Murder At The Masque (18 page)

‘But who would doubt the importance of food?’ said Monsieur Didier, puzzled. ‘Why, even the judge at the trial of Monsieur Zola has decreed that provision may be made for a restaurateur to provide meals for him while in prison.’

There were nods of agreement that this was only right and proper.

‘Did I not tell you, Egbert, that here you would find the true food of Provence?’

The
repas
, hastily thrown together at news of Rose’s arrival, was not that of the Faisan Dorè, not that of the Hôtel Paradis even, it was simply – Provence. Auguste gave a heartfelt thank-you to
le Bon Seigneur
who had decided that this should be one of
Maman’s
French days. The aroma of garlic arising from the dish of mushrooms lovingly placed on the table by
Papa
set Rose back a little – until he tasted the
sanguines
and they beamed in pride at his expression, almost forgetting to eat themselves in their pleasure at his enjoyment of their meal. Stuffed sardines and a
salade de mesclun
dressed with walnut oil followed, in preparation for the
plat – la pintade
.

‘Ah!’ An involuntary sigh of happiness escaped Rose when the bird was placed on the table.

‘Your wife does not cook
la pintade
?’ Monsieur Didier inquired, surprised.

‘No,’ said Rose regretfully. ‘Mind you, we eat very well,’ he said hastily.

Auguste spent many evenings at the Roses’ home, and knew very well that Mrs Rose’s offerings would be considered a serious mistake on any table in France, and yet – and yet how he enjoyed those companionable meals with the warm fire crackling, his gentle teasing of Mrs Rose, her girlish blushes, the games of whist that followed. How different, how much the same.

Somewhat later, they set out into the dim light to walk back to the Hôtel Paradis. Neither felt like talking after the happy evening, particularly of murder.

Above them loomed the old fort and the church. ‘Here,’ said Auguste, laughing at the memory, now that he was comfortably full of
Maman’s
food and Châteauneuf du Pape, ‘is where I saw the ghost. He walked there – and vanished.
Pouf
, like that.’

Rose looked at the high walls and the steep drop. ‘Odd,’ he said, ‘how the dark plays tricks on you.’ He shivered. ‘For all your Lérina liqueur inside me, I’ll be glad to get back tonight. I’m not surprised you thought you saw a ghost. There’s a funny atmosphere around.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes, and around this case.’ Rose paused. ‘Went to see a play once with Mrs Rose.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. There was a bit in it reminds me of your ghost – something about in the night how easy is a bush imagined a bear.’

‘But there are no trees to imagine bears or ghosts here. Just the bare road and then nothing, though it is true what you say perhaps about the case. There is so much, is there not? We have politics, we have Fabergé eggs, we have
ghosts and lovers, and Russian Grand Dukes. It is like a play itself, is it not?’

‘Just what I was thinking yesterday,’ agreed Rose.

‘And in your play, Puck puts the juice of a flower in people’s eyes to mystify them, confound them . . . just like this case. But who is our Puck?’

The Paris train drew in late on the Saturday evening. Ranged on the platform to greet it, in the manner of the Prince of Wales awaiting his own superior authority the previous week, were Inspector Fouchard and his sergeants. A figure stepped out of the train. Inspector Chesnais of the Sûreté had arrived.

He did not stop for formalities. ‘So,’ he said jovially, rocking back and forth on his toes, hands clasped behind his extremely plump body, ‘your English inspector, he thinks it is burglars. What are burglars,
pouf
?
Alors
, to your office, Fouchard.’ Wagging a finger in the air, he marched out of the railway station, followed by Fouchard and his men. How could such a fat man have so much energy in him? thought Fouchard, so late in the evening too. He resembled a
boule
perched on a pair of small feet dancing along the road, thought Fouchard viciously. To the
office
? Tonight? His spirits sank low.

‘
Eh bien
, Fouchard, courage,’ Chesnais announced genially, aware of the falling temperature in the atmosphere. ‘To us the glory. The English do not think of wider implications. They are blinkered at Scotland Yard. I have met this Rose, a fine man, but no
vision
. He does not see beyond his boots. And,
mon ami
, his clothes. Can one be a detective in clothes like that?’ He removed his elegant ulster complacently. ‘Now, you show me the evidence, I will show you the criminal.’

Three hours later he was still as bright as a button, and Fouchard was dozing quietly in the corner, pretending to read a file.

‘So!’ roared Chesnais.

Fouchard jumped.

‘I have solved this crime,
mon ami
. My investigations, and what I see here, tell me. If your English detective does not see it, then he is a fool.’ He paused impressively. ‘I
know
– and tomorrow an arrest will be made. Nine o’clock, Fouchard. Nine o’clock,
prompt
.’

Auguste shivered. Nine o’clock on a March Sunday morning was no time to be standing on a quayside, even in Cannes. Egbert Rose, with only the contents of a stale croissant inside him, shared his views. A wave of longing for Highbury with the comforting sight of the Sunday roast on the kitchen table, and fatty bacon and overdone eggs before him, overcame him. But when the news reached him by way of a young gendarme sent by Fouchard, there had been no alternative. It might well be that Chesnais had incontrovertible evidence. It might also be that Chesnais needed an hour of glory quickly. With all of Paris still talking of
l’affaire Dreyfus
and the merits and demerits of Monsieur Zola’s imprisonment, a blow needed to be struck for French justice – whether it hit the target or not.

They did not have long to wait for the inspector. A police van soon disgorged Chesnais, Fouchard and an eager-looking gendarme, excited at this unexpected promotion from his usual
surveillance sur îlot
at the Flower Market.

‘Ah, Inspector Chesnais, may I present my sergeant, Sergeant Didier.’

Fouchard looked somewhat surprised, but for fear of endangering good relations at the Faisan Dorè remained silent. After a startled look at Auguste’s straw hat, willow-pattern tie and pale blue shirt, Inspector Chesnais obviously put this down to Scotland Yard eccentricity.

‘You are French, Sergeant Didier?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘Half French,
Monsieur l’Inspecteur
,’ Auguste replied hastily.

Chesnais had no time to waste on sergeants, however.

‘
Bon
,’ he said briskly. ‘Forward. We go to arrest,’ he paused impressively, ‘the Comte de Bonifacio.’

‘So I gather, Inspector.’ Rose eyed with disfavour the choppy white waves outside the harbour. ‘It seems very unlikely to me. I take it you’ve a strong case?’

‘But of course.’ Chesnais was hurt at any suggestion that his methods were other than painstaking. ‘The Count was heard to make inflammatory remarks to his lordship at a meeting of the conference. He burst into the chamber and was heard to utter threats of death.’

‘Against Lord Westbourne’s life?’

‘That’s what he meant,’ said Chesnais. ‘“Death to the British Empire”, and shouting at Lord Westbourne. And next day Lord Westbourne asked for extra security on his house because of these threats.’ He was triumphant.

‘May I suggest that it’s more likely to have been La Belle Mimosa than the Comte de Bonifacio? We know she followed him down from Paris, and she was still shouting about killing him only yesterday.’

‘
Non
, Inspector Rose,
les poules de luxe
do not kill clients, even those they do not like. It gives them a bad reputation, you realise. No, we have our man. He can give no explanation for what he was doing after the tea break, before he took up the bowling.’

‘
Bonjour, messieurs
.’ A bicycle hurtled to a stop beside them, its rider waving cheerfully. Bowler-hatted, frilly-bloused and check-bloomered, Kallinkova dismounted gracefully, and smiled at them happily. ‘You look surprised, gentlemen. Perhaps also a little shocked. But it is good exercise. Why do you not approve of bicycles?’

‘It is not the bicycle,
ma mie
,’ murmured Auguste, choked with laughter at Rose’s face, but the endearment earned him an odd look from Chesnais.

‘Where are you going?’ she inquired.

‘
Madame
.’ Chesnais struggled to overcome his horror of women in men’s attire. He wondered if he should arrest her, but having recognising the famous Kallinkova decided this would be unwise. He merely averted his eyes to somewhere left of her bowler hat. ‘To arrest the murderer of Lord Westbourne.’

‘
Vraiment
? Then I shall come,’ she announced, looking from Rose to Auguste, and parking her bicycle in the ticket office of the steamer service.

‘
Non
,’ chorused the gentlemen.

‘No?’ Surprise gave way to outraged femininity. ‘Ah, it is my bloomers. Do not worry.’ She gave them a sunny smile, whipped a rolled-up bundle out of her basket on the back of the bicycle, and disappeared into the ladies’ waiting room at the departure quay for the Ile Ste Marguerite. One minute later she reappeared, decorously clad, albeit rather more bulkily than before, in a somewhat crumpled skirt. ‘
Voilà
.’

Thus checkmated, Chesnais found himself torn between irregularity and a desire that his triumph should be crowned by the presence of one of the world’s leading ballerinas. He compromised by stomping off to the police boat, and allowing whoever so willed to follow.

The sight of policemen on the tiny Ile Ste Marguerite was an event and the few residents peered out of their windows as Chesnais and Fouchard led them officiously up the one narrow street of the island. Auguste had always loved this island, a place of secrets and magic where he could wander among the pines and eucalyptus, play at being Legionnaires in the woods with his friends, and swim in the warm waters. How sad that now this small island too was touched by the tentacles of murder instead of the usual warmth with which it had been blessed by the gods.

There was no answer at the small house rented by Bastide. It took no great detective work to work out where he was, however. It was a very tiny island and apart from this one
short street of houses only one building existed – the Fort itself on the Pointe Croisette, built by Richelieu, its mellow stone shining gold in the pale sun.

‘I think I know,
Monsieur I’Inspecteur
, where he will be,’ said Auguste regretfully, and once Fouchard had arranged permission for their entrance he led the way past the old stone buildings over to the far side where the governor’s buildings were. Leading out of them were the cells for the important prisoners. Here was the very stuff of Dumas, here the window up at which Auguste had gazed so many times as a boy. The window of the cell of the Man in the Iron Mask.

Here, nobly positioned at the parapet above the steep cliff, staring out over the sea towards the hill of La Californie and the misty blue mountains of the Alpes Maritimes, and the Esterel on the other side, stood Bastide, who turned to face them as they approached.

‘So you have come,
messieurs
,’ he cried disastrously, ‘to take me as you took my illustrious ancestor Napoleon, to take me as you dragged off his noble forebear
Masque de Fer
, to incarcerate me as you did him in the Bastille—’

‘Very well,
monsieur
. It shall be as you wish,’ said Chesnais briskly. He had no time to spare for dramatics.

Rose groaned at the headstrong impulsiveness of youth. ‘You seem to be expecting us, sir.’

‘I admit nothing save the glory of France,’ cried Bastide dramatically. ‘
J’accuse
—’ An arm was flung theatrically as he sought an object for his verb. ‘
J’accuse Sa Majesté, l’impératice
— Of course I expect to be arrested; it is the way of all great men. They wish to do away with me.’

Yet even as Chesnais, now transported with delight at the straightforwardness Bastide was giving his task, formally arrested him, Bastide became silent as though reality had now raised an unfortunate question-mark.

The handcuffs put on by the constable with hands trembling with excitement, an indignity not suffered by
Napoleon, seemed to set the seal on the onset of depression, and he sat silent in the boat as it returned to the mainland.

Natalia squeezed his fingers sympathetically as well as she could for the handcuffs. ‘Why are you arresting this poor boy?’ she asked indignantly. ‘You think he is your burglar?’

‘
Non, madame
, this has grave political considerations. Very complicated.’ This to imply that a mere woman could not grasp their intricacies. ‘It was an assassination intended to change the course of history.’

‘No,’ bleated Bastide, finding some kind of voice. ‘I deny it.’

‘If this is a mistake,’ Auguste told him gravely, ‘we will discover it.’

‘Sergeant,’ thundered Chesnais, earning a surprised then amused look from Natalia, ‘the case so far as the Sûreté is concerned is closed. It is not for sergeants to have opinions.’

‘
Entendu
,’ muttered Auguste, sympathising at long last with the problems Rose had to endure at Scotland Yard.

At the sight of the police van at the quayside, Bastide roused himself to one last stand. ‘Take me, I beg you,’ he quavered, as he stepped on to the Quay St Pierre, ‘along La Route Napoleon that I may be inspired by the spirit of my great ancestor. He too knew adversity.’

‘Yes indeed,’ Auguste agreed. A man who never knew the pleasures of
la cuisine
, who drank coffee in preference to wine, who ate simply to live and thus never knew what life was about; Auguste guiltily dragged his thoughts back to the unhappy boy being pushed into the van. Was he a murderer?

‘If he is,’ remarked Rose, as the van was driven along the narrow roadway to the Allées de la Liberté, ‘I’ll eat your straw hat, Auguste.’