The Prisoner of the Riviera (The Francis Bacon Mysteries) (3 page)

Now, I quite like excitement, and even danger isn’t off the menu, but blind speed and invisible disaster are not to my taste at all. I got brief, frightful glimpses of potential calamity in palms and pink and buff stucco walls and dangerous curbs and a stray dog and two careless pedestrians. It seemed a long while before the motorcycle dropped from a whine to a roar to a throbbing rumble. I opened my eyes as we bounced off a side street into the courtyard of a small bicycle repair shop. Pierre switched off the motor and flipped up his goggles. He had, I now noticed, eyes between brown and green with little gold flecks like a cat’s. “All right, monsieur?”

I handed out the wheels and attempted to disengage myself from the tires, the boxes, and what turned out to be a couple of extra bike pedals, one of which had gouged my right shin. I started cleaning up with my handkerchief, but Pierre unlocked the shop and motioned me inside. He took down a first aid kit with iodine, Nan’s mainstay, several gauze pads, and reels of tape. While he patched me up, I looked at the photographs on the walls: men in Pierre’s blue-and-white-striped kit posed with racing bicycles and, sometimes, with trophies.

This was the local club, he told me, and he was a member as well as the team’s official mechanic. The parts were for his team leader’s bike, which was getting set up for a big race, and he’d taken the motorbike to save the train fare, a decision that would have been a disaster without me. He was so distressed about my leg that he insisted on riding me down to the front in the sidecar and he was so amusing and decorative that I had him stay for dinner, where he explained bicycle racing and mentioned that the ongoing Tour de France would run through Monaco.

“We will watch for you,” said Arnold.

“Oh, Monsieur, I will not be in that race, not even as a
domestique
, but I hope to work as a mechanic on the Riviera stage.” Then, sensing our all-encompassing ignorance of this splendid event, he began explaining the extraordinary length and difficulty of the race, the climbs in the Alps and the Pyrenees, and the hundreds of kilometers of stages that comprised a circuit of the entire country. “And the last stage beginning in Caen, Monsieurs, the martyred city—it will be very moving.”

In this way, we passed a pleasant evening. After Pierre, who kept training hours, said good night, we remained drinking on the terrace instead of going to the casino or one of our usual bars.

We left early the next morning for Monte Carlo, and it was two days later, after we were established in a pleasant waterside hotel and losing money hand over fist at the casino, that I visited a news kiosk for the London papers Nan enjoys. Almost as an afterthought, I picked up
Nice-Matin
, thinking to check on the progress of the famous bicycle Tour.

Standing under the plane trees in the dappled sunshine, I opened the paper to an article headlined, “Murder in the Var.” Just Nan’s cup of tea, I thought, with the added promise of the guillotine, for my dear nan has a great passion for capital punishment. I was skimming the story when my chest contracted: the victim was known locally as “Madame Renard.” Victor’s supposed widow, the woman I’d visited, was dead, and I had perhaps precipitated this by delivering Victor’s legacy. It took me a moment to digest that idea, before my shock turned to surprise and then doubt when I checked the accompanying photo.

Instead of the Madame Renard I’d met, who was young with short, honey-colored hair and a wide face with broad cheekbones and an impudent expression, this Madame Renard was older, Arnold’s age if she was a day. With her long nose and bony cheeks, dark hair streaked white, and the large eyes of a tragic heroine, this Madame Renard looked plausible for the widow of a gambler with enemies, but she wasn’t the one who’d collected Joubert’s package.

I sat down on one of the benches to read the story carefully. The body of Claudine Renard had been found the previous afternoon when one of her neighbors delivered some eggs, found the kitchen door unlocked, and ventured inside. Madame Renard lay in a small stone pantry off the kitchen with her neck broken. There was no sign of a struggle, and it was as yet unclear if the victim had been killed where she was found. There was no information on the time of death, but I profoundly hoped that it was well outside of five p.m. on the afternoon I rang the bell at the Villa Mimosa, even though earlier might implicate
my
Madame Renard while later suggested that she had met a similar fate. All this was bad in any case.

Worse was to come. The neighbors, who clearly had been alert behind their shutters, reported that the villa had had a number of visitors, some in cars, and at all hours. Although those late-night visitors should have been the concern, the police seemed more anxious to trace the whereabouts of a fair-haired foreigner who had asked directions to the villa on what the paper referred to as “the fateful day.” I’ll just bet they were. With that thought, I realized what I’d considered a diversion for Nan presented serious trouble for me.

“Make a run for it,” was Nan’s advice, while Arnold, reverting to his solid-citizen mode, advised a quick cross-border visit to the nearest French police station. “You saw two men leave the villa. They may be the very ones involved.”

Nan shook her head. Her fascination with newspaper crime accounts has given her considerable expertise. “That’s risky without knowing the time of death,” she said. “And you are guilty until proven innocent here.”

“There’s no question of that!” Arnold exclaimed, but I thought it very likely that a mysterious fair-haired foreigner, aka me, would look like a nice solution to a sensational murder. And so timely, too, right at the start of the tourist season.

“Then,” said Arnold, the voice of conscience and reason, “there’s your Madame Renard.”

Nan sniffed. “Likely no better than she should be, that one.”

“She may also be in danger. You said she looked young and”—he hesitated a second—“down on her luck.”

“Off the street in Marseille, I’d venture.”

“Expendable,” Arnold said.

“So is our dear boy to the
flics
.” That’s my nan. Her love of capital punishment is balanced by her dislike of authority. What she might have become had she been born male or wealthy staggers my imagination.

“The difficulty is the French border,” I said. “The police will have my name soon. If Pierre reads the paper—that’s it right there. Or the hotel personnel, even. I did ask about the Villa Mimosa, about the location of the hamlet and the proper train stop.”

“Raising another question,” said Nan. “Why weren’t you given more explicit directions if that package was so important? That Joubert is a jackass.”

I was sure that was true, and I feared that one or both of the Madame Renards had trusted him unwisely.

“You were set up,” said Nan. “Once you asked for directions.”

With this sobering thought, we sat pondering our alternatives. To go to the police, to respond to that call for assistance would be a point in my favor. On the other hand, my description of the two “workmen” and of my “Madame Renard” might well lack corroboration, though the men had been at the café near the station and the neighbors must have seen them as well. It was possible my statement would be taken, my public spirit commended, my vacation resumed.

Possible, yes, but even stronger was the chance of being detained indefinitely in
la belle France
, possibly in a French prison. I wasn’t going to risk that. Dieppe and the boat train were out of the question, but I could hop on the local and make for Italy. Arnold and Nan would return via the boat train, and I would get myself north to Holland or Belgium and cross the Channel there.

Arnold thought this plan possible; Nan was enthusiastic. I went upstairs to pack, and I had my paintings stowed and my suitcase ready when there was a knock on the door. Funny how bad events send out their own vibrations. I knew before I spoke that it was not the chambermaid. I looked out at the balcony, but we were on the third floor, and even a successful run would be a confession of guilt. I closed my suitcases and called, “Entrez.”

Two men stepped into the room. One was a local policeman in the principality’s handsome uniform. He was short and broad shouldered with a physique like a boxer and an athlete’s restless grace. He was markedly younger than his companion and dark, with thick, black hair and Italianate features. In better circumstances, I’d have given him the eye. The other visitor was a tall, shambling French police detective with a large, broken nose, full mouth, and small gray eyes, who walked as if his knees and his feet were not in direct communication. Both men were very formal and polite, showed me their identification, and asked for mine. I handed over my passport.

“You appear to be leaving,” remarked the Frenchman, whose name was Inspector Chardin. Shades of the great genre painter. Would that prove a happy omen? Probably not, for he seemed gratified to have found me packing like a proper felon on the run.

“Monte Carlo is wonderful,” I said with a nod toward the Monégasque, but I have not been lucky at the tables. Besides, I want to visit the police in Menton.”

This clearly surprised him. “How so?”

“Why the story in
Nice-Matin
this morning, Monsieur. The request for information. Isn’t that why you are here?” I certainly hoped I’d guessed right, because my public-spirited gesture didn’t seem to please him as much as one might have thought.

“You were a visitor to the Villa Mimosa? Why didn’t you come forward sooner?”

“I am on holiday. I only saw the paper this morning. And that was just by chance. I’d decided to see how the bicycle race was progressing.”

“Very well,” said the
flic
from Monaco in the eager tone of an aficionado. “Vietto is leading. Surely a French victory this year, though look for Brambilla in the mountain stages.
Bellissimo
is Brambilla.”

His companion gave him a sour look. “Why were you at the Villa Mimosa?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We are at your disposal, Monsieur.” He sat down on the end of the bed and took out his notepad. I started with the shooting outside the gambling club and progressed to the rich, mysterious Monsieur Joubert and the even more mysterious Victor Renard, who might or might not be dead.

Inspector Chardin looked up sharply at this. “You were supposedly taking his last letter to his wife.”

“Supposedly—and the letter bore that out. It was a farewell note. He had been very badly hurt, and I’m in position to know that he lost a lot of blood. His death was certainly believable, but there has been no report in the London papers. We took an interest, as you can imagine.”

Inspector Chardin made a note of this. “So you did not know Monsieur Renard personally?”

“I don’t believe I had ever seen him before. He was not a regular at the club.”

“And Joubert?”

“I just knew him as the proprietor.”

“Yet you agreed to deliver the letter for him even if it was out of your way?”

“There were inducements.”

I described our bargain, and the younger man did a quick conversion from pounds to francs. “That’s a lot of money for a letter.”

“Too much,” I agreed. “But the packet contained more than a letter.”

“It would be nice to have a look at that notebook,” the detective remarked when I finished describing the contents of the packet.

“Madame Renard, the Madame Renard I saw, that is, took it to the rear of the house—undoubtedly to someone else—and came back and pronounced it satisfactory.”

“Then you left?”

“I left immediately. I did not want to linger at the villa, which was nearly empty of furniture and unnaturally quiet. I couldn’t believe that anyone lived there, yet I had a sense that Madame Renard was not alone. For one thing, and I didn’t think of this until just now, the whole house stank of cigarette smoke. I have asthma; I notice. But not Madame. I spoke to her in the doorway, and she smelled only of cologne.”

“But you actually saw no one except the woman calling herself Madame Renard? As far as you know the house was otherwise empty?”

“No.” I explained my detour to the tower and the two men in their blue smocks and town shoes who came out the front gate.

“Would you recognize them again?”

“Hard to say. I saw them from above. There was nothing particularly distinctive about them. One was slightly balding. Both were medium height and weight. But if the neighbors saw me, I assume they saw the men as well, perhaps more than once. And the Madame Renard that I saw—surely someone would have noticed her. She must have left at some point.”

The inspector thought for a moment, letting the silence grow in the room that I now felt was distinctly warm and stuffy. He was waiting for me to tell him more, to reveal something, to betray myself. I kept my mouth shut and thought how he would look on canvas with his rather red mouth and his long yellow teeth. His fingers were stained brownish yellow, too, and he began tapping one restlessly on his knee so that I guessed he needed a smoke. Finally, he said, “There is a problem, Monsieur. A problem for you, unfortunately.”

I waited; this did not sound good.

“The neighbors only report seeing you that afternoon. No one else went in or out of the Villa Mimosa that day.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps they stopped peeking out their windows. Perhaps they are lying.”

“Or perhaps you are, Monsieur.”

“I have no reason to lie, and I had every reason to wish for Madame Renard’s good health so that she could notify Joubert and erase my gambling debts.”

“All this will have to be verified with our London colleagues.”

I could see delays coming.

“It would be convenient if you could return with me to France. It is possible you can identify the men you claim to have seen. That would be a very strong point in your favor.”

Though I pointed out that this plan would hardly be convenient for me, I was unable to convince them that I should remain in the principality. I tapped on the adjoining door, confident that Nan would have been listening, and told her that I had to return to France. She stuck her head out, glared at the two policemen, and said, “Give me your cases, dear boy. I will keep them for you.”

The inspector shook his head. “It may be a few days,” he said and motioned for me to collect my things and leave. Downstairs, a black car waited with a uniformed officer in the driver’s seat. Inspector Chardin shook hands with his Monégasque counterpart, and I managed to wave to Arnold before I was hustled into the back of the car, the driver complaining about the weight of my cases.

“Painting supplies,” I explained.

This interested the inspector. “You will help us with the picture file,” he said, and after a long session with him and one of his note-taking juniors, I was seated at a big table with piles of folders and books of photographs. A resource indeed, and in a happier time, I would have enjoyed pouring over the mug shots of various French, Italian, and Corsican lowlifes. Yes, really some remarkable features but too impassive for my brush. I like extreme emotions, rage, lust, ecstasy, and I like them pictorially, too.

In any case I didn’t make much progress. Only one balding man struck me as being the right type for my faux workmen. “Not him, but he was like this.”

“Keep at it,” Inspector Chardin ordered, and he had another book of photos brought in.

Two hours later, when I had still found nothing, he produced a couple of sheets of paper and a pencil. “You say you’re a painter. Give us a sketch, then.”

This certainly was my lucky day: free art work on top of hours spent in the interview room instead of lolling under the palm trees. But needs must, as the saying goes, and since I often start with a printed image, I asked for the photo that bore the closest resemblance. Normally, I paint and draw simultaneously and always with the brush. I’m not really too friendly with the pencil, and, even with the help of the photo, it took me several minutes to rough in the head. “I saw him from above, you understand.”

Chardin shrugged. He breathed a melancholy resignation that I thought would have been more suited to a priest than a copper. He stood at my shoulder and watched me work. “Ah,” he said when I was finished. He took the paper and disappeared with it.

On his return, he asked, “What about the other man?”

I shook my head. I had only a vague image of a square face, dark hair, heavy shoulders.

“And the girl? The one you call Madame Renard?”

I thought for a minute, trying to decide if she would be safer known or unknown to the police.

“They’ll kill her, you understand,” Chardin said. “When she’s no longer of use to them.”

I saw his point, though I wasn’t entirely convinced that a Marseille street girl would be any safer in the warm embrace of the law. “Right. But I need you not to stand over me. And something to drink.”

Chardin went to the door and presently I received a large glass of the local red wine. When the door was locked again, I took a clean sheet of paper and concentrated on the hallway of the Villa Mimosa with the bare walls and tile floor, and on Madame with her wide, cat’s face, her small ears, and full lips. I erased once, twice, three times, and the paper took on the nasty grayish sheen of overwork before a little alteration to the brows, a change to the inside corner of one eye, a little shadow under the other and
voilà
: There she was. Though I am not fond of realism, per se, it has its moments, and this was one of them.

I got up from the bum-torturing wooden chair and went to the narrow barred window. Perhaps it was the contrast between the blue Mediterranean and the mildewed rooms of the station that depressed Inspector Chardin, who returned as I was studying the buff and sienna roofs of the town. He went right to the table and picked up the sheet. I heard him swear under his breath. “Are you sure?”

I turned around. His face had contracted with anxiety, and I wondered what I had gotten myself into. “It is as good a likeness as I can manage. It’s a true impression of her.”

He looked at the drawing again, shook his head, and disappeared into the hallway. When he returned, we rehashed everything I had told him, particularly about my Madame Renard, who had gone from being a no-account Marseille tart to a person of real interest.

“Did you think she was frightened?” he asked at one point.

I thought this over. “When I gave her the packet, I thought she was nervous. But when she came back to see me out, she seemed relieved. I did momentarily get the feeling she would like me to stay, but though she offered me a drink, she did not press me.”

Chardin tapped the table with one long, restless finger. “This has been very helpful,” he said.

I stood up like a bona fide good citizen, hoping that my passport would be returned and I would be free to go.

Chardin shook his head. “Helpful, but your story is still without corroboration. You are the only one who claims to have seen these people. You are the only one who can identify them. We must ask you to stay in the Var until further notice.”

When I began to protest, he added, “With such excellent information, it will surely not be too long, Monsieur.” He suggested a small and inexpensive hotel in the old part of the town, then went to the door and called for an officer to bring my cases. I was going from
en vacances
to semipermanent resident.