He laughed. ‘No, no. We’ll spare Philippe that. Well, don’t let me keep you.’ The wheelchair swivelled away, then slewed back to us. ‘Oh, by the way …’
‘Monsieur?’
‘Don’t let Philippe use the swing in the big coach-house, Miss Martin. I see that one of the rivets is working loose. Keep off it until it’s mended. We mustn’t have another accident, must we?’
‘No, indeed. Thank you monsieur, we’ll keep out of there.’
He nodded and swung the chair away again. It moved off with that disconcertingly smooth speed towards the gate to the kitchen garden. Philippe ran ahead of me towards the side door with the air of one reprieved from a terrible fate.
He wasn’t the only one. I was reflecting that once again my imagination had betrayed me. That smile of Monsieur de Valmy’s last night … Madame’s coldness … my interpretation of them had been wildly wide of the mark. A guilty conscience, and a too-ready ear for gossip had given me a few bad hours. It served me right. There was obviously no idea of dismissing me; if there had been Monsieur de Valmy would never have spoken to me as he had. All was well … and even if there were snags in the future, Raoul would be here beside me.
‘Mademoiselle,’ said Philippe, ‘you look quite different. Qu’est-ce que c’est?’
‘I think I’ve seen a raven,’ I said, ‘flying the right way up.’
The rest of the day limped through without incident. I put Philippe to bed a little earlier than usual, and later on, as soon as I had taken him his late-night chocolate, I went thankfully to bed myself and slept almost straight away.
I don’t remember waking. Straight out of deep sleep, it seemed, I turned my head on the pillow and looked with wide-open eyes towards the door. The room was dark and I could see nothing, but then there came the stealthy click of the door closing, and soft footsteps moved across the carpet towards the bed. I think that for a moment or two I didn’t realise I was awake, but lay still listening to the ghostly approach in a sort of bemused half-slumber.
Something touched the bed. I heard breathing. I was awake and this was real. My heart jerked once, in a painful spasm of fear, and I shot up in bed, saying on a sharply rising note: ‘Who’s that?’
As I grabbed for the bedside switch a voice that was no more than a terrified breath said: ‘Don’t put the light on. Don’t!’
My hand fell from the switch. The intruder’s terror seemed to quiver in the air between us, and in the face of it I felt myself growing calm. I said quietly: ‘Who is it?’
The whisper said: ‘It’s Berthe, miss.’
‘Berthe?’
There was a terrified sound that might have been a sob. ‘Oh, hush, miss, they’ll hear!’
I said softly: ‘What’s the matter, Berthe? What’s up?’ Then a thought touched me icily and I put a hand to the bed-clothes.
‘Philippe? Is there something the matter with Philippe?’
‘No, no, nothing like that! But it’s – it’s – I thought I ought to come and tell you—’
But here the distressful whispering was broken unmistakably by gulping sobs, and Berthe sat down heavily on the end of the bed.
I slipped from under the covers and padded across the room to lock the doors. Then I went back to the bed and switched on the bedside lamp.
Berthe was still crouched on the bottom of my bed, her face in her hands. She was wearing the silver-netted frock, with a coat of some cheap dark material thrown round shoulders which still shook with sobs.
I said gently: ‘Take your time, Berthe. Shall I make you some coffee?’
She shook her head, and lifted it from her hands. Her face, usually so pretty, was pinched and white. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and her eyes looked dreadful.
I sat down beside her on the bed and put an arm round her. ‘Don’t, my dear. What is it? Can I help? Did something happen at the dance?’ I felt the shoulders move. I said on a thought: ‘Is it Bernard?’
She nodded, still gulping. Then I felt her square her shoulders. I withdrew my arm but stayed beside her. Presently she managed to say, with rather ragged-edged composure: ‘You’d better get back into bed, miss. You’ll get cold like that.’
‘Very well.’ I slipped back into bed, pulled the covers round me, and looked at her. ‘Now tell me. What is it? Can I help?’
She didn’t answer for a moment. Nor did she look at me. Her eyes went round the room as if to probe the shadows, and I saw terror flick its whiplash across her face again. She licked her lips.
I waited. She sat for a moment, twisting her hands together. Then she said fairly calmly, but in a low, hurried voice: ‘It is Bernard … in a way. You know I’m – I’m going to marry Bernard? Well, he took me to the dance tonight, and I wore your frock and he said I looked a princess and he started – oh, he was drinking, miss, and he got … you know—’
‘I know.’
‘He was drunk,’ said Berthe, ‘I’ve never seen him that way before. I knew he’d taken a good bit, of course; he often does, but he never shows it. I – we went outside together.’ Her eyes were on her fingers, plaited whitely in her lap. Her voice thinned to a thread. ‘We went to my sister’s house. She and her man were at the dance. It – I know it was wrong of me, but—’ She stopped.
I said, feeling rather helpless and inadequate: ‘All right, Berthe. Skip that part. What’s frightened you?’
‘He was drunk,’ she said again, in that thin little voice. ‘I didn’t realise at first … he seemed all right, until … he seemed all right. Then … afterwards … he started talking.’ She licked her lips again. ‘He was boasting kind of wild-like about when we were married. I’d be a princess, he said, and we’d have money, a lot of money. I’d – I’d have to marry him soon, now, he said, and we’d buy a farm and be rich, and we’d have … oh, he talked so wildly and silly that I got frightened and told him not to be a fool and where would the likes of him get money to buy a farm. And he said—’
Her voice faltered and stopped.
I said, wondering where all this was leading: ‘Yes? He said?’
Her hands wrung whitely together in the little glow of the lamp. ‘He said there’d be plenty of money later on … when Philippe – when Philippe—’
‘Yes?’
‘– was dead,’ said Berthe on a shivering rush of breath.
My heart had begun to beat in sharp slamming little strokes that I could feel even in my finger-tips. Berthe’s eyes were on me now, filled with a sort of shrinking dread that was horrible. There was sweat along her upper lip.
I said harshly: ‘Go on.’
‘I – I’m only saying what he said. He was drunk … half-asleep. He was—’
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘He said Monsieur de Valmy had promised him the money—’
‘Yes?’
‘– when Philippe died.’
‘Berthe!’
‘Yes, miss,’ said Berthe simply.
Silence. I could see sweat on her forehead now. My hands were dry and ice-cold. I felt the nails scrape on the sheets as I clutched at them. The pulse knocked in my fingertips.
This was nonsense. It was nightmare. It wasn’t happening. But something inside me, some part of brain or instinct listened unsurprised. This nightmare was true: I knew it already. On some hidden level I had known it for long enough. I only wondered at my own stupidity that had not recognised it before. I heard myself saying quietly: ‘You must finish now, Berthe. Philippe … so Philippe is going to die later on, is he? How much later on?’
‘B – Bernard said soon. He said it would have to be soon because Monsieur Hippolyte cabled early today that he was coming home. They don’t know why – he must be ill or something; anyway, he’s cancelling his trip and he’ll be here by tomorrow night, so they’ll have to do it soon, Bernard says. They’ve tried already, he says, but—’
I said: ‘They?’
‘The Valmys. Monsieur and Madame and Monsieur—’
‘No,’ I said. ‘N
o.’
‘Yes, miss. Monsieur Raoul,’ said Berthe.
Of course I said: ‘I don’t believe it.’
She watched me dumbly.
‘I don’t believe it!’ My voice blazed with the words into fury. But she didn’t speak. If she had broken into protestation perhaps I could have gone on fighting, but she said nothing, giving only that devastating shrug of the shoulders with which the French disclaim all knowledge and responsibility.
‘Berthe. Are you sure?’
Another lift of the shoulders.
‘He said so? Bernard said so?’
‘Yes.’ Then something in my face pricked her to add: ‘He was drunk. He was talking—’
‘I know. Kind of wild. That means nothing. But this can’t be true! It can’t! I know that! Berthe, do you hear me? It – simply – isn’t – true.’
She said nothing, but looked away.
I opened my lips, then shut them again, and in my turn was silent.
I don’t intend – even if I could – to describe the next few minutes. To feel something inside oneself break and die is not an experience to be re-lived at whatever merciful distance. After a while I managed, more or less coherently, to think, spurred to it by the savage reminder that Philippe was what mattered. All the rest could be sorted out, pondered, mourned over, later; now the urgent need was to think about Philippe.
I pushed back the bedclothes. Berthe said sharply: ‘Where are you going?’
I didn’t answer. I slipped out of bed and flew to the bathroom door. Through the bathroom … across the child’s darkened bedroom … Bending over the bed, I heard his breathing, light and even. It was only then, as I straightened up on a shaking wave of relief, that I knew how completely I had accepted Berthe’s statement. What was it, after all? A frightened girl’s version of the drunken and amorous babbling of a servant? And yet it rang so true and chimed in with so many facts that without even half a hearing it seemed I was ready to jettison the employers who had shown me kindness and the man with whom an hour ago I had been in love.
Stiffly, blindly, like a sleepwalker, I went back to my own room, leaving the connecting doors ajar. I climbed back into bed.
‘Is he all right?’ Berthe’s whisper met me, sharp and thin.
I nodded.
‘Oh, miss, oh, miss …’ She was wringing her hands again. I remember thinking with a queer detached portion of my mind that here was someone wringing her hands. One reads about it and one never sees it, and now here it was. When at length I spoke it was in a dead flat voice I didn’t recognise as my own. ‘We’d better get this clear, I think. I don’t say that I accept what Bernard says, but – well, I want to hear it … all. He says there’s a plot on hand to murder Philippe. If that’s so, there’s no need to ask why; the gains to Monsieur and Madame and – the gains are obvious.’
The words came easily. It was like a play. I was acting in a play. I didn’t feel a thing – no anger or fear or unhappiness. I just spoke my lines in that dead and uninflected voice and Berthe listened and stared at me and twisted her hands together.
I said: ‘You say “they’ve tried already”. I suppose you mean the shot in the woods and the balcony rail?’
‘Y – yes.’
‘So.’ I remembered then the white expectancy on Madame de Valmy’s face as Philippe and I came up from the woods that day. And the night of the balcony rail; she hadn’t come upstairs that night to get any tablets; she had come because she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. Léon de Valmy, stationed in the hall, must have heard the crash from the forecourt. My mind leaped on from this to recollect those two interviews with my employer in the library. I said harshly: ‘This could be true. Oh, my dear God, Berthe, it could be true. Well, let’s have it. Who fired the shot? Bernard himself?’
‘No. That was Monsieur Raoul. Bernard dug the bullet out.’
I forgot about its being a play. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘Miss—’
‘Did Bernard say so?’
‘Yes.’
‘In so many words?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he’s lying. He probably did the shooting himself and—’ But here I saw her face and stopped. After a while I said fairly calmly: ‘I’m sorry. I did ask you to tell me just what he said, after all. And I – I’m pretty sure that what he said is true in the main. It’s just that I can’t quite bring myself to – to believe—’
‘Yes, miss. I know.’
I looked at her. ‘Oh, Berthe, you make me ashamed. I was so wrapped up in my own feelings that I forgot the way you’d be feeling, too. I’m sorry. We’re both in the same boat, aren’t we?’
She nodded wordlessly.
Somehow the knowledge steadied me. I said: ‘Well, look, Berthe. We’ve got to be tough about this for Philippe’s sake, and because there isn’t much time. Later on we can work it out and – and decide who’s guilty and who isn’t. At present I suppose we must assume they’re all in it, whether or not we can believe it in our heart of hearts. And I’m pretty sure that Monsieur and Madame are guilty – in fact I know they are. I’m very much to blame for not seeing it before, but who on earth goes about suspecting an impossible outlandish thing like murder? That’s something that happens in books, not among people you know. I suppose I ought to have seen it straight away, when Philippe was shot at in the woods. And Raoul … Raoul was out there; he admitted it himself, and Bernard was sent straight out, and I suppose he removed the bullet then and went back later with someone else to ‘discover’ it. Yes, and I was right in thinking that Monsieur de Valmy knew I spoke French; I’d shouted it at – at the murderer in the beech-wood, and talked it to Philippe all the way home. Then the affair of the balcony rail, Berthe – I suppose that and the swing in the barn were extras? Off-chances? Booby-traps that might work sooner or later?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then the Cadillac’s horn blasting at – perhaps at nothing – brought Philippe out to his death?’ I added shakily: ‘Do I have to believe that, too?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, miss. What horn? Bernard never said anything about any horn.’
‘Oh? Well, skip it. It’s over, thank God, without harm. Now we have to think what to do.’
I looked down at my hands while I tried to marshal my thoughts. And the pattern was forming in a way I didn’t want to examine too closely. It was all there. I tried to make myself look at it all quite coldly and in order, from the time when Philippe had been sent up to Valmy and so delivered by the unsuspecting Hippolyte straight into the hands of murder …
The first step – and it was taken immediately – had been to get rid of the only person close to Philippe and trusted by Hippolyte – the child’s nurse. Someone must replace her, and it was judged better to find a young woman without family or guardian who, in the event of an ‘accident’ to her pupil, wouldn’t be able to call upon friends and relatives to exonerate her from possible charges of carelessness (or worse) should there be a mistake and doubts arise. So Madame de Valmy had made inquiries of a friend in London who was known to supply her friends with domestic help from an orphanage. Who better than an orphan, and a foreigner at that – someone who, in the accumulated bewilderments of a new job, a new country, and a foreign language, would hardly be in a position to observe too much or defend herself too readily … There had in sober fact been that slight over-emphasis on my Englishness … my instinct to hide my Continental origin had, absurd though it had seemed, been right.
So the scapegoat had been found and brought to France. They waited. There was plenty of time. I had been allowed to settle in; my life with Philippe formed its own quiet pattern, an ordinary day-to-day pattern which appeared pleasantly normal except that Monsieur de Valmy couldn’t quite keep his bitter tongue off the child who stood between him and so much. So it had gone on. I had stayed there three weeks, settled and happy, though still not quite at ease with my employers. Then the attempt was made and, by the purest cha
nce, it failed. The second was a longer chance, but quite safe for them – the rotten coping had already been reported, so Bernard had made sure of the stone’s collapse and then waited for an accident to happen when none of the interested parties was anywhere near. And the second ‘accident’ failed too, because of me. If the first, or even the second, had come off, ‘accident’ would almost certainly have been the verdict … and no doubt an entirely baffling series of alibis was in any case available. Certainly the one person who couldn’t be found guilty was the interested party, Léon de Valmy. It would have been a tragedy, and it would have blown over, whispers and all, and Léon would have had Valmy. It was even possible that there’d have been no whispers at all … Léon was highly thought of, and a first-rate landlord: the country folk would for many years past have regarded him as the seigneur, and they might have been only too pleased when the custody of Valmy passed unequivocally into his hands.
Berthe was still crouching at the foot of my bed, watching me dumbly. I said: ‘And now, Berthe, what’s next?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘You must. This is what matters. Think. Bernard let so much out; he must have told you that.’
‘No. I don’t think he knew himself. I think it wasn’t to be him. That’s all.’ She floundered, gulped, and began to sob again.
Out of nowhere, unbidden, unwanted, a picture flashed onto the dark screen of my mind. Philippe’s sleeping head lolling back against Raoul’s shoulder, and Héloïse’s voice saying hoarsely: ‘What’s the matter with Philippe?’ And Raoul giving her that hard quelling look. ‘Nothing at all. He’s asleep.’
I said shakily: ‘And Bernard said nothing to indicate when? Or how?’
‘No, honestly he didn’t. But it was to be soon because of Monsieur Hippolyte coming back. The cable came early this morning and it really put the Master out, Bernard said.’
‘And Hippolyte’s coming back tomorrow?’ I caught my breath. ‘Today, Berthe. It’s today, d’you realise that? Today?’
‘Why – yes, I reckon it is. It’s nearly one o’clock, isn’t it? But I don’t rightly know when Monsieur Hippolyte’ll get here. I think it won’t be till night, and then he mayn’t get up to Valmy till Thursday.’