Murder At The Masque (4 page)

‘He wouldn’t wait, Inspector.’

‘Who wouldn’t, Stitch?’ asked Rose patiently.

‘Lord Westbourne,’ said Stitch with reverent anticipation. Say what you like about old Rose; he had the knack of gathering interesting cases about him. Lords and ladies, chorus girls – Stitch approved of that. It was one of the things that made him stick by Rose.

With no sign that he was grateful for this devotion, Rose opened the letter with some interest. Lady Westbourne, the elegant fair-haired wife of this somewhat fearsome politician, was one of the victims of the theft of the Fabergé eggs. This fact still appeared to be unknown to her husband, who in his letter merely referred to the theft of a ruby; it also stated that he had positive information on the identity of the cat burglar, gleaned in London. Unfortunately he had to leave immediately for the afternoon train for Paris, where a sudden crisis had blown up. He was a member of the current, and it appeared lifelong, conference on the Niger, an issue vital to the future relations between London and Paris. War between the two countries might well erupt over Africa, if Lord Westbourne were not able to sway his fellow committee members into seeing sense. War between England and France. Shades of Napoleon all over again. Didn’t seem likely, Rose thought, but then you never knew
with these hot-headed Frenchies! All except Mr Auguste, of course. Auguste had brains: he reasoned things out, almost like an Englishman – but then, come to think of it, his mother had been English. That must explain it.

‘I can see you in Cannes.’ Rose read his instructions again with mixed feelings. ‘I shall be entertaining His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales on the 10th, but expect to see you in the Pavilion on the 11th at 7 p.m., after the match.’

What match? What Pavilion? Cannes? What on earth was the Chief going to say? It was a rhetorical question now, thought Rose with some pleasure. Now Lord Westbourne had summoned, he knew just what the Chief would say.

Vague mentions of cat burglars, ‘hidden depths’ to the case and hints from Higgins had done nothing to persuade the Chief to let his top detective depart on a jaunt down to the Côte d’Azur. The last time one had gone, he had discovered the delights of the Monte Carlo casino and had never returned. Now there was no question. Lord Westbourne had summoned and he’d be going. A rare smile of content crossed his lugubrious face. He’d be able to have some of those Provençal meals Auguste was always on about, and a nice easy case to solve as well. Then he had a sudden, belated thought. What was Mrs Rose going to say about this? In their twenty-five years of marriage they had rarely been separated, and now he was going to have to tell her he was going to the Côte d’Azur, and didn’t know when he’d be back. He was not looking forward to going home at all.

Auguste strolled back along the Boulevard de la Croisette, admiring the red-pinks of the sun sinking behind the Esterel. Was there anything more beautiful in the world than sunset in Cannes? Possibly the sunrise over the Croisette peninsula with its pink-grey light and blinding golden promise. As he crossed in front of the Hôtel de Ville to mount the street up to the Rue du Barri, the sun made its
final plunge behind the mountains, leaving gloomy dusk, and by the time he had reached the watchtower below the fortress of Mont Chevalier, he had to strain his eyes to see as the tall houses either side of the road cut out the remaining light. As he turned the corner, an odd shiver went up his spine, as the warm and welcoming Provence of the daytime suddenly gave way to a hint of the savagery of its wild past. A stillness in the air, vague shapes forming and unforming in the darkness. A flitting figure or a waving branch – or nothing? Surely a figure? Yes – he strained his eyes, and it swirled into the gloom, almost seeming to glow. He could have sworn it was a man wearing an old-fashioned cloak and hat, for all the world like something out of Dumas. He was half impelled to run after it to see; half inclined to stay just where he was. Curiosity won and he ran, his footsteps echoing in the stillness. There was the figure ahead, surely, hurrying on, soundless, silently; always the same distance ahead. A corner in the road – and nothing. Nothing but the empty road stretching upwards, tall walls on one side, a steep drop on the other.

Laughing at himself somewhat uneasily for chasing shadows, Auguste was glad when he entered the haven of his small home, and it was only some hours later, after a
rouget au safran
and a marc of the region, that he casually mentioned his strange experience.

His parents turned to each other and nodded sagely. ‘Do not alarm yourself, my son,’ said his father comfortingly. ‘It is only the ghost.’

Auguste blenched. ‘Ghost? What ghost?’ he almost squeaked.

‘The ghost of the Man in the Iron Mask, my son. You remember the old stories? He has begun to walk again.’

‘He is not seen very often,’ put in his mother comfortingly.

‘But I don’t remember any ghosts,’ said Auguste.

‘Because it is only recently he has begun again,’ his father
explained. ‘There were always stories, then they died out. Only the old people remembered those stories, and began to talk of them when the ghost was seen again. Only this week
la mère Peyret
saw it.’

Iron Mask had haunted Auguste’s boyhood dreams. Days when he looked out from his window at the Ile Ste Marguérite, lying beyond the Croisette peninsula. He could just see the fortress where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned until he was taken to the Bastille – or, if you believed local gossip, escaped to Cannes and hid here in secret. He had devoured Dumas’s
The Viscount of Bragelonne
. He had seen himself as d’Artagnan, the fourth Musketeer. But now he saw things a little differently! Dead heroes were safest. Walking ghosts were distinctly disturbing.

‘It is said he escaped from the Ile Ste Marguerite,’ said his father excitedly, ‘that he came to Cannes with his wife, the governor’s daughter. And her name was Bonpart. He died here but she escaped to Corsica with their son. And this son was the forebear of Napoleon. And there is a young man who has come to Cannes who is a descendant of the Comte de Bonifacio, and he says he is the rightful king of France. Is history not exciting,
mon fils
? And it is
true
about the Iron Mask. After all, Voltaire quotes the soldier Rioffe as saying that he saw Iron Mask in Cannes.’

Auguste was determined, if only for his own mounting unease, to quash all talk of ghosts. ‘But
why
should he haunt the place?’

‘For justice, my son,’ said his mother impressively.

‘And why does he only want justice sometimes?’ asked Auguste.

‘This is odd,’ admitted his father. ‘Before now, he has not been seen for nearly fifty years.’

‘So why on my holiday?’ Auguste muttered resentfully.

‘He was the brother of the great Louis the fourteenth,’ said his mother importantly. ‘Monsieur Dumas says so.’

‘They are only stories, not truth,
Maman
,’ Auguste insisted.

‘Not to the Cannois, Auguste. He is very real,’ his father said reproachfully.

‘Yes,
Papa
, the man. But not the ghost. There are no such things. There must be a real person behind it. Am I not a detective? Very well,’ he said bravely, ‘I will find out what lies behind this so-called ghost of yours.’

After all, it would provide a nice gentle mystery for his holiday. He would not tell Natalia. Being a lady, she might be nervous at the idea of ghosts. If only Egbert Rose were in Cannes they might investigate together. That would be most pleasant. For ghost-hunting would have nothing to do with murder.

The Villa Russe perched in all its white gleaming glory on the chemin de Montrouge on the hill of La Californie to the east of Cannes. It overlooked the Mediterranean, below its gardens, with a view over the whole bay of Cannes from the promontory of the Croisette, with Ile Ste Marguerite beyond it, to the Esterel in the west. Below, over the roofs of comparatively less ostentatious villas, lay the Croisette and the Gardens of the Hesperides, where 10,000 orange trees had been planted over forty years ago for the delight of any
hiverneur
who cared to pay fifty centimes.

During the dangerously hot summers, La Californie was almost deserted, but this was the height of the social season. During the bleak months of November to January Mentone pleased most, but for February, March and this year April there was no place other than Cannes. Although the English had encroached from their enclave to the east of Cannes on to the higher reaches of La Californie (indeed a prince of the royal blood had died at the Villa Nevada) and were making a determined onslaught on the eastern slopes of the hillside, Russian nobility remained firmly entrenched in the centre and south. Here during the season those unfortunate – or fortunate – enough to have incurred Imperial displeasure by marrying morganatically or not at all, advanced from England, Paris and Vienna to spend the winter season, often joined for holidays by those still basking in Imperial favour but seeking brief respite from the intrigues of the Russian court, by travelling in grand style on the
St Petersburg-Vienna-Nice-Cannes Express. A hundred yards away from the Villa Russe, the Grand Duke Michael and his morganatic wife the Countess Torby lived magnificently in the Villa Kasbeck (in the winter of course) and two hundred yards or so to the east, his sister the Grand Duchess Anastasia. In a few weeks the Russian church would celebrate the marriage of her daughter to Prince Christian of Denmark, thus inconsiderately extending the season unfashionably far into April.

The Villa Russe was built in the 1860s, when La Californie was still largely a barren hillside, by the enterprising gardener who had turned estate agent, and was now British vice-consul: John Taylor. Under the patronage of Sir Thomas Woolfield, he had created the gardens of Cannes, full of flowers, palms and eucalyptus trees, for which the town was now famed. The arrival of an earlier Romanov had been followed by the addition of some Russian statuary on the roof and porticos to remind him of the Winter Palace. Its present name had also followed, it being thought that the Villa Palmerston was no tactful appellation for a Romanov. The Grand Duke had also added a spectacular belvedere in the gardens overlooking the Bay of Cannes. Determined to go one better, and to rival that of the Grand Duke Michael at the Villa Kasbeck, he had rendered the ironwork golden, where it gleamed over the hillside as if in tribute to the old Russian sun-god Yarilo.

The villa still stood in splendid isolation, but its walls grew higher as the surrounding land sprouted more villas, churches and doctors. Admittedly there were now five British doctors in Cannes to the Russian one, and several English to the sole Russian church, but the lifestyle of the flamboyant Russians evened up the score.

‘Cricket, cricket,’ shouted the Grand Duke Igor jovially at the French local police inspector summoned to the Villa Russe at the un-French hour of 7 a.m. The Romanovs were brought up in Spartan fashion.

‘But, Your Imperial Highness, who would possibly wish to kill you?’ Inspector Fouchard asked rhetorically. He knew the answer.

The Grand Duke looked quickly round the room as though the samovars might hide an intruder.

‘Nihilists,’ he hissed conspiratorially.

The inspector sighed. He had heard it all before. ‘I regret,
Votre Altesse Imperiale
, it is not possible to provide a permanent guard.’

The Grand Duke’s eyes bulged.
Not
was not a word to use to princes, let alone to Grand Dukes. Jovial smile was replaced by Jove’s thunder.

‘Not! You want an assassination of a Romanov in your midst?’

The inspector did not. Even less did he want a repetition of the unfortunate incident some years ago when another Russian nobleman had killed a police guard under the impression he was a Nihilist. The incident had been brushed aside as an allowable mistake, for after all, these Nihilists were cunning. Nevertheless Fouchard did not intend it should happen again, least of all to him. He wavered.

‘If the Prince of Wales has a guard, the Romanovs have a guard,’ said the Grand Duke belligerently.

The inspector’s brow cleared. ‘Ah, the
match
. But that is different. Naturally we will be there. We do not want the Prince de Galles assassinated.’ Too late he realised this could have been more tactfully phrased.

The whole six foot five inches of offended Romanov was concentrated on him, then unexpectedly roars of laughter filled the room as the Grand Duke slapped the unfortunate Fouchard on the back. ‘Only one Prince of Wales, but plenty more Grand Dukes, eh?’

Another roar of laughter and thankful at his escape the inspector slipped out, mopping his forehead. He was not looking forward to this week at all. First, guarding the Prince of Wales as he laid the first stone of the new jetty on
Thursday; then trying to keep up with His Royal Highness’s movements in and out of various clubs and/or beds for the rest of the day; then on Friday this cricket match, to guard both a Wales and a Grand Duke. Cricket? Sometimes he wondered who ran this town. That Lord Brougham had a lot to answer for – or rather that
salaud
who prevented his lordship from progressing into Italy in 1834 as he had intended, with the result that he was forced to stop in a dirty little fishing village that was quite happy looking after itself. On top of that, Paris had informed him that an inspector from the English Scotland Yard was coming here. The English.
Pah
!

One of the many sons of the assassinated Emperor Alexander II, sandwiched unimportantly between the eldest and the youngest, the Grand Duke Igor had earned the displeasure of his father by marrying the divorced wife of a remote relative, and while his father could hardly therefore deny her the status of Grand Duchess he could, and did, refuse permission for the Grand Duke to live in Russia. Indeed he leapt at the chance. Igor was not of sufficiently serious disposition to please his austere father, and as the requisite number of sons remained to fill key army posts, Igor was altogether too volatile to be left to his own devices. Cheerfully Igor had taken his new duchess, 120,000 roubles in lieu of a court allowance for his wife, his cook Boris and his small cat Misha to whom he was most attached, and departed to join his Imperial relatives in Paris. Here they lived a carefree life until the assassination of his father in 1881.