The Scapegoat (21 page)

I read the complicated document over a dozen times, and I understood at last the allusions dropped by Françoise and the others to the advantage of the next child being a boy. I wondered what whim had caused her father to tie up his fortune in this fashion, and whether Jean de Gué, on his marriage, had simply seized his share of it and gambled on a son. Poor Marie-Noel, no trust money for her if a brother came along. As to Jean de Gué himself, he would get control
of half the capital itself only if there was no heir and Françoise died before the age of fifty …

‘Excuse me, Monsieur le Comte, but will you be much longer? I have to go to lunch. We close at twelve, as Monsieur le Comte is no doubt aware, and it is already twenty past.’

The clerk stood beside me, wearing the injured expression of one who has lost valuable minutes of his time, and with an effort I brought myself back to reality. For a moment it had been as though I were sitting in that vast bedroom in the tower, hearing again the comtesse’s voice – ‘Beggared … and likely to remain so, unless Françoise produces a son, or …’ Now I understood the words, though the hidden meaning of her tone, her covert glance, were still a mystery. I only felt, dimly, that there was a bond between us unbreakable and strong, a secret world of mother and son which no outsider, neither wife nor child nor sister, could enter; and the masquerader that was my outward self hovered on the fringe of discovery, seeking, yet fearful of what it might find.

‘I’m coming,’ I said, ‘I didn’t realize it was so late.’

I put the documents back in the safe. As I did so, a paper fell out which had not been tied up in tape with the others, but seemed to have been thrust hastily in. I glanced at it, and saw that it was a letter from the lawyer called Talbert, written two or three weeks earlier. Odd words caught my eye – ‘
verrerie’, ‘rentes’, ‘placements’
, ‘
dividendes’
, – and, sensing that there might be the clue to the whole financial tangle, I put it in my pocket. Once more we went through the ritual of the keys, and then I followed the clerk out of the vault, up the stairs and into the little office.

I looked about me, still absent in thought, my mind filled with the details of the marriage settlement, and then I remembered and said, ‘Where’s the child?’

The clerk replied, ‘She’s been gone some time.’

‘Gone? Gone where?’

‘Monsieur le Comte, you said I was to tell her it would be
all right for her to do as she asked and go with this person in a lorry.’

‘I said nothing of the sort!’

I spoke sharply, furious with myself and with him, and he repeated, more offended than ever, the words that I had used, giving them a sense I had never intended. I saw that my own impatience had been to blame – I had spoken quickly, thoughtlessly, wanting to read the document.

‘Who was this person, did you say? Where did she go?’ I asked, responsibility flooding me, with a sudden vision of gypsies, kidnappers, little girls murdered in woods.

‘I rather think it was one of your own lorries from the
verrerie
, Monsieur le Comte,’ said the clerk. ‘Some of your workpeople had been to the station. The child seemed perfectly at ease. She climbed up in the front seat with the woman.’

There was nothing to be done about it. Marie-Noel must take her chance. She would either be delivered safely at the château or butchered in the forest. If there was any mischance, I should be to blame.

The clerk led me past the counter, empty now and silent, and let me out, locking and bolting the door behind me. I turned left and went across the Place towards the church, for I must at least discover what had happened about the broken porcelain. Marie-Noel had said something about the Porte de Ville. Where was the Porte de Ville? I went back in the direction I had seen her take, beyond the car, and although irritated now, and anxious, I was at the same time struck by the beauty of the town, the curious charm of canals winding peacefully past the old houses, little footbridges leading across the water to back gardens, roofs yellow with age, overhanging eaves and twisted beams. At last I came to the Porte de Ville itself, an ancient gateway to the once fortified town, with a stone bridge where the drawbridge used to be. I passed under the archway to what was evidently the main shopping street of the town, and at once I saw, on the right-hand side, the place that the
child must have meant, an antique shop with china and silver in the window. But the door was fast shut and there was a notice beside it saying they closed from midday until three.

I turned away, and then saw that a man was watching me from a shop on the opposite side of the street.

‘Bonjour
, Monsieur le Comte,’ he said. ‘Are you looking for Madame?’

I was evidently known, but I did not want to become involved.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘It’s not important.’

A sort of half-smile appeared on his face. He seemed amused. ‘I don’t wish to be indiscreet,’ he said, ‘but Madame can’t hear the bell when the door is shut. It would be better to take the garden entrance.’

He went on smiling, delighted to be of use to me, but I had no intention of walking into any back garden and disturbing the antique merchant during the sacred siesta hour. I thanked him and went back under the Porte de Ville, and glancing leftwards, in vague curiosity, saw how the shops and houses of the narrow main street backed on to the canal, and that the rear of the antique shop itself was in reality a small eighteenth-century house, with a balcony and strip of garden fronting the canal like a miniature palázzo on a Venetian backwater. The windows were wide open to the sun, and a cage with budgerigars stood on the balcony. A narrow plank bridge led from the road to the garden. It was one of those corners that a tourist brochure describes as ‘picturesque’, and I wondered how many coloured replicas on postcards were on sale within the town. As I stood there, pausing to light a cigarette, someone came out on to the balcony to feed the birds, and I recognized in an instant the blonde woman in the bright blue coat who had laughed at Marie-Noel and myself in the market-place. Was she the keeper of the antique shop? If so, then I had no objection to asking what arrangements had been made to mend the broken porcelain.

I advanced towards the plank bridge, feeling a little overbold. ‘Excuse me, Madame,’ I called, ‘I tried the shop just now, but the door was locked. Did my daughter visit you this morning?’

The woman turned round, surprised, and then to my intense astonishment burst into laughter.

‘Idiot,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d gone home. What are you doing, hanging about at the street corner and playing the fool?’

The familiarity, the use of the intimate
‘tu’
, shook me off balance. I could only stare, wondering how to answer in character. She looked away to her right, past the Porte de Ville to the Place Saint-Julien. It was truly the siesta hour. The streets were empty.

‘There’s no one about,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’

The reputation of Jean de Gué in Villars was evidently a light one. I hesitated, and then, glancing across the square, saw the decisive factor in favour of acceptance. It was Renée, whom I had forgotten all about, long finished at the coiffeur, tramping the town in search of me. With a sudden flood of realization I remembered that, now Marie-Noel had disappeared into the unknown in a lorry, I should have to drive Renée back to St Gilles alone. I was trapped. The woman in the blue coat followed my eyes and saw my dilemma.

‘Quick,’ she said, ‘she hasn’t seen you – she’s looking the other way.’

I dashed across the little bridge and on to the balcony, and, laughing still, she pulled me into the room.

‘There’s luck,’ she said. ‘A moment later she’d have caught us.’

She shut the long window and turned to me, smiling, the same look of intense amusement on her face that I had noticed and indeed shared in the market-place. But now there was nothing guarded about it, or disguised: her whole expression was open and free.

‘That child of yours is adorable,’ she said, ‘but it was very
naughty of you to send her here. And why for heaven’s sake did you wrap up those pieces of broken porcelain in cellophane and paper with a card addressed to me? She said something about a mistake, and a friend of yours in Paris, but one of these days, my angel, your jokes will go too far.’ She put her hand in the pocket of her blue coat and pulled out a piece of crumpled cellophane and some string. ‘I’ll see to your broken porcelain, and anything else you care to send in from St Gilles, but don’t use your child or your wife or your sister as your deputy, because it’s making fools of them and I have too much respect for your family.’

She dived into the other pocket and produced a crumpled card. On it was written ‘For my beautiful Béla, from Jean.’ The porcelain dog and cat lay in pieces on a table. The only link that was missing was the outsize bottle of ‘Femme’.

A
lthough she had closed the long window, the billowing casement curtains masking the view, the room was full of sun. I had an impression of blue-grey walls and white cushions, but the effect, instead of being cold, was light as air. The dahlias that I had seen her carrying from the market-place were red and gold, and now they spilt in profusion from a vase in the corner, the sun upon them still. There was a bowl of fruit upon a table, a bookcase, a Marie Laurencin drawing hanging above the fireplace. Deep chairs stood about the room, and a Persian cat cleaned its paws in one of them. Close to the window was a low flat table with artist’s materials upon it, thin, small brushes and a special sort of paper. There was a smell of apricots.

‘What are you doing in Villars in the middle of the day?’ she asked.

‘I went to the bank,’ I said, ‘and forgot the time. I was supposed to pick up one of the family from the coiffeur.’

‘You’ve left it rather late,’ she said. ‘Does she enjoy walking about the streets?’ She went to a corner cupboard and brought out a bottle of Dubonnet and two glasses. ‘Where’s the child?’

‘I don’t know. She disappeared in a lorry with some workmen.’

‘That shows good taste. You’ve brought her up well. Are you going to have lunch with me? It’s all here – ham, salad, cheese, fruit and coffee.’ She opened a hatchway between this room and another, and there was a tray laid ready, with food upon it.

‘How can I,’ I asked, ‘with my sister-in-law waiting for me outside?’

She went over to the window and opened it, and looked out across the balcony to the Place Saint-Julien.

‘She’s not there any more. If she has any sense she will go and sit in the car, and then, when she becomes tired of waiting, drive back to St Gilles.’

I wondered if Renée could drive. I did not care. It was more interesting to speculate on why my companion called herself by the name of successive Hungarian kings. I sat down in one of the deep chairs and sipped Dubonnet. I felt suddenly devoid of responsibility, and content to let things take their course. Jean de Gué had too many women in his life.

‘You can imagine how I felt,’ she said, ‘when Vincent came to me just this morning and told me that your small daughter was in the shop asking if we could mend something very precious belonging to her mother. I couldn’t imagine what had happened – for one moment I thought your wife had found out that I had done the miniature. What about the miniature? Did you give it to her? Did she like it?’

I paused a moment, considering my words, trying to understand the proper sequence of events. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes, it was a great success. She was very pleased.’

‘And you managed to get the setting I told you about? They kept the locket for you, after my telephone call?’

‘I did. It was quite perfect.’

‘I’m so glad. It was a marvellous idea of yours, and must have come to you in one of your better moments. The child didn’t mention it, so of course I did not either. She said her mother had been very much upset by the breakage this morning, so I gathered the dog and cat were precious. They won’t mend, of course, but I can get duplicates from Paris. They’re Copenhagen – I suppose you realized that? Come on, let’s eat. I’m hungry, if you are not.’

She laid the table, drawing it up to my chair, and I thought to myself that this was, so far, the most effortless moment of my masquerade. It could be termed a gift, even, on the part
of Fate, which had been sparing of indulgence up to date. The only trouble was Renée, walking the streets of Villars getting angrier every moment.

Jean de Gué’s Béla must have divined my thought, for she said, ‘Vincent will be back from lunch directly. When he comes I’ll send him out to see if she’s in the car. Did you leave it in the Place de la République?’

‘Yes.’ Had I? I wasn’t sure.

‘Don’t worry. She’ll drive it home. It’s what I should do in her place. And then Gaston can bring it back again. Were you joking when you said the child had gone off in a lorry?’

‘No, it’s true. They gave me the message in the bank.’

‘You take it very calmly.’

‘I think it was a lorry from the
verrerie
. And what could I do? She and the lorry had disappeared when I came up from the vaults.’

‘What were you doing in the vaults?’

‘Looking in my safe.’

‘That must have been a shock to you.’

‘It was.’

I was eating the ham and the salad and breaking bread and, it struck me how much more pleasant was lunch today, with this woman opposite me, than it had been yesterday in the dining-room at the château. This train of thought led me to the one undelivered present.

‘There’s a bottle of scent for you,’ I said, ‘on the chest-of-drawers in the dressing-room at St Gilles.’

‘Thank you. Am I supposed to go and fetch it?’ she asked.

I told her without lying, able to laugh at it now, about the mistake in the initial B.

She looked bewildered. ‘I don’t see how it happened,’ she said, ‘since you never speak to your sister. Or had you really brought her something as a peace-offering at long last?’

‘No,’ I answered, ‘my mind wasn’t functioning properly. Too much to drink in Le Mans the day before.’