“Anne-Marie,” I said, “what are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow morning.”
“I didn’t have time to do the floor last time,” she said briefly, not lifting her eyes from her work. Her voice was quite steady.
“Well,” I said, “now that you’re here, come and have a cup of tea with me in the kitchen when you’re through.”
“Thank you, madame.”
We both saw Robert making his slightly unsteady way, a few minutes later, past my chalet and up to the road leading to the village, but neither of us remarked on it. Anne-Marie, with chilling self-possession, made a good job of the floor, accepted a cup of tea and a cake, and went back to her own empty house. I longed to comfort her, but she was playing it her own way, and I had to respect her self-imposed privacy. I just wondered how much longer she would be able to stand it. The most distressing thing was to see how, in less than a year, all the youth and joy had been drained out of her. Even toward me she had grown cold and hard, and old before her time.
The only redeeming feature of that wretched spring was a short surprise visit by Sylvie to Panoralpes. Pierre was once more away at a conference, she told me, and Paris had become intolerably boring.
Indeed, Sylvie herself seemed depressed and in need of company, and I had to use considerable tact to continue my self-discipline of regular working hours. In the end, however, I think I did make her understand that without routine an artist cannot work, and she settled for my company before two and after five. I did not mention the scandal of Robert Drivaz and Giselle Arnay, and Sylvie certainly seemed unaware of it, for I heard her gently teasing Anne-Marie about her handsome husband. Poor Anne-Marie mumbled something and fled, but Sylvie did not appear to notice anything strange.
A few days after Sylvie had left, the village was swept by a new sensation. Robert Drivaz left home and went to Paris. Or said he did. After a particularly acrimonious wrangle with Anne-Marie, young Drivaz lurched into the Café de la Source one Wednesday evening and announced loudly and tipsily that he had had enough of this one-horse village and his common little slut of a wife—his very words, as reported by Henri, the ski instructor. He had friends in Paris. Friends in high society. Rich friends. He had an open invitation to Giselle Arnay’s house. He didn’t intend to stay in Montarraz to be insulted, when he could be living it up in Paris, with people who appreciated him. And much more.
The other lads in the bar—once again, Henri was my informant—took all this with a pinch of salt, teased Robert a bit, and expected that he would go home and sleep it off. Mme. Bertrand took a less lenient view. She told Robert point-blank that she would not have loudmouthed drunkards in her bar, and ordered him out.
“Go home to your poor wife, you miserable sot!” she yelled at him, while the other young men laughed awkwardly and tried to pass it off as a joke.
Robert went—but not home. The local bus driver—a grizzled and intrepid man—confirmed the next day that Robert had taken the last bus down into the valley that night, the half-past nine which connects with the ten-thirty-five train to Lausanne. He had left the bus at the railway station, and was last seen walking onto the platform. Later, the widow Drivaz and Anne-Marie both—but separately—made inquiries at the station. The ticket clerk did not know Robert personally, but confirmed that a young man answering his description had bought a single ticket right through to Paris that Wednesday night, after being assured that there was a connection with the Lausanne-Paris night train. He had paid in cash from a full wallet.
Anne-Marie came to me, white-faced, in the morning, and told me that Robert had not come home; together we traced his movements of the previous evening, from the café to the bus, from the bus to the train. All that Anne-Marie said was, “I am glad there was not an accident.” Robert sent no word, and after a week or so the whole village assumed that he had gone for good.
As far as I was concerned, the next move came in the form of a visit from M. Bienne. Somehow, I seemed to have slipped into the role of foster mother to Anne-Marie—and of course I had been instrumental in getting her the job of concierge in the first place. M. Bienne was not an unkindly man, but he was in an awkward situation. So, as I said, he came to me.
“It’s not that I want to turn the poor girl out, Mme. Weston,” he said earnestly, sipping a glass of local wine in my tiny sitting room. “And she does the job well, I grant you. No complaints—all the tenants are full of praise. But, as I told you originally, this is a situation for a young couple. We must have a man to shovel the snow and cope with the boilers and so on. I’m not a monster, madame,” he added, almost pleadingly, “but people will call me one if I dismiss Anne-Marie. And yet, she simply cannot do the job alone. What am I to do?”
Assuming a briskness which I was far from feeling, I said, “Now, look here, M. Bienne. It’s March already; there won’t be any more big snowfalls.” I knew that this was not necessarily true, but Bienne was not a local man, and he nodded his assent. “Anne-Marie is perfectly capable of coping with the central heating and the cleaning on her own.” Another nod. “Well, then,” I went on, “give her a little longer. Personally, I am convinced that Robert will come back, and soon. He’ll be out of his depth in Paris, poor boy—he’s young and foolish, but he’s learning the hard way. Things like this happen in any young ménage ”—a preposterous statement, but kind M. Bienne nodded again—“so give them another month or so, please. I’ll help all I can. I promise you that Panoralpes will be managed as well as ever, and that Robert will be back.”
M. Bienne took my word for it. I had gained a reprieve for Anne-Marie, but I was desperately worried—especially when, contrary to my prediction, there was a heavy fall of new snow during the last week of March. Anne-Marie was hard-pressed to cope, even with my help, and I was far from being sure that Robert would ever come back.
But he did. On the last day of March, in a vile temper. He told nobody what had actually happened in the big city, but it was easy enough to guess. Giselle Arnay had undoubtedly invited her handsome ski instructor to visit her in Paris, anytime. Had Robert been more sophisticated, he might have recalled the apocryphal story of the Hollywood film star who was alleged to have displayed a suitably placed notice reading NOTHING I SAY IN BED CONSTITUTES A CONTRACT. Robert, however, had taken Giselle Arnay’s invitation at its face value, and had burned his fingers as a consequence. So he came home.
Unfortunately, it was not the return of the prodigal. Anne-Marie produced the equivalent of the fatted calf, and I did my best to make young Drivaz feel welcome. His mother wept over him, and most of the villagers, with instinctive kindness, received him warmly. But in order to achieve the happy ending, the parable requires a repentant prodigal, and this Robert Drivaz was not. He made it only too clear that he disliked Montarraz and everything about it, including his wife, that he would never have come back if he had had any other place to go, and that he would be off again as soon as possible. He even put up a blustering story about being about to come into money, and then he would go back to Paris, and everybody would see…
Meanwhile, he sat around—at home, or in the village bars—drinking and talking too loudly. M. Bienne came to see me again, even more distressed. This time he was threatening to find a new concierge, not because Robert was not there, but because he was. He was a useless layabout, said M. Bienne, and tenants were beginning to complain. The situation was explosive, and one evening in April it duly exploded.
At this stage, I shall do no more than set down the hard facts, as they happened. At five-forty P.M. on April 14, Anne-Marie Drivaz arrived at the local gendarmerie, hysterical and with blood on her clothes, screaming that her husband was dead. She had been driven to the police station by, of all people, Mario Agnelli—Giselle Arnay’s manservant.
The explanation of this curious fact was that Mario, who had arrived at the Chalet Perce-neige that very day with Giselle, had driven down to Panoralpes to deliver a note for Sylvie Claudet, who was expected at the weekend.
When he came out of the building, he said, he was met by Anne-Marie, who ran blindly out of her own chalet toward mine. She literally collided with Mario, and sobbed out her story to him. He at once took her to the police station in his car. I myself was quite unaware of all this, as I had finished work in my studio at five o’clock as usual, and was having a cup of tea in my kitchen at Les Sapins.
The police duly arrived at the Drivaz chalet, where they found Robert dead in the kitchen, stabbed with Anne-Marie’s large carving knife. A postmortem examination showed that he had been drinking heavily. Anne-Marie’s fingerprints were everywhere, including the knife handle—and there were no others, apart from Robert’s own. The story of the disintegrating marriage, of Robert’s affair with Giselle Arnay, of his flight to Paris and subsequent return, was well-known. It also transpired that Anne-Marie was four months pregnant. She was arrested and charged with the murder of her husband.
Had she admitted her guilt, pleading provocation and self-defense, the likelihood is that she would have got off without punishment. As it was, however, she stuck fiercely to the story that she was completely innocent. She had received a telephone call, she said, just after three-thirty from Madame Claudet in Paris, asking her to go over and clean up the apartment immediately. Sylvie denied making any such call, and Anne-Marie agreed that she had not spoken to Madame Claudet herself, but to a woman whose voice she did not know, who claimed to be Sylvie’s maid.
Anne-Marie said that she had gone over to the apartment at about four o’clock, and I was able to confirm this, as I was working in the studio with the doors open, and had seen her go past toward Panoralpes. She had remained there, she swore it, until nearly half-past five. Then, satisfied that the apartment was clean, she had returned home—and found her husband lying dead. Horrified, she had panicked—she admitted picking up the bloodstained knife—and had rushed out in search of me, only to run full tilt into Mario’s arms. Someone, she maintained, must have gone into the chalet and killed Robert while she was in the Claudets’ apartment. If Mme. Claudet or her maid had not made the call, then it must have been designed deliberately to get her, Anne-Marie, out of the way.
Unfortunately for poor Anne-Marie, her account was discredited by that of an independent witness—myself. Of course, when the police came to ask me what I knew of the affair, I had no idea of the story which Anne-Marie had told, nor of how damning my evidence would be. I simply told them the truth.
This was that I had been working in my studio, as always, from half-past two until five. The big doors had been open, as it was a dull afternoon and I wanted to get the maximum of light; this gave me a clear view of the path which led from the Drivaz chalet, past Les Sapins, and down to Panoralpes, and anyone taking that path had to pass within a few feet of me.
I had seen Robert Drivaz returning home, somewhat unsteadily, at about three o’clock. An hour later Anne-Marie had gone past in the other direction, toward Panoralpes. So far, so good—I confirmed her story: the trouble was the next part. Because, in all innocence, I told the gendarmes that I had also noticed Anne-Marie returning from Panoralpes to her own house—not, as she claimed, at about half-past five, but shortly before five o’clock, just as I was packing things up in my studio. After that, I had gone back to Les Sapins to make tea. The point was that my evidence made it quite clear that Anne-Marie—far from rushing straight out of the chalet on discovering her husband’s body—had in fact been indoors for half an hour before she came running out in hysterics.
The result of the trial was a foregone conclusion. Defense counsel tried to suggest that an intruder might have approached the chalet from some direction other than along the path, but the prosecution quickly disposed of that theory. The late snowfall that I mentioned—which was, incidentally, the reason why people like the Verons and Claudets were returning to Montarraz for some late skiing—had laid a carpet of unbroken whiteness all around the little chalet. The police had, of course, checked immediately for footprints in the new snow, and had found none. Unless the hypothetical murderer had dropped in by parachute and departed in the same way… Miserably, I had to confirm that, even though I was busy working, nobody could have passed my door without my seeing them. Anne-Marie was found guilty.
It was not as terrible as it might have been, I suppose. The judge was a sympathetic man, and the general climate of opinion was one of pity for the poor girl. She was given a sentence of three years’ imprisonment, suspended on condition that she return to the good Sisters in the convent, where—after the birth of her child—she was to remain for at least three years, doing domestic work. This she agreed to do.
Before the trial, Anne-Marie had been held in custody. I had done all I could to get in touch with her and to help her. Under Swiss law, however, a suspect can be held incommunicado until the police have prepared their case, and I was not allowed to visit her. Once it was all over, I again tried to make contact with her at the convent—and this time I was roundly snubbed. Not surprising, I suppose, considering that it was my evidence which had convicted her.
A sweet-faced but iron-firm Sister informed me that Anne-Marie did not wish to see me. After what had happened, the girl very naturally wished to have nothing more to do with Montarraz or its inhabitants. The baby was to be adopted by its grandmother, the widow Drivaz, and Anne-Marie intended eventually to take her vows and enter the convent. The matter was closed.
M. Bienne found another young couple to fill the job of concierges—a gay, hard-working pair of Italians who seemed to have no qualms about living in the house where a man had been killed. Gradually, the ripples of sensation and scandal died down. Montarraz became engrossed in preparations for the summer season. Everything returned to normal; and so, in a way, did I. Except that I smashed the clay model of the baby’s head which had made Anne-Marie cry. And I did not—could not—forget.
CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER THE TRAGEDY of Robert and Anne-Marie, my first instinct was to pack up and leave Montarraz forever. I had no special links with the place, and my one excursion into involvement with village life had ended in appalling disaster. I knew that, in one way, it was cowardice to run away, but I felt too old to start making courageous gestures, and anyway, I could not imagine that anybody in Montarraz would care a rap whether I stayed or went.
But it seemed that I was wrong. Before my resolve to leave had had time to harden into action, I had become aware of a new and different attitude toward me among the villagers. Most of them, with the natural exception of the widow Drivaz, pitied Anne-Marie, although they accepted her guilt without question. The trial was, of course, a cause célèbre in the village, and the public benches in the courtroom had been packed with Drivazes, Bertrands, Simonets, and other Montarraz citizens. I suppose the word had got around that I was deeply distressed by the part which I had unwittingly played in the drama, and the village felt sorry for me. Also, in some strange way, it perhaps made me part of the place, one of them. I don’t know. Anyhow, the result was that everybody became amazingly and touchingly friendly.
Mlle. Simonet sent her nephew Lucien around with the gift of a specially baked cake, because she had heard that it was my birthday (it wasn’t); M. Bertrand at the Café de la Source insisted that I sample a bottle of his best wine with my meal, took a glass of it with me at my table, and did not put it on the bill; even M. Bienne came to visit me to tell me about the new Italian concierge. He brought with him a bunch of grapes which he said had been sent to him by a friend in Geneva, and as he was not fond of fruit, he hoped I would accept them. It was only by chance that I had noticed him buying them that morning in Montarraz’s most expensive greengrocery. I was very touched, and my decision to leave began to waver.
It finally crumbled altogether when Sylvie Claudet arrived back at Panoralpes in June. She had appeared briefly at Anne-Marie’s trial, in order to deny having made or instigated any phone call from Paris; as soon as she had given her evidence, she had hurried off to the car which was to whisk her to Genev
a airport, as she and Pierre were due at an official function in Paris that evening. We had had no time to do more than exchange quick, sad smiles, and I had not seen her since.
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in late June, I remember, and I was working in my studio as usual when a shadow fell across the doorway. I looked up, and there was Sylvie silhouetted against the sunshine, her blond hair lit up in a bright halo, and her arms full of ridiculously extravagant flowers.
Like a small tornado, she swept me along with her to the Panoralpes apartment, insisted on opening a bottle of champagne—which seemed specially and deliciously wicked in midafternoon—and then curled herself up like a little cat on the huge brocaded sofa and announced that we must have a lovely long talk about everything.
“I have missed you so much, Jane,” she said. “In Paris there are people, people, people…but no real friends. Oh, I wish I could live here always, and talk to you and watch you work in your little studio… How is poor sweet Anne-Marie?” she added suddenly, with a typical swerve of subject. I told her all I knew.
Sylvie nodded gravely. “One can understand how she feels,” she said. “Do you think if I went to see her…?”
“I wouldn’t, on the whole,” I said. “The Sister was probably right. The girl’s been through a frightful time. She’s best left alone.”
Sylvie’s brow wrinkled, then cleared. “I know,” she said. “I’ll… When is the baby due?”
I did a quick mental calculation. “Around the beginning of September, I suppose.”
“Then I shall make a big gift for the baby—clothes, cradle, perambulator, everything, and send it to the convent. Anne-Marie need never know that it came from me.” Sylvie smiled delightedly at the idea.
“The trouble is,” I pointed out, “that Mme. Drivaz is going to adopt the child. I believe in such cases it’s usually considered better if the mother never even sees the child herself.”
Season of Snows and Sins Page 5