“Dear me,” he said aloud, “I must be going to turn into a real artist.”
What with his work and his thoughts the hours had slipped by and now it was time to think of dinner.
Over this meal, too, as over luncheon, Camion presided with the same effective and indeed remarkable mixture of quick competence and grave dignity. One felt that to him dinner was a rite and he the presiding priest. There were a good many more present than there had been in the middle of the day. Among them Bobby noticed a tall, bigly-built, imposing-looking man, wearing plus-fours and obviously English. His large, florid face in which his tiny nose and little twinkling eyes seemed lost, beamed with good humour, he expressed a loud appreciation of the dishes offered him and of the recommended wine, compliments Camion accepted as a tribute rightfully due. He even deigned to ask the stranger’s opinion on some question of sauce or flavouring, and Bobby noticed that this new-comer’s attitude to Camion had in it none of that half-frightened fascination others here seemed so often to show. Bobby noticed, too, that once or twice this new-comer glanced in his direction and he was not altogether surprised when the coffee stage was reached to see the stranger get to his feet and come across to him. In spite of his bulk he moved easily and lightly. Something of an athlete apparently. He said, speaking in English:
“Camion tells me you’re an artist, too. Artists may know each other, mayn’t they? especially when a coincidence brings them together in a foreign country. I’m Basil Shields. Very likely you don’t know my stuff. In private hands, nearly all of it.”
“I’m afraid I’m not as well up in art matters as I ought to be,” Bobby admitted. “Do sit down, won’t you?” Even had he not wished to, he would have been almost forced to give this invitation, since Shields was already drawing out a chair for himself. “But I do know your name anyhow.” This was perfectly true, for he remembered Basil Shields was the name of the artist, to be near whom Miss Polthwaite had settled here and from whom she had been taking occasional informal lessons. “My name’s Owen,” Bobby continued. “I’m afraid as an artist you’ll think me a bit of a fraud. I’m really only trying.”
“Not bitten by any of the ’isms, I hope?” Shields asked genially. “I know I’m old-fashioned. Traditional. I’m the scorn of the impressionist and the wash pot of the cubists. As for the surrealists, they’re just a little sorry for me. More than I am for them. I call them criminal. It’s a base commercial point of view, I suppose, but I do sell two canvasses for every one the whole boiling of them get rid of. But perhaps you’re bitten by that bug. If you are, I do apologize.”
“No need,” Bobby assured him. “I suppose I’m traditional as far as I’m anything.”
“Let me have a look at what you’ve been doing, may I?” asked Shields, and Bobby, who had brought his portfolio down with him from a vague wish not to be separated from work with which he was so pleased, promptly produced the sketch made that afternoon.
Shields took it, raised his eyebrows, looked surprised, even a little relieved, Bobby thought.
“I know that spot,” Shields said. “I’ve done it myself. You’ve a good eye for the right thing to spot it so quickly.” Then he said, almost accusingly: “You’ve moved that tree.”
“Well, yes,” Bobby admitted. “I suppose I thought it tied up better there.”
“So it does,” agreed Shields. “Composes much better, catches the eye at once. Gives the whole thing more significance, unity. You’ve an eye for composition all right. Gad, it’s quite a relief to find a young fellow doing good sound honest-to-goodness work instead of all this modern inner reality stuff.” He looked at the sketch again. “Good work,” he said briefly.
Bobby beamed. There had been times in his young life when he had dreamed of trying to earn his living by his pencil. Discovery that his eye for colour was defective and that though he had a distinct sense of form and a real ability to draw, his gifts even there were hardly outstanding, had persuaded him that he had small chance of ever being able to ‘muscle in’, as the Americans say, on an already much overcrowded profession. All the same, this warm appreciation of his afternoon’s work by a professional and apparently unusually successful artist gave him a very warm and comforting interior glow.
Shields began to talk about himself. His work, it seemed, was not much appreciated in London. (‘Paris won’t look at it,’ he said in parenthesis, ‘and Berlin and Rome are washouts. No money, and if you did get any, you would have to leave it there.’) But he had a very useful connection in New York among private friends. Made a baker’s dozen of sales last year at an average of four hundred dollars each sale. Not so bad these days. Oh, journeyman’s work, it might be called. He never claimed to be a genius, but his stuff gave him pleasure to do and apparently gave pleasure to the people who bought it. At any rate, he knew no other reason why they did buy. God knew it wasn’t because it was fashionable. Bobby must come over to Barsac some time and have a look round his studio. He chuckled a good deal over this and admitted that such an invitation to the ordinary tourist sometimes meant a bid for a sale. (‘Walk into my studio, said the artist to the tourist’, explained Shields, still chuckling.) Well, a fellow had got to live. But a brother artist was safe. Artists didn’t buy pictures, they painted ’em.
Bobby said how pleased he would be to accept the invitation and asked:
“Barsac? Is it near here?”
“Well, that depends,” Shields answered. “It lies between here and Clermont, about fifteen miles as the crow flies, over there.” He pointed north where the land rose into that tangle of hill and rock, ravine and crag, intermixed with long patches of scrub, which Bobby had remarked before. “But it takes three or four hours by train. You have to go round by Clermont and the connection is bad. By road, it is about four or five times as far as it would be direct. The road has to circle right round the Bornay Massif,” and he nodded again towards the desolation to the north where the bleak savagery of the land bore witness still to the convulsions of long ago.
“If it’s only fifteen miles direct, it would be almost as quick to walk, wouldn’t it?” Bobby asked.
“I never heard of any one trying,” Shields answered doubtfully. The elder Camion had come into the room now and Shields beckoned to him: “Monsieur Camion,” he called, “I suppose one could get across the Bornay Massif on foot, couldn’t one?”
The elder Camion came up and again Bobby thought how strange it was that this round, smiling, commonplace little man could have produced that youngster of the fierce and haughty mien who was his son. There was a distinct family likeness though. It was as though Nature had said: ‘Just to show you, I’ll take this humble, commonplace type, the very image of the “little man”, and show how easily I can transform it into the type of the leader and the chieftain.’ He looked faintly puzzled now, a familiar expression on his countenance, Bobby thought, and said: “But with what object, monsieur? Why should any one make such an attempt?”
“Well, if they did, would it be possible?”
“It might be done,” the elder Camion agreed though somewhat hesitatingly. “It would be difficult, success would be quite a triumph. There is the great crevasse it would be necessary to cross. That alone would require help and ropes. Doubtless it could be accomplished, but hardly in a single day. And if one were alone and met with an accident, even slight, or got lost—finished,” declared the hotel-keeper with emphasis. “But why should one try?” he asked and wandered away, evidently puzzled that so mad an idea should ever have occurred to any one.
“One of the village lads did get lost on the Massif a few months ago,” Shields remarked. “He was still alive when they found him, but he died from the exposure.”
“I heard about that,” observed Bobby. “Some one up there always shows a light now after dark, doesn’t he? A sort of guide?”
“That’s right,” said Shields. “Excommunicated priest—and they don’t excommunicate priests for nothing. I wonder sometimes what that lantern is really s
hown for.”
“You mean?” asked Bobby, startled.
“Did you know there was a murder here some months ago?” Shields countered.
“I think I’ve heard of it,” Bobby said. “An English woman, wasn’t it? A Miss Polthwaite?”
“That’s right,” Shields said again. “I knew her slightly—old friends in a way though we never got intimate. Fussy old girl but not a bad sort. I used to have to come over here to pay her a visit at times. Bit of a drag, I found it. She liked to play at being an artist and I gave her a few hints sometimes.” He smiled faintly. “It was really I who told her about the Pépin Mill. I panicked a bit when I found she was looking for a place round my way so I headed her off here as I happened to know about the Pépin Mill. Had had a look at it myself but decided on Barsac instead. And I definitely didn’t want her too near. She would have been on my doorstep all day and every day, wanting to know this and that. Makes me feel a bit responsible sometimes. I don’t care about the idea that if I hadn’t mentioned the Pépin Mill to her she might be alive still. I mentioned other places too, of course. I really wanted her further away if possible. There was a place at Vienne I thought would suit her down to the ground but she took a great fancy to the mill here. Picturesque sort of place, I know. But I hate to think I ever told her about it. Suicide they say. I wonder?”
“Do you think it’s possible it was something else?” Bobby asked gravely.
“Yes, I do. She wasn’t a rich woman really. Lived on a small annuity. Told me so herself. But the story got about that she had money. There’s an old blind beggar goes about here and he spread the story. He’s responsible for half the gossip that goes on and that’s plenty.”
“The Père Trouché?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, you’ve heard of him. Mischief-making old scamp. Ought to be drowned or something. He tells spicy bits about their neighbours to people and then he gets handouts. Kind of blackmail to keep his tongue quiet very often, I expect. Anyhow, the story got about that she had what they call a stocking here and next thing she is found at the bottom of the well. Very likely it’s all right, but I don’t like it. Nothing you can do, of course, but sometimes I lie awake at night and—well, wonder.”
“The police?” Bobby asked.
“The French police are about the best in the world,” Shields pronounced. “Scotland Yard.” He made a slight gesture of contempt. “Dull. Routine. Red Tape. No imagination.”
“I’ve heard that before. I expect it’s true,” agreed Bobby meekly.
“But even the French police can’t do miracles,” Shields continued. “They went into the whole thing very thoroughly. I will say that for them. Made up a procès-verbal a mile long and then turned it down with a ‘non-lieu’ as they call it. Questioned me about our being friends, and how, and why, and what for, and what did I know? which wasn’t much. Grilled the young fellow here, young Camion, for half a day over at Clermont.”
“Do they think he is guilty?”
Shields shrugged his shoulders.
“Impossible to say what they think, but anyhow there was nothing they could prove. The village still gets a kick out of thinking that perhaps it was him after all. Gives them a thrill to think they may have a murderer in their midst. People come out here just to look at him. Fascinated. Morbid, I suppose. Law-abiding sort of people, these, and murder’s a new idea to them. They’ll skin you to your last sou in honest bargaining but serious crime’s practically unknown.”
“Why was Camion suspected?”
“Well, for one thing, immediately after the murder, he visited the évêché—diocese headquarters, you know, where the bishop hangs out. Only a bishop can give absolution for murder and all the village was sure Camion went to confess the murder and get absolution. All rot, I expect. Anyhow he either didn’t get absolution or he didn’t get much of a penance, for he’s been carrying on much the same ever since. But that visit to the bishop’s place fairly damned him in the eyes of all the village.”
“Was there anything else against him?”
“He was friendly with the old girl. He used to go there. She was trying to paint his portrait—awful bit of work. Naturally as he was often there pretty late, the village was quite sure she was his mistress.”
“But wasn’t she rather elderly?”
“Oh, yes. But they think she paid him. And they think he got so shocked and fed up he did her in.”
Bobby blinked.
“Look here,” he said. “Have I got this straight? The idea is she was his mistress though she was old enough to be his mother and after he had taken her money he killed her in an access of moral indignation?”
“A bit complicated,” Shields grinned, “but that’s about it.”
“Sound’s a bit topsy-turvy to me,” said Bobby.
“Mind you,” Shields said earnestly. “To my mind, it’s all poppycock. Miss Polthwaite wasn’t that sort. She took a fancy to the boy. He’s good-looking enough, Lord knows, to take any old maid’s fancy. I believe there was some question of her lending him money. She hinted as much to me. I told her not to be a fool. He has ambitions, that youngster. Means to be a great hotelier, a new Ritz. Dreams of the Camion as the leading hotel in every capital. The Camion in New York, the Camion in London, the Camion in Paris, in Buenos Aires, in Rio de Janeiro, everywhere. And then politics, to put the world straight. Oh, quite a programme. If you can manage a big hotel, you can manage a country. He told me that once. Miss Polthwaite was to give him his big start. But it was all on the Up and Up—on her side. Sort of maternal instinct. The French don’t go strong for maternal instinct between an elderly spinster and a handsome boy. Not their line of country. I don’t know that it’s mine either. Most likely the boy himself expected to pay in the only way he could. Well, there it is. The village half believes he was the murderer and more than half approves. Thinks she got what was coming to her. But they’ve the wind up, too, for fear he continues. I suppose that happens. You bring it off once and you think you can again. Why not?”
“Well, I hope whoever is guilty will be caught some day,” Bobby said. “Not that it would do poor Miss Polthwaite much good.”
“No,” agreed Shields, “she’s not interested. She was a fair age, anyhow. Nothing much to lose, only getting older and lonelier all the time. I daresay she was spared a lot.” Perhaps thinking that this sounded callous, he added: “She was a good friend of mine; no one felt it more, what happened, I mean. No one.” He shook his head. “Well, these things have to be,” he said, “but I don’t mind saying it shook me, shook me badly.”
Bobby said sympathetically that it was no wonder, and then added:
“I thought of trying to do the Pépin Mill some time. I thought it ought to make rather a good sketch when I was by there last night.”
“I’ve done it myself two or three times,” Shields said. “One sunset piece I thought not bad. I’ll show it you if you come over to my place some time. There are English people there now. Did you know?”
“Yes, I had a chat with them the other evening. Williams is the name, isn’t it?”
Shields nodded. He appeared to hesitate. He leaned across the table and said in a confidential whisper:
“Scotland Yard.”
Bobby gasped, for the moment thinking that his own identity had somehow become known.
“Scotland Yard,” repeated Shields. “Williams, I mean. He’s over here to see if he can find out anything about Miss Polthwaite’s death.”
“Oh,” said Bobby feebly. “Oh—how interesting. Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes, he started asking questions and it came out. Keep it under your hat though.”
“Of course,” said Bobby, still more feebly.
Shields got to his feet.
“Well, I must be off,” he said. “Glad to have met you. Quite a coincidence to run up against another English artist, especially one who isn’t a cubist or a squarist or any other of the fashionable ists. Only mind you, don’t run away with the idea tha
t I’m an old stick-in-the-mud. Good work. That’s my idea. Some of the Victorian stuff was pretty sticky, of course. But look at Holman Hunt now, or Millais. Take some beating still. I agree that Landseer or Gustave Doré were rather awful—I was looking at some of Doré’s illustrations the other day. A pain in the neck, that’s all you can say. What do you think?”
“I’ve hardly ever seen anything of Doré’s,” Bobby answered. “I’ve always thought that anyhow Landseer knew how to draw.”
Shields was looking at his watch.
“I must be off,” he repeated. “I’m popping round now to have a word or two with the schoolmaster chap here before I go. I got a bit pally with him when I used to run over to see poor old Miss Polthwaite. He’s rather an intelligent chap. No time to lose or I’ll be getting stranded at Clermont—the last train Barsac way leaves pretty early.”
“Awkward if you miss it,” Bobby suggested.
“.Oh, if I do, I’ll walk,” Shield said cheerfully. “Shan’t mind that, though. Fifteen miles and I shall enjoy every step. I like a walk at night sometimes, good for the eyes, too. Rests them and trains them at the same time till you can see in the dark nearly as well as by day. A little gift of mine I’ve cultivated. But when it comes to walking, the curé here has me dead beat. He’s got quite a name for the way he marches up and down the roads, walks for miles and no one knows why, unless it’s to say his prayers.” Therewith he took his departure, leaving Bobby with much to think about.
Over on the hill-side, too, high above the village, shone out that distant light in which Shields seemed inclined to suspect some hidden, sinister significance.
CHAPTER VI
THE SOLITARY
Bobby’s intention had been to spend the rest of the evening in the cafe he had visited before, in further pursuance of his plan of making himself as familiar and friendly with the villagers as possible.
Murder Abroad Page 6