“Is that so extraordinary?”
“It’s wonderful. But I’m not going to let your honour deprive me of my happiness.”
“Happiness? Knowing what’s got to come?”
“Yes.”
“I’m booking two rooms.”
“You’re booking one,” she corrected.
*
The manager of the motel was an Englishman’s idea of the typical Frenchman: short, round-faced, balding, a funny little moustache, a generous stomach, and an inability to fill his clothes smartly. He stood behind the desk in the small, cluttered office which lay behind the reception desk. “I no understand,” he said, in heavily accented English.
Belinda spoke for the first time, her French fluent and fast, her r’s rolled with Parisian élan.
The manager shook his head. “Madame, I regret that I do not remember these guests.”
“They booked two rooms, one for themselves, one for Monsieur Sterne, for Friday, July the twelfth.”
“So you have already said. But we have a large number of guests throughout the summer…”
“It might help if you took the trouble to check your records.”
“It can make no difference. As I told the police when they asked me, I cannot remember guests who stay here only one night and who, in any case, I probably never see.”
“Madame Bressonaud was probably middle-aged, had a heavy, square face, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and dressed badly in a pleated, check skirt that was too short for her.”
“I’m sorry,” said the manager, “but I remember no one of that description. And now, as I’m a very busy man, perhaps you’d be kind enough to leave me to my work?”
“How were the reservations made?”
“Madame, without wasting a great deal of time searching through the books, I cannot answer.”
“The least you can do…” she began.
“Forget it,” interrupted Sterne.
As soon as they were out of earshot, she said: “Why d’you give in like that?”
“Because you were about to blow your top and we weren’t getting anywhere.”
“Goddammit! …I was so hoping he’d be able to tell us something.” She gripped his hand tightly. “What are we going to do now?”
“Find the chambermaid who’d have been responsible for the cabin and see if she can help.”
“If she’s like him, she won’t even tell us the time.”
“A hundred-franc note may persuade here to be more forthcoming.”
The sight of the hundred-franc note made the angular, toothy, bony woman very forthcoming, but it soon became evident that she was not able to help. “I seem to remember her, yes… Couldn’t stop wondering how she could dress so terribly. I mean, being so fat in something like that!”
“The couple gave a false address. Did you learn anything to suggest where they really came from?”
“Nothing like that. When I spoke to her it was just to make certain everything was all right. The manager don’t like the staff getting familiar with guests.”
“What did the husband look like?”
She thought back. “I don’t remember seeing him.”
“But he was around?”
“Next morning both beds needed changing and making, if that’s what you mean?”
“What luggage was there?”
“There was a suitcase. There’d have to be, wouldn’t there?”
“Just one?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Did you get a chance to see what was in the suitcase?”
“Here, you’re not suggesting…”
“We’re not suggesting anything except that a suitcase might have been open when you were in the cabin.”
“It wasn’t.”
“That’s about it, then,” said Sterne, as he handed the chambermaid the hundred-franc note.
“There’s just one more question.” Belinda turned to speak to the chambermaid again. “Can you think of anyone else who might have talked to either of them and so be able to help us?”
The chambermaid shook her head. “They were in my rooms, so no other staff would go in unless it was the plumber or carpenter and there wasn’t no call for either of them.” She paused, then smirked. “Of course, maybe Pierre saw something.”
“Pierre?”
“He was the odd-job man on night duty.” She giggled. “He was too odd, which is why he got the sack.”
“How d’you mean?”
“The old bastard… Oh, I’m sorry. I mean, the manager turned up unexpectedly the other night and caught him looking.”
“Looking at what?”
“Into the cabins… He’d bored holes through the walls of some of ’em so he could see what the guests were up to.”
“It’s just as well he got the sack before last night,” Sterne said to Belinda.
Chapter 16
Lençon was divided by the river Lence into two unequal parts. To the north and east was the old and much smaller section with narrow streets, steep-roofed houses with eaves, and a cathedral which was Norman in origin but had been heavily altered in the middle of the seventeenth century. Once the centre of considerable commercial activity, the area had declined as the new section to the south and west of the river had grown until now it was little more than a district of slums.
Pierre Foucarde lived on the third floor of a house which looked as if it must collapse unless steps were taken to shore it up. He was a large, heavily built man with hands that were noticeable small in proportion and elegant. His round, open face expressed sly good humour. His voice was thick with the local accent, many of the consonants being completely lost, so that occasionally Belinda had some difficulty in understanding him. If he felt the slightest sense of shame at having been sacked from the motel for being a Peeping Tom, this never became apparent.
“Room fifty-two?” He crossed to a battered desk which stood beyond the head of the single bed and brought from this a large notebook. He returned to the rush-bottomed chair which rocked slightly every time he shifted his weight. “What day d’you say?”
“Friday, July the twelfth.”
“He turned the pages of the notebook. “Fifth… Eighth… Here we are.”
“My God!” Belinda said in English, “he’s kept a diary.”
“Tomorrow’s best seller,” replied Sterne. “Tropic of Lençon.”
Foucarde patiently waited until they had finished speaking, then he said: “Yeah, I had a look in cabin fifty-two.”
“At what time?”
“Just after eleven.”
“What did you see?”
“There was a lady in bed, reading. She wasn’t pretty: all lumpy, know what I mean?”
“And her husband?”
“There wasn’t no one else in the room.”
“Are you sure? A couple booked in.”
Foucarde checked his notebook, shook his head. “There was only her… And…” He scratched his head. “Seems like I remember her clothes was on the second bed.”
Belinda said to Sterne: “If she put her clothes on the other bed, it wasn’t going to be used. So where on earth had the husband got to?”
“The chambermaid said both beds had been slept in, but I’m beginning to wonder if they really were. Maybe the husband never was around and it was only made to seem he was.”
She questioned Foucarde once more. “How much of the bedroom could you see?”
He answered at length, proud to detail his skills. The hole had been bored through the concrete-block wall months before and into this he’d inserted the small viewer which consisted of two strong lenses set in a thin copper tube: this gave a magnified view of part of the room with a good focus in the centre but rapidly distorting vision towards the periphery. If he’d not been caught by the manager when he had, he’d been going to build a second and much better viewer which would have cut out much of the distortion — sadly, the action had so often taken place where the distortion was great.
“Was there a metal container, roughly a quarter of a metre long and ten centimetres wide and deep, anywhere in the room?”
“I didn’t see one.”
As they stepped out of the building on to the pavement, Belinda said: “After that, I feel I need a bath, hair wash, and mouth rinse. God, I’ll never feel safe in a hotel room again.”
“Use them just for sleeping in.”
She linked her arm with his, gaining a sense of reassurance from the physical contact. They walked down the sloping, cobbled road and reached the T-junction to the right of which they’d left the Renault. He unlocked the doors and they climbed in.
“He didn’t help, did he?” she asked.
“No.”
She lit a cigarette. “So what do we do now?”
“I don’t think there’s really anything more we can do. No one saw the container in the woman’s possession, no one saw her enter the garage of my cabin while I was fast asleep… Nothing’s changed.”
“But you didn’t know what was happening.”
“I didn’t. But I can’t prove that negative.”
“Stop sounding so defeatist.”
“Suggest something to do and I’ll do it. Otherwise I am defeated.”
“I… I’m sorry, my darling. But I just can’t bear to see…” She stopped.
“To see the inevitable drawing nearer all the time.” He turned to look at her and saw she was crying.
She buried her face in the crook of his neck and as he put his arm round her he felt her shaking. A couple of elderly women, carrying shopping baskets, stared curiously at them as they walked past the car.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled. “And that’s the second time I’ve said sorry — normally I never do.”
“Then at least we’re making progress in one direction.”
“Pig!” She nibbled his neck, then sat upright. “I’m all right now and I won’t apologise for anything more. Let’s get out of here and have a drink and a meal and forget everything but ourselves and now.”
Normally a man who prided himself on a good sense of direction, he twice lost his way among the narrow, twisting streets, but finally they came to the most westerly of the three bridges across the Lence.
“Take the Perigueux road. I know of a restaurant that’s not in Michelin because the proprietor’s a tremendous character who takes sharp likes and dislikes and if he dislikes you he serves you poor food so you don’t come back. But if he likes you, the food’s three stars plus. I’ve only been there twice, but he seemed to like me and he told me how to prepare two of the dishes.”
“So you’re not only lovely, you’re a good cook to boot?”
“I’m too impatient to be a good cook, but one day I’ll pull myself together and cook the two dishes for you.”
There was a silence.
“Say something, can’t you?” she demanded fiercely, “even if it’s only to tell me I’m a one night stand and last night was my night.”
“Do you need it spelled out?”
“Yes, I bloody well do.”
“If I could, I’d marry you tomorrow.”
“Why can’t you?”
“What the hell would it look like for you to be married to a convicted dope-smuggler?”
“You’re innocent.”
“The outside world doesn’t care about guilt and innocence, only appearances: and my appearance is guilty.”
They passed beyond the outskirts of the town and for a short time drove parallel with the river, now wide and shallow and overhung by willows. Then the river curved away.
“Belinda,” he said, “it’s no good hoping things will change, as if this was just a bad dream. They won’t. Before long, I’ve got to return home and appear in court. The QC who’s defending me has given it straight from the shoulder. Unless fresh evidence comes to light, there’s no chance of my escaping a heavy prison sentence.
“Originally, I thought that identification of the blue Rover must provide the fresh evidence which would clear me, but the detective-superintendent soon scotched that one. I’ve got to do more than identify the people behind the smuggling — I’ve got to prove I didn’t know that the Mercedes, when it entered Dover, had a quantity of heroin hidden in it.”
“Maybe…” She became silent.
“Miracles don’t happen these days. They disappeared along with saints.”
*
The restaurant lay half a kilometre up a lane and it was set on high ground so that diners had a distant view over lush countryside. The building was a solid, chunky farmhouse, faced with the local grey stone that might have added a sense of dourness but for the colourful garden and the vine-covered outside patio. The proprietor was the chef, his wife kept the till and bar, and their daughter was the waitress. Meals could take a long time to prepare, but anyone stupid enough to complain was told to leave and drive to the nearest hamburger joint. The cellar was not extensive, but it was highly selective and it was possible to buy a superb but little-known wine at half the price one would have paid for a bottle of Romanée-Conti.
As he warmed a glass of Armagnac in the palm of his hand, Sterne asked: “Who was it said, ‘Let me die now, O Lord, when I have supped of heaven’?”
“I don’t know,” Belinda answered, “and what’s more I don’t bloody care.” She stubbed out a cigarette, picked up her glass, and finished the Cointreau in one quick swallow.
“Don’t forget, it was you who said we had to live for ourselves and now.”
“All right, it was me, so for the third time today, I’m sorry, I’m spoiling a wonderful meal, but I can’t stop thinking… When are you going back to England?”
“Monday or Tuesday.”
“Why can’t you wait until the next weekend?”
“Because I’ve got to be back in England before I can give the police the registration letters of the car if they’re not to have every chance of proving I broke the terms of bail and went abroad.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No,” he said sharply.
“Why not?”
“Because it would make things ten times harder for me.”
“When life decides to kick you, it can really make a good job of things… All right. From now on, there’s no future and for us there is only now. When we leave here we’ll go to somewhere where we can forget that there is a rest of the world.”
He hesitated, then said: “I want to return to the motel.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“I can’t stop wondering if the Bressonaud woman booked in for the two of them but she was the only one who turned up.”
“What if she was?”
He answered wearily: “I don’t know. But it would be an odd thing to do without a reason.”
“And you think the manager will tell you anything?”
“He might be more helpful than he was last time.”
“Pigs might fly… Angus, we’ll leave here and drive to somewhere very special. A little village called Persoul, in the St Amour foothills. I saw it the year before last and it was so lovely and the name of the hills was so appropriate that I promised myself that there’s where I’d have my honeymoon.”
“We’ll go there after the motel.”
“There won’t be time,” she said sulkily.
“We won’t be at the motel for long and afterwards I’ll drive hard to make up the time.”
“Can’t you understand, I don’t want to go back to that place? I can’t stop remembering that disgusting man with his periscope…”
“It’ll be broad daylight and we won’t be doing anything a maiden aunt couldn’t watch. Hopefully, that part comes later.”
The proprietor came up to their table and greeted Belinda as a friend and asked if their meal had been to their satisfaction: he received their praise with a complacency that lacked any suggestion of modesty. He explained to Belinda how the sauce had been prepared, offered them a second liqueur, then moved on to the n
ext table.
“Are you ready to move?” Sterne asked.
“No. I don’t want to leave.”
“Because you’re scared you’ll be leaving happiness behind?”
“Damnit, you seem to be able to read my mind.”
He shook his head. “It’s just that we often think alike.”
Chapter 17
At the motel, the receptionist recognised them and immediately assumed they wanted a cabin for another night, but Belinda explained that they would like a word with the manager. The receptionist looked doubtful. The manager was very busy because head office had unexpectedly demanded an extra stocktaking… Belinda asked him if he would see if the manager could spare the time. He went into the small office and when he returned it was to say, with some surprise, that the manager would.
The manager had taken off his coat and was working in his shirtsleeves and obviously was very busy. The thought occurred to Sterne — but it was gone almost as soon as it had formed — that, remembering the other’s previous hostility, it was perhaps strange that he should now agree to speak to them.
Belinda said, translating Sterne’s questions: “You told the police that the Bressonauds booked a double room?”
“All our cabins are double,” replied the manager, his manner brisk, watchful, but not overtly antagonistic.
“Did they both book in, or did one of them do it for the two?”
“I can’t say. How can that matter?”
“It would confirm that only Madame Bressonaud was here.”
“Confirm? Who says that’s the case?”
“The staff have told us there was no sign of her husband. Who actually did the booking in?”
“I’ve no idea…” began the manager, then stopped. He fidgeted with the plaited belt he wore round his trousers, finally said: “I’ll see if I can find out for you.” He came round the desk. “Please have a seat.” He moved a chair closer to Belinda before hurrying out of the room and closing the door.
He was away some time and when he returned he was slightly breathless, as if he’d been hurrying. “I’m sorry to have been so long, but the receptionist who was on duty at the time is now at home and I had to phone him there… He thinks Monsieur Bressonaud was with his wife, even though it was Madame Bressonaud who signed the register.”
Presumption of Guilt Page 12
