up in the end?’

  Jules Médoc said very soberly: ‘I mean that she must have lived on the edge of hell for a very long time. One cannot violate oneself and not become a place of torment.’

  There was a little silence, through which the old clock ticked solemnly.

  One can say that sort of thing in French, thought Jennifer sleepily, and it doesn’t even sound odd. It’s true, too. She blinked at M. Médoc with drowsy respect.

  Stephen said: ‘An ugly and reluctant partnership. It was bound to smash itself – and them with it – in the end. And now it only remains for you to take that triptych apart.’ He smiled. ‘With great care, of course.’

  ‘Care of the most delicate,’ promised M. Médoc. ‘This has been a great night’s work for me, monsieur, and I shan’t lightly forget what I owe to you and mademoiselle.’ And he sketched a little bow towards Jennifer.

  Stephen turned his head. ‘Awake, Jenny? How are you?’

  She put a hand out of the welter of blankets, and his own closed over it. ‘Lovely and warm.’ Her eyes sought the couch on the other side of the fire, where a burly, thickset man, who appeared to be the doctor, was still bending over Gillian. Memory stabbed at last through the mists of sleep and weariness, and brought her awake with a jerk.

  ‘How is she, Stephen?’

  The doctor had turned at the sound of her voice. He said, before Stephen could reply: ‘How is she? Lucky. That’s what, lucky. All three of you luckier than you deserve.’

  He moved aside to reveal Gillian, cocoon-like in her wrapping of blankets. She looked very pale in the flickering shadows, but her breathing was even, and her eyes were open. She turned her head, and the firelight gleamed on the fair hair. The grey eyes were wide and puzzled. They hesitated over the doctor, groped past Jules Médoc and Stephen, paused over Jennifer …

  Then they widened. They were smiling.

  Gillian said weakly, in English: ‘Why, it’s never Jenny?’

  After that, things seemed to resolve themselves very quickly. Two of Jules Médoc’s men, gruffly supervised by the doctor, carried Gillian in her wrappings to the police jeep which was waiting outside, and the doctor, following them, paused to look down at Jennifer.

  ‘Better get you to bed too, that’s what. And your young man.’ Then, as Jennifer made a startled movement of recollection, he put up a hand the size of a small ham and waved her back into her chair. ‘Nothing the matter with him,’ he said fiercely. ‘Knife hardly touched him. Merest scratch. If he tells you otherwise he’s malingering.’ He glowered down at them both. ‘Lucky, that’s what.’

  Jennifer was holding tightly to Stephen’s hand. ‘Lucky! That and more besides, Doctor! If he hadn’t found us … Stephen, how did you find the way up to the cascade?’

  ‘Darling, we followed your torch.’ He laughed as she stared at him. ‘It isn’t as mad as it sounds. We weren’t very far behind you, you know, and in those places you can see a light for miles. We saw it dodging up the gullies, and then, when we thought we’d lost it, we came on Bussac, and he told us the way.’

  ‘Simple, when you know how,’ said the doctor. He peered down over his glinting spectacles. ‘Here! What you crying for?’

  She wiped her eyes. ‘I’m not.’

  He snorted. ‘Women! Told you she’ll be all right. Meant it. Remembers up to that accident. No more.’

  She struggled to
assess this. ‘The accident? The car smash?’

  ‘That’s it. Thinks that’s how she was hurt. Told me so.’ The blue eyes were kind under the fierce white brows. ‘Retrograde amnesia,’ said the doctor gruffly, making it clear. ‘Gap. Complete gap.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Stephen, ‘that she thinks she’s just come round after the car accident? She won’t remember the time between?’

  ‘Just told you,’ said the doctor impatiently. ‘Gap, that’s what. Won’t remember any of this …’ A gesture took in the cottage kitchen, hesitated oddly over the now-shut bedroom door … ‘Him,’ said the doctor.

  Jennifer stiffened in her blankets, looking at the door.

  ‘May remember later on,’ said the doctor, ‘but won’t matter so much then. Stronger. But all for the best now.’ He opened the door, and nodded brusquely at her. ‘Lucky, that’s what.’

  The door slammed behind him. But Jennifer did not hear it. She looked across the little silence and met Jules Médoc’s eyes.

  ‘Pierre Bussac?’

  Stephen said gently: ‘He died Jenny. He lived long enough to tell the story, then he died. They brought him down while you were asleep.’

  ‘I – see.’ She turned her head away.

  Jules Médoc said, in simple wonder. ‘You would weep for that one?’

  Jenny looked at him. ‘I’m sorry he died like that, monsieur. I – I’d have liked him to get away. I suppose that’s wrong, but whatever else he did, he did save Gillian. Once, when Lally Dupré robbed her and left her in the storm, and again tonight. He may have been a murderer, but he loved her in his own way, and I for one, shall always remember him kindly.’

  Stephen’s hand tightened over hers. ‘Then so shall I,’ he said.

  Something moved in the corner beyond the couch, a singularly shapeless shadow which turned out, on inspection, to be Father Anselm. He, too, looked tired, but his little black eyes were bright, and he regarded Jennifer and Stephen with great kindness.

  ‘God is very merciful,’ was all he said, and Jennifer knew that he, too, was talking about Pierre Bussac. Nobody had mentioned the other – that other whose body must be even now washed up, gaunt and black, like a drowned crow asprawl on a rock in mid-stream.

  She said suddenly: ‘Does the Reverend Mother know?’

  Father Anselm nodded soberly. ‘I have been to the convent. In fact, I was already on my way when the police caught me up. The girl, Celeste—’

  Jennifer sat up sharply, then grabbed at her blankets as they slipped, and gripped them to her, staring with shocked eyes at the little priest.

  ‘Celeste!’ she cried. ‘How dreadful! I’d forgotten all about her! Oh, dear! I’m sure she was running away to Luis, and—’

  ‘So she was,’ said Father Anselm, ‘so she was. And the boy brought her straight to me. “You will look after her for me,” says he, solemn and proud, “she is to be my wife, and I will have no talk in the village. So I leave her with you.” Alors, there she is, asleep at my house, and today she goes back to the Reverend Mother’s care while she prepares for her wedding. You, my child’ – he was looking down at Jennifer and now there was the ghost of a twinkle – ‘have slept a long time. Look.’

  He went past her to the window, and, reaching up, pulled open the shutters. The pale light of early morning filled the room, killing the small glow of the oil-lamp, and picking out with chilly clarity the evidence of last night’s terrible little story. There was the clutter of broken china and scraps of food where Jennifer had torn the cloth from the table; there the charred fragments of a rag soaked with blood and brandy; there on the floor by the table-leg a dark irregular stain …

  Stephen exchanged a swift look with Médoc and got, albeit stiffly, to his feet. He stood between Jenny and the tell-tale disorder of the room.

  ‘And we,’ he said cheerfully, ‘haven’t been to sleep at all. And here’s the jeep coming back.’ He looked down at her and spoke soberly in his own language. ‘It’s over, Jenny. Whatever’s happened, it is over, my darling, and the best thing we can do is to go away and go to sleep. That’s not callousness, it’s common sense. For us, it’s over. Tragedy always has a dreary aftermath, but we don’t have to wait. You and I and Gillian – we move on.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jennifer. They smiled at each other.

  The jeep roared up the hill outside, changed gear, and rattled to a halt on the cobbles. Jules Médoc got up, stretched, and grinned at them both. ‘You’re lucky, that’s what,’ he said.

  They sat in a coign of rock, high above the valley, where the smooth turf washed up to their feet like a small sea, afoam with tiny flowers. Below them the convent lay, white-walled in the sun. Nothing moved in the valley but the stream that glittered over sun-drenched boulders, and, tiny in the distance, a chestnut horse that gently carried his rider across the grass into the shadow of the convent wall.

  Once again, chill and silver through the hot blue air, the convent bell began to ring. Jennifer, without turning her head, put a hand out, and, instantly, Stephen’s met it. For a few minutes more they sat there, gazing down the empty valley …

  There came from behind them the sound of voices, of boots on rock, of voices polite in academic altercation …

  Round the bluff they came, sturdy, solemn, untiring, with rucksacks on their backs and hammers in their hands; Miss Shell-Pratt and Miss Moon. Their eyes were bent on the ground as they passed, their tongues were going busily. Their rucksacks were full to the brim, no doubt, with little pieces of rock that they were prepared to cart back at enormous trouble to Cambridge, there to put them away in compartments labelled Paragneiss or Ultrametamorphic Orthogneiss or even – this was a counsel of despair – No.99. S.E., V. des O.: Pyr.: (?).

  They approached, talking vigorously.

  ‘The schistosity,’ said Miss Shell-Pratt, ‘plane or linear …’ A green lizard flashed across the rock and was gone. A great black-velvet butterfly alighted on a wild lupin … ‘Plane linear,’ insisted Miss Shell-Pratt, peering at the rock, ‘as Gotterhammer explains in his notes to Grund-komplex des südöstlichen Pyreneenge-bietes …’ Here her eye ran absently across Jennifer and Stephen, and she paused, to identify them almost immediately with a subdued air of triumph. ‘Ah! Miss Silver! Mr. Bridges!’

  ‘Masefield,’ said Stephen, who had risen.

  ‘Ah, quite so.’ Miss Shell-Pratt had the air of one who takes lesser cultures in her stride. She gestured largely. ‘An interesting area, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, decidedly.’

  ‘A lot to do,’ said Miss Moon from behind her companion. And indeed her gaze had already moved on beyond the group towards the next rib of exposed rock, to pass on, with what was perhaps a shade of dismay, to the towering shapes of the ridges beyond. ‘A lot to do,’ she repeated, and looked down uncertainly at the very small hammer in her hand.

  But Miss Shell-Pratt was made of sterner stuff. She became brisk. ‘Yes, indeed! Plenty of work there! Most interesting! We must be getting along. Come on, Moon.’

  They strode down the slope.

  Stephen put down a hand, and pulled Jennifer to her feet. He put an arm round her, and they stood for a while, looking down from the shoulder of the bare mountain at the green and golden valley below.

  ‘The enchanted valley,’ said Jennifer softly. ‘Paradise …’

  The small flowers stirred at their feet. The lizard slid back to lie on his stone, a crescent of living jade. The butterfly swayed on the yellow lupin beside them. Faint, but clear, Miss Shell-Pratt’s voice floated back to them. ‘The felspars,’ she was saying firmly, ‘are allotriomorphic towards the biotite, augite, and hornblende …’

  The lizard vanished. The butterfly flew away. Cambridge, after all, had had the last word.

  Also by Mary Stewart

  Madam, Will You Talk?

  Wildfire at Midnight

  Nine Coaches Waiting

  My Brother Michael

  The Ivy Tree

  The Moonspinners />
  This Rough Magic

  Airs Above the Ground

  The Gabriel Hounds

  Touch Not the Cat

  Thornyhold

  Stormy Petrel

  Rose Cottage

  THE ARTHURIAN NOVELS

  The Crystal Cave

  The Hollow Hills

  The Last Enchantment

  The Wicked Day

  The Prince and the Pilgrim

  POEMS

  Frost on the Window

  FOR CHILDREN

  The Little Broomstick

  Ludo and the Star Horse

  A Walk in Wolf Wood

  Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists, was born in Sunderland, County Durham and lives in the West Highlands. Her first novel, Madam, Will You Talk?, was published in 1955 and marked the beginning of a long and acclaimed writing career. All her novels have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was made a Doctor of Literature by Durham University in 2009.