Murder Abroad

by E. R. Punshon

  For the moment he appeared to have forgotten Bobby’s presence. Not until he finished collecting his scattered soap and piling the pieces up on the table in a heap from which he seemed unable to keep his eyes did he speak to him.

  “Monsieur will excuse me,” he said then. “One gets into the way of talking to oneself when one lives much alone. It is a way of hearing a human voice. Also one is a little apt to lose the head when one receives without warning enough of soap to last a year with care. All one needs now is hot water.”

  “Well, there’s some in the kitchen,” Bobby remarked.

  The curé looked surprised.

  “In the kitchen? Hot water? But no, that, how can that be?” He went quickly to the kitchen door. Bobby followed and pointed to the pot on the brazier of charcoal. The curé said: “Monsieur, that is my soup, my dinner.”

  “Oh, no,” Bobby told him. “Some one must have been playing tricks. That’s only hot water, a bit greasy.”

  Looking alarmed, the curé crossed the floor, lifted the lid of the pot, peered anxiously within, seemed relieved.

  “It is my good soup for my dinner,” he said. He looked doubtfully and with some suspicion at Bobby: “I do not fully understand why you speak so,” he remarked, “but if you mean that you wish for a share, you are welcome. Such as are my meals,” he added simply, “I share them always with those who desire it and are hungry. Yet unless there is some trouble at your hotel, you will receive there perhaps more varied nourishment.”

  “You don’t mean that greasy water is your dinner?” Bobby asked.

  “Monsieur,” said the curé, “it is better to thank God for food than to call it by such names as greasy water. My soup is not rich, perhaps, but it stays the stomach.”

  He went back into the front room. Somewhat at a loss, Bobby followed him. The curé said:

  “You were waiting to see me, monsieur? You do not believe, however? You others, English, you are not believers, you deny Holy Church? You do not believe?” he repeated questioningly.

  “Oh, yes, why not?” Bobby said.

  The curé looked doubtful and shook his head.

  “I have never noticed it,” he said. “The English tourists, they come sometimes to the church to stare at the black Virgin, but only as at a curiosity in a museum. It is difficult perhaps to be sure, since they are not able to speak so as to make themselves understood.” He turned back to his soap. “I must put it away,” he said, “but where will it be safe? for I have no place to keep valuables.” He gave a little apologetic laugh. “When one has had no soap for so long,” he said, “it is exciting to have all at once so much.”

  “But surely,” protested Bobby, more puzzled than ever, “there’s no shortage of soap, is there? You can buy as much as you like, can’t you?”

  “Without doubt,” answered the curé, “if, that is to say, you have the money.”

  “Well, soap’s not as dear as all that,” declared Bobby, still very puzzled, more especially as by now it was quite clear that drink had nothing to do with the curé’s show of excitement, and surely, Bobby thought, a few cakes of soap were not sufficient cause.

  The curé had put his soap away now on a shelf in the buffet and, sitting down, he looked up thoughtfully at Bobby.

  “I regret,” he said. “I was a little beyond myself. One would not think soap could be so exciting? Ah, well, if for so long you had had to make shift with crumbled lava, you would understand better. You say it is cheap to buy? Monsieur, an ingot of gold at a sou would be dear if you had no sou.” He smiled again as Bobby still continued to look very bewildered. “You thought that I was mad or I had been drinking too much wine?” he said. “It was not that. Listen. You are a foreigner. I will tell you things I never tell my own people. Among them one has one’s pride, hein? See now. I have from the bishop—” he named a sum amounting, Bobby calculated rapidly, to just about the forty pounds a year on which once in England another parish priest thought himself passing rich. “I have also what my parishioners pay me for a mass, for this or that. But they do not always pay, they economize on their duties to the Church. This soap that I have received, it is for dues owing me for years. The Church, they delay, they neglect, they refuse. Monsieur Eudes, he receives more each month to establish his paper of revolution and infidelity than I in a year. Also out of what I receive the Citry church must come first, the priest may starve but his church must be cared for, the mass must be said, the repairs must be made. In winter there must be a little warmth though the presbytery has none. But all that does not interest you who do not believe. There was a matter on which you wished perhaps to speak to me since you were waiting my return? ”

  “On the contrary, what you say interests me very greatly,” Bobby said. “Didn’t you tell me once you had hopes of rebuilding your church here?”

  “It was a dream,” the curé answered. “It is a dream I had. There was an uncle in America. He used to write sometimes of the great things he was doing there. But now he is dead and it seems that he left no money at all so that he was buried as a pauper. It appears he had misfortunes in business, but that he did not say, he preferred to write as though he were rich still. Then there arrived Mile. Polthwaite. She came to look at the black Virgin. She said to me things. Perhaps I misunderstood. It appeared that she was very rich. It would have been for the repose of her soul if she had done what she spoke of. Is it not a good thing to give your fortune to the Church and die and be received in Paradise?” The curé was growing excited again. He was on his feet now and in his eyes shone once more that fanatical gleam Bobby had seen in them before. “But she is dead; she has received her call, and I, no matter what black guilt I must confess to, at least I say each day a mass for the repose of her soul.”

  “Guilt? Black guilt? What do you mean?” Bobby asked, startled, but the curé only shook his head and made no other answer even when Bobby pressed him again.

  “Monsieur, I have nothing to say to you on this subject,” he answered firmly. “Neither do I know why you ask these questions. It is that that is beginning to interest me.”

  “I will tell you one reason,” Bobby said. “When I was in your church a day or two ago, I saw there, at the feet of the image of the Virgin, what I think were diamonds —seven of them. They are not there now.”

  “Monsieur,” said the curé quietly, “you are not the custodian of the possessions of the church.”

  “There is a story,” Bobby said, “that Miss Polthwaite possessed many such diamonds.”

  “Ah, you know that, you have heard that?” the curé said. He was facing Bobby now and looking at him very closely. “I will tell you then. I removed them. I noticed that you were looking, that you seemed interested. You stood upon a chair, I think, to look more closely. My own people, they do not rob; above all, not the Holy Virgin. But I do not know you, monsieur. You are a stranger. You are not of ours. You are of a country where they do not believe. Therefore I took my precautions.”

  “Oh, well,” muttered Bobby, slightly disconcerted to hear he had himself been an object of suspicion.

  “Also,” continued the curé, “it was plain you thought the stones of value. Of that, I was not sure before. Mademoiselle Polthwaite insisted that for those few pebbles I could receive many thousands of francs. No doubt she exaggerated, for the diamonds one knows, they sparkle and shine, as these did not, so that evidently even if they are diamonds at all, they are diamonds of an inferior quality, just as to-day there are pearl necklaces all our young girls wear that in former days a duchess or a countess would have been proud to own. But if they were of real value—well, our villagers are honest, yet when politics come in—well, there are some I would not trust. Eudes, for example,” said the curé, looking a good deal less Christian than should a good Christian priest, “though I might trust him not to rob me, yet he would rob the Church and boast of it. There is nothing he would not do, treason, murder, anything, to establish his newspaper of blasphemy and revolution that he talks of conti
nuously.” He paused, a little breathlessly, for his words had come tumbling out in his excitement, one on top of another as fast as he could get them uttered. Bobby said:

  “Was Miss Polthwaite murdered?”

  “Ah, you are thinking of Eudes,” the curé said. “About that, I know nothing. Yet I will say this, that I believe, I know, there is nothing that unhappy misguided victim of communist teaching would not do in order to secure the means to mislead, to deceive, to entrap honest folk in a net of ignorance and destruction and of folly and so to destroy all that stands for righteousness and peace and the salvation of the human soul.”

  CHAPTER XII

  ARTIST NOT AT HOME

  Bobby left the presbytery then and returned to the hotel in a mood of considerable doubt and bewilderment. He did not at all know what to make of this appearance of poverty so extreme that even soap became a luxury of which an unexpected supply produced such excitement. Nor did he much like to remember how at times the curé’s eyes had seemed to shine with the fires of fanaticism. Then, too, he found more than a little disturbing the curé’s tale of gifts and promises of future gifts made by Miss Polthwaite. Was it a confirmation of this story that the curé was certainly in possession of diamonds formerly her property—or was a darker, more dreadful explanation to be sought?

  Was it possible, Bobby asked himself, that the curé, brooding in his solitude on what he believed had been promised, and then abruptly disappointed, had been pushed beyond the bounds of sanity? Not but that he seemed perfectly sane and normal now, even though he was certainly a little excitable and not altogether unaffected by his lonely existence.

  Very strongly did Bobby realize how much his difficulties were increased by his comparative ignorance of the environment and psychology of these people. At home, in England, in London especially, he would have been able to place them all much more easily and to form on them a judgment much more likely to be accurate.

  He ate that evening an excellent dinner that might have been boiled cabbage and tapioca pudding for all he knew to the contrary. But he did notice that young Camion was not there to supervise the service and that in consequence things did not go as smoothly as usual.

  Later on, Bobby went for a short stroll that ended, as he was making it his habit, in the café he had visited before.

  It was as busy as usual, and when Bobby had found a table at which to seat himself he was both pleased and surprised when Eudes came to join him. By a lucky chance the child of whom Bobby had made a sketch, and then presented it to her, was one of the schoolmaster’s favourite pupils, and one who, in his opinion, showed promise of genuine artistic ability. Probably this nascent talent of hers explained the interest she had shown in Bobby’s work that had first attracted his attention to her.

  Eudes seemed in an expansive, genial mood, in no way diminished by the fact that Bobby’s hospitality took the form of asking him to share in a bottle of the most generous and expensive wine the patron could produce. Would Bobby, asked Eudes, an artist of such high merit, one of whom Monsieur Shields had spoken with respect, and Monsieur Shields was a man who was known, who had arrived, would Bobby look at some of the child’s drawings and give an opinion on them? It seemed Eudes wished her talent to be seriously cultivated. Her family disapproved, considering that any girl who knew how to cook knew all that was either necessary or desirable. Bobby expressed his willingness to do as desired, but suggested that seeking the opinion of the director of the nearest school of art and design would be more valuable. He himself, he pointed out, was neither critic nor teacher. It appeared, however, that the director in question was, in Monsieur Eudes’s considered opinion, a reactionary of the blackest hue. A strongly-supported rumour declared that he had been known to attend mass. The attention of the local deputy had been drawn to this dread suspicion, but he, a Laodicean, had done nothing, and there was reason to believe that the Sous-préfet, a man far worse than merely Laodicean, had even suppressed in the waste-paper basket certain reports on the subject that had been forwarded to him.

  “An intrigue, monsieur,” said Eudes darkly, permitting himself, however, the consolation of allowing his glass to be refilled. “It is the curse of France, these currents below the surface by which the people are influenced without their knowledge.”

  “But surely on a question of a child’s ability, no one would bother about politics?” suggested Bobby.

  “When one is stone deaf,” declared Eudes, whose glass was empty again and who displayed no reluctance to its being filled once more, “one’s judgment of all music is affected—whether of a Beethoven symphony or of jazz on a tin whistle.”

  Bobby did not quite see the analogy, though he thought it would probably be interesting to hear jazz played on a tin whistle. However, he did his best to look impressed and Eudes went on:

  “It is the gold of the Church, the enormous wealth she and her agents dispose of that gives them their power, that enables them to live in such unheard-of luxury.”

  “I had a chat with your curé to-day,” Bobby remarked. “I can’t say he seemed to me to be living in any kind of luxury.”

  “It is their cunning,” said Eudes earnestly, “they put on an appearance of poverty in order to deceive.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Bobby.

  Perhaps his tone showed a certain incredulity, for Eudes continued:

  “Oh, I do not deny that some of these black crows are forced to exist in a squalor that shows plainly what fate the rest of us would suffer if the Church secured the absolute dominion it aims at. Also there is a reward in view. If our curé ever succeeded in carrying out his cunning schemes to rebuild here his church in magnificence, so that that absurd block of wood he cherishes so much could become a fresh centre of degradation and superstition—”

  He paused, apparently unable to find words with which to express the fear and horror he felt at this prospect.

  “You mean the black Virgin?” Bobby asked.

  Eudes nodded, gloomily emptied his glass, put it down again firmly.

  “That shall never be,” he said, but there was uneasiness in his voice. “Never.”

  “You think,” Bobby asked, “that if a new church were built, enshrining the black Virgin, it would have a great influence here?”

  “It would give such fresh strength to old superstitions,” said Eudes with slow gravity, “as would undo all our work of enlightenment. A little time ago I admit I had a fear, a great fear. There threatened a danger, more formidable than I can tell. For there is nothing that these misguided, miserable tools of superstition and reaction will hesitate at, no crime at which they will draw back if it will give them and their masters the means to plunge honest folk further into morasses of ignorance and slavery and so destroy all hope of peace and progress and the liberation of the human mind.”

  His eyes were blazing now with much those same fires of fanaticism which only a little time before Bobby had seen shining in the eyes of the curé. Bobby watched uneasily. With two such fanatics, it seemed many things might have been possible. Eudes lowered his voice and spoke confidentially.

  “Happily that danger passed,” he said. “The money our curé hoped to get into his claws with which to enslave the population, it eluded him. Ah, what a triumph, how truly superb, for the cause of truth, of reason, of justice, if—”

  “Yes?” said Bobby as Eudes paused and once more he filled the schoolmaster’s glass.

  “If that very money,” Eudes continued, “escaped the claws of the church and came to be used for the establishment of a journal of true enlightenment, to achieve the final victory of truth and reason?”

  “How could that be?” Bobby asked, as indifferently and as carelessly as he could.

  But his hope that, as sometimes happens, a simple question asked naturally and with apparent indifference, might lead to fresh confidences, was disappointed. Eudes changed abruptly. He waved aside the bottle Bobby pushed towards him. He seemed to feel he had said too much, more than he would have
dreamed of saying to any one in the village, more than it would have been prudent to say to any compatriot, more indeed than it was wise to have said even to a foreigner little concerned with the conflict of ideas in another country. It even occurred to him that perhaps this rich and generous wine might have been loosening his tongue a trifle too much. All that showed plainly enough in his expression and Bobby tried again—shock tactics this time.

  “Was Mademoiselle Polthwaite murdered for her money, do you think?” he asked.

  Eudes leaned across the table and spoke in an undertone—a slightly thick undertone.

  “Monsieur,” he murmured, “of that I know nothing, I suspect nothing, yet I have my own thoughts I breathe to no one for it would be disloyal to say things of which there is no proof. Yet this I do say, that there are fanatics of the Church who would hesitate at nothing, who would persuade themselves that in its service all is permissible. All,” he repeated. “But of that we will say no more. Nothing. One’s lips are sealed. It is understood? Now we talk of other things.”

  “Let me fill your glass,” Bobby said. “It is empty.”

  “I thank you. No,” Eudes answered firmly. “You understand that I must set an example to the village? It is for that reason I push temperance to the verge of abstinence.”

  “Admirable,” murmured Bobby, surveying a bottle more than half empty, his share having been just one glass.

  But now he set an example he hoped might be followed by filling his own glass again. Eudes remained firm. He repeated:

  “We talk of other things, hein?”

  Occasion was provided almost immediately when from a table near by came some loud argumentative reference to the disappearance of the still missing Volny.

  “You hear?” Eudes asked. “How they talk! He has his admirers here, that lad, and there are those who think he has taken a ticket to America and that soon we shall hear of him as a new Carpentier, fighting for the world championship of the box. Ah, bah, he is not so good as all that, our little Volny, he is not even so fond of fighting as all that, not at least against those as big and strong as himself, or even bigger and stronger. Nor would he very willingly leave Citry-sur-l’eau at this moment—would you, monsieur, would any young man in love with a girl, depart and leave her to the attentions of his rival? But perhaps you do not understand that, for you are English, and you others, English, you do not understand love very well.”