Murder Abroad (6 page)

He went up to the zinc counter and ordered something and stood there, looking slowly round, and where his dark and proud glance rested, there showed at once uneasiness and doubt, and a shuffling of heavy, uncomfortable feet on the boarded floor.

One man joined Camion, and apparently, though Bobby could not hear what was said, made some sort of advance. The rest of the company seemed to think this was a daring thing to do. Camion took not the least notice and the other slunk away. The game of dominoes broke up. The market discussion died into silence. Yet there seemed no hostility. One or two as they were going even shouted a good night to Camion but seemed to take care to do so from the safety of the door. Bobby could not help thinking that it was all a little like what he had seen happen in certain disreputable haunts in London, when colleagues of his put in an unexpected appearance. Yet it was not quite like that either. All that seemed clear was that in some way young Camion had been set apart, that there was about him something of which they stood in awe, that they dreaded, and yet that invested him with a kind of awful fascination.

Camion himself did not speak. He stood there, his face dark and expressionless, and yet Bobby watching him intently noticed signs of nervousness, of tension. He was only too plainly exercising a strong self-restraint and Bobby found himself wondering what would happen if it broke down. He felt certain, too, that behind Camion's air of pride and aloof indifference there was strong emotion, an even stronger resentment.

People were beginning to drift away now. It was late, certainly, but all the same there was a subtle air of relief about them as they slipped off, as though they felt safer in departing. Bobby heard Camion say abruptly to the man behind the zinc counter:

“Has Volny been here?”

“He was here,” the other answered, “but he went a little while ago. That was before you came in.”

This last sentence had evidently been added by way of excuse or reassurance and Bobby thought that Camion winced as if he realized the underlying implication.

“Then I'll go, too,” he said, “or there'll be no one left. I only came to speak to Volny about to-morrow, so don't be afraid.”

“But why? What for? Afraid of what?” asked the patron from behind, where he was assiduously polishing glasses.

“Afraid that I should come again,” Camion answered very bitterly. “Heap of fools,” Bobby heard him mutter as he turned and left the café.

“The poor lad, now he does not sleep well,” said some one sitting at a table near.

“Who? That young man?” Bobby asked, turning to the speaker. “I thought it was only in the town that one did not sleep, not you who live in the country.”

“In the country also there are those who do not sleep well,” the other answered and got up and went away.

Bobby followed him soon, the prospect of bed not unwelcome, for the day had been long and tiring.

It seemed to him plain that in this apparently quiet and normal little village there were many currents and cross-currents at work, of which some at least, it was only reasonable to conclude, resulted from the Polthwaite tragedy. Had they also anything to do, he wondered, with the missing Polthwaite diamonds?

Once in bed he slept soundly, untroubled by the problem he had come here to try to solve. In the morning after coffee and a roll he went out for a stroll and on the pretext of buying some picture postcards he entered the little shop Eudes had pointed out as kept by an aunt of the girl, Lucille Simone. An old lady appeared. Bobby lingered over his choice. The old lady, apparently bored, disappeared, and Lucille came instead. Bobby began to ask questions about the cards and the localities shown. Lucille answered readily enough, but again Bobby had that feeling that he was being watched with suspicion. He thought it time to try to find out the cause. He said abruptly:

“Have you one of that old mill I noticed last night?

“No, monsieur,” she answered and it was plain that the question had made her uneasy.

“Is that because of the murder there?” he asked.

“Yes, monsieur,” she answered in a low voice.

“But that was months ago,” Bobby said.

“It is not forgotten, it will never be forgotten,” she answered and in her voice there was a deep and strange passion.

Bobby reflected that though officially Miss Polthwaite's death had been put down as suicide, this girl made no comment on his use of the word murder, ‘assassination' he had called it in the French phrase he had used. He said gravely:

“A terrible thing. An old defenceless woman so barbarously, so cruelly killed. Such a thing has never been heard of before in the village?”

“Never,” she replied with the same deep passion and emotion in her voice.

Bobby saw that she was twisting her hands together as in some fierce effort of control. She was pale to the lips, too. Bobby said:

“It has never been known who was guilty?”

She made no answer but her small teeth began to close upon her lower lip so that a drop of blood showed. Bobby felt he could question her no more. He began to pay for the postcards he had chosen. When he had done so, he said, and it was in a way in self-defence that he spoke:

“Such a crime should not go unpunished.”'

“Ah, my God,” she breathed, “no, that could not be.”

She turned and almost ran out of the shop, to hide her tears, Bobby felt sure. The old lady he had seen before came in. She looked at Bobby very indignantly but said nothing. Bobby bade her a polite farewell.

“I shall come back for some more,” he told her cheerfully and she made no comment, though he was sure she would have liked to say they had no wish to see him again.

He felt convinced that Lucille Simone either knew or guessed something. He wondered if, perhaps, she had been in some way an accomplice in the commission of the crime. He did not much like to think it of those clear eyes beneath that tranquil brow, but he had seen enough of life to know that fair without is no proof of fair within. Evil itself can put on at times an air of majesty, an aspect of beauty. He walked on towards the church. It stood a little distance outside the village. Close by it was the presbytery, a modest little dwelling standing in a small garden given over entirely to vegetables which, however, did not seem to grow well, since the church had been built on rising ground, on land that was stony and sterile. The garden had, in fact, been made almost entirely by soil carried up in baskets from the foot of the hill, but it was a labour of Sisyphus, for owing to the steepness of the slope of the land here and to the exposed position, the wind was continually blowing away the soil, the rain perpetually washing from it all elements of fertility. Both the house and the church, Bobby noticed, were badly in need of paint and repair.

The church was an old building, but architecturally it was of small interest. At the time of the Revolution it had been partially burnt and the interior entirely cleared. Then it had been roughly restored, used for a time as a stable, and subsequently transformed into a Temple of Reason. Later, it had been returned to the Church. It contained, however, one of those Black Virgins, for which Auvergne is notable. Bobby was examining this image with much interest when a priest came out of the vestry where he had gone to disrobe after celebrating a mass.

It was the curé Bobby had seen the night before working in the harvest field. He was a thin, emaciated man of middle age, with hollow cheeks and deep sunken eyes. His hair was almost white, the long soutane he wore was shabby and patched, his boots looked as if they had been taken from a scarecrow in the field. Not in any way fit, to judge from his appearance, for the heavy toil of the harvest field, and Bobby noticed with disfavour that the grime inseparable from work in the fields, had been only very imperfectly removed from his face and hands. Eudes had described him as a miser who lost no opportunity of picking up a few sous and Bobby thought that evidently he grudged spending them on soap and hot water.

At first he did not seem inclined to take any notice of Bobby's presence, except for the slightest possible movement of the head on seeing he was there, but, in pursuance of his determination to make himself as familiar as possible with the village background, Bobby stopped him and began to talk about the image of the Virgin. It stood by the altar, elevated on a tall wooden pedestal, before it a kind of shelf on which reposed an offering of faded flowers. A trail of grease that had dribbled down showed that candles burnt there occasionally, though there were none at the moment. The image itself, about three feet in height, was carved in wood, black oak, Bobby thought, though he was not sure, and he even wondered if it had been passed through fire. Of incredible antiquity, probably antedating Christianity itself, since quite possibly it represented some goddess of an earlier religion—for the mother and child, symbol and proof of the perpetual miracle of birth and of renewal, are objects of worship in many primitive creeds—it had been so battered through the long passage of the ages that now the face was hardly recognizable as human and the child might almost have passed for a bundle of faggots. But the reverence of the curé for it was plainly intense.

Not just at first did Bobby succeed in breaking down the curé's reserve. He did not, apparently, much want to talk about the image to a stranger who was probably a heretic or worse. Even after he had begun to answer Bobby's questions he still seemed uneasy, giving Bobby odd, sidelong questioning glances, as if wondering what was behind his questions and what he really wanted. He kept, too, putting up a hand to fidget with the dried-up flowers on the shelf at the foot of the image, re-arranging them and pushing them further back, till Bobby began to wonder if he were under suspicion of harbouring some ill design, perhaps of wanting to run away either with the flowers or the image.

Gradually, however, the good man appeared to forget whatever it was that was troubling him. He became more animated, and those deep-set, sunken eyes of his began to brighten and glow. It seemed the image was one that once had enjoyed a widespread fame. In the early middle ages the Black Virgin of Citry-sur-l'eau had drawn pilgrims from all over Europe.

“Even, monsieur,” said the curé, “even from your own country which then, of course, was still a faithful daughter of the Church, before you others, English, ceased to believe.”

Even in the time of Louis XIV, the Virgin of Citry-sur-l'eau had shown her power by miraculously converting on his deathbed a rather specially wicked nobleman of Auvergne, famous always for having more wicked lords to the square mile than any other province of France. But after that there had been few manifestations, owing, the curé explained earnestly, to the hardness of heart prevalent in the district. Then had come the Revolution and naturally the Black Virgin of Citry had lost power to grant petitions no longer addressed to her. Her image, once so revered, had even been thrown out of the church. Fortunately it had not been chopped up for firewood or burnt in a bonfire as had happened to other images of almost equal sanctity and fame in that dreadful time. It had been pushed away in an outhouse. It had lain there for long years. One did not know what indignities it had not suffered. The story, the almost incredible story, was that finally it had been identified in a stable, as one of the posts supporting a manger. It had been rescued and replaced in the church just before the Franco-Prussian war. Unfortunately the villagers had been much dis-appointed, when, in spite of all prayers and petitions offered, not only had there been failure to stop the advance of the enemy but the men from the village at the war had suffered with unusual severity, the company to which most of them belonged having been annihilated.

“As if,” said the curé indignantly, “after so many years of neglect the Virgin of Citry-sur-l'eau could have been expected to manifest her powers the very first moment my misguided parishioners chose to appeal to her. Perhaps it was not even possible, perhaps the heavenly power needs a certain time, as it were, to concentrate itself, to form for itself that channel which must be aided by our prayers.”

The disappointment of the people, however, had been vocal and profound. Such a pass had it come to now that many of the faithful, having vows to make or petitions to put forward, neglected their own Virgin and actually took themselves and their offerings to a neighbouring Black Virgin a few miles away and reputed to be of great efficacy and power.

By this time the curé was getting really excited. His words poured out in an indignant torrent, he hammered one fist into another, those hollow, famished-looking eyes of his blazed in his hungry face, he backed poor Bobby into a corner and thundered his denunciations at him.

Then he seemed to grow quieter.

“I do not deny,” he said, “that grace may flow more abundantly through other Virgins at other shrines which have not been so long neglected, scorned, as here. But if my people repented and turned again, one would see a different state of things and once more the Black Virgin of Citry-sur-l'eau would show her powers.”

He seemed to hesitate and then drew nearer Bobby. He almost whispered.

“I have a dream,” he said. “It comes to me often. A great church built here, a shrine for our Virgin so magnificent all the country could not show the like, a shrine blazing with light, a perpetual adoration, a beacon of faith in this forgetful land. It would need much money, much, very much. But perhaps it may come, monsieur, perhaps some day that vision may be fulfilled, when there is the money.”

He turned again to the image, and, putting up his hand, began once more to fidget with the flowers that lay on the shelf before the Virgin. He looked at Bobby uneasily.

“Monsieur will forgive me,” he said. “I grow a little excited at times with the thought of what I might do if some day, soon perhaps, by chance, the money came; yes, no matter how it came, so that in the end it came.”

Now he was gently shepherding Bobby out of the church as if he wished to see him safely away from the vicinity of the Virgin. Once outside he seemed relieved, muttered some words of excuse about affairs to see to, and hurried away. Bobby watched him go till he was out of sight. He never once looked back.