Night Without Stars

by Winston Graham

  There was a palm tree in the middle and a few vegetables growing; at the end were grapevines. Not an inch of space was wasted. The garden was about four feet above the level of the doors, and from halfway across it you could see into the room that was lighted. It was a storeroom and wine cellar. There was no one in it. A couple of mosquitoes danced around the unshaded electric bulb. Then a man and an old woman came down. The man was a stranger, but I recognised the voice of Mère Roget. She was smaller and older than I thought.

  She said: “ They should have sent two vans. My God, what organisation. By the time they come back it will be midnight.”

  “No,” said the man. “ It’s only half an hour’s run each way. And if it is too public we’ll send them back and they can come to-morrow.”

  Mère Roget picked up an armful of bottles. “I don’t like it. We have had the stuff a week. Get rid of it, I say. What are the Americans drinking?”

  “Not much. They are not the right type.”

  They went back up the stairs.

  Silence fell. Down in the next street two voices were singing:

  “It ain’t kinda fair on Maudie.

  Who’s faded round the edges

  An’ a haybag too.…”

  Some of the right type for Mère Roget.

  Down the steps and up to the first door. I tried the latch, but the door would not open. On to the next door. It was plain that the cellar was empty. Wooden steps led up to the kitchen above, but some sort of a door had been shut at the top because the voices from up there were muffled. In the left-hand wall of the cellar was another door, leading into the second cellar whose outer door I’d tried.

  Weigh up the risks. If the communicating door was open it wouldn’t be difficult to slip through the lighted cellar to the other.

  What gain? A knowledge perhaps of the goods Mère Roget didn’t like to store.

  One does things on impulse sometimes and without the best of reasons. It didn’t seem so rash at the time.

  Open the door eight inches more; inside; the smell of wine and straw and old stone; shut the door the same amount. Six steps across the flagged floor. The middle door was shut. Lift the latch. It’s open. Very dark. Go in and pull the door to behind you, then quietly lift the latch and shut out the last light. Well, that much done.

  Same smell in here. I felt for the switch and found it, but this seemed too risky just at present. A match. Four scrapes before it flickered. Square cellar. Wine bottles by the dozen poking their heads out at me. Bales of the sort I’d seen loaded; boxes; big square cardboard containers sealed along the tops with brown paper.

  The match went out.

  I thought of my lighter and fished that out. The flame was smoky but one wasn’t always burning one’s finger. I went across to the bales. They were heavy and fairly hard. The one I looked at was stamped “ G. Ravallo, Napoli.” I got out my penknife and slid it along the seam of the bale. These things are never as easy to open as you hope, and by the time I’d made a sizable gash it didn’t look such a good idea. Outside I could hear the two Americans going on with their song.

  “It ain’t kinda fair

  In this one-horse town

  On a high-class dame like Maudie …”

  I pulled back the wrappings and found some sort of grey wool, tugged it out and found it was a pair of socks. That was a bit of a surprise. Then I turned them up and saw them stamped “ Made in U.S.A.”

  Someone started coming down the steps. I slid down behind the bale and waited.

  It didn’t seem to be Mère Roget this time. Two men were talking, and there was the rattle of bottles again. I hoped the wine they wanted was in the first cellar. They were arguing about something, but I couldn’t get the hang of it.

  … After an age they went up again, and I re-lit the lighter. There were about twenty such bales as the one I’d opened. I went over to one of the cardboard containers and used the penknife again. The top of the thing was full of corrugated cardboard and shavings, but underneath were packets of cigarettes in clusters of five twenties held together with gummed paper; it didn’t seem worth adding up how many there might be in each container.

  Time to go. The object of coming here was served. I stuffed a couple of packets of twenty into my pockets, and the socks into my breast pocket. I’d had enough last year of telling stories without evidence. Not that one was sure yet that this story must be told. I blew out the light and picked up my stick. All quiet outside. Heavy feet were moving overhead, and the piano had begun again. Not this time with Blind Giles and his Provençal songs. I opened the door into the other cellar and saw a man standing by the steps looking at me.

  He was a big man, nearly as tall as myself and much heavier. He’d evidently been watching for me to come out because he’d got a knife in his hand. We looked at each other and his jaw dropped. There was one thing to do.

  I poked about with my stick and said: “Is anyone there? I don’t know where the devil I am. I’ve gone wrong somewhere.”

  He licked his lips and fingered the knife blade with his thumb. Then abruptly he reached up and thumped on the door above. I began to grope towards the outer door.

  “Stop!” he said. It was my one-time friend the fisherman.

  I turned eagerly. “ Roquefort! And I have been looking for you everywhere! After all this time. Where are you?”

  I changed my direction but still contrived to get a bit nearer the door.

  “Stop,” he said again. “ What are you doing down here, m’sieu?”

  I said: “ They kept telling me this wasn’t the Café Gambetta, and I know it is, so I tried to find my way in by a back entrance.”

  He thumped again. This time there was an immediate answer, and he moved aside as Mère Roget and the other man came down.

  Mère Roget said: “ What …” and then stopped as she saw me.

  “He was down here,” said Roquefort. “In the other cellar. I heard him moving when I came down.”

  The other man began to sidle round towards the door.

  I said: “Who’s there? Roquefort! What’s everyone so unfriendly about?” Another step.

  “Don’t move,” said Mère Roget. “How have you got in here?”

  “Mère Roget!” I said. “ I saw Alix yesterday and was asking how you were. I’m glad I’ve found you all at last.”

  The other man stopped moving when the old woman jerked her thumb at him. I could see she was weighing it all up. She didn’t know what to make of it, and didn’t want bloodshed. It all meant more danger from the police.

  “My name is not Mère Roget,” she said. “That was a little joke we had, m’sieu. Then the joke was over and we didn’t want you here any more so we did not admit you. If you want to know all about it, go and ask Alix.”

  “I did ask Alix, and she told me the same thing. And Roquefort and his butterflies? Was that all part of the joke?”

  She said to him in an undertone: “Go and see if anything has been touched.”

  I knew then that this bluff wasn’t going to last much longer. I watched Roquefort move towards the middle door.

  “And Scipion,” I said. “And the others. What a curious display of bad taste! Do you often get fun out of people’s infirmities?”

  Nobody answered. Roquefort went in and switched on the light.

  “Anyway,” I said. “I’m not going to push in where I’m not wanted.”

  I turned and went out through the door slamming it behind me. Then I made across the path in great strides as the man tried to open it again behind me. Passing the second door I heard Roquefort drawing back the bolt. For once I slipped in the dark but got out into the alley with probably a couple of yards’ lead. The gate banged, might hold them a moment, but two more men loomed up suddenly on my blind side and I knew I was done; they’d evidently sent them round from the street to be sure. One of them clutched my arm and I was just going to do something about it when he said:

  “What’s the hurry, pal? Just hit the turn int
o the stretch?”

  The other put his arm heavily round my shoulders and breathed rye whisky.

  “Pardon, monsieur” he said. “Avez-vous un … Est ce-que vous avez un … What’n hell’s the French for match, Joe?”

  “Allumette,” I said, a bit short of wind. “And I’ve got one here if you’d like it.”

  The first man went off into a crow of laughter.

  “He’s English, Herbie. Just when you were getting warmed up, too.”

  Herbie waved a dignified hand. “ Merci, monsieur. Je vous remercie pour le louer de votre allumette. Le soir est beau, n’est ce pas? Voulez vous joindre nous dans un—un boisson?”

  I said: “ Were you the two who were singing just now?”

  “Yeah,” said Joe. “ Like to hear us? Herbie, feller here wants to hear us.”

  I said: “ Let’s wait till we get to the top of this alley.”

  Chapter 10

  In the hotel next morning in the light of day it looked different, but at the time I felt lucky to get away. I didn’t waste any more time than I could help with Herbie and Joe, and was glad to be out of the town.

  It was plain from now on that I’d do well to keep clear of Villefranche. Nobody there loved me any more, and they might not be willing to waste opportunities arguing next time. I smoked one of the cigarettes, and it seemed good Virginian tobacco. But when I looked the socks over I found I was wrong about one thing. They weren’t grey, they were khaki.

  By the afternoon post a letter came from Charles Bénat.

  DEAR GILES GORDON.

  We didn’t have an opportunity for private conversation at

  the Wintertons last night, but I see that you will require more

  in the way of satisfaction than I have so far been prepared to

  give you. You, I think, owe something in way of explanation,

  too. I shall be in Marseilles until Friday, but if you will care

  to come to dinner that evening perhaps we can talk this thing

  over in a friendly spirit and come to an understanding. If you

  can let me know, I will send a car down to your hotel to pick

  you up about seven.

  Yours sincerely. C HARLES B ÉNAT

  So friendly a note was a surprise. I wondered if he’d heard of

  last night’s adventures when he wrote.

  I spent the afternoon writing; it seemed a common precaution.

  About six the telephone rang. It was the porter.

  “A Mme. Delaisse to see you, monsieur.”

  Something missed a beat. “ Where? In the hotel?”

  “Yes, monsieur. At the desk.”

  I said: “I’ll come straight down—no, will you ask her please to

  come up.”

  “Very well, monsieur.”

  I stood and looked about the room, swept up the papers I’d

  been writing, shoved them into a drawer on top of collars and

  socks, put my jacket on. I’d time to straighten my tie before the

  knock came at the door.

  When she came in her expression was rather taut. I wondered

  where that little teasing self-deprecating laugh had gone. It wasn’t

  just I who had changed.

  She stood with her back to me for a minute while I shut the

  door. She was wearing a scarlet frock with a white collar.

  I said: “ Whatever you’ve come for it’s good to see you.”

  She said: “How soon can you leave Nice?”

  I walked over to the window and pulled up the Venetian blind,

  for the sun had left the front of the hotel.

  “Sit here. It’s cool and airy and we can talk.”

  She came slowly over. “Giles, I am not playing. You had better

  leave Nice at once.”

  I looked at her sitting on the chair, went on looking. “ Why?”

  “You should know that. Why did you go round to the café last

  night?”

  “Temperamental impulse. Do they feel annoyed?”

  “They phoned this morning. I didn’t tell Charles before he left

  for Marseilles.”

  “Thanks for the breathing space. So I’ve got till Friday?”

  She looked quickly at me. “How do you know?”

  I told her about the invitation. “It’s too much to resist a promise

  of some explanation, don’t you think? After all this time?”

  She began to fumble in her handbag, but I got out my cigarette-case and offered her one. As she took it I said: “Recommended. Special Villefranche brand.”

  She looked at the cigarette. “ You must be crazy, Giles. You must be mad. You’ve recovered some of your sight. Why didn’t you go somewhere and enjoy yourself? What good is all this prying and interference going to do you?”

  I stopped with the lighter not yet burning. “ D’you really need that explaining?”

  “Then what …?”

  “I don’t care what black-market business Charles and your Villefranche friends are running. I don’t even care who killed Pierre Grognard. He’s in his grave and can stay there. It’s nothing to me. Don’t you realise that?”

  She looked at me. Then she flushed as she’d done at the Wintertons’ place.

  “… If you care for me you’ll not interfere with my friends.”

  “Oh, rot; rubbish; nonsense. What else can I do? Why don’t you tell me what there is to tell? I’m no Puritan. There’s a black market in England as well as in France. I don’t think much of it, but I shouldn’t rush to the police at the first sign. I like murder a lot less, but it’s not my job to bring every criminal in. Grognard’s death worried me a good bit because I found his body. Is that unnatural?”

  “Part of it isn’t my story to tell—”

  “All right then. I came for an explanation, which it isn’t unreasonable to expect. I wanted an explanation, but if you can’t or won’t give it me, then let’s drop it. Drop it for good and all. Grognard’s buried and Villefranche forgotten. But what I’m not prepared to forget is you. I want to see you, talk to you, have your friendship—at least for a little while, just to make sure. You say last time, last year you were sorry for me and that was why … Well, I don’t believe it. You say it was all a mistake. That may be. But it was your mistake, not mine. And I want a reasonable chance of being convinced that it was even yours.…”

  I lit the lighter, a bit out of breath, but she seemed to have lost her cigarette or something, so I lit my own.

  She said in a different sort of voice: “I think I can tell you about Villefranche. That first day, when it was wet, I knew I shouldn’t really take you to the café; but in a way I wanted to. You were—likable, and on impulse I wanted them to meet you. Their real selves, you know, are the people you met when I was with you, not the people of last night.… Well, when I took you that first time, just to be on the safe side I told you the names we’d used during the war—still used sometimes—so that no one knew who people or places were. When we went in that first time I asked for Mère Roget. It was a cue to them to use these other names that during the war had become almost as familiar to them as their own. The only one who kept his real name was my brother-in-law, Armand, because he was away, a prisoner, and didn’t have any other. It was not really intended to deceive you, but to reassure them. It was intended as a defence against their criticism. If they said, you shouldn’t have brought him here, I could say, but he knows nothing, not even your real names.…”

  “Good,” I said. “ That lets out Villefranche.”

  “I wish it did. But now with your interference last night it’s no longer for you to say when this shall be dropped. Do you think you’d wish to drop it if you were in their position? Their existence now depends on your good-will. And why should they think you have any good-will for them at all? Perhaps nothing will be done until Friday, but you should leave by this evening’s train.”

  “And if I stay?”

>   “Your life will not be safe.”

  “Oh, come. This isn’t Chicago.”

  “No.… It isn’t Chicago.”

  There was a pause. I looked out of the window. “That your car?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the model they call the sideways Studebaker, because you can’t tell whether it’s coming or going.”

  “Perhaps.” “I think that’s the nearest thing we’ve got so far to the design

  of the future.”

  “I haven’t come here to discuss cars.”

  “No,” I said, “but it’s a long way from a shoe-shop and an

  apartment in the Old Town to driving an expensive American car

  and wearing the clothes you wear now.”

  She said: “I’ve come here to warn you. I can’t do more.”

  “Why bother even to do that?”

  She shrugged slightly and was silent.

  “Old time’s sake?” I inquired.

  “If you like.”

  I said: “You’ve changed, Alix. God knows what’s done it, but

  you’re only half the same person. You wouldn’t have come over

  from the shoe-shop, have tried to help me this year.”

  “Stop being—interested in me then, and go.”

  “I’m not interested in you, I love you.…”

  There was a bit of a pause after that. Three or four people were

  round her car, staring at it.

  I said: “ Believe me, I’d get some satisfaction out of leaving this

  town for good, but it wouldn’t solve anything for me. So just for

  a little while I’m not going.”

  She looked up at me. “You’re a sticker, aren’t you?”

  I tried to smile at her. “Obstinate streak.”