The Prisoner of the Riviera Read online

  I nodded, though not knowing the details of their marriage, who could be sure?

  “And I was able to assist him in assembling certain papers of a sentimental value for her.”

  “Very nice,” I said.

  “Yes. But”—and here he paused and pivoted on one polished shoe; he wore, I noticed, a sort of lounge slipper as black and shiny as coal—“there is some problem with the manner of delivery. I do not like to mail these things to her. I think we need the—what is the phrase—the personal touch.”

  “Always a good idea,” I said, but I guessed we weren’t talking strictly sentimental value here.

  “I understand that you and your friend are taking a little holiday in France. Might I ask if you are going south?”

  I nodded.

  “Let me guess!” A quite unnecessarily dramatic pause. Then, as if producing a rabbit from a hat, he said, “Monte Carlo? Alas, our poor club cannot compete with the attractions of Monte! Such a palace, such a clientele! The dream of every gaming impresario! I envy you, Francis. I truly do.”

  I waited to see what would come from such an elaborate preamble.

  “It happens,” he said at last, “that poor Victor’s widow lives on the Riviera. Perhaps you would undertake to deliver his papers to her?”

  I shrugged. You could make fish soup just off the smell of this.

  “I think as a little thank-you for your help to Victor—and to his widow, of course—we could forget your debts at the club.” He pulled out some slips and showed them to me. All together they totaled an awesome number of pounds and guineas. “When I hear from her, I tear them up, yes?”

  I didn’t have much choice unless I wanted to be working for the club for the next decade, but before I could answer Nan piped up from the kitchen. “Have him put it in writing, dear boy.”

  Joubert frowned, but he scribbled a note and signed it. Nan sidled in, slid the paper into her black leather nanny’s purse, and retired to the kitchen, whereupon Joubert produced a substantial packet from one of his coat pockets. Victor’s letter must be nearly the length of a small book. The wrapper was very carefully taped up and sealed with a couple fat daubs of red wax. “I needn’t tell a gentleman of your intelligence that the seals must remain unbroken.”

  “Do not offend me, Monsieur.” I tried for righteous indignation, but I was already wondering if I could take just the smallest peek at the contents.

  He bowed with a particularly oleaginous and unconvincing smile, and Nan reappeared to usher him out.

  “A dubious man,” she said when the door was closed and locked. “And no gentleman.”

  “I should think not.”

  “What do you suppose is in it?” She picked up the packet.

  “Why, Victor’s last letter to his wife,” I said. “Supposedly.”

  “Victor. What’s Victor’s last name?”

  “Renard. Supposedly.”

  “Who was shot outside that club?”

  “The same. It was in the papers.”

  “But not his death, dear boy. I would certainly have noticed his death. Either you or Arnold has read me the Telegraph every day since. I shouldn’t like to think that the Telegraph has let us down.”

  “Nor I, Nan.”

  “But there’s money involved,” she said, peering at Monsieur Joubert’s note. “We must have a look in that package.”

  “Sealed up like King Tut’s tomb.”

  She poked at the wrapper with her long bony fingers. “A book, I think, with a soft binding like a notebook.”

  I took the package from her. I could feel the outline of what, yes, felt like a notebook. With maybe some papers. Maybe a letter, after all, maybe not. “Have we got any sealing wax?”

  “I think so, dear boy. But the seal?”

  “We’ll make a copy,” I said, “with a little plaster mold.”

  That’s what we did, but several hours of careful work proved disappointing. The letter was just as Joubert had said, a short farewell note in shaky handwriting expressing love and regret and including a reference to good times in the past. The text struck me as curiously flat and pro forma for someone’s dying words, but no doubt the writer hadn’t been too concerned with style. Odd just the same, and the notebook, likewise, with its columns of figures and names, mostly but not exclusively French, along with some notations in no language I recognized.

  When we had rewrapped the package in brown paper and sealed it up with cellophane and red wax, Nan said, “Get rid of it as soon as you can.”

  How sad that excellent advice is so readily ignored. As soon as we were on the Channel ferry, I felt free of my usual concerns—always a delightful, if dangerous, sentiment. And then France was so different. Though Caen was said to be utterly destroyed and we saw damaged fields and shattered churches, Dieppe looked like a prewar town. From the boat train customs shed, I saw cranes aloft over the port and wagons and trucks loaded with timbers to repair the docks, but the town itself seemed almost untouched.

  “Is there much damage?” Nan asked. That was to be her question throughout.

  “The port, yes, the town, no. Everything seems intact.”

  “The Canadians died here,” Nan said. I used to think that her mental map of two conflicts was part of her eccentricity. Now I know better. There are parts of London forever marked for me, places where I smell blood, smoke, and gas.

  When I said, “We must eat and drink for them,” she patted my arm. And, though she is dead suspicious of foreigners and distrusts the French and asked if every plate was clean, she tucked into the bread and a nice piece of plaice, while Arnold and I gorged on mussels with garlic and butter. We’d come to enjoy ourselves, and we did, both there and in Paris, where we wondered at the clean streets and clean air, at the intact buildings and the handsome blocks lacking the craters and gaps so much a part of London. As we wandered down the Champs-Elysées, I described the sights to Nan: the Arc de Triomphe, the lines of chestnut trees, the palaces and museums, and the French taxicabs, which Nan associates with the World War I Battle of the Marne.

  “No damage?” she asked again, for she distrusts the French whom she feels did not quite do their part.

  “Splendor saved by capitulation,” Arnold murmured.

  I had to agree, though whether it is really better to keep your buildings and have Nazis in your bed than to lose your buildings and keep der Führer’s boots across the water, I don’t know. But I was sure there would be plenty of damage under the surface, flesh and blood and moral equanimity being less durable than stately monuments. Certainly there were plenty of boys around Pigalle with thin, hungry faces. Thanks to my uncle Lastings, who deprived me of my innocence then abandoned me to profit from my knowledge, I’d been in their shoes between the wars, and I didn’t mind sharing the wealth. Paris presented opportunities such as I am quite willing to take, but, after Nan and I nearly made ourselves sick on filled pastries and fancy cakes, we took the Train Bleu south to the sun. We had in mind extravagant fun—and, of course, the delivery of Victor’s “last words.”

  Chapter Two

  We’d planned for a leisurely course along the Riviera, an orgy of French food and seaside casinos on our way to Monte. What I hadn’t taken into account was Nan’s failing sight, which made navigating unfamiliar places difficult. My heart sank when I heard her stumbling into furniture in her adjoining room or watched her listening at the curb for traffic or extending her hand for fear of street trees and lampposts. She admitted to being half blind, but she managed so well at home and around the studio that I hadn’t realized how much she relied on memory. Although she never complained except about the multitude of foreigners and the filthy public lavatories, Arnold agreed that moving her every day or so was going to cause her difficulty. We decided on our mandatory stop for Victor Renard’s widow, if such she was, then straight to Monte Carlo.

 
; Fortunately, the Widow Renard lived outside what turned out to be a particularly attractive resort. A row of white and pink hotels equipped with gay awnings and classical façades overlooked a sandy shore and a palm-lined esplanade that ended at the casino. Arnold was taken with the beach, and I had to admit that the tourist area with its landmarks would be easy for Nan. We took a decent win at roulette as an omen and booked for a week at the best hotel in town.

  Ah, to be en vacances as the French say. Have I mentioned that I hate the shore? At least the English shore. The cold and fog, the tacky amusement piers and argus-eyed landladies are not my style. But sun and French bread and good pâtés make up for so much, and soon I devised a routine that pleased me. I usually stayed in to paint until late morning, when I would make my way across to the plage. Arnold would be sitting after his swim, smoking and reading something serious, which he would share with me, because he wants to complete my education. Arnold is big and robust with a broad forehead; a straight, rather thin nose; and a round chin. He is not handsome exactly, though his hazel eyes are good, but he is vigorous and considerate and, at nearly twenty years my senior, just the right age for me.

  Yes, though pretty boys are fun, I prefer older men. We get on very well, and he is genuinely fond of Nan, who I always find sitting beside him, wrapped up like an Edwardian lady under an umbrella the size of a marquee. Nan can’t read anymore—either Arnold or I must read her the British newspapers that we buy at the kiosk—so she watches the waves and the boats and critiques bathing costumes that are all too skimpy in her opinion. I lie on a straw mat and look into the blue nothingness and soak up the sun we all crave or splash in the water with Arnold, who is an excellent swimmer. That’s morning, which ends with a long lunch at the restaurant overlooking the esplanade and the shore.

  Afternoons are already warm—hot for us northerners. We take siestas like the locals, and Arnold and I amuse ourselves in bed. Then, around about four, when the shops start to reopen, I take myself off to the upper town for a drink in one of the cafés or for a walk into the dry hills with Arnold. The buff and gray landscape is bracing, and there’s little pollen to bother my asthma. The sea below is a bold blue-green and the bleached hills and the vivid sky and water remind me of my Australian pal, Roy, whose Antipodean palette echoes just those hues. I wonder if mine reflects London as clearly.

  At night we eat well again and hit the bars and the casino after Nan goes to bed—or, as she’s been doing more and more, wins money from the bridge players in the lobby, who foolishly think a half-blind ex-nanny will be an easy mark. About the only thing I don’t do is visit the Widow Renard. The packet lay under the clean shirts in my suitcase, ignored rather than forgotten. I had a strong sense that the package was bad luck and my errand, bad business. If I’d had cash in hand, I’d have chucked it into the sea. As it was, I left delivery until the day before we planned to leave, and then I postponed it again until late afternoon, when I walked up to the station and took the train down the line to the fishing port near Madame Renard’s rented villa.

  The local rattled along the Mediterranean, brilliant ultramarine in the late-afternoon light. I got out at the village: a cluster of houses with a little hotel next to the station and a café between it and the fishing port. Madame Renard’s house, the Villa Mimosa, was up in the hills, and I was directed to a steep road that shortly lost its tarmac and became stony as well as vertiginous. The land was dry and rocky with insects buzzing in the dusty scrub. As I walked, long gray shadows reached down from the hills to darken the desolate landscape that made such a contrast to the pretty coastal towns.

  After I’d climbed a mile or so, I reached a hamlet of white and buff houses squatting under heavy tile roofs, one- and two-story constructions with their stucco coatings eaten away by age and weather to show the stone and brick underneath. Everywhere the shutters were down against the heat, and except for a cat asleep in one window and three black hens pecking through the white dust, nothing stirred.

  Victor’s supposed widow lived in the largest of these buildings, a two-story house no better maintained than the rest but with the pretension of French doors and a walled front garden. I opened the ironwork gate, crossed a bare yard ornamented by two spiky plants and a few dried-up pots, and rang the bell. No answer. I waited long enough to feel relief, and I was looking for somewhere to leave the package, when the door opened with a dry creak. A young woman, barely more than a girl, appeared in the doorway. I recognized her right away—not her personally, but her type, alert and underfed with a bad haircut atop a pert, intelligent face. She wore a black-and-white-striped sailor shirt and tight black Capri pants that showed off nice legs. Her lipstick was bright red, her mascara, purple, and if she was grieving, I was the pope in Rome. But I recognized her. Those of us who have lived by our wits and survived on our looks are all members of one club.

  “Madame Renard?”

  “Mais oui,” she said and looked me over carefully. I was tempted to wink, but Joubert wasn’t paying me for comedy.

  “Monsieur Joubert sent me. I have a package for you.”

  She stepped back and motioned me inside the dim foyer. I saw that the room beyond, striped with the thin bands of sun seeping through the shutters, was empty. In fact, as my eyes adjusted from the brilliant white glare outside, I noticed that there was not a single table, chair, or chest visible anywhere and that the walls had been stripped bare. Besides ourselves, the only sign of human habitation was a pervasive smell of Gauloises Bleu. “You took your damn time,” she said in French. Her voice was harsh, but her speech, though profane, was not uneducated. A surprise, that.

  I shrugged but I wondered how she knew I’d been in the area. Perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps living in a house without furniture had gotten on her nerves. Perhaps black wasn’t her color. Perhaps she wasn’t Madame Renard; she certainly seemed a curious match for Victor, the elegantly dressed gambler, but there’s no accounting for taste in erotic matters.

  “Let’s have it.” When I handed over the packet, she stepped into the adjoining room and cranked open a shutter. “You examined this?”

  “Certainly not.” Fortunately I can lie with a straight face and, in any case, I had learned almost nothing from my examination.

  “Wait here.” She disappeared into the back, her espadrilles slapping along the tiled floor. When she didn’t immediately return, I took a turn along the hall and tried the door behind me without success. A second door opened to reveal another empty, shuttered chamber. I found it hard to believe that anyone was in residence, yet there was a sense of presence. Though I could detect no sound, not even Madame moving about in the back and certainly no voices, I had a feeling that we were not alone, that there were others in the house, that she had gone to take them the packet.

  “Ah, Monsieur.” She appeared behind me in the corridor, looking relieved, I thought. “It is all very satisfactory. So thoughtful of Victor. I am grateful to you.”

  She seemed sincere, and I made a little bow.

  “He was such a thoughtful man.” She sniffed but could not manage a tear. “You were with him near the end, I understand.”

  “I did my best, but he’d lost too much blood.”

  “A tragedy.” Her face darkened in a reasonable facsimile of grief. “Could I offer you some refreshment? A drink, perhaps?”

  Music to my ears, normally, but something about her quick eyes and her theatrical talents warned me not to linger. “Alas, Madame, I am due back shortly. It took longer to reach your villa than I’d expected.”

  She made a little face. “It’s at the end of the world,” she said. “But, of course, Victor loved it and so I love it, too. We could drink a toast to Victor.”

  “Another time that would be a pleasure.”

  “If we meet again, Monsieur,” she said and opened the door.

  For a curious moment, I had the feeling that she would like to delay my departure, bef
ore she gave a little wave and closed the door smartly.

  Outside the gate, the dusty road dropped down to the sea and the little port below, while the hills reared up dark behind me. My first impulse was to hustle back to the station before shadows overtook the track. Then, completely on impulse, I ducked down an alley—one could hardly call it a street—that squeezed between a short row of houses and took me out of sight of Madame’s villa. Could there be another road, an alternate track down to the coast and the rail line? I saw a small church with a squat stone tower, found the door unlocked, and stepped inside.

  The nave was spartan, a few dozen wooden chairs, a small altar, a choir stall, a large wooden crucifix, and a pervasive smell of old dust and incense. There was a door toward the back, doubtless to the vestry, and, to my left, a second door to the tower stairs. Mercifully, the climb was a short one, because the well-aged dust contracted my lungs. I pushed open the trap and clambered into an open belfry where I had an excellent view of the Villa Mimosa. I stood back from the opening and waited. Five minutes passed, ten. I was wheezing and beginning to feel foolish when the gate opened and two men walked out.

  They were dressed like French workmen in overalls and blue smocks, but my guess was that they hadn’t done an honest day’s work in a long time. For one thing, they were slipping and stumbling just as I had done on the dusty track, and, for another I caught a glimpse of town shoes, not workman’s boots. I moved to the other side of the tower and watched them descend. I had half convinced myself that they were on some innocent errand until they paused at the side street. They were looking for me, I realized, and, trapped in the only obvious refuge, I had a bad moment before they continued down the main road and out of sight.

  After half an hour, I figured that they must have reached the station, and whether they waited or returned, I wanted to be gone before dark. I clattered down the stairs and out of the church. A block farther on, the houses ended and the street turned into a goat trail through the scrub. Disinclined to meet the faux workmen on the main road, I went with the goats, skittering over loose rocks amid the white powdery soil. I took an hour negotiating various rocky outcrops and thorny bushes to reach the coastal road.