The Dave Bliss Quintet (21 page)

“I know what it is,” she says, taking him completely unawares.

“You do?”

“Yes — I guessed. Zhat is why you want to get into Mrs. Johnson's apartment.”

“No,” he protests, “I was worried about the man in the cage, that's all.”

“I wonder where zhey have gone,” muses Daisy — a thought that has been preying on his mind as well since finding the hand. As remote as the possibility might be, he can't help thinking there could be a link between the two incidents. Morgan Johnson is certainly connected to both his wife and the father of his girlfriend — but what could Grimes have done to deserve this?

“So. Why you keep asking about zhe château?” Daisy continues.

“It's for the book ...” he starts, and then stops in thought. The security guards protecting the villas surrounding the château's estate must know where Grimes lives. They let the potter pass unquestionably each night before they stepped out of the shadows and confronted him.

Following a hasty lunch, Daisy happily escorts Bliss to the hill, and, explaining they are worried about a friend, describes Grimes to a couple of the heavies guarding the gates of a mansion.

“
Oui
,” they admit. He has sometimes walked that way at night — always alone.

But as for exactly where he lives — “
Bof!
” they say, shrugging.

“Does that mean they don't know, or won't tell?” Bliss asks her.

“
Bof!
” She shrugs, still leaving him in the dark.

Out in the open, with Daisy in tow, he climbs the tortuously twisted section of road over and over as he tries to recall precisely when he lost the sound of Grimes's footfalls the first night he tailed him. Finally, isolating a short segment between two hairpin bends, he digs in and insists, “This must be it.”

But just as he previously discovered, there are no doorways or gates in the fortress-like wall on one side, and the château's steel barricade on the other rules out any possibility of … But there he stops and starts tugging at the undergrowth sprouting around the railing's roots.

“What are you doing?” demands Daisy worriedly.

“Grimes disappeared here somewhere,” he explains, pausing. “He couldn't have climbed the wall or the fence, but what if he went through?” Then he points. “Start looking at that end, will you? See if any of these posts are loose.”

Daisy shies away. “Zhat is zhe château.”

“I know,” he says, continuing to rip seedlings and grass aside. “But maybe Grimes found a shortcut through the grounds.”

Daisy pales at the prospect. “
Non.
Zhat is not possible.”

“Why?”

“Zhe
chiens de garde
— zhe dogs.”

Her words stop Bliss with a curious awareness. “That's funny,” he mutters. “What dogs?” Where are the fearsome hounds the signs warn about? And where are the dog handlers and security guards? None of the heavyweight wrestlers who accosted him on the hill were connected with the château, as far as he could tell. If they were, they certainly weren't guarding any doors or gates. This is at least the fourth time he's been close to the fence, and he walked the southern perimeter on his return from Cannes one day, yet there has been no sign of a guard or dog.

“Here boy, here boy,” he starts shouting through the fence, and immediately Daisy is on his arm, dragging him away, her voice rising in terror. “
Non, non. Arrête, Daavid
. Stop. Stop — please. You must stop.”

Freeing himself with a sharp tug, he stands back. “What's the matter?” he asks. “They can't get at us through the fence.” But he fails to mollify her as she stands, trembling.

“Don't,
Daavid
, please,” she whimpers, and he's forced to comfort her with a hug.

“Sorry,” he says, deciding to abandon the fence, and he escorts her back down the hill, past the guards, to the town.

After her paroxysm at the château's fence, Daisy excuses herself, promising to make discreet enquiries of one of her tenants, a local gendarme. Then Bliss spends the rest of the afternoon and early evening walking the beaches, quays, and jetties, desperately seeking any sign of Greg
Grimes, worried he might have been murdered, chopped into pieces, and scattered at sea. And it doesn't escape his notice that the marine unit of the local police has spent the afternoon sweeping up and down the bay with a couple of men hanging over the sides of a patrol boat.

The pathetic sight of a procession of empty-handed promenaders saddens Bliss as he sits at L'Escale Sunday evening, desperately hoping Marcia Grimes will show up. He's not overly hopeful and has fostered a growing concern that Marcia Grimes had a better reason to handicap her husband than anyone else, but he has run out of other ideas. Earlier he checked the cupboard Grimes used to store his wheel and supplies. The padlock was firmly in place — not surprisingly, he thought, considering that the hand that would normally turn the key had been permanently detached from its owner.

Daisy's violent aversion to anything connected with the Château Roger continues to puzzle him, but so does everything about the building. The realist in him wants to believe it is simply an abandoned structure with no more heart than an empty garbage bin, yet the negative passion its presence generates in the community shakes his logic. I must be going soft, he thinks, wondering what his colleagues might say if he suggested the grand old house was a major source of malodorous vibes. But he knows what their reaction would be. “Show me the evidence,” they'd demand pragmatically, highly suspicious of anything metaphysical or unconventional, and equally skeptical of anyone promulgating such ideas or other wacky notions such as alternative punishments, remedies, religions, or lifestyles.

Time weighs heavily as Bliss, completely frustrated by his inability to find either of the Grimeses or to do anything about an apparently serious crime, waits at L'Escale, watching the sun slip over the rim of the world. With nothing else to do he rereads his growing manuscript and realizes Frederick Chapel is in a similar quandary over the château. He too is chary of the mystique being developed around the nascent building, but he has to get into the grounds some way or another. Now with two reasons for wanting to infiltrate the well-protected property, Bliss takes up his pen and gives his three-hundred-year-old character the task of finding a solution.

The days stretched from weeks into months as Frederick Chapel paced the hot dunes of St-Juan in constant fear of his true identity being exposed. France's war with England raged ever closer as the summer progressed, until he had become almost entirely cut off from his mother country. Although his chances of successfully completing his mission were remote, his determination to swim the strait to Île Sainte-Marguerite from the beach at the foot of the Château Roger's grounds was unwavering.

Every day the château had grown in size and splendour. The materials, craftsmen, and labourers arrived in tall-masted ships that lay at anchor in the wide blue bay. Fine Italian marbles, exotic timbers from Mozambique, Chinese silks, drapes, and Persian carpets were all barged ashore from traders' barks and fluyts. And every day Frederick Chapel puzzled over the motivation for constructing such an impressive and exquisite building where the occupants would be plagued by heat, mosquitoes,
and the notorious gangs of blackguards who roamed the hills, cutlasses at the ready.

“Bonsoir,
Jean,” said Chapel to the fisherman, as he sat on the sand one evening, eyeing the developing edifice. “I see the château is almost completed.”

“
Ah! Mon Dieu. Mon ami,
” Jean said, throwing up his hands in horror, “I have warned you. You should not talk of zhe château. If you are overheard you will most surely get
le raccourci.”

It matters little, Chapel thought to himself. I can no longer return to England. I may as well risk my neck here as risk my neck in war.

“Jean,” he said, “you are a wily character. I see it in your eyes. You must see therefore that I have a good reason for wanting to get into the château's grounds.”

Leaning forward, Jean replied, “I have not told you zhis, but I know many of zhe guards. Zhey fish for sardines all day and zhey keep watch at night. But when can zhey sleep?”

“I understand,” said Chapel, “but what of the dogs?”

“Aha,” said Jean. “Zhe dogs are so hungry they would kill each other for a morsel. Zhey would certainly take off your hand. But, perhaps — and it is only perhaps — perhaps if you offer
le beefsteak
you will save your hand.

Some things never change, thinks Bliss, his eye taken by the lighthouse on the promontory of Cap D'Antibes as it pulses out its warning. Then his gaze falls to the harbour and he watches the moon diamonds sparkling off a gently rippling sea as Dave Brubeck jazzes up his version of “Look for the Silver Lining” in his ears.

“I wonder if Grimes, the poor bastard, is out there somewhere,” he muses as he falls under a shadow, and it takes him a few seconds to catch onto the fact that someone is standing over him, demanding, “Have you seen him?”

It's Marcia Grimes, and he rips off his headphones and pulls himself out of his seat. “No — where is he?”

Slumping as her face drains, she sighs, “He's gone again.”

“Gone where?” he queries.

“I don't know,” she spits. “Back to Corsica, probably.”

Angeline has braved the great divide and recognizes Marcia. “Oh. Your friend comes back,” she says to Bliss, but his mind is elsewhere as he explains to Marcia, “I thought you meant your husband.”

“Where is he?” she asks, eyes screwed in puzzlement as she searches passing hands for signs of wet clay pots.

Angeline scurries away as Bliss describes the morning's grisly discovery, and Marcia rises in alarm, repeatedly questioning, “What's happened? … What's happened?” as she scours the promenade and dark harbour.

“I was hoping you'd be able to tell me,” he says, keeping a carefully trained eye on her reaction.

“I've no idea,” she answers clearly, her face taut in consternation and concern.

Could she have done it? he asks himself, but draws a blank. She certainly had good reason. Jealousy is a potent motivator, he knows from previous cases, and judging by the venomous way she spoke of the clique of women who nightly swarmed her husband, she was certainly motivated.

“He's obviously not at home, then.”

The reply is almost swallowed in the tears as she mumbles, “We don't have a home, Inspector. Thanks to Morgan Johnson.”

Bliss urges Marcia to report her husband's disappearance to the local police, but she shrinks away with more fear than Daisy showed at the château's fence, and he is sorely tempted to disobey his commander and approach the gendarmerie himself. But Marcia persuades him to wait until Monday morning.

“He'll turn up, I'm certain,” she blubbers.

“I'm not so sure,” he mumbles, but he has been vacillating on the notion of putting the police in the picture all Sunday afternoon. It isn't as if he has any concrete evidence to offer, other than the possibility that Grimes might use the château's grounds as a shortcut.

“And where exactly is zhis potter — zhis Monsieur Grimes — going?” he imagines the desk sergeant demanding. He'd have no answer, but the trickier question would be: “And who, precisely, authorized you to carry out zhis surveillance?” Even at home, a detective straying from his patch into an adjacent jurisdiction could get his knuckles severely rapped.

“Where has your husband been living?” Bliss asks, but Marcia Grimes is of little assistance.

“Do you think he would have told me?” she shoots back angrily, immediately confirming his suspicion that there is some other woman in Grimes's life.

Trying diplomacy, he responds, “Not to put too fine a point on it, Marcia, it seems as though he was popular with the ladies.”

“Inspector —” she starts, but he quickly cuts her off.

“Please call me Dave.”

“I'd rather use your rank, if you don't mind,” she responds coolly, and he understands. Spilling the embarrassing minutiae of your partner's sexual peccadilloes is easier if there is a shield of professionalism. Calling him by his first name would be like calling her doctor John or Billy, then trying not to cringe as he slips on a glove for an internal exam.

“It was me,” she continues, breaking down. “It was my fault. He's a good man. He worked as hard as he could. He never messed around — not as far as I know. And it wasn't as though he didn't have offers. You saw the way women watch …” She pauses, unable to talk through the tears, and then corrects herself. “You saw how they couldn't take their eyes off him.”

Trying to soften the blow Bliss suggests an alternative. “People just like to see others working — makes them feel good when they're on holiday. If some bloke stood on the quayside sandpapering his nails some people would watch.”

The cynical look she gives him borders on incredulity.

“OK. I noticed it,” he admits. “He had something special — warmth. It was as if he gave part of his heart away with every pot.”

“He did. But you're wrong if you're thinking he wanted something in return.”

“So, why always women then?”

“Oh, come on, Inspector. How many men are going to hold out their hands for a prissy pot? Anyway — it wasn't just women.”

Daisy's bustling arrival at L'Escale prevents Bliss from asking what she means, and they sit glumly as the newcomer explains that, according to her source, the police don't have a clue.

“OK,” he says, making up his mind. “If he hasn't shown up by the morning, I'm going to contact my office for advice.”