Читать книгу Murder at Monte Carlo - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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On the way down the winding road after lunch Roger Sloane drove his Packard at almost a walking pace. The flower gatherers were at work and the drowsy air was sweet with a tangle of perfumes. After the second corner the road became little more than a gully with orange trees on either side. Women and girls and a sprinkling of older people were everywhere busy on ladders, over the tops of which they disappeared into a green-and-white obscurity. Petals were falling everywhere like snow. Roger was surprised to find that even his companion, leaning back in the car, was entranced into silence. His lips were parted, his eyes half-closed. He had the air of one travelling in Paradise. Roger contemplated him in benign approval. Notwithstanding his uncouth attire and mundane luncheon conversation, it was obvious that the joint enthusiasms of their Oxford days might easily be reawakened. He found himself speculating as to the thoughts which might be framing themselves in his friend’s brain.

“Damn’ good smell,” the latter murmured drowsily.

Roger opened his lips but his sharp word of rebuke was never spoken. He was suddenly conscious of a brisk tap on the top of his skull and a slowly fluttering waterfall of exquisite blossoms upon his cheeks and head and around his feet. He stopped the car and glanced upwards. Lying upon her stomach on the overhanging branch of a veteran orange tree was a wisp of a girl, long-legged, long-armed, with a mass of chestnut brown hair blowing about her shoulders, eyes so light a hazel that they seemed almost yellow as they laughed into his, and a face like the face of an elf born of a fairy grinning down upon him.

“Mademoiselle!” he protested. “I am blinded.”

He gained nothing by his expostulation. Seeming literally to be hanging through space, she leaned across and reached a neighbouring bough, plucked another branch laden with blossom and, leaning once more perilously downwards to ensure a correct aim, she dropped a shower of petals upon him so that he was again enveloped. Then she laughed and he fancied that a bird must be singing in the tree.

“You little devil!” Roger exclaimed. “Wait till I can get at you.”

He had no idea of any definite purpose. He obeyed apparently some sort of a hunter’s instinct, some subtle response that stirred within him to the challenge of those brown eyes. He jammed the hand brake a little tighter and swung himself out of the car. He had taken one step towards the trunk of the tree—it was probably in his mind to climb or pretend to do so—when one of the most thrilling sounds he had ever heard in his life clamped the soles of his feet to the ground and sent an icy chill, even on that day of hot sunshine, through his veins to the very pulses of his heart. It was the cry of a child in terror—but the soul of the child had found its way to her lips....

There was a flutter of commotion everywhere. The small crowd of flower gatherers, mostly girls and mostly of the same peasant type, deep-bosomed, black-eyed and bareheaded, came creeping out of unexpected corners. From the higher part of the orchard descended the disturbing object and as soon as Sloane had seen him he scented trouble. Here was a man in a passion, a black-browed, heavily built man, cutting the air with a switch as he moved, an ugly protruding jaw reminiscent somehow of the dragon in a child’s story. Sloane could almost imagine the red fire gleaming from the newcomer’s eyes as he loped along through the daffodil-starred long grass. Then his somewhat indifferent curiosity changed to a more poignant emotion. He felt his pulses quicken and a sense of crisis precipitated itself. The strange child above was swaying on the bough and moaning to herself. He looked up. There were no tears in her eyes, but she went on moaning and her fingers were digging deep into the bark.

“Do not be afraid, little one,” he called out encouragingly. “He can’t reach you.”

“There is a ladder,” she sobbed.

Roger saw that she was right and the object of the child’s dread seemed indeed about to use it. He planted it against the tree but, as he placed his foot upon the first rung, Roger realised what was about to happen. The child above him had crawled in her terror an inch or two farther along the bough and that inch or two was just a trifle too far. The limb of the tree sagged and cracked. She swung for a moment in mid-air, a strange medley of struggling arms and legs, a shape of grace and phantasy. Then the bark fell away, the white wood split. Already in the road beneath her Roger stiffened his back, preparing for the inevitable happening. With the final crashing of the branch, she came warm and fluttering into his arms.

A moment before the incident had seemed trivial—an ugly interlude in a pleasing but unexciting hillside pastoral. Now, to Roger Sloane, the seconds seemed stabbed with some magic fire. He was caught up in a blaze of incredible and incomprehensible sensation. This half-dressed, probably unwashed brat was clinging to him with all the abandon of her long supple limbs and pulsating body, her strange-coloured eyes aflame, her breath sweet as the flowers themselves falling hot upon his cheeks. She was nearly mad with terror. Her sobs told him that and the frantic rise and fall of her small bosoms.... The man’s voice—he was only a yard or two away now—broke the silence, ugly with curses, terrifying with threats. The girls and women, even the few older men, gave way before him like scared rabbits. He jumped into the road and paused for a moment to recover his breath. A sudden silence seemed to have fallen upon every one, one of those silences which precede a storm. The man eyed Roger evilly. He had dropped his switch and began to swing his fists. There was mischief in his bloodshot eyes, murder in the leer of his grinning mouth. The girl who, in obedience to his gesture, had unwound herself from Roger’s arms, crept towards the car which was standing by the side of the road. Erskine opened the door and pulled her in, but all the time her eyes were fixed in agony upon her protector. A brave old woman, toothless and decrepit, with a shawl around her head, called out from the other side of the ditch.

“Let him alone, Pierre Viotti. You have drunk too much red wine. The young American has done no harm. That little devil, Jeannine, she pelted him with the orange blossoms. Au temps de ‘la fleur’ ils sont tous en folie!”

Pierre Viotti took no notice. He went blundering on to his doom. He struck savagely at the usually good-natured, but now stern face of the young man, only to find that he was beating the air. A moment later he was lying in the dust of the road, partial oblivion clouding his murky senses. Roger bent over him for a moment, listened to his stertorous, but regular breathing, then stepped back into the car.... The attitude of the crowd was somewhat uncertain. Some of the young women were dancing for joy. The older people were whispering together. One lad was slouching off towards the village. After all, the man lying in the road was a rentier and their mayor and the man who had struck him was a foreigner. They hung together like leeches, these French village folk.

“If you take my advice,” Erskine observed, with a glance around, “you will get out of this, Roger. Pity you could not have let the fellow know what you did at Harvard and Oxford in boxing.”

“No time to tell him anything,” Roger replied, thrusting the gear shift into reverse. “I couldn’t even warn him. He came at me like a mad bull.”

They backed noiselessly to the corner, swung around and crawled up to the entrance of the pink-and-white villa on the hillside. The girl seemed to have got over her terror and was making queer little noises in her throat. Roger glanced at her questioningly. Suddenly he realised that she was laughing. Her eyes were dancing with happiness, her brown face had puckered up into creases of mirth, her soft, delicately shaped mouth was quivering, no longer with fear. She was clasping and unclasping the long fingers of her scratched but shapely brown hands and swaying from side to side in rhythmical content.

“What the mischief are you going to do with her?” his friend demanded.

“Heaven knows,” Roger answered.

Madame Vinay, cuisinière and housekeeper, summoned from the kitchen, was inclined to take a gloomy view of the situation.

“He is a bad man, Pierre Viotti,” she declared, “but he is the mayor and he owns all the land, the épicerie and the café. He does what he pleases with the girls and all the people about the place. If Monsieur has touched him, he will probably go to prison.”

“Oh, la, la,” the girl laughed gaily. “Has Monsieur seen Henri our gendarme? He is no bigger than I am. Monsieur Viotti—he is the strongest man in the village and voilà, Monsieur l’a battu.”

“Where are your father and mother?” Roger asked.

The girl shook her head. Madame Vinay explained.

“The child’s father and mother never lived in the village, Monsieur. Her mother taught in the school and her father was a foreman at Molinard’s, the perfume factory in Grasse. They died within a few weeks of one another and her grandmother brought her here. Now the old grandmother is herself dead since last week. What is to become of the child no one knows. The Curé has concerned himself in the matter, but Monsieur le Maire wishes her for his house. Just now there is work for all in the fields, but afterwards—well, Pierre Viotti is the mayor and what can one do?”

The child calmly stretched out her long arm, helped herself to an apple from a dish on the sideboard and began to eat it. “I will never work for Monsieur Viotti,” she declared firmly. “He is a bad man. All the children in the village are afraid of him and so am I. I will pick the blossom for Monsieur here,” she added, her eyes laughing into Roger’s.

“The Curé is in the kitchen,” Madame Vinay observed. “He might have advice to give. After what has happened, the child would be better away from the neighbourhood altogether.”

“By all means let us consult him,” Roger agreed. “Fetch him at once, Madame.”

Madame Vinay rustled out and the Curé presently made his appearance in her company. He was an elderly man, rotund in shape and with few of the graces of life, but his expression was pleasant and he was at once helpful.

“Monsieur,” he said earnestly to Roger, “what you have done may indeed turn out to be a fortunate action. We are all bound to respect Monsieur le Maire, who is a hard-working man and has amassed much money. Nevertheless he is not a fitting guardian for the child.”

“He is a beast!” the latter declared vehemently, her white, beautifully shaped teeth crunching once more into the apple.

“What I should like to do,” Roger Sloane explained, “is to find the child reputable employment and a safe home until she is old enough to decide for herself what she would like to do. I will be responsible for any money that is necessary and if you will help me in this matter, Monsieur le Curé, I will with pleasure give a donation to your poor.”

“I wish to remain with Monsieur,” the child begged. “I will work for him. I will be obedient. I will do what I am told.”

Madame Vinay, who was standing in the background, coughed.

“In the village,” she said severely, “they say that you obey no one.”

“In the village,” the child scoffed. “But that is different. Here I will obey you, Madame Vinay. I will obey Monsieur.”

“What do you think, Monsieur?” Sloane asked.

The Curé hesitated.

“Jeannine is a strange child but I believe that she has good qualities,” he pronounced. “They say in the village that she fights all the time.”

“I only fight if I am touched,” she cried. “I will not be touched by those others. When they leave me alone, I behave.”

The Curé scratched his chin thoughtfully.

“If Monsieur would try her for a week,” he suggested.

The girl sprang suddenly to her feet and danced around the room, her arms waving, her legs moving to some strange measure. They stared at her in astonishment. Madame Vinay sighed and shook her head. The Curé only smiled.

“They say that her mother once wished to be a danseuse,” he confided. “The child is difficult but I have found her truthful.”

She came to a sudden pause in front of Sloane, dropped almost on one knee, seized his hand and kissed it. Then she stood up again.

“I will obey you,” she promised. “I will pick your blossoms faster than any one has picked them before. I will do everything that Madame Vinay tells me.”

Roger Sloane drew a deep sigh of relief. He found himself wondering why he was so persistently anxious to avoid looking into the depths of those questioning brown eyes with their strange lights.

“That’s all arranged then,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “You and I can get on our way to Nice, Pips.”

In Nice the two young men spent an evening of masculine, but restrained hilarity. Upon their arrival Roger strolled upon the Promenade des Anglais and watched the sunset while his companion went to his hotel and changed his attire. Afterwards they visited the Casino, drank cocktails and amused themselves playing midget golf. They dined at a famous restaurant, gambled for an hour or two at the Palais de la Mediterranée, supped at Maxim’s and even danced. At three o’clock Roger dropped his friend at his hotel and drove homeward through the velvety darkness. For the last ten kilometres the road wound its way through the flower-growing country and already the carts were crawling along the lanes to pick up their cargoes of blossoms. Once or twice Roger paused by the wayside to listen to the nightingales and to feel the queer fascination of the silence before the morning. The first pencil shaft of light was creeping into the sky when he reached the villa. He drove his car into the garage, locked it up and mounted to his room by the back stairs. He walked with light footsteps and a smile upon his lips. After the meretricious and somewhat futile straining after pleasure of a night spent in crowded rooms, of gambling, noisy music and overheated atmospheres, the coolness and perfume of his own home delighted him. He felt like the boy Marius on his way to his bed in the mountain monastery, with the life of the cities far behind and the purity and sweetness of the country already like a sweet tonic in his blood.... Then, during his last few steps, his fingers outstretched towards the handle of his door, he came to a sudden standstill. There was an old-fashioned Provençal bench outside which looked as though it had been made from a discarded refectory table. Seated upon it, wrapped in an old dressing gown of flaming red, probably a loan from Madame, was Jeannine!

Her eyes shone up into his, her quivering lips parted expectantly. He was astonished to find how sternly he could speak.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Je ne fais pas de mal,” she faltered, a little frightened at his tone. “Je vous attendais.”

“But why?”

Her lips became almost pathetic.

“Monsieur Viotti—”

“What about him?” Roger interrupted, speaking with fierce anxiety but keeping his voice low.

“He told me that if I served him in the house and he spent the evening out, that I must wait up till he came home. He told me that any one I served would expect that. I was waiting for you.”

He met her eyes, frankly this time. There was a stern but kindly light in his own and a sense of great relief in has heart. It was not for the child to know that his knees were trembling.

“Forget everything that such a beast has told you,” he enjoined. “Go to your room at once and stay there.”

She rose obediently to her feet, but she was shivering as though his words had hurt her. He laid his hands upon her shoulders and kissed her lightly upon either cheek. He could almost feel the warmth of her inviting lips as he passed them by.

“Now run,” he ordered.

He entered his room, closed the door and listened to her departing footsteps. As soon as there was silence, he turned the key very softly and threw wide open both his windows. Already the streak of light had grown broader and the moon paler. There was only one nightingale left in the valley, still singing faintly. Here and there, along the lanes, the carts with their swaying lanterns were moving—ghostly, obscure objects. And all the time the perfume of the orange blossoms. He thought of the old woman’s speech—

“Au temps de ‘la fleur’ ils sont tous en folie!”

The two friends lunched together a few days later under a striped umbrella upon the terrace of Juan-les-Pins Casino. Already the early heat had drawn the crowds to the sands below. There was a fair sprinkling of bathers, a great many more lying about enjoying a sun bath. The suggestion of a mistral had given a faint tang to the sea breeze. The Estérels had thrown off their silver mantle, their sharp outline was firm and vivid against the crystalline background.

“What about the little protégée?” Erskine asked.

“I’ve scarcely seen her during the last few days,” Roger replied. “Madame Vinay’s latest report was that she was restless and didn’t wish to work outdoors. She thought of trying to get a job for her in a flower shop in Nice or Monte Carlo.”

Erskine watched the serving of a mostelle with an air of reverent admiration.

“Do you know, Roger,” he confided, “I shouldn’t be surprised if that girl didn’t turn out damn’ good-looking some day.”

“She’s quite attractive enough now,” Roger said calmly.

“No, but I mean a real tip-topper,” Erskine persisted. “She’s got something about her, I don’t know what it is, that these Frenchmen describe so well in the memoirs of all their famous courtesans. Write a novel about her, old chap. If you’ve got the right touch, you might achieve immortality.”

“I’m off work,” was the rather terse reply. “Look here, Pips, I’ve been thinking—one’s got to clear out of here presently. I’ve been here six months on end and that’s pretty well long enough. I’ll make a bargain with you, if you like. I’ll do as you suggested and go back to England with you, look up a few old pals and get some golf while you settle up your affairs and—what is it you have to do?—stick a coronet on your head and strut across the Palace yard and get turned into a bona fide Lord. I’ll see you through this if you’ll come across to the States with me for a month or so and get back here in say, November or December. How does that appeal to you?”

“It’s a bargain,” Erskine declared emphatically. “Nothing I should like better, old chap. We’ll get back, as you say, about October or November and I’ll have a real season here. I always thought I should like to, if I could get hold of a little of the ready. When do you think you could make a move? The only trouble is, I really ought to get over to London at once, you know. I got off at Marseilles and I was doing a tramp around here to sort of get my bearings, but the lawyers are getting a bit sniffy now. They can’t understand a chap who’s come in for a title and a decent spot of the ready not being anxious to get his hands on it.”

“I’ll start to-morrow, if you like,” Roger promised.

“Capital,” Erskine exclaimed. “We’ll make it the day after, if you don’t mind. Or let’s say the first day we can get seats on the Blue Train; or there may be a steamer calling at Monaco.”

“Agreed.”

They lunched lazily but with excellent appetites. The food was good, the wine and service perfection. Erskine was thoroughly content. Now and then he looked at his friend curiously.

“I should think you’re right in what you say, old chap,” he remarked. “Six months might be enough for any one without a move, and you look a trifle fagged. We’ll have some golf up in Scotland, but by Jove, the one thing I’m going to look forward to is our next season out here.”

They raised their glasses and drank to it. A few thousand miles westward five men, including Paul Viotti, the illustrious brother of the Mayor of La Bastide, were doing very much the same thing.

Down the mountainside, a week later, in snakelike fashion, through the vine-growing country and the stripped flower farms crawled the dilapidated grey motor omnibus which plied between the out-of-the-way hill villages of the Alpes-Maritimes and Nice.

Jeannine, with Madame Vinay on one side and the Curé opposite, felt herself so well guarded that she indulged in a derisive grimace at Monsieur Viotti, the Mayor, who was leaning against his grey stone wall looking steadily seawards. Madame Vinay reproached her charge severely.

“Manners such as that are not for the town,” she declared. “In Nice one must forget such peasant ways.”

Jeannine made no reply. There was something in her eyes, however, and the quiet smile upon her lips which made her guardian just a trifle uncomfortable. More and more every day she was getting to realise that this charge which she had undertaken at Roger’s earnest request was likely to be no sinecure. When they turned the corner, from which was a fine view of the sea below, Jeannine leaned out and her eyes travelled westward. That way his ship had gone—the man whom some day she hoped to make suffer....

Behind them, and some distance above them now, Monsieur Pierre Viotti was also gazing at the sea, a cunning smile of self-satisfaction upon his lips. Halfway across the Atlantic, bound straight for Cherbourg, came the great three-funnelled steamer bearing his famous brother and his friends. He gloated over the thought of their arrival, made plans, indulged in mischievous fancies. What strange instructions these were which he had received. Never mind, they should all be carried out. In time, perhaps, he might become as rich as Paul....

That little devil of a Jeannine! So they were going to try and cheat him out of her. Not a chance. What did Monte Carlo matter? He would be there himself in a few weeks. The leer of the village satyr parted his thick red lips.