by Mark Hebden
‘I’ve seen you before,’ he said.
‘Of course, Monsieur.’ Riccio dazzled him with his gold teeth in a wide smile. ‘Everybody knows me.’
‘You were standing outside one of the bars yesterday. One near the ferry jetty.’
‘I am always near the jetty when the ferry arrives.’
‘Why?’
Riccio placed one finger against his nose. ‘It’s an island pastime, Monsieur. To study the girls who come to spend their holidays here. To look them over and study the form. I’m not married, so why not? Everybody else does. You’d be surprised what goes on during the summer season.’
Pel had heard of the behaviour of girls from the north – from England, Germany, Holland, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries. The Mediterranean sun seemed to make harlots of them at once and the first thing they did was involve themselves in a torrid affair with a local man – be he barman, waiter or chef – which sometimes left them a month or two later with grave worries about their future.
‘He seemed nervous of you,’ Pel said.
Riccio shrugged. ‘He owed me money and I am big.’
‘Had you threatened him or something?’
‘Caceolari? Me?’ Riccio laughed. ‘I didn’t have to. He knew he had to pay.’
‘What would have happened if he hadn’t?’
‘Probably a punch on the jaw, Monsieur.’
‘Not a knife in the chest?’
Riccio laughed. ‘They told me you were a cop, Monsieur. I think you’re thinking like a cop.’
Yes, Pel thought. He was. He’d have to try to stop. Tonight at least. After all, despite everything, he was on his honeymoon.
‘Caceolari was a nervous type, Monsieur,’ Riccio went on. ‘These Italian types get nervous very quickly. You can tell by the name he was Italian.’
‘Yours is Riccio. That sounds Italian, too.
Where did your family come from?’
‘Sicily,’ Riccio grinned. ‘We’re a bit tougher in Sicily.’
Pel’s questions didn’t seem to worry him and he continued the business of settling them in with a large smile and considerable flair.
‘What’ll it be for an apéritif?’ he asked. They decided on a dry vermouth so Riccio placed the bottle on the table with a slam. ‘Help yourselves,’ he said cheerfully.
There was a fine dry local wine and expertly cooked swordfish steaks. The fact that Riccio handled the fish with the same hand he used to put more carcoal on the grill hardly mattered at all and Pel had one glass of wine too many, so that he ended up more mellow under the circumstances than he’d expected, and even complimented Riccio on the meal.
‘I catch the fish I serve myself,’ Riccio said. ‘That’s my boat.’ He gestured at the line of vessels tied up to the quay just outside. ‘The yellow one.’
‘The swordfish was yesterday’s fish?’
‘Ah, no, Monsieur!’ Riccio smiled apologetically. ‘Not the swordfish. The mullet and other things. Besides, I’ve just finished fishing. A week ago.’
‘Good catch?’
‘Excellent. But today the holiday season starts and the tourists come, so I make more money from my restaurant. And anyway, I don’t have the equipment for catching swordfish. That’s frozen. But good, no?’
Well, yes, it was good, but frozen fish to a man who set such store by his food as Pel did, it wasn’t quite the same.
The rain that had been hanging about ever since their arrival seemed finally to have gone and the night was warm, so Pel and his wife went outside to drink their coffee and brandy. It was a new experience for Pel to drink with a woman. Usually his drinking companion was Darcy with his cynical comments on life. As modern as the space age, Darcy knew exactly what life was all about and his attitude to women and to his work were brisk and realistic. This was different. Pel felt like holding his breath as he looked at Madame. How he had induced her to marry him he couldn’t imagine, and he still lived in fear that even now she might abandon him for someone more handsome, clever and rich. Perhaps it was the light or perhaps it was just the fact that she was on her honeymoon, but at that moment she looked beautiful in a way he’d never noticed before. It made him ashamed of his growing baldness and uninspiring frame. It was his firm view that he resembled a rather bad-tempered terrier and that what was left of his hair lay across his head like wet streaks on a rainy pavement. For the life of him, he couldn’t work out how he’d managed to win her. At an age when he’d begun to suspect life had shot by him and he was condemned to old age with only Madame Routy, his housekeeper, to keep him company, an old age, moreover, which – despite the fact that he’d been stuffing savings away for years – would, in addition, also be poverty-stricken, he had acquired a wife who was not only good to look at but also possessed wealth beyond his dreams.
With his house already let, they had acquired a new house and Madame was now converting into an apartment rooms over her business premises so that Pel wouldn’t have to trail home from the city when emergencies kept him late at the office. Finally, she was also exploring the possibility of buying a weekend house on a lake in the Jura. Suddenly Pel had become a bloated plutocrat.
As they waited for their coffee, Riccio moved about, serving other customers who had appeared, then he banged down on their table a miniature Espresso-type machine and plugged it into the socket where the table light was connected.
‘Help yourself,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I am busy.’
Madame was intrigued. The machine was not a lot taller than a normal percolator, but was bright red, with a wide central column on a square stand that held cups and saucers. The column supported a small square tank which, when she peeped inside, was found to contain water.
‘That’s useful for a home,’ she observed. ‘I can get you one,’ Riccio said. ‘They’re assembled here on the island so we get them cheap. Soon they’ll come in different colours. There’s enough water in there for half a dozen cups. All you have to do is put in the coffee and press the switch. It heats the water and pours it through the coffee into the cup. I have several. They’re cheaper than hiring help – especially when I’m busy. And I sometimes am in the summer when the tourists come.’
As they sat in the warm evening, silence descended on them. Pel was entranced. Despite the happenings of the day, his marriage filled him with so much pleasure and amazement he wished he could purr. If nothing else, it had relieved him for ever of the ill-temper of Madame Routy, his housekeeper. For years Madame Routy had bullied him with half-cooked casseroles for the simple reason that, being addicted to the box with the square eye in the salon, she could never tear herself away long enough to give her full attention to the stove. He had been terrified when the new Madame Pel had insisted on taking her over with Pel but, since Madame ran a hairdressing salon which was noted not only for the ability of its operators to persuade wealthy women to submit themselves to the torments caused by ever-changing hairstyles but also for its ability to charge them vast sums of money for the privilege, he had finally though somewhat unwillingly agreed. And, on the very first occasion when Madame Routy had tried her hand at a meal for them, she had surprised him with what she had produced. He could only suppose that his wife had more skill at dealing with female staff than he had. He wondered if, under the circumstances, he ought to risk another cigarette but summoning up his reserves – and it needed a few – he decided against it.
‘No,’ he said with the air of an early Christian martyr about to face the lions. ‘No cigarettes after the one I have with my evening meal.’
‘When did you decide that?’
‘Just now.’
Madame gave him a doubtful smile. ‘Think you can keep it up?’
‘No,’ he admitted.
They walked back to the house along the harbour hand in hand, Pel feeling faintly like a bashful boy but defiant about it nevertheless. As they entered the Duponts’ splendid house and closed the door, Madame turned to smile at him. ‘I hope nobody drops dead on us tonight
,’ she said.
Five
The first visitor to the Duponts’ house was the postman who brought letters and catalogues for the Duponts.
‘They’ll collect them eventually,’ he said, tossing them into the garage.
He was a cheerful young man with a long face, glasses and a mandarin moustache. Inevitably he didn’t wear a postman’s grey suit but jeans, a red T-shirt with UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA stamped across it and the usual canvas shoes.
‘They’ve got a good business here,’ he said. ‘How come they rented you their own house? I’ve never known them do anything like that before.’
Pel was standing on the verandah while Madame bathed and dressed and, because it was a bright morning, warm and sunny with no sign of rain clouds, he was willing to listen to the postman’s gossip. Gossip, his shrewd policeman’s instinct told him, sometimes contained a lot of truths.
‘They didn’t rent it,’ he said. ‘They – ah – lent it to us. I think they were encouraged by the Vicomte de la Rochemare.’
The postman gave him a sharp look. ‘You that cop that’s come to the island to sort out this Caceolari thing?’
‘I am that cop,’ Pel said stiffly. ‘But I didn’t come here for that reason. I came for a holiday.’
‘Well, apart from the big stuff and the millionaires’ set-ups at Muriel on the other side of the island, you’ve got one of the best houses there are. No swimming pool, mind, but I wouldn’t mind having it, I can tell you. Me and my wife still have to share with her mother. What’s more, here in the Vieux Port it’s not likely to catch fire.’
Pel remembered what he’d been told as he arrived on the ferry. ‘I hear houses have a habit of catching fire here,’ he said.
‘Some do. Only holiday homes though. There’s a type going round the island burning them down while their owners are away. A litre or two of paraffin and a match. Paf! It’s easy. We call him Guillaume le Feu – Billy the Burner. It suits him, don’t you think?’
Pel offered him a glass of white wine. It was a habit of his with postmen and this one seemed to know exactly what went on across the island. As they sat on the verandah, the young man introduced himself.
‘Jean Babin,’ he said.
‘Have you always worked here?’ Pel asked.
‘Since I left school.’
‘Always as a postman?’
‘About six years. I sometimes do a few jobs for Lesage at the garage. I’m good with engines. Everybody does two jobs here and being postman’s a cushy job. You just collect the mail when it comes off the afternoon ferry then the next day you drive it round the island in the van to where it’s supposed to go.’
‘Tell me more about these houses that are being burned.’
‘Well, this type, Billy the Burner, whoever he is, obviously keeps his eyes open, and when he sees a cottage belonging to somebody who isn’t an islander empty for a long time, he puts a match to it.’
‘Why does he do that?’
Babin laughed. ‘Resentment. Objects to people coming to the island. They take over old houses, modernise them, build a swimming pool, then only live in them for two months of the year. A lot of the islanders feel the same.’
‘Did you know Caceolari?’
‘Not much. Not my type.’
‘You get about. Ever see him about the island?’
The postman grinned. ‘Often. Always under that car of his. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve been asked to give him a shove to start him or a lift to Lesage’s to collect petrol or borrow a battery or a new tyre or something.’
‘Ever see him with any strangers?’
‘There aren’t any strangers on the island.’
‘Anybody unusual?’
The postman grinned. ‘We’re all unusual here,’ he said, finishing his wine. ‘We wouldn’t be here, otherwise. I reckon we’re all nuts just to stay.’
Nelly Biazz, the maid sent down by the Vicomte de la Rochemare to look after them, was preparing breakfast and when Madame announced that she intended to sit in the sunshine with her and find out where the shops were, Pel decided he might as well go to see Beauregard.
‘I shall be all right,’ Madame said. ‘Nelly knows the way and we can both drive. And, of course, there’s the little Renault.’ She gave Pel a bright smile. ‘I suspect the Duponts are having to pay for their shiftiness by renting one of their own hire cars. Probably that old Diane that came on the ferry.’
Driving along the harbour road to the police station in the Duponts’ substantial Peugeot, Pel felt like a financial magnate, and to his delight, he spotted the car’s owners, just ahead of him walking towards their office. As he beamed at them, they gave him a glare of pure hatred that made his day.
The police station was in the main square, alongside a small set of administrative offices, but since the island was administered not by a mayor but by the Vicomte de la Rochemare, there was no Mairie. The interior was blank and ugly and remarkably dusty.
‘It’s always dusty,’ Beauregard said gloomily. ‘When the mistral blows it whips up everything that’s been left around.’
Pel wasn’t very interested in the climatic problems of the island and got to grips with the real business at once. ‘What’s the crime rate like here?’ he asked.
Beauregard shrugged and scratched his chin. ‘There isn’t any crime.
‘There is now,’ Pel rapped in a voice like the slam of a door. ‘Murder.’
Beauregard shrugged again. ‘Well, that’s unusual, of course. Normally nothing ever happens here. Well, not quite nothing. There’s been some type going around setting fire to houses. A couple of litres of paraffin and a match when the owner’s away.’
‘So I’ve heard. You call that nothing?’
‘Well, it’s almost nothing. They’re all holiday homes belonging to people from the mainland.’
‘It’s still arson.’
‘What I mean,’ Beauregard said patiently, ‘is that it’s nothing to the people who live here. You know what it’s like. People from the cities buy cottages and small houses – big ones too – and stick in a swimming pool and a few bougainvillea and geraniums, live in them a few weeks a year, and let them for another few weeks to make them pay. The rest of the year they’re empty. There are kids without houses who resent it.’
Pel could see the point. It was all part of the scene that had sprung from high-speed travel and it was occurring in every country in the world. Jaded city dwellers anxious for a country retreat were buying up all sorts of old cottages and farms and converting them into modernised living quarters and then recouping their cost by letting them during the summer season. It not only changed the face of the countryside but it was also not much help to young people wanting to marry and set up home in the village where they were born, grew up and wanted to go on living. Even as he sympathised, he was guiltily aware that he and his new wife were thinking of doing the same thing in the Jura so he could have the pleasure of a little weekend fishing.
‘What are you doing about it,’ he asked.
Beauregard shrugged. ‘Isn’t much you can do,’ he said. ‘I make a few enquiries but nobody ever knows anything. People keep a tight lip. In bocca chiusa non entra mai mosca.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s an old Italian saying. The people on the island use it.’
‘What’s it mean?’
‘A fly never enters a closed mouth. They don’t talk much.’
It was something Pel had come across before. In some of the higher regions of France, the people seemed to prefer to maintain their isolation and went weeks without speaking to anyone else. There were occasionally even hatreds and fierce passions and few ideas on anything else and, though the people were not educated they were crafty with the wisdom of experience and sometimes wealthy far beyond their outward appearance.
Doubtless Beauregard didn’t push the matter of the burnings too hard. The arrest of an islander for an offence of which the islanders approved m
ight have made his position there very uncomfortable.
He was still brooding on the matter when Beauregard announced that he’d arranged for Pel to see the Vicomte again. Pel looked up sharply, feeling he was being managed.
‘Why are we going to see the Vicomte?’ he asked.
‘I thought you’d like to. He’s invited you to lunch.’
Pel had felt that he could conduct his enquiries in his own way with access to the Vicomte only when things grew difficult and he needed his authority to sort them out. Nevertheless, they were collected by the Vicomte’s Range Rover, a vast British machine like a tank that was polished to the point of being dazzling.
‘He lives in style,’ Pel said.
‘Oh, this isn’t his normal car,’ Beauregard assured him. ‘He uses a big Citroën. This is just for other people.’
Such as visiting chief inspectors, Pel thought sourly, who didn’t merit the same treatment as the titled and wealthy the Vicomte normally entertained.
To his surprise, the Vicomte’s château, though not an old one, had been built as a replica of one of the châteaux of the Loire. It was small, of white local stone, and was built in front of a wide circular tree-shaded lake – artificially made, he felt sure – on which there were swans. Beyond the lake were hectares of parkland and a view of the sun on the sea. They drove in through huge wrought-iron gates and circled the building by a wide turreted tower, which Beauregard said contained the library. Beyond the front door there was a huge hall leading into a long corridor that ran the length of the building.
‘My son,’ Beauregard murmured, ‘thought it would be a good place to set up his model railway.
Pel gave his smile time to settle before he replied. ‘It’s in good condition,’ he admitted.
‘It’s one of the few châteaux that’s fully used and lived in. It’s not too big and it pays for its own upkeep. He converted the stables into freezers and people come here every day to prepare vegetables grown on the island ready to go into them. He was one of the first to get into it when France started eating frozen foods.’