The Warning Bell

by T D Griggs

  ‘Felix, this isn’t just a case of giving the foreigner the cold shoulder.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I looked up the tides for the night Father Thomas was killed. I don’t see how my father could have got away in a sailing dinghy that night. Not from the Vasse.’

  ‘Come on, Iain.’ He leaned across and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Can any of us really know how a bunch of desperate young guys pulled off something like this sixty and more years ago? Maybe they carried the boat past the point. Or maybe it is possible to sail against the tide if you’re a good enough sailor. And…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And maybe you have been treading a bit heavily. My friend, people here have the past in order. They’ve cast your father and mine as heroes of St Cyriac. They don’t want you to rewrite any part of that script. Relax. You leave it with me. I’ll make sure everyone knows you don’t mean any harm.’ He looked into my face. ‘You don’t, do you?’

  I’m not sure if he expected an answer, but I didn’t give him one.

  He slapped his thighs and got to his feet. ‘Look, forget about all this nonsense. Come along to the carnival this afternoon. We’ll have a few drinks, build some bridges with the locals. Let your hair down. They’ll like you all the better for it.’ He grinned at me. ‘You might even enjoy yourself.’

  45

  I spent the rest of the morning clearing up the mess the builders had left, and running makeshift repairs – plugging leaks, nailing boards over joists, shifting rubble. I took an hour in the middle of all this to call a list of contractors in Lannion and St Brieuc. Being Sunday, most were closed, but I felt better for making the effort.

  Chantal busied herself cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. I heard her make a couple of attempts to look in on Kate, who had not emerged since the night before, but she got no encouragement. I doubted that she would until that beaten-up old BMW came grumbling up the drive again. But it did not come.

  We stopped for a baguette at lunchtime and were gentle with one another. Neither of us mentioned Serge, or Dominic, or Bonnard. I went back to work afterwards, but at about four I took a shower and walked into the village.

  Last night’s spring rain had passed over and the afternoon had turned out fine for the carnival. A dozen stalls and sideshows had been set up on the gravel of the square, and a sizeable crowd of tourists and locals lined the esplanade and gathered on Henri’s terrace. I saw Felix there, moving among the tables, laughing and joking, holding court to one group of visitors after another. He saw me, took a bottle of rosé and two glasses as Henri cruised past with a tray, and pushed through the throng.

  ‘Good to see you made it.’ He sat on a bollard on the quay and poured for us both, put the bottle on the ground, and rang his glass against mine. ‘And you’re in luck. The parade’s about to start.’

  I said: ‘Have you seen Dominic?’

  ‘He makes his big entrance on the Bourgogne float.’ He drank. ‘He’ll be prancing about in his Neptune outfit, jabbing people with that damned trident of his. Does it every year.’

  A loudspeaker crackled and an announcement rang out, and an ancient red tractor came chugging down the esplanade, coughing fumes. The crowd gave a cheer. More elderly farm vehicles followed, some lovingly restored, the drivers in smocks and straw hats and neckerchiefs, waving at the crowd.

  Felix topped up our glasses. He shouted some ribaldry at one of the drivers, who threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘They have their own way of doing things,’ he said, still looking at the tractors. ‘It’s not London or Paris, but it’s a real community. You know what that means, Iain? Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s what you’ve come here to find out.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been clumsy, Felix. I just can’t get this stuff out of my mind.’

  ‘St Cyriac’s survived all kinds of difficult newcomers.’ He smiled at me. ‘And taken quite a few of them to its heart.’

  The first of the floats was coming through now. An enormous plywood fish, painted silver and blue and pivoted in the centre, was mounted on a flatbed truck. Le Toque, his son Guy, and two deck hands, all dressed in yellow oilskins, capered around tossing sweets into the crowd.

  Two or three other floats followed. I craned my neck to get an early look at them. The Citroen dealership had entered a trailer with two shiny new hatchbacks on it and girls in bikinis sprawled over the bonnets. On the farm cooperative’s float, piled with hay bales and fruit and vegetables, kids in peasant gear shrieked as they squirted the crowd with water pistols.

  And there were more, crawling into view: a wine grower’s float boasting a huge barrel and free samples, a band in twenties costume playing Dixieland, a clown on stilts, a truckful of teenage beauty queens in sashes and tiaras.

  ‘There they are,’ Felix said, and from the relief in his voice I realised he’d been watching too. ‘There’s Daniel.’

  The boatyard float had been rigged like a galleon in full sail, with wooden cannon along the sides and a dozen flags flying. On the makeshift quarterdeck Daniel and Marie-Louise Bourgogne were both dressed like pantomime admirals, in cocked hats and blue frock coats heavy with medals.

  ‘He’s not there,’ I said.

  Felix stood up. ‘He must be. He’s always there.’

  The float moved abreast of us. We both pushed through the crowd to the kerbside. Daniel was making an effort to wave and smile at people, but Marie-Louise was tight-faced at the wheel, staring straight ahead. I had the impression she had been crying. Daniel caught sight of us and beckoned us up to the float and crouched to talk to us as we walked beside it, speaking loudly over the laughter and music.

  ‘Have you seen Dominic?’ he said.

  Felix rested one hand on the trailer. ‘We were going to ask you that. He’s never missed before, has he?’

  ‘He usually comes over about an hour before the start,’ Daniel said. ‘We waited as long as we could. Maybe somebody should check on him.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘You’re both busy here.’

  Felix looked uncertain. ‘I can come if you need me.’

  ‘I’ll sort it out, Felix.’

  He touched my arm. ‘It’s probably nothing. He forgets things, loses track of time. Come back for a drink afterwards, and bring the old bugger with you. We’ll all still be here.’

  I took my now familiar route across the pontoons by the boatyard, past the Bourgognes’ cottage and down the river path. There were lights on in the cottage, but I didn’t care, and in any case no one seemed to see me.

  It was just before six o’clock by now, a warm spring evening – the warmest of the year so far – with the westering sun angling across the water and through the trees. The tide was out, and I could smell dank river mud and rotting vegetation. I didn’t think I had ever noticed this rank smell before. It was very quiet where the bend of the bank smoothed the current, and I slowed my pace. Two swans were feeding in the shallows. I could hear them dibbling among the weeds, could hear the trickle of water from their bills in the stillness. The slanting light was gauzy with insects.

  I stepped up to the launch and rested one foot on the gunwale. Dominic was not here. There was no need for me even to call out; I could feel he wasn’t here. And yet I had pictured him so very clearly riding the prow with his fishing line in his hand, smiling his childlike smile. I waited there in the warm evening, disappointed, wondering what to do next.

  It took me a couple of moments to see the heron, standing in the shallows just in front of the boat, much closer than before. It was watching me, unmistakably watching me, its shortsword of a head slightly on one side and one white-ringed eye fixed on me. The river was so still that the bird was perfectly mirrored. Only the faintest ripple of water around its legs betrayed the sliding of the current.

  And then without warning the heron rose. The rush of it startled me, and I felt its broad wings thumping, banging its way up into the air above the launch. It circled once under the trees, and then
beat away low over the water towards the open sea, whump whump whump, the sun flashing on white and slate grey.

  I started back down the track, paying no attention now to the sound of my footfalls or to the speed of my going. I was ill at ease, and unnerved by the heron, and I felt like an alien creature, something that didn’t belong here. I crossed back over the river, and after a moment’s hesitation I set off upstream on the opposite bank, past the cress beds and towards the mill.

  I walked in under the brick archway, crossed the courtyard with its tables and giant chess set, and started up the stairs. Madame Duquesne was in her back garden, taking in her washing. She called something up to me but I didn’t catch it, and I didn’t stop.

  Some visitors’ cars were in the parking area below and old people were pushing children on swings in the playground. On the second floor a scruffy man of about sixty was hanging over the balcony rail sucking on a very thin cigarette. He grunted to me as I passed. The door to a flat was open some distance down the walkway and I could hear a shouted conversation over the noise of a television.

  I walked on down the passageway and found Dominic’s bright blue door and tapped on it. I could hear nothing from inside, and I knocked again, more loudly. Madame Duquesne came puffing up the stairs behind me, her flat shoes slapping on the concrete walkway.

  ‘He’ll be off at the carnival by now,’ she said.

  ‘Did you see him leave, Madame Duquesne?’

  ‘Why, isn’t he there yet? He’ll be late for his own funeral, that man. Man? Child, I should say.’ She shouldered past me and dragged out her keys. ‘Goes off in a dream, making his little ships or stitching his costume. Oh, I have to watch him!’ She tapped the side of her nose. ‘Watch him like a hawk. He’s in another world, that man.’

  She pushed open the door and shouted Dominic’s name a couple of times through the gap, then shrugged and stood aside for me.

  I knew at once that he was dead. He was curled on the bed fully dressed, facing me, his lips slightly parted, eyes open and unfocussed. There was dried vomit crusted over the sheets and on the floor and splashed over the half-dozen wine bottles which lay scattered there. Dominic’s skin was the colour of paper with bluish shading around his mouth. The still air in the room stank of puke and stale wine. I heard Madame Duquesne gasp. I leaned across and touched the skin of his neck. It was mutton cold. I stood back. The chill seemed to linger on the tips of my fingers.

  ‘Oh, he’s not, is he?’ Madame Duquesne asked. ‘Oh, the poor soul! He’s not, is he? And wine? He’s not allowed drink! He can’t drink. He knows that!’

  She stepped up beside me, panting a little. I glanced into the kitchen area. A small frying pan stood beside the gas hob, and in it were two pink sausages with half a dozen fat flies droning around them.

  ‘Aren’t I always telling him?’ Madame Duquesne cried, as if Dominic might still be susceptible to scolding. She made to push past me, but I stopped her.

  ‘Better leave him,’ I said. ‘The police won’t want anything touched.’

  ‘The police?’ She looked at me, disbelieving, and then back at the dead old man, and her chin began to wobble. ‘But I watch them like a hawk, Monsieur Madoc. Just like a hawk.’

  ‘Why don’t you call Sergeant Freycinet?’ I said gently.

  ‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll go and do that right away.’

  She bustled out of the room. Somebody – perhaps the cigarette-smoker leaning on the rail – asked her a question and got a terse reply. I nudged the door closed. I realised that I had my mobile in my jacket pocket and could just as easily have called the police myself, but I was glad I had sent her away.

  It was very quiet. A couple of pigeons were murmuring in the lime tree outside the window. I could faintly hear the TV from the neighbouring flat, studio laughter and a game show klaxon. Dominic’s green Neptune costume was draped over a chair, and his silver foil-wrapped trident was leaning against the chairback. I could hear a faint hiss and I checked the gas stove. But the sound was coming from Dominic’s portable radio, up on its shelf above his head. If I concentrated fiercely I could just hear dance music through the static.

  Only then did I see that china elephant lay shattered on the tiled floor. They’d broken Jumbo’s trunk. But I’ve made him better. Not any more. Dominic wouldn’t be making Jumbo or anything else better, ever again.

  I felt glass crunch under my feet and, looking down, I saw chunks of a thick greenish bottle, some bits of coloured wood and small pieces of calico. I looked into the living room, already guessing what I would see. Every one of his models had been smashed. The floor was littered with splintered wood, tangles of rigging, and the tiny figures of crewmen. The models had been systematically broken apart.

  I stood there until I heard the sirens and the sounds of men hurrying up the steps and along the walkway. The door opened and the flat was full of clumping boots and Madame Duquesne’s pleading voice and Sergeant Freycinet’s gruff replies. He stood beside me, staring at Dominic.

  ‘Poor old sod,’ he said. ‘We used to throw stones at him, you know, when we were kids. Village idiot, sort of thing. Awful cruel, kids.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Not this cruel, though.’ Freycinet looked at me curiously. ‘Did you find him, M’sieur Madoc?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We should sign you up. You’re better than a sniffer dog.’ He laughed, vastly amused at his joke, then touched the cold skin of Dominic’s neck, as I had done. He stood up. ‘Wine, eh? Dominic didn’t know much, but I thought he knew better than that. Sent him crazy, drink did.’

  He walked back out into the living area and I followed him. He saw the destruction and whistled softly. ‘How would you call it, Monsieur? He goes on a bender, blows a gasket, breaks everything up, then has a fit and chokes.’

  ‘That would wrap everything up very nicely.’

  He gave me a narrow look. ‘You have a better idea?’

  ‘Sergeant, you see that drawer? That middle one. Could you open it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Last time I was here it was full of money.’

  He lifted his eyebrows, but produced a handkerchief with something of a flourish, wrapped it around his hand, and slid open the drawer.

  ‘Not any more,’ he said.

  It was late by the time I got home. Chantal was standing at the stove. I had called her from Freycinet’s office and she must have decided to keep herself busy while she waited for me, because the kitchen was clinically tidy. She was wearing a cheerful cartoon pinafore which was at odds with the expression on her face. It was at odds with everything.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘That poor old man.’

  I went to the fridge and took out a beer, offered one to her. She shook her head. I sat down at the table and poured it, taking a lot of care.

  ‘The place has been turned over,’ I said. ‘Everything’s smashed. All his money’s gone.’

  She took a couple of breaths. ‘It must have been horrible. Finding him…’

  ‘I expect you’ve seen a lot worse. In all those war zones.’

  She blinked. ‘You’re upset.’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked away. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me say that.’

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  I drank some beer and stared into the glass. Chantal came over to the table and sat down opposite me and caught my right hand in both of hers. I could feel her eyes on me, and the pity in them, but I couldn’t meet them, which made me sad, because I badly wanted to say more to her. I wanted to tell her that Dominic was a nice old man who liked sausages, that he repaired broken elephants and made beautiful model boats, and he never hurt a fly in his entire life and the birds loved him and he would even throw back the fish he caught and for all I knew perhaps they loved him too. I wanted her to put her arms around me. I wanted to pull myself against her waist and sob for Dominic and tell her about the terrible feeling that was growing within
me, the feeling that he was dead because of me.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, and got up clumsily. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Not just yet.’

  46

  I sat in the dawn garden. Across the seafront road the sun struck fire from the Channel. I could hear the village coming to life – a car starting, the clatter of a steel shop shutter, the tolling of the church bell. Felix would have heard by now. And Dr Pasqual. And Le Toque, and Garnier, and Madame Didier. The whole damned village would have heard by now. Nothing would ever be the same here again.

  ‘Dad?’

  Kate stood a few feet away, beside the trunk of the poplar, a steaming mug in each hand. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red.

  She said: ‘You look like you haven’t slept.’

  ‘You look like that makes two of us.’

  Her face crumpled and I walked quickly over to her and took the mugs out of her hands and set them on a paving slab on the ground and took her in my arms.

  ‘I feel such a bitch,’ she said against my shirt. ‘That poor old man’s dead, but I’m not crying for him.’ She took a step back and found a wad of tissues and scrubbed at her face with them.

  A dark blue Peugeot came sliding down the road from the direction of the village. It passed the ragged hedge bordering the garden, stopped a little further on, and backed up, coming to a halt half up on the verge just a few metres from where we stood. A man emerged from the passenger door and looked over the hedge.

  ‘Monsieur Madoc?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He gave me an electric smile. He was in his late thirties, dark and good looking in a way that reminded me of 1950s movies, with a charcoal cashmere coat and beautifully creased trousers. He hopped across the drainage ditch, keeping his shiny shoes out of the mud, and stepped through the gap in the hedge.

  ‘Inspector Sharif,’ he said, peeling off a black leather glove to offer me his hand. ‘It’s about Dominic Charpontier, naturally.’

  I took his hand. ‘Charpontier? Was that his surname? I never knew.’