Season of Snows and Sins

by Patricia Moyes

  I was relieved to see, when the grille in the door shot open, that the same Sister was still on duty. Her eyes widened when she saw the basket, but whether with disapproval or mere surprise, I could not be sure.

  “I have brought this for Anne-Marie,” I said. “Would you give it to her for me?”

  “The order does not permit members to receive personal gifts,” the nun said. But she did open the door.

  “Anne-Marie isn’t a member of the order, Sister,” I said. “She’s not even a novice. Just a domestic help.”

  There was a silence. The nun stood staring at the basket. Suddenly she smiled. “The cow,” she said. She pushed it with her finger through the cellophane wrapping. “She has a funny face. One has to smile.”

  “I hope she will make Anne-Marie smile, too,” I said.

  The nun looked at me gravely. I had the impression that she had deliberately erased the smile from her face, but its softening effect lingered, transforming her. “I think it may be against the rules,” she said, “but I will give the girl your gift.”

  “You are very kind, Sister.”

  “No,” she corrected me, accurately, but without emphasis. “Not kind, madame. Our rules are poverty, chastity, and obedience.” As she turned to go, holding the basket as if it were some precious relic, she added, “I have spoken to the Mother Superior. You may visit Drivaz again if you wish.” Before I could say another word, she had gone, and the dark door had closed in my face.

  When I got back to Panoralpes, the apartment was deserted. I presumed that Henry was still out walking, and that Jane was working in the studio. There was no sign of Giselle Arnay’s car, so I imagined that she had had enough of posing for one day. I was in the kitchen, making myself a cup of tea, when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, and was surprised to be faced by Chantal—Sylvie’s young goddaughter.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hello.” She walked past me into the drawing room and lay down full-length on the sofa.

  “I’m afraid Jane isn’t here,” I said from the doorway.

  “I know.” Chantal sounded bored to the point of exhaustion.

  “I think she’s in the studio. Shall I go and…?”

  “Oh, don’t fuss. I’ve brought Giselle’s car. She’ll be over from the studio in a minute.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  I got no answer. Chantal had rolled over on the sofa so that her back was toward me, and fallen into what appeared to be a graceful attitude of sleep. I shrugged and went back to the kitchen.

  It was at the very moment that the kettle came to the boil with a high-pitched scream that the telephone began to ring. I quickly switched off the gas and came out into the hall, but by then the ringing had stopped. I was turning back to the kitchen, mentally castigating people who haven’t the patience to wait for two minutes for an answer before hanging up, when I heard Chantal’s voice, and realized that she must have answered the telephone in the drawing room. I could not follow the rapid flow of her French, but it was obvious that she was having an animated conversation. Oh, well, I thought, we’re both only visitors here. She has as much right to answer the phone as I have. I went back to the kitchen and finally succeeded in making my pot of tea.

  A minute or so later Chantal came into the kitchen. She looked excited—her eyes bright and a flush on her pale cheeks. She said, “That was Sylvie.”

  “Mme. Claudet? I thought she was on a yacht somewhere.”

  Chantal ignored my remark. “She’s coming here. She arrives tomorrow. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  It did not strike me as wonderful. My first thought was that Jane, Henry, and I would have to move out of the apartment and back to Les Sapins, and I said as much.

  “Oh, no.” Chantal perched on the edge of the kitchen table. “Can I have some tea?” She was completely transformed from the listless, half-asleep creature of a few minutes ago. “No, Sylvie said you mustn’t dream of moving out. She’ll come and stay at Perce-neige with us.”

  “Now, that’s just silly,” I protested. “This is her apartment.”

  “You don’t know Sylvie,” said Chantal. “She’s…well, she’s just the most fabulous person in the world. She’d do anything for anybody.”

  “Well,” I said, “all the same, I think we ought to tell Mme. Weston straight away. You should have called her, Chantal, and let her talk to Mme. Claudet herself. It’s a very awkward position.”

  “Oh, you are silly.” Chantal took a gulp of tea, and at once put her cup down. “Ugh. Horrid. Sylvie would rather come and stay with Giselle and me.” I noticed the rather curious omission of any mention of Michel Veron. “Sylvie just wants everybody to be happy.”

  “You’re very fond of her, aren’t you?” I said. Having started off by disliking Chantal, I found myself warming to the girl. Her enthusiasm was unexpectedly simple and disarming.

  “Oh, yes. Everybody loves Sylvie, because she is so good. She is good even to that little slut Anne-Marie. Do you know that she paid all the lawyers’ fees for her defense?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, she did, but nobody knows, because Sylvie didn’t want any thanks for it. And she’s planning all sorts of presents for the baby. Just imagine. After what Anne-Marie did.”

  “What did she do?”

  Chantal opened her eyes very wide. “Oh, you are silly. She killed Robert.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. The judge said so.”

  “Did Sylvie think she was guilty, when she arranged to pay for her defense?” I asked.

  Chantal hesitated. Then she said, “It wouldn’t make any difference with Sylvie. That’s what I mean about her. She’s always doing things for people. Like lending this apartment to poor Mme. Weston, and letting me drive her car and everything.”

  I was not sure that Jane would have appreciated the “poor Mme. Weston,” but youth is brutally candid. To change the subject, I said, “You enjoy driving, do you?”

  “Oh, yes. Very fast. In bare feet. Sylvie’s Alfa—you know Sylvie’s Alfa?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Everybody in Montarraz knows it. It’s white with bright red leather inside, and it’ll do a hundred and eighty.”

  “Good heavens. Miles per hour?”

  “No, silly. Kilometers.”

  I did a quick mental calculation, which worked out at over a hundred and ten. I said, smiling, “Well, if you drive at that speed, I hope you keep your shoes on.”

  “I nearly had a big accident outside Versailles,” she said with offhand satisfaction.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “A great big camion came out of a side turning, and my foot was wet and slipped on the brake. I did a big dérapage, and the car turned right around.”

  “That must have been frightening,” I said.

  She smiled faintly. “Oh, no. It was fun.” She paused. “I have had many such happenings. I just remember that one, because of the day it happened.”

  “The day it happened?”

  “Yes. Sylvie had to spend all day at some conference in Paris—ladies in hats, you know. So she said I could borrow the car all day. When I took it back in the evening, we were having a drink in the apartment when the police turned up, wanting to know if Sylvie had telephoned Anne-Marie about cleaning this apartment. Of course, Sylvie said she hadn’t. They were very mysterious about the whole thing, but Sylvie made them tell us. Pierre is very important, you see. So in the end they told us that Anne-Marie had stabbed Robert that very afternoon. Poor Sylvie. She was so upset.” Chantal smiled a little. “One of the gendarmes had the nicest brown eyes.”

  Before I could think of a suitable rejoinder to this, the front door opened, and there was a clatter of footsteps and voices. Jane and Giselle were back from the studio, and Henry was with them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JANE, NOT UNNATURALLY, was taken aback at the news of Mme. Claudet’s
imminent arrival, and at once began to protest that we would move back to Les Sapins sat once.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” said Chantal. She addressed all of us exactly as if we were her contemporaries, but with no apparent intention of being rude. “Sylvie would be bored to death here on her own.” The implication was clear that Jane, Henry, and I at Les Sapins did not constitute company. “She wants to be with me…and Giselle,” she added, as an afterthought.

  There was a little silence; then Giselle Arnay said, in her quaint, abrupt way, “Sylvie will stay at Perce-neige.” A simple, authoritative statement which nobody thought of challenging. “Come, Chantal, we go home.” She turned to Jane and said, “I shall sit for you from eleven to twelve tomorrow morning. You will all come to Perce-neige for a drink tomorrow evening, before dinner.”

  Jane, a little flustered, said, “Well, now, Giselle, I’m not sure if…”

  Giselle looked up solemnly at Henry, the little gamine again. “You will come, won’t you, Henri?”

  Jane looked hard at Henry, who shrugged his shoulders slightly. “Yes, Giselle,” she said, and I heard once more that unpleasantly fawning note in her voice. “How very sweet of you. We’ll come.”

  When Giselle and Chantal had gone, with a joyful roar of the Monteverdi, the three of us sat down to a quiet drink. I began to talk about my visit to Anne-Mane, but Jane seemed curiously uninterested. She was dreamy and withdrawn, as she had been at lunchtime, and I could only suppose that she was utterly absorbed in her new work. I always feel out of my depth with artists.

  I dropped the subject of Anne-Marie, and said, “How’s the statue going, Jane? Chipping away like mad?”

  She gave me the sort of hopeless look that creative people reserve for Philistines, and said, “Oh, I’ve done nothing today but preliminary sketches in charcoal and a very tentative study in soft clay. I won’t even be choosing the marble until the figurine is finished.”

  “I’d love to see the sketches,” I said. “May I?” Surely there could be no harm in that.

  Jane stood up. “No,” she said. “No, Emmy dear, I’d rather you didn’t. In fact, if you don’t mind, I’d sooner nobody came into the studio. Even when I’m not working. You do understand, don’t you?”

  I said I did, but frankly, I didn’t. I couldn’t make out the change that had come over Jane—but then, I told myself, I wasn’t used to living in the same house with an artist actually in the process of creation. As Jane withdrew to change out of her working overall, I made a mental vow to be sensible and to make allowances for her.

  When we were alone, Henry said, “Now—tell me about Anne-Marie.”

  I did so, in all the detail I could. Henry listened in silence, and then said, “What do you think, Emmy? Did that girl kill her husband?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. Really, I don’t. She’s had her head stuffed so full of woolly ideas about guilt—you know, the wish is as bad as the deed, and all that—that I don’t know whether you can rely on what she says any more. It’s even possible that by now she believes herself to be guilty—but I don’t.” I was surprised myself at the vehemence of my last words. Quite suddenly I was certain that Anne-Marie was innocent.

  Henry smiled. “And they talk about my ‘nose,’ ” he said, referring to his flair for intuitive detection that had acquired this nickname at Scotland Yard. “You mean, you’ve no evidence except the impression the girl made on you.”

  “If she had killed him, she’d have admitted it before now—if only to ease her conscience. What has she got to lose? She’s been battered and brainwashed, but she still knows the difference between the thought and the deed. She can’t have killed him, Henry.”

  “In that case,” Henry said quite lightly, “something had better be done about it. And we had better do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s already been convicted, so the only way we can clear her is to demonstrate who did kill Robert Drivaz,” said Henry.

  “Look,” I said, “be sensible. We’re here for only another week, and the trail is cold. In another couple of years, Anne-Marie will be free from the convent—we might even get her out sooner, with Sylvie’s help, by pulling strings. Then she can come over to England…”

  Henry said, “Aren’t you forgetting the baby?” I said nothing. He went on, “Anne-Marie will never be free, and neither will the wretched child. Can’t you imagine the tales old Mother Drivaz will tell him—about his wicked mother, who murdered his father? She says she wants to adopt the baby, and it all sounds very suitable to the court officials—but I wonder just what widow Drivaz wants that baby for?”

  I shivered. “It’s a horrible thought.”

  “I agree,” said Henry. He sounded cheerful. I recognized the signs. He was buckling down to a job. “So we’d better get going.”

  “Down to Charonne tomorrow to see Anne-Marie again?” I suggested.

  “To Charonne,” said Henry, “but not, I think, to see Anne-Marie. Much as I’d like to, I don’t think she can help us at the moment. What I’m interested in is the local paper.”

  The next morning Jane was only too pleased to let us have the car—she was entirely engrossed with her sitting. By ten o’clock we were away, winding down the precipitous road to the valley. We soon found the offices of the Gazette de Charonne, and a smiling secretary told us we could have the run of the morgue, where back numbers of the paper were stored. Of course, she said, the Drivaz trial had been very fully reported. It had been of great local interest.

  The reporters had certainly given front-page treatment to the affair. There were pages of newsprint and several photographs each day during the hearings. A wedding picture of Robert and Anne-Marie—the latter smiling up adoringly at her handsome bridegroom; Jane, eyes downcast, hurrying out of the courtroom; Sylvie Claudet, shielding her face with a newspaper against the cameras as she was ushered into a chauffeur-driven limousine; incongruously cheerful publicity photographs of Giselle Arnay and Michel Veron, who—although not called to give evidence—were in a way the stars of the show; an almost unrecognizable Mario, scowling at the camera; an only too cooperative Mme. Drivaz weeping at it ( Bereaved mother’s unbearable ordeal, see Page 8 ); defense and prosecution lawyers snapped on their busy errands, white jabots fluttering, heads together in conference as they walked; the Drivaz’s chalet, taken from the outside, with a large white arrow indicating the “Kitchen of Death”; and so forth.

  Sitting on hard chairs in the newspaper’s archive room, with the yellowing pages spread out on an ink-stained table, Henry and I waded through the complete reportage of Anne-Marie’s trial. I won’t attempt to put you through the same grueling task, but here are a few verbatim extracts which proved later to have some significance.

  Maître Dubois (for the prosecution): At what time, Madame Weston, did you see the accused returning to her own house from Panoralpes?

  Mme. Weston: Shortly before five o’clock.

  Accused: That’s not true!

  The Judge: Silence in the court! Proceed, Maître Dubois.

  Maître Dubois: Thank you, my Lord. Mme. Weston, how can you be sure of the time?

  Mme. Weston: Because I was just packing up my work in the studio. I always work until five o’clock, you see.

  Maître Dubois: But you said, madame, that you saw the accused before five o’clock.

  Mme. Weston: Yes. I packed up a little early that evening, because it had become too dark to see properly. It had started to rain.

  Accused: That’s not true!

  The Judge: If the accused does not hold her tongue, I shall have her removed from the court. Proceed, Maître Dubois.

  Sylvie Claudet, as the wife of an influential French politician, had been treated with kid gloves. Her evidence had been brief in the extreme and was reported in full.

  Maître Dubois: Just a few brief questions, Mme. Claudet—we shall not have to trouble you for long.

  Mme. Claudet: Thank you.

  Maître Dubois
: Thank you, madame. Now, on April 14 last, did you make a telephone call from Paris to Montarraz?

  Mme. Claudet: I did not.

  Maître Dubois: Did you instruct any other person to make such a call on your behalf?

  Mme. Claudet: No, I did not.

  Maître Dubois: Did you intend to visit your apartment at Montarraz in the near future?

  Mme. Claudet: Yes. The following weekend.

  Maître Dubois: Did you, in fact, visit it?

  Mme. Claudet: No. When I heard what had happened…

  Maître Dubois: Quite, madame. Very understandable. Now, did you give any instructions that the apartment should be cleaned before your arrival?

  Mme. Claudet: No.

  Maître Dubois: Thank you, Mme. Claudet. That is all.

  Maître Ronsard (for the defense): Mme. Claudet, I fear I must detain you for a few questions.

  Mme. Claudet: Of course, Maître.

  Maître Ronsard: You are acquainted with the accused, are you not?

  Mme. Claudet: Of course. She is the concierge at Panoralpes.

  Maître Ronsard: Are you in the habit of employing her to clean your apartment?

  Mme. Claudet: When I am there, yes.

  Maître Ronsard: Have you, in the past, telephoned from Paris to ask Mme. Drivaz to prepare the apartment for your arrival?

  Mme. Claudet: Yes.

  Maître Ronsard: But you did not do so on this occasion?

  Mme. Claudet: I did not.

  Maître Ronsard: And you did not instruct your maid to telephone?

  Mme. Claudet: I have already said I did not.

  Maître Ronsard: Nevertheless, someone might have telephoned the accused, impersonating your maid?

  Mme. Claudet: I—

  Maître Dubois: I object! That is not a proper question!

  The Judge: Objection upheld. Mme. Claudet cannot be expected to conjecture on such a matter.

  Maître Ronsard: My Lord, I am merely trying to establish—

  The Judge: You have made your point, I think, Maître. Pray proceed.

  Maître Ronsard: Mme. Claudet, will you tell the court where, in fact, you were on the afternoon of April 14?