Season of Snows and Sins

by Patricia Moyes

  I turned my head quickly to look at Giselle, who had stepped back to usher us out onto the green lawn. She looked as insubstantial as a ghost, framed in the dark doorway; she also looked apprehensive. At that moment, Mario appeared behind her, and put a hand on her shoulder. His face was completely expressionless.

  The only person who appeared utterly relaxed was Chantal. She was wearing a tiny white bikini, and her slender body was deeply tanned, so that her fair hair looked almost white against the bronze of her forehead. She was lying on her back on the grass beside the pool. Her eyes were closed, and her arms flung wide on each side of her. She looked as innocent and as vulnerable as a child asleep, and her only reaction when Giselle announced our arrival was to stir slightly, and put one brown arm across her eyes, as if to protect them from too bright a light.

  Pierre Claudet, predictably, was the first person to overcome the instant of shock and displeasure which our arrival had obviously caused. He stood up, held out his hand, and said, “Superintendent Tibbett! What an unexpected pleasure. You have concluded your investigations in Paris, then?”

  Shaking the outstretched hand, Henry smiled and said, “Not exactly. I’d say, rather, that my inquiries had led me back to Montarraz.”

  “What do you mean, your inquiries?” Sylvie sounded nervous.

  Claudet said, “The superintendent came to see me in Paris yesterday, my dear. He is on the track of an international blackmailer, if I understood him aright. I am afraid I was not able to help him. At any rate,” he added, smiling at Henry, “I presume that your visit here is purely social. May I offer you some of Giselle’s excellent champagne?”

  I glanced at Henry. He, too, was smiling. “Thank you. We’d love some.” Mario came forward, expert and unobtrusive, and poured us a glass each. You would never have taken him for more than a well-trained servant.

  Henry took his glass and sat down on the grass beside the pool. Taking my cue from him, I did the same. He raised his glass and said, “Your good health, Chantal.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Chantal, without opening her eyes. She rolled over onto her face.

  Giselle said, “And now you chase this international blackmailer in Montarraz? That is exciting.”

  Henry ignored her. He said to Sylvie, “We met a friend of yours in Paris, Sylvie. Gaby Labelle. She was telling us about the old days, when you were still working, and before she was famous. It’s funny how people’s lives change, isn’t it?”

  Sylvie said shortly, “I haven’t seen Gaby in years. As a matter of fact, I never knew her very well.”

  “I’d no idea you knew her at all.” Pierre Claudet was looking at his wife in surprise. “I’m a great admirer of hers. You must invite her to dinner when we get back to Paris. I must say, you’ve kept very quiet about knowing her.”

  “Perhaps because I was afraid you might admire her even more at close quarters, chéri.” Sylvie was smiling and teasing. She leaned over and kissed Pierre’s cheek.

  Michel Veron strummed a chord on his guitar, and said, “Is Labelle still around? I’d have thought she was past it by now.”

  “Thank you very much, Michel!” Sylvie was mock-indignant. “She’s not so very much older than I am.”

  “She’s very much still around,” said Henry. “She’s currently packing in the customers at Le Fromage Sauvage. Twice-nightly cabaret.”

  Michel Veron stopped playing, laying his fingers on the guitar strings to kill the reverberating sound. He looked hard at Henry. “You went to Le Fromage Sauvage?”

  “We did.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “What reason?”

  “I was interested,” Henry said, “to hear about your appearance there. M. Renoir was most helpful.”

  Michel Veron exchanged a quick glance with Mario, who moved quietly to a position just behind Henry, where he lit a cigarette and lounged against the wall of the house.

  Sylvie said, “You had a busy time in Paris, Henry. What else did you do?”

  “Not very much.” Henry seemed quite unaware of Mario’s presence. “I had a long talk with an old friend of mine who’s a journalist—that was most interesting. And of course, M. Claudet was kind enough to spare me some time, as he has told you.”

  “What did you really go to see Pierre about?” Sylvie asked, a little too elaborately casual. “I really don’t believe in your international blackmailer.”

  Before Henry could reply, Claudet said hastily, “Oh, just an old scandal, my dear. Something about a fraudulent hat shop which was closed by the police. Nothing you would ever have heard about.”

  There was an electric silence. It was broken by Chantal, who, without opening her eyes, said, “Oh, you are silly.”

  “Who is silly?” Sylvie’s voice was edged with anxiety.

  “All of you. Henry wasn’t doing any of the things he says he was. He was digging the dirt about the Drivaz case.” And she settled herself more comfortably on the grass.

  Claudet said grimly, “A strange thing happened after you had been to see me yesterday, Superintendent.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. A foreign woman telephoned my apartment, using my private number. She said she was a journalist from England, writing an article on the Drivaz case. She was trying to get hold of Sylvie’s maid—the girl who was alleged to have made that nonexistent telephone call to the Drivaz girl.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “That was me.”

  They all looked at me then, and Claudet said, “If that is true, Mrs. Tibbett, I must say that it hardly reflects to your credit.”

  Giselle let out a ripple of laughter. “Oh, Pierre, don’t be so pompous. You’re not in the Chamber of Deputies now.” To Henry she said, “So Chantal’s right, is she? You’re after a murderer, not a blackmailer.”

  “You might say—both,” said Henry.

  “And have you caught him?”

  “No.”

  “But you know who it is?” Giselle’s question hung in the air, emitting sparks.

  Henry said easily, “Oh, yes. I know.” He put down his glass, and glanced at his watch. “Well, it’s been fun seeing you all, but I’m afraid we must go. Jane is expecting us for lunch, and I promised we wouldn’t be late.”

  “No. You are not going.” It was Veron who spoke. He stood up and laid down his guitar on the bench.

  “I’m afraid we must.”

  “I mean—” Michel Veron looked embarrassed. “I mean, you can’t just walk off and leave us on tenterhooks. You must tell us who the murderer is.”

  All eyes were on Henry now, and the tension was almost tangible. Mario took a step forward, so that he was standing immediately behind Henry, full of menace. Nobody even noticed when I murmured, “Excuse me,” and slipped away into the house.

  The telephone was in the hall. I picked it up and dialed Jane’s number. As I listened to the ringing tone, I imagined the bell shrilling in the tiny sitting room at Les Sapins, and Jane coming out of the kitchen to answer it. Or perhaps she was in the studio—where she had had an extension bell fitted. It shouldn’t take her more than a minute to get back to the chalet. But the telephone rang on unanswered, and suddenly I saw Mario coming in from the garden.

  Ignoring the ringing tone, I said into the receiver, “Yes, at Perce-neige…oh, about five minutes…no, don’t bother, we have a car…unless we don’t turn up, of course…yes, I’ll tell Henry. See you soon. Good-bye, Jane.” I rang off, and turned to face Mario.

  He was smiling slightly, and gave me a curious little bow, as if of acknowledgment and admiration. I stuck my chin in the air and walked past him and out into the garden, looking—I hope—braver than I felt.

  Henry was on his feet now, ringed by the others. He smiled at me and said, “Ah, there you are, darling. Did you ring Jane?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “I told her we were here, and to expect us in five minutes.”

  “Good,” said Henry. He surveyed the circle of tense f
aces. “Jane is going to Charonne this afternoon, so Emmy and I will have Les Sapins to ourselves. Personally, I’m hoping to get some rest—I never can sleep on trains.”

  Mario had come out of the house again, and I saw him nod, barely perceptibly, to Michel Veron. I fervently hoped that this meant that the iron gate was now unlocked again.

  Henry added, “Meanwhile, I’m sorry I can’t satisfy your natural curiosity—but I’m sure you’ll realize that it would be quite unethical. You’ll all know soon, I promise you.”

  He took my arm, and we walked together into the house. I felt like a traveler in a jungle, who knows that he is being stalked by a man-eating tiger, and that to show fear would be fatal. The circle of eyes seemed to burn holes in my back. But nothing happened. The gate was open, and we made our way to the little blue car. However, it was not until we were in it, and halfway down the hill to Les Sapins, before either of us spoke. Then Henry let out a big sigh of relief and said, “Well done, darling. You were splendid. What did Jane say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She wasn’t there. There was no reply. Then Mario came out, and I had to pretend to talk to her.”

  “In that case,” said Henry, “even better done. I confess, I had some nasty moments.”

  “But, Henry,” I said, “you surely can’t mean that all those people—our friends—are in some sort of conspiracy against us?”

  “For a start,” said Henry, “I wouldn’t describe them as our friends. To go on with, they are all famous people—which makes them both powerful and vulnerable, and that’s a dangerous combination. If a particularly sordid murder could be proved against one of them, the others would be implicated in some measure. And if I’m not mistaken, all of them have plenty to hide. It only takes one crack in the façade, the press gets its chisel in—and the whole lot crumbles. And behind it—who knows? Drugs, irregular sex of one sort and another, tax evasion, bribery—all sorts of nasty things that people in the public eye prefer to keep locked in the woodshed. They made a great mistake, that little lot, when they let people like us get a foot into the door of their tight little world—and now they know it. They’re closing their ranks against us.”

  I shivered. “It’s terribly hard to believe.”

  “That’s why there had to be two of us,” Henry went on. “If I had been alone, and if they thought I was the only person with evidence to clear Anne-Marie—well, I think they might have preferred the risk of an unfortunate accident happening to me on their premises to a big scandal blowing up in their faces.”

  I found myself glancing nervously over my shoulder, half-expecting to see the Monteverdi, with Mario at the wheel, chasing us, crowding us, edging us off the narrow mountain road and over the precipice. I said, “What will they do now?”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Henry. “My hope is that they will try persuasion before they resort to violence. I think we can expect some visitors this afternoon.”

  Jane was in the studio when we arrived at Les Sapins, having just returned from Charonne with her block of marble. She had chosen a dark color—almost black, but with threads of red running through it, like trickles of blood. The clay figurine from which she would work was standing on a board in the studio—life size, pale gray, and still, a severed head of Giselle. I tried to imagine the smooth lines and contours of it translated into dark, shiny marble—and decided that the result would be beautiful, but sinister, too. I wondered what Giselle herself would think of it.

  Jane greeted us with a big smile of relief. “Oh, I am glad to see you both. And I love unexpected visitors…”

  Henry said, “You’re always so hospitable, Jane.” For a moment I thought I caught a strange look passing between them, but I may have been mistaken.

  Then Jane said, “Let’s go over to the house and have a drink.”

  Sipping Fendant in the tiny living room, Henry said, “You understood my note, didn’t you, Jane?”

  “Well, it had me a bit worried—about the police and—”

  “Jane,” said Henry quietly, “please. You know very well what I meant. You would have told the police?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Of course you would. And what’s more, you must promise me that if anything should happen to me in the next few days, you’ll go down to Charonne and tell them.”

  “But, Henry, what could happen to you?

  “I could have a motor smash,” said Henry. “I could be on a plane that crashed. I could climb a mountain without proper equipment and fall over a precipice. You’d be surprised at the things that could happen to me.”

  He and Jane looked at each other for a long moment, and again I had the feeling that they shared a secret. Then Jane said, “All right. I promise.”

  “Good.” Henry was cheerful again. “Well, what’s for lunch?”

  “Lunch?”

  “Didn’t I mention that we were inviting ourselves?”

  “But—” Jane looked nonplussed. “I had a snack in the Source on the way up. There’s nothing to eat in the house!”

  In the end, a search of the kitchen produced some bread, butter, and cheese, and a tin of sardines, from which we made ourselves a frugal meal. I was glad that we had had a good breakfast in Geneva. We were just finishing the last crumbs, and Henry was saying, “Now, Jane…about this afternoon…” when the telephone rang.

  Jane looked inquiringly at Henry, who motioned her to answer it. She went into the hall.

  “Hello…yes, this is Mme. Weston speaking…who? Oh, yes, Sister…yes, of course…at once…about twenty minutes, I should think…give her my love…tell her not to worry…yes, as quickly as I can…” She rang off and came back into the kitchen.

  I said, “Anne-Marie?”

  “Yes. It was the Sister from the convent. The baby is on its way, and the doctor says Anne-Marie should go into the hospital at once. I’m going down to collect her and take her in my car.”

  “But—”

  “I arranged it a couple of days ago.” Jane was struggling into her coat. “After you’d seen Anne-Marie. I couldn’t bear the thought of her going into the hospital alone. The Sister agreed.”

  “And Anne-Marie? I thought…”

  “Oh, I know she wouldn’t see me before, but your visit evidently made a big impression on her, Emmy. She actually sent a message thanking me and saying she’d be pleased. Must go now. Good luck.” And Jane had gone, like an excited whirlwind. All her nervousness seemed to have dropped away from her. Clearly, as far as Jane was concerned, the dead could bury their own dead. Her preoccupation was with the new life which was on its way. Henry and I washed up our plates and glasses, and sat down to wait.

  Our first visitor arrived soon after three o’clock. Looking from the sitting-room window down into the forecourt of Panoralpes, I saw the small beige Mini being neatly parked between two painted white lines, even though the car park was empty. Then the door opened, and the lank figure of Michel Veron climbed out. He was wearing the huge dark glasses which had appeared in his wedding photographs, and between them and the long hair falling over his eyes, it was impossible to judge the expression on his face as he climbed up the path to the chalet.

  I opened the door in response to his knock. He paid no more attention to me than if I had been a hired maid, but walked straight in through the open door of the living room, with that famous slouch which sets the fans yelling before he even opens his mouth or touches his guitar. I followed him into the room. Before Henry had time to speak, Veron said, “Good afternoon, Superintendent. I imagine you are expecting visitors.”

  “It did cross my mind,” said Henry.

  Michel Veron sat down at the table. “I’ve come to see you,” he said, “because I’m the one person you can’t possibly accuse of this murder.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. For a start, if you visited Le Fromage Sauvage and spoke to Renoir, you’ll know without any doubt that I was in Paris for
the whole of that day.”

  “For extra rehearsal,” said Henry. “Was that really necessary?”

  “Of course. I put a new number into the act.”

  “Very well. You have an alibi. Go on.”

  “Secondly, as even my wife has remarked, I am far too tall to have impersonated Anne-Marie.”

  “Don’t you agree,” said Henry, “that if a man employs an agent to kill another man, he is just as guilty as the actual killer?”

  “Of course. And I know what you are driving at. But you are wrong. You see, I had no motive for killing Robert Drivaz.”

  Henry’s eyebrows went up. “No motive? My dear Mr. Veron, Drivaz and your wife—”

  Michel Veron made an impatient movement. “I’m afraid you have not grasped the situation, Superintendent. My marriage to Giselle is, you might say, one of convenience to both of us. I don’t think I need to say more. This is strictly off the record, of course.”

  “I could have a hidden tape recorder,” Henry said. I saw he could not repress a slight smile.

  Veron smiled back. “I think not. You would never be so… ungentlemanly. No, as a matter of fact, I liked Drivaz. He kept Giselle amused, and he was a pleasant character.”

  “Until your wife dropped him, and snubbed him in Paris. He could then have turned into a blackmailer,” Henry pointed out.

  “A ski instructor?” Veron seemed to find this very funny. “Oh, he might try to sell a story to the gutter press, but nobody would take it seriously, and there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

  “All right,” said Henry. “You’ve made out your case for not killing Drivaz, or causing him to be killed. Why are you here?”

  “Because,” said Veron, “it would be more agreeable for me and for other people if the case against Anne-Marie was not upset. After all, she got off very lightly. When the three years are up, she will be well provided for. Giselle and I are prepared to set up a substantial fund for her and for the baby. She will be financially secure, and that is all that matters for people of that sort. Then, I realize that your investigations must have left you considerably out of pocket.” I thought he might have had the grace to sound a little embarrassed, but he did not. Presumably, he classed Henry with Anne-Marie as the sort of person to whom financial considerations are paramount.