Death of an Old Master (28 page)

‘They’ll think we’re going to take a rest now. Run, my love, let’s keep going.’

Their strength was beginning to run out. Sometimes Lady Lucy stumbled. Powerscourt stopped briefly several times to hold on to his side. ‘Stitch,’ he said ruefully to Lady Lucy.
Powerscourt was wondering again about the police chief. He had mentioned that he was looking for the de Courcy family. He had mentioned that he was looking for a forger. He had, he thought, implied
that the two might be linked in some way. Surely that must be the cause of this Corsican violence. But had the policeman himself ordered it? Was he part of the conspiracy with the forger? Had the
policeman told somebody else? Had the policeman telegraphed to brother Edmund in London, keeper perhaps of the forger and his secrets? Was that what caused the assassination attempt, here on the
slopes beneath Aregno with the impossible blues of the Corsican sea washing away at the beach? Somebody could have killed Christopher Montague in his flat behind the Brompton Oratory because he was
about to reveal the existence of the forger. Were Powerscourt and Lady Lucy to be further victims? Nobody, absolutely nobody, Powerscourt felt certain, would investigate closely the deaths of two
strangers on this island. Shooting accident. Very regrettable. The man must have had the sun in his eyes. Very regrettable. Soon forgotten. Maybe the de Courcy women would put flowers on their
graves.

Lady Lucy was praying for her children. Then they could see salvation. A couple of hundred yards ahead, on the far side of a group of comforting trees, was the railway line, the beach and, on
their left, the little town of Algajola with its train station. Powerscourt outlined the final plan of campaign under the trees.

‘We’ll do it as we did before,’ he said. ‘You go first. Lie low in those bamboos on the far side of the railway line. I’ll keep you covered. Then you do the same
for me.’

Lady Lucy seemed to have acquired a last reserve of strength. She shot over the railway line and zigzagged her way into the bamboo. No shots ran out from the mountainside. In the distance she
heard a siren. Maybe a rescue party was on the way. Powerscourt took a long series of deep breaths. He could see Lady Lucy standing on something to get a better view. There was another hoot from
the siren. Three hundred yards away he could just see the little Corsican train approaching before it vanished behind a headland. He started running. Lady Lucy could see a man and a rifle peeping
out from an abandoned farmhouse up the hillside. She took very careful aim at the farmhouse. The man disappeared. Powerscourt was fifty yards short of the railway line. Lady Lucy saw a glint from
the late afternoon sun on the rifle, now peeping out from the other side of the farmhouse. The train was at the end of the beach now, chugging sedately towards its next stop.

There was a shout from Powerscourt. His boot was caught in one of the sleepers on the railway line. He waved helplessly at Lady Lucy. The train was now a hundred yards away, tons and tons of
doom heading unstoppably towards Powerscourt. Lady Lucy shot out from her bamboos, firing one desperate shot at the farmhouse up the hill. She reached Powerscourt in what seemed like seconds. She
could see a terrified train driver, his brakes now full on, staring helplessly at the disaster ahead. Lady Lucy reached down in the middle of the line. She pulled Powerscourt’s boot off. She
saw from out of the corner of her eye that the train driver had closed his eyes. He was praying out loud.

‘Jump, Francis, jump!’ Powerscourt dived full length to the side of the driver’s cab, only a few feet away. Lady Lucy sprang back the other way. One further shot came down from
the mountain slopes. It passed over the train and made a slight plop as it fell into the peaceful waters of Algajola Bay. Fifty yards on the train stopped. Lady Lucy ran in front of it and held
Francis in her arms. ‘Thank you, Lucy,’ he said. ‘You’ve saved my life. Again.’ He held her very tight.

Less than a minute later they were inside the train. Powerscourt went to thank the driver, still shaking at his controls. Lady Lucy sank back on to a hard wooden seat on the side furthest away
from the mountains. Powerscourt flopped down beside her. He looked at the ruins of Lady Lucy’s clothes, her dress badly torn, a hole where one of her knees had been. The blood by her wrist
had dried now, a dark stain running up her left arm. There was a scratch mark on her face, where one of the bamboos had caught her on the desperate dash to the railway line. Powerscourt was still
clutching his left boot, miraculously undamaged by the passage of the Bastia to Calvi rail service above it. His clothes, so immaculate in Mrs de Courcy’s drawing room an hour before, were
almost rags. His right trouser leg had a hole in the middle, a trickle of blood still running down it from a cut on the granite rocks. His left hand was dark, bruised from his fall in front of the
train.

They smiled at each other. Powerscourt thought how beautiful Lucy looked, her blue eyes sparkling in the light off the sea.

‘I think I found an omen, Francis.’ She smiled across at him, Powerscourt shifting uncomfortably on his wooden billet. ‘I saw it in one of the shops in Calvi yesterday and I
forgot to tell you.’

‘What is this omen, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt, scowling at the blood on his knee.

‘It’s the motto of Calvi. Do you know what it is?’

‘I’m afraid to say, Lucy, that up until now it has passed me by.’

Lady Lucy paused for the memories.

‘It’s Semper Fidelis, Francis. Forever Faithful.’

Forever Faithful, Semper Fidelis, last words in a letter to Powerscourt from a young man who committed suicide in Sandringham Woods in one of his earlier investigations into the strange death of
Prince Eddy, eldest son of the Prince of Wales. Forever Faithful, Semper Fidelis, words Powerscourt had used to express his own loyalty to the dead man’s memory as he searched for the truth.
Forever Faithful, Semper Fidelis, words spoken by Francis and Lucy to each other on the deck of a great liner as they sailed to their honeymoon in America.

Powerscourt smiled. He took Lady Lucy’s bloodstained hand into his own and pressed it very tight.

‘Forever faithful, Lucy. Semper Fidelis.’

Lady Lucy had tears in her eyes.

‘Semper Fidelis, Francis. Forever faithful.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were sitting in a corner of their hotel bar, Powerscourt facing the entrance, his right hand never straying far from his pocket. They
were in clean clothes after an alarming encounter with the local plumbing. The bathroom was a few feet away down the corridor, an enormous bath in dark wood panelling, rusty pipes running up the
wall. When the hot tap was turned on, there was at first a distant rumble, like thunder in the mountains. Then the rumble faded to be replaced by a ferocious rattling of machinery. The pipes began
to tremble, then to dance to some strange Corsican rhythm, shuddering against the wall, beating against each other. The performance was accompanied by a barrage of steam so great that it was almost
impossible to see across the room. But the water was hot, the metal symphony gradually subsided, their aching limbs were soothed by the heat.

‘I never knew you could shoot like that, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, sipping very slowly at a glass of local white wine.

‘My grandfather taught me,’ said Lady Lucy, remembering a day long ago in the hills behind her grandfather’s house. ‘It was in Scotland. Everybody else had gone on a
fishing expedition. The two of us were alone in the house.

‘“I’ve taught all my male grandchildren to shoot,” my grandfather said suddenly after lunch. “Think I’d better teach you as well.” So he took me into
the hills with some kind of ancient archery board and a couple of pistols. I had to keep on trying until I could hit the centre of the board. “If you end up in India,” my grandfather
said, “married to an army colonel or the Viceroy or somebody like that, you never know when you mightn’t need to shoot straight.”’

‘Did you intend, at that point, to marry a future Viceroy, Lucy? Supper dances at Simla in the Viceregal lodge, that sort of thing?’ said Powerscourt in his most serious voice.

‘I don’t think a future Viceroy was much in my thoughts at that point, Francis. Rather a dashing young Captain in the Black Watch.’

‘And was your grandfather pleased with your efforts?’ asked Powerscourt, rubbing slowly at the bruise on his knee.

‘He was,’ said Lady Lucy happily. ‘He said he wouldn’t like to be a tiger or a rebellious native trying to take me by surprise.’

There was a sudden rush of footsteps to their table.

‘Lord Powerscourt, Lady Powerscourt.’ Captain Imperiali cast his eyes up and down Lady Lucy. ‘I have just heard the terrible news about what happened this afternoon. It was all
a terrible mistake. I have come to apologize for the behaviour of my fellow Corsicans.’

The Captain pulled a chair from the neighbouring table and deposited his ample frame upon it.

‘In what way was it a mistake?’ said Powerscourt. Some mistake indeed, shots pursuing them down the mountainside, rifles waiting for them in the open stretches of the road. He felt
sure that Imperiali knew more than he would say. Perhaps he had instigated it himself.

‘It is a tradition,’ said Imperiali, smiling at Lady Lucy as he spoke, ‘a tradition in the village of San Antonino. Perhaps we have too many traditions here in Corsica. They
call it the Traitor’s Run. Over a hundred and fifty years ago, Lady Powerscourt, there was war in the Balagne, the French against the Genovese. San Antonino and the other places up there were
with the Genovese. Calvi was always loyal to Genoa. But up in San Antonino a young man betrayed the village to the French. For money, you understand. So the people of San Antonino take him and his
fiancée out on to the road down to the coast. ‘Go and find your French friends down there,’ they say, kicking them both on the start of their journey. Then they followed them
down the mountain. The young men of San Antonino let the traitors almost reach the bottom so they think they are safe. Then they kill them. Their bodies are cut up into pieces and left for the
wolves.’

‘What a horrible story,’ said Lady Lucy, avoiding Captain Imperiali’s eye.

‘This is what is important, Lord Powerscourt.’ Imperiali was leaning forward, his hand fingering his unlit cheroot. ‘Every year since then, the young men of San Antonino replay
this event. That is why it is called the Traitor’s Run. A young man is drawn by lot from the people of the village. He has to persuade a young woman to accompany him. The anniversary is
today, my lord. Today is the day for the Traitor’s Run. You were not the only people running down the mountainside. Perluigi Cassani and Maria Cosenza from San Antonino were also running
down. The young men think you are the traitors. So they shoot. But they never intend to kill. Always they shoot at the running persons on the day of Traitor’s Run. But in over a hundred years
nobody has been hit or killed. It is like a game, even though it is more serious than a game. Nobody intended to kill you this afternoon. It was a case of the mistaken identity. You were quite
safe.’

Captain Imperiali paused to light his cheroot. ‘On behalf of the people of Calvi, on behalf of the people of Corsica, may I apologize most seriously,’ he said.

‘We are most grateful for your apology,’ said Powerscourt. He wondered if Lady Lucy’s book on Corsica made any mention of a Traitor’s Run. It was certainly a good story.
He wasn’t yet sure if he believed it.

‘May I have the pleasure of taking you both to dinner in Calvi’s finest restaurant?’ the Captain went on. ‘The lobster there is superb. And they specialize in wild boar,
a great delicacy in these parts.’

Powerscourt thanked him for his offer, but said they were both tired and would prefer to remain in their hotel. Maybe another day.

‘Do you know when you are going to leave the island, Lord Powerscourt?’

Powerscourt said they had no plans to leave for the present. Captain Imperiali bowed to them both and departed, the smell of his cheroot still lingering in the air.

‘Well, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘did you believe a word of it?’

‘What a revolting man he is,’ said Lady Lucy firmly, ‘the way he looks at you is quite appalling. Did I believe it? I think I probably did – I’m sure anybody we ask
here in the next few days will all swear it’s true. It’s not the sort of thing that would be in the guidebooks. It might put people off.’

‘There is a boat to Marseilles first thing in the morning,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’ve booked two passages in the name of Fitzgerald. Do you like the thought of becoming
Lady Fitzgerald, Lucy?’

‘Very much,’ Lady Lucy replied. ‘But I must ask you one question. When you aimed at those people on the hill this afternoon, were you intending to hit them?’

‘Of course I was,’ said Powerscourt, ‘weren’t you?’

‘I most certainly was not,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘I was aiming about ten feet away from them and praying that I wouldn’t hit anyone at all.’

‘Why ever not?’ said Powerscourt, draining his glass of Corsican white wine.

‘Oh Francis, can’t you see? Suppose we had killed one of them. That would have been the start of a vendetta. Our lives, the children’s lives, would all be at risk to the
Corsicans’ terrible passion for revenge. I don’t think I could have slept safely ever again. They’d have followed us all the way to London.’

Powerscourt was lost in thought. Corsicans in London. Corsican killers in London. Corsicans who garrotted their enemies.

William Alaric Piper was pacing nervously up and down the street outside his gallery. He was waiting for Lewis B. Black, the taciturn American millionaire whose silences
unnerved him to the point of illness. Piper resolved to say as little as possible, though he doubted if he could bear a prolonged period of silence.

‘Good morning to you, Mr Piper,’ said Lewis B. Black, shaking him by the hand, ‘fine weather we are having this morning.’

This was the longest single speech Piper had ever heard from the taciturn millionaire. Maybe London was beginning to have an effect on him.