The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (14 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bea. The agent told you no one has lived there for decades. And you saw the evidence for yourself, the neglect, the peeling wallpaper, the antique plumbing—” She shuddered, imagining it. “But yet you say it has charm,” she added thoughtfully.

“It is the most beautiful villa I’ve ever seen,” Bea said sincerely. “It’s like a secret house, waiting to be discovered by someone who will love it and lavish time and care on it.”

“And money,” Millie added.

Bea nodded regretfully. “A lot of money, I’m afraid.”

They fell silent, contemplating the Mediterranean, rippling like molten pewter under the newly gathering storm clouds.

“Maybe it was the future you were seeing and not the past,” Millie said after a while. “Perhaps that was it, Bea. That’s why you thought you recognized it. My astrologer—she’s the famous one you read about in the newspapers, the one who counsels the movie stars and presidents—told me it can happen like that sometimes. And she’s always right.”

Bea glanced hopefully at her. Somehow Millie made it all sound logical. She decided to call Phyl and tell her what had happened. Phyl was flying to Paris tomorrow, and she would be in Nice a few days later. Then she would take her to the villa and tell her about her strange experience; she would ask her whether it was all just longing and wishful thinking on her part
or something more sinister.

Nick picked Bea up that night just as the storm broke. They parked the car behind the old quay in Cannes and ran, laughing, hand in hand, into a deserted café. They sat at a table in the window, watching the rain bounce from the cobbles and the lightning flash. He grinned and said, “It’s déjà vu. I have the feeling we have done this before.”

Bea threw him a startled glance. “That’s the second time today it’s happened to me,” she said. “Only this time I know it’s real.” She looked wistfully at him, thinking how different his life was from hers. Nick knew who he was and where he was going. He did not know that behind the carefree facade of the person called Bea French lay an unknown quantity: a young woman who faced the nightly terrors of the dark tunnel—and a faceless killer.

He seemed so sympathetic, so tuned in to the girl he
knew as Bea that she wished she could go on being that girl forever. But she knew she could not. One day the terror of the past would come to claim her; she just knew it. And she felt as if she were deceiving him.

Suddenly she was telling him about what had happened to her in San Francisco: how the police suspected someone had tried to kill her, about her loss of memory and the dream she had had under hypnosis, and how today that dream had seemed to come true when she had seen the Villa Mimosa.

“Millie thinks maybe I saw the future,” she said tremulously, afraid he would think she was crazy. “But what about the songbirds? How else could I have known about them if I had never been there?”

“Poor Bea,” Nick said, trying to console her. “What a dreadful time you’ve had. But don’t worry, I’m sure it’s all going to work out, and soon you’ll remember everything.”

She shook her head miserably. She didn’t think so. “I’ll call Phyl tonight,” she said, a touch of hope creeping into her voice as she thought of Phyl’s steadying presence. “Phyl will know what to do.”

Nick was intrigued by the story the
gardien
had told her about Madame Leconte’s fatal accident. “It’s exactly up my alley,” he said thoughtfully. “Tragic death in a grand Riviera villa. It must have made the headlines when it happened. Tell you what, Bea. I’ll go through the newspaper archives tomorrow and see what I can come up with. If I find more information about the house, maybe it will help you remember.”

Nick found what he was looking for the next morning, in the archives of the Nice
Matin.
The newspaper, dated October 5, 1926, carried the story of Madame Leconte’s fatal fall on its front page. It said that she came from a well-known Marseilles family and had lived at the Villa Mimosa for several years. She had given birth only two weeks previously, and it was thought that a dizzy spell had caused her to fall from
the top of the stairs onto the marble floor of the hall below. There was no mention of any inquest and no mention of her husband. It merely stated that the funeral had taken place that afternoon.

At two-thirty Nick went to meet Millie and Bea in Antibes. They were going to inspect the Villa Mimosa, but then Millie suddenly said she felt “too tired” to go with them.

“I would prefer a quiet game of bridge, dear girl,” she said wearily to Bea. “But you must go. Show the Villa Mimosa to Nick. If he likes it, too, tell them we’ll buy it.”

Bea stared incredulously at her. “You can’t do that, Millie. You might hate the place. You must at least see it first.”

“I’ve learned to trust your taste by now,” Millie said carelessly. “And besides, there’s all that good antique furniture I bought in Paris, urgently awaiting a home. Get a good decorator to put it in shape, dear girl. And tell him I want it ready yesterday. Or else he’s fired. Understand?”

“You know you’re just acting on impulse again, Millie,” Bea warned. “You’ll regret it later, just like always.”

Millie shook her head, making her blond curls bounce. “Oh, no, dear girl. I’ll not regret this one,” she said, with a secretive little smile, waving them off as she headed serenely for the bridge table.

“Even for Millie, this is crazy,” Bea said nervously to Nick as they waited for the
gardien
to open the gate. “I mean, I know she’s really rich and can afford to indulge her every whim, but”—she shrugged—“not even to take a look at it first!”

“This is some expensive whim.” Nick marveled, peering through the gates. “Do you have any idea how much land this place must have? And what land around here costs per hectare?”

“No. And nor does she. That’s just it, Nick. Millie knows nothing about it.
Why
does she want to buy it?”

“Maybe because you’re in love with it?”

Bea shook her head. “No chance. She’s buying it because she’s in love with the past. She’s an old lady trying to recapture her youth.”

Looking at Bea, so young and pretty with her fluff of sun-gilded hair, Nick thought she was wrong. He thought lonely old Millie Renwick had found in Bea the granddaughter she had never had. Maybe it was because of the terrible thing that had happened to Bea. The loss of memory had left her so alone in the world and made her so vulnerable he would bet that Millie was trying to please Bea and trying to help her get her memory back. And if it cost her the price of the villa, so what?

They followed the old
gardien
up the drive, and when Nick finally saw the Villa Mimosa, he gave a low whistle of appreciation. Bea had not exaggerated. It was a rose pink wedding cake of a house with colonnaded terraces and a pillared portico and marble balustraded balconies. But neglect was apparent everywhere: The faded green shutters hung askew, many windows were broken, and there were a thousand cracks in the marble terraces. The overgrown lawns stretched down the hillside toward the sea, and old rosebushes fought for their beautiful existence with the rampaging bougainvillea and honeysuckle, the tamarisks and the mimosas.

A small stream tumbled musically from a grotto on the hillside above the house, and an empty stone fountain adorned with crumbling naiads and dolphins peeked forlornly from the high grasses of what had once been a velvet lawn. And a grove of ancient silvery olive trees creaked and sighed eerily in the wind that sent lazy ripples across the azure sea beyond the peninsula.

Nick took Bea’s hand as they stood looking at it, and the villa cast its spell over them. It was like love at first
sight. He could see it in his mind’s eye: the pink stucco walls glowing softly under a new coat of paint, the reglazed windows reflecting the sunset, and the old shutters flung wide to catch the breeze. He could almost smell the fresh-hay scent of newly mown grass and hear the tinkle of water in the fountains.

They walked hand in hand into the hall and stood looking up at the great curving staircase. Nick shook his head and said, with a puzzled frown, “Something’s wrong. You see that broad landing halfway down. And then the other half landing, near the top. How could Madame Leconte possibly have fallen from the top to the bottom, the way the newspaper said? She would have been stopped by the curve of the landing.”

“Maybe she fell from halfway and the newspapers got it wrong. You know how it is.”

“I wonder,” Nick said thoughtfully. “I have a feeling there is more to this than meets the eye. Let’s see what the
gardien
can tell us.”

The old man was waiting outside. He had cut a rose for Bea. It was big with dark velvet petals, and she smiled her thanks as she breathed its old-fashioned scent, of musk and incense. “They were Madame Leconte’s favorite,” he told her with a smile. “She loved their perfume.”

But he knew little about the accident. “I did not see it, m’sieur,” he said. “Remember, I was only a boy, still in school, living in the village with my family. We were poor, and I was working part-time as a gardener’s lad to earn a little extra money.” He thought hard. Then he added, “There was a journalist who came here. He was very young, not much older than myself. He wrote the story for the Nice
Matin.
But whether he is still alive, only
le bon Dieu
knows….”

The secretary at the Nice
Matin
newspaper office was very helpful. She told them that, of course, she knew the journalist. Everybody knew Monsieur Marquand.
He had been one of the star reporters for years until his retirement.
Naturellement
he was still alive, very much so. And he could usually be found in the Café du Marin Bleu in Antibes, where he had spent his mornings every day for the past fifteen years.

They found Aristide Marquand sitting comfortably at his usual table on the terrace, sipping a glass of pastis. He sprang nimbly to his feet when they introduced themselves, throwing an appreciative Gallic glance at Bea. He might be old, but he was still handsome and spry and a bit of a dandy in his panama hat, sharply pressed white pants, and dark blue linen jacket. And a Frenchman was never too old to appreciate a pretty young woman.

“It’s strange you should ask,” he said to Nick, accepting another drink. “I was thinking about the Villa Mimosa the other day. Heard it was finally on the market.”

“A friend of ours is thinking of buying it,” Nick said, “but we heard there had been a tragedy there.” He told Monsieur Marquand that he was also a journalist and was researching a book on crimes on the Riviera. “So any information you can give me would be appreciated,” he said, looking hopefully at him.

“It is a strange story, what happened at the Villa Mimosa,” Monsieur Marquand said. “Stranger than anyone knows. But enough time has gone by for it not to matter anymore, so I shall tell you.”

They leaned forward, waiting impatiently for what he would say, as he slowly sipped his pastis, collecting his thoughts.

“Life was changing on the Riviera then,” he said finally. “People were flocking down here, not just to the winter resorts of Nices and Cannes, as in the old days, but to the summer beaches. It was Chanel who started the craze, of course, when, brown as a sailor boy, she came here on the duke of Westminster’s yacht, in 1922. Then the Americans came, Cole Porter and
the Murphys and Fizgeralds, and the society people from Paris.

“It was a whole new era, of sunbathing and beach pajamas and floppy hats and potent drinks. There was the tiny Hôtel du Cap and the old villas here in Antibes, and then suddenly all the chic young couples brought their children and their nursemaids. They built extravagant villas and had them designed by smart people from Paris, white and blue and green with cool marble floors and black satin sofas. They put huge striped umbrellas by their new turquoise pools overlooking the sea. And they carved beautiful gardens from the rocky hillsides and planted fully grown palms and shade trees. Everything had to be instant, you see; there was no time to wait for plants and trees to grow. They wanted it all
now.

“Ah, my dear young people,” he said reminiscently, “you have no idea what it was like, how wild and almost pagan it was then. The sun seemed to shrivel their brains and relieve them of their inhibitions. It was an era of wild, naked parties at the beach, of dancing until dawn in newly sprung-up clubs. Of winning and losing heavily at the casinos, of drinking pale pink wine and lingering over lunch on the terrace of the Hôtel du Cap.”

Aristide Marquand’s faded blue eyes held a hint of regret as he regarded them. “Ah, m’sieur,” he said softly, “it was about lovers. And about requited passion behind green-shuttered windows on long, hot summer afternoons.

“But this woman, Madame Leconte, was never part of it. Always she was on the outside. The lumpy woman of a certain age, dining alone at a table on the terrace, returning afterward, always alone, to her villa. Maybe standing under the stars on her balcony and gazing yearningly at the moon in the midnight velvet sky, longing for love. And though they called her
Madame
Leconte, it was merely an honorary title, in consider
ation of her age and her financial status. But everyone knew her simply as
la célibataire.
The spinster.”

Bea gave a shocked gasp. “Oh, how cruel,” she whispered.

The old man nodded. “It was. But these were superficial people living a glamorous, superficial life. To qualify for their charmed circle, you needed to possess looks or style or talent or an aristocratic name, to be a writer, an artist, or a composer, the latest musical comedy star, a prince or a duke. Mere money was not enough.”

Nick ordered another pastis, and the old man sipped it while he told them that Madame Leconte was the daughter of a backstreet Marseilles lad who through his own ingenuity and enterprise had made himself a fortune dealing in armaments. He had married later in life, and when his daughter was born, he had named her Marie-Antoinette because she was his own little princess. He had kept her at home with governesses to educate her, and he was said to adore her so much he was always afraid of losing her to some other man. His wife had died early. Then later, when he died, Marie-Antoinette was already nearing forty years old, and she was left all alone.