Murder Abroad

by E. R. Punshon

  But then again, if Miss Polthwaite had been murdered, as Bobby now felt was certain, must not the crime have been committed for the sake of the diamonds and was it not certain they would be now in the possession of the assassin?

  Bobby sighed and shook his head at himself, vexed to think he could find no way through the tangle of doubt and hesitation in which he felt himself ensnared. One thing alone stood out clearly in his mind: that he disliked and mistrusted both Mr. and Mrs. Williams. Nor was he sure now that Mrs. Williams was quite so colourless and insignificant as she had at first seemed to be.

  When he reached his hotel again he went in for a few minutes and then on to the little postcard shop near, where, when Madame Simone appeared, he asked if he could have a word or two with her niece. The old lady looked very doubtful and grumbled inaudibly to herself, but this time seemed a trifle less unfriendly. Finally she took him into the small living-room behind the shop. Lucille was there and Bobby said to her:

  “Mademoiselle, I have come to ask if you will tell me exactly what happened this afternoon.”

  “Oh, no,” she answered quickly, looking terrified at the suggestion.

  “It was Mr. Williams and his wife who asked you to go to see them, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “Why? How do you know?” she retorted.

  He let that pass, not bothering to explain that the guess had been an easy one. He said instead:

  “I wish I could persuade you to trust me. I know I am a stranger. I don’t like Mr. and Mrs. Williams. I think they have some reason for being here and I don’t think it is a very creditable reason.”

  She still shook her head and then after a time she said suddenly:

  “I was glad when I saw you this afternoon. I was terrified before but not then.” She added when he did not speak: “Please do not think I am ungrateful.”

  Bobby took a photograph of Olive from his pocket. “That is the girl I am going to marry,” he said. “If some one was trying to bully her, I hope any one who saw what was happening would try to interfere.”

  She took the photograph from him and looked at it and then at him and then back again at it. He thought she looked doubtful and he said:

  “I will give you her address if you like and you can write and ask her if you can trust me. Because I think it is important you should tell me about this afternoon.”

  “If she loves you, then of course she will say you can be trusted,” Lucille answered. “If you love a man, you trust him, too. It is the same thing.” She looked at Bobby: “Do you love her?” she asked.

  He did not answer, suddenly shy and embarrassed. She gave him the photo back and smiled:

  “You need not say it,” she told him. “It is in your eyes.”

  “Oh, well, now then,” he muttered, scarlet now. With an effort he recovered himself. He said: “A woman died in that well. You were afraid when Williams lifted the cover.”

  An almost imperceptible nod answered him.

  “He was threatening you?”

  She hesitated again. It was a moment or two before she gave another almost imperceptible nod. Then she said:

  “But not in the way you mean.”

  “Well, then. How?”

  “He said—” the words came slowly, hesitatingly, with long pauses between. “He said—there was proof—down there—somehow—proof—something dropped—proof who was—guilty.”

  “Proof? What sort of proof?”

  “He did not say. I think perhaps it was not true. But he made me afraid. I think he is a bad man.”

  “Proof against whom?”

  “He did not say.”

  “If he knows anything, it is his duty to tell the police. It is serious if he does not.”

  “Yes, he said that,” she almost whispered.

  Madame Simone had gone back into the shop, but she was watching them from behind the counter. She came to the door now and said to Bobby:

  “That’s enough, you’ll make the child ill.”

  That Lucille was very distressed was in fact plain enough and Bobby felt he could not press her further. “Can I see you again some other time?” he asked.

  A customer appeared in the shop and knocked for attention. Madame Simone went to answer the summons. Lucille said:

  “Perhaps. Another day. Please go now.”

  “Very well, thank you,” Bobby said, and was in the act of retiring when she called him back and asked if she could see again Olive’s photograph. Flattered, he produced it. She took it and studied it carefully and gravely for some moments before she gave it him back.

  “I was wondering,” she explained, “if that style she has of doing her hair, would suit me.”

  CHAPTER IX

  STILL LIFE COMPOSITION

  It was not yet the dinner hour, but feeling a need to be alone for a little to try to think out the implications of all that he had seen and heard during the day, Bobby returned to the hotel. Since the evening of his arrival, he had seen nothing of Eudes, the village schoolmaster, but now as he entered the hotel he saw him in the background, talking earnestly and quickly to young Camion. They heard Bobby come in and both looked round, and, when they saw him they moved away. Bobby wondered if it was self-consciousness that gave him the impression it was of him they were talking.

  He shook his head gloomily at himself. It had been his hope and his intention to avoid in every way attracting the notice of the inhabitants of the village and he could not help feeling that in that respect he had not succeeded very brilliantly. This man, Eudes, for instance. On the very first day of his arrival Eudes had made an excuse to talk to him. Then there had been that visit by the artist, Shields, who afterwards had gone on to call on Eudes. Bobby found himself suspecting that Eudes had asked Shields to come over on purpose to test Bobby’s claim to be an artist. If so, Bobby hoped that the unexpected excellence of the sketch he had made that day had satisfied Shields and, through him, Eudes. At any rate, since then he had not seen Eudes again till now.

  Thoughtfully Bobby asked himself what reason Eudes could have for showing such an interest in him and he remembered the touch of fanaticism with which Eudes had spoken of the journal of ‘enlightenment’ he hoped to found and of his need of money for that purpose. Now here was Eudes again, talking privately to young Camion, and appearing anxious to keep out of Bobby’s sight. Curious, Bobby thought, and he was not much surprised when, the meal over, Camion, instead of disappearing as usual, came to the table in a quiet corner where Bobby had chosen to sit. Seeing him coming, Bobby pushed out a chair.

  “Nice evening, isn’t it?” he said. “Do sit down.” Camion, whose expression had not been amiable, scowled even more heavily. Nor did he accept the invitation. Leaning over the back of the chair, he said: “Monsieur, I trust I am right in believing you do not contemplate making a long stay?”

  Bobby did not answer at first. He looked thoughtfully at Camion, wondering what this new move meant and if he owed the making of it to Eudes. But then why should Eudes be anxious to get rid of him? Camion said:

  “It would in fact be a convenience if monsieur would vacate his room.”

  “I took it for two weeks,” Bobby said. “I even got a reduction in terms as it was for that long certain. I may stay longer. I am not sure yet. What’s the idea?”

  “Monsieur,” said Camion, looking more haughty and dominating than ever, “if you by any chance prefer to leave to-morrow, no charge will be made for the time you have already stayed here.”

  “My dear friend,” said Bobby in his most amiable tones, “it is evident that we are neither of us good business men. If you were, you would not make such a suggestion. If I were, I should accept it. Let us sympathize with each other on our common misfortune.”

  “You mean you refuse?”

  “Guessed it in one,” said Bobby approvingly.

  “You force me then,” said Camion, “to inform you that I am well acquainted with your identity, your profession, your purpose in wishing to stay here.”
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  Bobby felt slightly ill. If Camion knew, all the village knew. The authorities would soon know, too, and then he would be asked to explain his errand here and that would certainly mean an end to all his hopes of success. Very likely he would receive a polite hint that there are many other districts of France equally attractive to the tourist. It might even get back to Scotland Yard that he had been indiscreet.

  “Oh, well,” he said moodily, “no use asking you to hold your tongue, I suppose?”

  Camion’s gesture might have been that of one of the Borgian guests refusing the customary parting cup of poison.

  “Who told you?” Bobby asked.

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Oh, aren’t you? Well, then, run away and amuse yourself.”

  “It is understood that you leave in the morning?”

  “No, it isn’t,” snapped Bobby, who had no intention of quitting till he was actually booted out—and only then if the boot was too big to resist.

  Camion drew himself to his full height. His glance was fiery, his nose was as that one of which it is said that once British soldiers thought a glimpse of it worth ten thousand men. He flung out one hand.

  “Monsieur,” he announced, “I shall give instructions to the hotel porter to bring down your baggage in the morning. I shall see that the door of your room is locked.”

  “Monsieur,” responded Bobby, “if the hotel porter tries to remove my baggage from my room I have taken for two weeks certain, I shall throw the hotel porter out of the window. If I find my door locked against me, I shall break it open. Understand? Hang it all, this is an hotel, isn’t it? And I’m paying for my room, aren’t I?”

  “Very well,” said Camion. “Very good. I had wished to keep your secret, but now all the world shall know it. Ah,” he added triumphantly, seeing Bobby wince, “you do not like that? Naturally. Very well. You go or all the world shall know you are a married man, that in Nice last year you persuaded an unhappy girl at the hotel where you stayed to accompany you to San Remo, where you deserted her in a foreign and unfriendly country without a penny.”

  Bobby fairly gasped. He struggled for speech but none came.

  “We are simple here, in our village, but we know the morality of the artist,” Camion went on. “You did not, I imagine, dream that all this was known?”

  “I shouldn’t have dreamed it,” said Bobby earnestly, “even if I had been living for a month on nothing but lobster salad and cold boiled rice. Who on earth has been telling you all these fairy tales?”

  “Yes, I was warned you would deny it,” Camion said darkly. “I warn you, here in Citry-sur-l’eau, we have ideas, we others. When our honour is touched, we—kill.”

  “The dickens you do,” murmured Bobby thoughtfully, for Camion looked as if he meant what he said.

  “Question of honour; question of life; question of death,” said Camion.

  “It’s a sentiment worth remembering,” Bobby said, still more thoughtfully.

  “Useless to deny,” said Camion. “I have proof.”

  “So have I,” said Bobby cheerfully. “Proof that while you want to manage a chain of big hotels in all countries of the world—”

  “What’s that?” interrupted Camion, gasping in his turn, “Who... what... I never...”

  “You haven’t enough sense or knowledge or experience,” swept on Bobby relentlessly, unheeding Camion’s dismay at this exposure of ambitions that he probably thought were locked deep in his own breast, “to manage a—” Bobby had been going to say ‘peanut stall’ but not being sure of the French for ‘peanut’ altered it to “—a gingerbread stall in a country fair. Some one’s been stuffing you.”

  But here Bobby rather spoilt the effect by using the word ‘farcir’, which is chiefly employed in a culinary sense, instead of some equivalent French colloquial term for our slang ‘stuffing’—se payer la tête, for example. Camion looked bewildered at this sudden reference to the kitchen and its operations, of which he could make nothing. He let it pass and said:

  “It happens that I have a photograph of your children, their names and yours written on the back.”

  “Children?” said Bobby, growing interested now. “How many?”

  “Three. The twins and another.”

  “Twins?” Bobby almost shouted. “Twins, did you say? Oh, well, thank God, it’s not triplets.”

  Camion produced a photograph. It showed three small children. On the back was written: ‘John, Henry and Mary Owen, children of Robert Owen, artist.’

  Bobby studied it with great interest. Then he put it in his pocket.

  “Can’t deprive a loving father of his own offspring,” he said. “Listen, I said just now you hadn’t sense enough to run a gingerbread stall at a country fair. Optimistic, that was. I expect when it comes on to rain, they have to send some one to tell you to come in out of the wet?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Camion said, but beginning to look a little uneasy.

  “About your intelligence,” explained Bobby, “or rather your total, complete and absolute lack of it. I suppose Williams told this pretty yarn to Eudes and Eudes told you?”

  “How did you know?” Camion asked.

  “By using my brains,” Bobby told him. “Probably you’ve never heard such things exist. They are used for thinking but if you can’t think, I suppose you don’t need them.” He paused and looked again at Camion: “Is all this because I’ve been buying postcards at the shop where Mademoiselle Lucille Simone—”

  Camion started to interrupt but Bobby checked him.

  “Probably her aunt began it,” Bobby went on, “she looks a bit like that, looks like an old body with a tongue she can’t help using. And then I daresay you heard I had been in the shop before dinner and that mademoiselle seemed disturbed afterwards. You know it’s silly but it has its interesting side. Williams wants to get me out of here and Eudes is willing to help. Why? It was your jealousy they thought they could work on.”

  “I am not jealous, I have no right to be, it is nothing to do with Mademoiselle Simone, her name should not have been mentioned, it is insufferable,” Camion cried angrily.

  “I expect she’ll say that and a bit more if she gets to know,” agreed Bobby. “Has she any friends or relations about here?”

  “No, she only came to live here a year ago, there is only her aunt she lives with.”

  “So you thought you had to take her under your protection,” Bobby observed. “Well, I hope she will be grateful, but I doubt it. She might want to know why you were butting in?”

  “If anything happens to me,” Camion muttered, “there would be for her no one even to notice, no one to know, to protest.”

  “Perhaps the young lady may prefer to look after herself rather than trust to a silly, meddling, thick-headed, conceited, ignorant prize imbecile from the last house in imbecile town. And you,” said Bobby, “who want to establish a chain of hotels in all the capitals of the world! You mean perhaps a chain of cat’s-meat barrows?”

  Camion wilted under this version of a commination service, Bobby pronounced very slowly and thoughtfully, pausing every now and again for reflection in his search for the ‘mot juste’. Camion tried to interrupt once or twice but Bobby’s upraised hand checked him. Bobby said: “Another thing, what do you mean? ‘If anything happened’ to you? Why should it?”

  “That at least,” Camion answered, “is my affair. They are not true, then, the things I was told about you?”

  “Silly rubbish,” Bobby answered. “Only a boy like you, without sense or experience, would have paid any attention to such a tale. I don’t suppose you would either, in a general way, only you’re a bit rattled; upset, I mean. Not quite yourself just now, are you? what with murders happening round here and general excitement and jealousy. Do you good if you put your head in a bucket of water and kept it there every night for an hour or two. Williams would like to clear me out. So he thought he would have a try. Clumsy. The fellow�
�s a fool. Look here, what’s this about something happening to you? Has Williams asked you to pay a visit to the mill for a talk?”

  “How do you know?” asked Camion bewilderedly. “You know then everything?”

  “I’ve a few brains,” Bobby explained. “You know. Brains. I mentioned them before. First time you knew such things existed? Not that I mean I’ve got so many myself. At least, I know that’s what they think where I work over in London. See here, you keep an eye on Williams.”

  “I am not afraid.”

  “It’s always wise to be afraid,” Bobby said quietly.

  Camion began to look scornful and haughty again.

  “That is not our idea here,” he said. “If anything happens to me, it will not be through Williams.”

  “Through whom, then?” Bobby asked, but Camion only shrugged his shoulders and then after a pause walked away.

  “Now, I wonder,” Bobby said to himself, “what the young fool means. Something upsetting him so badly he can’t think straight. Only what?”

  Useless though to try to guess with so little to go upon, since even a guess must have some starting point.

  It was a warm fine evening, and, having nothing else to do, Bobby went for a short stroll. Coming back, he turned in again at the café he had visited before. The first person he saw was Williams sitting alone at a table, before him an empty glass and a bottle nearly empty. Bobby at once went towards him. Williams scowled and, pouring out what was left in the bottle, drank it off. Bobby said with his most amiable smile:

  “Oh, about that photo. I just wanted to thank you for not making it quins. You know I really could not have endured quins.”

  “Think you’re funny, don’t you?” snarled Williams.

  “More a faint and far-off hope than an actual thought,” explained Bobby. “But people I have to do with often laugh—only sometimes it is on the wrong side of their mouths.”