“Don’t we?” said Bobby meekly. “But what’s become of Volny then?”
“I could make a guess,” Eudes told him gravely. “Up there, up on the hill-side, with that other old black crow who sits there, watching and waiting and hatching mischief. I saw him ride off that way on his bicycle.”
“You mean he is staying with the Abbé Taylour?”
“You have visited the Abbé Taylour? Yes, up there, for it is there he went once before, when he quarrelled with his father and wished by his absence to reduce his mother to despair and by that his father to submission, as indeed soon happened. Few know where he was then, but it happens that Monsieur Shields, your countryman and my friend, met him there that night.”
“Shields?” repeated Bobby very surprised for he could not think for what reason Shields could have been wandering about late at night near the Abbé Taylour’s hut when he himself lived on the other side of the Bornay Massif. “What was Shields doing there?” he asked.
“It was on one of his visits to Mademoiselle Polthwaite,” Eudes explained. “He used to come sometimes; he would stay a night or two at the hotel, visit Miss Polthwaite, talk about her work, take little excursions to make sketches and his paintings. On one of them he stayed too long and had to take refuge with the Abbé Taylour.”
“Must have been crowded in that little hut with three of them,” observed Bobby. “I suppose if it was summer, one of them could sleep outside.”
“It was in the winter, before Christmas,” Eudes said, “early, before the snow came. It was late that year. No doubt they kept each other warm.”
Eudes laughed very much at this idea and then appeared suddenly to realize that he had taken rather more than usual of a rather stronger wine than he was accustomed to. He announced firmly that much as he regretted leaving so dear, so good, so amiable a friend as Bobby, it was time for him to return home.
He went off accordingly, walking very steadily but somehow giving the impression that he was being careful to walk steadily, and Bobby, whose own head was buzzing from the effects of a wine richer than he also was accustomed to, was not sorry to seek his own bed.
The next day was a Sunday, and Bobby thought it would be a good opportunity to visit Shields as that gentleman had invited him to do. That the missing Volny was not, as Eudes had suggested, with the Abbé Taylour in his isolated hut up in the hills, Bobby felt fairly certain. Volny had gone off on his bicycle, and one does not as a rule attempt to go hill-climbing on a bicycle. Eudes’s story, though, of a previous meeting with Shields, had struck Bobby as possibly significant. Very probably the meeting of these three men, Volny, Taylour, Shields, in that lonely hut had been entirely accidental, but just possibly it had not. And if Volny, disappearing on his bicycle and without apparently much money in his pocket, since his father was said to keep him on a short allowance and he had none of his own, had taken refuge with Shields, as was at any rate a possibility, then there would be a proof of continued connection that would bear further investigation.
Bobby departed therefore by the first train available next day. At Clermont he had to wait for a train to Barsac and he remembered Shields had told him the connections were always bad. He filled in the time by taking a stroll round the town, admired the Puy de Dome from a new point of view, decided that if ever he had the time to spare he would make the ascent, admired, too, the famous statue of Vercingetorex and the less famous one of Pascal— naturally philosophers have smaller, less noble statues than have warriors—found the church where Peter the Hermit preached the first Crusade, and caught his train to land him in Barsac before eleven.
He knew roughly from the directions Shields had given him where the house lay. So first he treated himself to a light meal at a café, then smoked a reflective cigarette or two and finally reached his destination at what he hoped was the tactful hour of half-past one when he thought lunch would probably be over and yet the business or the repose of the afternoon not yet begun.
The house was situated a little distance outside the small town and did not look in very good repair. The fairly large garden surrounding it had a somewhat neglected air, too, as though Mr. Shields, though more fortunate than most artists in these days, since he seemed to possess a faithful clientele in the United States, was yet by no means inclined to spend money on his place of habitation. Nor did Bobby much like the position of the house. It lay in a hollow, it looked damp, it was cut off on the south by close-growing trees, on the north it was exposed to wind sweeping down from the high ground behind, the Bornay Massif on the other side of which lay Citry-sur-l’eau.
Rusty, unpainted iron gates admitted to the garden. Bobby passed through them and went on up a weed-grown gravel path to the house. He knocked once or twice and rang the jangling and ancient bell whose echoes he could hear resounding from the interior. But no one came, and after a time he gave up the effort. Annoying, he thought, to have come so far, only to find Shields out. Sketching, perhaps, though Bobby had hoped Sunday would be a good day to catch him at home. Thinking that just possibly some one might be at the back or in the garden, Bobby strolled round. Here there were more signs of care and cultivation, most of the space being given up to vegetables. There were two or three outhouses, too. Bobby walked round the garden, noticed there was a back gate that led straight on to the waste ground of the Massif that came right down to the garden fence, and then wandering back and noticing that one of the outhouses was open he went inside to sit down, out of the sun, smoke a cigarette and wait a little in the hope that some one would appear.
The shed was evidently chiefly used as a receptacle for garden and other odds and ends. Dust was everywhere and cobwebs hung in festoons. Not an inviting place, Bobby thought, but it did offer shade and the sun was hot. Various tools, broken, damaged, rusting, lay about. In one corner was a heap of flower pots and in another some of the small glass frames used for forcing early vegetables. Close by stood the remnants of a bale of binder twine, used presumably for tying up plants, and piled against one wall was a great heap of sacks of artificial manure. Bobby regarded this with mild interest, wondering if Shields was an agent for the sale of the stuff or was taking care of it for some neighbouring farmer, since there seemed to be more of it than a garden of this size would require in half a century or so. He noticed, too, a broken-down bicycle in one place, and then observed that there was another, in better repair, pushed away behind the sacks of artificial manure and so well hidden that only because one sack had slipped had it become visible.
Bobby went across to look at it and noticed that it showed no such ‘plaque’ as French regulations demand. But then regulations in France are not always very closely obeyed, and Bobby, noticing that some of the artificial manure sacks seemed much cleaner and freer from dust than most of the surrounding articles, as though they had not been there long, or been recently moved, made himself a seat on them and was enjoying a cigarette when a gruff voice from the door wanted to know who he was and what he was doing there.
The speaker appeared to be a working man in his Sunday clothes. Bobby explained that he had come to visit Mr. Shields, who had promised to show him his paintings, but there was no one at home and so he had decided to wait for a little. He asked if it were known when Mr. Shields would be back, learned that he was probably out painting somewhere, offered the new-comer a cigarette, and was soon on friendly terms. It appeared that his name was Ducane, that he cultivated the garden on a sharing arrangement, Mr. Shields being entitled to such of the produce as he chose to claim for his own use, and Ducane taking the rest, for sale or use, as payment for his work. Ducane explained, too, that he had heard some one was inquiring for Monsieur Shields’s house, and as he knew the artist was out and there had been occasional mysterious and mischievous intruders in the garden who had done a certain amount of damage, he had come along to see what was happening.
“Quite right, too,” agreed Bobby. “Your duty both to yourself and to Mr. Shields. But what kind of mischief and what sort
of mysterious intruder?”
Ducane shook his head. That, he explained, was a question, a veritable question. Bobby waited patiently. He had soon decided that Ducane was of those whom it is best not to hurry.
“Truly, monsieur,” Ducane said finally, “if we knew that, then there would be much that we should understand better. But as it is, it is beyond comprehension, and so indeed Monsieur the Commissaire of Police said himself, for I, I who am now speaking, I heard him say it aloud.”
CHAPTER XIII
ARTIST AT HOME
Startled as he was by this sudden reference to so important an official as a commissaire of police having been interested in whatever it might be that had happened here, Bobby was careful to show no special sign of interest.
“Bit of mischief by some boys, was it?” he asked, offering Ducane another cigarette. “I daresay your kids here are just as full of devilry as ours are in England. I’m English, you know, but I expect you spotted that from my accent.”
“Monsieur speaks our language admirably,” Ducane assured him. “Like Monsieur Shields almost, one could take him for a true Frenchman.”
Bobby expressed proper appreciation of the compliment and then remarked:
“Probably you sit for Monsieur Shields, don’t you? As a model, I mean.”
Ducane looked rather surprised.
“No,” he said, “no, that has never been suggested.”
Bobby looked very surprised.
“I should have thought any artist would have been glad of the chance of getting you to sit,” he remarked. “A countenance so interesting, so—how shall I say it? so different. One can see you have suffered, you have wept, you have understood.”
Ducane smirked, purred, behaved as ninety-nine point nine per cent of us would behave on being told that we looked ‘different’—dearest praise of all in this standardized civilization of ours—and that we had ‘suffered’ and had ‘understood’. An Englishman might not quite have liked being told he had wept, but for a Frenchman that was an additional proof of insight and of sympathy.
“Got him eating out of my hand now,” said Bobby to himself with Anglo-Saxon brutality. Aloud he said: “But without doubt Monsieur Shields has found another model. It is remarkable, it is fortunate. Some one in the village?”
“There is young Pierre,” Ducane admitted, somewhat reluctantly. “A youngster, a boy, a child.” He paused there, and Bobby thought it just as well or else probably the young Pierre would have been denied even birth. Ducane continued: “Once or twice he has been up there in the studio. But seldom. In general Monsieur Shields paints in the open air, for his models trees and rocks that cost him nothing. As for me, I have no time to waste sitting still doing nothing.”
“But one pays?” Bobby pointed out.
“Not so much as all that,” retorted Ducane. “It is why the young Pierre would come no longer. All very well to have one’s portrait shown the world over but one must gain one’s bread as well.”
“That is understood,” agreed Bobby, “and when one has work, one must attend to it. Cabbages and cauliflowers do not grow by accident. But to-day is a Sunday. See now. Suppose you gave me a sitting? For an hour or two merely.” He produced his sketching materials he had fortunately brought with him. “That is all. We talk. We discuss. There are many things two intelligent men can converse upon. You speak to me of your life, of your work, of the village, of what you will. You tell me, for example, of the mischief those boys did in your garden. As for me I work as I listen. At the end there is twenty francs for you. What do you say? Only, remember, I am not an artist of the first rank, like Monsieur Shields, though indeed it is difficult to understand why he has resisted the challenge there is in your features to even the most skilled brush. I shall do my best, but, remember, it is part of the bargain that you are not disappointed if it is a failure. Perhaps then I shall wish to try again.”
Ducane promised gravely to control any disappointment he felt but was evidently determined to be critical.
“Good,” said Bobby cheerfully as he set to work. “Now let us talk. About anything. Go ahead. I am waiting. I listen.” This, of course, as Bobby had expected, reduced Ducane to an embarrassed silence. His mind became blank, which was indeed its normal state, save as regarded growing vegetables, the only subject on which his mental processes had ever troubled to exercise themselves. But then a demand to begin to talk about anything would by the general working of the law of opposites reduce most people to silence.
“For instance,” said Bobby, when he judged the silence had lasted long enough, “about—what was it? Oh, yes, boys doing damage in the garden here.”
“Ah, no,” answered Ducane, finding his tongue now, “it was not boys. The footprints were of a man—enormous. Seven feet high at the least, declared Monsieur the Commissaire, “all over the garden they were and then they vanished—like that—pouf—as if he who made them had turned into thin air.”
“Was that all?” asked Bobby.
“It was enough,” Ducane retorted in a slightly offended tone. “Would monsieur not be disturbed if he found enormous and mysterious footsteps all around his house? But there was worse. It was as though a deliberate purpose had been to walk on my seed beds I had so carefully prepared. Tools had been thrown about. Some I did not find for days. A ladder had been put up against the house near the window. Monsieur Shields did not like that. My seed beds, my tools, all that was nothing. A ladder near a window, that was something to think about.”
“Odd,” said Bobby. “When was all this?”
“Early in March, when the snow had gone and one was beginning one’s work.”
“Nothing else happened?” asked Bobby.
“Nothing. That was what puzzled. Yet it was disconcerting, it was bewildering. As indeed admitted Monsieur the Commissaire of Police himself.”
“You reported it to him?”
“It was hardly an affair for him,” explained Ducane. “These big bonnets, they would not trouble themselves about the destruction of my seed beds or a ladder against a wall. They had indeed the inconceivable stupidity to suggest that I, I myself, had left it there. It was the brigadier to whom I spoke.”
“What did he think?” asked Bobby, who knew that ‘brigadier’ corresponded roughly to our local sergeant of police. “I suppose he reported it to Monsieur the Commissaire?”
“It was not altogether that,” Ducane answered. “An old foreign woman had committed suicide and as she was English also and a friend of Monsieur Shields, the commissaire came to ask Monsieur Shields what he knew about her and if he could tell why she had drowned herself. For me, I should choose a more pleasant end than jumping down a well. But everyone to his own taste. As for those gigantic footsteps, the commissaire made nothing of them. He would have sung a different tune if they had been in his garden, on his seedbeds. Monsieur Shields was angry about that, for he, he feared burglary. He arranged that for a time the brigadier should pass by regularly during the night. After that, the footsteps ceased and my seed beds were not again destroyed. That, it was a relief.”
A curious tale, Bobby thought. Was it merely some piece of village spite or mischief or was there some deeper significance? If so, what could it be?
“It was really in connection with poor Miss Polthwaite’s death that the commissaire came to make his inquiries?” Bobby remarked. “But what had Monsieur Shields to do with Miss Polthwaite’s suicide?”
“It was not altogether plain at first that there had not been an assassination,” Ducane explained. “It was only the inquiry that gave proof of suicide. Before that there had been talk. Nor has it altogether ceased even yet. Naturally at first one thought of Monsieur Shields. He, too, was English. They were friends. It was very possible there had been an affair and that he had grown tired, she had remained persistent, and the affair had ended as such affairs sometimes end when the woman chooses not to understand. But it was clear there had been no affair —when he visited Citry-sur-l’eau he stayed alway
s in the hotel, never with her, and also there was another who was her friend. Besides, he had not visited Citry, or indeed left here, all that week. Also, since he was not her lover, he had no reason to kill.”
“No, I see that,” agreed Bobby, “but one kills sometimes for other reasons than love.”
“Seldom,” pronounced Ducane. “One loves. One kills. That is to be understood. For love, it goes to a young man’s head. Inconceivable, incredible, when one is married, that one ever felt like that, but so it is. For money also one kills, or for hate. But who could hate an old foreigner like Miss Polthwaite—name of names, what a word to wrap one’s tongue round—and there was no sign of robbery, nothing missing, nothing seemed to have been taken. Certainly there was no quarrel between Monsieur Shields and Mademoiselle Polthwaite and also as Monsieur the Commissaire said himself, as Monsieur Shields was here, he could not have been there.”
“I suppose not,” agreed Bobby, “but how do they know he was here? I was in Citry this morning and now I’m here. It’s not so far.”
“But undoubtedly you came by train—in the daytime that is possible but not at night, and that Monsieur Shields was here during the day, all the world knows and I also, for I, I who speak to you, I saw him myself.”
“Well, there are motors, bicycles, one has legs even,” Bobby pointed out. “Look here,” he added, “I’m only talking, you know, I’m not making suggestions. I don’t mean I suspect Monsieur Shields of anything. I can t because I don’t know anything. So don’t go saying things to him.”
Murder Abroad Page 14
