The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Thank you,’ Cassie said, preparing to go and tell Jack their journey had all been in vain. Yet as she went to leave something stopped her, a voice which spoke to her somewhere deep in her head, a voice she knew, a voice she had loved and which now urged her to return to the desk and ask where she might find the person who would finally help her, who held the answer to the questions she so badly needed to ask.

  ‘Madame de Vendrer,’ she began, without knowing quite what she was asking for and why. ‘I think I really should speak to her.’

  ‘Madame de Vendrer is at the château,’ the nurse replied. ‘She was here earlier, but went home at midday.’

  ‘I really should like to speak to her,’ Cassie repeated. ‘To convey my condolences. My problem is that I flew over from Ireland specially and I have to return again tonight.’

  ‘Perhaps you might telephone her?’ the nurse suggested. ‘There is a pay telephone in the hall over there—’

  ‘I don’t think I have her number.’ Cassie went through the motions of looking for the non-existent telephone number in her small pocketbook, watched by the nurse.

  ‘It’s all right, madame,’ the nurse said finally. ‘I can give you Madame de Vendrer’s number from her husband’s record card. It will save you having to look it up, perhaps.’

  Armed with the number but with no idea what she was going to say, Cassie went and made the call from the nearby pay phone. When the phone was picked up at the other end it was by Madame de Vendrer herself.

  ‘I am so sorry to hear about your husband, madame,’ Cassie began.

  ‘Thank you,’ an impersonal voice said at the other end of the line, ‘but you have not told me who you are. Are you – I mean were you a friend of my husband’s?’

  ‘Not really, no, madame—’

  ‘Then please why do you telephone me now?’

  ‘Your husband and I had a close mutual friend, madame. Leonora Lovett Andrew?’

  There was a pause before Madame de Vendrer replied. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Then you were a friend of a friend, shall we say? Rather than a personal friend of my husband’s.’

  Thinking she could detect a note of relief in the woman’s voice Cassie decided to try to press home her advantage. ‘Madame, I wondered if I could come and talk to you?’ she said. ‘Only briefly. I have to return to Ireland tonight and while I know this is a very sad time for you—’

  ‘Puh,’ the woman said derisively, just as Cassie had thought perhaps she might. Remembering her brief but telling conversation with the garage proprietor from whom she had rented a car on the night of her flight from the de Vendrer château, Cassie had gambled on there being no love lost between Madame de Vendrer and her husband and the gamble seemed to be paying off. ‘If you knew my husband even remotely, madame,’ the voice continued, ‘then you would know that this time is the very opposite of what you say. Even so, I do not understand why you should want to see me. After all, you and I do not know each other.’

  ‘No madame, we do not,’ Cassie agreed. ‘But even so—’

  ‘No, please wait a moment,’ Madame de Vendrer interrupted. ‘You said Ireland, did you not? That you had to return to Ireland?’

  ‘That’s what I said, yes. Why?’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Rosse. Cassie Rosse.’

  Again there was a silence the other end of the telephone.

  ‘Who sent you?’ Madame de Vendrer asked eventually.

  ‘No-one sent me, madame. At least not in a way you would understand. Madame – I can’t explain this on the telephone, believe me, but—’

  ‘I know who you are now, Mrs Rosse. As I think I might know why perhaps you want to see me. Do you know where the château is?’

  ‘No,’ Cassie said. ‘Only vaguely. But I’m sure if I ask here at the hospital—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Madame de Vendrer agreed, her tone completely changed. ‘They will direct you. It will take you no more than twenty minutes by car.’

  Exactly twenty-five minutes later Cassie found herself seated opposite Madame de Vendrer beside the remains of a large log fire in the drawing room of the château, while a manservant poured them both brandies before going out quietly and shutting the two women in the room behind the huge double doors.

  Madame de Vendrer was much more beautiful than Cassie had expected, remembering only the garagiste’s dismissive summary of her when he had described her as a go-go girl. Consequently Cassie had imagined de Vendrer’s wife to be less elegant and somewhat more streety, as her fellow countrymen were fond of describing women who had come from the sort of world from which Madame de Vendrer had been rumoured to have come. But there was nothing streety about the woman who was now sitting opposite Cassie. On the contrary, Madame de Vendrer was the epitome of French chic, from the top of her beautifully styled blond hair to the tip of her expensive red shoes. She had a perfect peach-like complexion, the figure of a young woman although she must have been well into her forties, and a pair of sensational legs clad in sheeny silk stockings. Only her eyes betrayed any lack of confidence, a pair of oval-shaped dark green eyes which viewed Cassie as Cassie was sure they viewed everything, with distrust and suspicion.

  ‘It is really very good of you to see me,’ Cassie said. ‘Particularly seeing how late it is.’ Madame de Vendrer raised her eyebrows very slightly. ‘The time is really of no importance,’ she said. ‘And I must compliment you on your French. I have met very few Americans who speak French as well as you, madame.’

  ‘I was very well taught at a convent,’ Cassie said. ‘And subsequently at my finishing school, which was where I met Leonora Lovett Andrew.’

  ‘I am sorry to speak ill of a friend of yours, madame,’ Madame de Vendrer returned. ‘But I simply cannot abide Leonora Lovett Andrew.’

  ‘No, neither can I,’ Cassie smiled. ‘Leonora is the very opposite of a friend of mine.’

  ‘Good,’ Madame de Vendrer said. ‘Then we have common ground. She was a friend of my husband. The remarkable thing is that although my husband had many such friends, Leonora Lovett Andrew was the only one he really liked. Did you know my husband did not like women? In fact my husband hated women, beautiful women in particular. Yet he simply adored Leonora Lovett Andrew. Perhaps, would you say, it was because Madame Lovett Andrew was quite as bad as my husband was, yes?’

  ‘I only knew your husband slightly, madame,’ Cassie said. ‘But from our brief acquaintance and knowing Leonora as well as I do, I would imagine they would get along all too well.’

  Again Madame de Vendrer nodded and smiled at Cassie, although her dark green eyes still showed a degree of mistrust. ‘Now,’ she continued, ‘we are agreed not to waste any time in false sympathy because I assure you, Madame Rosse, I disliked my husband as thoroughly as he disliked me – and if you wonder why I stayed with him, then please look around you. He was extremely wealthy and when I married him I was very poor. I was a ballet dancer, you understand, in the corps de ballet, and came from Paris where my father was a picture frame maker. Once I understood the sort of marriage I was expected to endure, I soon learned to bear it in return for a very good life style. Cynical I am sure you will say, but I would see it as practical.’

  ‘I think you were right, Madame de Vendrer. If you were allowed to lead an independent life, then what harm?’

  ‘Only the harm he inflicted on me, Madame Rosse, and even that you can learn to endure when you have been as poor as I was. Besides, finally he bored of beating me, and began to beat others. I could have divorced him, but I was afraid. He was not a good man, madame. He might well have done me worse harm.’

  ‘All those sayings come to mind,’ Cassie sighed. ‘Better the devil you know, and so on.’

  ‘Truisms only become so because they are true. At least according to my father. So. What was it you wished to talk to me about, Madame Rosse? Our mutual acquaintance Leonora Lovett Andrew? Or your horse perhaps?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Cassie asked in astonishment.
‘What do you know about my horse?’

  ‘Yes – well. I know about your famous horse from the newspapers, naturally. But I make mention of it because when he was stolen – and maimed, yes?’

  ‘Castrated, yes.’

  ‘Exactly. When all this was happening I remember my husband laughing, you see, and my husband rarely laughed at anything. He only laughed at things which hurt people, so when your horse was kidnapped, he laughed. As did Leonora, as did certain other friends of his.’

  ‘Such as Herr Brandt?’

  It was Madame de Vendrer’s turn to be surprised. ‘Yes, Herr Brandt precisely,’ she agreed. ‘He and my husband often did business. They also had money in a breeding farm. You know Herr Brandt?’

  ‘I used to train some of his horses,’ Cassie replied. ‘A few years ago. Before he got caught.’

  ‘I often wondered why my husband found the disappearance and the maiming of your horse so amusing,’ Madame de Vendrer continued. ‘I never asked, of course. To ask my husband anything not one’s business was generally rewarded with a slap on the face. But you were often mentioned, not directly to me, but when Madame Lovett Andrew visited, and Herr Brandt, the three of them would often talk about you and your horse and I would wonder why.’

  ‘Do you know a man called Gold?’ Cassie asked. ‘Was he ever a visitor here? A small, heavily built Irishman, with a pair of the coldest eyes you would ever have seen.’

  Madame de Vendrer shook her head. ‘I do not think so. I never heard the name, and certainly a name like Gold I would remember.’

  ‘When they talked about my horse, and about me,’ Cassie wondered. ‘Did they ever say anything that might have implicated themselves in his kidnapping?’

  ‘No. But why should they? Do you think they had some part in it?’

  ‘Very possibly, madame, but I need proof. That’s why I’m here, really, to see if there is anything I could use as evidence. There would seem to be a good case against this man Gold, your late husband, Brandt and perhaps even Leonora Lovett Andrew, but it’s all hypothetical. We can’t prove a thing.’

  Madame de Vendrer drank some of her cognac, thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I do not think I can help you, alas, except to say these people all knew each other, and that they talked about you. But then everyone who knows you must have talked about this case, yes?’

  ‘I should imagine so,’ Cassie agreed.

  ‘Of course if I find anything which will help I will let you know,’ Madame de Vendrer volunteered. ‘Believe me, I should be only too happy to see my late husband implicated in something like this. So would most people I know.’

  Again Cassie found herself in a cul de sac, facing a blank wall. Closing her eyes she racked her brain in the vain hope of coming up with something at the eleventh hour, of finding the one question which would prompt the discovery of the vital evidence she needed.

  ‘Yes,’ she heard Madame de Vendrer saying, ‘yes, I believe he did. But why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Cassie said. ‘What do you mean – why do I ask?’

  ‘You just asked me if my husband had a leather-bound journal,’ Madame de Vendrer replied. ‘Specifically a marbled leather book with a small gold lock which he kept locked away, and I said yes, yes he did. You don’t remember asking me?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Cassie said hastily to avoid further embarrassment, since her mind was still a complete blank. She had no recollection of even opening her mouth to speak, let alone saying anything. ‘I am so sorry,’ she added. ‘I misunderstood what you were saying. So your husband did keep some sort of journal?’

  ‘I do not imagine it was a journal at all,’ Madame de Vendrer replied, putting down her glass. ‘He despised people who kept diaries and journals. No no, he had a book in which I occasionally saw him writing, usually at some length, too. I imagined it to be a record of his doings with women, even though he despised such records, but then such was my husband’s conceit he possibly could not resist the temptation to write down exactly what he had done to the women who had fallen prey to him. I had very little interest in what he might be writing about and never asked him. All I know is he kept it locked away where he always locked his private papers, in the closet in his study. But please, how do you know about the existence of such a book?’

  ‘I don’t know about it, madame,’ Cassie replied. ‘This is going to sound absurd, but, you see, I dreamed about it.’

  ‘You dreamed about it? You say you have never seen it, yet you describe it just how it was? Good God, Madame Rosse. You have made my hair stand on its end.’

  Now her husband was dead Madame de Vendrer had all his keys, and it took her no more than half a dozen tries before she found the large old-fashioned key which opened the door cut flush in the panelling of de Vendrer’s study. But far from being empty as it had been in her dream, Cassie found it was packed to the ceiling with files, papers, drawings, books, photographs and magazines, everything de Vendrer had apparently wanted to keep hidden and to himself.

  The two women wasted no time in looking through the dead man’s secret papers. What they were looking for they found easily enough on a small shelf along with other notebooks, although none of them were bound in marbled leather and none of them were secured with small gold padlocks. There was just one to fit that description and when they found it they took it back to the drawing room and sat together on the Louis XIV sofa with the smallest bunch of de Vendrer’s keys until they had found the one that sprang the lock and opened the covers of the book, revealing the secrets Cassie had so desperately needed to uncover.

  Thirty-Five

  ‘You’re right, you got the pig!’ Jack called to Cassie over her headset after she had finished a brief translation of the story de Vendrer had so painstakingly recorded in his marbled leather notebook. ‘Seems you got everything you could have hoped for, chapter and verse!’

  ‘Everything, Jack, down to the last detail,’ Cassie answered into her mike.

  ‘What is it with you, Cassie?’ Jack wondered, as the plane cleared a bank of cloud and flew into some utterly clear sky. ‘You got some sort of extra sense or something?’

  ‘Now and then something speaks to me, Jack, that’s all,’ Cassie replied, looking out of her side window at the coastline of France disappearing thousands of feet below them. ‘Or rather someone.’

  ‘Don’t tell too many people that, Cassie,’ Jack said with a laugh. ‘Remember what they did to Joan of Arc. Now if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have to take a new bearing and call in our flight path.’

  While he was busy, Cassie stared out of the side window again and wondered at her luck, then wondered whether in fact this pilgrimage had been anything to do with luck at all. When I’m gone, Cassie, Tyrone had so often said to her while she lay in the protection of his arms in the still and dark of the night, I shall never be far from you. When you need me I shall be there close at hand. If ever I see you troubled or in danger, I shall come to you and if I go before you, I shall always, always watch over you, for ever more.

  She smiled as she remembered how she used to demand to know how he could possibly dare to make such promises, promises which he couldn’t possibly keep, and how Tyrone had teased her, laughing as he held her in his arms before telling her to wait and see. I don’t want to wait and see! she had cried in return. If you die first then I shan’t live one moment longer! I shall die with you! I won’t have to kill myself – because my heart will just break in two! So don’t you dare ever say such things again!

  But he had. She had only been married a matter of months when he first had made her such promises, but then as they grew older and their love matured and deepened he would tell her again and she learned not to fear his Celtic preoccupation with death but rather to understand that what he was promising her was eternal love. She stopped taking him literally and instead took comfort from his words, knowing that since he was older than she was Tyrone might well die before her, but that after she had mourned
him she would know that she would indeed always be watched over, never alone.

  What then of her dream? And what then of the voice which had guided her? Cassie sighed to herself and stared again out into the night sky. That had to be a bonus, she thought, that was just typical Tyrone. St Peter would probably put him to stand outside the pearly gates for a day or two, but as sure as there was a God somewhere up above the dark blue yonder into which she was staring, He wouldn’t be able to stay cross at Tyrone for long. No-one ever could.

  Just as no-one but Tyrone could have got into her sleeping head and sent her flying across the Channel in search of something she had seen only in a dreamscape.

  For Cassie now knew with certainty that because of the contents of the notebook Claremore could be saved. Not that she was altogether sure how she was going to play out the rest of the game once she got back to Ireland, although an idea was beginning to form. What she did know was she had to be careful not to make any rash, presumptive moves. De Vendrer had recorded every detail of the heist, right from his initial idle discussions with Leonora through to the private party he had thrown for the conspirators once the horse had been loosed in the lanes behind Claremore. Every conversation had been logged, every involvement specified and every meeting itemized and dated. There was not one detail omitted, not even the name of the suppliers in Wigmore Street from whom the conspirators had ordered the wheelchair to be delivered to her suite in the Dorchester.

  ‘Fine,’ Theodore said after she had filled him in on all the details over a late lunch the following midday. ‘Now tell me, because obviously the thought must have occurred to you, why do you think de Vendrer recorded all his misdeeds so meticulously?’

  ‘I suppose the clue to that lies in what he wrote inside the front cover, Theodore. In the event of my untimely death.’

  ‘Ah,’ Theodore nodded. ‘Of course. He may have been wary of Mr Gold and his connections, yes, yes of course. He was obviously very well aware in what sort of league he was playing.’