The Dave Bliss Quintet (28 page)

But he brightens with the realization that he's cleared up two of his original five conundrums. He now knows the secret of the château and, although he doesn't yet have a name, he has the means to discover the identity of the man in the iron mask. However, he'll have to go back to the château — eventually. He has to do something about the boy in the cage — eventually. He's got to find Johnson eventually, and he would still like to see Natalia Grimes released from the man's evil clutches.

The potter's wheel has not thrown off a pot for nearly a week, yet women are still drawn by an invisible residue
of magnetism that causes them to dither at the spot, just for a second. Bliss and Daisy pause to watch them as they take an evening stroll on the promenade.

“Zhey look very sad,” Daisy says, but Bliss's mind is still wrestling with the château's history. If the build-ing's original secret could be maintained for three hundred years, is it so preposterous to believe people would keep the secret of the Nazi terrors for another sixty?

“You don't believe it, do you, Daisy?” he asks, sensing she'll know he's talking about the missing
ré sistance
fighters.

“No — of course not,” she replies, “but you must understand, it is real to zhe women of my grandmother's age because zhey have zhe faith.”

“It sounds like religion,” he says, nodding knowingly. “Idolizing someone who died a long time ago and devoting the rest of your life in prayer for their resurrection.”

“But zhey believe zhe men are still alive. As long as no one goes to zhe château zhere's no evidence against it.”

“That sounds more like a rumour than a religion,” he says, still shaking his head in disbelief as he spots Hugh and Mavis at L' Escale.

“Was that Jacques?” he asks, thinking he recognized the back of the distant figure.

“Yes,” says Hugh, looking confused. “He was just telling us about the different winds when he saw you and Daisy coming and said he had an appointment.”

“That's strange,” Bliss says, seating Daisy as he gives Angeline a wave. “He hasn't forecast an ill wind for over a week now.”

“Actually he was just saying that tomorrow we can expect a bit of a nasty blow. What did he call it, Mavis?”

“Louis Armstrong.”

“No,” he sneers, muttering “Stupid woman” under his breath. “It is the
lou marin —
or something like that.”

“How long are you staying?” asks Daisy as Bliss orders their drinks.

“This is our last few days,” says Hugh. “It's nearly the fifteenth of August.”

“So?” queries Bliss.

“End of summer, old boy. Didn't you know?”

“It can't be,” he says, eyeing the star-filled sky that still preserves a strong memory of the day's blue.

“Oh yes,” continues Hugh. “Everyone will tell you. Regular as clockwork the weather goes to pot here on the fifteenth.”

“Sounds like one of Jacques's winds,” Bliss mutters disbelievingly, but Daisy steps in. “No. It is right. August fifteen is zhe end.”

That's only two days, Bliss realizes with a quick calculation, and suddenly sees an opportunity to enlist an aid. “You strike me as a man with a military background, Hugh,” he says, his tone heavy with bullshit.

Hugh straightens himself and exhales, “Army.”

“I thought so,” says Bliss. “I can usually spot a good Sandhurst man.”

Hugh deflates a touch. “To be honest, I didn't quite make Sandhurst, old boy.”

That's the same as being not quite pregnant, thinks Bliss, though he'd never pegged Hugh as a graduate of the elite officer training college — guessing he'd probably done a couple of years compulsory national service, most of it spent on a parade ground, square-bashing or pushing a pen in the Pay Corps. Leaning forward to cut Mavis out of earshot, he adds a dose of flattery, “I bet you're still game for a bit of excitement, though.”

“Naturally, old boy,” replies Hugh, though adds diffidently, “What did you have in mind?”

A bold assault on the château is his plan. He and Hugh marching assertively past the guards on the hill, slipping through the fence, and carrying out a full daylight recce. The prospect of entering the decaying structure alone for a third time, particularly with its growing legion of ghosts, has held him back for days, but the building possesses no ghosts for Hugh. “Tomorrow morning,” whispers Bliss. “Be here at nine and I'll fill you in.”

“What you ask zhat man?” Daisy wants to know as soon as they leave the L' Escale.

“I told you. I have to go back to the château to look for evidence. Whoever cut off Grimes's hand needs catching and I need someone to help me.”

Daisy flies at him. “You can't take Hugh. He will tell.”

“I need someone to hold the lights,” he protests. Someone to hold his hand, he means, though would never admit it.

“I come,” she whispers.

“Really.”

“Yes. I not scared.”

“You certainly sound it.” “If you go — I go.”

W
hile Bliss might have preferred the stouter company of Hugh, he acceded to Daisy's pleas, and now he holds aside the broken fence for her as they enter the château's grounds. But his motive in bringing Daisy has more to do with his novel than his quest for clues in the maiming case. If she sees for herself that the château is not an underground community of octogenarian resistance fighters and is able to convince her mother and grandmother and the other siblings and widows, then he will be able to publish his book without fear.

Although he's dispensed with the workman's plaster-caked overalls, the workman's bag carried them past the heavies on the hill, and as soon as he's replaced the fence post he extracts two cans of pepper spray and a couple of steaks.

Daisy's eyes go wild. “You said no guards. No dogs.”

“There aren' t,” he soothes. “These are just to make you feel safe.”

Her voice quivers. “I don't feel safe now.”

“It's just a precaution,” he says, taking her hand and drawing her away from the fence along the path to the château.

The mid-morning sun bathes the old stone building in a sepia warmth that touches on gold in places, and Daisy stands at the foot of the expansive flight of marble steps with her mouth open.

“Scared?” he asks, but she doesn't answer and he concludes it is awe: the Forbidden City, the Holy Grail, and the Pearly Gates all rolled into one. What's going through her mind? he wonders, as he gives her time to acclimatize while sorting out floodlights and his camera, but her rigid expression and clamped fists suggest she's holding on somewhere between dread and wonder.

The small door to the side of the giant aediculated entranceway is still open, and, buoyed by Daisy's presence, Bliss bustles through into the massive hall, dragging her in his wake. But he has no illusions. All the ghosts up here on the main floor are smiling and dancing — seventeenth-century merrymakers and twentieth-century Jewish revellers alike. It is in the eternal darkness below that the torment lies.

“Are you all right?” he asks as she hovers near the door, close to backing out.

Her mouth opens, though her voice won't work.

“Don't worry. There's no one here,” he says, gently pulling her in, but he feels the weight of evil just as much as she.

His primary goal is to find the place where Grimes had set up camp. “He won't tell me where he's been
living,” Marcia admitted after Bliss agreed to try to find her husband's mutilator, “but I think he's been going to the old château for some time.” The only additional information she could offer was that he'd been pounced on in the darkness and had absolutely no idea who his attacker was; he knew only that he reeked of cigarette smoke and garlic.

“That narrows it down to about ninety percent of French males,” Bliss intoned sarcastically, but it was all she could offer.

“You said he'd upset people,” he continued, seeking a motive. “Who?”

“We owe some money ...” she started sheepishly, though didn't need to elaborate and didn't try.

The sins of the wife shall be visited on the husband, he thought, and couldn't help wondering how many other men had been mutilated, one way or another, by the extravagance of their wives.

The inspection of the main floor and upper stories takes twenty minutes, including a five-minute stop on the rooftop balcony from where they gaze at the fortress on the island and watch yachts steaming through the treetops in the bay below. Finding no trace of Grimes's living quarters, Bliss takes a deep breath and heads for the basement.

“I no go,” says Daisy, paling at the top of the dark staircase.

“Oh
merde!
” he mutters, fearing this was likely to happen. What now? He could happily have done the upstairs without someone riding shotgun, but downstairs isn't just a
panier de crabes
, it's a claw-filled minefield. In any case, he can't have her going back to her
mother and shrugging as she says, “
Bof!
Perhaps the men were downstairs. I did not look.”

Does it really matter what her mother believes? he wonders, deliberating whether or not to force her. Why not just publish and be damned? But does he want to be damned by an entire community?

“Daisy, I really need you to come with me,” he pleads.

“I scared,” she confesses, though the tautness of her face and the coldness of her hand suggest “terrified” might be more appropriate. “You scared too?” she asks.

“A little,” he admits. “But it's very important.”

“OK,” she says, arming herself with a hammer and a can of pepper spray. “I go.”

Physically, nothing has changed in the basement. Rats and lizards scurry from the light in the ancient kitchen, the nauseating smell of blood is still in the musty air, and the atmosphere is still charged with fear, but in the dark torture chambers the souls hanging in the chains now have shadowy forms. One of the shadows is Daisy's grandfather, and tears stream down her face as she eyes the pathetic bundle of old clothes dumped in the corner. Some of the rags might have been the clothes he was wearing when he was wrested from her mother's grasp, and their presence brings the past into frighteningly painful focus as she pictures her mother, as a twelve-year-old, watching her grandfather broken, beaten, and dragged away in chains.

Bliss has no words to help her. It isn't her pain; it's her mother's pain. No wonder they couldn't accept the finality of the situation. They are devout Christians. They and their forebears had piously carried the Cross
up the Chemin du Calvaire in nearby Antibes every Easter for more than a thousand years. And every year, without fail, there was a resurrection. So, as they trudged the rocky path to the war's end after years of hopeful prayer there had to be some salvation — some reward. The notion that they might have been cheated by the insufferable cruelty of their God, as well as that of their invaders, had been too much.

“
C' est horrible,
” mumbles Daisy succinctly, perfectly encapsulating the suffering of thousands — men and women alike.

Returning to the kitchen, with all the rooms checked, Bliss is stumped. “I was sure he was living here.”

“Maybe zhe man who cut off his hand took his zhings.”

“How?”

“Zhe tunnel to zhe beach,” she says, then stops with a confused expression.

“That's a point,” he says. “Where is the tunnel your mother spoke about?”

Daisy's shrug of denial is the most unconvincing he's ever seen, and the fact that it isn't accompanied by a “
bof
” alerts him immediately. The body language of the lie transcends national boundaries, he decides, and pushes her. “Where is the entrance to the tunnel, Daisy?”

Seeking refuge in tears, and his shoulder, she evades the question for several minutes, but he persists. “You obviously know where it is. We're not leaving ' til you show me.”

Wiping her nose on his shirt, she snivels, “Why you want to know?”

“So you do know where it is.”

“No.”

“Daisy … if Greg Grimes was living here perhaps he was in the tunnel. I need to know.”

Breaking away, her eyes scour the basement as if she's preparing to run, then Bliss catches on.“You thought the tunnel was here, didn't you?”

Her refusal to answer is answer enough. “Where is it?” he demands, then pulls back. “Did your mother tell you it started in the basement?”

Her nod is another lie. He sees it, but lets it go. “We must've missed the entrance. Grab that light.... Wait a minute,” he breathes, and bends to pick up the remnants of a cigarette stub that has been ground into the dirty wooden floor.

“Here's another,” she cries, brightening at the discovery.

“Well, these haven't been here for sixty years,” he says, carefully dropping them into the finger of a rubber glove from the workman's bag and stuffing it into his pocket.

The door to the sub-basement takes them both by surprise. It isn't concealed; it just doesn't look like a door. A couple of ring handles recessed into the floor-boards at one end of the kitchen, next to the huge range, give it away.

“They must have brought the wood and coal up this way,” he says, struggling with the weighty trap door. Daisy steps in to help, and together they uncover a steep flight of stone steps. The anomaly of a white plastic light switch at the top of the steps doesn't immediately register in Bliss's mind as he gives it a flick. Mild surprise at the flood of light in the room below turns to alarm as they are jolted rigid by the rattle of a generator firing up in the distance.

“What a nerve,” whistles Bliss a few minutes later, stunned at the magnitude of their discovery. “This isn't squatting — this is a full-scale occupation.”