Night Without Stars

by Winston Graham

  At times his face looked dark, as if in shadow. “ Oh, yes, of course. Pierre Grognard. Cigarette?”

  “Thanks.”

  He said: “You’ve heard, of course, that he is dead.”

  “I told you so last year.”

  “But you were mistaken then. Because he was very much alive when I saw him in Grasse.”

  “And also when he was married?”

  “I spoke of his intention to get married on the Saturday. He obviously changed his mind. That day he must have left for Grenoble.”

  “And what happened to Alix Delaisse?”

  “She’s still about somewhere.” He sighed. “Oh, yes, you were interested in her. I remember now.”

  “I haven’t been able to trace her.”

  “Perhaps she has married someone else.”

  “D’you happen to know which hotel in Grasse Grognard stayed at from the Wednesday to the Saturday before his death?”

  “How should I?”

  “No. I only wondered if you could help me. I can find out.”

  “Surely the subject’s a little out of date.”

  “It’s just getting interesting to me.”

  He inhaled and swallowed some smoke, sat very still watching me. I listened for that faint tick-tick in his breathing.

  I said: “ I shall spend a few days making inquiries in Grasse—then go on to Grenoble. There must have been an inquest, and Alix Delaisse would most likely have been called.”

  “You feel under some obligation to Grognard’s memory?”

  “No.… But nobody likes to be fooled. Those were your own words. And I want to find Alix and know the truth.”

  “I hope you’re successful.” He got up. “ It’s time for an apéritif. Even Pierre wouldn’t object to our having that, I’m sure. He won’t be any colder in ten minutes.”

  He rang for drinks and we talked casually while they were brought.

  I said: “ When I called last year I’d no idea how widespread your fame was. How does it feel to be so much admired?”

  “Not very different from being hated. It gives one a feeling of being in the centre of things.”

  “But hero-worship’s pretty difficult to take, I should think. What are the antidotes you use?”

  He glanced at me. “Hero-worship, where it exists, comes, I suppose, from the old religious sense of wanting to bow down to something—it doesn’t much matter what. It’s like a biological function that’s half atrophied.”

  “Well.… The Führer prinzip, isn’t it? Can you accept that?”

  “One acknowledges its existence. One tries to rationalize it.”

  I heard a car coming up the valley.

  He said: “The difficulty of course is that the demagogue is seldom adult enough to keep his balance. He lays down his own principles, his own laws, and then doesn’t keep them. That’s why he never lasts.” He had heard the car. “Naturally I’m talking in general terms now. The popularity of Charles Bénat isn’t likely to give anyone sleepless nights. Another drink?”

  I accepted, and watched him pour it out. He began to talk about the occupation. That didn’t prevent my hearing the car stop outside, the slam of the door, quick footsteps on the steps. Grutli began to get restive and his tail whacked the floor, but Bénat instead of saying anything just put a restraining hand on the dog’s head. I got a queer premonitory twinge in my stomach.

  Bénat said: “ How is John Chapel? Haven’t seen him for six months or more, and then it was for only a word in the street. I often wonder what whim of fate—”

  And then the door came open and Alix stood there.

  I knew her at once of course.

  When she saw me she went dead white, as if she was going to collapse. What colour I was I don’t know, but just for the important seconds Bénat was looking towards the door. One hand on Grutli’s head, he had the other to his lips. She looked from me to him, and he made a quick expressive jerk with his head.

  I’m sorry, Sarah,” he said. “ I haven’t finished the papers. I’ll see you in five minutes.”

  Just for a moment I thought she was going to burst out, but she didn’t. I took a grip of myself and looked away. It was just in time, because Bénat looked at me.

  “These are Venetian wineglasses,” he said. “You can probably feel the delicate cut of the stem. I found them in a hotel that had been commandeered for Italian officers. Pretty things.”

  “Pretty things,” I said.

  The door closed behind her.

  I said: “ Do I know that person who’s just gone out?”

  “Sarah? I shouldn’t think so. My secretary.”

  There was a brief silence. We were both trying to think of something to say.

  I finished my drink. “Touching on Grognard, does anyone know why he was motoring to Grenoble?”

  “I certainly do not. But then— Will you excuse me a minute? I think my secretary wanted to see me.”

  “Of course.”

  He got up and went out. The Great Dane rose and ambled after him, just getting his nose in the door as it swung to and levering it open again.

  As soon as I was alone I got up, listening. Bénat’s footsteps went down the passage. I heard him call something.

  Hands were uncertain with the shock of seeing her, and head in a whirl, but this opportunity had to be taken, and at once.…

  Round to the desk. There was a good spread of papers on it; some letters, what looked like invoices. Glance over them. Restricted sight made this more dangerous, and I was careful to keep the unshuttered side towards the door. The quiet-walking manservant could be a danger. Grutli had left the door open, but there was nothing to do about it.

  Letter from a client in Avignon about a will.… Marriage settlement on one Ambrosine Coste, post-office worker at Cannes.… Judgment given before M. le Procureur-Général in Paris.… Consignments of lavender invoiced. (Coals to Newcastle?) Estimate for repairs to windows.… Consignment of miscellaneous goods for M. Godeau of Roquebrune. Was Bénat a dealer?

  Someone was moving about not far away.

  A diary? Small black book was shut. No. A list of engagements. Very laconic. “ June 18: D.G., Sospel.… 22: Marcel C. Rue St. Martin.… 23: Dine at 9 with W.W.” (The dog was coming back.) “24: Café Gambetta.”

  I moved round the desk and slid into my seat. The door swung wide and Grutli came in. A dozen paces behind was Bénat.

  He stopped inside the door and lit a cigarette from the stub of the old.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Gordon, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me. My secretary has brought me some business that will have to be looked into at once.”

  “Of course.” I got up.

  His face appeared again out of the smoke. “ We haven’t got far with your Grognard business, have we? I suggest that we have a meal together one evening next week. We can discuss it further then, eh?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Good. I’ll get Mathieu to help you to your car.”

  As I left the room the Great Dane came across and sniffed at my trouser leg.

  “Queer,” said Bénat. “I don’t think Grutli likes you.”

  Chapter 8

  I kept telling myself that at least she was alive and well, but by the next day I felt rather sick about everything. Up to now there’d always been the hope that she had somehow been prevented from seeing me or writing. Deep down—at least since reading of Pierre’s death—there may have been a vague melodramatic expectation that she was locked away somewhere. At least it wasn’t quite as third-form as that, but, having known her well enough to fall in love with her, one went on trying to find some explanation which would leave the shreds of self-respect.

  Well, there had been no suggestion of coercion this morning. I’d seen her car on the way out, a new high-powered Studebaker. Beautifully dressed—in a cream linen frock with a tight bodice and yards of stuff in the skirt, crimson sandals, and a crimson brooch—she’d looked perfectly confident and at home in the second bef
ore she saw me. Then her face had fallen, she’d gone pale, and turned and crept out. A real lover’s welcome.

  Nothing was made better by the effect of the meeting on me. Six weeks ago I had gone down to Portsmouth to see Rachel, and come away knowing I was free. All things considered, it might have been gratifying to feel the same about Alix. But that one short glimpse had had the opposite result.

  Only one good thing came out of the confusion: the words Café Gambetta written in his book. The twenty-fourth would be next Monday.

  Sunday was spent with the Wintertons. As soon as they knew I was back in France they had phoned and made a date. I was glad now of somewhere to pass the time and some company to take my mind off things. But I didn’t realise how much company.

  The command was to arrive in time for drinks before lunch, and Claire met me in one of her usual flowing robes, kissed me like a favourite brother, and told me that as the American cruisers were in they’d invited half a dozen of the senior officers to lunch. Her hair was silver blue with a steely sheen in the bright sun.

  She hardly said this before the American Navy arrived behind me, and in a minute or two I was shaking hands with Vice-Admiral Carrol and Captain Grabo and half a dozen younger men. The room was in a babel of talk and it went on all through lunch. Walter was in his element. After lunch things might have slacked off a bit, but Claire had had the bright idea of asking about a dozen of the best-looking girls in the neighbourhood to join us in a bathing party. This was a terrific success, and we spent the afternoon on the pebbly but pretty beach, lying under sunshades or swimming; and some of them put on goggles and breathing tubes and tried to spear mullet. I had my first swim in five years.

  Tea and drinks were brought down from the house, and we sat on li-los and watched the sun move towards the thousand-foot cliff behind and the shadows of the beach wall creep across the stones. At seven the younger officers left, and I got up to go, but Claire waved her plump fingers disdainfully.

  “Of course not, dear Giles. You have no duty to bother about. It’s so nice to see you again after all this time. Sit down and have a drink, dear boy; I have a dinner-party all planned for nine.”

  It isn’t hard to give way when you’re enjoying yourself, and I took a seat on the veranda. One sign of a good party is that it doesn’t give you time to think. For some hours I’d nearly forgotten Alix, and I watched the colours quickening and changing on the sea and the mellow evening sunlight flushing the wooded promontory of Cap Ferrat. Villefranche was hidden from here. Let it stay so.

  Walter was saying: “ The whole trouble, Admiral, is that Lend-Lease ended too soon. It should have gone on for five years after the war. That would have given Europe a chance to get on her feet again; and cost us less in the long run.” I lit a cigarette. I thought, no human being’s ever satisfied for long; I’ve been restless since Friday; but put this on record: satisfaction here and now. Just in seeing the smoke curl up and the high cloudless sky going remote with evening, and the bougainvillea climbing over the veranda wall. Just to be able to see. To hell with Alix.

  I remembered saying that once before.

  About eight we went in and got tidied up. I caught a glimpse of a dining-table set for fifteen. About half-past eight the guests started arriving.

  The first two were French, a M. and Mme. Lemaître. I’d heard his name in Nice and knew he was on the Conseil Général and had a hand in a good deal of local administration. A close-cropped man of fifty-odd with a serious unhumorous look, and wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. His wife was a tiny little nonentity, round and soft and wrapped in wool. On their heels were Sir Robert and Lady Funchal, whom Claire had run to earth somewhere in Monte Carlo. Sir Robert had just retired from the Diplomatic Service and was thin and grey with a lot of delicate veins at his temples and the sides of his nose. Lady Funchal was nearly as tall as he was and looked like a neglected monument; all the ruins of great beauty were there.

  A gap then, and we were all getting going among ourselves and drinking champagne cocktails when another man drifted in. He was about forty-five, tall, wary, and sharp-faced, with thin nostrils. He talked like a Parisian and his name was Deffand. Behind him, but not with him, was a French actress, called Maggie Sorques. “In Nice all through the war, dear Giles,” Claire cooed in my ear, “and collaborated with practically everyone.” A fat little author called Henri Cassis came just before nine, and then a French naval officer, a Captain Vigre, who was a prominent Gaullist. The last guests to arrive were Charles Bénat and Alix.

  It was the second time in three days I’d had that sort of shock. It begins in the middle and works its way out, to the shoulders, the elbows, the knees, and the joints of the fingers. Then it’s gone and everything’s moving again.

  Alix was wearing a frock of heavy white crepe cut Grecian style with a gold ornament, and the rest of the company suddenly looked drab. Claire sometimes did the introductions casually, but to-night, perhaps knowing Americans like the thing done properly, she was careful to go round.

  Both Bénat and Alix had seen me and Alix had changed colour under her make-up; but there was no backing out of the door this time. When they got to me Bénat said:

  “Mr. Gordon, of course, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting before.”

  After a minute I was holding Alix’s hand for the first time for thirteen months.

  “Mme. Delaisse?” I said. “Yes, indeed.”

  Something in the way Alix looked made Claire raise her post-impressionist eyebrows. I watched them pass on. I’d just changed into ordinary untinted glasses, but didn’t yet think they realised I could see. Anyway, it didn’t much matter now. I made no movement towards them and we all chatted amiably until half-past nine, when dinner was served.

  I got Mme. Lemaître on one side of me, which wasn’t much fun, and Defraud, the Parisian, on the other, there being not enough women to go round. Alix was put right opposite me, between Captain Grabo and Sir Robert Funchal. I stared at her and stared at her.

  I knew now why I sometimes caught the glint of her eyes in those first near-blind days. She had those rare eyes which attract the light, and whenever she turned her glance there was a glint from their clear whites. Claire had always been crazy about candles—at least ever since she was old enough to care about looking younger—and to-night there were three silver candelabra down the table. The general talk was partly in English in deference to the American guests— which was hard on Mme. Lemaître, who didn’t know a word of it; but I found that Alix knew more than she admitted. The exception was where Bénat talked in an undertone to Maggie Sorques. I noticed Alix look towards him once or twice. Claire had put Lemaître opposite Bénat, but although they must have known each other they hardly exchanged a word.

  Alix kept glancing at me and then glancing away with a puzzled frown. Her skin was very fine with a faint tan, her amber-brown hair thick and with a deep sheen. She had a look of frankness and spirit. I’d thought her very young when we first met, but now she looked all of twenty-four, or whatever it was. I wondered if she’d matured a lot this year.

  Halfway through the meal talk at the head of the table came round to the increase of violence everywhere. Sir Robert didn’t take it seriously: crime always increased after a war, he said, the wonder was the majority of people were still so law-abiding. In five years things would be back to normal—always provided political revolutions didn’t occur. Henri Cassis, the little author, had been listening, and he said in a voice just loud enough to carry up the table:

  “Is it true there were two people murdered in Nice last night?”

  A quiet voice will sometimes shut conversation down, and this did. Most of us looked at Lemaître, who seemed to be directly in the line of fire.

  Lemaître said after a minute: “ In the Old Town. An affair of knives, I understand.”

  “What was the cause of it?”

  Lemaître shrugged his shoulders.

  Admiral Carrol said: “ I read some place that the inc
idence of crime in the Alpes-Maritimes was higher than for the rest of France. That true, monsieur?”

  “The difference is negligible, M. l’Amiral. I would say that any department with a land frontier is slightly more susceptible.”

  Lady Funchal said in her tired drawing-room voice: “ I suppose this department—French for only a matter of eighty years—has problems specially its own. And the large commingling of Italian blood—that will make it more liable to affrays. Like Corsica, in fact.”

  Lemaître said: “I see it differently. People have no faith these days, no courage. What symptoms of lawlessness there are are too widespread to be the problem of one department. The cause is not racial but moral.”

  “You mean the Communists?”

  “Ah, yes, the Communists,” said Captain Vigre, sitting up.

  Lemaître chewed for a bit. “Of course, inevitably in their own way. But Sir Robert, I think, excluded political unrest. For the moment I was doing the same.”

  Walter said: “ Well, what’s at the bottom of it all?”

  Lemaître shrugged again. “I’m sure it’s not a subject to thrash out at your dinner-party.”

  Charles Bénat sighed. “ We talk of courage. But perhaps M. Lemaître hasn’t quite the moral courage to call a spade a spade.”

  It was the first time he had joined in any general discussion. Lemaître said stiffly: “ That is as M. Bénat is pleased to think.”

  Cassis put down his glass. “I don’t see how you can divide the social scene. Political, moral, economic causes: they all inter-relate and overlap. The sources of people’s behaviour are always complex when you dig under the surface. It’s pleasant to say, this man is a bad citizen because he is a Communist, or because he doesn’t go to church or because he hasn’t a living wage, but nothing is ever as simple as that.”

  “I suppose you’d have us all psychoanalysed,” said Claire, staring interestedly at the tips of her silver-blue fingernails.

  Lady Funchal said: “I always think of psychoanalysis as a science which explains everything and solves nothing.”

  The conversation was a bit ragged and, except for the spark between Bénat and Lemaître, didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Lady Funchal had a way of flattening things out. Next to me the Parisian Deffand breathed hard through his long, thin nose.