The Dave Bliss Quintet (29 page)

The potter's studio, complete with electric wheel, walk-in kiln, giant steel drying racks, and stacks of bagged clay, sand, gravel, and other ingredients, has the appearance of a full commercial set-up. And in a curtained alcove to one side is a neat little bedroom.

“Why did he stay up there?” Bliss puzzles briefly, looking back up the steps and recalling Grimes cowering under the old stone sink, before realizing the weakened, disabled potter wouldn't have had the strength to lift the trap door.

“He must've shipped his entire studio out here,” Bliss says, as he and Daisy inspect the equipment and supplies. “I wonder why he didn't just rent a proper space?”

“It is very expensive,” she replies, though he doubts that was the reason as he muses, “How did he get all this stuff in here?”

The thrum of the generator provides the answer as it draws them from the chamber down an illuminated brick-lined tunnel, and Daisy recovers a little of her bounce. “Zhis goes to zhe beach,” she tells him.

Bliss stops dead. “How do you know?”

A momentary hesitation warns him she's trying to come up with the correct answer. “
Maman
told me,” she says, but her tone isn't convincing.

“She told me as well,” he agrees, though can't get past the feeling Daisy is hiding something.

The noise of the powerful generator beats into their eardrums as they approach, and Bliss is surprised to discover the engine in a concrete-lined bunker the size of subway station, complete with narrow gauge sidings and
tracks that lead down another tunnel — to the beach, he surmises. “The Germans must have dug this,” he breathes, amazed by its size, and he puts it into context. The original brick-lined tunnel must have been built to allow supplies to be brought ashore and taken directly to the cellars of the château, without risk of offending the sensibilities of the gentry in the landscaped gardens above, but the concrete-lined cavern is obviously much more recent.

“I bet this is where the Germans stored their small craft,” he calls, pointing out the rusted rail lines and the hand switches that would have allowed the boat-dollies to be shunted into sidings. “They could have even kept midget subs here.”

Distracted by dark thoughts and seemingly uninterested, Daisy has wandered off and doesn't reply. There are pots — smashed pots — everywhere. Heaps of shattered stoneware. “It looks like someone's taken a wreck-er's ball to the place,” he says, picking through the shards of thick, rough terra cotta.

The darker recesses of the cavern attract him and he scouts around, looking for detritus of occupation. Some scraps of paper with German handwriting, and swastikas scratched into walls by bored sentries, are all he finds to confirm his suspicions.

“Somebody cleaned this place out pretty well after the war,” he notes, finding nothing of value. Then the low rumble of a train overhead drowns out the generator and takes his eyes up a rusted steel ladder, which fades into the high ceiling. Shining a flashlight he finds a large steel trap door. “I bet that comes out by the side of the railway line.”

Suddenly aware that he's been talking to himself for several minutes, he looks around for Daisy and finds her frozen in contemplation.

“What is it?” he calls, noticing some material in her hands.

“Just an old shirt,” she says, dropping it back to the ground and heading down the tunnel towards the beach.

“They probably took prisoners out this way to the trains or boats,” he chatters, catching her up as she emerges from the mouth of the tunnel onto a sunlit beach.

The charm and warmth of the perfect little cove contrasts so sharply with the cold tunnel and chilling images behind him that Bliss sinks to the sand and takes a deep breath as he surfaces from the nightmare to a dream.

“It's just like your mother described it,” he mutters to himself, unaware Daisy has slunk out of earshot, head down, as she fights with demons and darkness.

Encircled by rocky peninsulas, the cove is entirely screened from the sea, and the serene surface could be that of an emerald lake in a hidden valley.

Whoever the man in the iron mask was trying to impress must have been blind to turn this down, he tells himself, as he lets warm rivulets of white sand slip through his fingers. Yet the lovesick man's romantic proposal was obviously rebuffed because, according to records, he waited eleven years in the fortress, earnestly seeking the white flag destined never to be raised over his beautiful château. Finally, in mourning for his lost love and feeling foolish at his failed scheme, he persuaded Louis XIV to let him spend the rest of his life in reflection and purgatory in the Bastille in Paris.

The ironic image of an entire town of masked women still waiting for the release of their loved ones drags Bliss's spirits down. There is no one to raise the white flag today any more than there was in Frederick Chapel's time, and the thought that such a beautiful
building in such an idyllic setting has been the cause of misery to so many pains him.

Daisy sits contemplating the sea with such ferocity that he is wary of frightening her. Announcing his presence with a satisfied, “Aah,” he sighs, “It is very pretty, isn't it?” But she's changed. Deep in thought she barely acknowledges him, and her customary shrug has none of the emphasis she usually manages to convey.

Sitting silently beside her for a few moments he feels a degree of animosity in the air and is saddened that, in a way, he's tricked her into facing the dark truth. Her hunched shoulders and downcast eyes tell him that, despite claiming not to believe in the myth of the missing men, she is struggling with the enormity of a destroyed faith. But he sees more. “You've been here before, haven't you?” he asks. Her confusion in the basement kitchen and hesitant replies have given her away, as has her certainty that the tunnel led to the beach.

“
Bof!
” She shrugs.

“
Bof?
” he questions.

“
Oui, bof!
”

“You
have
been here, haven't you?”

Her impassive face gives nothing away as she demands, “How you know?”

“I guessed.”

“Don't guess,
Daavid
,” she says, and her sudden coldness takes him aback, but before he can protest she shakes herself free of the sand. “Can we go now please? I no like it here.”

“OK,” he says, but she's already off, almost running back up the tunnel. Scrabbling to his feet he sets off in pursuit. “Wait a minute,” he calls, but finds himself trailing as she storms through the wartime bunker.

Her footsteps are already clacking into the next tunnel as he quickly gathers some larger shards of broken pots, then he grabs the old shirt she'd been holding to use as a sling bag.

“Blasted woman,” he curses, as he's forced to run to catch up, and she is already climbing the steps to the kitchen when he enters the underground studio. Quickly stuffing the hoard of pottery shards into his tool bag, he pulls out his camera and takes a few snapshots before racing after her.

Daisy, face drawn in anxiety, waits at the top of the steps, fearful of leaving the bright lights for the gloom of the basement. “Somebody really had it in for Grimes,” Bliss says nonchalantly as he emerges from the trap door, trying to restore some normality to their relationship. “His wife said he'd upset someone — looks to me like he's upset a whole load of people.”

The walk back to Daisy's car, in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill, is tortuously silent. Bliss tries to soften her a couple of times, but gives up when he realizes she is close to causing a scene.

“I'll walk home,” he says, and feels the tension lift as she drives off.

Back in the apartment, he carefully transfers the crushed cigarette ends to a small plastic bag, spreads a newspaper over the kitchen table, and unfolds the shirt — but it's neither the pottery shards nor the stains of age on the shirt that cause him to catch his breath. It is the logo. “TAKE FIVE — The Dave Brubeck Quartet.”

Either my doppelganger has lied about his age or this shirt did not belong in the château with the wartime
relics, he decides, then puts it to one side as he picks through the pottery and phones Marcia. He has her number and address as part of a deal —
“If you expect me to find out who did it … ”

“Two questions, Marcia,” he says. “Did Greg smoke?”

With her emphatic “No,” he asks, “Who was he making pots for?”

“The young women … ”

“No,” says Bliss, “big pots — very big pots. Wait a minute,” he cuts himself off, turning over a conical shard in his hand, thinking about treasure and pots and the Senegalese salesmen on the beaches flogging Rolex and Cartier knock-offs. “Johnson's treasure hunt wouldn't involve the search for Roman amphorae, would it?”

“Well done, Inspector.”

“So, when you got people to invest in the deal they were actually investing in the search for pots that had never been anywhere near Rome or a galley. Is that right?”

“You said two questions.”

“Do you want me to find Greg's attacker or not?”

“All right. Yes — if you must know, the amphorae may not be quite as old as they appear. Though I don't see what this has to do with Greg.”

I bet they're roughly two thousand years newer than they look, Bliss guesses, then informs her, “Somebody's smashed all the pots.”

“What pots?”

“The pots Greg made for Johnson.”

“He didn't make any pots for Johnson. He wouldn't make them. He absolutely refused to get involved.”

“Then I don't understand,” says Bliss, and is preparing to put down the phone when he has a final thought. “Is Greg a Dave Brubeck fan?”

“Yes — why?”

August fifteenth breaks with all the fury of a feather cudgel. Good old Jacques, thinks Bliss, as he strolls to the warm balcony with his morning coffee, although he is mindful that Daisy was just as adamant about the imminent demise of summer.

Daisy has been keeping a low profile since yesterday morning, and he's purposefully avoided contacting her, figuring she needs time to digest the information and decide how to disenchant her mother and the other women. Or will she simply carry on as before? he wonders.

The manuscript of his novel, “The Truth Behind the Mask,” nears completion as he adds descriptions of the château's basements and underground tunnels for colour. The only significant feature not yet clarified is the name of the jilted Romeo, but he is working on that when a muttered cry of annoyance from the garden below catches his attention.

“
Merde
,” swears the old concierge, as he bends to scoop crap off the lawn, and Bliss is reminded that he's still done nothing about the young man in the cage. But what to do? In England it would be easy. Magistrate — swear out an affidavit alleging an arrestable offence and obtain a search warrant. But this is France. Who knows — the French might enjoy this kind of thing. There may be thousands of French kids living in cages with their dogs.

With Johnson complaining to Daisy about his interference and — whatever Marcia may claim — the strong possibility that Johnson had a hand in her husband's mutilation, he decides to leave it for the time being.

Hoping to catch Hugh and Mavis before their afternoon flight, he takes a stroll to L' Escale for an early lunch. A commotion in the road near the bar has attracted a small crowd, and an ambulance screeches to a halt as he arrives.

“What's happened?” he asks Hugh, peering along the promenade.

“Angeline,” says Hugh, nodding to the waitress as she hobbles across the road to take their order, then details how she pirouetted neatly past a zooming white delivery van, squeezed through a gap between two racing Renaults, but miscalculated the speed of a sprinting cyclist and stabbed her foot through his front wheel. The bike stopped — but not the rider.

“
Bonjour, Monsieur
,” sings Angeline, apparently unscathed.

“Are you all right?” he asks, concerned.

“
Oui, c' est rien
— no
problè me,
” she says, seemingly indifferent to the fate of the young man who screams in agony as he's loaded aboard the ambulance.

“Let me get your lunch, Dave,” offers Hugh. “I feel we owe you something.”

“Thanks,” he says, ordering the oysters and chips in place of his usual mussels.

Angeline limps towards the bar, and Bliss resists the temptation to cry out as she plays chicken with the ambulance. For once the vehicle wins, but she leans on
the sympathy of a bus driver in the medic's wake and hobbles across the road.

Hugh and Mavis are blushingly effusive in thanking him for persuading them to stay. “We've had a wonderful holiday,” says Mavis, her deep bronze tan glowing golden in the midday sun. “We're coming for two months again next year.” Then she adds slyly, “We've already booked.”

“That's wonderful,” he says, then asks, “With John and Jennifer?”

“Good grief. No,” says Mavis, “they're a couple of old stick-in-the-muds.”

Jacques pulls up a chair with a smile to Hugh. “You'll be thankful to have got out of here.”

“Why is that, Jacques?” Bliss asks, knowing he'll regret it, knowing that some Beaufort blast is about to wreak havoc on the coast. “Are we expecting bad weather?”

“
Certainement
,” he assures them. “By tonight zhe sirocco wind will scoop zhe red sands from zhe deserts of Africa and will scorch across zhe Mediterranean. By tomorrow zhe surf will pound our beaches and smash zhe boats.”

“Sounds horrific,” laughs Bliss. “Maybe I should leave as well.”

“You would be very wise to consider it, Monsieur,” says Jacques with a degree of seriousness that shakes Bliss. “Zhe summer is at an end,” continues the Frenchman, forcefully. “It is time for everyone to go home.”