Murder Abroad

by E. R. Punshon

  “Entrance of misunderstood and persecuted hero,” he thought to himself. “Hang it all, the boy’s a born actor.”

  Indeed the way in which Camion managed to suggest tragic innocence, the victim unjustly laid upon the altar of vengeance, and yet at the same time preserved the air of a desperado it would be imprudent to offend, was really magnificent.

  “Monsieur is not content,” he said once, bending darkly over a guest who had ventured some sort of trifling criticism; and the poor man went quite pale and hurriedly stammered out an expression of the most complete satisfaction to which Camion listened with an air of gloom that plainly said it was well for them both no complaint was intended.

  “The young fool,” Bobby muttered again, “he’ll act himself to the guillotine if he isn’t careful,” and then was startled to notice the commissaire’s alert, intelligent eyes turning thoughtfully from him to Camion and back again.

  The commissaire was the first to finish his meal and leave the dining-room. Bobby purposely lingered over his coffee but when he went into the entrance hall he found the commissaire there, talking to the elder Camion. The hotel keeper vanished, the commissaire turned to Bobby, introduced himself very politely, and explained that there seemed to be a certain uneasiness over the disappearance of one of the young men of the village—‘un nommé Volny, Henri’.

  “His father,” he explained, “the elder Volny, is not without his importance. He is in politics of the centre, a good republican, and a strong opponent of the Church.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bobby cautiously. “I know so little about French politics. Are all good republicans strong opponents of the Church?”

  The commissaire waved this aside, and Bobby thought he looked a little disappointed as though he had hoped that this reference to the elder Volny’s hostility to the Church might have elicited something interesting, though what, Bobby could not imagine. The commissaire went on:

  “At present, I see no reason to open a formal inquiry. Often in these days young people and their elders have very different ideas. The old family tradition is weakening. It is a pity. Not so long ago a father could arrange his son’s marriage and if the son ventured to ask for whom his hand was destined, the father could reply by telling him to mind his own business. To-day that young man in the question of marriage would say the same to his parents. Then perhaps a family scene. The young man—or sometimes the girl—takes himself off. Even with a daughter it might happen. The parents are in despair. They seek our assistance. What can we do? Presently no doubt the truant returns, or a letter arrives. Then all is well and our inaction has proved the best for all. Yet there is always the possibility that it is more serious; and it may be, monsieur, that I shall have to ask you for a statement, since it seems you and another were so uneasy one morning that you left your beds at a very early hour.”

  “I suppose Camion told you,” Bobby asked. “We saw nothing of Volny, nothing of any interest.”

  “So I understand,” answered the commissaire, “so I shall not bother you unless it becomes necessary to open an inquiry as I hope it will not. Indeed, I should not have troubled myself in the matter at all, only that one understands the anxieties of a parent, and if it were not that already one has heard of the young Camion.”

  “In connection with the murder of Miss Polthwaite?” Bobby asked, certain now there was more in the other’s mind than he was allowing to appear.

  The commissaire raised his eyebrows.

  “Murder?” he repeated. “You speak of murder?”

  “It is what I gather is the general belief in the village,” Bobby answered quietly.

  “Ah, the general village belief,” repeated the commissaire. A delicate shrug of the shoulders dismissed general village beliefs. “It is I myself,” he said, “who conducted the inquiry, and Monsieur Alain, the juge d’instruction, agreed with me there was no evidence to support any theory of violence, much to suggest that the poor woman destroyed herself.”

  “No doubt,” Bobby answered. “It is, of course, understood that I speak only of what I have heard in the village.”

  “One understands that,” agreed the commissaire, very politely, even with a little acquiescent bow, but none the less somehow making Bobby feel more uneasy still. “Monsieur is not at present thinking of leaving us?”

  “Oh, no, I am expecting to stay at least another couple of weeks,” answered Bobby, realizing that this meant no departure would in any case be permitted.

  “For my part,” observed the commissaire, “I trust our young friend will report himself in a day or two and then I trust his family will scold him well for the trouble he has caused. I shall pick a bone with him myself. One has work enough without false alarms.” He added abruptly: “You are observant, monsieur. I saw you watching Charles Camion and I saw that you were interested. I should be glad of your opinion.”

  Bobby hesitated.

  “My own impression,” he said at last, “is that he is impulsive, well meaning, amiable, but here entirely out of place. He lives, I think, too much in his imagination. He ought to be on the stage, he is a born actor.”

  “It is interesting, that,” the commissaire said thoughtfully. “You are perhaps accustomed, monsieur, to judging men? I think you may be right. But that type, the imaginative, the introvert, it has its dangers, too, for the comedy of the imagination may well pass over into the reality of tragedy.”

  He took his departure then; and when he left, it was as though a visible weight lifted from all the village. But not from Bobby, who had found that last remark profoundly disturbing. For a little he waited and then went out as if for a stroll. He took his way towards the Pépin Mill, and when he came to the spot where earlier he had talked with Père Trouché, he looked to see if the hundred-franc note he had allowed to fall and had left there was still in the same place. But there was no sign of it and Bobby was looking more worried than ever as he turned back towards the village. It was late now but the little postcard shop was still open. Bobby entered and Lucille appeared from the room behind. He said to her:

  “You know the commissaire has gone?” When she nodded an assent, he added: “I think he will be coming back before long.”

  “Charles says he is sure Volny will be heard from in a day or two,” Lucille said, but not with complete confidence. “For me, I do not know why it should be supposed that anything has happened to him.”

  “If Volny returns, so much the better,” Bobby said. “The commissaire asked me questions, too. He spoke about the death of Mademoiselle Polthwaite.”

  “It is why you are here, is it not?” Lucille asked. “To find out what you can.”

  “What makes you say that?” Bobby asked, disturbed by this fresh confirmation of his fear that his errand was generally suspected.

  “All the world,” she answered, “knows that it is for that Monsieur Williams is here. He has said himself that he is from your Scotland Yard. Then you came, and you, also, you began to ask about the Pépin Mill. It is thought that you are here for the family.”

  “Oh,” said Bobby, still more disconcerted. “I don’t see why any one should think so. I don’t see why most people wouldn’t be interested in the Pépin Mill. What happened was in all the papers. People are curious about such things. Naturally.”

  “They do not all ask such questions as you do,” Lucille answered. “Many in the village say it is right for you to make your inquiries; above all, if it is for the family. They think there will be no good luck here till the truth is known.”

  “Well, anyhow,” Bobby said, deciding it best not to pursue that aspect of the affair, “I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t believe Williams has anything to do with Scotland Yard. If he has any special reason for being here, it is for his own purposes.”

  “Some say that if there was murder done, then he is the murderer,” Lucille said. “It is said, you know, that a murderer cannot stay away from the scene of his crime.”

  “He would hardly go so far as to want to
live where it happened, would he?” Bobby asked. “There may be some other reason. Some idea of hiding something, of preventing some one else from finding it. But that is merely guessing.”

  “He is trying to find out something,” Lucille insisted, “and it is something he thinks I might know. That is why he asked me to go there, why he and his wife—Madame Williams I do not like, she is more terrifying than he, it is she who made me afraid—why they were so disappointed when I said I knew nothing, why he made me go to look at the well to frighten me.”

  “If he wants to find out something, it can’t be the murderer’s name if he is the murderer himself,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “There may be something quite different, though.”

  “It is not Père Trouché at any rate,” Lucille said with a faint smile. “Of that I am sure.”

  “There is something else I wonder if you are sure about,” Bobby asked. “Are you sure he is really blind or is that pretence?”

  She looked startled at that. Then she said:

  “There are some who think that no one who is blind could do what he does. Sometimes he hints himself that perhaps he can see more than is known. But for my part I think that is only talk, for he loves to talk, he loves also to impress.”

  Bobby said nothing about his test with the hundred franc note. He had not yet quite made up his mind what to think about that. After a pause he went on:

  “Mademoiselle Lucille, will you tell me all you know about Charles Camion and Mademoiselle Polthwaite? It may be useful. It may be more than that. I have heard a lot but it would help if you would tell me what you think and know yourself. Also it seems to me possible that Camion may soon have greater need for help than he understands at present.”

  She made no answer for a minute or two and he waited patiently, knowing she was trying to decide what she could tell him, how far she could trust him. At last she said:

  “Very well, I will tell you what I know. It is not much. It is not pleasant to have to talk about such things to one who is a stranger. But I think you have a reason why you ask and you may be able to help, and then there is your fiancee who trusts you, and I think her photograph you showed me was of one who would not trust too foolishly. When Mademoiselle Polthwaite came here first, she stayed at the hotel, and she made herself very friendly with Charles. When she moved to the Pépin Mill, she asked him to help her to install herself. Next it was his portrait that she wished to paint so that he was often there and each day after she finished working, she kept him to talk to her and do little jobs and help her with her French. She made him tell her his plans, she even made plans for him he had never dreamed of, she talked of founding for him a great chain of hotels—the Camion hotels—and she promised him money to help him to begin. She seemed to think it might be a way to place her funds, for she spoke occasionally of having a stocking that was very well filled. Well, in the village they began to talk. There were many who were jealous of what seemed his good luck in becoming a favourite of a foolish rich old woman. A fortune for him to pick up, they said. But then they began to whisper, too, that it was not without a reason that an old woman had so often a handsome young man at her house. A gigolo they called him behind his back. It began to be said that a love affair is all natural, but that there is nothing natural when it is a question of an intrigue between a woman of that age and such a boy as Charles. Charles had only contempt for such talk. He said it came from minds already poisoned and evil. In reality, he was blinded by his ambitions she wakened in him, by the hopes of becoming great and famous she gave him. I was angry with him, oh, more than angry. I could not bear it that he should allow such gossip to continue. There was a scene between us—oh, such a scene. He said to me: If I thought such things of him, he would make them true. Since I spoke so readily of degradation, very well, so it should be, and when I thought of him in that degradation, then I was to remember that it was I who had driven him there. Oh, he said many things, and also he said that now he would marry her, old though she was.”

  She paused, and Bobby had a clear vision of the young man dramatising himself and his emotions and thoroughly enjoying picturing himself as a lost soul destroyed through a great, misunderstood love.

  “If you ask me,” he said, speaking with great deliberation, “I should say that young man was about the most foolish young man who has ever set foot upon this earth.”

  “It may be so,” she agreed gravely, “but really it is only that he is very young and I think he always will be. Always he will be the child. But also you cannot imagine how dear he is and also how intelligent. Then she said: “I think sometimes he does not live in the same world as we others.”

  “Perhaps not,” Bobby agreed in his turn, “but unluckily ours is the world in which things like guillotines exist. Do you know what happened after?”

  “After our quarrel? That same evening a note came, asking him to come to the Pépin Mill and to stay there the night. What could one think? Ah, it was ridiculous. It would have been a comedy of the first order had it not become a tragedy. The poor Charles, he went then to the Pépin Mill. Mademoiselle Polthwaite was waiting. She was excited, nervous, hysterical indeed. She complained that he had been so long and that he should have come the moment he received her note. He answered that previously there had been need to reflect but now he had made up his mind to accede to her wishes. Well, it seems that when she on her side understood what he meant, what he thought she meant, she raged—oh, a formidable anger, a scene more frightful than can be imagined. A comedy, for each had so entirely misunderstood the other and both of them because of it so utterly furious they were entirely beside themselves. A comedy without doubt and all the time a tragedy that waited. She cried to the heavens, was it not possible for a grown woman to take an interest in a young boy, a mere child, without it at once turning him into a beast, a veritable beast of the fields? She screamed that and much more, and he shouted back to know why then had she sent for him to come and sleep there that night? She told him then, quietening a little, that she was afraid. She told him that she believed herself to be in danger from an assassin and that she had sent for him to be there to protect her, since she believed, she said, that her life was threatened by this unknown.”

  “She did not say who it was she feared?” Bobby interposed quickly.

  “Charles did not ask, did not listen, he thought it was what you others, English, call to ‘bluffer’. Lucille used the word ‘bluff’ as the verb into which it has been turned in French. “He was too angry to listen, for he felt that he had been made to look ridiculous, and if those in the village came to know of it, they would never stop laughing at him.”

  “All is there,” Bobby muttered, “if only we knew who it was she was afraid of. He has no idea?”

  “No, he did not take her fears seriously. He said to her that she might be visited by an assassin every night of the week for all he cared, and the sooner the better. The last thing he shouted at her from the door as he rushed away was that he would like to murder her himself and perhaps he would.”

  “It happened that night?” Bobby asked.

  “Yes,” Lucille answered in a voice so low he could hardly hear what she said. After a long pause, she added: “The worst is, the note she wrote asking him to come to the mill to sleep there, the police found it. Naturally, they put upon it but one interpretation.”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Bobby, not at all sure indeed that such a letter would not have been considered by many courts as strong presumptive evidence of guilt.

  Only presumptive though, and apparently there had been little confirmatory evidence. He suspected, too, there had probably been no great anxiety to press the case and also no great likelihood of obtaining a verdict of guilty from any jury.

  “There is even worse, but that the police never knew,” Lucille said suddenly. “Their quarrel was overheard. The threat he shouted but never meant as he rushed away, that was heard.”

  Bobby looked grave, for there it seemed was the very kind of
confirmatory evidence calculated to appeal to the official mind.

  “Who heard it?” he asked.

  “The curé. And another, too. The curé was returning from visiting a sick woman and he heard as he was passing. He said nothing. He was not asked. None knew he had been near and he did not speak. But he sent for Charles and he made him go to the bishop to confess. I think the curé felt the responsibility was too great for him. I think perhaps—” her voice faltered—“I think perhaps he was not very confident that Charles had no concern in it.”

  “Who was the other who heard?” Bobby asked. “Père Trouché.”

  “He has kept silent, too?”

  “He promised me.”

  “How did he happen to be there?”

  “I do not know, perhaps he had heard about Charles and Mademoiselle Polthwaite and was watching to find out the truth. He is like that. Always he must know. He is not malicious, but he wishes always to know. And then, why should he not have been there when he is always everywhere? He says himself that he shares with the good God both omniscience and omnipresence, but not omnipotence.”

  “I wish I knew how far one could trust the old man,” muttered Bobby, who did not much like this story, for it seemed to him Père Trouché might have had his own reasons for his reticence. “He told you though?”

  “I asked him. Charles had seen him. He told me, and so I asked Père Trouché what he had heard. It was then he promised to say nothing.”