My sister sighed impatiently. ‘You are such a fusspot, Francis. Besides, Lavinia also told Climp and Mullion about the swastika. She will probably think it was they who whipped it. After all, they would have been far more likely to than us – just the types.’ She gave a superior smile.
‘But they didn’t,’ I pointed out, ‘we did – or you, rather. And although Lavinia let them know the thing was hidden in the Folly, it is highly unlikely that she mentioned the key was hanging on a hook in the wardrobe of Myrtle’s bedroom! That particular detail she helpfully revealed to you in Clermont. And vague though she is, she may just recall it.’
‘Oh really …’ Primrose grumbled.
‘Nothing like belt and braces,’ said Nicholas briskly. ‘There’s a good girl, Primrose, put the key back – it will be good practice.’
‘Practice for what?’
‘Who can tell?’ he replied enigmatically. ‘These little sleights of hand are always useful. One never knows what difficulties they may resolve.’ He gave a heavy wink.
‘Oh, all right,’ she conceded, ‘just as long as I don’t encounter Myrtle climbing out of her stays …’
The weather broke on the morning of the funeral. Up until then we had enjoyed a mild Indian summer, but now the mists came down and there was a dankness in the air redolent of autumn. The distant puys were blotted out and the valley below looked grey and uninviting. A classic interment day, I thought gloomily. However, I brightened at the prospect of our impending departure. Dumont had rung to say our passports would be returned by a passing gendarme, and already Ingaza was checking the Citroën and clearing the boot of the now denuded whisky crates. There was of course still the problem of Bouncer and his concealment, but as I had hoped, Georges had kindly offered to seek counsel from a veterinary friend, and it seemed likely that the poor little blighter could be sent off to the land of nod with no ill effects. Whether Primrose would be prepared to shove Maurice into her classy travelling case was another matter, but if I made the right pecuniary gestures perhaps she would …
I was impressed by the funeral service, which, given its subject, was surprisingly conventional, with the usual Anglican prayers, hymns and ritual. Knowing Boris, I had expected something fey and cock-eyed but this seemed the model of decorum and normality, and I wondered if its swift and businesslike procedure was due to the organizational powers of Turnbull rather than the hand of Lavinia. Clinker delivered a deft, even generous address, and Boris’s coffin (unadorned by either tambourine or bones) was lowered into the earth with due precision and solemnity. I am rather particular about the matter of obsequies, and in that respect the handling of Boris Birtle-Figgins’ final passage struck me as exemplary.
Solemnity over, we returned to the house for the usual bun fight. To my surprise Lavinia had laid on some caterers from Fleurville, and while there was no repeat of the earlier cocktails, there was a lavish supply of tasty French canapés and delicate bonnes bouchées. Gladys and Myrtle were being moderately useful in dispensing these, and it crossed my mind that while the latter was thus occupied it might be a good moment for Primrose to slip into her bedroom and return the key to its rightful place. I looked around for her to suggest this, but was caught by Clinker intent yet again on impressing upon me the need for silence regarding the Climp/Mullion affair. I assured him that he should have no qualms on that score and enquired when he expected to leave.
‘As soon as possible,’ was the answer. ‘Gladys is fractious and Myrtle talks of nothing except getting back to Brussels.’
‘But I thought she had been so keen to come here – to the Auvergne.’
‘Not any more, she isn’t,’ he replied darkly. ‘Says she wasn’t brought up to be associated with suicides and murderers or their victims, and that staying here any longer will bring social death. No, she’s champing at the bit to return to her embassy cronies. I don’t think Lavinia will encounter her again. Some people have all the luck.’ He melted away to consume some sausages on sticks.
There was a light tap on my shoulder. ‘It is very good of you to come, Canon,’ breathed Lavinia. ‘Boris would have so appreciated it.’ I mumbled some appropriate response and took stock of my hostess. It may have been a trick of the light, but she struck me as being fuller in the face, more physically animated than when I had last seen her. Although draped in black, she still wore the glittering beads that she had sported on our last visit, and her hair was swept up in a rather becoming chignon. I noticed too that her nails were painted a discreet silky pink. The result was not unattractive.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ I asked. ‘Carry on here, or do you have other plans?’
‘Oh, other plans,’ she replied emphatically, ‘but first I am going to have a little holiday. These things put one at such a low ebb. I think I need a tonic – you know, some sort of break from the norm to get my bearings as it were.’ I did know, having needed just such a respite after the Spendler débâcle* – but alas, thanks to DS Sidney Samson and Nicholas Ingaza, never achieved that luxury.
‘Very sensible,’ I said, in my best soothing voice.
‘Oh, but I don’t want to be sensible, that’s just it. I feel it is time I was rather unsensible!’ She gave a soft giggle. I was slightly taken aback by this, not used to recent widows responding with quite such liveliness. She clearly saw my surprise, for she then said, ‘But haven’t you ever wanted to behave outrageously? You know, break out from your chains – drive fast cars, go to Monte Carlo, tango till six in the morning – live dangerously!’
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘All I have ever wanted is peace, quiet, seclusion and safety. And so far none of those has come my way.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘how sad.’ And giving me a puzzled look she drifted over to join Turnbull.
Behave outrageously? Live dangerously? Huh! She didn’t know the half of it … In some irritation, I followed Clinker’s example and moved in the direction of the sausages. Thwarted again – the bishop had scoffed the lot.
I was on the point of choosing a canapé instead, when I saw the harpist from the musical evening making a beeline towards me. Admittedly it wasn’t a dark night, merely a gloomy afternoon, but I thought it prudent to take evasive action all the same, and looked about for an outlet. Unfortunately the nearest one was Gladys. But working on the principle of better the devil you know, I walked smartly up to her and embarked on some scintillating chit-chat. She looked rather surprised as neither of us is in the habit of seeking the other out – although, at a really loose end, the bishop’s wife has been known to hold court even with curates (a practice never embraced by her sister).
‘Hmm,’ she said with her usual forthright charm, ‘I don’t know what you have to be so bright about. Personally I consider this whole holiday to have been a nightmare – not helped, I may say, by my dear sister. It was her idea in the first place. One would have done far better to stick to the Ardennes. We’ve been going there for the last thirty years and never a suicide or dead body in sight.’
I nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, it has been rather trying, and most perturbing for the bishop – just when he needed a good rest.’
‘Good rest? He does nothing but … No, Canon, it is we women who need the rest. But then that’s not something you would know about, of course.’
‘No,’ I agreed humbly, ‘perhaps it isn’t.’
‘A case in point,’ she continued, ‘being that tiresome Birtle-Figgins girl. What she has had to put up with is nobody’s business! Mind you, such a door mat – has only herself to blame, I consider.’ She frowned, looking very fierce, and not for the first time I felt mildly sorry for Clinker.
‘Er … but what did she have to put up with?’ I ventured.
‘Marital matters,’ was the terse reply. ‘Again, not something you would understand.’
I cleared my throat and tried to steer us down another route. ‘I rather gather she has plans to move elsewhere. Is she intending to leave France?’
‘
I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that she is certainly giving up this awful relics business – ceasing all involvement with the hermit and severing her link with that monstrosity down the hill. She and Boris were sort of substitute concierges in the last few years. He thought it gave him additional status in the village. It didn’t of course, everyone hates the place.’ She stopped, rummaged in her handbag for a handkerchief and blew her nose explosively. I wondered if the hiatus would give me the chance to slip away, but in the next moment she said, ‘In fact now I come to think of it, wasn’t it built by some relation of that woman who was murdered in your village? I seem to remember her name was Fotherington.’
I looked suitably vague and murmured something to the effect that I hadn’t heard of any connection, and that although the name was not particularly common, neither was it rare.
‘Hmm, perhaps not. But in any case they are going to pull it down soon – well, half of it apparently. A good thing too.’
‘Really?’ I was startled.
‘Yes. The locals can’t stand it – think it’s haunted. You know how superstitious these people are. Apparently the authorities have been trying to trace the owner for some time – or at least, so they say. Technically of course they need his or her permission, but with typical French pragmatism they’ve decided to demolish it first and deal with complaints later. All very high-handed no doubt … but that’s the way with the Frogs. I remember during the war when …’ She prosed on, while I felt a rush of grovelling warmth towards the French and their high-handedness.
‘So what’s going to happen to it?’
‘Assuming no claimant materializes from the woodwork, I believe they have plans to turn it into a holiday home for deprived children from the slums of Nice and Toulon. A worthy cause, naturally – though I must say if I were a local I’d be a trifle nervous. After all, you never know these days, do you? But quite a constructive idea, I suppose. Anyway, I hear the bulldozers are all ready.’
Making a mental note to remain well within the woodwork, I said I thought it an excellent scheme, and then asked her what Lavinia was going to do with Bondolphi’s bones. ‘She’s going to donate them to the children’s home. The plan is to display them in a large showcase in the central hall. Grotesque! Frankly, if I were one of those young inmates I would heave a brick through the glass.’ And so saying she stomped off to argue with her sister.
Looking around, I noticed a number of people were beginning to leave and saw Lavinia by the door shaking hands and nodding graciously. Turnbull was still there, in animated conversation with Primrose. (Were more paintings being negotiated? Surely not, not now!) He looked confident and relaxed. And I felt a pang of guilty envy of one who could remain so poised having just committed (presumably) so dastardly a crime. Nevertheless, I was glad to have escaped meeting him during the afternoon, for I suspect I might have made a hash of things – blushed, stuttered, giggled, spilt my tea. It is one thing being a murderer oneself, quite another to be jolly with a fellow practitioner.
I was pondering this and preparing to leave, when there was a disturbance at the far end of the salon, and Myrtle appeared on the threshold breathing fire and apoplexy. ‘This is outrageous,’ she boomed, ‘my room has been ransacked!’
‘Oh dear,’ said Lavinia vaguely, ‘the maid does get carried away sometimes, it’s the hoovering, she –’
‘It is not the maid,’ Myrtle thundered, ‘it is someone else.’
Fortunately the announcement elicited only mild shock, for half of the residual guests did not understand English (or were inured to the eccentricities of its speakers), while the other half were too familiar with Myrtle’s melodrama to take much notice. She hovered by the door, muttering and spluttering and for once largely ignored.
‘So you did it, then,’ I whispered to Primrose as we moved out into the hallway, ‘put the key back.’
‘Of course I did.’
‘Well, it doesn’t sound as if you were very subtle – what was all that about the room being ransacked?’
‘Old bat had left an open suitcase on the bed. I was in such a hurry after shutting the wardrobe door that I knocked it over on my way out. The stuff spilled all over the floor – frightful mess!’ She chuckled.
* See Bones in the Belfry
33
The Vicar’s Version
At last we were free to leave. Dumont had come personally to deliver the passports, and wished us a safe journey back to ‘la belle Angleterre’. He seemed genuinely sorry that our stay in Berceau-Lamont had been so alarmingly disturbed, and was at great pains to persuade us that normally that part of the Auvergne was a model of respectable tranquillity. He was, he said, désolé about poor demented Monsieur Castris and trusted that Madame Birtle-Figgins would find it in her heart to forgive so wretched a crime.
I had been wondering about Boris’s inamorata, Clothilde de Vere: whatever the dimensions of her poitrine, the loss of two lovers in such violent circumstances must have been hard for the woman. Thus, affecting a casual tone, I asked him how she was taking it all. ‘With great excitement,’ was the dry reply. ‘Being on such intimate terms with both victim and perpetrator, she was one of our key witnesses and responded to our questions with alarming enthusiasm.’ He paused and coughed discreetly. ‘The account she gave of her relationship with the two gentlemen was most explicit … rather more than necessary really – and repetitive. However, monsieur,’ he murmured politely, ‘I need not bore you with the details …’
Lucky escape, I thought. And turning to other matters said that, with the sad demise of its leader, the cult of Belvedere would surely lose much of its impetus. He gave a brief shrug, whispering something that sounded very like ‘Zut alors! Tant pis, tant mieux …’
I was beginning to quite warm to the man, and when he mentioned that he was hoping to visit his old Cambridge college the following year, in a rush of thoughtless bonhomie I suggested he visit Molehill as well. But at that moment his attention was distracted by an acerbic comment from Gladys, and I received a sharp kick on the shin from Primrose and her muttered warning, ‘Don’t push your luck, you fool – he hasn’t discovered Climp and Mullion yet!’ I coughed loudly, and instead made some polite remark about longing to return to the area in more propitious circumstances.
That afternoon Clinker telephoned announcing they were leaving on the morrow, the two ladies being intent on taking the waters at La Bourboule ‘to soothe and pacify the nerves’ before embarking on their homeward journey.
‘Ah, that’ll be nice,’ I said encouragingly, ‘very refreshing.’
‘It won’t be nice,’ he said testily, ‘simply prolong the agony.’
I ignored that and asked brightly if there would be salubrious treatments.
‘I do not intend having any treatment,’ he replied stiffly. ‘But I think the women are proposing some massages or thermal baths … With a bit of luck Myrtle may sink.’
There being no answer to that, I wished him a pleasant trip and said I would see him at the annual diocesan conference the following month.
‘Unless you forget about it like last time, Oughterard … And remember, at all costs be reticent!’ He rang off.
I started to go upstairs intending to begin some early packing, but was diverted by Georges saying there was still coffee available in the bar and that I was welcome to help myself. I went in, poured a cup and picked up the newspaper. Other than a small article reporting the Birtle-Figgins funeral and brief references to the fate of the ‘malefactor’ Herbert Castris, there was little of interest. And I was about to put it aside and attend to the packing, when my attention was caught by something small and shiny tucked into a corner under the window seat. Thinking it might be a piece of jewellery dropped by one of the female customers from the night before, I bent down and picked it up. What I held in my hand was no brooch or ring, but a glimmering glass eye with dark pupil and pale blue retina … I gazed at it with curiosity and a flicker of irrational distaste. However
, it looked perfectly clean and ‘clinical’, and I was suddenly reminded of a similar encounter many years ago at my prep school. That one had belonged to the piano teacher, whose zeal for the keys had invariably necessitated the removal of both dentures and eye before tackling the more rumbustious pieces. But at least in that case one had known to whom the item had belonged. This eye could be anybody’s.
Or could it? I remembered Boris enthusing about his casket of bones, detailing the contents which had included Belvedere’s false teeth … and, as he had said, ‘that brilliantly azure eye’. As far as I knew, in none of the press reports had there been any mention of an eye, and I certainly could not recall seeing such an object when confronted by the spectacle by the poolside. Nevertheless, might it just possibly be the hermit’s – purloined from the casket before or after the murder? Unlikely surely. Obviously it belonged to one of Georges’s clientele – slipped from pocket or socket in a moment of bibulous aberration.
As I pondered, there was a heavy padding in the hall. Clemenceau appeared and launched himself upon me with a roar of welcome. The collar was silent but the dog was not, and deafened by the kindly pandemonium I retreated upstairs still holding my find. I put it on the bedside table meaning to take it down later, but in a trice Maurice had seized it, and tossing and dribbling the thing around the room established immediate ownership. Oh well, I thought, if someone is careless enough to leave their eye lying about on the floor that’s their problem if the cat gets it …
34
The Cat’s Memoir
‘I’ll get that bluebottle if it kills me!’ the dog exploded.
‘Probably will,’ I replied indifferently. ‘With all those Bonios inside you, you won’t have the stamina.’ And hoiking my leg behind my ear I resumed my grooming.
Bones in High Places Page 21