Nine Coaches Waiting

Chapter 20

"Who the devil are you?" said Raoul.

Since he said it in French, William Blake took not the slightest notice. He stopped just inside the door, breathing hard. He looked, as ever, enormous; very English, with the untidy blond hair, and very safe. He looked down the room at me, ignoring everyone else.

"Linda? What's going on here? Are you all right?"

I said between a laugh and a sob: "Oh, William!" and ran to him down the length of the room, bouillon and all.

He didn't exactly fold me in his arms, but he did catch me, and, with some presence of mind, hold me away from him, so that the bouillon didn't spill all over his ancient jacket, but only on the priceless Savonnerie carpet.

"Here, steady on," he said. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yes, quite all right."

Hippolyte had turned and risen in surprise at the interruption, but Héloïse was past caring for the presence of a stranger. She was weeping freely now, the sobs tearing at the atmosphere of the beautiful over-civilised room. Hippolyte paused, looking helplessly from the newcomer back to her. Raoul said, without moving: "It's the Englishman. I told you about him."

I saw William wince from the sound of sobbing, but he stood his ground, his jaw jutting dangerously. "Did they hurt you?"

"No, oh no. It's not them, William, it's all finished, honestly."

"Anything I can do?"

"Not a thing, except… take me out of here."

Behind me I heard Hippolyte say with a kind of controlled desperation: "Héloïse, please. My dear, you must try and pull yourself together. This is doing no good, no good at all. You'll make yourself ill. Héloïse!"

William said: "Okay. We'll get you out of this. And fast." He put an arm round my shoulders, and turned me towards the door. "Let's go."

I saw Hippolyte take half a step towards us. "Miss Martin-"

But here Héloïse sobbed something incoherently and caught at his sleeve, a desperate little gesture that broke something inside me.

I said: "I can't stand this, William. Wait."

I thrust the half-empty pot of bouillon into his hands, and went back to Madame de Valmy. Hippolyte stood aside and I went down on my knees in front of the little gold chair. I was kneeling at Raoul's feet I didn't look up at him, and he never moved. Her hands were still over her face. The sobs were less violent now. I took her wrists gently and pulled them down and held her hands.

I said: "Madame, don't. Don't cry any more. We can talk this thing over quietly when you're feeling better. It won't do any good to make yourself ill." Then to Hippolyte: "Can't you see she's beside herself? There's no point in letting this go on. She doesn't know what she's saying. She must be got to bed… Madame, there'll be some way to arrange everything, you'll see. Don't cry any more. Please."

The sobbing caught in her throat. She looked at me with those pale, drowned eyes. The beauty had all gone. The delicately rouged cheeks sagged slack and grey, and her mouth was loose and blurred with crying. I said: "There've been enough tears over this, madame. Don't distress yourself any more. Nothing's going to happen to you. It's all over now. Here, take my handkerchief… Why, you're cold! I don't know why you're sitting here when there's a stove in the study; and you haven't been well lately, have you? Shall we go in there, and perhaps we can get Gaston to bring some coffee? Can you get up? Let me help you… "

She got to her feet slowly, stiffly, and I led her across to the study door. She came obediently, as if she were sleep-walking. The others followed. Nobody spoke. She was weeping still, but quietly, into my handkerchief. I put her into a chair near the stove, and knelt again beside her on the rug.

I don't know quite what else I said to her, but the sobbing stopped, and presently she lay back in the chair quietly, and looked at me. She looked exhausted, dazed almost. She said abruptly, in a flat, sleep-walker's tone: "I liked you, Miss Martin. I liked you from the first."

I said soothingly: "I know you did. It's all right. Don't worry now. We'll get you home, and-"

"You wouldn't really have been blamed for the accidents, you know. We didn't mean to blame you. We never meant at the beginning to make you responsible."

"No."

"Léon liked you too. He said you were gallant. That was the word. He said: 'She's a gallant little devil and it'd be a pity if we had to bring her down.' "

Raoul said very quietly, from behind me: "And just what did he mean by that?"

Madame de Valmy took no notice. She seemed oblivious of anyone but herself and me. She held my hands and looked at me with those pale dazed eyes, and talked in that tired monotone that she didn't seem to be able to stop. "He said that just a day or so ago. Of course, after the second accident on the balcony we were going to have to dismiss you, you know. He said you were too wide-awake and now you'd begin to suspect us if anything else happened. We were pleased when you gave us the excuse to send you away. You thought I was angry, didn't you?"

"Yes, madame."

"Then we got the cable. We had to do something in a hurry. There were the rumours in the village about you and Raoul, and about your being dismissed, but Léon said it might come in useful later anyway, if the village had been linking your names."

Behind me I heard Raoul take in his breath as if to speak. I said quickly, to divert her: "Yes, madame, I know. Albertine started to talk, didn't she? Well, don't think about that now."

"She never knew what we were trying to do," said Madame de Valmy. "But she didn't like you. She never liked you. It was she who told me about the muddle you'd made with the prescriptions that time. She only told me to show you up. She thought I'd think you careless and silly. It was only spite. But that's what made us think of the poison, you see. That was the only reason we thought of using those pills. We weren't trying to fix it on you, Miss Martin. It was to have looked like an accident. It was in the glucose, you understand. The poison was in the glucose that you used every night to make his chocolate with."

"Madame-"

"Luckily there wasn't much left in the tin, so we soaked the blue colour off the tablets and powdered them up and made a strong mixture. Too strong perhaps. It may have been bitter. He didn't take it, did he?"

"No. But that wasn't why." I turned desperately to Hippolyte, who was standing silently over by the desk. "May I ring and ask for some coffee, Monsieur de Valmy? I really think-"

"We hadn't time to think of anything better," said Héloïse. "It was to look like an accident. If he had taken it and died they might not have thought of murder. Those anti-histamine pills are blue. The doctor might have thought he'd taken them as sweets. Children do. We meant to empty out the rest of the glucose and leave one or.two pills by his bed. There were some in a jar on your mantelpiece, where he might have found them and eaten them. You mightn't have been blamed. They would have thought you'd forgotten to give them to Mrs. Seddon. Léon said you might not be blamed even then."

Behind me Raoul said: "Just what are you talking about, Héloïse?"

She looked up at him with that dead, sleep-walker's look. She seemed to have forgotten her outburst. She answered him mechanically: "The poison. It wasn't a very good plan, but we had to be sure and it was all we could think of that might look like an accident. But he didn't take it. It's all right. She said so. I was just explaining to her that we didn't mean her any harm. I like her. I always did."

I said quickly: "Madame, you're upset. You don't know what you're saying. Now we're going to have some coffee, and we'll see you home.”

Across me Raoul said: "And if Miss Martin had been blamed? If murder had been suspected? You had made it common knowledge, hadn't you, that she and I-that there might be an interested reason to get rid of

Philippe?"

She said nothing. She stared up at him.

"Was that what my father meant when he said that the gossip 'might have been useful later'?"

I heard Hippolyte begin to say something, but Raoul cut across it. "On Tuesday night, Héloïse… who was it found Philippe had gone?"

"Léon did. He stayed awake. We were going to empty out the rest of the glucose and-"

"So you said. He found Philippe gone. And then?"

"He thought he must have felt ill and gone for Miss Martin. But there was no light there. She'd gone too."

"And when he couldn't find them, what then?"

"He sent Bernard out to look for them."

Raoul said: "With what instructions?"

She said nothing. Under the hammering of his questions she seemed to have come partly to life again. Her eyes were conscious now, blinking nervously up at him.

"With what instructions, Heloise?"

Still she didn't answer. She didn't need to. Her features seemed to flatten out and melt like candlegrease. Hippolyte said, harshly: "That's enough, Raoul."

"Yes," said Raoul. "I think it is."

He walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

For a moment nobody moved. Then Héloïse came to her feet, thrusting me aside so that I fell over on the rug.

She stood there with her hands slack at her sides. She said, almost conversationally: "Léon. He's gone to kill Léon." Then she crumpled beside me on the rug in a dead faint.

I left her there. I remember leaping to my feet to stand like a fool on the rug beside her, gaping at the shut door. I remember Hippolyte starting forward and shouting: "Raoul! Come back, you fool!" He was answered by the slam of the front door. He turned with a sound like a groan and jumped for the telephone. I remember that, as he touched it, it began to ring.

Before it had threshed once I was out on the gallery and racing for the head of the stairs. There were steps behind me and William's hand caught at my arm. "Linda, Linda. Where are you going? Keep out of this. You can't do a thing."

Outside an engine roared to violent life. A door slammed. The Cadillac gained the road, paused, whined up through her gears, and snarled away into the silence.

I shook off William's hand and fled down the curving stairs. Across the hall, and struggling with the heavy

door… William reached over my shoulder and yanked it open. The lamp over the door showed the dark circular drive walled in with misty trees… a big black car… a battered jeep… the scored grooves in the gravel where the Cadillac's tyres had torn their circle. The smell of her exhaust hung in the air.

I ran out.

William caught at my arm. "For God's sake, Linda-"

"We've got to stop him! We've got to stop him!"

"But-"

"Didn't you understand? He's gone to kill Léon. He said he would, and they'll have to kill him for it. Don't you understand?"

He still held me. "But what can you do? You've been mixed up in enough of their dirty game as it is. Let me take you away. There's nothing you can do. You said yourself it was finished. What's it to you if they murder each other?"

"Oh, dear God, what's it to me? William"-I was clinging to him now-"William, you have to help. I-I can't drive a car. Please, William, please, please-"

The night, the misty trees, the solitary lamp in its yellow nimbus were all part of the roaring horror that enveloped me, that was only my own blood pounding in my ears…

He said quietly: "Very well, let's go," and his hand closed over mine for a moment. As the world steadied around me I saw that he was opening the door of the jeep.

I said shakily: "No. The other." I ran to the big Chevrolet and pulled the door open. It was the Valmy car. Héloïse must have had it down to the airport to meet Hippolyte.

William followed me. His voice was doubtful. "Ought we to!"

"It's faster. The key's in. Oh, William, hurry!"

"Okay."

And then we were away. Our wheels whined round in the same circle, skidding on the gravel. Our lights raked the trees, the lodge, the willows fronded with weeping mist… We took the gate cautiously, gained the road, and swung right.

Along the narrow, fog-dimmed road with its soaring dark trees; a sharp turn left, a steep little climb between echoing walls; right again, then a series of dizzy, whipping turns through the steep streets that climbed up to the town. Now we had reached the upper level, and were clear of the mist. We swept along a wide curved boulevard where lamps flickered by among the pollard-willows… A sharp swing right, and we scudded across the empty market-place where cobbles gleamed damply and a few flattened cabbage-leaves lay in a gutter like a drift of giant leaves. William had got the feel of the car now. We swirled right-handed into a badly-lit avenue and gathered speed. The lopped chestnuts flicked past us one by one, faster, faster, faster…

We were out of the little town. Our headlights leaped out ahead of us, and the engine's note rose powerfully, and held steady.

Ahead of us the road forked. A signboard flashed up in the white light and tore towards us.

We took the left for Valmy.

William was, I thought, as good a driver as Raoul, but Raoul had not only a start, but a faster car which was, moreover, the one he was accustomed to drive. But after a while I began to hope that even these advantages might not help him too much, for very soon after leaving Thonon we met the mist again. Not the tree-haunting grey mist that had risen from the lake to moat the Villa Mireille, but little clouds and clots of white brume, breathed up from the river to lie in all the hollows of a road that was never far from the water. Each time the car's nose dipped a dazzling cumulus of white struck back the light at us, swept over us, blinded, engulfed us, then even as the engine slowed and hesitated we roared up out of cloud again into the calm black air. At first the experience was unnerving; the moment of blindness was like a great white hand thrust against your face, so that you flinched backwards against the upholstery, and were conscious of your eyes' catlike dilation. But with each succeeding dive into the cloud the car's hesitation became less apparent and after a while I realised that William was losing very little speed. He seemed to know unerringly just how the road lifted and curved, where the mist would lie for fifty yards and where for five, and he sliced through the fog-patches with the confidence of the man who-literally-knows his road blindfold. He must have driven up and down it scores of times in the course of his job; it was even probable that he knew it better than Raoul, who for some time had lived most of his year between Bellevigne and Paris. We might catch him yet…

So at any rate I told myself, huddled down in the seat beside William and staring with eyes that winced through the marching clouds of mist to catch a glimpse of a vanishing tail-light round some curve ahead.

William said: "What was all that about, Linda?"

"What d'you mean? Oh-I keep forgetting you don't speak French." I gave a shaky little laugh. "I'm sorry, William. I- I’m not thinking very clearly tonight. I haven't even said thank you for coming. I've just rushed you into my affairs and used you like this. I-I'm terribly grateful. I really am."

"Think nothing of it. But you'd better put me in the picture hadn't you?"

So I told him the story from the beginning-not very clearly, I’m afraid, and with halts and pauses due to weariness and the fear that clawed at me, while the car roared on up that wicked valley-road and the night went by us smoothly as a dream. The dark road fell away, streamed, poured away behind us; the thin grey trees reeled past us into nothingness; the mist-clouds marched, fled, broke and streamed away from us in mackerel flakes like rack in the wind.

The red tail-light struck at my eyes like a dagger.

I said hoarsely: "There. William. Look, there."

He didn't answer, but I knew he'd seen it. Then it vanished and a moment later the blinding white swamped us again. Out into a patch of clear darkness, and then another cloud was on us, but this time thin, so that our yellow-dimmed lights made rainbows in it that wisped away along our wings, and we were through.

The car gathered speed up a steady straight. rise. And the fleeing red light was there, not three hundred yards ahead.

He didn't seem to be travelling so very fast. We were gaining, gaining rapidly. Two hundreds yards, a hundred and fifty… the gap dwindled. We were coming up fast. Too fast.

"It's only a lorry," said William, and lifted his foot.

We ran up close behind it and asked to be by.

It was one of those appalling monsters so common in France, far too high and wide for any road, and far too fast for their size. And it became obvious very soon that this one had no intention of allowing us the road. Ignoring the flickering of our lights it roared along, rocking a little on the bends, but never yielding an inch of the crown of the road.

I don't know how long we were behind it. It seemed a year. I sat with my nails driving holes into the palms of my hands, and my teeth savaging my lip while I stared with hatred at the dirty back-board of the lorry held in our lights. It was carrying gravel, which dripped through the cracks onto the road. Someone had chalked a face like a gremlin on the left-hand panel. To this day I can see the number-plate with the chip off the corner and read the number. 920-DE75… I stared at it without consciously seeing it at all, and thought of the Cadillac roaring on ahead, of Raoul and Léon and the terrible little scene that, unbelievably, was so soon to be acted out in the Valmy library.

I said again: "William…”

“If the Caddy passed him," said William calmly, "we can. Hold on."

There wasn't even a trace of impatience in his voice. He drew out to the left, flickered his lights again, and waited. The lorry lumbered on. We were on an up-grade now, and the lorry was slowing. It held the road, and once again we drew patiently in behind it.

So we went in procession up the hill. A sob rose and burst in my throat and I put the back of my hand hard against my teeth in an effort for self-control.

The lorry slowed, slowed again, and checked as it was rammed into bottom gear. We crawled towards the head of the rise.

The trees that crowned the hill-top swelled into light that soared towards us. Lights were coming up the other side of the hill, and coming fast. Their grey aurora spread, splayed brighter, lifted into gold. The lorry topped the crest of the road, black against the approaching glare, and swung sharply over to its right to make way for the oncoming car.

Our own lights flashed once, and dimmed. Something hit me in the small of the back as the Chevrolet shot forward like a torpedo into the gap.

Lights met lights with a clash that could be felt. Then we whipped to the right almost under the lorry's front bumper. I heard the yell of a horn and something that might have been a shout, but we were through with a little to spare and dropping downhill with the rush of a lift.

"Oh, you honey," said William affectionately to the car, and then sent me a grin. I had bitten the back of my hand but his breathing wasn't even ruffled. "It's nice," he said mildly, "to have the horses…"

The road lifted once more, to shake itself clear of mist. William's foot went down and those horses took hold. My eyes strained through the darkness ahead for that tell-tale light among the trees.

But no light showed till we rounded the curve where the road begins the long drop to the Valmy bridge, and saw the lurch and sway of lights that cut their way up the zigzag nearly half-a- mile ahead.

I must have made some small sound, for William gave me a glance and said: "Don't fret, my dear. They'll talk it over, surely?" But he didn't sound convinced, and neither was I. We'd both seen Raoul's face. And the way those distant headlights now slashed their way up the zigzag was some indication that the mood still held.

I saw them vanish at the top under the château's bright windows. William accelerated, and we shot down the last hill, met a wall of mist bonnet-high, slowed, sank down to second for the turn onto the bridge-and then stopped short, with brakes squealing.

I said breathlessly: "What is it?"

"Can two cars pass on that road?"

"The zigzag? No. But-"

He nodded towards it. I followed his gaze and said: "Oh, dear Lord," on a dreary little sob. A car had nosed its way down off the driveway and was taking the first hairpin with some caution. It got round, and came on its decorous way down…

"Where are you going?" asked William sharply.

I was fumbling with the door. "There's a path straight up from the bridge through the wood… steps… I think I could-"

He reached across and his hand closed over mine. "Don't be silly. You'd break your heart and I'd still be there before you. Sit still."

"But William-"

"My dear girl, I know. But there's nothing else to do." His voice was calm. "Look, he's nearly down. Sit still."

I was shaking uncontrollably. "Of course. It-it doesn't matter to you, does it?"

His eyes were grave and gentle. "And it does to you? It really does?"

I said nothing. The descending car swung round the last bend, and her lights sank towards the bridge. There was mist lying as it had lain that night.

William said gently: "I'm sorry, Linda."

The car was crossing the bridge, nosing through the mist. It paused, and moved out into the road with a lamentable crash of gears. William's hand shifted and the Chevrolet leaped for the gap and went over the bridge with the mist flying out from the headlamps like spray in the teeth of a destroyer.

For a fleeting second before the cliff cut it off from view I lifted my eyes and saw the Château Valmy, brightly lit against the night sky. That was what William meant; I knew it. The castle in the air, the Cinderella-dream-nonsense for a night. Banquets abroad by torchlight, music, sports, nine coaches waiting!

Not for you, Linda my girl. You get yourself back to Camden Town.

The Chevrolet lurched up and round the final curve, and skidded wildly as her wheels met the gravel of the drive. She came to a rocking halt just behind the parked Cadillac.

There was another car in the drive and a van of sorts, but I hardly noticed them. I had my door open before our wheels had shrieked to a stop, and was out and stumbling up the steps to the great door.

Seddon was in the hall. He started forward when he saw me and I heard him say: "Oh, Miss Martin-" but I fled past him as if he didn't exist, and down the long corridor that led to the library.

The door was slightly ajar and a light showed. As I reached it my panic courage spilt out of me like wine from a smashed glass and I stopped dead with my hands actually on the panels ready to push.

Inside the room there was no sound.

I pushed the door open softly, took three steps into the room, and stopped short.

There were several men in the room, but I only saw two of them.

Raoul de Valmy was standing with his back to the door, staring down at his father.

For once Léon de Valmy was not in his wheel-chair. He had fallen forward and out of it onto the floor. His body lay clumsily, pulled a little crooked by whatever harness he wore under his clothes. His head was turned to one side, his cheek against the carpet. His face was smooth, wiped clean of every line and shadow; beauty and evil had emptied themselves from it together. Now there was nothing there at all.

From where I was you could hardly see the blackened hole in the temple.

I would have fallen where I stood but that William’s arms came round me from behind and swept me up

and out of the silent room.