It was no more than a ten minutes’ walk to the mill, and as Flinders had predicted, Charles was rewarded by the sight of M. Duval at work on his sketch.
Charles approached from behind him, and thus had leisure to observe the artist before his own presence was detected. The man looked more of a scarecrow than ever, but if he was under the influence of drink or drugs this was not immediately apparent. He seemed to be absorbed in his work, and it was not until Charles stopped at his elbow that he looked round.
There was suspicion in his nervous start, and he glared up at Charles out of his bloodshot eyes.
‘Good afternoon,’ Charles said pleasantly. ‘I apologise for being so inquisitive. If I may say so, you are painting a very remarkable picture.’
This was no less than the truth. Privately Charles thought that Flinders’ strictures were not without reason. The sketch before him was weird in the extreme, yet although it could hardly be said to represent the old mill, even Charles, no connoisseur, could see that it was executed with a certain perverted skill.
The artist sneered, and said disagreeably: ‘What do you English know of art? Nothing, I tell you!’
‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ Charles agreed. ‘But this, I take it, is not destined for our Academy? You exhibit in the Salon, no doubt?’
This piece of flattery found its mark. ‘It is true,’ M. Duval said. ‘With this picture, my chef-d’oeuvre, I make my name. The world will know me at last.’ The momentary fire died out of his face. He shrugged, and said with a return to his sullen manner: ‘But how should you appreciate a work of genius?’
‘What strikes me particularly,’ Charles persevered, ‘is your treatment of shadows. In fact…’
‘I see them red,’ M. Duval said sombrely. ‘Dull red.’
‘Very few people have the eye to see them like that,’ said Charles truthfully.
He soon found that no flattery was too gross to please M. Duval, and he proceeded, as he afterwards told Peter, to spread himself. At the end of twenty minutes the artist had mellowed considerably, and when Charles said solemnly that Framley was fortunate indeed to have attracted one who was so obviously a genius, he threw down his brush with a gesture of bitter loathing, and cried out: ‘You think I live here because I choose? Ah, mon Dieu!’ He leaned forward on his camp-stool, and the hand which held his palette shook with some overpowering emotion. ‘I think all the time how I shall get away!’ he said tensely. ‘Five years I have lived here, five years, m’sieur! Figure to yourself! But the day comes when I see it no more. Then – pouf! I am gone, I am free!’ He seemed to recollect himself, and a smile of weak cunning showed his discoloured teeth. ‘You think I talk strangely, hein? Not like you English, who are always cold, like ice. To those others I am nothing but a mad Frenchman, but you, my friend, you have seen that I have a genius in me!’ He slapped his chest as he spoke. ‘Here, in my soul! You have admired my picture; you have not laughed behind my back. And because you have sympathised, because you have recognised the true art, I will tell you something.’ He plucked at Charles’ sleeve with fingers like talons, and his voice sank. ‘Take care, m’sieur, you who think to live in that house which is the home of Le Moine. I warn you, take care, and do not try to interfere with him. I tell you, it is not safe. You hear me? There is danger, much, much danger.’
‘Thanks for the warning,’ Charles said calmly. ‘But I don’t really think a ghost could do me much harm, do you?’
The artist looked at him queerly. ‘I say only, take care. You have tried to find Le Moine, I think, because you do not believe in ghosts. But I tell you there is great danger.’
‘I see. You think I should be unwise to try and find out who he is?’
‘There is no one who knows that,’ M. Duval said slowly. ‘No one! But maybe this poor Duval, who paints pictures that the world laughs at, maybe he might – one day – know – who is – Le Moine.’ He was smiling as he said it, and his eyes were clouded and far away. His voice sank still lower till it was little more than a whisper. ‘And if I know, then, then at last I will be free, and I will have revenge! Ah, but that will be sweet!’ His claw-like hands curled as though they strangled some unseen thing.
‘Forgive me,’ said Charles, ‘but has the Monk done you some injury?’
His words jerked Duval back from that dreamy, half-drugged state. He picked up his brush again. ‘It is a ghost,’ he muttered. ‘You have said it yourself.’
Seeing that for the present at least there was little hope of getting anything more out of the artist, Charles prepared to take his departure. ‘Ghost or no ghost,’ he said deliberately, ‘I intend to find out – what I can. You seem to have some idea of doing the same thing. If you want my assistance I suggest you come and call on me at the Priory.’
‘I do not want assistance,’ Duval said, hunching his shoulders rather like a pettish child.
‘No? Yet if I were to say one day that I had seen the face of the Monk…?’ Charles left the end of the sentence unfinished, but its effect was even more than he had hoped.
Duval swung round eagerly. ‘You have seen – but no! You have seen nothing. He does not show his face, the Monk, and it is better if you do not try to see it.’ He fixed his eyes on Charles’ face, and said in a low voice: ‘One man – saw – just once in his life. One man alone, m’sieur!’
‘Oh? Who is he?’
‘It does not matter now, m’sieur, who he is, for he is dead.’
Charles was half-startled, and half-scornful. ‘What did he die of ? Fright?’
The artist bent his gaze on his sketch again. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Yet me, I do not think he died of fright.’ He began to squeeze paint from one of his tubes. ‘You will go back to your Priory, m’sieur, but you will remember what I say, is it not?’
‘Certainly,’ Charles said. ‘And I shall hope to see your picture again when it is more finished, if you will let me.’
There was something rather pathetic about the way Duval looked up at that, unpleasant though the man’s personality might be. ‘You like it enough to wish to see more? But I have many pictures in my cottage, perhaps not so fine as this, but all, all full of my genius! One day perhaps you come to see me, and I show you. Perhaps you will see something you like enough to buy from me, hein?’
‘That was what I was thinking,’ lied Charles.
The Monk was forgotten; avarice gleamed in the artist’s eye. He said swiftly: ‘Bon! You come very soon, and I show you the best that I have painted. Perhaps you come to-morrow? Or the day after?’
‘Thanks, I’d like to come to-morrow if I may. Shall we say about this time?’ He consulted his wrist-watch. ‘Half-past three? Or does that break into your working hours?’
‘But no! I am quite at your service,’ M. Duval assured him.
‘Then au revoir,’ Charles said. ‘I’ll see you to-morrow.’
M. Duval’s farewell was as cordial as his greeting had been surly. Charles walked briskly back to the village, trying as he went to separate the grain of his talk from the chaff.
One thing seemed clear enough: unless the man were a consummate actor, he was not the Monk. It seemed improbable that, in his half-drugged condition, he could be acting a part, but on the other hand that very condition made it dangerous to set too much store by what he said. Much of it sounded suspiciously like the waking dreams experienced by drug-addicts, yet when he had spoken of the Monk, Charles thought that he had detected a look of perfectly sane hatred in his eyes. He had not been talking of a ghost: that much was certain. To Duval, the Monk was real, and, apparently, terrible. It was possible, of course, that in a state that resembled delirium his mind had seized on the idea of the ghostly inmate of the Priory, and woven a story about it. Possible, Charles admitted, but hardly probable.
If one accepted the provisional hypothesis that the Monk was no ghost, one was immediately faced with two problems. The first, Charles thought, was the reason he could have for what seemed a senseless masquerade; the s
econd, which might perhaps be easier to solve if the first were discovered, was his identity.
Since they had had, so far, no means of identifying any single thing about him, he might be any one of the people with whom they had become acquainted, or, which was quite possible, someone whom they had never seen.
The artist apparently knew something, but how much it was hard to decide. Charles hoped that on the following day he might, by buying one of his pictures, induce him to disclose more. If he was weaving a fanciful tale out of his own clouded mind it would be merely misleading, of course, but Charles felt that for the sake of the remote chance of discovering the Monk’s object in haunting the Priory, this must be faced.
He had reached the Bell Inn by this time. The bar was not open, but on the other side of the archway into the yard there was a draughty apartment known as the lounge. Here he found his brother-in-law seated in an uncomfortable leather chair, and chatting to Colonel Ackerley. The Colonel’s golf clubs were propped against one of the tables, and he was wearing a suit of immensely baggy plus-fours.
‘Aha, here’s Malcolm!’ he said, as Charles entered the room. ‘Sit down, my dear fellow! Been fishing? I’m on my way back from my day’s golf! Noticed your car outside and looked in to see which of you was trying to get a drink out of hours. Found you out, eh?’
‘It cannot be too widely known,’ said Charles, ‘that I am more or less of a teetotaller.’
‘But mostly less,’ Peter interpolated.
The Colonel was much amused by this, and repeated it. ‘More or less – that’s very good, Malcolm. I must remember that. Might mean either, what? But what have you been doing? Calling on the Vicar’s wife?’
‘I regard that as a reflection on my sobriety, sir,’ Charles said gravely. ‘No. I’ve been watching a very odd specimen paint a still odder picture.’
The Colonel lifted his brows. ‘That French johnny? Can’t say I understand much about art, but I’ve always thought his pictures were dam’ bad. I’m a plain man, and if I look at a picture I like to be able to see what it’s meant to be. But I daresay I’m old-fashioned.’
‘I should rather like to know,’ said Charles, ‘what he’s doing here. Know anything about him, sir?’
The Colonel shook his head. ‘No, afraid I don’t. Never really thought about it, to tell you the truth.’
‘He’s not exactly prepossessing,’ Peter remarked. ‘He may be a bit of a wrong ’un who finds it wiser not to return to his native shores.’
‘’Pon my soul, you people have got mysteries on the brain!’ exclaimed the Colonel. ‘First it’s poor old Titmarsh, and now it’s what’s-his-name? – Duval. What’s he been up to, I should like to know?’
‘Intriguing us by his conversation,’ said Charles lightly. ‘Making our blood run cold by his sinister references to our Monk.’
The Colonel threw up his hands. ‘No, no, once you get on to that Monk of yours I can’t cope with you, Malcolm. Now really, really, my dear fellow, you don’t seriously mean to tell me you’ve been listening to that sodden dope-fiend?’
Charles looked up quickly. ‘Ah! So you think he’s a dope-fiend too, do you?’
The Colonel caught himself up. ‘Daresay one oughtn’t to say so,’ he apologised. ‘Slander, eh? But it’s common talk round here.’
He glanced over his shoulder as someone opened the door. Wilkes had put his head into the room to see who was there. He bade them good afternoon, and wanted to know whether he might tell John, the waiter, to serve them with tea. They all refused, but the Colonel detained Wilkes. ‘I say, Wilkes,’ he called, ‘here’s that artist fellow been maundering to Mr Malcolm about the Priory ghost. Is he drunk again?’
Wilkes came farther into the room, shaking his head. ‘I’m afraid so, sir. Been carrying on something chronic these last three days. First it’s the Monk, then it’s eyes watching him in the dark, till he fair gives me the creeps, and yesterday nothing would do but he must tell me how there was a plot about to keep him from being reckernised. If you ask me, sir, he’s gone clean potty.’
‘Dear, dear, something will have to be done about it if that’s so,’ Colonel Ackerley said. ‘You never know with these drug fiends. He may turn dangerous.’
‘Yes, sir, that’s what I’ve been thinking,’ Wilkes said. ‘He’s got a nasty look in his eye some days.’
‘Better keep your carving-knife out of reach,’ the Colonel said laughingly.
At that moment Peter chanced to look at the window. ‘Hullo!’ he said. ‘There’s your pal, Fripp, Chas. Looks a trifle jaded.’
Charles glanced round, but Fripp had passed the window. ‘I daresay. There are quite a lot of rooms at the Priory,’ he remarked.
The Colonel pricked up his ears. ‘Fripp? Fripp? Seem to know that name. Wait a bit! Is he a fellow with some sort of a vacuum-cleaner?’
‘He is,’ said Charles. ‘He has been spending the afternoon demonstrating it at the Priory. In fact, all over the Priory.’
‘Perfect pest, these house-to-house salesmen,’ fumed the Colonel. ‘Came to my place the other day, but my man sent him about his business.’
‘I told him he wouldn’t do no good in these parts,’ Wilkes said. ‘What I can’t make out is how he comes to be making this place his headquarters, so to speak. Don’t seem reasonable, somehow, but I suppose he knows his business. You’re sure you wouldn’t like tea, sir?’
‘We must be getting along at any rate,’ Peter said, rising. ‘When are you coming in for another game of bridge, Colonel? Why not come home with us now, and have some tea, and a game?’
The Colonel said that nothing would please him more, and accordingly they all went out together, and drove back to the Priory to find Celia in ecstasies over the dustless condition of the house, and quite anxious to send an order for a cleaner at once.
Eight
ON THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON PETER WENT OFF WITH Colonel Ackerley to play golf on the nearest course, some four miles away on the other side of the village. Margaret, whose appointment with the dentist fell on this day, had taken the car up to London, so that Charles, no believer in such forms of exercise, was compelled to walk to M. Duval’s cottage.
He found it easily enough, but even the farmer’s disparaging remarks upon it had not quite prepared him for anything so tumbledown and dreary. It had an air of depressing neglect; the garden was overgrown with docks and nettles, every window wanted cleaning, and in places the original white plaster had peeled off the walls, leaving the dirty brown brick exposed.
The hinges of the gate were broken, and it stood open. Charles made his way up the path to the door of the cottage, and knocked on the blistered panels with his walking stick. After a few moments footsteps approached, Charles heard a bolt drawn, and the door was opened by M. Duval.
It was plain that he had made an effort to tidy not only the living-room of his abode, but also his own person. His shirt was clean, and he had evidently done his best to remove some of the stains from his coat. Also he was sober, but he betrayed by his nervousness, and his unsteady hand, what a hold over him drugs had obtained.
He was almost effusive in his welcome, and insisted that Charles should take tea with him as a preliminary to any negotiations they might enter into. The kettle, he said, was already on the stove. He seemed so anxious to play the host to the best of his ability that Charles accepted his offer.
‘I will make it on the instant,’ Duval told him. ‘I do not keep a servant, m’sieur. You will excuse me?’
‘Of course,’ Charles said. ‘And while you’re getting tea perhaps I may take a look at your work?’
Duval made a gesture that swept the little room. ‘You see my work, m’sieur, before you.’
All manner of canvases were propped against the walls, some so weird that they looked to be no more than irrelevant splashes of colour, some a riot of cubes, one or two moderately understandable.
‘Look your fill!’ Duval said dramatically. ‘You look into my soul.’
For the sake of M. Duval’s soul Charles hoped that this was an exaggeration. However, he bowed politely, and begged his host not to mind leaving him. Thus adjured, the artist disappeared into the lean-to kitchen that was built out at the back of the cottage, and Charles was left to take stock of his surroundings.
These were miserable enough. The cottage, which bore signs of considerable antiquity, had but the one living-room, from which a precipitous staircase led up between two walls to the upper storey. At the back a door led into the kitchen; at the front were lattice windows and the principal door of the house, and on one side a huge fireplace occupied almost the entire wall. The ceiling was low, and a wealth of old oak formed worm-eaten beams, in between which the cobwebs of years had formed. Charles judged that originally the room had served as kitchen and living-room combined, for from the great central beam one or two big hooks still protruded, from which, doubtless, flitches of bacon had hung in olden days.
The furniture was in keeping with the dilapidated building itself. A strip of dusty carpet lay across the floor; there were two sound chairs, and one with a broken leg that sagged against the wall; a table, an easel, a cupboard, and a deal chest that stood under the window, and which was covered with a litter of tubes, brushes, rags, and bits of charcoal.
There remained the pictures, and until Duval came back with the tea-pot Charles occupied himself in trying to make up his mind which he could best bring himself to buy.
Duval reappeared shortly, and set the tea-pot down on the table. He suggested, not without a hopeful note in his voice, that perhaps his guest would prefer a whisky and soda, but this Charles firmly declined.
‘Eh bien, then I give you sugar and milk, yes? So? You have looked at my pictures? Presently I will explain to you what I have tried to express in them.’
‘I wish you would,’ Charles said. ‘I can see that they are full of ideas.’
No further encouragement was needed to start the artist off on his topic. He talked volubly, but rather incoherently, for over half an hour, until Charles’ head reeled, and he felt somewhat as though he had stepped into a nightmare. But his polite questions and apparently rapt interest had the effect of banishing whatever guard the artist had set upon his tongue and he became expansive, though mysterious on the subject of his own enforced sojourn at Framley.