Murder Abroad (9 page)

Bobby continued his way. It was still early, the air fresh and cool, and he found the climb up the hill-side pleasant and exhilarating. It was a steep ascent, and as he climbed beech and chestnut gave place to oak and fir, and then there were no more trees but only stunted shrubs and stretches of purple heather and yellow flowering gorse. He came to a bank where the wild thyme grew, and, remembering Shakespeare, decided it would be a good place to rest. The scent was strong and sweet; he thought how nice it would be if he had no other object than to sit here and try to transfer to canvas something of the loveliness of the valley at his feet, its rich and peaceful beauty so strange a contrast to the wild tangle of scrub and rock and ravine on which now his back was turned. But he could see quite plainly, too, the Pépin Mill, cut off by its barrier of chestnut and beech as if it hid behind them, and his face hardened as he thought of the deed done there, such a deed as even this fierce and hostile land had, he supposed, scarcely known before.

He got up and resumed his climb and came presently to a kind of plateau where were still visible what even his inexperienced eye could recognize as traces of ancient fortification. A little distance away, where the land began to rise again, but well sheltered by a high cliff behind, stood a small hut, built of the lava slabs, of which, too, were formed the walls of many of the houses in the village. A man of middle height, thin and gaunt, dressed like any peasant, was standing just outside, leaning on a staff and watching him intently. Skirting the edge of one of the mounds that told how here, too, men had sought for that security no arms or fortresses can give, but only a mutual good will, Bobby found a rough track that led towards the hut. He followed it, and when he was nearer called a cheerful greeting to the man at the door, adding some comment on the view. He spoke in English and explained: “They told me in the village you were English but they never told me it was quite such a stiff climb up here. Good thing I brought my lunch with me so I haven't got to hurry back. You are, monsieur, the Abbé Taylour, aren't you?”

“Yes,” Taylour answered, speaking in English, too, though with a faint touch of French accent. “They told you more than my name in the village, I expect.”

He had been standing quite close to the partly open door of the hut, with his back to it. He turned and closed it, making sure that the latch was secure. An ordinary garden chair of the hammock variety stood against the hut wall. The abbé took it down, opened it, placed it in position at a little distance and in the shade. Near by, between it and the door of the hut, was a rough block of lava. On this the abbé took his own seat. Bobby watched all this carefully, and wondered if it was fanciful to find a certain meaning or significance in these various movements. With a gesture Taylour invited Bobby to occupy the chair. Thanking him, Bobby complied. Taylour said: “I see you sketch. An artist perhaps? But I think it was not only to make sketches that you climbed up here.”

“Well, partly for the view, and anyhow I've enjoyed the climb,” Bobby answered.

“I suppose,” Taylour continued, “they told you in the village I was excommunicated and in constant close communion with ‘Le Vilain?'”

“‘Le Vilain'?” Bobby repeated, puzzled.

“The devil,” explained Taylour. “The good people about here think it more prudent not to mention him by name. Probably the idea is that if he heard himself spoken of, he might come along. An old superstition common in many forms. Neither tale is true I may explain. I have no more to do with ‘Le Vilain' than most other people and I am not excommunicated. At least, if I am, I do not know it, and therefore, by canon law, I am not excommunicated. But I daresay such stories interested you a little?”

“Well, you see,” Bobby answered slowly, wondering if all this meant that Taylour regarded his visit with suspicion and was trying to find out if anything lay behind it, “the fact is, I saw a light up here, and I asked about it.”

“I hang it out each night,” the abbé answered. “I pretend it is meant as a landmark and a guide. I call it the lighthouse of the Bornay Massif—the local name for this neighbourhood. In reality it is, I think, because I feel it a kind of link between myself and the world. But it is true one poor lad did get overtaken by darkness up here—he was looking for some strayed animal, I believe—and lost himself and died from fatigue and exposure. Perhaps if I had been showing my light he might have been saved. They found him not very far from here and a compatriot of yours, a Mr. Shields, who had helped in the search, remarked to me on the tragedy of the poor lad's dying so near the food and shelter I could have given him. So then I made up my mind it must not happen again and I hang up my light now every evening. Not that it is really much use. People don't wander about here at night. No object and no paths for that matter.”

“Isn't Clermont just over there?” Bobby asked, pointing to where showed the great round summit of the Puy de Dôme. “Mightn't some one be trying a short cut?”

“No one could get to Clermont that way,” answered Taylour smilingly. “Practically impossible. Of course, it's all been surveyed, but by parties properly equipped and supported. No one caught by himself out here at night would stand much chance.”

“Well, I had thought of trying,” Bobby said, “but if it's like that, I won't. It struck me as looking as if it would make a nice country walk, that's all.”

The Abbé Taylour smiled.

“A nice country walk,” he repeated. “A townsman's idea,” he said. “You are a townsman, I expect? Yes. Ah, well, towns are one thing; and people who live in them and who think of the country as a place all made up of villas and gardens and cultivated fields, don't even dream of what the real country is like, the untamed country, where nature's savage still. But in England, I suppose, there's none left like that. You English conquer Nature as you conquer everything else.”

“Do we?” Bobby asked. “I don't know that we feel much like conquerors these days.”

He produced his lunch and without too much difficulty persuaded the abbé to share it. He had been provided with one of those small wooden casks in which the workingman of Auvergne carries his day's ration of wine, but in order to get an additional glass, the abbé had to get up and enter the hut to find one. Bobby noticed that he was again careful to close the door behind him, both entering and coming out. The wine, it was the local ‘cru' unmixed with water and fairly strong, seemed to loosen the abbé's tongue and he was soon chatting freely, showing himself the possessor of an intelligent and cultivated mind. He told Bobby a good deal about the surrounding country and its history and its customs. He told Bobby, too, that the ancient fortifications, still to be traced on the plateau before them, were relics of a Gallic fortress stormed by the Romans during the war with Vercingetorix.

“You remember his statue in the Place de Jaude at Clermont?” Taylour asked. “He is the national hero in these parts. You would think it must always have been as peaceful and quiet here as it is now, but here, too, has been battle and slaughter, man slaying man and rejoicing in the act, cries of dreadful despair, of still more dreadful victory, all those things that God still permits upon the earth—if God there be,” he added under his breath.

His quiet voice, for he had spoken without emotion, sank into silence. Bobby was silent too. He did not know what to say. After a pause, the abbé continued in the same quiet, almost indifferent manner:

“Sometimes at night I think I hear them still, those cries, those groans. It may be that when the human soul has fled in such anguish and such terror, the memory remains even in things that seem to us inanimate.”

“If so, there can't be many spots in the world,” Bobby said, “where such memories don't remain.” He pointed towards the valley so far below. “There was another tragedy down there only a little while ago,” he said. “An old, defenceless woman.”

“Yes,” agreed the abbé. “You are interested?”

“She was English,” Bobby said. “Perhaps that doesn't matter. But she was old and weak and defenceless and alone. And that does matter. I do not much like to think of it—not even if it was suicide and still less if it was murder.”

“You have been told that she was murdered?” Taylour asked.

“Well, hardly that. But there does seem a pretty strong suspicion that's what it was, even though the official idea is suicide. What do you think?”

Taylour shook his head.

“I know so little about it,” he said after a pause. “I was ill at the time—an attack of fever. Luckily a good man who sometimes brings me my letters happened to find me and I am afraid got a bad scare. You see, I was delirious, and unluckily it appears I made some reference to the devil. He was quite persuaded the devil was there in proper person waiting to carry me off. Luckily, he talked about it down in the village and the doctor heard and very kindly came up to see for himself. The fever had left me by then but I was so weak I believe I might have died for sheer lack of strength to get my own food.”

“It was certainly fortunate,” Bobby agreed, and he could not help thinking that, whether consciously or unconsciously, the Abbé Taylour had provided himself with an alibi. If he were so ill and feeble as he said he had been, he could certainly have had no hand or part in the Polthwaite tragedy. But was his story true? Delirium is easily assumed. An ignorant peasant could as easily be scared. By the time the doctor arrived, the fever had gone, if it had ever existed. No need, therefore, to pretend the existence of symptoms the falsity of which a medical man might detect. The suggested alibi is always so much stronger than the one supposed to be impregnable and therefore challenging investigation. Bobby told himself that he did not much like either it or the apparently casual but possibly intended manner in which it had been put forward. He said: “I wonder if the truth will ever be known. You are English, too?” he added abruptly.

“Of English descent. My parents were English but I was born in France. I am a French citizen, I have done my army service. Then I entered the Church. You wonder why I live up here by myself, in such solitude?”

“Well,” Bobby answered, “it's a grand view and lovely air and all that, but it does seem a bit out of the way.”

“A typically British way of putting it,” observed the other with a faint smile. “It is undoubtedly a bit out of the way. But I wanted peace and quiet, I wanted to be for a time alone with my own thoughts.”

“I wonder how you manage for provisions?” Bobby remarked.

“I fetch what I need from the village or sometimes I arrange for it to be brought here. For water, there is a stream about a hundred metres away. At times I have visitors. Once or twice artists like yourself, seeking good subjects. Then it is known I am a priest and occasionally even I hear confessions. I cannot refuse, though I am afraid it vexes my good friend, the Abbé Granges.”

“The curé of Citry-sur-l'eau?”

“Yes. You have met him? He is sure I am excommunicated. He is still more sure when he hears of his parishioners visiting me. It seems he has the name of being too severe towards the sins of the flesh and because of that, perhaps, he gets criticized himself in other ways. A good man, I think, but limited in experience. It is not his fault. The Church puts down a man in a parish and then forgets all about him—at least, unless he has friends in high places or he proves a saint or makes a scandal.”

Bobby noticed that he spoke of the Church with bitterness and he remembered, too, that earlier, half-whispered, ‘if God there be'. It began to seem to Bobby that if the Abbé Taylour were not excommunicated, it was probably not for lack of having given sound cause, in theology and discipline, at least. Bobby said:

“Speaking of confession, is it true that only a bishop can give absolution for murder?”

The Abbé Taylour looked gravely at Bobby and for some moments did not answer. Then he said:

“Why do you ask that? You spoke just now of what happened at the Pépin Mill. English people are there, a Mr. and Mrs. Williams. Are they friends of yours?”

“I never saw or heard of them before,” Bobby answered. “I know nothing about them.”

The abbé made no answer and did not seem inclined to chat so freely now. He took to replying only in monosyllables or not at all and soon Bobby departed. But when he had gone some distance and was well out of sight of the hut he sat down and, getting out his sketch book, set to work. He had chosen a spot where a tall pillar of stone, like the last remaining column of some vast palace that otherwise had vanished utterly, hid him from view. Quite near was a deep crack or small crevasse in the ground, twelve or fifteen feet deep, and so hidden by a growth of gorse along its edge and climbing down its precipitous sides that it was nearly invisible. Bobby, indeed, had been close upon it before he was aware of its presence, and he reflected that if there were many of such traps for the careless walker, no wonder every one said there would be small chance of survival for any overtaken up here by the fall of night.

He did not make very good progress with his sketching. If it was his unconscious that had helped him the day before to do such good work, now it did not seem disposed to give him any assistance. But then it was not primarily to sketch that he had settled himself in this snug and hidden corner, and presently his patience was rewarded, for he heard approaching steps. He got to his feet and looked round his sheltering column of rock. Coming down the hill at a swinging pace was that tall youngster of the small head set upon the tremendous shoulders whom now he knew to be Henri Volny, son, he had been told, of the richest farmer of the district but kept, apparently, on short allowance. Bobby came further out. Volny saw him and stopped and stared. Bobby waved a greeting.

“Hullo,'' he called. “I've just been paying a visit to the Abbé Taylour. Jolly up there, isn't it?”