Murder Abroad (20 page)

“That,” he said, “it was the first prize ever won by 

Charles. Afterwards, it became a habit with the boy, but this was the first, for before then he had seemed but half awake, the poor child. But one day he was heard declaiming poetry to himself and after that—oh, many triumphs. This book, as the first, was especially dear to my wife, and never, never, has she forgiven Monsieur Shields.”

“Why, what did he do?” Bobby asked.

“It was the illustrations, the Doré illustrations. It is understood that to-day, the poor Doré, he is no longer approved. One asks oneself why. But Monsieur Shields, when my wife showed him this first of all Charles's many prizes, asked that he might take it to his room. He wished, it seemed, to copy a drawing that had appealed to him, of Dido waving her farewell, the poor deserted one.” Here Bobby wondered for a moment how many small hotel- keepers in England would either know or care anything about the sorrows of Dido. “But my wife,” continued Monsieur Camion, “was uneasy, and when the book was returned, she was desolated—the burn of a cigarette, Monsieur, truly not on the picture itself but plain to see in the margin.”

“Lucky poor Dido escaped,” observed Bobby sympathetically.

“Ah, that, no, it was Ariadne—another of the deserted ones, was she not? See!”

He opened the book at the article telling the story of the exploits of Theseus, including the slaying of the Minotaur by the aid of Ariadne. There was a very small burn at the edge of the margin and also several smudges which Bobby thought could easily have been cleaned away, though the tiny burn was past remedy. Bobby sympathized politely, small as the damage seemed, but kept the book so long in his hands—it was so heavy a work it required the use of both to hold it—that Monsieur Camion grew a trifle uneasy and remarked that Monsieur Owen seemed as interested as had been Monsieur Shields himself.

“They are indeed drawings of a high value,” he declared, “even though not in the present mode. Yet never shall I dare lend the book again, for what would my wife say if another misfortune happened to it?”

Bobby smiled, promised that he would not ask for its loan, but all the same continued to regard with great interest the illustration that had caught his eye, that of Ariadne handing to a very magnificent and war-like Theseus the ball of thread by which he was to guide himself through the labyrinth.

“Extremely interesting,” Bobby remarked, closed the book, handed it back to its owner much to that gentleman's relief, decided instead of reading to sit with a cigarette in the entrance hall that did duty for a lounge, and there employ his thoughts with the many problems pressing for a solution.

After déjeuner, the rain having stopped but everything being still drenched and dripping so that sketching was out of the question, he went for a stroll, and took his way towards the Pépin Mill. As he had hoped might be the case, both Mr. and Mrs. Williams were in the garden, but as soon as they saw him approaching, Mrs. Williams scurried away into the mill, and Williams, after giving the approaching Bobby a long stare deliberately turned his back and walked off to the bottom of the garden, where it was bounded by the close growth of beech and chestnut trees Bobby had noticed before.

“Meant for a hint,” Bobby thought as he crossed the tiny plank bridge over the mill stream, “but then I was never good at taking hints.”

He went on and hailed Williams with a cheery good afternoon. Williams turned round with his back to the screen of chestnut and beech, but made no answer. Bobby said:

“I thought I would come along now the rain's stopped. There's a question I wanted to ask you.”

“Coming yourself this time instead of sending your pal?”

“My pal?”

“Working in with Volny, aren't you?”

“Volny?” repeated Bobby, a good deal surprised. “You mean the young chap who has just cleared out?”

“Yes. What have you done with him? What's the game? What was he snooping round here for the other morning?”

“Was he?” asked Bobby, still more surprised.

“Yes, was he?” snarled Williams. “My missus heard him, not much she misses,” he said with a sort of sombre pride. “Looked out of the window and saw him. Just after dawn it was. Called me, she did, and then he caught sight of us at the window and bunked. Off and out of sight before I had a chance to dress and get after him.”

“Curious,” said Bobby. “How do you mean, snooping around? Was he trying to get in or anything like that?”

“Don't know anything about it, do you?” retorted Williams. “Oh no. Wouldn't guess he had the cover off the well and staring down it, though what good that would do him, I don't know.”

“Nor I,” said Bobby, very puzzled, wondering indeed if the whole odd story could be an invention and yet thinking that even more improbable and purposeless.

“Now he's turned up missing,” Williams said. “Well, what's the game? What have you done with him?”

“You mean you think Volny and I have been working together for some unknown reason?” Bobby asked.

“Don't know so much about the unknown reason,” growled Williams, “but the working together's pretty plain. I'm here. You want us out of it, you and Volny.”

“Curious,” said Bobby. “I thought it was you wanted me out of it, and in fact that's what I came to see you about.”

Williams made no comment. He was looking thoughtfully not at Bobby but past him, at the trees behind, as though seeking counsel from them. Bobby, waiting and watching, became aware of a faint rustling sound close behind, amidst the trees, as though some small cautious animal were lurking there. He remembered that once before he had had that same impression in this garden. He made no attempt to turn. He knew that if he did he would see nothing nor did he wish to let Williams suspect that he was so much on the alert. None the less he was aware of a feeling that he was in peril, and there came into his mind a swift memory of the damp, narrow, brick-lined wall of the well, of that blackness into which once he had peered, of the sullen gleam of the waiting water far beneath. A quick blow on the head from behind, a hurried removal of the well cover, a dull echoing splash below, and what would remain to show a living breathing human creature had once been there?

Fanciful, perhaps. He told himself his imagination was running away with him, none the less he knew well in every nerve and fibre of his being that there was need of caution.

“Was it you pinched my gold pencil?” Williams asked abruptly. “It's gone and I saw you looking at it.”

Bobby remembered how once he had noticed Williams fidgeting with such a pencil, but he had seen then, and saw now, no importance in the fact. He supposed that Williams was trying to be offensive and so he took no notice. He said instead:

“You seem to have been telling rather wild fairy tales about me. Apparently you wanted to get me thrown out of the hotel. Well, what's the idea?”

Williams did not answer at once, but Bobby thought that there was a relaxation in that tension of which previously he had been aware. It was as though some other question had been expected, one more disturbing, more difficult to answer. Desperately he wondered what it could be. Williams was looking, if anything, even more sulky than usual, but there began to die down that dark menacing glow in his eyes of which till now Bobby had been aware. Williams said presently: 

“Tit for tat, that's all.” He paused. He had his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his head bent forward, but with eyes and ears alert, almost as if he were listening for some message. Then he said:

“Well, why can't we chip in together?”

“In what way?”

“Same as you and Volny.”

“What makes you think Volny and I have anything to do with each other?”

“Plain enough, isn't it?” Williams retorted. “Volny has been doing a lot of snooping round here. Began as soon as we got here. Didn't expect the old place to let so soon. Thought he was going to have it all to himself; and when he found he wasn't, tried to scare us off. That didn't work, so then he fetched you along, or maybe you were behind from the first. And soon as you turned up, Volny snooping around again and shots fired to see if that would do the trick.”

“You admit now there was a shot?” Bobby remarked. “Why did you tell lies about it?”

“We didn't want a fuss; we didn't know then you were in it, too; we thought you and Volny being around together was coincidence. Of course, there was no coincidence about it. Was it you did the shooting or was it Volny? We wondered about that and I kept my eyes skinned. I saw Volny going off up in the hills when I knew he ought to have been at work in the fields and then I saw you follow. Plain enough, you and him going to have a quiet talk. Well, what I say is, how about a deal together, me and you?” It was a development that Bobby had never anticipated, though he had thought of many possibilities. He did not quite know what to reply and Williams continued:

“Where is Volny, anyway? What's the big idea, him dodging off? You haven't done him in, have you?”

“What? What's that?” Bobby asked, startled by the question.

“Have you done him in?” Williams repeated. He looked at Bobby closely, as if now attaching more importance to a question not at first meant seriously. “Well, have you?” he repeated.

“Is there any reason to think anything's happened to him? Do you know anything?” Bobby asked slowly, and a fear he had hitherto hardly been conscious of leaped in his mind to sudden life.

“Turned up missing, hasn't he? One party been croaked around here, why not another?” Williams asked, still with that new and strange expression of mingled doubt and wonder and suspicion in his eyes. “Looking a bit green about the gills, aren't you? Lumme, I do believe I've tumbled to it all right.”

“Believe what you like,” Bobby muttered, very well aware he might in fact be looking ‘green about the gills', now that a new terror was slowly taking shape and substance in his heart.

“Where there's been one murder, sometimes there's another,” Williams said.

“You mean Miss Polthwaite was murdered?” Bobby asked. “How do you know?” Then he said: “Did you murder her?”

“Don't you try to come that over us,” Williams retorted, scowling. “We were nowhere near. In Paris we were. See?”

“You mean you've got an alibi?” Bobby asked. “Alibis need checking. That's my experience.”

“What do you mean, your experience?” Williams said, mistrustful again. “Why don't you spill it?” he demanded, “What's your game? First of all we thought you must be a regular dick, but you can't be that very well, not out here, not in France; the Frenchies wouldn't stand for it. Are you a private man? Or just a blasted, interfering, meddling snooper? One thing's sure, you're no artist.”

“Why not?” asked Bobby, a little hurt.

“Don't look it,” said Williams briefly. “I've seen 'em, Chelsea, Soho, round there. You're as different as chalk from cheese, and you haven't got that silly lost look like most of them, either, just as if they were where they knew they didn't belong.”

“In any case, you've no reason to worry about me,” Bobby pointed out. “Take me as you find me. If you've any real reason to think there's anything queer about Volny's having cleared off, you ought to tell the police. It may be awkward, if I have to tell them, as I certainly should, that you had suspicions and kept them to yourself.”

“Now, see here,” Williams retorted angrily. “I know nothing about Volny, or about Miss Polthwaite either. We came here for a quiet holiday. My old woman's nerves were bad, she wanted a rest. And then we hear there's been murder done on the place and people come poking about wanting to look down the well and where it was done, and all that. Enough to upset any one.”

Bobby wondered how much of truth there was in this. Possible, he supposed, the Williamses were simply on the spot by pure accident, and until their arrival had known nothing of the Polthwaite tragedy. Yet it had been widely reported and commented on in the press.

“Well, then,” he asked; “if you're not interested, what's all this about working together and what for?”

“We've got interested,” Williams said. “If there is anything here to show the old girl was really murdered and who did it, I suppose it ought to be turned up. We're willing to help. Why not? Only we've got to be sure first. Cards on the table and all that, open and straightforward and nothing kept back.”

“You told Mademoiselle Simone you had proof of some kind?”

“Not me. I asked her if she thought there was proof hid here, not that we had it. It was her started it, asking questions when the wife was in that bit of a shop of hers. The wife was a bit curious, same as women are, and she asked the girl to come along and tell us all about it but it didn't seem she knew anything really, only wanted a peep down the well and then got scared. My own idea is she wanted photos of the well taken, so she could sell em to tourists and people. ‘Scene of the tragedy.' Marked with an X. That sort of thing. I suppose it was her gave you that message?”

“I don't think it matters who it was,” Bobby answered. “Frankly, Mr. Williams, I don't much believe you're putting all your cards on the table as you call it. You may be here by accident, but I doubt it. I do not believe Mademoiselle Simone was the first to speak to you about the murder. I don't believe she showed any interest in the well. My guess is you were trying to frighten her. I think you were trying to find out something you thought she might know. I think you are here not by accident but for some purpose and I wonder what that purpose is.”

“Curiosity,” answered Williams promptly. “Wouldn't you be curious yourself if you found you had come to a place where there had been a murder, and no one knew who it was, and people came snooping round all the time?”