Murder Abroad (21 page)

“Your own affair,” Bobby answered, “but I shouldn't try to play tricks with the French police if I were you.”

“Same to you and many of them,” growled Williams. “As you know such a lot about that Simone girl, ask her if it was her fancy boy did in Miss Polthwaite?”

“Who is her fancy boy?” asked Bobby.

“Volny, isn't it? Used to be young Camion but she gave him the go-by because they think in the village it was Camion did it. I don't.”

“Why not?”

“No guts. All bounce and swank. Thinks about things, doesn't do 'em. Besides, why should he? He was getting all he wanted out of the old girl. Doted on him, they say. She was the goose laying golden eggs for him.”

“There's that,” agreed Bobby, though he thought such considerations overlooked the possible complications that might have resulted from Camion's realization of the false position he was in, or the even more possible results of some sudden outburst of anger or revulsion. “If it wasn't Camion, who was it?”

“Volny.”

“I thought your idea was he had been murdered himself?”

“There might be a reason for that,” Williams said. “It might be he knew too much, it might be he had really found out something. There's some one else likes to snoop round here. I've seen him. Told him to get out, too, and quick about it. But he's been back all right.”

“Who?”

“An old blind beggar. I don't know his name. He's always about the village for what he can cadge. I happen to know he had a row with Miss Polthwaite. She said she would put the police on him. He didn't like that. Swore revenge. Very upset over being threatened with the police.”

Bobby could believe that. From the little he had seen of the Père Trouché, he could well imagine that no threat would be more likely to rouse his ire.

“Hardly a reason for murder,” he suggested, though his voice was uneasy.

“Might have lost his temper and hit out with that stick of his, knocked her out, then got scared and popped her down the well out of harm's way. They say in the village he's done a murder or two already. He pokes his nose into everything, gets to know everything, they're all scared of him for what he knows and might tell. Suppose he got to know Miss Polthwaite had—” He paused and looked sharply at Bobby—“had anything of value? Money. Jewellery. Anything. If he got to know and came snooping round and she spotted him—well, there you are.”

“But you say he is still snooping round?”

“Perhaps he didn't get what he was after. Perhaps she had it too well hidden. What do you think?”

“It's possible,” agreed Bobby. “So many things are, aren't they?”

“Another thing,” Williams said. “I don't believe he's blind, not him, no more than you or me. Put on, that is. Ever seen the way he hops about? Blind, my hat.” He added thoughtfully: “Might be Volny knew and suspected something and that's why he's been done in. Easy for a man you might think blind and wasn't, to do the job.”

It was in a disturbed and troubled mood that Bobby slowly made his way back towards the village. The possibility suggested by Williams was one that had not before occurred to him and yet one he felt could not be utterly dismissed.

Especially disturbing did he find the suggestion that possibly the Père Trouché's blindness was only fictitious. Was that extraordinary dexterity and knowledge of his surroundings displayed by the old beggar really due to abnormal cultivation of his other senses or had he in fact, like other people, the use of his eyes?

Again, the old man boasted, and the claim seemed more or less justified, that he knew most of what went on in the neighbourhood. He might then very well have heard in some way of Miss Polthwaite's gift of diamonds to the curé, he might have guessed there were more where those had come from, and then what a temptation would present itself.

Bobby did not much like the look of things. True, the old man had boasted of his indifference to money, but was that indifference probable? Was there any one in all the world so totally indifferent to money? A voice broke in upon his thought, saying:

“You think then it is possible the story is true?”

Bobby gave a little jump. The words came strangely apt to his thoughts, and came from Père Trouché himself, sitting there by the road side, on a bank still only partially dried by the sunshine that had followed the storm, and so far hidden by a growth of bushes and a tall chestnut tree that Bobby had not noticed he was there. 

“Oh, it's you,” he said, standing still.

“That surprises you, Mr. Englishman,” the old man said with his low, hoarse chuckle. “Indeed, it seems to me that it more than surprises you. Why?”

“I didn't see you,” Bobby said. “You startled me.”

“That is true but not all the truth,” Père Trouché answered. “There was more in your voice than that, more than that, too, in your footsteps.”

“What was in my footsteps?” Bobby asked.

“Perplexity, hesitation, doubt; all that was plain even to the ear of a child. I said to myself: The Englishman, too, has heard, and he, too, is troubled. But in your voice there was more also, a shade, a nuance that I did not recognize. What was it?”

Bobby crossed to where the old man sat, basking in the warmth of the strong sun and apparently quite indifferent to the damp its hot rays were drawing from ground soaked by the recent rain.

“Seat yourself then,” the old man said with something of the air of a host putting his guests at their ease. “Here there is room for all. It is Monsieur and Madame Williams you have been visiting, is it not?”

“How do you know?” Bobby retorted, though, with more respect for possible rheumatic pains, he remained standing.

Père Trouché made so angry and impatient a gesture with his staff Bobby almost thought he was about to strike him with it, nor could he help the thought flashing through his mind that perhaps in some moment of irritation that gesture might well pass into action. Was that what had happened before in the Pépin Mill?

“But it is childish,” the old beggar was saying, “you and your perpetual ‘How do you know?' Do you not come from the direction of the Pépin Mill? Could I not hear your footsteps on the bridge? Do you not know that footsteps on a wooden bridge sound altogether differently from footsteps on a road? Soon I suppose you will ask me how I know there is a wooden bridge leading to the Pépin Mill? Why is it then that the good God has found it well to deprive some of us of all intelligence?”

Here the old man, in the classic phrase ‘paused for a reply'. None came, for Bobby did not feel competent to offer any explanation, keenly conscious though he was of the implications conveyed by the last question. Père Trouché snorted and then continued:

“Evidently, then, the Williams ménage, they told you. Well, do you believe them?”

“I don't know enough yet to say,” Bobby answered. “You know best what the truth is, I suppose?”

“That,” agreed the old man, evidently pleased, “is the most sensible thing I have ever heard an Englishman say. They are not, I speak as between friends, a race of high intelligence. For me, I answer simply: ‘No.'”

Bobby made no comment. He stood staring at the old man, wondering how to prove whether his blindness was genuine or assumed. One can test deafness simply enough by dropping a small weight behind the suspected person. If he seems to remain unawares, then he is certainly shamming, since a genuinely deaf person, though he would have heard nothing, would yet feel the vibration set up. But Bobby knew of no equally simple and effective test for blindness. He said abruptly:

“Tell me now, are you really blind or can you see?” Père Trouché laughed delightedly.

“Ah, that, it is often asked,” he said through his mirth. “There are those who say I see as well as another. They do not believe that the nose, the ears, the touch, can tell as much and more, too, than the eyes. Whether I see or no, am blind or no, none will ever know for certain, and on my tombstone it may be written: ‘Here lies the Père Trouché, who was blind or else perhaps he wasn't.'”

In a veritable paroxysm of laughter the old beggar rocked to and fro, and Bobby seized the opportunity to extract from his pockets both a cigarette and a hundred-franc note. He was certain that, absorbed in his eldritch merriment, the old man could not know, however keen his hearing, that both cigarette and hundred-franc note had thus appeared, nor yet be aware that the note had fluttered to the ground as if accidentally dropped. Yet if he had in fact the use of his eyes, he could not fail to notice that significant piece of paper. Hardly a conclusive test, but the best Bobby could think of. He said:

‘‘I am glad you are amused. I did not think I was so pleasant as it seems I am.”

This last phrase, a well known quotation from one of Molière's plays, caught Père Trouché's attention and stayed his mirth.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “I have said that myself and it is often wisdom. Yet, too, in another sense, it is why I enjoy so much talking to others, for often they are amusing without intending it. But never mind whether I see or am blind. It is not of importance. Tell me, for it is of importance: How is it the Williams ménage has heard so soon?”

“How do you mean so soon?” asked Bobby, puzzled.

“I only heard myself this morning. The story has spread indeed, since all repeat it, but the Williamses have not been to the village to-day nor has any, I think, from the village, been to the Pépin Mill. How then have they heard so soon?”

Bobby felt puzzled and began to think that possibly they were talking at cross purposes. The old beggar went on:

“It is not possible that it is they who have invented the story? One would be glad to think so and yet it is not likely, for why should they? As for me, I am uneasy, for when such a story springs up on a sudden, well, it is often because it is true, or nearly true. Not, I think, as regards the young Camion, but for Volny—there I have a fear.”

“Camion? Volny?” Bobby repeated, and this last name reawakened in his mind that unease of which lately he had become conscious. “What about them?” he asked “Volny has not returned yet?”

“But you have heard? It is what they told you at the Pépin Mill?” Père Trouché asked. “That Volny is dead and that Camion has killed him and hidden the body, killed for the second time?”

“That is being said?” Bobby muttered.

“You did not know? There is surprise in your voice? But assuredly you knew, or why was there such unease in your footsteps, such questioning and such doubt, you who generally walk so firmly and with such assurance?”

“You hear too much in footsteps,” Bobby said. “You deceive yourself.”

“Never,” retorted the other. “Faces may lie. I do not know for I cannot see them. Yet it is probable, for faces, they are under control, they have been trained to deceive, taught to hide well what lies behind. But the footsteps —no. They are not controlled, they have not been taught to deceive. They tell always what they feel. Your footsteps told me plainly something had been said that disturbed you. What was it if it was not this story that all the village speaks of?”

“It is of no importance,” Bobby said.

“You do not wish to tell me? Why? I warn you. I shall find out. I always do. What is told me, I respect. What I find out, it is mine to tell to others or not, as I choose. Also, it is not good when friends hide things from each other, and it is as a friend that I came here to wait for you.”

“You were waiting for me, then?”

“But naturally, or why should I have been sitting here? They told me you had gone this way and so I waited your return. For, you see, Mr. Englishman, it is not pleasant, this story that is going about. And it is not pleasant that you and I, we heard a shot, a single shot. You remember?”

“I remember well enough,” Bobby answered reluctantly.

“But you wish that you did not? I also, I have that wish. The memory has ruined my afternoon. In general, after a storm, it is very calm, very beautiful. One can sit quietly and listen to all those lovely sounds that make up the world. Eh, it is worth something then to be alive, to sit, to feel the warm sun, to hear and notice each little sound that tells how the good earth is alive again, strong and refreshed as if the rain were wine. For the rain, monsieur, makes glad the earth, as wine makes glad the heart of man. Eh, there is the veritable joy of life, the birds so busy, the buzzing of the bees, the song of the cigales, the air so richly full of every kind of scent from flower and herb, and then the air itself fresh as if just breathed from the lips of God. All that, monsieur, I have lost this afternoon, lost for ever, for the only thing that I have heard, it is the report of a pistol shot, fired once and not again.”

Bobby asked a few questions. But the old man had no idea how the story had originated. It had seemed to be all over the village almost simultaneously. Possibly some hint Volny or Camion had dropped about their proposed duel had been remembered, repeated, and, in the light of Volny's disappearance, suddenly invested with significance. Père Trouché protested that he had breathed no word of that early morning scene when they found Charles Camion alone in the chestnut grove, and Bobby, for his part, declared that he had been equally reticent. To be assured of this, and to suggest that their silence should still be preserved, was, it now appeared, the real reason why Père Trouché had followed Bobby here. He was also very anxious to be further assured that Bobby had actually had a look round on that morning and had noticed nothing in any way disturbing.

“It is one of those rare cases,” Père Trouché confessed with his usual reluctance to admit that the use of the eyes conferred any special advantage, “when to have sight is actually a help. A dead man makes no sound, does not move, and I might pass not far away and know nothing of it. But with the eyes one might, I suppose, note a dead body from afar. It is so?” he asked, a little as though hoping for a denial.