Murder Abroad (16 page)

He went on into the kitchen. It was as bare, as neglected- looking, as the room he had just left. A scrubbing brush hanging up in one place had no bristles left. Bobby supposed that it had been worn out by the housekeeper and the curé had refused to supply her with another. No wonder she had departed. In the fireplace stood a brazier in which smouldered a little charcoal. On it was an iron pot containing, Bobby thought, dish water for washing up. A pea pod or two floated on the surface and Bobby wondered a little why it was being so carefully kept warm.

So far he had not seen any place in which either diamonds or anything else of value could be hidden. He went back into the sitting-room and tried the buffet. It was unlocked and its shelves contained only a few odds and ends even a rag and bone dealer would hardly have been willing to take the trouble to remove. At least that was Bobby's first impression till he looked again and a glint of metal caught his eye. It was a revolver lying there, and, though Bobby could not be sure, it looked to him very like the one that he had taken from Volny and thrown away.

Doubtfully, Bobby stood and looked at it. How had it come here, he wondered. An odd thing to find in the possession of a priest. Looking again he saw there was a cap near by, a cloth cap resembling, though again he could not be sure, the one Volny had been wearing. He took it out to look at it more closely and saw on the lining a dull stain that looked to him like blood, that in fact he felt sure was blood.

Troubled and uncertain, for these were discoveries of which he could make nothing, he went to the door of the house. There was no one in sight. He went back into the house, closed the door behind him, ran quickly up the stairs. The first room he went into was empty of all furnishing. The second contained only a wooden bed, nothing else. The third room was a little better furnished, but nevertheless had the same neglected and desolate look the rest of the house showed. The bedclothes looked so old and worn they resembled a heap of rags more than anything else, and Bobby noticed that here, too, the bare boards of the floor, though they had been swept, though they showed a little damp in places as if water had recently been applied, were yet so marked and stained that certainly they had known no touch of soap or scrubbing brush for a long time.

But Bobby experienced now a certain relief; and then smiled at himself for the absurdity of the vague half-fear that had come into his mind when that pistol and bloodstained cap had suggested to him the possibility that Volny had been either killed by Camion in their duel or else seriously wounded, and had sought refuge here. A ridiculous and far-fetched fancy, no doubt, and be-sides in a duel two shots, he supposed, would be fired, that is, at least, if the rules are observed in loyalty and good faith. Bobby found himself, however, reflecting again that pride and self-will can lead a young man into strange paths, and that Camion was already under suspicion of having killed once. Now he dismissed such thoughts with a sigh of relief as he reflected that here there was no sign of Volny, either dead or wounded, and no other suggestion than pistol and bloodstained cap that he had ever been near the place. And of the presence of cap and pistol a dozen explanations could easily be imagined.

Bobby gave another quick glance round the room. The economical and somewhat slovenly habits of the curé, his apparent ignorance of the use and value of soap—Bobby had noted that in the kitchen no morsel of soap was visible—were no business of his, and anyhow there did not appear to be any place here where valuables could be kept. It did not much look, Bobby thought, as if the diamonds removed from the shelf before the black Virgin could be hidden in the presbytery.

He went downstairs again and settled himself to wait, nor had he had time to do more than smoke a cigarette when he saw the curé coming briskly up the steep ascent on which stood church and presbytery. He came in quickly, and looked a little surprised and not too pleased to see Bobby, who for his part thought the curé looked flushed and excited. The suspicion even came into his mind that the curé had been drinking, a suspicion that was strengthened when, after the briefest possible salute to Bobby, he put down on the rough wooden table a package he had been carrying with great care.

“There!” he said, “there is something that goes a little to the head.” 

In his apparently excited state he had forgotten on his safe arrival home to be as careful with his parcel as before, and he put it down on the edge of a not-too-steady table. It slipped and, falling to the floor, burst open. Bobby had subconsciously been prepared for a crash of breaking bottles. Instead, to his utter amazement, he saw some dozen or so cakes of a well-known brand of soap manufactured in England go rolling about the floor.

The curé stooped and picked them up with caressing, tender fingers.

“Eh, eh, my little ones,” he said as if addressing them, “it is not time yet, one is not ready yet, but presently you shall have your introduction to the floor, only not yet, my little ones, not till we have also the hot water and a scrubbing brush, since it is difficult to scrub well without a brush.”

For the moment he appeared to have forgotten Bobby's presence. Not until he finished collecting his scattered soap and piling the pieces up on the table in a heap from which he seemed unable to keep his eyes did he speak to him.

“Monsieur will excuse me,” he said then. “One gets into the way of talking to oneself when one lives much alone. It is a way of hearing a human voice. Also one is a little apt to lose the head when one receives without warning enough of soap to last a year with care. All one needs now is hot water.”

“Well, there's some in the kitchen,” Bobby remarked.

The curé looked surprised.

“In the kitchen? Hot water? But no, that, how can that be?” He went quickly to the kitchen door. Bobby followed and pointed to the pot on the brazier of charcoal. The curé said: “Monsieur, that is my soup, my dinner.”

“Oh, no,” Bobby told him. “Some one must have been playing tricks. That's only hot water, a bit greasy.”

Looking alarmed, the curé crossed the floor, lifted the lid of the pot, peered anxiously within, seemed relieved.

“It is my good soup for my dinner,” he said. He looked doubtfully and with some suspicion at Bobby: “I do not fully understand why you speak so,” he remarked, “but if you mean that you wish for a share, you are welcome. Such as are my meals,” he added simply, “I share them always with those who desire it and are hungry. Yet unless there is some trouble at your hotel, you will receive there perhaps more varied nourishment.”

“You don't mean that greasy water is your dinner?” Bobby asked.

“Monsieur,” said the curé, “it is better to thank God for food than to call it by such names as greasy water. My soup is not rich, perhaps, but it stays the stomach.”

He went back into the front room. Somewhat at a loss, Bobby followed him. The curé said:

“You were waiting to see me, monsieur? You do not believe, however? You others, English, you are not believers, you deny Holy Church? You do not believe?” he repeated questioningly.

“Oh, yes, why not?” Bobby said.

The curé looked doubtful and shook his head.

“I have never noticed it,” he said. “The English tourists, they come sometimes to the church to stare at the black Virgin, but only as at a curiosity in a museum. It is difficult perhaps to be sure, since they are not able to speak so as to make themselves understood.” He turned back to his soap. “I must put it away,” he said, “but where will it be safe? for I have no place to keep valuables.” He gave a little apologetic laugh. “When one has had no soap for so long,” he said, “it is exciting to have all at once so much.”

“But surely,” protested Bobby, more puzzled than ever, “there's no shortage of soap, is there? You can buy as much as you like, can't you?”

“Without doubt,” answered the curé, “if, that is to say, you have the money.”

“Well, soap's not as dear as all that,” declared Bobby, still very puzzled, more especially as by now it was quite clear that drink had nothing to do with the curé's show of excitement, and surely, Bobby thought, a few cakes of soap were not sufficient cause.

The curé had put his soap away now on a shelf in the buffet and, sitting down, he looked up thoughtfully at Bobby.

“I regret,” he said. “I was a little beyond myself. One would not think soap could be so exciting? Ah, well, if for so long you had had to make shift with crumbled lava, you would understand better. You say it is cheap to buy? Monsieur, an ingot of gold at a sou would be dear if you had no sou.” He smiled again as Bobby still continued to look very bewildered. “You thought that I was mad or I had been drinking too much wine?” he said. “It was not that. Listen. You are a foreigner. I will tell you things I never tell my own people. Among them one has one's pride, hein? See now. I have from the bishop—” he named a sum amounting, Bobby calculated rapidly, to just about the forty pounds a year on which once in England another parish priest thought himself passing rich. “I have also what my parishioners pay me for a mass, for this or that. But they do not always pay, they economize on their duties to the Church. This soap that I have received, it is for dues owing me for years. The Church, they delay, they neglect, they refuse. Monsieur Eudes, he receives more each month to establish his paper of revolution and infidelity than I in a year. Also out of what I receive the Citry church must come first, the priest may starve but his church must be cared for, the mass must be said, the repairs must be made. In winter there must be a little warmth though the presbytery has none. But all that does not interest you who do not believe. There was a matter on which you wished perhaps to speak to me since you were waiting my return? ”

“On the contrary, what you say interests me very greatly,” Bobby said. “Didn't you tell me once you had hopes of rebuilding your church here?” 

“It was a dream,” the curé answered. “It is a dream I had. There was an uncle in America. He used to write sometimes of the great things he was doing there. But now he is dead and it seems that he left no money at all so that he was buried as a pauper. It appears he had misfortunes in business, but that he did not say, he preferred to write as though he were rich still. Then there arrived Mile. Polthwaite. She came to look at the black Virgin. She said to me things. Perhaps I misunderstood. It appeared that she was very rich. It would have been for the repose of her soul if she had done what she spoke of. Is it not a good thing to give your fortune to the Church and die and be received in Paradise?” The curé was growing excited again. He was on his feet now and in his eyes shone once more that fanatical gleam Bobby had seen in them before. “But she is dead; she has received her call, and I, no matter what black guilt I must confess to, at least I say each day a mass for the repose of her soul.”

“Guilt? Black guilt? What do you mean?” Bobby asked, startled, but the curé only shook his head and made no other answer even when Bobby pressed him again.

“Monsieur, I have nothing to say to you on this subject,” he answered firmly. “Neither do I know why you ask these questions. It is that that is beginning to interest me.”

“I will tell you one reason,” Bobby said. “When I was in your church a day or two ago, I saw there, at the feet of the image of the Virgin, what I think were diamonds —seven of them. They are not there now.”

“Monsieur,” said the curé quietly, “you are not the custodian of the possessions of the church.”

“There is a story,” Bobby said, “that Miss Polthwaite possessed many such diamonds.”

“Ah, you know that, you have heard that?” the curé said. He was facing Bobby now and looking at him very closely. “I will tell you then. I removed them. I noticed that you were looking, that you seemed interested. You stood upon a chair, I think, to look more closely. My own people, they do not rob; above all, not the Holy Virgin. But I do not know you, monsieur. You are a stranger. You are not of ours. You are of a country where they do not believe. Therefore I took my precautions.”

“Oh, well,” muttered Bobby, slightly disconcerted to hear he had himself been an object of suspicion.

“Also,” continued the curé, “it was plain you thought the stones of value. Of that, I was not sure before. Mademoiselle Polthwaite insisted that for those few pebbles I could receive many thousands of francs. No doubt she exaggerated, for the diamonds one knows, they sparkle and shine, as these did not, so that evidently even if they are diamonds at all, they are diamonds of an inferior quality, just as to-day there are pearl necklaces all our young girls wear that in former days a duchess or a countess would have been proud to own. But if they were of real value—well, our villagers are honest, yet when politics come in—well, there are some I would not trust. Eudes, for example,” said the curé, looking a good deal less Christian than should a good Christian priest, “though I might trust him not to rob me, yet he would rob the Church and boast of it. There is nothing he would not do, treason, murder, anything, to establish his newspaper of blasphemy and revolution that he talks of continuously.” He paused, a little breathlessly, for his words had come tumbling out in his excitement, one on top of another as fast as he could get them uttered. Bobby said:

“Was Miss Polthwaite murdered?”

“Ah, you are thinking of Eudes,” the curé said. “About that, I know nothing. Yet I will say this, that I believe, I know, there is nothing that unhappy misguided victim of communist teaching would not do in order to secure the means to mislead, to deceive, to entrap honest folk in a net of ignorance and destruction and of folly and so to destroy all that stands for righteousness and peace and the salvation of the human soul.”

Bobby left the presbytery then and returned to the hotel in a mood of considerable doubt and bewilderment. He did not at all know what to make of this appearance of poverty so extreme that even soap became a luxury of which an unexpected supply produced such excitement. Nor did he much like to remember how at times the curé's eyes had seemed to shine with the fires of fanaticism. Then, too, he found more than a little disturbing the curé's tale of gifts and promises of future gifts made by Miss Polthwaite. Was it a confirmation of this story that the curé was certainly in possession of diamonds formerly her property—or was a darker, more dreadful explanation to be sought?