“But that woman must know what this Morillon is up to,” Véronique protested. “Why isn’t she just as guilty as he is?”
“Ah, for that you’d have to see her,” Louis said maliciously. “Next to her, even Eliane looks like nothing.”
“Oh God!” gasped Véronique, startling us. “What with everything that happened, I forgot all about it. I had lunch with Eliane and Léon and they said they’d drop in here after the movies tonight.”
Louis glared at her. “Couldn’t you drop a hint that Reno would be here?”
“I did. That’s why I think Eliane was so anxious to visit. She and Léon were engaged yesterday. She’s wearing his ring, and I guess she wants to show it off to Reno.”
“Let her show it off,” I said. “The real question is what to do about the mess I’ve gotten us all into.”
“What can we do?” Louis demanded. “Go to the police and get hit by a car the next day? Let’s face it. We know too much and don’t dare open our mouths about it.”
“Which puts us in the same boat as Anne de Villemont,” I said. “The fact is that Morillon killed Sidney Scott and she knows it. She might have been right there when it happened.”
“True.” Louis fell into a black silence, nervously working his hand back and forth across his mouth. “Wait a second,” he whispered. “Now it comes clear. Now I begin to see the whole thing. Madame knows a little more than we think. She knows about someone else’s death too.”
“Whose?” I said. “Everyone else is accounted for.”
“Not everyone, pal. Not Colonel Henri de Villemont, who had a bomb tossed into his car during the Algerian trouble. Tell me something. Who do you think did that job on him?”
“Some bomb-happy Moslem. Don’t forget there were a lot of bombs being tossed around Algeria those days.”
“There were. The French OAS terrorists were throwing them at the sidis, and the sidis were throwing them back, and what with those tin-pot Napoleons in the Foreign Legion figuring how to take over all France, it was a wild time, wasn’t it?”
“We all know it was.”
“All right,” said Louis. “And during such a wild time it’s easy to throw a bomb for something besides patriotic reasons. Remember that once the OAS took over, there were no more rules to worry about. Everything went.”
“What about it?” Véronique said in bewilderment “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“I am getting at a spicy little situation which involves an army officer, his beautiful American wife, and his best friend. The scene is North Africa, so naturally the wife is bored to death. To relieve the boredom she has an affair with the best friend, who, although a man of science, is also a handsome, virile animal. But the affair becomes serious. A few stolen moments of bliss are not enough. Finally, the wife presents her case to the husband, sheds tears, asks for a divorce.” Louis cocked his head at me. “Does this scenario make sense so far?”
“What about Paul?” I said. “You know how she feels about him.”
“I do. That’s why I’m sure she not only asked for a divorce, but also asked to be given the child. And what do you think his papa had to say to that?”
“A loud no, right along with his whole family.”
Louis nodded sagely. “A very loud no. So Madame is caught in a terrible dilemma. Her solution? Well, to put it kindly, a woman in love sometimes thinks merely being in love is excuse enough for any madness. Even to joining with her lover in killing the nuisance of a husband who stands in their way.”
I said, “I can’t believe she was ever Morillon’s partner in any murder.”
“Maybe not a willing partner. But suppose she let Morillon get the idea she wouldn’t mind seeing her husband dead? What if he took that at face value? Like it or not, she would be his partner afterward, and he’d make sure she knew that.”
It was like watching the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle being put together and a picture of hell emerging.
“Not that Madame and her doctor would be so crude as to handle the business themselves,” Louis said relentlessly. “But with her kind of bank account, what could be easier than hiring the right man for the job? Someone hand-picked. One of those OAS baby-butchers.
“But once the job is done, what happens? Madame goes out of her mind with guilt and fear; she now detests her dangerous lover. But there’s no escape from him. She is handcuffed to him by their partnership in murder. And that murder breeds others. Madame gets herself drunk one night and lets Sidney Scott in on her secret, so he’s the next victim. Max Marchat somehow learns the truth about Scott’s death, so he has to be knocked off. Poor Driot-Steiner is suspected of sticking his nose into the affair, so his number is up.
“Do you see what all this means? It means that if this blood-thirsty doctor ever gets the idea Madame has confided her secret to you—well, in simple language, pal, you have to get out of that pile on the rue de Courcelles quick. Tonight, if you can.”
He and Véronique waited for my decision. But was there any choice of decisions? I had just had answered for me every question I had ever asked myself about Anne de Villemont. Above all, the question of why she was playing her double game now—going to bed with Morillon to keep him off his guard, and at the same time, using me to help her flee from him. After all, my wallet was stuffed with the ten thousand francs she had given me to arrange the flight.
“I’ll talk to her tonight,” I said.
“What can she tell you but a pack of lies?” Louis retorted. “No, all you do is wave good-bye to her. You can bunk with me in my room until Léon and Eliane set up housekeeping and he clears out of your place. That won’t take long, now that he’s got the ring on her finger.”
Véronique glanced at her watch. “They’ll be here soon. It’s a shame they have to walk in on something as awful as this, tonight of all nights.”
“Well,” said Louis, “we can just tell them that if we’re not as merry as we might be, it’s because Reno’s job is taking him back to the States at the end of the week.”
We left it at that, and when Becque and Eliane made their entrance—Becque awkward in my company at first, then finally grinning from ear to ear with embarrassed delight when Eliane made a great display of the neat little diamond ring on her finger—everyone did his best to simulate merriment. It must have had a hollow sound to the astute Becque, however. His smile faded, was replaced by a puzzled frown.
“Ça ne tourne pas rond,” he said at last. “There’s something wrong around here, friends, and no use trying to cover up. What is it?”
He was genuinely impressed when I told him I would be accompanying my young pupil and his mother to America at the end of the week.
“De luxe, I suppose, and all expenses paid?”
“That’s right.”
He nudged me with his elbow. “What a spot to be in, eh?”
As some philosopher once remarked, the most devastating humor is always unconscious.
Louis had not underestimated the impact Anne de Villemont could have on a man. When she opened her bedroom door to me and stood there in negligee, wide-eyed, her dark, lustrous hair caught up in a ribbon and falling loosely to her shoulders, she was enough to make a heretic out of Saint Anthony.
She knew at once that something was wrong. She closed the door behind us and leaned back against it looking at me with a mixture of fear and defiance.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s about the agreement we made. Twenty thousand dollars isn’t enough.”
“If you want more—”
“Not money. Answers to some questions.”
“Oh God, haven’t I made it plain there are things I can’t tell you until we’re away from here.”
“You did. But we’re not even starting to leave here until you tell me everything. And I mean everything. Now let’s have it. What did Hubert Morillon have to do with your husband’s death in Algeria? He did have a hand in it, didn’t he?”
Too late, A
nne shook her head in wild denial.
“Please go away,” she said in a choked voice. “If you won’t help me, please go away and forget you were ever in this house; forget you ever knew me. I’m telling you that for your own sake.”
“I see. And was it also for my sake that you let me get the idea you were madly in love with me? Anyhow, enough in love so that I could handle you a little, sample the merchandise, as it were?”
“You bastard!” Anne said between her teeth.
“Now we’re beginning to understand each other. It’s about time, too.”
“You don’t understand anything!”
“Henri de Villemont,” I said. “Sidney Scott. Max Marchat.” I refrained from mentioning Driot-Steiner since that might be highly dangerous to Véronique. “Three dead already, and who knows how many more to go. Who can tell when Dr. Morillon might decide that a sanitarium in Issy isn’t the best way of keeping the star witness against him quiet when she threatens to get out of hand? How does it feel to be the petite amie of a man who’ll cut your throat the minute he stops trusting you to keep his secret?”
“That’s my affair!”
“You’ve made it my affair too, sweetheart. And do I have to tell you it’s very much a police affair?”
“You’re not to go to them!”
“Why? Because you’d be implicated or because Morillon has friends among the police who’d turn me in to him?”
“He has friends everywhere.” Now there was the familiar quivering panic in her voice. “Listen to me. Believe me. Everything depends on Hubert’s being left alone, on his being allowed to do whatever he wants to. I’ve already told you that if anything happens to him, there are people who’d stop at nothing to avenge themselves for it on Paul. On Paul, do you hear?”
“Is that the story Morillon’s been scaring you with? Who are these people? Has he ever named them?”
She refused to answer, but compressed her lips and slowly shook her head.
“So that’s as far as the story goes,” I said coldly. “For the rest—”
“I can’t tell you any more. You know too much already. For Paul’s sake—”
“No,” I said angrily, “don’t get started on that. For Paul’s sake there’s one thing you should have done long ago. As soon as you found out what Morillon was really like, you should have gone to Claude de Gonde and told him about it. He’s devoted to Paul, he’s as tough as Morillon, I’m sure he’s too much man of the world to faint at whatever dirt you might tell him. As it is, he and everyone else in this house believe you were insane enough to deliberately murder Scott. That should make them all relatively shockproof by now. And if it comes to a question of Paul’s safety, they’d do anything to protect him. What can I do for him single-handed that they can’t do a hundred times better?”
“You could get us away from here,” Anne pleaded. “You said you would.”
“Not under the conditions that prevail. Not when all I get from you are lies and evasions. What I will do is stand by until you tell Claude everything, and that has to be damned soon. Tomorrow, in fact I promised Paul I’d take him to the fair at the Place de la Versailles tomorrow afternoon. While we’re away you can get Claude in here, lock all the doors, and unburden yourself to him.”
“I can’t!”
“You’d better. And since I’ll have a long talk with him after you’ve had your turn, there’s no use trying to stall about it. A murderous specimen like Morillon can’t be left to roam around loose, and you’re going to see he isn’t!”
I went to the door. Then I turned and saw that Anne was staring at me with the horror of one who sees the devil coming to claim her soul.
I said, “One final question. That gun you gave me has disappeared. Did you take it?”
“No,” she whispered.
In the corner of her bedroom was a huge chest of drawers, a twin of the one in my room. The sight of it drew me like a magnet. I went to it, removed its bottom drawer, and thrust my arm into the empty space left there. My fingertips brushed something cold and metallic, and I hauled it out. It was the gun, and this time, I discovered, it was loaded.
I extracted the cartridges and displayed them to Anne in my palm. “Where did you get these?”
She remained silent.
“Either you tell me who gave you these things,” I said, “or so help me God, I’ll beat it out of you.”
“Nobody gave them to me,” Anne said dully. “They’re from the gun room. I found out where the key was kept and took them.”
I dropped the cartridges into my pocket and tossed the gun on the bed.
“When you see Claude, you can start by giving him that,” I said. “It might convince him you’re not quite as unbalanced as he thinks you are.”
15
The Paris Fair—la Foire de Paris—is the exhibition put together now and then by French trades and industries, and if one is in a mood to be entertained by a display of electronic eggbeaters and jerry-built model homes, it can be entertaining. But I was in no such mood when I arrived at the Place de la Versailles with Paul, and Louis, who was waiting there for us, recognized this at a glance. So at his insistence as we walked along the avenue leading to the electric train display which was our reason for being there, we made several stops at wine booths where free samples were offered. Samples being forbidden to Paul, he worked off his energy by running up and down collecting the literature offered by each booth.
Meanwhile, Louis and I had a chance to talk over my tangled affairs.
“You look like hell,” Louis said. “I suppose you had that little talk with Madame, and she handed you one right in the eye.”
“Not exactly.” I briefly described the scene between Anne and me the night before. “She’s probably with de Gonde right now, getting it all off her chest,” I concluded. “After that, it’s his baby.”
“His monster,” Louis said. “What do you think he’ll do about it?”
“I don’t know. Probably turn Morillon over to the authorities and sign Anne back into that sanitarium at Issy. Even if she isn’t directly implicated in any of the killings, she’s put herself on the wrong side of the law by covering up for Morillon. What the hell, a nice mink-lined sanitarium is still a lot better than the guillotine or jail or whatever is waiting for Morillon.”
“The way you say that,” Louis observed pityingly, “you sound like somebody shoved into that torture box in the Musée Grevin, the one with the spikes. You’ve got to stop eating your heart out about that woman. I suppose you’ve got the kid on your mind too.” He nodded in Paul’s direction. “What happens to him?”
“If de Gonde wants me to stay on until he gets used to being without his mama, I’ll do it.”
“Well, it won’t be in town here. It’ll be the scandal of the century, this mess, and once the papers get to work on it they’ll chase the family right out of town.”
“That won’t bother me as long as I can keep in touch with Leschenhaut. I must have been out of my mind when I turned down his offer. I’m calling him up this evening to let him know that.”
Louis nodded his approval.
“That makes sense.” Then he added in an undertone, “If you want to show even more sense, keep your hand on your wallet. There’s a smooth type like a pickpocket over there has an eye on it. What’s in it, anyhow, makes it look so fat in the belly?”
It was the ten thousand francs I had forgotten to return to Anne in the heat of my scene with her, and I transferred it to a hip pocket, keeping a hand over it. The feel of that money made me marvel now at how close I had come to going through with the harebrained scheme to flee Paris. If anything kept Anne from joining me, there I would be, boarding a plane for America without luggage but with a child in my possession whom I was undeniably smuggling away to a secret destination. Madame Cesira Montecastellani de Villemont’s grandson, no less. I could see myself in handcuffs, trying to convince the sardonic French police that I was not a kidnaper, and this in a country wher
e kidnaping is known as le crime américain.
The model railroad, our destination, lived up to its advertisements. It was laid out on a Lilliputian countryside a hundred feet long where an intricate web of rails wove through hills and fields and small towns and where a dozen tiny trains raced busily along on a schedule which miraculously kept them from colliding at switchpoints. A metal railing kept the public at a safe distance from the display, and it was just the right height for Paul to drape himself over it and suspend himself there by the armpits. Time went on and still he hung there, eyes glazed with wonder.
After a while he stirred from his trance and looked up at me. “Reno, do you think Grandmother would mind very much if I didn’t go to Saint-Cyr and become a soldier?”
“I have a feeling she would.”
“But if I told her I want to be the engineer of a train like that?”
“It’s a lot easier getting into Saint-Cyr than the railroad union,” Louis remarked. He dug an elbow sharply into my ribs. “There’s the pickpocket type again,” he muttered. “Only he’s no pickpocket, that one. He’s watching you like a hawk, and no pro would give himself away so stupidly twice in a row. Turn around fast and you’ll see what I mean.”
I wheeled around and at the far end of the railing, near the exit of the pavilion, I saw a youthful face, eyes fixed avidly on me. The next instant it was gone, but not before I had recognized the features of the boy who had once escorted me at gunpoint from the conference room in the mansion to Bernard Bourdon’s presence. Albert, Bourdon had called him, and I remembered with foreboding the pistol thrust into his belt.
“You and Paul wait here,” I ordered Louis, and sprinted to the exit. The promenade outside was filling up with sightseers now, but was still not so crowded that it offered ready concealment to the fugitive. Yet Albert seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth in those few seconds. The tide of sightseers was all coining from one direction, the entrance of the fair grounds, and I moved with it down the promenade, peering into the face of anyone who, from the rear, bore any resemblance to my man.
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