by Rumer Godden
“What are they talking about?” asked Willmouse, and I lost the rest until Inspector Cailleux said slowly, “I know that man’s work as if it were my own.”
“Tell us,” Willmouse commanded me urgently and I translated sentence by sentence as best I could, but it was hard work listening and telling.
“But . . . right under our noses!” said Monsieur Dufour.
“Under your noses,” said Inspector Cailleux. Then he threw down his pen. “What’s the good? He has had thirty-six hours. He is hundreds of miles away by now.”
“I don’t think he is,” said Willmouse when I had translated.
“What do you mean?”
“I know where Eliot is.”
“Where?”
“On the barge,” said Willmouse, “the Marie France.” The Marie France had gone and I remembered that soft strange hoot in the night.
I gazed at my little brother. “But how did you know?”
“He was dressed for it,” said Willmouse simply. He added, “Barges go very slowly, but I don’t suppose they will think of looking for him there.”
“Cecil!” said Hester urgently.
I looked up. Mademoiselle Zizi had come into the bar. I had seen her once without her make-up, but now her face seemed to have come through it. She was a strange grey-white colour and her face was knotted as if it had cords in it, and her hair was tumbled half down on her shoulders. She looked at us, then into the little salon and pointed to it enquiringly and then at us again.
We shook our heads.
Her eyes turned from one to another of us; they seemed to be asking us, and she put her fingers to her lips. Slowly, solemnly, we nodded.
Madame Corbet’s quick voice was heard in the hall and Mademoiselle Zizi turned almost in a panic to go. In the doorway she met Joss.
Joss stopped when she saw Mademoiselle Zizi. For a moment they faced one another. Then Mademoiselle Zizi spoke.
“They have told me. So! It was you who sent the photograph.”
“Of course.” Joss crossed in front of her and said, “Let me sit down, Hester.”
In the little salon the voices grew louder. We listened and I said, “They’re talking about us.”
“We have seen everyone now,” Monsieur Dufour had said.
“Except the children.” That was Inspector Cailleux.
“They cannot be very important. At least, only the big girl.”
“They may be very important. Call them in. I shall take the small ones first; and remember,” ordered Inspector Cailleux, “don’t speak to the big one. Ignore her.”
“It will make her nervous.”
“I want her nervous,” said Inspector Cailleux.
Monsieur Dufour came to the salon door and beckoned us in. He started when he saw Mademoiselle Zizi. “Zizi,” he said, “you should be resting.”
“Resting!”
“Well, something. Don’t stay here. Please,” and he said, “Irène, take her.” Madame Corbet put her arm round Mademoiselle Zizi and led her away as we filed in.
“Asseyez-vous, mes enfants.”
Because we knew our scarecrows were very dirty we sat on the edge of the yellow chairs. Last of all Joss, her chin high, spots of red in her cheeks, took a chair by the door.
“Must the little children be in this?” asked Monsieur Dufour in French.
Inspector Cailleux did not raise his head. “They are in it,” he said.
He wrote for a few minutes, then suddenly he sat up and looked at us, one after the other. I felt myself go hot, then cold. I think we all had blanched faces. Hester looked like . . . like a peeled nut, I thought; as for Joss, it seemed she had put on her mask painted with those two bright spots.
“Which of you took this photograph?”
It was said so casually, and in English, that we started. I do not know what we had expected—to be bullied, asked our names and ages, or have our thumbs twisted—but he was simply holding the snapshot up.
“I did,” said Hester with modest pleasure.
“And you are . . .” he looked at a paper, “Hester?” She nodded. “Ten years old?” Hester’s curls bobbed again. “Ten years old,” said Inspector Cailleux in French to Monsieur Dufour, “and she has succeeded in doing what no one else has ever done, getting a photograph of Allen.” Then in English, “I must congratulate you, ma p’tite. It is most valuable.”
“Valuable?” The pleasure was wiped from Hester’s face. “You mean . . . my photograph helped you?”
“Helped me! It brought me straight here,” and to Monsieur Dufour again he said, “I am one of the few, the very few, who have seen Allen. I had him once . . . for an hour.”
“He got away?” Monsieur Dufour sounded almost pleased.
“He got away.” Inspector Cailleux’s voice forbade any more questions and I remembered how the newspaper had said: ‘. . . whom the police failed to catch.’
“I must ask you for the negative”—Inspector Cailleux was speaking to Hester again—“but we shall give vou something very pretty in exchange. A doll. You would like a doll?”
“No,” said Hester, her eyes horrified.
“Eliot gave me a doll,” said Vicky. “We don’t want yours.”
“Listen,” said Inspector Cailleux, “I am going to speak to you as if you were not children but grown up. You know this man Allen?”
We shook our heads.
“You know Monsieur Eliot?”
We nodded. “He’s our friend,” said Willmouse.
“Your friend is a thief,” said Inspector Cailleux. Hester and the Littles were listening to him solemnly and he warmed. “A thief who stole in many countries, deceived people, took their money and was often cruel to them. I must tell you that sometimes he killed them.”
“Like he did Paul?” asked Vicky, interested.
“Vicky, you are not to say things like that,” Joss cut in from where she sat by the door.
“If you please, Mademoiselle . . .” said Inspector Cailleux.
“But . . .” began Joss hotly.
“I must ask you to be quiet. I shall come to you . . . later.” He made that sound so frightening that I had to press myself down on my chair not to gasp.
Inspector Cailleux returned to the Littles. “He killed Paul,” he said. “Are you going to like him after that?”
Hester, Willmouse and Vicky said instantly, “Yes.”
Inspector Cailleux looked nonplussed and perhaps a little angry. When he spoke again his voice was sharp. “Like him or not, you have a duty. You know what duty is?”
We all nodded. Eliot was our friend . . . but when a friend kills a friend? And with a paperknife. I felt sure now it was the paperknife, or what we had thought was a paperknife. A rift was being torn between us and Eliot; each word that Inspector Cailleux said made that rift more.
“If you know anything, have seen anything strange or out of place, about this man Allen or Eliot,” he was saying, “it is your duty to tell me.”
Dead silence.
“Your duty,” said Inspector Cailleux and his eyes went over each of us again. I dared not put my hands down on my chair in case they left marks as they had left them on the windowsill.
Hester was the most honest of us and the most easily worked upon. I had guessed she would feel she had to say something and in the silence she put up her hand.
“Well?”
“He . . .” said Hester as if her throat were dry, “he . . .”
“Yes?” said Inspector Cailleux encouragingly. “He?”
“He lay in the cove . . .” said Hester.
“Yes?” said Inspector Cailleux again, but I had pinched her and she shut her lips.
Again there was silence, but this, of course, could not go on; they were the police. I thought Inspector Cailleux had seen that pinch; detectives saw everything or they would not be detectives. He was looking at me without appearing to look, and it was borne in on me afresh that I was the only one who knew . . . everything, I thought. I coul
d not help another little gasp, and this time his eyes looked straight at me for a second. They looked away at once, but I knew I was marked; quite rightly, not even Joss, who had been so quick to guess, knew all the pieces that fitted together. Each of them knew something, but I knew it all. What was I to do? Here in front of Inspector Cailleux all dreams and wishes fled. These were the police. Soon I should have to tell.
It was beginning to come out.
“You were the one who had the sleeping dose.” Inspector Cailleux had turned to Willmouse and he asked Monsieur Dufour, “You think Allen gave the dose to him?”
“The chef, Monsieur Armand, says Monsieur . . . Allen took up a tray for the boy. We think, but we do not know.”
“We can guess,” said Inspector Cailleux, and to Willmouse, “What was on the tray you were brought?”
“Food,” said Willmouse, “banquet food; chicken and party toast and a meringue. A beautiful meringue,” said Willmouse, remembering.
“Anything to drink?”
“Grenadine.”
“The supper things were washed up,” said Monsieur Dufour, “so that, of course, we do not absolutely know.”
“We can guess,” said Inspector Cailleux again and his pale eyes studied Willmouse. “This child knew something.”
“What could a child of his age know?”
Inspector Cailleux shrugged. “Children are everywhere, like insects. They can know anything.”
“H’m,” said Monsieur Dufour thoughtfully. “They say he slept for two days. It must have been strong.”
“The drug or the reason?”
“Both,” said Monsieur Dufour. “But it was abominable! To drug a child!”
“This was Allen,” Inspector Cailleux reminded him. “The little boy is lucky to be alive.”
“Who are they talking about?” Willmouse whispered more urgently to me.
“You.”
“Why?”
“Because they think . . . Eliot . . . put you to sleep.”
“Eliot?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why?” said Willmouse imperiously to Inspector Cailleux.
“Because, my little man, you knew something he did not want you to tell. It was not a very pleasant thing to do to you, was it?”
“It was silly,” said Willmouse. He was wounded. “Why didn’t he ask me not to tell? He needn’t have put me to sleep. He could have trusted me.”
“Was this man God to them?” asked Inspector Cailleux. He was getting angry and the questions came fast.
“Why did he send you to bed?”
“I was out late.”
“Why were you out late?”
“I had been for my walk.”
“Where did you go?”
“Along the river.”
“Did you see anything?”
They were coming closer . . . like bloodhounds, I thought, and prickled with apprehension. “Did you see anything?” asked Inspector Cailleux peremptorily.
“I saw the barge,” said Willmouse.
“What barge?”
“The Marie France.”
“What was the barge doing?”
“Nothing,” said Willmouse truthfully, but Inspector Cailleux was looking deeply into him.
“Do you like barges?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then there was something especial about this one? Something you saw perhaps? Perhaps?” rapped out Inspector Cailleux.
“I would rather not talk to you,’ said Willmouse.
“I am not playing,” cried Inspector Cailleux and hit the little table with his fist so that it shook. Vicky burst into tears.
“I don’t like it,” she wailed, “I want Mother.”
As if Mother’s name had been a touchstone we all began to weep, except Joss, who was still dissociated from us; I was ashamed but the tears were gathering, unbearably heavy and hot, in my eyes. Mother. If only Mother were here for us in this terror! But there was no one, no one for us, and we quailed like little rabbits, chased and cornered, ready to be snared. Helplessly we wept. There was more to come, more shockingness, but we had moved Monsieur Dufour. He protested, “I told you this was not for children.”
“Some of them are not children.”
We jumped. Mademoiselle Zizi was standing in the doorway. At the sight of her distorted face even Vicky was quelled.
“You are asking them questions,” said Mademoiselle Zizi. “Why? You need only ask her.” She pointed at Joss. “Ask her what the ladder was doing on the lawn under her window, why the marks of it were on the grass.” Madame Corbet had come running after Mademoiselle Zizi, but Mademoiselle Zizi shook her off. “Ask her.”
Inspector Cailleux looked at Joss, who had risen like a girl in class. Slowly I rose too, but no one noticed me.
“Is that a child?” said Mademoiselle Zizi, and to Monsieur Dufour, “You have seen her with your own eyes, how she behaved at the dinner. She drove Paul out of his mind. You saw that too. Well, ask her what happened. The ladder was at her window. Elle a couché avec l’un après l’autre.”
I did not understand the word ‘sleep’ used like that, ‘sleep with one after the other’, nor its import; I was only sure that in some way it was hideous and unjust and I moved nearer to Joss. “She didn’t sleep,” I said, “she was wide awake. Why, she came to my room and sent me in . . .”
“You?” Their eyes all shifted to me.
“Tiens! They begin young in England,” said Mademoiselle Zizi.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Joss curtly to me.
“These little children must go out,” said Monsieur Dufour, springing up distressed, but Hester and the Littles had already left their yellow satin chairs and come to Joss and me; they did not understand what the talk was about but knew we were threatened and they stood loyally round us.
Once again we seemed small and alone in that French house. Monsieur Dufour was kindly, but he was thinking of Mademoiselle Zizi. Only one person would have defended us—Eliot . . . and he . . . I could not go on. I swallowed, and felt as if the tears were running down my throat.
“So! Two of you,” said Mademoiselle Zizi. “And this is what I took into my house.”
Your dear house! In that moment of misery I almost said it. Les Oeillets, the gold-green days, the love, to end in this.
It was at that moment I heard a sound in the courtyard outside that made me look up. These were the windows from which Mademoiselle Zizi had so often watched for Eliot, listening for the Rolls. Now I looked out and saw the big gate was shut as it had been on our first night. It had been shut by the police. The sound I had heard was the jangling of the bell.
I do not know how I heard it in the confusion in the room, but it seemed to join on to the bell of that first night; the sound belonged . . . to us? I thought, puzzled.
A gendarme opened the wicket; he spoke for a moment to someone outside and opened the gate.
Inside the salon there was turmoil. The other two policemen had jumped up and Madame Corbet was explaining to them, shouting over our heads while Monsieur Dufour talked to Mademoiselle Zizi as if he were scolding her. Only Inspector Cailleux stayed at his desk, quietly watching.
“Zizi! You haven’t a shadow of proof,” scolded Monsieur Dufour.
“Haven’t I?” She wheeled on him. “Why did I have to put Monsieur Joubert out of the hotel?” Everyone stopped to listen. “They said it was painting!” said Mademoiselle Zizi and she spat the word again, “Painting!”
I had felt Joss quivering, but now happened something so alarming that it burnt out everything else. Joss, dignified, aloof, almost grown-up Joss, crumpled like a little girl. “Mother. I want Mother,” she wailed like Vicky.
We stood round her, appalled too. “Help me. Help me,” sobbed Joss.
We could not help her. How could we? We barely understood. There was no one to help us now, and soon, soon I should have to . . . Helpless in my tears I looked out of the window and saw that a man had come in through the gat
e. He was dressed in a grey suit and brown felt hat and was followed by a porter with a handcart and two leather suitcases. There was something very familiar about the man; his small figure looked square and solid in the Frenchness of the courtyard, his skin fresh and pink beside the dark, sallow-skinned gendarme and porter, and there was a wonderful calmness about him. My heart suddenly calmed too. It was Uncle William.
“Uncle William!” The shout I gave filled the little salon. I do not know how we burst out of it, past Mademoiselle Zizi, Madame Corbet and Monsieur Dufour. I think I heard Inspector Cailleux ordering us to sit down, but I was not listening, nor were the others. All of us, even Joss, rushed through the bar into the hall.
Uncle William came in. Joss threw herself into his arms, I had mine round his neck, Vicky and Hester were hugging his legs, Willmouse danced up and down in front of him. Uncle William! Dear, dear, dear Uncle William!
CHAPTER 18
“MY NAME is Bullock.”
We had always winced and thought that people must laugh when Uncle William said that, but now nobody laughed, nor did we wince. We kept close behind him; Hester even had a corner of his coat clutched in her hand. “Bullock,” and he put down his card on the desk, “of Bullock, Roper and Twiss, Solicitors, Southstone. That is in Sussex, England.”
“À votre service, Monsieur,” said Inspector Cailleux and introduced the others. “Monsieur Dufour, Monsieur Lemaître. Monsieur Aubry.” They bowed. “Madame Corbet,” said Inspector Cailleux; he did not introduce Mademoiselle Zizi.
“You have some trouble?” asked Uncle William after he had shaken hands. “The police . . . ?”
“You have doubtless heard at the station or on your way here of these shocking events,” said Inspector Cailleux dryly.
“I have heard nothing. I do not speak French,” said Uncle William. His calm flat English voice sounded wonderfully unexcited. “I have come to take my sister—if she can travel—and my nieces and nephew home . . . to England,” he added firmly, looking at us.
“You said you wouldn’t come and you came!” said Hester, stroking his coat.
“How did you know to come now, just now?” cried Joss, pressed close to him.
“But I was sent for,” said Uncle William.
“Sent for?”