The Prisoner of the Riviera

by Janice Law

“I think whoever brought this,” Pierre gestured toward the body. With the lights up, I could see that the dead woman’s hair was dark blond, her face, well preserved rather than youthful. “Can you get a sheet or a blanket?”

  She took a step closer, night in her eyes. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Has he killed Madame?”

  “We don’t know who she is,” I said.

  She came down to the last step, looked at the body, and raised the shotgun at us. “Oh, poor Madame Lambert ! My poor Madame Lambert! Don’t move,” she cried, then turned and fled upstairs with a little gasp. Pierre started to follow her, but I put my hand on his arm and shook my head. “Give her a moment.”

  Sure enough, she reappeared, still with the gun but now wearing a thin coat and carrying both a purse and a bundle of linen. She came downstairs and covered the body gently. “She is so cold! Poor thing! Her arm is like ice.” She stood, clutching her weapon and visibly shivering.

  I didn’t feel too good myself. I touched one of her thin shoulders. “When did you last see your employer?”

  “How do I know it wasn’t you?” she asked, moving away angrily and raising the shotgun again. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

  She went on in this vein, until Pierre introduced me as Marcel Lepage, visiting decorator—“Quite famous, madam!”—and himself as a member of the Sud-Est racing team. I noticed that he was careful not to give his name, but his explanation was apparently adequate, for when I asked a second time about the dead woman, she answered.

  “Tuesday it was. There was a terrible argument. He arrived just at lunch.”

  “Who? Who arrived?”

  “Monsieur Brun.”

  “Serge Brun?” Pierre asked.

  “You know him?” She gave Pierre a sharp glance. “Yes, that is his name. I had just brought in the soufflé when he rang the bell. I brought him into the dining room.”

  “He was a welcome visitor, who came often?”

  “He was not welcome to me, Monsieur, but Madame said that he was an old friend. Lately, he had come often. More often than I liked.” Though she was still trembling, her voice was firm. Her slight, almost girlish form had deceived me. I realized that she was at least as old as her late employer.

  “You said there was an argument.”

  “Something he wanted—as usual. I didn’t catch the details, but she was furious. Really furious. Then he showed her something, a piece of paper.” She was silent for a moment.

  “And then?” Pierre prompted.

  “Then she ordered him out of the house, Monsieur. It was quite a scene. Marie will remember.”

  “Who is Marie?”

  “She comes in to cook whenever Madame is home.”

  “You said you hadn’t seen Madame Lambert since Tuesday. When did she leave?”

  “That afternoon, Monsieur. She packed a small bag and called a taxi. And now here she is and so cold. How is she so cold, Messieurs?”

  Pierre and I exchanged glances. “She has perhaps been kept somewhere cold,” I suggested, though I couldn’t bring myself to mention the fish locker.

  “We must call the police,” she said and moved toward the back of the foyer where, I now saw, there was a telephone on a small gilt table. That was one detail the Chavanels had missed but perhaps it was a recent addition. “The police must know. They know she has enemies.” She leaned the shotgun against a table and lifted the receiver.

  We moved toward the door.

  “A moment, Messieurs, if you please. How did you get here?”

  We explained about the motorcycle.

  “I have a better idea,” she said. “But first, I must call the police.”

  She dialed the number, then turned her back on us and spoke to the officer on duty, demanding to be contacted with the chief inspector. “I am calling about Madame Yvette Lambert.”

  A pause, then she gave a swift but accurate description of the victim and instructed the officers to use the unlocked terrace entrance. She had a rather imperious manner for a personal maid, and I was surprised at how crisp and decisive she sounded, especially when she said, “Certainly, the victim is Madame Lambert. And you will know who is to blame, Inspector. ”

  I didn’t have time to consider the oddities of this conversation, for as soon as she hung up the telephone, she took a set of keys from a small bureau and motioned for us to follow her. We went out by the terrace, and, though I may have been deceived in the moonlight, I thought that she did something with the door latch. We walked beside the garden wall to a stone garage with a nice Peugeot sedan inside. Pierre got behind the wheel, she got into the backseat, still with the shotgun, and I closed up the garage doors and slid in beside Pierre. We crossed the gravel sweep in front of the villa and headed down the drive.

  “We can drop Marcel at the gare,” Pierre suggested, and he signaled for a right turn.

  “We’re going together,” she said and she laid the shotgun against his ear. “All of us.”

  “Marcel is just a visitor,” Pierre said.

  “A pity,” she said. “You chose the wrong house and the wrong time, Monsieur.” And she moved the shotgun in my direction.

  “I am surprised you did not want to wait and assist the police, Mademoiselle—how awkward we do not yet know your name.”

  “Pelletier,” she said.

  “Have you worked for Madame Lambert for a long time?”

  “Forever,” she said. “But you see what has happened to my poor Madame. There is not much point in my going the same way, is there?”

  “None at all. Yet you are well protected.” I nodded toward the shotgun, which she seemed to handle with a good deal of confidence. How many personal maids go shooting?, I wondered, though Nan had more than once picked up a hunting rifle during the Irish Troubles of my childhood, when we cowered in the big basement kitchen, alert for shouts and torches outside.

  She did not answer, but directed Pierre to take the main coastal road east. “Do not think of leaving the vehicle,” she told me. “I will shoot him without hesitation.”

  I knew then and perhaps Pierre guessed, too.

  I turned around and looked at her. “Very well, Madame Lambert,” I said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Yvette Lambert with her brightly dyed hair and now unconcealed arrogance directed Pierre to the coastal road toward Nice, then up into the dark hills, an itinerary that provoked bad thoughts and bad memories. As the lights of the city diminished and the rail line with my exit route slipped away behind us, I glanced at Pierre, but he just shrugged and focused on the roads, which became steadily rougher and narrower.

  I wondered whether we had a better chance to survive ignorant or knowledgeable. As far as the gun-toting Madame Lambert knew, I was Marcel Lepage, decorator. Unless she had something against Pierre, we were simply annoyances with reasons of our own for avoiding the police. On the other hand, her associates seemed very fond of using the fish locker.

  Would my undeniable assistance to her brother soften her heart? Though I was tempted to conjure up Victor Renard’s shooting for her, I didn’t feel I could go that far without consulting Pierre, and I was still worrying this question when we entered an unpaved track. I had the nasty thought that we were returning to the abandoned farm where Cybèle and I had buried the late Richard Malet, but this farmhouse, if ancient, was well roofed and solid with a variety of stone outbuildings. An oil lamp was burning in one window. Madame Lambert directed Pierre toward what might have been a stable and told him to shut off the motor and leave the keys in the car.

  The door of the house opened, and two men with flashlights approached. One was the balding chap I had seen at the Villa Mimosa. Proximity revealed a fleshy face with a little cupid’s bow mouth and small eyes sunk on either side of a thick nose. The other was a tall, fair man with an angular jaw and mean eyes who could have passed for English or G
erman. Pierre whispered, “Serge Brun.”

  “Get out of the car,” Brun said, “and put your hands on the hood.”

  We did as we were told. The bald man searched us, removing my wallet. I regretted the loss of Malet’s francs and even more the little scraps of paper with his handwriting on them. Were Brun to recognize them, what was dangerous might turn catastrophic.

  “I warned you to be discreet,” he told Yvette, his voice harsh. “I warned you to involve no one else. Who are these men?”

  “They walked in the open terrace door, saw the body, and asked a lot of questions. Had you followed my instructions, they would probably still be hiding in the garden.” She spoke calmly, indifferent to his anger.

  “And now you want me to tidy up the mess,” he shouted. “You must think I’m a garbage collector.”

  “I think you are willing to do whatever is required.”

  They glared at each other for a few seconds, before he turned away. That was interesting, but she was still holding the shotgun in a knowledgeable way. “Tie them up and take them inside,” he yelled to the bald man. “We’ll deal with them.”

  None of this sounded good to me. Fun and games in dark places can be entertaining, but not at the back of beyond among people with complex politics. The bald man tied our hands behind our backs and pushed us through the darkness toward the building. When Pierre stumbled on the step and fell, the man kicked him hard in the ribs. Without thinking, I kicked him behind his left knee, catching him off balance so that he dropped his light and wound up on his hands and knees on the step. Mistake. He got up in a fury and struck me on the side of the face. When I staggered back against the house, he hit me again, and I was in line for serious damage, when Yvette shouted, “Victor! Victor! You idiot.”

  The flashlight lying on the ground illuminated his features from below, picking out anger and something else that might have been pleasure. I tasted blood in my mouth and realized this could be worse than I’d imagined. He jerked Pierre to his feet, picked up the flashlight, and threw open the door. An archway on the left led to a kitchen. The main room with a stone fireplace was straight ahead, lit by a single oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. The foyer was empty except for a chair and a heavy wooden door set into the right-hand wall. Victor pushed us against this, and Brun shone his flashlight directly in our faces. He took a good look and didn’t seem pleased with what he saw.

  “What were you doing in the garden?”

  “Hiding,” I said.

  Pierre added that we had been chased there.

  Brun struck him heavily in his injured side, and Pierre screamed, his face white with pain.

  “It’s true,” I said. “We ran into some tough types near the port. There was an argument.”

  He cracked me across the mouth. “Sure. And you ran all the way across Cannes.”

  I spit out blood. “We had Pierre’s motorbike. Which was damaged and ran out of gas. We hid it in the driveway and ran into the garden.”

  He didn’t believe us. “You asked questions.” And he struck my ribs with his flashlight so that my breath seized up with pain.

  “We walked in an open door and found a woman lying dead on the floor and someone with a shotgun. That’s not normal décor.”

  This time he hit me hard enough so that I momentarily lost the light. From some distant constellation I heard him shout, “How did you know it was Madame Lambert? How did you know that?”

  This question was trouble. Don’t mention the dollhouse, which would lead to the Chavanels, which would lead to Cybèle and codes and things I’d better not remember. Don’t mention Victor Renard, whom my alter ego Marcel did not know. “She didn’t seem like a lady’s maid.” I’d had some teeth loosened and the words came out a mumble.

  Yvette Lambert laughed at this, but she hoisted the shotgun in a menacing way, and Brun relieved his feelings by cracking Pierre’s shoulder with his flashlight. I believe that things would have gone seriously downhill, if Victor hadn’t yelled, “Quiet!” and run to the doorway. Now we all heard the rumble of a vehicle approaching along the rough track. He closed the heavy outer door, as Brun shoved us to one side and opened the cellar. Swinging at both of us with his flashlight, he forced us onto the top of a steep stairway and tumbled us down. Pierre gave a cry as his bruised side hit the stone steps. I went head over heels, bounced on my head, bashed my arm and shoulder, and wound up facedown on a dirt floor that smelled of old vegetables. Above, the door rattled and banged shut.

  The back of my head throbbed, and red and green constellations wheeled across my retinas until I gradually got myself located in space. When I felt my knees under me, I levered myself upright. One elbow was touching the bottom of the stone stairs, and I managed to crawl onto the lowest step. No sound from Pierre, which worried me as I was sure I had been out for some minutes.

  “Pierre. You all right?”

  A sound in front of me. Pierre wheezed a little as he answered, “Just my ribs.”

  “Could that be the gendarmes arriving?”

  “A nice thought, but unlikely.” I heard him moving slowly toward the steps. “Can you untie me?”

  My hands were tied so tightly that they were already half numb, but I found the knot on Pierre’s bonds and began picking at it. A few minutes later, my fingers were bleeding but Pierre was beginning to move his hands.

  “I’ve got it now,” he said.

  I heard him moving his arms and rubbing his hands. Then he set to work on the rope around my wrists. “Don’t drop the ropes. They’re all we have.”

  “Not much good against a shotgun,” Pierre said.

  “There’s the element of surprise. I’ll bet there’s no electric light down here.”

  Pierre laughed. “No electricity period in these old farmhouses.”

  “Well, then.”

  He thought this over. “One of us stands at the top of the stairs and garrotes whoever opens the door?”

  This was a bolder plan than I’d have devised, but I could see its attractions. Pierre was clearly a man of talent, and the war had developed his abilities quite a bit further than my ARP unit had mine. “Wouldn’t the others hear?”

  Pierre allowed that this might be the case and finished untangling the rope around my wrists; I began to feel that my hands were once again attached to my body.

  “What about one of us lying at the foot of the stairs and luring him down?”

  “You don’t want to be in the line of fire. We must see if there is a place to hide,” he said.

  I heard him moving in the darkness, touching the stairs, feeling for the back wall. I began to do the same. We were in a fairly large space, and the darkness was disorienting. We’d have had difficulties finding the stairs again but for the sliver of light under the door above. “A cave,” Pierre said. “For storing wine.”

  “Vegetables, too, I’d guess.” I’d touched some earth-filled boxes—shades of the grave. I hoped that raw earth would not continue to remind me of Richard Malet’s final resting place.

  “If they both come down, we’re finished,” Pierre said. “Brun will shoot without hesitation. He might anyway.”

  “Lovely chap. What about Victor? He didn’t do much of a job tying us up.”

  “The woman maybe wants some answers. I’m not sure about Brun and his buddy.”

  “I have some answers for her,” I said, “but not as Marcel Lepage.”

  “Don’t think of it. If they suspect you were at the villa or that you know anything about the notebook or codes, they’ll just open the door and blast away. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  I suddenly didn’t like the idea of being the decoy. “We must make them come down,” I said, but I could hear Pierre moving up the stairs, and before we could argue the point, there were sounds loud enough to penetrate even the thick walls of the cellar. I stepped around the side of th
e stairs as the door was thrust open with an explosion of light. A silhouette, a man in the doorway, and a deafening bang set my brain vibrating. Then the light diminished with the sound of the door thrust against a body. A shout and someone somersaulted down the stairs. The shotgun landed several feet away from me. I made a lunge for it, kicking at the figure sprawled on the dirt, seized the weapon by the barrel, and swung it at the man’s head and shoulder.

  Pierre stepped into the light of the doorway. Although still deafened, I could see that he was shouting, and I ran up the steps. Clearly something had happened while we were immured below. The oil lamp was out, the front door was open, and outside I could see more car lights than there should have been. I ran into the kitchen where Pierre threw open the rear door. We plunged into a rampant tangle of weeds, herbs, and shrubs, rounded the back of the farmhouse, and sprinted behind the barns.

  From our new vantage point, we saw Yvette’s car, the big black fish truck, and another large sedan with its lights on and both its front doors open, as if the passengers had stepped out without closing them. There was something on the ground, a large shape, maybe two, and I had just registered these when Pierre grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back. I caught a glimpse of figures running, then I followed Pierre along a stone-walled paddock and into the fields, where I fell twice before we finally took shelter behind a large rock surrounded by scrub.

  We lay on the ground, listening to the whirr and hum of night insects and our own labored breathing. I had a tooth loose, my mouth hurt, and an assortment of bruises combined with the stony ground made any comfort impossible.

  “Will they follow us, do you think?”

  “Not now. There were shots; they will leave. And deal with us later. Or contrive to blame us.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Nothing to do until morning,” Pierre said and fell silent. Eventually I must have fallen asleep, too, because when he touched my shoulder, the sky had lightened to the east and the farthest hills were outlined against a wash of pearly gray.

  “We should start now,” he said, his voice cracked and hoarse. “We might catch a farm truck heading to the coast.”