by Mike Ripley
‘We are not offended,’ said Perdita with her sweetest smile, ‘we were only hoping you could tell us what was going on down there.’
‘But you were there, Madame Campion, standing next to her. You saw what was going on. I assure you there was no collusion or impropriety on the part of the casino. The roulette wheel is a game of chance, we do not – cannot – control which number come up.’
‘I was suggesting no such thing, my dear M’sieur Fleurey. We are looking for an explanation for Lady Redcar’s behaviour.’
‘Behaviour? She comes to the casino every morning and she always plays her own system, betting on each column in turn. Sometimes she wins, sometimes she loses; then she stops, always after nine bets.’
‘Nine?’
‘Always. She always places nine bets. Did you not notice?’
‘We were rather distracted,’ said Rupert, ‘by her singing D’em bones, d’em bones, d’em dry bones in that tuneless drone of hers. It’s a good job you don’t have many other customers that time of the morning. I think serious gamblers would find that most distracting.’
M. Fleurey smiled a wry smile.
‘Lady Redcar is not, as you suspect, a serious gambler. It matters not to her whether she wins or loses. She plays for low stakes on the safest of bets and she has something no true gambler has – the ability to say ‘Stop!’ before things go too far.’
‘Or ‘Stick!’ in her case,’ observed Perdita.
‘Precisely. She places her nine bets and then stops. Every day it is the same. But you are wrong about her singing, M’sieur. She is not singing the Negro spiritual, she is chanting a prayer.’
‘A prayer? For luck?’
‘No, not, I think, for luck but out of remembrance.’
‘But she was asking ‘the old bones’ to share the luck,’ said Perdita.
‘She is remembering ‘Old Bones’ and the luck he had. I do not think she prays to him – that would be heretical, would it not, even in England? I think she prays for him or at least for his soul for he is surely no longer with us.’
‘Do you know who Austin Bones is … was?’ asked Rupert.
‘But naturally, although his name was Bonus, not Bones and his story is a legend in the world of the casino here on the Riviera.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Perdita gasped gleefully, rubbing her hands together and breaking into song, ‘Austin Bones was … the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo!’
Joseph Fleurey threw back his head and laughed.
‘I would say that he was the man who hardly troubled the bank at Monte Carlo, even though he was a winner and caused quite the scene when he won. There are many stories about famous winners and losers, even losers who sadly went on to commit the suicide.’ Joseph Fleurey gave a dramatic shudder to emphasise his point, ‘but Austin Bonus was a man who could not have been happier. He even sang that awful song about breaking the bank at Monte Carlo – which nobody ever has – even though he did not come close, though his winnings would have been a considerable sum in his day, perhaps ten thousand English pounds.’
Perdita let out a long low whistle and said, ‘I wouldn’t mind winning that today if you could arrange it, darling Joseph.’
M. Fleurey showed her the palms of his hands indicating that he was powerless in such matters.
‘When was this, Joseph?’ Rupert steered the conversation away from his wife’s charming cupidity.
‘It was before the first war … 1910, that was it.’
‘And was this Austin Bonus a regular visitor to the casino?’
‘Not at all; no one knew him, no one knew where he came from or where he stayed. No one had seen him before and no one saw him again. When he collected his winnings, he left a receipt which the manager of the time had framed. In addition to his signature, he had written a line from Madame Campion’s favourite song: “I to Monte Carlo went, just to raise my winter’s rent.”’
‘I’m afraid I only know the chorus,’ confessed Perdita. ‘Is that significant?’
‘No, just an example of the English sense of humour, yes?’
‘So this Austin Bonus was definitely an Englishman?’ Rupert pressed on.
‘Most definitely, but then we have always been popular with the English.’
‘But you said his story was legendary. What made him a legend?’
‘Two things,’ said Joseph, linking his fingers across his shirt front and leaning back in his chair. ‘Firstly, his system of playing roulette: he did not have one; it was as if he had never seen a roulette wheel before that night. I am paraphrasing from the diaries left by the manger here in 1910, you understand. He carried a bag of money with him, what I think was called the Gladstone bag, perhaps. Once he saw the roulette wheel, he watched the other players for a few moments then he attempted to put the bag on the layout cloth, which caused quite a stir. The croupier explained that he had to buy chips from the cashier before he could play, and so he did. He emptied the bag into the cashier’s window, all of it, which amounted to a little over 4,000 Francs, and he exchanged it for four 1000 Franc chips. He returned to the table and some said they heard him say a short prayer and then …’ M. Fleurey showed that he knew how to use a dramatic pause with a captive audience ‘… he placed all his chips on one number and that number came up! The odds paid were 35:1 and this on his first bet! It was also his only bet, as he collected his winnings and left the table.’
‘And that is why Austin Bonus is a legend? Because he made one incredibly lucky bet at roulette?’
‘In terms of time spent at the table, it was a remarkable achievement and no one could remember seeing anything like it before, but then no one had seen a gambler quite like Austin Bonus before. I said there were two things which made up the legend of Austin Bonus. It was not simply that he was a remarkably lucky winner, it was that he was the most unlikely person to be on the floor of the casino in the first place. You see, he was dirty and … what is the word? … dishevelled, yes that’s it, and unshaven as if he had travelled a long way, which of course he had, and he had not eaten for several days. He came through the doors of the casino just before midnight and all the other guests and players were in evening dress, so his appearance was even more … incongruous, yes?’
‘He sounds like what we might call a tramp,’ said Rupert. ‘I’m surprised he was let in.’
M. Fleurey shrugged a Gallic shrug.
‘Normally, he would not have been, but our doormen were caught off guard by the fact that he was a priest.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘A priest, or a vicar, as you call them in England.’ Fleurey put a hand to his throat to hide his bow-tie. ‘Complete with – how you say? – faux-col d’ecclésiastique.’
‘Dog collar.’
‘Exactly. He was the vicar of a place called Lindsay Carfax, which I believe is where Lady Redcar lived before she moved to the Riviera. Perhaps he was her priest – vicar – though it was all sixty years ago and I do not think Lady Redcar is so old.’
‘Do not be such a gentleman, Joseph,’ smiled Perdita. ‘Lady Prunella is quite old enough. She is proud to be a Victorian.’
‘How long has Lady Redcar lived in Monte?’ asked Rupert.
‘Three years I think, but she does not live in Monte Carlo, she has a small house in the village of Gorbio in the hills towards the Italian border. It is not far, perhaps fifteen kilometres. Do you intend to visit her, if you can get beyond her Swiss guard dog?’
Rupert chuckled. ‘I know what you mean. Frau Berger is rather formidable. We were sort of invited for tea I think, but the guard-dog said it wasn’t convenient; something to do with furniture repairers.’
‘Bof !’ said Joseph Fleurey, which is not a word in any language except French. ‘That woman and her furniture; you would think there were no craftsmen in France the way she sends her things back to England for the slightest repair and it is not as if she has a collection of valuable antiques. People who have visited her say that she has but a few p
ieces of any age, which she brought with her, and those are of inferior quality. They cannot be worth the cost of shipping them to England and back two or three times a year. It is curious, but then she is a curious woman, is she not?’
‘Yes, she is,’ agreed Rupert, ‘and I am mildly curious to see where she lives. Could you give us directions?’
‘Of course. Gorbio is not far from my home town of Mentone and it is not a big place; but you will need a car. I am sure Charles Bouilleau at the hotel can arrange one. It is a beautiful drive, very panoramique.’
‘How about it, darling?’ Rupert appealed to his wife. ‘A nice drive into the hills from where we can watch the sunset over the coast.’
‘Well, I thought we might …’ Perdita began to pout, but Rupert quickly spotted the warning signs.
‘We could be there and back in time for a late supper and then I thought we might come back here to the casino to try our luck if, that is, we have any credit left.’
Joseph Fleurey waved a magnanimous hand indicating that their account was still in the black.
‘In that case, it’s a wonderful idea,’ enthused Perdita, leaping to her feet. ‘But there is one thing I must know, Joseph.’
‘Yes Madame?’
‘Do you know which number it was that Austin Bonus bet on?’
M. Fleurey smiled to himself.
‘Ah, if only I had one of your English pounds for every time I have been asked that question. The legend is that Austin Bones staked everything he had on number nine.’
Sixteen
As a Thieves in the Night
The car was not anywhere near as big as the ‘hearse they arrived in’ Rupert had insisted, but Perdita remained unconvinced. It was, he conceded, a Citroën and possessed the same hydraulic suspension which dealt so effectively with uneven French roads but which made unwary English passengers seasick. It was a Citroën DS which, if you said it French, was Déesse or ‘Goddess’; but Perdita was one goddess who remained unappeased.
M. Bouilleau the hotel manager had arranged the car for them on condition that it was returned more or less in one piece – the odd scratch and scrape being acceptable for the driver would, after all, be English – as it belonged to the hotel’s best pastry chef and good pastry chefs were easy to offend and difficult to replace.
With great care and some skill – though not enough to pacify his wife who was finding driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road disconcerting – Rupert negotiated the Citroën along the coast road to Mentone and found with little difficulty the minor road which twisted inland and up into the hills to the medieval village of Gorbio. Apart from excellent directions, M. Fleurey and M. Bouilleau had between them supplied the additional knowledge that Gorbio had a population of less than seven hundred souls, no decent restaurants, a passably attractive fountain in the village square where one could water one’s mules and donkeys if one so desired, and an ancient elm tree supposedly planted in 1713 though no one could remember why. They had also provided the very useful advice that once in Gorbio, the junior Campions should not attempt to negotiate the narrow streets in a strange car but park in the village square and explore on foot, for it was not a big place and they would easily find the Rue Garibaldi, where the eccentric Lady Redcar lived at Number 9.
There it was again, Rupert thought: Austin Bones’ lucky Red Nine on the roulette wheel, Lady Prunella’s nine bets and now her address. What was it about the number nine? His father had not mentioned that it had any significance when he had asked Rupert and Perdita to ‘go and brace the old she-wolf in her lair’ but then Mr Campion Senior had always regarded vagueness as a legitimate modus operandi and had not exactly given them a detailed brief. He had asked them to make contact with Lady Prunella, to pass on his regards and to report back on the venerable lady’s health, sanity and well-being. He had not specified how the junior Campions were to quantify or interpret their findings, nor to what purpose they would be put. He had, however, said that he wanted Rupert and Perdita to act as ‘neutral observers’ and they were in no way to think of themselves ‘as detectives’. Well, they had tried observing neutrally and all they had discovered was a slightly batty old English lady who had a fixation with an eccentric Edwardian vicar and the number nine. Surely a bit of practical detective work would flesh out their next report, justifying their travel and hotel expenses, not to mention Perdita’s gambling habit.
Gorbio, in the quiet of an early evening when the sun still gave an artist’s light but little heat, was a picturesque settlement of pink stucco houses with red-tiled roofs, narrow cobbled streets and arched passageways. It was impossible to miss the village square with its fountain (mules and donkeys for the use of) and the famous ancient elm tree of 1713. The only other tourist attraction seemed to be a shop, closed for the day, called La Cave de Gorbio, which sold artisan local pottery and poorly but enthusiastically executed watercolours of local views.
Rupert followed the advice he had been given and parked the Citroën in the square after executing a flamboyant three-point turn so that the car was facing towards the road down to the coast.
‘Always secure the means of a quick exit,’ he told Perdita when she queried his actions. ‘It’s the one piece of paternal advice I tend to follow.’
‘Are we expecting to have to make a quick exit?’ asked Perdita, unperturbed.
‘Better to be safe than sorry. Come on, let’s explore on foot and find out where the old bat roosts before the sun goes down.’
‘You make her sound like a vampire.’
‘She’s a Victorian Englishwoman – that’s far scarier than a vampire!’
‘Lead on, then, Van Helsing.’
They spotted a sign, half-way up the wall of a stone-built house, saying Rue Garibaldi as soon as they reached the edge of the square.
‘It’s a good job we didn’t have to ask directions,’ Perdita observed as she looked around at the deserted streets and the empty square, silent except for the tinkling of water in the fountain. ‘The local inhabitants seem to have taken cover. Wait –’ She sniffed the air loudly, turning in a circle ‘– I’m getting thyme, garlic and crushed basil … it must be dinner time.’
‘It almost always is in France,’ said Rupert, ‘and jolly civilised it is too.’
‘Now don’t go native on me, husband. Let’s get detecting before it gets dark and the vampires and the English gentlewomen come out.’
Holding hands, as any recently married couple still would, they walked slowly down the Rue Garibaldi which curved around to their left and sloped gently downhill. The houses were of a similar design and age, stone built into the hillside, of two storeys with front doors straight off the narrow street and firmly shuttered windows, each separated from its neighbour by a patch of land to the side which was guarded by a stone wall at least seven feet in height containing wooden gates wide enough – just – to accept a vehicle.
It was impossible to tell whether the space enclosed by the walls was used as a garden or a parking space or something more suspicious, for their height and the ubiquitous signs saying Attention au chien ensured a considerable degree of privacy. And the citizens of Gorbio seemed to value their privacy to the extent that only the occasional whiff of cooking or the muffled rattle of pots and pans escaping through ground-floor shutters suggested that the town was inhabited at all.
The flickering glow of a television screen through a net curtain was, in this medieval context, quite startling.
‘Is French television as bad as they say?’ Perdita had asked, peering rudely, but vainly, into the curtained window.
‘Worse,’ said Rupert pulling her away. ‘A circus every night and the rest is all politics, makes you really appreciate the BBC.’
Hand in hand, they continued carefully down the street, picking their way over the cobbles which were playing havoc with Perdita’s unwise choice of lemon yellow high-heeled shoes. She was at the point of cursing her entire choice of wardrobe – the wispy yellow summer frock and t
he thin pink cardigan – which might have fitted the image of a tourist promenading through Monte Carlo but which made her feel like a clumsy sunflower in the narrow, shady streets of the ghost village of Gorbio. It was noticeably cooler now, the twilight coming on quickly, causing Perdita to shiver involuntarily.
‘Remind me, dearest, what exactly are we doing here?’ she sighed.
‘Just looking,’ said Rupert. ‘Just looking and reporting back to the Old Man.’
Perdita was about to ask ‘Looking for what?’ when Rupert pulled down hard on her hand causing her to stumble into his shoulder and he stopped abruptly and pressed himself back against the wall of the nearest house. The street had curved sharply to their left and around the corner, perhaps thirty yards away, parked in the street and occupying more than its fair share of it, was the rear end of a white Bedford commercial van with British number plates and an oval GB sticker.
‘The furniture removers,’ whispered Rupert.
‘Restorers,’ muttered Perdita, rubbing her arm.
The Bedford was parked tight up against the garden wall of the house displaying a 9 on its traditional blue and white enamel plaque. The green wooden gates in the wall were open offering a slit of a view of a shadowy, shrub-filled garden. There was no sign of life in or around the van or the gate, but an upstairs light had been turned on in the house.
Rupert slipped his arm around Perdita’s waist.
‘Come on, let’s just saunter casually down the street and see if we can spot anything.’
‘What if Lady P. spots us?’ Perdita hissed, but made no attempt to remove his arm.
‘Then we act utterly surprised and go into our ‘Fancy bumping into you here, Lady Redcar – were you out for an evening promenade too?’ routine. You can improvise on that.’
‘I’m much better with a script and rehearsal time. I never saw the sense of those lessons where we had to be a cat scenting danger or a train. I mean, what was the point? When would we ever get jobs in a theatre playing a cat or a steam engine? The legitimate theatre, that is.’