Mischief in St. Tropez

by C. G Oster

  Chapter 22

  A t no point that night did Dory sleep. It was almost as if she didn’t trust the wall to stand if she so much as closed her eyes. It was still unbelievable to think the Germans were marching toward them. It was impossible to imagine what this would entail. No doubt they were going back to England, but it would be an England at war, and Dory had no idea what that meant.

  It was a given that she would return to England at some point; she just hadn’t anticipated that it would be under these circumstances, which seemed unbelievable even as the war hadn’t exactly cropped up overnight. She had always had that hope that it would fizzle to nothing.

  With groggy eyes, Dory met the next morning. Her head ached and she felt awful. When she reached the salon downstairs, it seemed Lady Pettifer’s night had been similar. “Terrible sleep,” the woman said.

  “Me, too,” Dory confessed.

  “It seems we must find some way of leaving here. There are still so many people on the coast. How are we all going to make our way back to the UK?”

  “I don’t envy the task that has befallen Major Dodds. You don’t think he would simply leave us, do you?”

  “It would be cowardly if he did,” Lady Pettifer said with distaste. “I think he will do his best. He seems a sensible man.”

  “You know him.”

  “Well enough. It seems as our options reduced, traveling home seemed too difficult to deal with, and now we are in the lurch.”

  “I don’t think flying is an option.”

  “There are too many of us here for it to be the strategy he will choose. The government will have to help us.”

  “And if they don’t?” Dory asked.

  “Then we will be in trouble indeed. I still think it will be a long time before the Germans make it all the way down here. The Italians are more of a concern, but so far, they have shown little indication that they want to participate. I don’t trust that, though. It is well known that Mussolini dreams of restoring some semblance of the old Roman Empire.”

  “Well, he will have to compete with the Nazis and their empire,” Dory said with distaste.

  “I think for the time being, we are safe. We have time at the very least.”

  Lady Pettifer checked her watch, a bejeweled timepiece that Dory knew she had received from her late husband. “Perhaps I should call Major Dodds now.” On painful knees, she rose from her seat and walked over to the telephone in the hall, speaking in French to the operator, who apparently couldn’t put her through.

  Before long, Lady Pettifer returned to her seat. “There is a queue to access his line,” she said. “It seems every person on the coast is having the same idea.”

  A noise in the hall showed that someone else had risen, and Vivian appeared with his washed hair slicked back from his face. He looked like he had slept at least. “I’m starving,” he said.

  “Then we shall eat,” Lady Pettifer said, and called for Mr. Fernley. “I suppose Livinia won’t rise for a while. I understand Richard left early this morning.”

  Dory had heard a car start and drive away some time well before dawn.

  It was going to be a hot day. Heat was already starting to build up. They walked into the dining room and sat down. It would take a few minutes before Mr. Fernley appeared with ham and eggs. Dory’s body seemed to crave energy today.

  “I think we should wait until tomorrow and then go to the consulate in Nice. It will be utter chaos today, so no need to add to it.”

  Vivian looked distracted with a deep frown marring his features. “I am going back to Switzerland,” he said after a while.

  “Vivian, you can’t.”

  “I have to go collect Mother before it’s too late.”

  “The Germans could have invaded by the time you get there. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “If they invade, Mother would be exposed. Centuries past a noble could be assured of good treatment, but that is no longer the case. These Germans would as readily kill anyone with a title.”

  “I’m sure it is not that severe,” Lady Pettifer said.

  “Well, I am going shortly. I will collect her and… ”

  “And then what? She cannot come back to the United Kingdom. Technically, there is still a warrant out for her arrest and if she is arrested, she will hang.”

  “I know that,” Vivian said curtly. “I will have to figure out what to do. Maybe Spain.”

  “To live under the rule of another insane dictator with dreams of an empire? Who knows what his role is going to be in all this? If he joins with the Nazis, which he could at any point, then things will be very dire indeed.”

  “The French wouldn’t have a chance,” Vivian said.

  Dory simply looked from one to the other, too afraid to speak in case voicing her thoughts made them real.

  “You need to get off the continent,” Lady Pettifer said.

  “Perhaps we’ll go to Algeria or Morocco.”

  Concern shone through Lady Pettifer’s eyes, but even Dory knew that Vivian wasn’t changing his mind. As awful as Lady Wallisford was, she was still his mother, and Dory could sympathize with him wanting to fetch her. She would likely do the same if the positions were reversed.

  Their food arrived and Dory struggled with her appetite, but she forced herself to eat. A few days ago, her main concern had been the lack of sugar, and now they were all being driven in different directions in desperate flight.

  Livinia appeared through the door wearing her sunglasses. “I feel awful. I was hoping I would wake up today and it had all been a bad dream. Where’s Richard?”

  “He left early this morning,” Lady Pettifer said.

  “I can’t believe he just left without a word. What if we needed him?”

  “I guess at times like this, you see who people really are,” Vivian said.

  “That’s unfair.”

  A silence descended as no one really felt like getting into an extended argument.

  “What’s going to happen to Mother?” Livinia said.

  “Vivian has decided to fetch her,” Dory said.

  “And then you’ll bring her here?” Livinia said hopefully.

  “I don’t know,” Vivian replied noncommittally. “I don’t know what options will be open to us. It might be better to head down to Italy. The Italian ports are still open. We could potentially get passage south.”

  “South?”

  “Well, I can’t bring her back to England, can I?”

  “I’m sure they will make an exception considering the circumstances.”

  “And will you risk her life on that assumption?”

  If Dory didn’t feel that capital punishment was gruesome and unnecessary, she would be open to Lady Wallisford meeting the justice she deserved, but she couldn’t bring herself to wish someone to hang.

  “I will work something out,” Vivian said after a while. “There are options.”

  “There has to be panic all over the country,” Lady Pettifer said. “Everyone in the north must be heading south. The poor Belgians. They must be running like rabbits.”

  “Well, if they ever invade us,” Vivian said. “There is nowhere to go.”

  “Except America,” Livinia said.

  “If things go very badly, maybe the next time we see each other, it will be in New York.”

  “Or the Bahamas.”

  “Not sure the Bahamas can take half the population of the United Kingdom descending on it,” Lady Pettifer said. “In saying that though, I am sure Lady Ridgemont will be able to put us up in that villa of hers.”

  “Along with everyone else she knows.”

  “Why did we never invest in a villa in the Bahamas?” Lady Pettifer said furtively.

  “Because you fell in love with the Cote D’Azur,” Vivian pointed out.

  “Yes,” Lady Pettifer said absently. “Could you imagine traveling across the Atlantic every year?”

  The conversation drifted to silence, and shortly after eating, Vivian went upstairs to
pack.

  “Is he going now?” Livinia asked.

  “Yes, I think it is better he goes as soon as possible.”

  It didn’t take him long to return, carrying a leather bag. They all gathered in the hallway.

  “If the Germans invade Switzerland, you can’t go.”

  It frustrated Lady Pettifer that Vivian didn’t answer, instead kissed her on the cheek. He gave Dory an awkward kiss to, which would probably never have happened if it wasn’t for the extreme circumstances. “Get them home,” he said quietly so only she could hear. He was placing the task on her to ensure they got home. Dory nodded.

  Then he walked outside and placed his bag on the backseat of his motorcar. Livinia followed him and they embraced tightly. That was an affection she hadn’t really seen between the twins before. When it came down to it, it ran deeper than either of them let on.

  Then he got in and drove without looking back. Not one for long-winded goodbyes. Livinia stood and watched for a while.

  An anxious groan escaped Lady Pettifer. “He isn’t a stupid boy,” she said to reassure herself. “He will know how to watch out for danger.”

  Will he, Dory wanted to say. As far as she knew, Vivian had a strong sense of entitlement and a puffed-up sense of importance in the world. Hopefully those things would not lead him into trouble.

  Chapter 23

  T he difference in Nice was stark. The streets were empty. They weren’t really. People were hurrying along, but at first glance, they looked deserted. There was no one wandering leisurely down the promenade and the cafés were largely empty. Overnight, the world had changed.

  Dory drove along the promenade until they reached the building where the consulate was. If there was any question as to where the people had gone, it appeared to be here. A crowd of people stood in a group outside the building, milling and chatting. There were grave expressions of worry on people’s faces.

  Pulling over, Lady Pettifer and Livinia got out. There were no available parking spaces so Dory had to keep driving down the road to find somewhere. It seemed people had driven from all around to reach the now swamped consulate. Dory doubted they would get much assistance today. Perhaps it had been a mistake coming here, but what else could they do? Hopefully the British Government had some plan for the people here on the coast. Surely they couldn’t all be left to their own devices. There were a great many people here without the means of leaving on their own account.

  A new set of worry descended on Dory. What would they do if they had to find their own way back? Perhaps Vivian was right and Italy was the best route, but heading into an uncomfortably fascist regime sat badly. Their choices were Italy, Spain, or to find their way north to the Atlantic coast, or even closer to the fighting on the channel coast.

  A parking space was available and Dory pulled in. It was a hot day and she could feel the heat of the ground through the soles of her shoes as she walked back toward the consulate.

  A lone figure sat along the tables of a café she was approaching, all other tables empty. He was smoking and as Dory came closer, she saw that it was Prince Barenoli. A small coffee cup sat next to him.

  “Your highness,” Dory said and stopped.

  “Miss Sparks,” he said as he looked her over. It wasn’t a lecherous look, more disapproving of what she was wearing. Dory smiled tightly.

  “Going about life as normal despite what’s happened?” she asked.

  He shrugged and took a drag of his cigarette. “What point is there in panicking?”

  “You’re not scrambling to leave, then?”

  “I have nowhere to go,” he said, pulling a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “No one wants an Italian aristocrat.”

  “The Italians are not a part of this war.”

  “Not yet, but they will be.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Mussolini is too greedy to stand back and watch the Germans claim all the spoils.”

  The Prince apparently believed the Germans weren’t going to be stopped at the border. “So what are you going to do?”

  With a shift of his head, he regarded her. “I don’t know. Maybe I will go to Spain.”

  “Some have suggested Algiers,” Dory said.

  “Maybe that is a good place to wait out this madness.”

  “What do you know of the land down in Antibes that the Countess Tirau had bought for Baron Drecsay?”

  “Even with a war, you do not give up?” he said with a chuckle. He took a drag and regarded her. “It is not worth much.”

  “Would anyone kill him for it?”

  “I suppose it would be worth a few francs to the desperate. It was a joke, I think, on behalf of the countess. Drecsay wanted to build a home and she gave him awful land for it. She had a habit of buying him useless things. It amused her. It wasn’t the only useless thing she’d bought him. She even bought him a small Scottish Island once, which I believe is probably the most uninhabitable place in the world. There were others, the more useless, the better. But this property was the first one in an accessible place, I suppose. Maybe that made it all the more vexing.”

  “So he was never going to build in Antibes?”

  “I think he was—maybe just to spite her. But in the end, he had no money to. But a plump, little heiress would take care of that, no?”

  He had to be referring to Livina’s wealth, because she was certainly not plump in any other regard. “Would he really marry someone simply to build a house?”

  The Prince chuckled. “No, I don’t think so, but he was certainly looking for ways to recover what his family had lost.”

  “Apparently a Mr. Henri dealt with the conveyance. Do you know him?”

  “I don’t know such people,” he said chidingly.

  “Would Marie kill Drecsay?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. She just wanted to see what he said.

  “Without Drecsay, his girlfriend loses everything. Maybe he was going to drop her.”

  “I haven’t heard any indication from anyone I’ve spoken to.”

  The look he gave her was almost belligerent. “Well, good luck with finding some place to hide.” She knew that sounded a little bit like an insult, but she didn’t care. There was nothing likable about the man in her book. In saying that, she did recognize the position he was in. At least she could go home. He had no home and had to run as far as he could.

  “And to you, Miss Sparks. Best of luck finding your way home. An invading army is never gentle on the women.”

  The warning was stark and she knew it was intended to be. She gave him a nod and kept walking, wondering if there was any way he had killed Drecsay. There was nothing to indicate a motive. The Prince was much better off financially, and it certainly didn’t seem that he had any jealousy. Nothing seemed to stick there—as unpleasant a man as he was.

  Lady Pettifer and Livinia hadn’t even gotten inside the building by the time Dory got there.

  “The Government is organizing transport,” Lady Pettifer said. “They just can’t give us any details yet. He knows remarkably little. I’m not sure the advent of a war had actually occurred to him.”

  “So what are we supposed to do? Go home and wait, they say. Unbelievable. Mrs. Grifton said she was going to drive to Calais.”

  “Stupid woman,” Lady Pettifer said. “They are not going to let her anywhere near Calais.”

  “I hope you told her,” Dory said.

  “I doubt she listened. Some people cannot help but do the worst thing for themselves.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?” Livinia asked.

  “I think we are better off doing as Major Dodds says. I do believe the Government is organizing something.”

  “If they’re not too busy with other things,” Livinia said pointedly, “like fighting a war.”

  “There are over a thousand people here. They will have to do something,” Lady Pettifer said.

  “So we drove all the way here for that—‘return home and wait for them
to do something.’” Livinia said tartly. “If they would have answered their telephone, it would have saved us a trip here.”

  “Not much else we can do,” Lady Pettifer said with a smile. “Where are you parked?”

  “Down this way,” Dory said indicating, “but I can go get the car if you wish.”

  “No, a walk will do me good.”

  They set off at a leisurely pace. “Can we really afford to wait?” she asked.

  “It might be better than setting off like scared rabbits, hurtling ourselves all over France. Who is to say there is any passenger transport if we even reach the northern coast, to get stuck there as the fighting begins in earnest. At least this way, the Government will send something specifically to take us home.”

  “I suppose you are right,” Dory conceded.

  The café where she had seen Prince Barenoli was now empty, which was probably a good thing, because Livinia, for some reason, seemed blind to the man’s glaring faults. Dory suspected she saw the looks and the title and didn’t notice the unpleasantness of the man underneath. That was the kind of man who used women like Livinia and afterward deriding them for their own gullability and greed. Livinia utterly failed to see such things—perhaps it was her own sense of entitlement falling prey to an even larger sense of entitlement.

  “I saw Prince Barenoli before,” Dory said.

  “Oh, he’s here?” Livinia said, looking around.

  “He mentioned that Drecsay intended to build on the land that the countess had bought him in Antibes, but he said it was useless land and she had bought it, a little to spite his ambition to build his own house. She bought him a few such places.”

  “Strange people,” Lady Pettifer said with distaste.

  “There is something about this that needles at me. I don’t know what, but I feel it.” Dory chewed her lip. There was something that wasn’t clicking into place. “I must find this Mr. Henri and get a list of all his assets.”

  “What use to anyone is a bunch of useless land?” Livinia said. “Besides, it wasn’t as though anyone would inherit. I suppose his extended family would inherit. They are the only ones who had anything to gain.”