by Ann Bridge
Chapter 8
When Colin Monro left the clinic, still accompanied by his policeman, he took his car barely a hundred yards on down the broad main road to where a very modest sign indicated the Hotel Victoire; he turned in and drove up to the front door. The Victoire was as modest as its sign—it was merely a large suburban house which had been converted into an hotel; when Colin rang the bell there was a long pause before a middle-aged man in a dressing-gown opened it, and announced himself as the patron. ‘It is Monsieur Monnro, who comes from the Clinique?’ he asked. Colin said Yes. Then the landlord caught sight of the agent, who was standing at the foot of the steps.
‘Who is this? Only one room was commanded by the Professor Martin.’
‘He can stay outside; he doesn’t need a room’ Colin said coolly. The patron was worried.
‘Why does an agent accompany Monsieur? Here, we are not accustomed to having the police on the premises! I would wish to understand a little more.’
But Colin had had enough. He had been on the go for 21 hours, and simply had to get some sleep; the newfound toughness which had helped him at Labielle ten days earlier returned now. He walked in past the landlord, and himself slammed the hotel door in the agent’s face, telling him brusquely—‘You can wait in the car.’ (He had not only taken the keys but used the hidden burglar-switch which disconnected the engine before he got out.) Then he turned to the patron.
‘I too am not accustomed to being followed by the police—I am English, myself! I arrive from Spain a few hours ago, and learn that Madame my sister’—he thought it prudent to stick to the Larége version—‘had been taken to Professor Martin’s clinic for an immediate operation; naturally I follow her. I went to the house of Lord Heriot to inform her intimate friend, the daughter of the Duke of Ericeira, who is staying with Lady Heriot, of this critical situation, and there this creature attaches himself to me! How can I know why? I come back to the clinic to learn the result of the operation—Grâce à Dieu it has succeeded—and now I wish to sleep!’ He took out his passport and slammed it down on the desk in the hall. ‘Let the patron examine this, and allow me to sign the registration, and then, in the Name of God, take me to my room!’
This display of indignation and firmness combined produced its effect. The landlord looked at the passport and saw that all the exit and entry visas were in order, including one showing an entry at the Grandpont barely six hours before. He gave Colin the registration slip to sign, and then led him up to a rather old-fashioned bedroom, with a large brass bed, several armchairs, and some massive furniture; a fitted basin was its only concession to modernity. No, no private bathroom; there was one along the corridor—‘et le ouattaire aussi.’ (Le ouattaire is the peculiar expression still current in provincial French tourist resorts frequented by the English for the lavatory, deriving from the word water-closet). He thanked his host—no, he did not wish to be called; he would ring when he desired his petit déjeuner. He took out his things, had a quick wash—the water was only tepid—put on his pyjamas and fell thankfully into bed. Before switching off the dim bedside light he glanced at his wrist-watch as he wound it—3.30 a.m. He fell asleep at once.
The young and healthy, like Colin Monro, are very good at catching up on fatigue; given a chance they simply sleep it off. Colin did this, in that antique but excellent bed, for eight hours; he was aroused not by a knocking at the door, which didn’t penetrate his slumbers, but by the valet de chambre, in his green baize apron, shaking him by the shoulder and announcing that an English Monsieur, a Colonel, desired to speak with Monsieur.’
Colin sat up, stretched and rubbed his eyes. ‘Who wishes to speak with me?’ he asked sleepily.
‘I do’ Philip Jamieson replied cheerfully, walking into the room after the servant; he went over to the windows and flung back the shutters, letting in a flood of bright Southern light. ‘Shall I tell this chap to bring you some coffee?—it may help you to wake up!’
‘Yes, do—have some yourself Colin said, putting a hand up to his eyes; he found the sudden brilliance of the light almost painful. Jamieson gave the order, adding ‘Prontito!’—he was obviously in tearing spirits.
‘They won’t understand that here’ Colin said, shoving his pillows up behind him to lean back against them.
‘Oh yes they do—he did’ Philip said. ‘I’ve got a son!’ he then announced, triumphantly.
‘Oh, you’ve been to the clinic already? How’s Julia?—she was still “under” last night’ Colin said, now more awake.
‘Splendid—a bit doped still. The nurse said she mustn’t talk much, so I came off—they told me I should find you here. Thanks for getting that message to me’ Jamieson said, sitting down in one of the armchairs, and lighting a cigarette. Colin looked at his watch—it was twenty minutes to twelve.
‘You’ve made pretty good time’ he said. ‘How did you do it? Oh, here’s the coffee—good. Make that man put it down somewhere, and give me a cup.’ Jamieson caused the valet to dump the usual over-crowded and ill-arranged tray on the big dressing-table, and dealt skilfully with its contents: he poured Colin out a cup and took it to the bed-table; then he cleared the tray and arranged it properly with one plate and knife, butter, and a couple of croissants, and set it down on Colin’s knees on the honey-combed dimity bedspread.
‘Oh, thanks’ his cousin-by-marriage said, drinking the coffee. ‘Well go on—tell me how you managed to get here so soon.’
‘Oh—well naturally when I heard about Julia, and the baby coming too early, I came out at once. The B.E.A. planes only reach Bordeaux quite late, after two; so I got the Office to lay on a charter-plane, and to fix with the Consulate at Bordeaux about a hire-car. It was all quite easy: Buchan came with me to the airport to drive my car back, and we touched down at Bordeaux soon after eight—a very nice young chap from the Consulate met me with a perfectly good Citroën; he’d even had the sense to bring a Michelin map, so I simply blinded on here, and went straight to the clinic’
Colin was now sufficiently awake to fall to greedily on the croissants and butter as he listened to this recital.
‘Very nice’ he said, with a sarcastic grin. ‘All this on the British tax-payer, I suppose?’ Philip was quite unperturbed.
‘I’ve just saved the British, and various other European tax-payers, several millions of pounds by—well let us say “successful dealings” in one or two oil-producing countries—so I don’t worry about them! I shan’t worry if I have to foot the bill myself either—I can afford it.’
‘Oh, were you heading off that Commie attempt to make trouble in the OPEC oil-fields?’ Colin asked, interested.
‘More or less.’ But Philip Jamieson never took much interest in a job he had finished; he cared about the present.
‘Why is there a policeman in the hall?’ he asked. ‘That valet man said he was here to watch you. What have you been up to?’
Colin buttered another croissant. ‘Didn’t you see Hartley yesterday when you got back?’ he asked. ‘He could have put you in the picture.’
‘No—he happened to be out. Have a go yourself.’
‘Well give me another of those roll things—I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast yesterday but two or three lobster patties, and I’m hungry. Thanks’ he said, as Philip put a plate of croissants on the bed.
‘Well go ahead.’
Colin proceeded to relate the whole story of how he had encountered Maupassant and de Lassalle up on the frontier, the old man’s fall, and subsequent death in the hospital; he laid stress on the marked map, and his curious instinctive impulse, when he found that it was Bonnecourt who was waiting for the pair at the inn outside Labielle, to let him take de Lassalle away. ‘Of course I didn’t know then that he had worked for us—it was just a hunch.’
‘How do you know that this man worked for us?’ Philip asked crisply—it sounded to him as though Colin had behaved irresponsibly.
‘He told me, later that night, and I checked next day with Hartle
y. I’m sure now that I did the right thing,’ Colin said, again a little on the defensive.
‘What do you say his name is?’
‘Bonnecourt—but we called him Bernardin.’
‘Oh, him!’ Greatly to Colin’s pleasure, Philip Jamieson practically repeated Hartley’s phrase—‘I’m told he was one of the best people we ever had.’ After a pause—‘Well go on’ he said. ‘Did he get this young O.A.S. type away?’
‘I imagine so, and I also imagine that that is what all the present fuss is about—though how the Sureté pinned it on to Bonnecourt I don’t know; you see I’ve been in Spain for the last week.’
‘The Sureté? Are they activating about this?’ Jamieson asked, looking slightly disturbed.
‘So Luzia told me last night—well really this morning—at the Heriots. But according to that old gynae at the clinic it was really Bonnecourt who saved Julia’s life; he found her ill up at Larége, all alone, and brought her down, just in time.’
‘Why was she alone? Where was this Ericeira girl?—Julia wrote that she was going to be with her the whole time.’
‘Well to tell you the truth, Philip, this whole idea of yours of sending Julia to Larége was a complete nonsense!’ Colin said, with some irritation. ‘It’s a hopeless place—not a servant to be had, no telephone in the house, no food ever delivered; you even have to bring the drinking-water down in a crock from a spout 50 yards away! It was crazy, I think, to put a pregnant woman out on a limb like that. Sorry—but that’s what I feel.’
Philip Jamieson was considerably taken aback by this onslaught—especially coming from Colin, usually so uncertain, not to say timid. But he stuck to his point.
‘Why was Julia alone? Where was the Ericeira girl?’
‘She’d come down for two nights to the Heriots, here in Pau; Dick Heriot has rather fallen for her, so his Mother put on a dance for them.’
‘Who are the Heriots? Oh, I remember, friends of Mrs. Hathaway’s; lived here for ever. Julia wrote that the boys had been quite useful.’
‘She’d have been sunk without them’ Colin retorted. ‘They’ve done everything possible for her. And Luzia has worked like a black—cooking, cleaning, doing the washing and the washing-up; fetching the bread and milk every day, and the damned meat and vegetables from the village—when they come! How you suppose Julia would have managed alone I can’t think; after all you didn’t lay on Luzia! The whole thing was crazy’ the young man said, quite angrily—‘so don’t you go criticising Luzia for taking a couple of days off.’
For the first time Philip Jamieson realised, startled, that his rather romantic notion of Julia’s staying at Larége might be open to criticism. But he was still not deflected from his enquiry.
‘It all seemed to work quite easily when I stayed there two years ago’ he said pacifically—‘I’d no idea that it would be so complicated now. But if you weren’t there, why did Luzia leave Julia alone?’
‘Well, that was an accident’ Colin said. ‘I was due back in the afternoon of the day Luzia left, but I got held up. I came away first thing yesterday, but I had two burst tyres—it would have to happen like that—and you know what Spain is! By the time I got to Larége Bonnecourt and Julia had started down, but she left a note for me; I was only about fifteen minutes after them at the Clinic. Oh the bloody French!’ He described the hateful scene: Julia’s agonised appeals for advice, the stony-faced refusal of the two Doctors to give it, and the general delight when she opted for a Caesarean. Philip was horrified.
‘I can’t think why this should have happened’ he said presently. ‘She was so fit, and she always takes everything so calmly. I wonder if anything could have happened to upset her?’
‘Luzia said she thought she was worried by the Sureté types calling on her.’
‘The Sureté called on Julia? What on earth for? And when?’
‘A day or so before Luzia left, to enquire about Bonnecourt—and me, I gathered. I haven’t got it all pieced together yet; everything has been such a shambles: Julia’s baby, and then the gendarmes turning up at the Heriots in the middle of their ball.’
‘Did they do that?’ Colonel Jamieson’s face grew darker at every phase of Colin’s recital.
‘Oh yes—when I came out after telephoning to the Office from Lady H’s bedroom there were three of them in the hall, questioning Bonnecourt—and all the huests looking on! They wanted to take him away for interrogation, but then they started to talk to me, and old Lord Heriot was pretty tough with them; he took them into his study to explain their goings-on, and meanwhile one of the twins took Bonnecourt away. Oh, and Luzia said her piece too, in front of everyone!—she told the agents that she was sure it was the Sureté’s visit that had brought on Julia’s miscarriage. They didn’t like that at all’ Colin ended, rather more cheerfully.
‘Nor do I.’ But Philip kept his eye on the essential point, as always.
‘Where is Bonnecourt now?’
‘I don’t really know—I think Dick or Nick hid him somewhere on the place. It can’t have been in the flat, because the police searched that when they found he’d disappeared. But I went back to the clinic to hear how Julia was, and then came straight on here, to get some sleep.’
Philip smiled—he remembered Colin’s endless desire for sleep on the yachting trip where he first met his Julia.
‘Well, he can’t stay there, obviously’ he said. ‘In fact he can’t stay in France at all, for the moment. Once the Sureté have their claws into anyone they don’t easily let go—least of all those who give “aid and comfort” to the O.A.S.! I think we’d better go round to these Heriots and find out where he is; then we must arrange something. How quickly can you get dressed?’
Colin said that he must shave, and it would take about ten minutes, all told.
‘All right—I’ll wait in the garden.’
The Victoire had a charming garden, gracefully sheltered with acacias. Philip could have done with a drink—it was now past noon; but the Victoire was ‘dry’, he learned from the patron, so he made do with a citron pressé. He sipped this in a chair under the thin-leaved trees, alternately rejoicing over the fact that he had got a son, and pondering on how best to rescue ‘Bernardin’, who had done so much for England in the past, and now for him, Philip—it seemed that he owed both his son, and the life of his wife, to this man.
When Colin came downstairs the wretched agent was fast asleep on a chair in the hall—the young man went out to the garden.
‘What do we do about that poor devil who’s tailing me?’ he asked Philip.
‘Oh, leave him where he is.’ Philip too had seen the sleeping policeman. ‘We’ll go in my car—no use having too many police about.’
But when they arrived at the Heriot mansion there was an agent at the door there, too; he asked for their names, and their business. While Philip was showing a visiting-card Colin pushed hard on the bell of the upper flat; before the agent had finished his enquiries Dick Heriot opened the door.
‘Oh, hullo, Colin! Come on in. These gentlemen desire to speak with Milord’ he said firmly to the agent. ‘They are friends of ours’—and he led them indoors. Philip was rather startled by this easy handling of the French police; he had not realised to what extent Lord Heriot was the uncrowned king of Pau. Going up in the lift Colin introduced him—‘This is Julia’s husband, Colonel Jamieson. He’s just flown over.’
‘Smart work!’ Dick said. ‘How is Madame?’
‘Very well, thank you. A bit sleepy still.’
‘So are we all. In fact His Lordship hasn’t surfaced yet—won’t till tea-time, I don’t suppose! Nor has Her Ladyship; but do come in’—as he opened the door of the lift—‘and have a drink. I think Nick’s awake.’
The flat was full of maids clearing up after a major party: brushing carpets, emptying ash-trays, and plumping cushions. ‘Jeanne, where can we sit in peace?’ Dick asked the old servant.
‘In the boudoir of Milady—we have terminated there, M
onsieur Dick.’
‘Her Ladyship hates this room being called the boudoir,’ Dick said, ‘but Jeanne can’t learn the word “morning-room”. What will you drink, Sir? Gin?—or sherry, or some of last night’s champagne?’
‘I think gin; thank you very much.’ As Dick went out—‘What a nice boy that is’ Philip was saying, when the door opened again, and to his embarrassment apparently the same young man reappeared; however this one repeated ‘Oh hullo, Colin!’—and then asked—‘Who’s this? Mr. Julia?’
‘Yes, this is Colonel Jamieson. How did you guess, though?’
‘Oh, the gendarmerie are creating like mad on the telephone! Monsieur le Colonel checked in at the Clinique, and then at the Victoire, and now he has vanished—and you too, Colin! I expect your wretched tin-can follower will be hanged, drawn, and quartered by tonight’ the young man said in slow tones, with a dry relish.
‘Philip, this is Nick Heriot; he and Dick are twins—identical, as you see.’
The Colonel did see, since at that moment an exact replica of the young man who was shaking his hand came in, bearing a tray of drinks and glasses.
‘Best I can do’ Dick said. ‘Jeanne wanted to polish up the glasses, but I didn’t think you’d care to wait for that.’ He poured out for his guests—‘Only soda for me this morning’ he said. ‘Why have balls?’ He turned to Jamieson. ‘Now, Sir, I don’t imagine this is purely a social call—unless you want to see Luzia?’
‘I don’t in the least want to see Luzia’ Jamieson said, rather haughtily.
‘Oh well, some people always want to see Luzia’ Nick put in. His brother cuffed him lightly. ‘Put a sock in it, Nick!’ He turned back to Jamieson, slightly thrilled to meet someone so high up in Intelligence. ‘How—if at all—can we be of use to you, Sir?’
‘I gather that you have a man called Bonnecourt stowed on your premises here’ Philip said, rather slowly and ponderously. ‘I want to get him away—he can’t stay in France now. He has been—well, very useful—to us in the past, and I must arrange to get him to safety at once.’