The Prisoner of the Riviera Page 6

  We shook hands formally and they promised the card for later that afternoon. I walked back to the hotel to pack my bag and my painting kit, stopping for a farewell drink at the café I’d been frequenting. I had barely settled under one of its umbrellas when a stout fellow with dark jowls and the face of a lesser emperor sat down heavily in the seat opposite me. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face.

  I waited. As a romantic approach, this lacked something in subtlety. He signaled for Louis, who brought us a carafe of white wine and some biscuits. All very civilized.

  “To your good health,” my companion said when the drinks were poured. Despite his heavy, even brutal, appearance, his voice was soft and insinuating. “May it continue.”

  First a knife in the back and now a toast to my health. I said nothing.

  He took a drink of his wine, held it up to the light, took another sip. He helped himself to three of the biscuits at once and said, “Monsieur Joubert is very displeased.”

  “You’re from Joubert? Where are my gambling chits? No, no,” I said when he began describing his master’s wrath. “I got a package from Joubert. I delivered the package. I have had nothing but trouble since.”

  “You delivered it to the wrong woman after alerting half the town.”

  “I was given no directions and no description of the lady in question. Joubert is an incompetent ass. You can remind him that I have a signed agreement for a job that I have completed.”

  “You are behaving very foolishly. You are broke and without papers—that is correct? The police have your passport?”

  “My problems are nothing to you.”

  “You are broke in a foreign country without documents. You need me, Monsieur.”

  I said several rude things about my needs of the moment, but my fat, vaguely sinister visitor was undeterred. “You have, moreover, friends in England. Friends who are known to Monsieur Joubert. It is in their interest as well as yours that you cooperate.”

  I didn’t like this at all. I would have to wire Arnold, make arrangements for Nan. “If Joubert wants some caricatures from the beachfront, I’ll be happy to oblige. Otherwise, you can tell him, he’s out of luck.”

  “Monsieur Joubert wants that package back. You are to get it for him.”

  “Oh, right, without papers, without money, without knowing what is going on.”

  He put a fat envelope on the table. “A little walking-around money,” he said.

  I didn’t touch it. “Walking around here has not been entirely pleasant.”

  “Hence this small gratuity. You and Monsieur Joubert have enemies in common. They have his package.”

  “And they’d like me dead. Excuse me if I’d rather avoid them.”

  “Monsieur Joubert wants to retrieve that package. See it happens,” he said, getting awkwardly to his feet. “Otherwise, I can’t vouch for the health of either you or your friends.”

  Being en vacances was gaining new meaning all the time.

  I wired a warning to Arnold and rethought my plan—a simple, touristy plan, I now realized—of storing my painting kit in left luggage and taking the train to Nice. Neither would do at all. I had to assume the police or my emissary from Joubert or even my assailant of last night would be keeping an eye on the gare. I would have to find an alternate route. I ruffled through the bills in the envelope and put them in my wallet. At this juncture, trapped like the proverbial rat, et cetera, et cetera, I thought a night on the town would be a good idea, and, under the pressure of imminent violent death, I came up with a possible companion.

  Chapter Six

  The sun slid down into the Mediterranean, the dark sea of Homer and of Aeschylus, whom I love. Because I was both badly and briefly educated, the great Greek poets were never ruined for me with classes and exams. Especially near nightfall, the time when blood is shed in the palaces, the time secrets are unfolded and rituals begin, I often think of the Greeks, my spiritual mentors. After a time of war and misery, they were distractingly vivid to my imagination—which, I reminded myself, must be redirected to finding my way through the town’s narrow streets, all seemingly deserted except for some lurking cats and a small dog barking behind an iron fence.

  Had there been a patisserie on the corner? A laundry? I couldn’t remember and I didn’t want to ask. With night coming on, the shadows of the stone walls started to remind me less of ancient kings and more of local thugs. My bag was a nuisance, too, but if I was to troll the various clubs and cafés of Nice, I needed a dinner jacket and a pair of decent shoes. Another little alley. I’d come down toward the sea again, and I could see the coastal road that I’d last glimpsed from the sidecar of Pierre’s motorcycle. Head west again, remember the turns. Yes, there was the boulangerie, and there was the sign: bicyclettes. My prospects brightened slightly when I saw the black motorcycle with its fishlike and uncomfortable sidecar waiting in front.

  I set down my case and listened. The showroom was dark but the big metal doors of the garage were open and the interior lit. Voices? No. Just the soft clinks of gears being adjusted and the shush of tires being inflated. I walked across the yard, stuck my case behind a trash barrel, and went to the door. Pierre’s curly head—another little echo of the Greeks—was bent over a derailleur. He was moving the pedals by hand and fiddling with the shifting.

  “Bon soir.” He straightened up with a start, as handsome as I remembered, even without his memorable cycling kit. “Sorry,” I said in French, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Monsieur Francis.”

  “The same. Preserved thanks to your kindness.”

  He looked shamefaced and uneasy.

  “We had such a pleasant evening. I wondered if you might like to go to dinner.”

  “Ah, Monsieur,” he gestured toward the shop, the bicycles.

  “One must eat.” I could see that there were several bicycles finished and ready with their bills attached. He was not busy; he was embarrassed, and so he should be. As a matter of principle, I avoid assisting the police, but how could I reproach him when I was, myself, a prisoner of the Riviera, “helping with police inquiries”? But perhaps not for long, if I could exert my charm. “I can offer you Cannes. A very good restaurant. We begin with a pâté and a salad. A dry wine. We progress to mussels with garlic with, I think, a white Burgundy. And for dessert, I favor a selection of small tarts and some Sauternes.”

  He was tempted. Of course, he was. France had food, but food was expensive and every other person was hungry. Postwar, cuisine, high and low, was on everyone’s mind.

  “Cannes has some fine restaurants,” he said. “But pricey.”

  “I have come into a little money. As an indirect result of being questioned by the police.”

  “Rare good fortune, Monsieur,” he said, and I thought he relaxed a little.

  “Don’t feel bad about les flics,” I said. “If not you, the hotel concierge or the café waiters or some busybody on the front would have pointed me out. You’re a good citizen, and I’m in a pickle but not in any real trouble.”

  “We’d been seen at the restaurant,” he said quickly. “They said you were a witness to the killing.”

  “If that were true, I’d be dead. I delivered a package to the house just about an hour before you gave me a lift. I suspect the victim was already dead when I arrived that afternoon.”

  “Oh, very certainly, Monsieur. Very certainly.”

  This put my situation in a new light. “How can you be sure?”

  “The smell, of course. The neighbors went to investigate early the next morning.”

  I swore under my breath at Inspector Chardin. “But they told the police they saw no one but me. That can’t have been true. Two men followed me from the villa. If the neighbors saw me, they almost certainly saw the men leave, too.”

  “They are frightened, Monsieur. Everyone is fri
ghtened, not of those particular men, but of their employer, who was very big during the war. Very big. Official, almost. People remember.”

  “So the men were known. And known also to the police?”

  “How could they not be, Monsieur?”

  How indeed! A little more of this and I’d be “down the rabbit hole,” as my depraved uncle Lastings of affectionate memory used to say. But more than ever, I needed to get out of town, and my escort seemed hesitant. Take the bull by the horns, my nan whispered. “Would you know a good restaurant in Cannes?” I asked.

  When he nodded, I pulled out a roll of Joubert’s francs. I handed them over and said, “Treat me to dinner.”

  He ruffled through the bills and raised an eyebrow. “You mentioned mussels,” he said with the fussy precision of the gourmet, “but I rather fancy a fricassee of rabbit or a veal escalope.”

  “Either would be delightful with a fish soup to start.”

  He put the bills in his pocket. “With perhaps a small pizza with olives?”

  “The very thing.”

  “And I think a mousse au chocolat for dessert.” He went to a hook behind the bench and collected a key.

  “I might lean to crème brûlée, myself.”

  “Some of each,” Pierre said decisively. He tossed me a pair of biker’s goggles. “My cousin has a restaurant in Cannes. Not fancy but excellent, Monsieur.”

  “Call me Francis; I am in your hands entirely.” A figure of speech suggesting the delightful prospects that my charms might accomplish.

  He switched off the lights and locked up the garage. I thought he might balk when he saw my bag, a small carpet valise borrowed from the Chavanel ladies, but I squeezed into the sidecar before he could protest, and after a moment’s hesitation he went back for a rope, lashed the bag to the cycle proper, and hopped on the machine. “Hang on, Francis,” he said. With a bump and a rumble we rolled onto the street and down the hill to where the sea was a blackness broken only by the lights of distant boats.

  Once on the corniche road, Pierre gunned the engine. Coming in, without goggles, blinded by dust and grit, and tortured by loose bike parts, had been misery. With vision and comfort, this was different. We roared east, flat out on the straights, trusting physics to keep us on the curves, slowing a fraction for the lights of the little fishing hamlets, then rocketing off into the darkness. The hills rose black above us, the sea dropped away into eternity, and we raced between them, almost drunk with exhilaration. Here was what I’d glimpsed on canvas, the dissolution of the world into dark energy. I started whooping with joy, and over the sound of the engine, Pierre shouted menu suggestions and detailed a wine list of ever-increasing complexity.

  We reached the bay at Cannes almost too soon. We shot along the wide curving beach, past the lights of the waterfront cafés and hotels, and up to a small bright restaurant with candlelit tables under the umbrellas and, inside, a cheerful bar decorated with pictures of football and bicycle teams. Pierre was embraced; my hand was shaken. Pierre consulted with the head waiter and the chef, before we were led to a sidewalk table. A carafe of the local white appeared and a basket of good bread.

  “Bonne chance with your race,” I said.

  “And to your venture, whatever it is.”

  I’d need all the luck I could get, but I believe in putting pleasure before business. We had soup, we had pizza, we had fish and veal and beans and lovely fried potatoes. We had three bottles of wine and more desserts than were good for us, and afterward we walked barefoot along the sand, an unaccustomed activity that shows just how besotted I was with Pierre.

  When I suggested that we should take a room, that it was not safe for him to ride back, he agreed, and that turned out lovely, too. I’d say a fine evening in every way, and as evening turned into the next morning, it became profitable, for thanks to Joubert’s money and that fine dinner, I learned some interesting things, even a possible identity for Victor Renard, the man who never was. This was in the wee hours of the morning, when Pierre went out onto the tiny balcony of the room to smoke.

  The moment was right, and I asked, “So who owns the Villa Mimosa?”

  I saw his shoulders move. “It was owned by Paul Desmarais, who was a trucker. During the war, he made a killing in the black market and bought the villa. He’d been a poor man but a very good mechanic, very ingenious. We had little or no gasoline, you understand, Francis. Trucks, cars, buses, whatever, had to be converted to run on charcoal or some other fuel. Desmarais could drive trucks and keep them running. He was shrewd and ruthless and he saw an opportunity.”

  “To get rich.”

  “To get very rich.” Pierre paused again. “Soon he had money and connections. He cultivated everyone who might be useful, made loans to businesses, helped with dodgy papers.”

  I thought about the Chavanels. And also about Pierre’s little bicycle repair shop and store. He was young to own even a small business, and I thought I must tread carefully. “Many must have done the same,” I suggested. “The black market was extensive, yes?”

  “And essential to our survival. No one liked it, but no one held that too much against him.”

  “We made some compromises on our side of the water, too,” I said.

  “Desmarais had opportunities you English lacked. When the Germans came in ’43, he got himself into the Milice.”

  “The Milice?”

  “A right-wing Fascist paramilitary. Pro-Vichy, as opposed to the Cagoule, which was right-wing and Fascist and all the rest but anti-Vichy and anti-German.”

  “French politics are bizarrely complex.”

  “Politics are a load of shit,” said Pierre, and he was silent for a while.

  “His work during the war frightened the Villa Mimosa neighbors.”

  “It certainly did. The men you saw worked for him. They protected his trucks, first. Then they were muscle for the Milice, protecting collaborators, torturing and killing resisters, hunting down Jews and refugees. A month or so ago, they showed up again at the villa. Are they still working for him? Nobody knows. But people are still afraid.”

  “Desmarais has disappeared,” I guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “Recently?” I was thinking of Victor Renard, who might or might not be dead in London.

  “No, no. When the Allies landed—our town had the honor as you may know, Francis—the Milice fled with the Germans into the hills. They went up, the Maquis came down; men with guns everywhere. Scores were settled. But Desmarais ditched his Milice uniform and put his trucks at the service of the Americans. You see how smart he is?”

  “They knew nothing about him, whereas the Free French—”

  “Exactly. Next thing you know, he’s advising the Yanks and running supplies and his shit smells sweeter than ever.”

  “A piece of work. Eventually, they must have gotten wise to him.”

  “At that point, Desmarais took his money and scrammed. Some said he went to South America, some said he went to Spain. Or Germany.”

  “Or London?”

  The tip of the cigarette glowed red. “London, possibly. He could have gotten papers. Perhaps he even got some from the Americans. He made himself very useful,” Pierre said and fell silent.

  A few minutes later I asked him if he knew the murdered woman’s real identity.

  “No. She was not local. The villa was empty until just recently. I train up that way. You’ve got to do the hills to get your legs in shape.”

  He elaborated on the masochistic rituals of the serious cyclist: hills and more hills, brutal climbs and suicidal descents. I was afraid that remembering so much exertion and misery might put the Villa Mimosa out of his mind, but, no. He’d seen a car and then a truck parked out front.

  “Did you see the girl, the thin blonde who was pretending to be Madame Renard?”

  “No. I saw an older woma
n who I assumed had rented—or bought—the place. I saw her once or twice. A car would be parked there, a fine Peugeot sedan. Never for very long. I’d see it maybe on my way out but not on my way back. I stopped to admire it one day, and she came out like she was expecting someone.”

  She had been expecting me, I realized, or someone else dispatched from Joubert.

  “Did she say anything?”

  “I complimented her on the car. She agreed it was a fine one.” His cigarette glowed in the darkness. “How strange to think that she had only days to live. Maybe not even that long.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I heard that the body had been kept for some time.”

  This was a disagreeable thought, though, if true, it surely put me beyond suspicion. “In this climate?”

  He took another drag of the cigarette. “We have to keep our fish cold. There are many facilities with refrigeration and ice. Not impossible.”

  “So my Madame Renard might have known nothing about the murder.” I really hoped that.

  “If she’s smart, she knows nothing and forgets even that.”

  “I’m wondering if she might be local,” I said cautiously. Pierre was special, but who knew what his politics were—or had been—and what he might feel about the Chavanel ladies. “Thin, pretty, short dyed blond hair, no older than you. She looked like a dancer. I thought maybe an entertainer of some sort. Sound like anyone you’d remember?”

  “The only dancer I know was dark, black hair, black eyes.” He spoke almost too quickly and dismissively.

  “Hair can be bleached. For professional reasons.”

  “Possible,” he said, but if he knew more or guessed which way my interest ran, he did not say. His cigarette arched away into the shadows, and he came back to bed, putting questions quite out of my mind but starting the day in a highly satisfactory manner.