Her reward was to see Johnny’s quick concern, and hear his protest that she would be ruining the first evening of his holiday, which they always spent together; but Molly Fountain was not given to changing her mind once she had made it up, and, blowing a kiss from her finger-tips to Christina, she left them to join the Americans.
When John was staying with his mother on the Riviera he often got home at unconscionable hours, and like most young people he required a lot of sleep; so it was an accepted thing that he should never be called, but should ring when he woke for Angele to bring him coffee and croissants.
On the following morning he did not wake till nearly eleven. Then, having breakfasted in bed, he dawdled for another hour over his bath and dressing; so it was half-past twelve before he came downstairs and joined his mother.
‘Well,’ she asked, as soon as he had kissed her good morning, ‘how did things go last night after I left you? I do hope you weren’t too terribly bored by my little protégé?’
‘Bored!’ His eyebrows shot up in a comical grimace. ‘Believe me, Mother, you’re jolly lucky to get me back all in one piece.’
Molly smiled and patted her grey hair. ‘Making due allowances for your usual exaggeration, I’m rather pleased to learn that she has something that ticks inside her.’
‘Something that ticks! Why, the girl’s a human bomb. Honestly, this new-born lamb of yours—this little sister of Saint So-and-so straight out of a convent—is a positive danger to the public’
‘Oh come, Johnny! Mix yourself a Vermouth-Cassis, and one for me too. Then put reins upon your imagination, tie it up to the fence, and tell me what happened.’
He walked over to the side table and while mixing the drinks spoke over his shoulder, ‘Well, to start with, we danced. The fact that she seems to have had very little practical experience of dancing with a man is the one piece of evidence we have in support of your theory that she has only just come out of the egg. Otherwise, hold me up, Uncle! Her sense of timing is not at all bad, so I think she’d be pretty good if she had some practice. But that’s not the point. She clung to me as if I was her favourite woolly bear. I got really scared she meant to rape me on the dance-floor. And that scent of hers! It played old Harry with my libido.’
‘Johnny, don’t be disgusting.’
‘Don’t you pretend to be a little innocent, Mother. You know as well as most people what goes on in the world, and how that sort of thing can affect a chap. Anyhow, after we had danced for a bit she said she’d like to try a liqueur brandy. In the next hour she knocked back three doubles and she didn’t blink an eyelid.’
‘She must have a remarkably good head.’
‘I’ll say she has.’ John brought the drink over to his mother, and went on, ‘About half an hour after midnight she suggested that I should take her to the Casino to do a spot of gambling. I hedged a bit at first; as on the one hand I would have liked an excuse not to dance with her any more for the time being, while on the other I didn’t particularly want to go to the rooms, because you know how it has always been with me. I can make money if I work for it, but I never seem to have any luck at the tables.’
‘You had a perfectly good excuse for refusing, as they wouldn’t have let you in without your passports; and as she is still under twenty-one they wouldn’t have let her in anyway.’
He shook his head sadly at her. ‘Darling, how you do under-rate the resourcefulness of your offspring. I’m ten times as good as your pet “Crack”, if you only knew it. I’ve known that chap Fleury, the under-manager, for years. All I had to do was to ask for him and say we’d forgotten to bring our passports. It was a safe bet that he would pass me in, and anyone else who was with me. So, on the basis that if “Paris was worth a Mass” my chastity must be worth a couple of thousand francs, I agreed. By a quarter to one we were in the Casino. And what do you think happened then?’
‘How in the world should I know, silly?’
‘Well, for the next hour and a half, while I piddled around dropping six milles, little orphan Annie played baccarat with a poker face that could hardly have been equalled had she been born inside the Sporting Club; and at the end of it she walked off with half a million francs.’
‘Johnny, she didn’t?’
‘She did, Mother. If I hadn’t been so well brought up, I’d have had it off her in the car on the way home. Just think of it! Five hundred quid, and free of Income Tax.’
Molly nodded. ‘How lovely for her. One hears a lot about beginner’s luck, but I must say I’ve never heard a better example of it.’
‘It must have been mainly that; although the old Canon stood behind her chair all the time, and was tipping her off what to do now and then.’
‘What! Her godfather, Canon Copely-Syle?’ Molly sat up in surprise. ‘This is the first you’ve said of him.’
‘Sorry. I’m afraid I telescoped the story a bit to give you the exciting dénouement about her big win. The Canon was there when we entered the rooms, and came over to us.’
‘What did you make of him?’
‘I thought he was rather a nice old boy. He’s certainly a picturesque one. All black satin front, pink face, and long silvery locks curling down behind his ears—like a parson in a Restoration play. He couldn’t have made himself pleasanter.’
‘I’m glad he didn’t spoil her evening. His attitude towards her might have been pretty frigid on meeting her in such a place, after having told her only that morning that he believed her father to be dying.’
‘I think he was a bit shocked at first. I happened to catch sight of his face before she saw him, and he was staring at us with a rather worried, annoyed sort of look. But as soon as we got chatting butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and he never even mentioned her father until just before we were leaving.’
‘Was there anything fresh in what he said then?’
‘No; he only introduced us to a friend of his who had been playing at another table, for the purpose of telling her that should she change her mind about going home, and want an air passage at short notice, this chap would be able to fix it for her. He was another distinguished-looking old boy with grey hair, only the tall and thin type. With a nice red ribbon across his shirt front he could have walked on to any stage in the role of the French Ambassador, and he wouldn’t even have had to change his name for the part. It was the Marquis de Grasse.’
Molly nearly dropped her glass, and her mouth fell open. Then she gave a cry of consternation. ‘Oh, Johnny! What can be at the bottom of all this? De Grasse is one of the most evil men in France.’
Chaptre 5
Battle of Flowers and Battle of Wits
John knew about his mother’s work in the war—at least he thought he did. All she had ever told him was that her fluent French had secured her an interesting job as a secretary, and that later she had acted as P.A. to one of the senior officers of a department of the War Office situated in Baker Street. Since the war he had run across several people who had been connected with the same office, and from odd scraps of information they had dropped he had formed a pretty shrewd idea of the activities in which they had been engaged. Those who knew his mother spoke most highly of her, and the association had led him to believe that she too had actively participated in all sorts of cloak and dagger business designed to bring alarm and despondency to the enemy.
The belief was strengthened by the fact that she still kept a private armoury, consisting of two pistols and a number of other lethal weapons. She had often assured him that her ‘museum’, as she called it, had been acquired only because such things had always fascinated her and, in addition, helped her to describe accurately the use to which they could be put when writing of scenes of violence in her books. In this she was speaking the entire truth. Much as she would have liked to try some of them out, she had never used any of them. Neither had she ever been in the least danger, except during airraids, as her work had lain inside the office, helping to direct the activities of others. Neverthele
ss, it had given her an exceedingly wide knowledge of the French Resistance, secret agents, collaborators and the crooks who were mixed up with them.
After a moment he said, ‘I suppose you ran up against the Marquis when you were doing your stuff as Molly Polloffski, the beautiful spy?’
‘No, Johnny. I’ve told you hundreds of times that there was nothing the least glamorous about my job; and I’ve never met de Grasse. But I know plenty about him.’
‘There was a chap of that name up at Cambridge when I was there. I knew him slightly, but he went down at the end of my first year.’
She nodded. ‘That would have been the son, Count Jules de Grasse. His father is as slippery as they make ’em. In the war he was far-sighted enough to back both sides; and his having sent his boy to school in England in 1940 went a long way towards saving him from a heavy sentence of imprisonment when the French began to catch up with collaborators after the liberation. He had been in it up to the neck with the Germans, but was able to produce that card as evidence that he had always thought and hoped that the Allies would win; then plead that he had done no more to help the Germans than thousands of other patriotic Frenchmen had been compelled to do as the only alternative to having their businesses taken from them. Of course, we knew that wasn’t true, but he is immensely rich and money talks in France with a louder tongue than in most countries. His story about his son proved a good enough peg on which to hang a pardon, so he was able to bribe his way out, and he got off scot-free.’
‘What was his business?’
‘He is ostensibly a respectable shipping magnate; but that covers a multitude of sins. We had plenty of proof on our files that he used his ships for running every sort of contraband. Before the war he used to specialise in dope and white slaving; but more recently, I understand, he has concentrated on smuggling Jews out to Palestine, and arms to anyone in the Near East who wants to make trouble for us.’
‘How do you know that, Mother?’
Molly coloured slightly. ‘Oh, sometimes friends who worked with me in the old firm come out here, and we talk of this and that.’
He laughed. ‘Boys and girls who are still in it, eh? I’ve always suspected that they kept you on unofficially to tip them off about anything you might tumble to in their line that was going on down here.’
‘Johnny, you do get the silliest ideas. The department I worked for was wound up soon after the war ended.’
‘Maybe; but there are others: for example, your old friend Conky Bill’s outfit. I know he pretends to be only a sort of policeman whose job it is to hunt out Communists; but like this shipping racket I bet it covers his poking that big nose of his into a multitude of other dubious goings on.’
‘And if you don’t keep your nose out of other people’s business you may one day get it chopped off,’ retorted Molly aptly.
‘Touché!’ he grinned. ‘Let’s get back to the wicked Marquis, then. What else do you know about him?’
‘His headquarters used to be at St Tropez. The choice was appropriate, as before the war it had the most evil reputation of any town west of Suez. Every vice racket flourished there. At night, down by the port, it was dangerous for decent people; and your father would not allow me to leave him to do even ten minutes’ shopping on my own there in the middle of the day.’
‘Really! On the few occasions I’ve been there I’ve never noticed anything peculiar about it.’
‘You wouldn’t, now. The Germans, and later the French, have cleaned it up a lot since then. But I am told that de Grasse still spends quite a lot of his time there.’
‘He is living there at present. He told Christina so. He and his wife have a permanent private suite at the Capricorn. You know, that big modern hotel that overlooks the bay from the high ground to the right of the road, just before you enter the town. On learning that Christina had never been to St Tropez, he said that his wife loved entertaining young people, and offered to send a car to fetch her if she could lunch with them there today.’
Molly set down her glass with a bang. ‘I hope to goodness she refused?’
‘No: she accepted. It is only in the daytime that she seems to shy off any suggestion that she should go out; but of course she may have changed her mind this morning.’
‘I’m afraid not. I had to go into St Raphael earlier to do some shopping, and I got back only just before you came down. I remember now noticing that she was not on her terrace when I drove past it, and she always is at that hour. If you were very late getting in she may still have been sleeping, but … Oh, Johnny, run round next door and make certain.’
Seven or eight minutes elapsed before John returned, panting slightly. He spread out his hands. ‘No dice, dearest. She was called for around twelve by a chap a few years older than myself. From the rather sketchy description which was all I could get out of her old Catalan woman, it might have been Jules de Grasse. Evidently she had changed her mind about going, though, and did not mean to, as she wasn’t dressed ready to go out. It seems that they had quite an argument before she went upstairs and changed her clothes. It was close on half-past when they left; so you must have passed them on your way back.’
Standing up, Molly helped herself to a cigarette. When John had lit it for her she drew hard on it for a moment, before she said, ‘I do hope she will be all right. I don’t like this new development a little bit. I wish to goodness there was something we could do to ensure her getting safely out of the clutches of those people.’
John shrugged. ‘We certainly can’t arm ourselves from your museum, give chase, and do a “stand and deliver” on the de Grasses to get her back—if that is the sort of move your agile mind is beginning to toy with. They are not the Germans and there’s no longer a war on; so snap out of it, Mother. She went off in broad daylight of her own free will, and judging by the form last night she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.’
‘You did make a pass at her, then?’
‘Well, not exactly. She made it quite clear that she expected me to say Goodnight to her in the orthodox manner. And, although she said afterwards that it was the first time she had been kissed by a man, she took to it like a duck to water. If it hadn’t been that she didn’t seem to know the opening moves of the game I certainly wouldn’t have believed her, and I still have my doubts about it. But it wasn’t of that sort of thing that I was thinking. I meant in her general behaviour; and particularly at the Casino, she undoubtedly had all her wits about her.’
Lunch was announced at that moment. They dealt with the hors d’oeuvres in thoughtful silence; then when Angele had put the sweetbreads on the table and gone out again, Molly said, ‘You know, I believe she is a schizophrenic’
‘What, dual personality?’
‘Yes. It is the only way one can account for the quite extraordinary changes which we have both seen in her. By day she is still an affectionate, overgrown child who is scared stiff that something awful is going to happen to her, and obsessed with the thought that she must remain in hiding; while by night she becomes a rather hard-boiled, sophisticated young woman, who is perfectly prepared to take the risk of being recognised for the sake of having a good time. It goes even further than that, because I am sure that during the daytime she is both innocent in mind and instinctively modest; whereas, from what you tell me, by night she is only too eager to have a necking party with the first man she sets eyes on.’
‘Hi! Have a heart!’ John protested, swiftly swallowing a piece of fried courgette. ‘That is not very complimentary to your only begotten.’
‘Do you seriously suggest that she would have preserved a virginal aloofness had she been out with any other personable young man than yourself?’
‘Thank you, Mother. The word “personable” salves my wounded pride. No, to be honest, I don’t. And I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this theory of yours that she could be schizophrenic. All the same, that does not get us any further in solving the mystery of who is after her blood, and why
.’
‘At least we now have good reason to suppose that the Canon is not to be trusted. No clergyman who had a proper respect for his cloth would show himself in the gambling-rooms of a Casino—anyhow after midnight—and his being a friend of de Grasse makes him suspect in the highest degree. I wouldn’t mind betting the serial rights of my next book that the story he told Christina about an accident to her father was a pack of lies, and designed solely to lure her away from her villa. Then, this invitation of de Grasse’s: he and his wife are not the sort of people to spend their time showing young girls the beauties of the Riviera. It is all Lombard Street to a china orange that the Canon put him up to asking her to St Tropez for some nefarious purpose of his own.’
John nodded; his voice was serious now. ‘I’m afraid you’re right, dearest. But there is nothing we can do about it for the moment. We can only wait to see if she gets back all right and, if not, call in the police.’
That afternoon there was to be a Battle of Flowers at St Maxime. As they had planned to go to it, they set off there immediately after lunch. The little town was only about fifteen miles away; so by half-past two John had parked the car and they were installed in the seats for which Molly had already secured tickets. Their chairs were in the front row facing the sea, with only a temporary barrier of chestnut-pale fence railing them off from the promenade down which the procession would come; and while they waited for it they could scarcely prevent their gaze from frequently coming to rest on the white houses of St Tropez, which lay in the shelter of the headland just across the bay. Both of them were wondering how Christina was faring there, and although John endeavoured to engage his mother’s attention, he did not succeed in doing so until the sounds of the town band in the distance heralded the beginning of the fête.
To the Devil, a Daughter Page 6