Naughty In Nice

by Rhys Bowen

  There was a trace of sympathy now in the way she stared at me, never taking her eyes from my face, but then the scornful smile returned.

  “But I have survived. I am not a great dancer like my mother was, but men find me attractive.”

  “One man in particular?” I asked. “He employs you to be much more than a dancer. You were impersonating me, so that I’d be the one suspected of theft and forgery and murder.”

  “Murder?” she asked, her face suddenly wary. “Who said anything about murder?”

  I shifted uneasily on the chair, which creaked, the sound echoing through the empty room. “You must have heard that Sir Toby was found dead in his swimming pool. You didn’t expect to find anybody home, did you? And so you had to kill him.”

  “No!” She shook her head angrily. “This is not true. I do not kill.”

  “At the very least you can come with me to the police and let them see that they have made a mistake in arresting me.”

  She laughed. “Are you quite stupid? I don’t want to go to jail. And why should I do anything for you? You are nothing to me. You robbed me of my father. You took away our life. I’ve had to suffer. Now it’s your turn.”

  “Jeanine,” I said softly. “That is your name, isn’t it?” She nodded. “I can’t believe that you’re really bad. I can’t believe that your conscience would let someone else be punished for your crimes.”

  “Crimes? How are these crimes?” Her voice had risen now. “I help to take from those who have so much money that the loss of a valuable item is a mere inconvenience. They care nothing for people like me who know what it is like to be starving and beaten and raped. No, rich lady. I do not think I’ll be helping you.”

  “Did it mean nothing to you when you saw your sister standing before you? Had you never dreamed of the day when you would be with your sister?”

  The angry look faltered. “I always imagined—” she said. “That great big castle and pretty dresses and enough to eat, and no more men.”

  “Then come with me now, Jeanine,” I said. I stood up. “We have a very important policeman staying with us. I’m sure he can help. He can show that you were forced into what you did. And I’ll take you to the castle.”

  “You are foolish,” she said slowly. “You don’t think he’d let me get away, do you? Or testify against him?”

  She looked past me suddenly and I saw confusion and then terror in her eyes. “No!” she shouted and tried to grab me and drag me down to the floor. At the same moment there was a deafening explosion and we fell together, knocking over a table and chairs.

  I got to my knees, shaking. “Jeanine, are you all right?” I looked down at her. She was lying sprawled like a rag doll. Her mouth was open in surprise and her eyes were staring. And blood was spreading across the floor. “I’ll go for help,” I said.

  A small smile spread across her face. “My sister,” she murmured, and she reached out a hand to me. Then the light went out of her eyes.

  I was on my feet. The shot had to have come from the slightly open window. “Help!” I shouted. “Help. She’s been—” In my state of panic I couldn’t remember the French word for “shot.” Or for “gun.”

  Nobody came. I ran outside. I knew the shooter might still be waiting for me in the alleyway, but there were people in the street now—coming home from work, going for an evening stroll. Some had gathered, looking around nervously after the gunshot.

  “Help!” I shouted again. “She’s hurt. Get a doctor, quickly.”

  Some people hurried past or backed away from me, but then I heard a shout from inside the building and Robert appeared at the doorway behind me. “She’s dead,” he shouted. His gaze focused on me. “You killed her.” He pointed at me. “This woman killed Jeanine.”

  A crowd was gathering. “No,” I shouted back. “I didn’t kill her. She was—” Why couldn’t I remember the word for “shot”? I tried desperately to think of hunting and shooting expeditions—had I ever had to speak French at one? I didn’t think so. “Somebody through the window . . .” I said. “Bang. One time and—”

  I looked up and there was Jean-Paul de Ronchard at the edge of the crowd, making his way toward me.

  Chapter 33

  In Nice and beyond

  January 28, 1933

  I didn’t hesitate another second. I turned and ran. I heard shouts behind me. Someone grabbed at my sleeve but I felt the fabric rip and I wrenched myself free. Feet were running behind me, the footsteps echoing from high buildings in the narrow lane into which I had turned. I said a silent prayer of thanks that I had chosen to wear the linen trousers and not a long, fashionable skirt that would definitely have slowed my progress, but even so, I couldn’t outrun the whole of Nice. Soon there would be police on my tail. Maybe they’d believe that I had nothing to do with Jeanine’s death, that I had never owned a gun and that she was not shot from close range. Maybe not, if they didn’t want to. I wished fervently that the Duke of Westminster’s yacht was still in port, with my cousin on board. They would have transported me to safety.

  My breath was now coming in ragged gasps and my side was hurting. I heard the sound of a car engine approaching—and a car slowed beside me.

  “Hello. You’re in a hurry. Are you going somewhere?” an English voice called. I looked at the racy little Fearless Flyer and at Johnson behind the wheel. “Do you need a ride, my lady?”

  I leaped in. “Drive as fast as you can,” I said. “People are chasing me.”

  “Good heavens,” he said, already revving up the motor. “What on earth for?”

  “They think I shot somebody.”

  “Well, then, let’s get out of here.”

  He changed gears and the little car sped forward, screeched around a corner, then took another one. We started to climb the hairpin bends of the Corniche. I looked back but nobody seemed to be following. I breathed a sigh of relief. “You saved my life,” I said.

  “All part of a day’s work,” he shouted back, and he swung us around the next bend.

  We went on climbing until I could see rooftops below us. “Aren’t you taking me back to the villa?” I asked as I clung onto the armrests, bracing myself for the next turn.

  “I thought the upper road would be better,” he said. “They won’t suspect we’d take this route. We can drop down before Monte Carlo.”

  “You’re a really good driver,” I commented, raising my voice over the rush of the wind and the roar of the engine.

  “One of the few things I inherited from my father,” he shouted back. “The love of motorcars. He’d have approved of the way this handles. I’d have been a racing driver if I’d been born in different circumstances. But that’s a sport for the rich, isn’t it?”

  We had left the town behind and the road became a narrow strip of asphalt cut into the side of the cliff. Above us was scrub and rocks. Below us the land fell sheer away to the sea far below, dotted with white yachts. The whole scene was glowing gold in the winter sunset. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Any other time I’d have loved to stop and enjoy it.

  “So why do they think you shot someone?” Johnson asked.

  “I was alone in the room with her. I think someone shot her through the open window.”

  “Alone with whom?”

  “A young Frenchwoman.” I couldn’t bring myself to say “my sister.” “She was the one who impersonated me, who went to the villa that afternoon. I thought she killed Sir Toby but she swears she didn’t.” I paused. I hadn’t had much time for thought recently. “Or I suppose she might have seen his killer. She might be the one witness. I never thought of that.”

  “So she didn’t tell you that she’d witnessed the murder of Sir Toby?”

  “No. But we’d only just started talking. She confessed she was at the house.”

  The tires screeched as we negotiated yet another hairpin bend, a little too fast for my comfort. I looked back.

  “You can slow down now,” I said. “I don’t believe we’re
being followed.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” Johnson said, speeding up if anything. “Besides, how often do I get the chance to drive fast? Only when one of you lot lets me. Take chances while you can. That’s my motto.”

  Something was stirring at the back of my consciousness. Love of motorcars. One of the few things I inherited from my father. He’d have approved of the way this handles. Of course he would, because he designed the engine for it. I gripped the armrest harder as we swung around the next bend. The engine that Toby Groper stole and claimed as his own. Johann Schermann. A German Jew. Johann—the German word for John. And this was Johnson: John’s son. He had been waving his identity in Sir Toby’s face and Sir Toby had been too blind to see. We’d all been too blind until now. Because nobody pays attention to servants. They do their job. They are just there, in the background, and they don’t matter.

  “Where are we really going?” I asked, trying to sound calm and interested.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “You’ve been kind to me and you’ve treated me like a person, which is more than the rest of your lot. But you’re my insurance, I’m afraid.”

  “So where are we going?” I repeated.

  “To Italy. I’m banking on there being plenty of ships that sail out of Genoa and don’t ask too many questions. And I hear there are opportunities to make a fortune in South America. The perfect place for a bright chap like me. Away from the snobbishness of the English class system.” He glanced across at me. The wind was in his hair and his eyes were alight with—what? Danger? Excitement? “You suspected me for some time, didn’t you? I saw it in the questions you asked me. Why didn’t you turn me over to the police?”

  I didn’t like to say that I had only just twigged to him. It would be better to let him think that I may have confided in other people. “Those two men you saw at our house this morning,” I said slowly, not sure if this was playing with fire or not. “They were not art experts. One of them was from the Sûreté in Paris and the other from Scotland Yard.”

  “The Sûreté and Scotland Yard? Just for me? I didn’t think I was worth that much.” He sounded pleased and then he laughed out loud. “Well, Georgie—that is your name, isn’t it?—we seem to have left the opposition behind.”

  “But if you killed Sir Toby, how did you do it? You were in town.”

  He was still smiling. “Pure luck. One rare bit of luck in my life. I’d gone into town as he commanded. I’d finished his errands and I was about to do my own when he saw me driving down the street. He flagged me down and got in. He was in an awful mood. Apparently his day had not been going well and he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to stay in Nice, so he told me to drive him home. As we drove, I realized that we’d have the house to ourselves and I wondered if I’d have the nerve to do it. And how I’d do it. I’d gone through the scenario in my mind many times—stabbing him, shooting him—but they all seemed so risky. There was only a point in it if I got away safely, wasn’t there?”

  I didn’t answer so he went on. “We got to the house. I didn’t put the car away. He was annoyed about it but I pointed out he’d given me the afternoon off. I still had things I wanted to do in Nice.

  “‘You’re not going anywhere. I’m here now, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to cook my own damned supper.’

  “Then he said he was going for a swim. He peeled off his clothes and dropped them all over the floor as he put on his bathing suit. He looked disgusting, like a great walrus.

  “‘Pick up those things,’ he commanded.

  “‘Have you not guessed who I am yet?’ I asked him, and I told him. And do you know what? He laughed. ‘Oh, dear me. The family has come down in the world, hasn’t it? Your father was such a clever chap too,’ he said, ‘clever in some ways, but really stupid in others. Not a businessman, and apparently neither are you.’ Then he looked back at me. ‘I presume you knew who I was when you applied for the job?’

  “‘Yes, I did,’ I said. ‘I took this job for one reason: to avenge my father’s death.’

  “He looked at me and laughed again. ‘How melodramatic. And how do you plan to accomplish this? Steal the plans for the car back from me?’ He actually walked ahead of me out toward the pool. I picked up a rock and I hit him hard over the back of the head. ‘Like this!’ I said. Then I pushed him into the pool. And you know what? I’m not one bit sorry. He was a poor excuse for a human being who deserved to die. I am sorry about the others, though. I’m not a born killer. But they were sure to have remembered something if the police questioned them, something like the motor being parked that gave away that I was there.”

  He looked in my direction again. “It seemed so easy. I waited until the road was empty then drove back into town again. Made sure people noticed me at all the shops. Perfect alibi, wouldn’t you say? Except that you were determined to find the girl who looked like you.” He stiffened suddenly, glancing in the rearview mirror. A large sleek sports car had swung into view. It was still far behind but gaining on us.

  “I think we’re being followed after all,” he said. “It’s not the police. Who can it be?”

  The only person I knew who drove a car like that was the marquis. Hope was tinged with fear. If it really was Jean-Paul, was he coming to save me or to finish me off?

  “No problem. We can go faster.” He put his foot down. The engine whined in protest. The rocks shot past us as a blur. The big car was keeping pace. A rock wall loomed up ahead of us. I think I screamed as we shot into the darkness of a tunnel and then out again the other side without slowing at all. We approached a small hamlet where a stream tumbled down to the sea below, its course marked by a line of greenery. Suddenly a farm cart, pulled by a great yellow horse, lumbered out from between two buildings. Johnson shouted and jammed on the brakes. Tires squealed as the car skidded, hit the low wall and bounced back into the road again. Johnson cursed, jamming the car into a low gear as he tried to steer around the terrified and rearing animal.

  I had been waiting for the slimmest of chances to escape. Even though the car was still moving, I saw the bushes beside the road, instead of that forbidding wall. I threw open my door and fell out, rolling onto the spiky plants beside the asphalt. I had expected it would hurt but I hadn’t anticipated how much. I felt stones cutting into me and the breath knocked out of me as I hit the ground and rolled. I came cannoning into the bushes, which yielded under my weight, then I felt myself sliding down into nothingness. I grabbed wildly as branches slipped past me, scratching at my arms and face. Somehow my hands managed to hold on to a small branch and I came to a halt, half suspended, half dangling out over the most horrendous of cliff faces.

  My position was so precarious I wasn’t sure what to do next. Leafy branches were in my face. Some kind of stump was sticking into my back, holding me out from the cliff, as my hands clutched at a branch that was bending with my weight. When I looked down all I could see were rocks, hundreds of feet below. At any second I expected to feel the thud of a bullet into me, or to feel the slender branch finally yield and crack beneath my sweaty fingers. Instead I heard a great boom far off, then I spotted a fireball somewhere below me. Fire raced up the cliff, consuming the scrub it met. As it came upward it spread. Through the leaves and twigs below me I could see orange flames licking their way out toward me, like a hungry dragon devouring everything in its path.

  I was hanging facing out, away from the cliff face, and I couldn’t work out how to turn myself around to use that stump that was digging into my back. I wished I had been more diligent in gymnastics classes at school. The fire was directly below me now and I certainly didn’t relish the prospect of being burned alive. This spurred me into taking the leap of faith and letting go with one hand. The branch bobbed dangerously as I swung myself around. I thought I heard the sound of a branch cracking over the crackling of the fire, but I managed to turn enough to grab hold again with my body now facing toward the cliff. I pulled up my legs and struck out in all
directions, trying to find something firm enough to take my weight. My right foot hit a rock. I scrabbled madly and it held firm. Holding my breath, I transferred some of my weight to it, then inched my way back up the branch until I was standing on the rocky outcropping. There was another branch above me. I made a grab for it and tried to haul myself upward. Pebbles showered down around me. I found a clump of grass or weeds growing from the face and dug my other foot into it. Then inch by inch I was making my way upward. I could see the road above. A big racing car had stopped.

  “Help!” I yelled, in English. I suppose it would have been more sensible to have shouted in French but one tends to forget logic at times like this. Two men had been walking ahead of me, presumably hurrying toward the site of the fireball. At the sound of my voice they spun around and ran back to me. Hands grabbed at me and I was yanked back up to the road just as the bushes below me burst into flame.

  “Merci, monsieurs.” I remembered my French this time, and I looked up at my rescuers. They were the Marquis de Ronchard and Darcy.

  Chapter 34

  At a peasant cottage, somewhere high above the

  Mediterranean

  January 28, 1933

  “My God, you look terrible,” Darcy said at the same moment as the marquis said in French, “Mon Dieu, you look terrible.” He ran back to the car.

  “Of course I look terrible,” I snapped, the tension of the past hour spilling out. “So would you if you’d been kidnapped by a murderer and nearly fallen down a cliff and been singed to death.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” Darcy had dropped to his knees beside me. “I was just horrified by what had happened to you. But you’re safe. That’s the main thing. Rather, it’s not the main thing. What was the last thing I said to you when we parted? Was it not ‘go straight home and stay there’?”