Murder Abroad (35 page)

“I had better go and see,” Mendel said and was starting off when Clauzel stopped him.

“Just take a look at this fellow first,” he said, nodding at Camion. “I do not want him to cheat the guillotine.”

“It is nothing,” Mendel answered at once, and indeed Camion had opened his eyes now and was struggling into a sitting position. “It is only that he was ‘knock-outed.'”

Mendel used the English word ‘knock-out' that has now become a French verb—like ‘interviewer'. Camion, looking up at them, said:

“She put the pistol in her mouth and then she fired. It was as though the top of her head leaped off.” He began to shudder violently. “I heard some one scream. I think perhaps it was me. I think I ran. It was an awful thing to see and I think I screamed and then I think I ran.”

“What's all that? What do you mean?” Clauzel demanded while the others gaped. “What ‘she'?” 

“I ran after her, I saw her running and I ran after her,” Camion explained, still in the same half-dazed manner. “I shouted to her to stop. I shouted that the gendarmes were all around and she could not escape. She looked at me and then she put the pistol in her mouth and fired. It was an awful thing to see. She fell down and so did the pistol and I must have picked it up and then I think I began to run, but I do not know why, except that I wanted to get away.”

“All this, I do not understand it,” Clauzel said bewilderedly.

“Who do you mean? What ‘she'?” Bobby asked.

“But I am telling you,” Camion answered impatiently. “Madame Williams. Do you want me to go on repeating to you again and again what I shall see to the end of my life?”

Alain had come up now and had been listening quietly. He said:

“Come, doctor. Let us look for ourselves.”

Followed by one or two of the gendarmes who had also arrived by now, the juge d'instruction and the doctor disappeared amidst the trees. Bobby said to Camion:

“How did you come to be here? What are you doing here? Why did you clear out from Citry?”

“I wanted to find Volny,” Camion answered. He seemed more composed now and talked quickly and volubly, as if in the flow of words he could forget the awful scene he had just witnessed. “I knew I was suspected. It was absurd, for there had been no duel, we had not fought, but I had no wish to go to the guillotine because of the folly of the ideas of others. It was because Volny did not wish to fight our duel that he went away, and I was very glad, because I also, I had no wish to fight.”

“Did you see anything of him that morning Père Trouché and I followed you?” Bobby asked.

“No. He sent me a note to say that he was not going to make a fool of himself and he was not going to keep our appointment. I was very glad, but then I thought perhaps it was a trick to keep me away so that he could say he was there but I had been afraid. That I could not have endured. So I went to the place we had agreed upon and I waited, and when Volny did not come, then I fired my pistol in the air to show that I at least had sustained my honour.'

An action typical, Bobby thought, of the boy's leaning to the dramatic, not to say the theatrical. Probably when he discharged his pistol in the air he had felt himself truly heroic. All the glory of the duel and none of the danger. And yet just now he had shown a genuine and cool courage in following a criminal taken in the act, armed and desperate.

“It would have saved a lot of trouble if you had told us all that at the time,'' grumbled Bobby.

“I saw no reason to,” answered Camion with something that at another time might have been a swagger. “Père Trouché could tell any story he liked. Why not?”

And Bobby divined a secret hope that Père Trouché would have spread a story in which Camion himself would figure as something of a hero and Volny as something quite different.

“Wasn't it a bit dangerous following that woman when you knew she was armed and had been taking potshots all round?” Bobby asked curiously. “She had just killed poor old Père Trouché,” he added.

“A Frenchman does not permit himself to be afraid,” answered Camion.

“No permission required for this Britisher,” grunted Bobby. “If my hair isn't as white as the usual driven snow to-morrow morning, it won't be for lack of funk.”

“Each has his qualities,” said Camion kindly, and then in a burst of candour added: “All the same, as I ran, my very skin sweated terror. But do not tell any one,” he added quickly.

“Not me,” Bobby assured him and they shook hands solemnly. Bobby added: “You didn't find out anything about Volny?”

“I found he had been seen in Barsac, but no one seemed to know where he had gone or what had become of him.”

“What made you think he might be here?” Bobby asked.

“There are some of his cousins he might have gone to. Also he had asked questions about Monsieur Shields and he had said there were other questions he would like to ask Monsieur Shields. It seemed to me he might have thought it an opportunity. If he had been able to find out anything about the Polthwaite affair, then it would have started people talking about that once more and they would have forgotten about our duel. I knew Volny believed Monsieur Shields might be able to explain certain things.”

“Do you mean he suspected Shields of the murder?”

“But no, how could that be when Shields was in his home at Barsac on the night of the assassination? No, but he believed there might be points which Shields could explain. So I thought I would ask him if Volny had been to see him, but the good Monsieur Shields he had dined too well that night, he was in no state to answer questions even of the most simple.”

“Why do you say that?” Bobby asked.

“It was not difficult to see. When I knocked I got no answer so I went round to the back. Monsieur Shields heard me and came out of one of the sheds in the garden. He had gone there to drink all by himself for he had a bottle of brandy in his hand and he drank before he spoke a word—-drank deeply, too. His clothes were all over dust. He said he had been sitting on a bag of chemical manure and it had burst open. Most likely he fell and upset it, he was not steady on his feet. He was quarrelsome, too. He would not answer my questions. It is useless to talk to a man who drinks brandy from a bottle as he speaks.”

Bobby was looking at Camion with a kind of wonder. It seemed certain the boy had interrupted Shields in the very act of disposing of the unfortunate Volny's body. 

“Did you say anything about Volny?” Bobby asked.

“I asked him if he knew where Volny was or if he had seen him. He drank the last drop of his brandy before he answered. Then he said if I would come into the shed with him he would show me something. But it was evident to me that he wished to quarrel. I felt that if I went with him, before long I should have that brandy bottle he flourished thrown at my head. So I went away. I thought I would return another time. As I was going I saw Monsieur and Madame Williams. If they were intending to visit Shields, they also must have found him in the same state.”

“I expect they did,” Bobby said slowly and wondered if ever before so strange a tale had been told so simply and so innocently.

He wondered, too, if ever before a murderer had been interrupted in the very act of concealing his victim's body by an inquiry as to that victim's whereabouts. A dramatic scene, Bobby thought; the body of the dead Volny in the adjacent shed; the murderer seeking support in his bottle of brandy, and going out of his way to account for the condition of his clothes; Camion asking his innocent and unsuspecting questions. Bobby wondered, too, what would have happened if Camion had accepted the invitation to enter the shed. Not that there could be much doubt. A second murder, a second body to be concealed, would have been the inevitable sequel. Camion had been nearer death then than he had ever dreamed. The condition of Shields that evening, as reported by Camion, explained, too, the ease with which the Williamses had been able to carry out their project, for Shields had been a strong and desperate man. Probably, however, he had awakened from a drunken stupor to find himself helpless in their hands, bound hand and foot very likely.

“Did you go back again?” Bobby asked.

“Yes, later, but there was no one there. I knocked and waited but no one came. It was a little curious though that once I thought I heard a sound like some one moaning. But it must have been imagination, for though I waited quite a long time I heard nothing more. So I went away.” Bobby thought to himself that from Camion's point of view that had been just as well. Had he attempted to pursue his investigation, then again his life would probably have paid the forfeit. The moaning sound he heard must have been the wretched Shields from whom the Williams couple must even then have been forcing the secret of the hiding-place on the Massif. Again Camion had been near death, for very clearly had the Williams couple shown how ruthless they could be. Probably Camion had left only just in time to save himself.

“How did you happen to be here this evening just in the very nick of time?” Bobby asked.

“I thought it might be out here on the Massif that Volny was hiding,” Camion explained. “I knew that he had been in Barsac, but then he had vanished, only I was sure he could not be far away. Also I was worried because I had seen Monsieur and Madame Williams again. They had come from Paris by train and I wondered why. I thought possibly Volny had found the things Mademoiselle Polthwaite was said to have hidden and that he had asked the Williamses to help him to get away to Paris with it to claim a reward there. I found out that Monsieur Williams had been trying to hire a car, and that he had specially asked for one that would stand up to rough ground. So I guessed that he meant to drive out somewhere on the Massif to pick up Volny.”

“I daresay it was a bit like that,” Bobby said, “only not Volny.”

Alain and the doctor came back. Alain gave a few orders to his men and Bobby told as briefly as possible both his own story and the gist of Camion's.

“Looks to me,” he said in conclusion, “as if, after they had dug up the Polthwaite jewellery from where Shields had it hidden, and after they had shot him and buried his body, Mrs. Williams remained hidden in this grove while Williams himself went off to get the car Camion says he had been bargaining for. I expect they thought it would be safer not to go back through Barsac, especially while in possession of the jewels. Unfortunately for them the search you organized upset their plans altogether. Williams wouldn't dare show himself in a car while your men were all about. He would have been seen at once and asked for explanations. It must have been a bit of a shock to him when he found he couldn't get back and was cut off both from his wife and from their loot, and he must have wondered a good deal what the search of the Massif would reveal. Mrs. Williams most likely didn't realize there was a general search taking place. She would only see Père Trouché and me making for the very spot where Shields was buried. She would realize we were bound to find his body and then I suppose she decided their best chance was to stop us reporting it. She would think it might be weeks before our bodies were found, and she and her husband could be anywhere in the world by then, South America, China, anywhere. Her bad luck, that the firing was bound to be heard by your men, Monsieur Alain, though as it happened Camion heard it first. It must have been another shock for her, and the worst of all, when she realized that her pistol practice had brought down all your gendarmes on her. No wonder she made up her mind to end it.”

“There was an old leather valise near the body,” Alain said. “It is full of rings, brooches, unset stones in handfuls. Gold cigar cases, handbags in gold mesh, and so on, too. It had evidently been buried for some time, it was damp and covered with earth. It's a good weight. They would want a car to take it away in, if only to avoid attracting attention.”

Darkness had been increasing rapidly while all these things were taking place and by this time was nearly complete. The doctor had been making out a brief written report as best he could and now was ready to listen to Bobby's request that he should see to old Père Trouché, who in the midst of so much excitement, with so much needing swift and instant attention, had been almost forgotten.

“Yes, yes, I go, I go at once,” Mendel answered a fresh request from Bobby, “but if the man is dead, there is nothing I can do.”

“I thought he was hit right over the heart,” Bobby said.

Together they started off; Clauzel, to whom Bobby had also spoken, promising to follow immediately with two of his men as soon as they had ready the improvised stretcher he set them to construct.

The distance was only short but in the intense, impenetrable darkness that had now set in, no stars showing, the moon not yet risen, progress was both slow and difficult over the rough, uneven ground, covered with tangled vegetation, here and there with loose stony patches where sometimes big boulders lay. The battery of Bobby's torch had run down, the doctor had none with him, their only light came from an occasional match one or other of them struck, though even between them they had so few they were obliged to be economical in their use. Once indeed the doctor, who had stumbled several times and once fallen full length, refused to go on, protesting that it was useless to continue.

“We shall be breaking our necks,” he complained. “Already I am covered with bruises. Also if the man is dead, then a doctor is no longer of any use.”

“Two shots hit him,” Bobby said. “He never moved after the second shot. Only it does not seem decent to leave him lying there.”

As he spoke there came an instant response, from out of the heart of the black night, as a voice that Bobby knew well called softly:

“Hé, Mr. Englishman, is it you? What is it that has happened and who is that with you?”

Bobby, after a moment of blank amazement, began to run, then stood still, bewildered by the darkness. He struck one of his few remaining matches and held it up. Instantly a puff of wind, though the air had seemed calm before, blew it out. He called: