“You don’t think we were right?”
“That depends. At that time I would have thought it, I’m sure. If your sons had been off fighting in Russia, you would never have given a thought to whether or not we were right. We would have had to have been right.”
“Yes. I suppose so.” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. I thought she was going off to sleep. Anna had started to cook something over the fire, while the two men continued their game. The sun came down in patches there under the tree. It was beginning to get warm. Tania stirred and opened her eyes.
“But what about now?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Are we right, now? Or will some German Tolstoy come along in fifty years and make us all appear to be beasts?”
“Whatever we may appear in fifty years,” I said, “for the present time we’re at least justified. France has to survive, and now it has to fight to survive.” I leaned back and lit a cigarette. “Novelists make us think war is terrible because they tend to make a personal story out of it. Nationally, war is either desirable or necessary, never right or wrong. It’s not a personal thing, any more than a storm is personal. If a bolt of lightning strikes down a man, no one says that there’s any reason behind it. Some writers try to, saying it’s an act of God or whatever, but that doesn’t wash. It just happens, like war happens.”
“But the people . . .”
“People don’t matter in wars. Countries matter. Nations matter, issues matter. The last thing anyone should think about is people.”
She closed her eyes again. “I think about my sons,” she said, then added quietly, “all the time. And we both think of Marcel.”
“But we don’t know Marcel had anything to do with the war.”
She looked up at me. “Don’t we?”
I wondered how much she did know.
“And if he did have to do with the war, then he wouldn’t matter, because people don’t matter. Oh, Jules, you don’t really believe that?”
I thought of the night before, and the reasons I had decided to stay on in Valence. I had let it become personal, which was absurd. France was what mattered. But finally I didn’t believe that, and some sense of that realization had made me resign. I supposed I was, indeed, getting old. I touched Tania’s face gently.
“No,” I said, “I don’t really believe that.”
We were silent.
Across the pond nothing changed. I watched for several minutes, after which Watkins, evidently beaten in the game—I heard his “Damn!” clearly—abruptly stood up and stalked over to the fire.
“You know who that is over there?”
Tania sat up. “Who?”
“Your friend Lupa.”
“Your friend Lupa,” she said, frowning. “I’m surprised he had the energy to get all the way out here.”
“It’s not that he lacks energy—he just chooses a bit carefully how he wants to expend it.”
“Well, let’s not expend any of ours by calling him.”
“I had no intention of doing that, my dear.” I leaned over and kissed her.
She stood up. “Would you excuse me for a minute?” she asked.
She walked back a ways into the woods while I sat propped against the tree, watching the scene across the pond. Anna was removing something from the fire, while Lupa was putting up the game pieces and clearing the table. Anna went back to the pond for more bottles.
I took a drink of my beer, long and refreshing, closing my eyes and letting the cold liquid run down my throat. Suddenly there was a loud report. Opening my eyes, I saw Lupa and Watkins drop to the ground, while Anna screamed as she fell, rolling over and over. Behind me, I heard Tania call out my name, and I turned to see her running toward me. There were two more shots.
“You’re all right?” I yelled, and she said she was. The shots I’d heard had been the loud ringing noises of a rifle rather than the soft pops of a pistol, so the range could have been great.
I took out my pistol. Tania came up to me. “You’re not going—” she began.
I cut her off. “Go see to Anna. I think she’s been hit.”
“But Jules, you’re not . . .”
I was already moving back toward the road, where the shots had originated. Retired or not, I was a trained operative of the French government and knew how to act around hostile elements. Perhaps I was curt to Tania, but such times call for action, not sensitivity.
No more than a minute had passed since the third shot. As I ran, I saw out of the corner of my eye another figure moving through the woods to my left. It was Lupa, outpacing me as we sprinted.
We broke from the woods at about the same time, all the while moving rapidly toward the road, where we could see a figure retreating into the trees on the other side toward my house. Lupa fell momentarily from my vision, but, seconds later, he appeared at my side astride one of the dray horses.
“Get up!”
His hand grabbed me like a vice as I bounded up behind him. “Over there,” I yelled, pointing to a break in the copse just beyond the road. Lupa, holding the horse’s mane, leaned into the untrained beast and miraculously was obeyed.
I still held my pistol in my hand, dismally aware of its inadequacy. We were closing on the roadway and within another minute might expect to come upon our assailant, fleeing on foot. It was not to be, however, as over the sound of the horse’s hooves we heard a motor turning over and saw, not fifty meters away, an automobile kicking up dust as it spun from its hiding place into the road.
I fired one ineffectual shot—from that range, the gesture was about the equivalent of shouting “Stop!”—but Lupa didn’t hesitate. He spurred the horse back a bit to our right, directly toward my house.
“Your car!” he yelled over his shoulder.
“Tout droit! Straight ahead.” I pointed to the barn.
The car we’d seen had been covered, so we had no opportunity to see the driver or even whether there had been more than one occupant. Still, I would recognize the automobile itself—made of a corrugated iron just becoming popular here and painted a dull green.
We came to the barn and dismounted roughly. I stumbled and fell dismounting, but Lupa did not slow up at all. As I picked myself up, he was pulling back the building’s door, grunting with the exertion. I ran past him and threw myself behind the wheel.
It pays to keep one’s machinery in top condition, as I had done. Immediately, the motor caught, I slammed the gearshift into position and nearly ran over Lupa as the car lurched forward. He caught the windshield and leapt onto the running board, barely clearing the doorway.
I pressed the hand throttle to its limit, and before we had left my property, we were closing on fifty kilometers per hour. On the unpaved and pitted drive, the ride shook my very bones. I hoped the automobile would handle the shocks better.
“Anna?” I began.
“Not now!” Lupa bellowed.
As soon as we hit the road, however, it became smoother. The car skidded slightly as we turned left, and I nearly lost control of the wheel, but Lupa grabbed it and righted me as we continued our acceleration.
We hadn’t gone a kilometer, though, when the ride very nearly ended. What I thought at first was a backfire, or perhaps a blowout, made me lean forward against the steering wheel. That move may have saved my life. Lupa, without the worry of watching the road, spun and evidently made out a glint of metal in another stand of trees by the road. It had been another shot.
“Keep driving,” he yelled as I began to slow down. “Let Watkins get him.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Our man’s in the car.” he said. “Drive!”
Lupa pulled a weapon from under his coat. The pistol, an M-1911 Colt American military issue .45 automatic, boomed like a cannon as he fired off four rounds with what seemed to be impossible rapidity, the smoking brass jackets flying out the side of the weapon and onto the road. The fire was returned as we heard one more report from behind us
.
“Damn!” Lupa spun around, grabbing his cheek. A sliver of red appeared and he wiped at it with his hand.
“You all right?”
“Scratched. Nothing more.”
No more than three minutes had elapsed between the enemy’s car breaking from the cover of the trees and our turning into the road in pursuit. With the speed of my Model T, if the chase lasted more than fifteen kilometers, I thought we had a chance of overtaking our prey. I kept the accelerator jammed to the floor while Lupa dabbed at the cut on his face with a handkerchief. Just as I turned to look his way and question him again about the initial shooting and how badly Anna had been hurt, we crested a small hill and I was forced to skid again, braking hard, as we came upon a horse-drawn produce cart from the other direction. We barely missed it as we screeched to a stop.
The driver had leapt off the cart to the roadside and lay sprawled in the shallow grass. “Has there been another car?” I asked.
Clearly furious, swearing violently, he seemed inclined to rush us. Lupa pointed his gun at the man’s head and quieted him. “Has there been another car?”
“Oui.”
“How many passengers?”
The man shrugged. “I didn’t notice,” he said. “I was getting out of the way.” In spite of Lupa’s weapon, his anger spewed over again. “You bastards don’t own the road, you know. I’m reporting this. I . . .”
We couldn’t stay to discuss the niceties of priorité á droit, but pressed onward. If we were having trouble making headway, perhaps we were not alone.
The top was still off on the Model T, and the wind brought tears to my eyes, slightly impairing my vision. I didn’t mind it, pushing the car to nearly 120 Ks. Very few other machines could match that speed. The road’s surface, relatively smooth, nevertheless provided its share of bumps and necessitated my full attention.
Lupa stemmed the flow of his blood, then removed the clip from his weapon and refilled it. To my inquiring look, he answered, “We could have hurt him. The range is close to fifty meters.”
“Who do you think it might have been?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He dabbed again at his cheek reflectively. “I just don’t know. Perhaps Watkins will come up with something.”
I finally got the question out. “Anna was all right?”
He shook his head wonderingly. “Again, just a scratch. We’ve been uncommonly lucky.”
I thought of Marcel. Our luck had its limits.
Within moments, we were on the outskirts of Valence. Cart traffic and a few military vehicles slowed our progress as we stopped and started, honking, through the narrow streets. The town was a maze of alleys, any one of which could hide the man we sought. But we had no choice other than to pursue his logical path—toward St. Etienne.
The frustrating ride through the city streets, where we were stopped time and again by carriages, children, geese, dogs, and pedestrians, continued and continued. Our only hope was that the car we followed was experiencing similar delays.
Finally, just as we broke from the confines of the cobbled streets and onto the smoother, wider thoroughfare that led to St. Etienne, Lupa grabbed my arm and cried out.
“There it is!”
I didn’t know how he could be sure. The car was a mere speck on the roadway, and he’d only glimpsed it before it rounded a curve and disappeared again. Still, it was not a time to quibble, and I pushed the Ford to its limit.
We were gaining. As we took the same curve, we’d picked up perhaps fifty meters. Now, clearly, even to my blurred vision, it looked like the same car.
“Keep low,” Lupa cautioned. “They might shoot.”
I followed his instructions, and we closed rapidly. In another minute, we were within range of Lupa’s weapon, but he held his fire. It would not be wise to shoot until we had seen the occupants.
By the time we reached the first aqueduct crossing the Rhone, we had nearly come upon them, and it was becoming obvious to me that something had gone wrong. They were not pulling away, not shooting. In fact, they paid us no attention whatsoever.
As we pulled alongside, we glanced over at them—two elderly men in officer’s uniforms. They looked back at us with mild curiosity, nothing more. At the first opportunity, I turned into a side road, drove on for several hundred meters, then pulled over.
“What now?” I asked.
The breeze blew over us gently. Overhead, a flock of birds chided us with their song.
11
“We’re fools,” Lupa said. “What else could we have done?”
“Yes. I’m trying to determine that now.”
“There must be a dozen look-alike cars on the road.”
“Jules,” he explained, “I know the answers as well as you do. We must be asking the wrong questions.”
We continued in frustrating and desultory conversation until, in the end, he asked if I would drop him off at La Couronne on my way back home.
“Aren’t you curious about Anna?” I asked.
“I am many things in relation to her,” he answered, “but almost never am I curious. No, I am sure she has gone back to be ministered to by Madame Chessal. She was fine, Jules, as fine as I am now. I did make sure before I joined with you.”
The drive continued in silence. Occasionally I would glance over at my companion. He sat, motionless, eyes closed, pursing his lips in and out. Finally, he spoke:
“Where was Madame Chessal when you heard the shots?”
“With me. Well, she’d gone off into the bushes for a moment.”
“So she was not with you.”
“Auguste, don’t be absurd. She didn’t even know we’d be here. She was nowhere near where the shots came from.”
He looked at me in exasperation. “There is such a thing as a paid assassin. She wouldn’t have to be where the shots came from.”
I thought he was stretching the point beyond credibility and told him so.
“Jules,” he said, “there are two kinds of women: simple women, accounting for ninety percent of the race, and dangerous women.”
If he was brooding, I’d let him brood. I was convinced that his line of reasoning led nowhere, and nothing he said was going to shake that conviction. He seemed to come to the same conclusion, for suddenly he sat up straight in his seat.
“I apologize about the way I spoke of Madame Chessal. I still can’t help but feel a great deal of mistrust, but with no evidence, I’m a fool to speak rashly. Forgive me.” He sighed, back to business. “I’ve decided something rather crucial.”
“What’s that?”
“What did you see, exactly, when you heard the shots today?”
“Actually, I saw nothing. Just at the moment I heard the shots, I was tipping my head back to drink some beer. I saw nothing at all. Just before that, I saw Anna crossing back to the table and you and Watkins—no, just you—seated, presumably waiting for her.”
“Correct. Does that lead you to note any similarity between this latest incident and the successful attempt on Routier?”
I couldn’t see what he was getting at.
“Let me describe to you what happened today. Exactly. Anna had been at the fire getting our food and had turned back to the table. Watkins stood on the far side of the table, having just returned also from the fire. When the shot came, we were all precisely in a line from the direction of the report. Anna was grazed while leaning over to place the food on the table, and the same bullet passed through the bottom of Watkins’s coat. I heard the whistle of the thing as it passed my ear. There! What does that tell you?”
“Nothing,” I said truthfully. “Except perhaps that they’re both very lucky.”
“How about if they were both extremely unlucky? What if the bullet hadn’t been meant for either of them?”
I smiled. “What if you are getting upset and nervous and losing your judgment?”
Ignoring that response, he continued. “The most salient point of these two attempts, last week’s and today�
�s, is that both attempts were on my own life. Of course, there is a possibility that this was not the case last Wednesday but only the barest possibility. You see—and I don’t know whether you noticed this at the time—Routier, after the incident with Lavoie’s bottle exploding, went back to the seat I’d been occupying and drank from my already poured glass. The poison had obviously been put there for me; only the chance realignment of our positions saved me and resulted in your friend’s death.
“Again today,” he went on, “today we were all in a line, and the shot chanced to miss me. You heard the other two? After the first we all dropped immediately to the ground. The second shot landed somewhere far off, but the last hit the ground not one meter from where I lay, which was far from the other two. No, whoever the killer may be, the intended victim is beyond dispute. It is myself. And whatever else the killer may be, we may be certain that he’s getting desperate.”
“All right,” I said, after a moment, “it might be true. And if it is, what are you going to do?” I negotiated back onto the cobblestones. In contrast to our earlier passage en ville, no one seemed to be about.
“I’d like you to go and find out where Pulis was today. Then go to the police station, find where Lavoie is supposed to be, and wire him. As I said, it’s possible that there’s a hired assassin involved, even though further reflection renders that rather dubious. A hired assassin wouldn’t have missed me, and if our man was so concerned about covering up, he certainly wouldn’t have done anything at your house the other night. No, I believe he’s acting alone on this. I believe he’s scared, and a scared man makes mistakes.”
“What about Paul?”
“Anser? You’re going to see him tomorrow, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Well . . . question him. Find out what you can. Watkins, remember, will be working in St. Etienne.”
“All right, but you?”
“I’m going back to La Couronne. I don’t intend to leave my rooms until this is cleared up. A scared man, as I said, makes mistakes. I can’t be wondering about my own safety if I’m to be effective. My cooking, too, is suffering. As you see, I should be there now. Charles is no chef, but he’s taking over when he can. I try to show him a style, but how do you teach a flair, eh? Monsieur Vernet, La Couronne’s owner, is very patient. We are, in fact, distantly related. He is a good man, but he is also a businessman, a restaurateur. He needs a quality chef to survive. Much as I need a quality operative.” He glanced sideways at me. “Would you object to filling that role?”
Son of Holmes Page 12