by Jane Holland
There’s also no shade on the corner. The sun beats down relentlessly, and the reflective glare of the traffic starts to give me a headache.
After about ten minutes standing there, I give up. Wherever Lucille has gone and for whatever reason, she’s not coming back. The only thing to do is cross the road again, only this time head down towards one of the taxi stands in the main shopping area. The road into Antibes centre is crowded with morning traffic. Cars, vans and buses jostling for position, sounding their horns.
I pause at the kerb, waiting impatiently for the lights to change further down the street before attempting to cross.
A car slows down in the nearside lane as it heads towards me.
It’s an old creamy-blue Citroen, dusty and with a large dent in the front bumper. The windows are open, music blaring out. I glance at the lone driver through the dirt-smeared, bug-encrusted windscreen and stiffen, incredulous.
It’s the black man with dreadlocks.
The man who tried to abduct me in Vieil Antibes on the afternoon of Emily’s funeral.
The vile, grinning man who would probably have raped and murdered me if Robin had not dragged him off me and chased him away. He sees me looking at him, and his expression changes as he realises I’ve recognised him.
Suddenly, the car lurches towards me at speed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Before I really understand what’s going on, the Citroen mounts the kerb and accelerates along the pavement with vicious intent.
It’s aiming straight for me.
What the hell?
There’s no time to think. Instinct takes over. I throw myself backwards, knocking into a waist-high, A-board pavement sign for a property rental service. The board clatters to the pavement with me, trapping one of my legs beneath it.
The car is still coming.
I flinch, rolling away desperately, and wait to be hit. The old engine roars and smokes with menace, emitting a poisonous black cloud that leaves me choking.
The nearside wheel misses me by a mere two or three inches.
The Citroen rattles noisily along the pavement another few feet, then drops off again as though to re-join the stream of traffic.
Then it stops.
The white reverse lights come on at the back.
‘Jesus.’
I’m still not safe. The bastard’s planning to return for a second pass. If at first you don’t succeed … I untangle my legs from the advertisement board, scramble back to my feet and look around. But there’s nowhere to hide. I’m too easy a target here.
Panting, my hair in my eyes, I stagger backwards until my back meets the white-washed wall of the office block behind me.
The driver pauses, still revving his engine as though planning to reverse anyway. I see his face in the mirror, a flash of angry eyes. Then a horn sounds nearby, a van driver remonstrating with him for blocking the lane, and he gives it up, pulling away violently.
Still choking on fumes, I hurry back to the kerb and squint after him, keen to catch the number plate. But another puff of smoke from the dangling exhaust pipe obscures it. His engine isn’t going to last much longer, I guess. Long enough to mow down a few more hapless pedestrians though.
Seconds later, the Citroen slips between a delivery van and a town bus, and is hidden from view in the next block of vehicles.
‘Ooh, la la.’ A middle-aged woman in a black head scarf has stopped beside me to watch the Citroen disappear. She stoops to retrieve the fallen bouquet, handing it back to me with a shocked expression. ‘Are you all right, mademoiselle?’
‘I think so,’ I say, though I’m feeling quite shaken up.
‘Do you want me to call the flics?’
She means the police.
I hesitate. It might be a good idea to report this attack. But it would probably take an hour or more to explain what happened, and maybe give the police an official statement. Meanwhile I have no idea where Lucille has gone or whether she’s responding to some kind of emergency back at the chateau.
I shake my head.
The woman does not look surprised, seeming to understand my reluctance. But perhaps French police are not always as friendly and approachable as they are in England, especially when you’re a foreigner. Plus, there’s all the paperwork. I vaguely recall Robin saying something similar when the man with dreadlocks attacked me in Antibes.
‘That maniac could have killed you.’ She clicks her tongue disapprovingly. ‘These young men, they’re all on drugs.’
I thank the woman, agreeing that the driver must have been high on something, and stumble across the road before the lights change again.
I can’t quite believe what just happened.
Maniac, yes.
But that was no drug-fuelled accident. He knew precisely what he was doing. In fact, if I hadn’t seen the car coming …
Weaving too quickly between the other shoppers, I drop the bouquet again, damp-palmed, its plastic wrap too slippery, and have to stop to pick it up again. Some of the lilies are looking a little damaged. I drag one out of the arrangement and toss it in a kerbside bin, then keep walking. I’m not entirely sure where I’m going. But my instincts tell me I must keep moving. That any kind of hesitation could be fatal.
A taxi, I tell myself.
I need a taxi.
My ears are buzzing though and my vision is blurred. I slow for a road crossing, but this time check for the dirty Citroen and its driver before hurrying across in a tight-knit pack of other pedestrians. He could have killed you. I’m sure that was his intention. But why?
Down in the main shopping area, it’s slow going, the pavement crowded with seats and tables, and other obstacles. I pass a pavement café next door to an old-fashioned Tabac, selling newspapers and postcards on several spinners outside.
In the Tabac window, I see the reflection of a long familiar shape, then stiffen at a squeal of tyres as the Rolls Royce comes to a rapid halt behind me.
There’s a short beep.
I turn, my heart speeding up again. This time with anger.
Lucille lowers the window. Her face is flushed. ‘There you are at last,’ she says in clipped French. ‘Where did you go?’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I reply in English.
She shows no sign of having understood.
‘Get in,’ is all she says.
I throw the flowers and my purse onto the back seat, then climb into the front and close the window against the noise and heat of the street. It’s a relief to be out of the sunshine and in an air-conditioned car again, but my pulse is still racing. Sheer bloody fury at her behaviour, and what it could have cost me.
‘I told you to wait for me,’ I say, reverting to French. ‘When I got back, you’d disappeared.’
‘I was only gone a few minutes,’ she says, and pulls into the traffic. ‘You should have waited.’
‘I did wait. I waited at least ten minutes.’ I drag on my seat belt in response to a warning beep from the dashboard. ‘Where the hell were you?’
‘I remembered something.’
‘What?’
‘An errand I needed to run while I was in town.’
‘Such as?’
She nods over her shoulder into the back of the Rolls. ‘Madame’s dry-cleaning. I had to pick it up.’
I look back at the plastic-covered clothes hanging behind her seat, then stare at her face, incredulous. ‘You left me standing there for ages while you picked up my aunt’s dry-cleaning?’
‘Hardly ages.’
‘Couldn’t it have waited until I’d got back from the florist?’
‘Perhaps,’ she says, driving fast through the crowded street and sounding her horn at other drivers who get in her way. ‘But I didn’t know how long you would be. The dry-cleaners isn’t far away, but it was hard to find somewhere to park. And I didn’t want to walk through the streets with her dry-cleaning.’ She looks at me sideways when I raise my eyebrows in disbelief. ‘Designer outfits are wo
rth a lot of money. See the white dress? That cost nearly five thousand Euros.’
‘Why doesn’t she get the company to collect and deliver?’
‘She does. They bring it back on a Thursday, usually. But Madame asked me to pick it up early.’ She shrugs. ‘No doubt she has her reasons.’
I think of my invitation for Tamsin to fly home with me. Perhaps she’s decided to come back with me after all. If so, I only hope it won’t prove too dangerous for her. Perhaps I shouldn’t have pressed the issue. If she has a heart attack, it will be my fault.
I rub my grazed elbow, wincing, and Lucille notices.
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, someone tried to run me off the pavement,’ I tell her, still pumped up with adrenalin. ‘A big black guy with dreadlocks. He was driving a blue Citroen. Looked like the car was on its last legs.’
‘Mon Dieu,’ Lucille says, oddly expressionless given what I’ve just told her.
A suspicion flickers inside me.
‘You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’ I ask.
She looks at me blankly. ‘Moi?’
‘Well, it’s strange how you disappeared … and then he appeared a few minutes later, at the exact place where you knew I’d be waiting.’ I watch her face, but it’s hard to read in profile. ‘Quite a coincidence, that.’
‘I have no idea what you’re suggesting,’ she says, but glances at my elbow again. It’s bleeding slightly again, though is hardly a significant injury. As her dry expression seems to say. ‘But if some mec tried to run you down, you should tell the police about it. Not me.’
‘Maybe I will tell the police.’
Lucille shrugs, a touch sullen now. ‘As you wish. You can telephone the local gendarmerie from the chateau. I have the number somewhere. I’m sure your aunt won’t mind.’
Her dry intonation, of course, indicates the opposite. That my aunt will mind. That Tamsin will mind greatly. Because the police coming round and taking a crime report will interest the paparazzi, and at such a delicate time like this, in the midst of family tragedy …
I gaze out of the tinted window as we sweep along the glittering, blue harbour, and nurse my aching elbow in silence. I don’t much like Lucille, and I certainly don’t trust her. Not after what I found in her room. But she’s right about one thing. I should be thinking more about Tamsin today, and less about myself.
And maybe that guy was just a maniac, as the woman in the head scarf suggested. A guy with mental health problems who, still furious at having his original attack in Vieil Antibes thwarted, spotted me at random on the kerb and decided to do the job properly this time. To make sure I couldn’t testify against him, perhaps. Or just for kicks.
Who knows how mad men think?
There’s no guard on duty on the gate when we arrive.
‘I told you,’ Lucille says bitterly. ‘Probably gone home for a siesta. Or to Angelo’s bar, down on the waterfront. Contract workers. They’re not paid enough to stay full-time.’
While Lucille is parking the Rolls with her usual lack of care, I unlock the front door with my key and run upstairs with Tamsin’s flowers. The fragrance of the mingled roses and lilies is sweet and heady, and they still look beautiful, despite having been dropped several times and almost run over.
I knock lightly at her bedroom door but there’s no reply.
‘Aunt Tamsin?’
The door was not shut properly when we left, I realise. Either that or she’s been out to the bathroom.
I push the door open and peer round.
‘It’s only me …’ I start to say.
Then stop.
Tamsin is no longer sitting up in bed. She’s lying on her back across the bed, on top of the covers. There’s something unnatural about her slack-limbed posture, still in her night gown, as though posing for a film shoot. The extravagant white chiffon nightdress reaches almost to her ankles, her legs set neatly together beneath it, bare feet dangling off the edge of the bed. Her long silver wig is askew, her face ashen, head tipped to one side under the loose curtain of hair. Her mouth gapes open, as though about to speak.
Her eyes are closed.
Slowly, I approach the bed. The polished floorboards creak under me, bright and warm with light streaming in through the open balcony windows. In the distance, I can hear music from someone’s garden party. Her slippers lie carelessly on the rug beside the bed, as though she kicked them off in a hurry.
‘Aunty Tamsin?’
My voice comes out as a whisper. She doesn’t respond. I clear my throat and try again, more loudly. Still no sign of movement.
Experimentally, I reach over and touch the back of her hand. Her skin is cool to the touch.
I don’t need to check her pulse. Her chest isn’t moving.
Tamsin is dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I jump back as though from an electric shock, dropping the bouquet of flowers.
In my panic, my mind snatches at dimly remembered precepts for CPR. Pump the chest rhythmically, breathe into the mouth, hold the nose closed. I stare helplessly at her body, aware of this terrible pressure to act, and act now. But should I move her to the floor to start resuscitation or kneel over her on the bed? Does it matter?
And is it too late anyway?
Downstairs, the kitchen door bangs.
I run to the door at once. ‘Lucille,’ I shout down to the housekeeper, unable to keep the shock out of my voice. ‘Come quick, it’s … It’s Madame.’
I run back to my aunt, stumbling over her slippers in my haste.
Something crunches underfoot.
Hard plastic.
I glance down, and stop dead.
It’s a pill bottle.
The empty bottle is lying on its side beside one of her slippers, pills scattered beside it in a messy trail, almost the same colour as the deep pile rug.
That’s how I missed it when I walked in.
I stoop to pick it up and read the label in French. Sleeping pills, I guess. Last time I saw this bottle, it was on the bedside table, its tamper-proof lid safely shut. So how did the bottle come to be on the rug? And how did she manage to spill all these pills?
Christ, if only we’d been here …
Lucille bursts into the room, breathless, clasping a dishcloth to her chest. ‘What is it? Is Madame unwell?’
Then she sees the body on the bed.
‘Oh no, no,’ she moans, and runs past me, throwing herself onto the bed. She checks hurriedly for a pulse, then moans again and begins to bang on the dead woman’s chest. Her hair comes loose from its usual neat arrangement, dangling over her face.
‘Help me.’ She stares round at me through her hair. Her eyes are wild, her voice shaken. ‘Help me, please. Breathe for her.’
I let the pill bottle drop, and the two of us work together in the heat for what feels like maybe ten or fifteen minutes, trying to force air back into her lungs, to restart her heart. But it’s too late.
Tamsin is gone.
Eventually even Lucille gives up the struggle and sits back, covering her flushed face with shaking hands. ‘Madame,’ she cries, rocking back and forth like a child. ‘Madame.’
I step away, exhausted.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I tell Lucille, though I’m crying too.
She does not reply, lost in misery.
‘We should call the police.’
The coroner too, I imagine, or whoever deals with sudden deaths in France. I’m not entirely sure. But I expect Lucille will know.
She sniffs, then nods. ‘I’ll do it.’
There’s a telephone base station on Tamsin’s bedside table.
But no phone.
I look around, and spot the handset on the bed, half-hidden among the lacy white pillows.
‘She must have tried to call us,’ I say, feeling awful.
I retrieve the handset and hold it out to Lucille. She takes it reluctantly, then presses out a number. A moment later she is explaining the situ
ation to someone at emergency services in a subdued voice.
I bend to collect the scattered pills from the rug, then realise I probably shouldn’t touch anything.
When I straighten, my eye is caught by the photograph on the wall. The old photograph of Tamsin and David Halifax at the children’s party. Their hands are tightly entwined, and her face is turned adoringly towards his. He’s smiling into the camera, but it’s a proud, possessive smile.
That smile reminds me a little of Robin at Les Baux. His relaxed satisfaction once we had slept together again. As though he had won a bet. A thought which leaves me distinctly queasy.
I study Robin’s youthful face in the photograph. He looks innocent and adorable.
How people change.
Lucille has hung up. ‘Ten minutes,’ she says blankly. ‘Maybe fifteen. They’ll do their best in the traffic.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.
‘They’re sending a doctor too, they said. To be sure.’ She hesitates. ‘Then the body will be taken away.’
‘Of course.’
I watch Lucille in sympathy. Tamsin was my last surviving close relative. But Lucille had been with her for many years. She always called her ‘Madame,’ but the two women were more like sisters than employer and employee. Her sense of loss must be indescribable. Though sadly I know exactly how she feels.
Tamsin is at peace now, at least. Her face has smoothed out in death and she looks younger. Maybe ten or twenty years younger.
Lucille straightens Tamsin’s wig and tweaks her beautiful night gown, which our efforts have messed up, then sits back with a sigh. ‘That’s better,’ she says, almost to herself.
In the distance, we hear the faint wail of sirens. Getting louder now, heading our way. Lucille takes one of Tamsin’s hands in her own and raises it to her lips in a sudden, affectionate gesture of farewell. Then she starts to mutter something under her breath. A prayer, I realise.
I touch her shoulder. She looks up at me, startled. ‘Do you want to be alone with Tamsin?’
Her eyes widen at the question, then she nods.
‘I’ll wait downstairs until the police arrive,’ I say.
‘Merci, Miss Caitlin.’
I pick up the unwanted flowers and make my way downstairs into the warmth of the sunlit hall. I wonder if she’ll ever feel able to call me Caitlin.
