‘They will, my general. In the next day or two they will. My friends and I lack experience. It is taking us a little time to find a convincing spot for the grave which the police have not already searched.’
I felt that with this remark I might have overplayed my hand, encouraged to the edge of fantasy by the pleasure I took in crossing swords with them. But not at all! To them graves and their contents were instruments of policy.
‘It would help our negotiations if I knew your reasons for killing him,’ Sauche said. ‘A question of Mlle Manoli’s present difficulties, or perhaps of her estate?’
Oddly enough neither of them ever doubted that Ardower was dead. After all, the admirable Gonzalez had interviewed them in all good faith.
‘The bullet which cut the femoral artery is still in place,’ I told them. ‘Somebody, therefore, removed Duyker’s gun.’
‘And if Duyker fired in self-defence against a lunatic?’
‘You will still have to explain why Ardower left this house with a bandaged head, where he found the rope which he tried—too feebly—to use as a tourniquet and why the other half of the rope is still knotted round his ankle.’
After a short pause, Sauche very sensibly remarked:
‘M. Sequerra, I observe that my enemies have persuaded you to collaborate with them up to a point. But since you thought it worth while to call on me with this story, I must assume that you personally are prepared to offer terms. What are they?’
‘Not very hard. I only want your signed confession to the outrage upon my ward, and I will allow you to say that Duyker killed Livetti. Whether he did or not, he is no longer here to deny it.’
Vigny burst into protests, insisting that he would fight this nonsense to the last. He said with a strained smile that he himself was prepared to face any court and to prove that the quarrels between Duyker and Livetti and Duyker and Ardower, whatever they were, had nothing to do with the general or himself.
‘And the Press of the whole world will be in the court room,’ he added. ‘What about La Manoli and her distinguished nigger then?’
An intelligent man! He had attacked the point of least resistance. It seemed a very good moment to throw in the reserve which Olura had provided.
‘You would succeed in creating all that publicity which I prefer to avoid,’ I admitted to Vigny. ‘But you would find yourself accused of complicity in the murder of Livetti. We know that you arranged for the presence of an English newspaperwoman in the Hostal de las Olas.’
He denied it furiously. It was curious how those two always sounded less convincing when they told the truth than when they were lying.
‘So far she has only admitted to the police that she was sent there by an anonymous telephone call. But she is now prepared to swear that the conversation was in French and she will recognise your voice.’
‘We are finished,’ Sauche said as superbly as he could. ‘We are perhaps a little to blame. But that little, when inflated by bankers and the agents of the so-called Fifth Republic … I take it that you have made some arrangements for our safety in return for the statement you require?’
I replied very truthfully that I had not. I suggested that they should escape as they had come in, across the Pyrenees.
Vigny, white with fury, was about to exclaim that they had not crossed the Pyrenees and could not return to France. Sauche, the more discreet of the two, silenced him with a gesture.
‘I think we shall be able to leave tonight,’ he said.
That certainly was rather sooner than I dared hope, allowing me to fulfil the optimistic estimate of four days’ confinement to bedroom by which I had encouraged Ardower. I learned afterwards that they had paid the skipper of the Isaura to stand by in port ever since the death of Duyker.
What their plans were I did not know and could not ask. My guess is that they meant Bozec to drop them in Portugal, where no unnecessary questions would, I think, have been asked so long as they declared their intention of taking the first plane to South America and actually took it.
The document which we drafted was dignified but satisfactory. We had, however, some difficulty over the timing. Sauche was willing to accept my word that I would not deliver it to the authorities until the following morning. Vigny disagreed. So we compromised by taking, all three of us and my plain-clothes escort, an amicable stroll to the Post Office where I sent the envelope, registered, to my address in Maya. They on their part dispatched an apparently innocent telegram to St Nazaire, a town conveniently large but only seventeen miles from Le Croisic.
After calling on my folklorists at the gay little Camping where they had set up their car tent and private transmitter, I was back at Maya in the late afternoon with a basket containing the most luxurious picnic that the very civilised shops of Zarauz could produce. When my car had left, I broke the door seals of the notary public and displayed to Ardower, I fear too pretentiously, a copy of the confession.
Left alone so long with only a diminishing sausage for company, his morale was at low ebb. Looking over again the sheets which in my absence had poured from Olura’s typewriter I can distinguish the point at which he began to be overwhelmed by this cruel brooding on his difficulties and to be convinced that there was no way out.
He congratulated me with warmth and simplicity on my success in freeing Olura and said that he would now give himself up and stand his trial. All that bothered him was what story he could tell of the death of Duyker which would omit all mention of Olura and Mgwana. His unselfishness seemed to me as remarkable as his temporary want of intelligence.
‘My dear Philip,’ I said, for it was ridiculous even to my conventionally mannered mind not to experiment with his Christian name, ‘it does not appear to have occurred to you that you can tell any story you please since there is nobody to accuse you of lying.’
And I pointed out that the Livetti case was closed by the confession, the authenticity of which was assured by the signatures of Vigny and Sauche as well as by their sudden flight. As for the evidence against him, there wasn’t any beyond Vigny’s statement to the police, now hopelessly discredited. The Algerian, well out of the affair, had no incentive whatever to talk. Bozec did not come into it at all, and did not know the identity of the caller he had escorted to Zarauz.
However, to avoid being arrested on a charge of affront to the Civil Guard and held for six months in case any other charge could be pinned on him, I recommended that he should immediately try to return to France. He interrupted me, exclaiming in unacademic language that illegal crossing of frontiers was not a job for amateurs.
In that I agreed with him. If it is necessary to disobey government regulations, one should always employ a professional. Still, it seemed to me that his friend Allarte would have some inkling of the proper way to set about it and could put him ashore at night on the beaches of the Landes. Philip objected that Allarte had a family, never far from hand-to-mouth existence in the winter, and that he could never afford to pay him so much that he would risk a gaol sentence.
I did not tell him that Allarte would be in no danger whatever, that indeed I could arrange for them to be unofficially welcomed. The less that he knew of Bozec and Naval Intelligence, the better. So I contented myself with saying that if he thought Allarte’s price beyond his personal means I would lend it to him and his children could repay me.
He laughed dutifully at what he thought to be the tasteless remark of an insensitive tycoon. I felt that I ought not to develop the actual proposal I had in mind until he was more used to the conception of a future. So I opened the picnic basket and was glad to see in his eyes that guilty light of a mourner who, through the last of his tears, has just caught sight of the bottles and cold collation on the dining-table of the deceased.
When he was sufficiently mellowed to appreciate that there were other loves in the world beyond Olura’s and his—mine, for example, for her and for her father—I explained to him that Theodore knew her better than either of us. His blasted daugh
ter, he called her. I remember his exact words, for on that same morning he had warned me that he had less than six months to live.
‘That blasted daughter of mine,’ he said, ‘is likely as not to enter some kind of nunnery run by Californian Hindus, and we’ll tie up her money so that they don’t get a penny of it if she does.’
I thought he exaggerated and told him so. Olura’s sixteen-year-old obsessions with Church of England vestments, compulsory education of unmarried mothers to university level and the rights of every minority to overrule any majority would probably be superseded by the delights of debutantcy and marriage into whatever class was replacing the peerage as the most desirable.
Theodore would not agree. A fortune, he insisted, was a nuisance to a girl like Olura who would always resent it and misuse it. She would never marry into society, money or power but follow her nature in deciding that truth could only be found through the embraces of a Chinese boiler maker or in trying to reform an alcoholic missionary. He could not bear to think of the unfortunate fellow trailing after her round the world and being allowed to save his face by writing the cheques for the hotel managers.
So the trust which he required for his darling was eccentric. All his money was left to her children, if any. She had the full use of the income until marriage, when it could be reduced and the income reinvested at the pleasure of the trustees.
I explained these provisions shortly to Philip and awaited his comment.
‘You are suggesting, if I understood you, that I fall into the class of alcoholic missionary,’ he said. ‘A little hard on a devoted scholar with a taste for good living. But I see the analogy.’
That was more like him, and I was encouraged to proceed. I proposed that Olura should have enough to be able to taper off her enthusiasms gradually, but not so much that he found himself in the position foreseen by her father, and I asked him to name a figure.
He replied that he had not the faintest idea, that I had better put it up to Olura. I told him that he still did not know her. She would be so impatient at being asked such a question that she would insist on living on his salary.
‘Well, what does it cost to keep up that sort of thing?’ he asked, pointing to the eight unexamined suit-cases of ostrich skin.
‘At least ten thousand a year.’
‘Make it five, and I should have a hope of equalling it some day.’
That was one difficult negotiation settled. A second was more embarrassing: to extract Allarte from the inn and persuade him to accompany me to the villa. I could not manage it without attracting the curiosity of all Maya—which, on his return, he allayed by pretending a discussion over the rent of his moorings. His evident joy at seeing Philip and their satisfactory jabberings in Basque predisposed him to accept my offer. On the falling tide before dawn Philip left the house by the cliff below the terrace, as he had come.
I was glad to see in the morning, when I had received my registered letter and was waiting for the car which would take me down to Madrid, that the sea was shimmering in the heat as far as the misty horizon. Philip would be saved from an uncomfortable day of seasickness and the new master of the Phare de Kerdonis would have no great difficulty in picking up the Isaura. It was the first time that I could really appreciate what attraction my pair of romantics had found in the coast.
I have no first-hand knowledge of the further adventures of General Sauche and Major Vigny. Two gentlemen, bearing their passports, boarded at Madrid Airport a plane which they had chartered to take them to South Africa. At what discreet point these two were exchanged for the real owners of the passports I do not know.
It will be remembered that the plane got off course and made a forced landing in mountainous country where Mr Mgwana had not yet been able—owing, he claimed, to the negligence of British colonialism—to introduce all the benefits of civilisation. The pilot fortunately took a route which led him to the nearest Government Officer. His passengers were regrettably lost in the thick bush, and little more of them was discovered than was essential for identification.
When I last saw Mgwana, I ventured to hope that Vigny’s end had been of a nature to satisfy his intelligent interest in the arts of the table. Some years ago he would have taken this as a reflection upon his people. He now retorted, as any of the more confident members of my club might do, with an unrepeatable jest upon the manners and morals of the City of London. Africa will go far with such a man for example.
This was at the christening of his goddaughter, little Theo Ardower. I was relieved that Prebendary Flanders had not been invited to perform the rite, though this may have been due to the fact that it took place in the sane, gay and decorous atmosphere of the College Chapel. I noticed that the beautiful gravity of Olura was attuned to perpendicular architecture and that, happily, she was well aware of it.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1965 by Geoffrey Household
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
978-1-4976-4561-5
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Olura Page 25