Murder Abroad

by E. R. Punshon

  “Extremely interesting,” Bobby remarked, closed the book, handed it back to its owner much to that gentleman’s relief, decided instead of reading to sit with a cigarette in the entrance hall that did duty for a lounge, and there employ his thoughts with the many problems pressing for a solution.

  After déjeuner, the rain having stopped but everything being still drenched and dripping so that sketching was out of the question, he went for a stroll, and took his way towards the Pépin Mill. As he had hoped might be the case, both Mr. and Mrs. Williams were in the garden, but as soon as they saw him approaching, Mrs. Williams scurried away into the mill, and Williams, after giving the approaching Bobby a long stare deliberately turned his back and walked off to the bottom of the garden, where it was bounded by the close growth of beech and chestnut trees Bobby had noticed before.

  “Meant for a hint,” Bobby thought as he crossed the tiny plank bridge over the mill stream, “but then I was never good at taking hints.”

  He went on and hailed Williams with a cheery good afternoon. Williams turned round with his back to the screen of chestnut and beech, but made no answer. Bobby said:

  “I thought I would come along now the rain’s stopped. There’s a question I wanted to ask you.”

  “Coming yourself this time instead of sending your pal?”

  “My pal?”

  “Working in with Volny, aren’t you?”

  “Volny?” repeated Bobby, a good deal surprised. “You mean the young chap who has just cleared out?”

  “Yes. What have you done with him? What’s the game? What was he snooping round here for the other morning?”

  “Was he?” asked Bobby, still more surprised.

  “Yes, was he?” snarled Williams. “My missus heard him, not much she misses,” he said with a sort of sombre pride. “Looked out of the window and saw him. Just after dawn it was. Called me, she did, and then he caught sight of us at the window and bunked. Off and out of sight before I had a chance to dress and get after him.”

  “Curious,” said Bobby. “How do you mean, snooping around? Was he trying to get in or anything like that?”

  “Don’t know anything about it, do you?” retorted Williams. “Oh no. Wouldn’t guess he had the cover off the well and staring down it, though what good that would do him, I don’t know.”

  “Nor I,” said Bobby, very puzzled, wondering indeed if the whole odd story could be an invention and yet thinking that even more improbable and purposeless.

  “Now he’s turned up missing,” Williams said. “Well, what’s the game? What have you done with him?”

  “You mean you think Volny and I have been working together for some unknown reason?” Bobby asked.

  “Don’t know so much about the unknown reason,” growled Williams, “but the working together’s pretty plain. I’m here. You want us out of it, you and Volny.”

  “Curious,” said Bobby. “I thought it was you wanted me out of it, and in fact that’s what I came to see you about.”

  Williams made no comment. He was looking thoughtfully not at Bobby but past him, at the trees behind, as though seeking counsel from them. Bobby, waiting and watching, became aware of a faint rustling sound close behind, amidst the trees, as though some small cautious animal were lurking there. He remembered that once before he had had that same impression in this garden. He made no attempt to turn. He knew that if he did he would see nothing nor did he wish to let Williams suspect that he was so much on the alert. None the less he was aware of a feeling that he was in peril, and there came into his mind a swift memory of the damp, narrow, brick-lined wall of the well, of that blackness into which once he had peered, of the sullen gleam of the waiting water far beneath. A quick blow on the head from behind, a hurried removal of the well cover, a dull echoing splash below, and what would remain to show a living breathing human creature had once been there?

  Fanciful, perhaps. He told himself his imagination was running away with him, none the less he knew well in every nerve and fibre of his being that there was need of caution.

  “Was it you pinched my gold pencil?” Williams asked abruptly. “It’s gone and I saw you looking at it.”

  Bobby remembered how once he had noticed Williams fidgeting with such a pencil, but he had seen then, and saw now, no importance in the fact. He supposed that Williams was trying to be offensive and so he took no notice. He said instead:

  “You seem to have been telling rather wild fairy tales about me. Apparently you wanted to get me thrown out of the hotel. Well, what’s the idea?”

  Williams did not answer at once, but Bobby thought that there was a relaxation in that tension of which previously he had been aware. It was as though some other question had been expected, one more disturbing, more difficult to answer. Desperately he wondered what it could be. Williams was looking, if anything, even more sulky than usual, but there began to die down that dark menacing glow in his eyes of which till now Bobby had been aware. Williams said presently:

  “Tit for tat, that’s all.” He paused. He had his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his head bent forward, but with eyes and ears alert, almost as if he were listening for some message. Then he said:

  “Well, why can’t we chip in together?”

  “In what way?”

  “Same as you and Volny.”

  “What makes you think Volny and I have anything to do with each other?”

  “Plain enough, isn’t it?” Williams retorted. “Volny has been doing a lot of snooping round here. Began as soon as we got here. Didn’t expect the old place to let so soon. Thought he was going to have it all to himself; and when he found he wasn’t, tried to scare us off. That didn’t work, so then he fetched you along, or maybe you were behind from the first. And soon as you turned up, Volny snooping around again and shots fired to see if that would do the trick.”

  “You admit now there was a shot?” Bobby remarked. “Why did you tell lies about it?”

  “We didn’t want a fuss; we didn’t know then you were in it, too; we thought you and Volny being around together was coincidence. Of course, there was no coincidence about it. Was it you did the shooting or was it Volny? We wondered about that and I kept my eyes skinned. I saw Volny going off up in the hills when I knew he ought to have been at work in the fields and then I saw you follow. Plain enough, you and him going to have a quiet talk. Well, what I say is, how about a deal together, me and you?” It was a development that Bobby had never anticipated, though he had thought of many possibilities. He did not quite know what to reply and Williams continued:

  “Where is Volny, anyway? What’s the big idea, him dodging off? You haven’t done him in, have you?”

  “What? What’s that?” Bobby asked, startled by the question.

  “Have you done him in?” Williams repeated. He looked at Bobby closely, as if now attaching more importance to a question not at first meant seriously. “Well, have you?” he repeated.

  “Is there any reason to think anything’s happened to him? Do you know anything?” Bobby asked slowly, and a fear he had hitherto hardly been conscious of leaped in his mind to sudden life.

  “Turned up missing, hasn’t he? One party been croaked around here, why not another?” Williams asked, still with that new and strange expression of mingled doubt and wonder and suspicion in his eyes. “Looking a bit green about the gills, aren’t you? Lumme, I do believe I’ve tumbled to it all right.”

  “Believe what you like,” Bobby muttered, very well aware he might in fact be looking ‘green about the gills’, now that a new terror was slowly taking shape and substance in his heart.

  “Where there’s been one murder, sometimes there’s another,” Williams said.

  “You mean Miss Polthwaite was murdered?” Bobby asked. “How do you know?” Then he said: “Did you murder her?”

  “Don’t you try to come that over us,” Williams retorted, scowling. “We were nowhere near. In Paris we were. See?”

  “You mean you’ve got an
alibi?” Bobby asked. “Alibis need checking. That’s my experience.”

  “What do you mean, your experience?” Williams said, mistrustful again. “Why don’t you spill it?” he demanded, “What’s your game? First of all we thought you must be a regular dick, but you can’t be that very well, not out here, not in France; the Frenchies wouldn’t stand for it. Are you a private man? Or just a blasted, interfering, meddling snooper? One thing’s sure, you’re no artist.”

  “Why not?” asked Bobby, a little hurt.

  “Don’t look it,” said Williams briefly. “I’ve seen ’em, Chelsea, Soho, round there. You’re as different as chalk from cheese, and you haven’t got that silly lost look like most of them, either, just as if they were where they knew they didn’t belong.”

  “In any case, you’ve no reason to worry about me,” Bobby pointed out. “Take me as you find me. If you’ve any real reason to think there’s anything queer about Volny’s having cleared off, you ought to tell the police. It may be awkward, if I have to tell them, as I certainly should, that you had suspicions and kept them to yourself.”

  “Now, see here,” Williams retorted angrily. “I know nothing about Volny, or about Miss Polthwaite either. We came here for a quiet holiday. My old woman’s nerves were bad, she wanted a rest. And then we hear there’s been murder done on the place and people come poking about wanting to look down the well and where it was done, and all that. Enough to upset any one.”

  Bobby wondered how much of truth there was in this. Possible, he supposed, the Williamses were simply on the spot by pure accident, and until their arrival had known nothing of the Polthwaite tragedy. Yet it had been widely reported and commented on in the press.

  “Well, then,” he asked; “if you’re not interested, what’s all this about working together and what for?”

  “We’ve got interested,” Williams said. “If there is anything here to show the old girl was really murdered and who did it, I suppose it ought to be turned up. We’re willing to help. Why not? Only we’ve got to be sure first. Cards on the table and all that, open and straightforward and nothing kept back.”

  “You told Mademoiselle Simone you had proof of some kind?”

  “Not me. I asked her if she thought there was proof hid here, not that we had it. It was her started it, asking questions when the wife was in that bit of a shop of hers. The wife was a bit curious, same as women are, and she asked the girl to come along and tell us all about it but it didn’t seem she knew anything really, only wanted a peep down the well and then got scared. My own idea is she wanted photos of the well taken, so she could sell em to tourists and people. ‘Scene of the tragedy.’ Marked with an X. That sort of thing. I suppose it was her gave you that message?”

  “I don’t think it matters who it was,” Bobby answered. “Frankly, Mr. Williams, I don’t much believe you’re putting all your cards on the table as you call it. You may be here by accident, but I doubt it. I do not believe Mademoiselle Simone was the first to speak to you about the murder. I don’t believe she showed any interest in the well. My guess is you were trying to frighten her. I think you were trying to find out something you thought she might know. I think you are here not by accident but for some purpose and I wonder what that purpose is.”

  “Curiosity,” answered Williams promptly. “Wouldn’t you be curious yourself if you found you had come to a place where there had been a murder, and no one knew who it was, and people came snooping round all the time?”

  “Your own affair,” Bobby answered, “but I shouldn’t try to play tricks with the French police if I were you.”

  “Same to you and many of them,” growled Williams. “As you know such a lot about that Simone girl, ask her if it was her fancy boy did in Miss Polthwaite?”

  “Who is her fancy boy?” asked Bobby.

  “Volny, isn’t it? Used to be young Camion but she gave him the go-by because they think in the village it was Camion did it. I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “No guts. All bounce and swank. Thinks about things, doesn’t do ’em. Besides, why should he? He was getting all he wanted out of the old girl. Doted on him, they say. She was the goose laying golden eggs for him.”

  “There’s that,” agreed Bobby, though he thought such considerations overlooked the possible complications that might have resulted from Camion’s realization of the false position he was in, or the even more possible results of some sudden outburst of anger or revulsion. “If it wasn’t Camion, who was it?”

  “Volny.”

  “I thought your idea was he had been murdered himself?”

  “There might be a reason for that,” Williams said. “It might be he knew too much, it might be he had really found out something. There’s some one else likes to snoop round here. I’ve seen him. Told him to get out, too, and quick about it. But he’s been back all right.”

  “Who?”

  “An old blind beggar. I don’t know his name. He’s always about the village for what he can cadge. I happen to know he had a row with Miss Polthwaite. She said she would put the police on him. He didn’t like that. Swore revenge. Very upset over being threatened with the police.”

  Bobby could believe that. From the little he had seen of the Père Trouché, he could well imagine that no threat would be more likely to rouse his ire.

  “Hardly a reason for murder,” he suggested, though his voice was uneasy.

  “Might have lost his temper and hit out with that stick of his, knocked her out, then got scared and popped her down the well out of harm’s way. They say in the village he’s done a murder or two already. He pokes his nose into everything, gets to know everything, they’re all scared of him for what he knows and might tell. Suppose he got to know Miss Polthwaite had—” He paused and looked sharply at Bobby—“had anything of value? Money. Jewellery. Anything. If he got to know and came snooping round and she spotted him—well, there you are.”

  “But you say he is still snooping round?”

  “Perhaps he didn’t get what he was after. Perhaps she had it too well hidden. What do you think?”

  “It’s possible,” agreed Bobby. “So many things are, aren’t they?”

  “Another thing,” Williams said. “I don’t believe he’s blind, not him, no more than you or me. Put on, that is. Ever seen the way he hops about? Blind, my hat.” He added thoughtfully: “Might be Volny knew and suspected something and that’s why he’s been done in. Easy for a man you might think blind and wasn’t, to do the job.”

  CHAPTER XV

  HUNDRED-FRANC TEST

  It was in a disturbed and troubled mood that Bobby slowly made his way back towards the village. The possibility suggested by Williams was one that had not before occurred to him and yet one he felt could not be utterly dismissed.

  Especially disturbing did he find the suggestion that possibly the Père Trouché’s blindness was only fictitious. Was that extraordinary dexterity and knowledge of his surroundings displayed by the old beggar really due to abnormal cultivation of his other senses or had he in fact, like other people, the use of his eyes?

  Again, the old man boasted, and the claim seemed more or less justified, that he knew most of what went on in the neighbourhood. He might then very well have heard in some way of Miss Polthwaite’s gift of diamonds to the curé, he might have guessed there were more where those had come from, and then what a temptation would present itself.

  Bobby did not much like the look of things. True, the old man had boasted of his indifference to money, but was that indifference probable? Was there any one in all the world so totally indifferent to money? A voice broke in upon his thought, saying:

  “You think then it is possible the story is true?”

  Bobby gave a little jump. The words came strangely apt to his thoughts, and came from Père Trouché himself, sitting there by the road side, on a bank still only partially dried by the sunshine that had followed the storm, and so far hidden by a growth of bushes and a tall chest
nut tree that Bobby had not noticed he was there.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, standing still.

  “That surprises you, Mr. Englishman,” the old man said with his low, hoarse chuckle. “Indeed, it seems to me that it more than surprises you. Why?”

  “I didn’t see you,” Bobby said. “You startled me.”

  “That is true but not all the truth,” Père Trouché answered. “There was more in your voice than that, more than that, too, in your footsteps.”

  “What was in my footsteps?” Bobby asked.

  “Perplexity, hesitation, doubt; all that was plain even to the ear of a child. I said to myself: The Englishman, too, has heard, and he, too, is troubled. But in your voice there was more also, a shade, a nuance that I did not recognize. What was it?”

  Bobby crossed to where the old man sat, basking in the warmth of the strong sun and apparently quite indifferent to the damp its hot rays were drawing from ground soaked by the recent rain.

  “Seat yourself then,” the old man said with something of the air of a host putting his guests at their ease. “Here there is room for all. It is Monsieur and Madame Williams you have been visiting, is it not?”

  “How do you know?” Bobby retorted, though, with more respect for possible rheumatic pains, he remained standing.

  Père Trouché made so angry and impatient a gesture with his staff Bobby almost thought he was about to strike him with it, nor could he help the thought flashing through his mind that perhaps in some moment of irritation that gesture might well pass into action. Was that what had happened before in the Pépin Mill?

  “But it is childish,” the old beggar was saying, “you and your perpetual ‘How do you know?’ Do you not come from the direction of the Pépin Mill? Could I not hear your footsteps on the bridge? Do you not know that footsteps on a wooden bridge sound altogether differently from footsteps on a road? Soon I suppose you will ask me how I know there is a wooden bridge leading to the Pépin Mill? Why is it then that the good God has found it well to deprive some of us of all intelligence?”