TWENTY-THREE
The management gave no trouble about our early departure. They were indeed glad to be able to get a higher rate for our room, now that the influx of tourists was about to begin, and said so, all the while assuring us that they would miss us, that we were most welcome to return any time, that we had been delightful and honoured guests. So it was with expressions of mutual esteem that we got ourselves out of the hotel the next morning and headed for the hospital to pick up Sam.
‘I hope he’s informed l’Ermitage about having us in his suite,’ I said as we set out. ‘Because if they kick up a fuss, we’re homeless.’
‘He strikes me as an efficient sort of chap. I’m sure we’ll be all right.’
The morning was one to make a person glad she’s alive. I won’t describe it, because all the beautiful-day words have become clichés. Just picture your idea of absolutely perfect weather, and there you have it.
The storm had washed everything clean. It had also filled the rivers and streams with a rushing torrent of water. I looked toward the bay before Alan turned inland. The tide was high and turbulent, crashing against the rocks at the base of the Mont. I thought about Sam’s fate if he’d fallen into a sea like today’s. He’d have had no chance at all.
I looked away, toward the sheep grazing peacefully in the salt meadows.
Sam was waiting for us at the hospital door, looking hale and hearty and, as I had suspected, brawny. The starchy nurse was there, too, distributing her disapproval equally between Sam and us. He was in a wheelchair, but he sprang out of it to meet us, and further enraged the nurse by giving her a robust smack on one cheek. ‘Thanks, darlin’, for takin’ such good care of me!’
We got him out of there before the nurse could have a stroke.
‘She needs to watch her blood pressure, for sure,’ said Sam when he was comfortably installed in the back seat. ‘Needs to take life a little easier. I tried to tell her, but she doesn’t speak English, and my French … well—’
‘About like mine, I expect. Sam, your clothes seem to have survived the bay remarkably well.’ He was dressed in clean jeans and a plaid shirt.
‘Nah, they were pretty well done for, the other nurse told me, the friendly one. Actually, she showed ’em to me. They’d run ’em through the hospital laundry, but they were pretty much rags. When I was sittin’ up and takin’ notice, I called the hotel, and they ran over a few things for me.’
‘Speaking of hotel,’ said Alan, ‘you’ll have to show me where we’re going. And do they know we’re coming, too?’
‘They do, and I haven’t got any idea where we’re going. You gotta remember I was out of it when they brought me here. But I’ve got the directions right here on my GPS.’
He handed his phone to me, and since the voice spoke in English (technology can be wonderful – when it isn’t driving you crazy), we got to the hotel quite easily.
It was a new experience for me. I’ve never lived in poverty, but never in the lap of luxury, either. We were greeted at the door, Sam with great warmth and anxious enquiries about his health, Alan and me with courteous hospitality. Our car was taken away and parked, our bags brought to the room. Rooms, rather. A ground floor room was furnished beautifully as a sitting room, and a lovely curved staircase led to the bedroom upstairs. ‘Only one bathroom, I’m afraid,’ said Sam apologetically. ‘And the extra bed is a sofa bed down here.’ He gestured. ‘But seeing as how you folks are my guard dogs, I’m gonna sleep here and give you the big bed upstairs.’
We both protested, but Sam was adamant. ‘Looky here, now. This is a big imposition for you two. I know that. I know you’d rather be in your own cosy room at the other hotel. And Dorothy, ma’am, I’ve got an aunt about your age, and I hope you don’t mind my talkin’ about it, but she has to get up a lot in the night, and I don’t reckon you’d want to be climbin’ those steps three, four times in the middle of the night. And that’s a king-size bed up there, better for two people, and I can manage just fine on this one. So I’m sleepin’ down here, and that’s all there is to it.’
Alan nodded his head in reluctant concession. ‘But since you’ll be downstairs alone here, mind you keep the door locked. And if you have to go out, tell one of us, and we’ll go with you.’
‘You all really think somebody’s out to get me?’
‘We think,’ I said firmly, ‘that your adventure at the Mont was an attempt at murder.’
Alan added, ‘God knows I’d rather the police were keeping a guard on you. But I know all about staffing problems; they’re a part of police life everywhere. They don’t have the personnel to do it, so they’ve drafted me.’
‘And me,’ I added.
‘And Dorothy.’ Alan smiled.
‘Well, ma’am, it’s not that I’m not grateful, but—’
Alan didn’t let him finish. ‘My wife is quite an efficient deputy, Sam, though you mightn’t think it to look at her.’
I glowered at him.
He grinned and went on. ‘She’s also quite touchy on the subject of being protected because she’s a woman, as I’ve learned over the years. I owe quite a few of these grey hairs to her habit of getting into tight spots.’
‘And I always got out again, so there!’
Alan rolled his eyes at that.
I ignored him. ‘Anyway, Sam, I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just that, when I see a possibility of finding out something useful, I don’t always consider the consequences. Or rather, I’m always sure I’ll be all right.’
Alan’s response to that would have been a snort, if he hadn’t been such a gentleman.
Sam had been looking from one of us to the other, his face growing more and more troubled.
‘I sure don’t want to put anyone in any danger—’ he began, but Alan interrupted.
‘Sam, it’s not you that’s creating the danger. I won’t pretend it doesn’t exist, but Dorothy and I are confident that you are a victim rather than a villain in the case. We’ve been delegated the job of protecting you from further harm.’
‘And to do that, Sam, we’re going to stick with you like ticks on a hound.’ That homely simile brought a smile.
‘We’re also going to ask you a lot of questions,’ said Alan. ‘That is properly the job of the police, but what with the language problem and the dearth of personnel, I might as well start the process. I’d have to serve as translator in any case. So I’d suggest we find a meal somewhere and then return here to start trying to work out what the—’
‘Sam Hill,’ I suggested.
‘—is going on here.’
We had a pleasant lunch at a nearby restaurant. The prices, as we’d come to expect in this area, were high, but Sam insisted on paying, so I mentally shrugged and ordered what I wanted. We shared a bottle of white burgundy (Sam’s tastes belied his folksy persona) and went back to the hotel in a mellow mood.
Alan’s eyes had surveyed the area all through the meal and our walk back. He’d looked so much like a Secret Service operative guarding the President that I’d had to stifle giggles. He’d apparently seen nothing to disturb him, though, and we got to our suite unscathed.
‘Now, Sam. I may get a call soon. You are aware of the man injured at the Abbey, not long after your … incident?’
‘Heard somethin’ about it. Not much.’
‘Well, he’s English, for a start, and he’s very much better and wants to talk about what happened. And as he’s English, the Avranches police have invited me to be present at the interview, which they hoped would take place this afternoon. So let’s accomplish as much as we can now, before I have to leave. For a start, I want you to tell me every single thing you can remember about the time of your “accident”.’
I could hear the quotation marks, and evidently Sam could, too, because he made no objection. He settled back in the very comfortable chair and folded his hands in his lap. ‘Not a day I’m wild about rememberin’, but I’ll do my best. I went up there on the ramparts—’
<
br /> ‘No, sorry, I want you to begin at the beginning. When did you arrive at the Mont?’
‘Two days before. That’d be … let’s see, now …’
Alan was consulting the calendar on his phone. ‘Eighteenth May. A Sunday. Right?’
‘Right. Yeah, I fell in on the Tuesday, so you’re right.’
‘How did you arrive? That is, by car or train?’
‘Car. I’d gotten in to Paris that morning, and I was tired and anxious to get to my bed. The train service isn’t so great on a Sunday, so I’d arranged for a car and driver to get me here. I wasn’t sure I could handle driving myself in a foreign country. Didn’t think I could read the road signs. So I got the guy to drive me here, right here to this hotel. Nice guy. Even spoke pretty good English.’
‘Did you talk to him at all about why you were coming to Mont-Saint-Michel?’
‘Nope. Once I got into that nice comfy car I was out like a light, and I didn’t wake up till the driver woke me.’
‘You had arrived here at the hotel?’
‘Not quite. We were on the road, and the driver thought I’d like to see the Mont. “Rising out of the sea”, he said, and I mean to tell you! There’s nothin’ on our side of the Atlantic like that!’
I felt as proud as if I, personally, had built the Abbey. ‘It really is something, isn’t it? America has its own spectacular beauties, of course, but this …’
‘Sorta gets you in the gut, don’t it? Sorry, ma’am, that’s vulgar, but—’
‘But that is exactly where it gets you. I agree. Sorry, darling. I interrupted.’
Alan shook his head, somewhat impatiently. ‘Yes. Well. Let’s get on. So who did know your purpose for this visit? Your family, I presume.’
Sam shook his head. ‘Don’t have a family. My wife died a few years ago, and we never had kids.’
My sympathy welled up for the man, childless as I had been childless. And that might explain his near-obsession with the Middle Ages and Abelard. A man has to devote his passion somewhere, and with no family … That idea passed through my mind and out the other side.
‘Your colleagues, then? Or friends?’
He gave a little laugh, more of a snort. ‘Maybe you don’t understand about academic competition, Mr … Alan. A professor who gets a brilliant idea about somethin’ in his field doesn’t talk about it to everybody he knows. Even when you’re doin’ pretty well, you hold your cards close to your chest.’
‘Surely you have tenure, Sam?’ I put in.
‘Sure I do. Still got ambition, don’t I? You know how it is in America, Dorothy. Everybody wants to be the first, the best, the biggest. I’d be the brightest bulb in the medieval chandelier if I could find an undiscovered Abelard manuscript!’
I exchanged a glance with Alan. Some things, it seemed, were universal.
Alan’s phone rang. He looked at the displayed number, sighed, and answered the call. The conversation was brief.
‘That was the police. They want me to come talk to Mr Douglas. I wish you could come, too, love, but …’
‘But I need to stay here with Sam. Don’t worry, dear. Tell me all about it when you get back. Oh, and give the poor man my best wishes, and tell him I really hope he’s feeling much better.’
‘You know the guy?’ asked Sam when Alan had left. There was a hint of suspicion in his voice.
‘Not at all. I know very little about him. But he’s had an awful time, and I’m sorry for him.’
‘Okay, right. Sorry if I sounded kinda … but there’s been too much funny stuff goin’ on around here. I guess I don’t trust much of anybody.’
‘Very wise of you. We’ll establish a friendly, mutual mistrust between the two of us, shall we?’
He started to laugh at that, and that brought on a cough that sounded a bit alarming, and by the time I’d administered sympathy and a glass of water and phoned room service for bottles of both cognac and Calvados, we had both forgotten the ‘mistrust’ part. Or at least, it had retreated to a shadowy background.
‘Now, ma’am,’ he said as he sat back, exhausted from the coughing fit, ‘how did you and your husband come to be messed up in all this? I know your husband’s a cop, and all, but what about you?’
‘Alan is not exactly a cop anymore. He used to be a chief constable – that’s sort of like a county sheriff in America – but he’s been retired for a while now. Of course he’s still interested in crime, in all kinds of nefarious doings really, and with the police force here so badly understaffed, and with his French so good, he was glad to lend a hand, and they were glad to accept his help.’
‘And you’re his sidekick.’
‘Sort of.’ I wasn’t in the mood to get into the long explanation of my gradual evolution into a kind of American-born Miss Marple.
‘Okay, but what I really meant was, how’d you find yourself in this particular problem? All the goin’s on at the Mont, I mean.’
‘Happenstance. Alan and I can’t seem to take a vacation these days without something cropping up. What interests me a good deal more is how you came to be here. I know, I know, you’re a medievalist and you came here to look for Abelard manuscripts. You said there were rumours about the possibility of finding some here. I’d love to know about those rumours. Where did they come from? Who started them?’
‘Hmm. Who told me?’ He thought back. ‘Don’t think it was one of the faculty. They’d keep a thing like that to themselves, y’know? So it musta been a student.’ I could see him running through a roster of students in his head. ‘Not one of my doctoral students; I’d remember that.’ He thought some more and smacked his forehead. ‘Got it! I had to teach an intro history section last semester. The whole history faculty has to be in the rotation, and my turn came up. Most of ’em hate it, but I don’t mind. Sometimes a kid’ll come along knowin’ next to nothin’ about history, and you can get him turned on, y’know? That almost makes up for readin’ a whole lot of terrible essays. So we were givin’ the Middle Ages a once-over-lightly, and this kid comes up to me and says he’s been readin’ a little about Abelard. Well, that got my attention, seein’ as how he’s my favourite boy, and most undergrads’ve never heard of him.’
‘Most people, period,’ I interjected. ‘In America, anyway.’
‘Lady, you ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie! So when this kid tells me he’s been readin’ about the old boy, I’m pretty happy about it, and I tell him so. So then he says, “You know about the music he wrote?” and I says I do, wonderin’ what’s comin’ next, y’know? And that’s when he says somebody told him they’d heard there might still be some, hidden away in France somewhere. “Mount San Michelin, or somethin’ like that,” he says. And that’s when I started plannin’ this trip.’
‘On the unsupported word of an undergraduate you didn’t know well.’
‘Didn’t know, period. It’s one of those big lecture classes, maybe three hundred students. But I found out his name and looked him up. He was gettin’ along okay in the class, and in his other classes. No Phi Beta Kappa, y’know, but a decent student, and never been in trouble, at least that the university knew about. So I reckoned there might be somethin’ in it, and I started nosin’ around. See, I was really excited about the possibilities, but I’m not stupid enough to jump in with both feet until I figure I maybe know what I’m doin’.’
‘No, I wouldn’t have said you were stupid. Impulsive, maybe.’
‘Yeah, but I can hold myself back when I need to. So, anyway, I know a couple of guys in the music department, and I invite ’em out for a beer and start talkin’, just casual-like, y’know. How come there hadn’t been any concerts of ancient music lately, or even Renaissance? I ask. And after a lot of talk about there’s not a whole lot of good medieval music around, and it’s hard to perform it right on modern instruments, and the audience is pretty sparse anyway, I make ’em an offer. “You put together a concert of the best medieval music you can find, and I’ll tell my students they all have to come and br
ing a friend. That’ll give you enough to fill that new little recital hall. I don’t s’pose anybody’s found anything new lately, have they? Some mouldy old twelfth-century chant lyin’ around in somebody’s attic, or somethin’?” I says. And ma’am, I’ll tell you they both went so quiet I thought I’d gone deaf.’
‘Hmm. Interesting. And Sam, I do wish I could get you to call me Dorothy. In these parts – well, in England, anyway – “Ma’am” is the way you address the queen.’
He gave a seated bow. ‘Your Majesty. You know, in Texas we call any lady ma’am. But I’ll try to remember. Anyway, I knew that minute, when they couldn’t think what to say, that they’d heard the rumours, too. And these guys really know about music.’
He casually mentioned a couple of names I’d been hearing for years; I owned some of their recordings. I hope I didn’t look as impressed as I felt. I wanted to try to keep control of this conversation. ‘So that was when you decided in earnest to come over and see for yourself?’
‘Yes, ma— Dorothy. I brushed up on what I knew about the Abbey and got me a plane ticket and a hotel reservation.’
‘And what did your colleagues think about this sudden whim?’
‘I’m the head of the department. I can pretty much do what I please. And I didn’t have any classes or seminars this summer, so it didn’t matter.’
I continued with the matter at hand. ‘Sam, there’s one thing that still puzzles me. No, two. Your story hangs together and makes sense, right up to the point when someone tried to kill you. But then there’s a detail that doesn’t make sense at all. When the news reports about your accident – yes, I know, but we’ll call it that for lack of a better word – when the news came out, you were identified as a “German woman”. Of course the minute you landed in the hospital they got your gender straightened out, but since you couldn’t talk and had no identification, your nationality was still in question. Do you have any idea how that odd mistake could have happened?’
‘Ma’am—’
‘Dorothy.’
‘Dorothy, I ain’t got no more idea than a new-born dogie! Do I look like a woman? Do I sound like a German? When your man said that to me in the hospital, it made me so mad – well, you were there. Guess I upset that nurse some.’
The Missing Masterpiece Page 18
