Nine Coaches Waiting

Chapter 21

… Warmth, and the sound of liquid, and the smell of azaleas… And someone was patting my hand. But there was no music, and the voice that said my name was not Florimond's. Nor was Raoul there waiting to sweep me out onto the terrace and under the moon…

William said: "Here, Linda, drink this." The liquid burned sourly on my tongue and made me gasp. I opened my eyes.

I was in the small salon, lying on the sofa before the fire. Someone had made this up recently. Tongues of pale flame licked round the new logs. I stared at them dazedly. I had never fainted before, and the memory of the roaring dizziness frightened me and I put an unsteady hand up to my eyes. The salon still swam round me, too bright and a little out of focus.

"Finish it," urged William.

I obeyed him meekly. It was detestable stuff, whatever it was, but it ran into my body warm and potent, so that in a few moments more my eyes and fingers and even my brain were mine again. And my memory.

"How d'you feel now?" asked William.

I said drearily: "Oh, fine. Just fine. I'm sorry, William. That wasn't a very useful thing to do."

He took the glass from my hand and put it on the mantelpiece. Then he sat down on the sofa beside me. "Nothing we've done tonight has been so terribly useful, has it?"

I found myself staring at him in a kind of daze. Of course.

It was nothing to him. I said, dragging the words up from the depths: "Have they… taken him away yet?"

"Not yet"

"William. I've got to… see him. Just for a moment. I've got to."

I heard stupefaction in his voice. "But my dear Linda-"

"When will he go?"

"I've no idea, the police are still busy. The ambulance is waiting."

I gave a little gasp and turned my head sharply. "Ambulance? Is he hurt? What's happened?" I sat up and gripped his arm. The bright roaring mist was there again. Dimly through it I saw William's eyes, puzzled and a little shocked. Dimly I heard him say: "But Linda. Didn't you realise? I thought you knew. He's dead."

My grip must have been savaging his sleeve. His hand came up to cover mine, quietly. "He shot himself," said William, "some time before Raoul and you and I got here."

"Oh," I said, in a silly high voice, "Léon. Léon shot himself. The ambulance is for Léon."

"Why-who else?"

I heard myself give a cracked breathless little laugh. "Who indeed?" I said, and burst into tears.

It was hard luck on William. And for a shy British amateur, he was certainly doing very well. He produced some more of that filthy drink, and patted my hand some more too, and put a large comforting arm round me.

"I thought you'd grasped the situation," he was saying. "I thought it was just the shock of seeing, er, Monsewer Léon that made you faint… The butler chap was telling me all about it just now when he brought the drink for you. I thought you heard. I'd no idea you were right out."

"I-I wasn't really. I heard you talking. But I didn't take it in. It was like voices in a dream… coming and going."

The arm tightened momentarily. "You poor kid. Better now?"

I nodded. "Go on, tell me. What did Seddon say?"

"Is that his name? Thank God he's English! Well, he told me he'd gone in to look at the library fire soon after eleven, and found him dead on the floor, the way you saw him. Nobody heard the shot. He called the police and the doctor straight away, and then the Villa Mireille, but got no answer there."

"That would be before Philippe and I got into the house."

"Oh? They tried again later, twice. I suppose the first time was while you were telephoning me, and then they finally got Monsewer Hippolyte. That would be the call that came through as we left the house. Hippolyte's on his way up. He'll be here before long."

"If he knows how to drive the jeep."

"Oh, murder," said William. "I never thought of that."

I said: "Are they sure it was suicide?"

"Oh, quite. The gun was in his hand, and there's a letter."

"A letter? Léon de Valmy left a letter?"

"Yes. The police have it. Seddon didn't read it, but from what the police asked him he pretty well gathered what it said. It admitted the first two attempts to murder Philippe, involving Bernard, but nobody else. He states categorically that neither Raoul nor Madame de Valmy knew anything about them. He never mentions this last affair of the poison-I suppose that would almost certainly involve his wife. He simply says that Bernard must have let something out to you about the two early attempts, and you got in a panic and bolted with Philippe. I think that's about the lot. You've certainly nothing to worry about."

"No." I was silent for a moment. "Well, I shan't volunteer anything else unless they ask me. I don't somehow want to pile anything more onto Madame de Valmy, whatever she did. He's dead, you see. She's got that to go on living with. Funny, one somehow imagines her snuffing quietly out now, the way the moon would if the sun vanished. Somehow it's like Léon to let her out, and me, and yet to turn the wretched Bernard in… though I suppose it was impossible to hide his part in it. And Bernard failed, after all."

"That's not why," said William. "When Bernard found you both gone and Raoul on the trail he must have realised that Léon de Valmy's bolt was shot and that there'd never be a future and a fortune for him the way he'd been promised. He moved onto the winning side, probably with an eye to the future, and played in with Raoul all day, looking for you and Philippe. Then last night-three or four hours ago-he came and tried to retrieve that lost fortune by putting the black on Monsewer Léon."

"Blackmail?"

"Yes. It's in the letter. He threatened to turn informer. If you ask me, that's what tipped Léon de Valmy's scales towards suicide in the end. I mean, there's no end to blackmail, is there?"

I said slowly: "You're probably right. I was wondering what had made him kill himself instead of waiting to see what Raoul and Hippolyte would do. After all, it was still all in the family. But when one thinks about it… Even if Raoul and Hippolyte and I had agreed to hush the whole thing up for Philippe's sake and the sake of the family-what was there left for Léon de Valmy? Hippolyte would be able to put any sort of pressure on that he liked, and he might have insisted on Léon's leaving Valmy. Even if Léon was allowed to stay, Hippolyte would start sitting down tight on the money-bags, and presumably Raoul would be in a position to stop Léon milking Bellevigne any more… And in any case Léon would have had to get out in five years' time. And we all-even Philippe-knew what he'd done and what he was… And then, finally, the wretched tool Bernard started to blackmail him. Yes, one can see a desperate moment for Léon, and no future. Certainly he wasn't the kind of man to submit to blackmail; he'd literally die sooner, I'm sure of it. It only surprises me that he didn't kill Bernard first, but I suppose Bernard would be on guard against that, and he did have certain physical advantages. What did happen to Bernard anyway? Did Léon kill him?"

"No, he's disappeared. There'll be a hue and cry, but I suppose it's to be hoped that he gets away, and the rest of the story with him."

I said: "Yes. Poor little Berthe."

"Who's that?"

"Oh, nobody. Just one of the nobodies who get hurt the most when wicked men start to carve life up to suit themselves. You know, William, I doubt if I was altogether right about why Léon de Valmy killed himself… I imagine all those things would be there, part of it, in his mind, but it would be something else that tipped him over. I think I knew him rather well. He'd been beaten. He'd been shown up. And I don't think he could have taken that, whatever happened later. He was-I think the word's a megalomaniac. He had to see himself as larger than life…everything that happened was seen only in relation to him… He sort of focused your attention on himself all the time, and he could do it, William; I believe he liked to think he could play with people just as he wanted to. He couldn't ever have taken second place to anyone. To shoot himself, making that magnanimous gesture with the letter… yes, that was Léon de Valmy all right." I leaned back wearily. "Well, whatever his reasons, it made the best end, didn't it? Oh, God, William, I'm so tired."

He said anxiously: "Are you all right? What about some more brandy?"

"No, thanks. It's all right. This is just the anticlimax hitting me.

"D'you want to go now? Perhaps we could-"

"Go. Where to?"

He pushed his fingers through his hair. "I-yes, I hadn't thought of that. They didn't exactly get the red carpets out at the Villa Mireille, did they? Though if you ask me they owe you a ruddy great vote of thanks, and I'll tell them so myself if nobody else does!"

"They know, for what it's worth," I said.

"But you don't want to stay here, do you?"

"What else can I do? When Monsieur Hippolyte gets around to it, he'll see that I get my passage paid back to England."

"You'll go home?"

"Yes." I looked at him and gave a smile of a sort. "You see, when you're in my position you can't afford to make the grand gesture, William. I can't just swep' out. I'm afraid I must wait here till the police have asked all their questions. I think I'll go along and see Berthe now, and then come back here and wait for them."

"Hang on, here's someone coming," said William. "Yes, here they are."

I must still have been in a semi-dazed condition, because, although I remember quite well exactly what the police inspector looked like, I can't recall our interview with any accuracy. I did gather that after Léon de Valmy's death the frightened servants had poured out the story of Philippe's and my disappearance and all the accompanying rumours, but that the suicide's letter, together with what Hippolyte de Valmy had said over the telephone and (finally) an interview with Raoul, had strangled stillborn any doubts about myself. This much I understood soon enough: the inspector's manner with me was gentle and even respectful, and I found myself answering his questions readily and without any anxiety other than the dreadful obsessional one-the fox under my cloak that kept my eyes on the open door all through the half-hour or so of question and answer, and made my heart jump and jerk every time anyone passed along the corridor.

The inspector left us eventually when Hippolyte arrived. I saw them pass the door together on the way to the library. Hippolyte was still pale and tired-looking, but very composed. It was easy to suppose that, once the shock was over, the news would prove a relief.

I wondered fleetingly about Héloïse, and then again, sharply, about Berthe. But as I got to my feet to go in search of her Seddon came in with coffee, and in response to my inquiries told me that the police had dealt with her very kindly, and had (when the interview was over) sent her in one of their cars down to her mother's house in the village. I supposed this was the car that had held us up at the zigzag. There was nothing more to be done for Berthe except to hope that Bernard could be forgotten, so I sat wearily down again while Seddon poured me some coffee. He lingered for a while, asking me about Philippe, to vanish at length in the direction of the hall when Hippolyte came into the room.

William got to his feet a little awkwardly. I put my coffee- cup down on the floor and made to follow suit, but Hippolyte said quickly: "No, please," and then, in English, to William: "Don't go."

I began to say: "Monsieur de Valmy, I-we're awfully sorry-"

But he stopped me with a gesture, and coming over to the sofa he bent over me and took both my hands in his. Then, before I knew what he was about, he kissed them.

"That is for Philippe," he said. "We owe you a very great deal, it seems, Miss Martin, and I have come belatedly to thank you and ask you to forgive me for my rather cavalier treatment of you at the Villa Mireille."

I said rather feebly: "You had other things on your mind, monsieur." I wanted to tell him not to bother about me but to go back to his own worries and his own personal tragedy, but I couldn't, so I sat and let him thank me again with his grave courteous charm, and tried not to watch the door while he talked, or to think how like Raoul's his voice was.

I realised suddenly that he had left the past and was talking about the future.

“… He will stay with me at the Villa Mireille for the time being. Miss Martin-dare I hope that after your very terrible experience you will stay with him?"

I stared at him for some time, stupidly, before I realised what he was asking me. He must, in his own tragic preoccupation, have forgotten Raoul's confession concerning me. I said: "I-I don't know. Just at the moment-"

"I quite see. I had no right to put it to you now. You look exhausted, child, and no wonder. Later, perhaps, you can think it over."

There was a queer sound from the corridor, a kind of slow, heavy shuffling. Then I knew what it was, Léon, leaving the Château Valmy. I looked down at my hands.

Hippolyte was saying steadily: "If under the circumstances you prefer not to spend the night here, there's a place for you as long as you choose to stay at the Villa Mireille."

"Why, thank you. Yes, I-I would like that. Thank you very much."

"Then if we can find someone to take you down -?”

He had glanced at William, who said immediately: "Of course." Then he stammered and added awkwardly: "I say, sir, I'm terribly sorry about taking the car. We thought-that is, we were in a hurry. I really am awfully sorry."

"It's nothing." Hippolyte dismissed the theft with a gesture. "I believe you thought you might prevent a tragedy-a worse one than what actually happened." His eyes moved sombrely to the door. "I'm sure you will understand me when I say that-this-was not altogether a tragedy." Another glance at William, this time with the faintest glimmer of a smile underlying the sombre look. "You'll find your own-extraordinary vehicle-outside. And now goodnight."

He went. I picked up my coffee-cup absently, but the stuff was cold and skinning over. I set it down again. A log fell in with a soft crash of sparks. No movement now outside in the corridor. I looked at the clock. It had stopped. The world-without-end hour… Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour, whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you…

"Linda," said William. He came and sat beside me on the sofa. He reached out and took both my cold hands in his. Safe, gentle hands; steady, sensible hands. "Linda," he said again, and cleared his throat.

I woke to the present as to a cold touch on the shoulder. I sat up straighter. I said: "William, I want to thank you most awfully for what you've done. I don't know what I'd have done without you tonight, honestly I don't. I'd no business to call you in the way I did, but I was so terribly on my own, and you were my only friend."

"It's a friend's privilege to be used," said William. He loosed my hands. There was a pause. He said: "If you are going to stay with Philippe, I might see you now and again, mightn't I?"

"I don't suppose I'll be staying."

"No?"

"No."

"I see." He got to his feet and smiled down at me. "Shall I run you down to the Villa Mireille now in the jeep?"

"No, thanks, William. I-think I'll wait."

"Okay. I'll say goodnight, then. You'll look me up before you leave, won't you?"

"Of course. Goodnight. And-thanks a lot, William. Thank you for everything."

I forgot him almost as soon as the front door shut behind him. Someone had come out of the library. I could hear Hippolyte's voice, and Raoul's, talking quietly. They were coming along the corridor together.

My heart was hurting me. I got up quickly and moved towards the door. Hippolyte was talking, saying something about Héloïse. I shrank against the wall to the side of the door so that they wouldn't see me as they passed.

“… A nursing-home," said Hippolyte. "I left her with Doctor Fauré. He'll look after her." There was something more-something about an allowance, a pension, and "somewhere away from Valmy, Paris or Cannes," and finally the words, dimly heard as they moved away along the corridor: "her heart," and "not very long, perhaps…”

They had reached the hall. Hippolyte was saying goodnight. I went softly out into the corridor and hesitated there, waiting for Hippolyte to leave him. I was shaking with panic. Léon and Héloïse might have faded already into the past, poor ghosts with no more power to terrify, but I had a ghost of my own to lay.

Raoul's voice, now, asking a question. Seddon's answer, almost indistinguishable. It sounded like "Gone." A sharp query from Raoul, and, clearly, from Seddon: "Yes, sir. A few minutes ago."

I heard Raoul say, grimly: "I see. Thank you. Goodnight, Seddon."

Then I realised what he had been asking. I forgot Hippolyte's presence, and Seddon's. I began to run down the corridor. I called: "Raoul!"

My voice was drowned in the slam of the front door. I had reached the hall when I heard the engine start. Seddon's voice said, surprised: "Why, Miss Martin, I thought you'd gone with Mr. Blake!" I didn't answer. I flew across the hall, tore open the great door, and ran out into the darkness.

The Cadillac was already moving. As I reached the bottom of the steps she was wheeling away from the house. I called again, but he didn't hear-or at least the car moved, gathering speed. Futilely, I began to run.

I was still twenty yards behind it when it slid gently into the first curve of the zigzag, and out of sight.

If I had stopped to think I should never have done what I did. But I was past thinking. I only knew that I had something to say that must be said if I was ever to sleep again. And I wasn't the only one that had to be healed. I turned without hesitation and plunged into the path that short-circuited the zigzag.

This was a foot-way, no more, that dived steeply down the hillside towards the Valmy bridge. I had taken it with Philippe many a time. It was well-kept, and the steps, where they occurred, were wide and safe, but it could be slippery, and in the dark it could probably be suicide.

I didn't care. Some kind freak of chance had made me keep Philippe's torch in my pocket, and now by its half-hearted light I went down that dizzy little track as if all my ghosts hunted me at heel.

Off to the left the Cadillac's lights still bore away from me on the first long arm of the zigzag. He was driving slowly. The engine made very little sound. I hurtled, careless of sprains and bruises, down through the wood.

It couldn't be done, of course. He was still below me when he took the first bend and the headlights bore back to the north, making the shadows of the trees where I ran reel and flicker so that they seemed to catch at my feet like a net.

The path twisted down like a snake. The whole wood marched and shifted in his lights like trees in a nightmare. Just before he wheeled away again I saw the next segment of my path doubling back ten feet below me. I didn't wait to negotiate the corner with its steps and its handrail. I slithered over, half on my back, to the lower level, and gained seven precious seconds before the dark pounced again in the wake of the retreating car.

The third arm of the zigzag was the longest. It took him away smoothly to the left without much of a drop… I would do it. At the next northern bend I could be in the road before he got there.

I flung myself down a steep smooth drop, caught at a handrail to steady myself, and then went three at a time down a straight flight of steps. The rail had driven a splinter into my hand, but I hardly felt it. A twig whipped my face, half-blinding me, but I just blinked and ran on. Down the steps, round, along over a little gorge bridged with a flagstone… and the great headlights had swung north again and the shadows were once more madly wheeling back and away from me. But I was below him now. I could do it. Only fifty yards away the track ran right to the bend of the road, where a high bank held the cambered corner.

The shadows blurred and wavered, caught at me like the ropes of a great web. My breath was sobbing; my heart-beats hammered above the sound of the oncoming car.

Here was the bank, head-high. Beyond it the road lay like a channel of light in front of his headlamps. I had done it.

But even as I put my hands on the bank-top to pull myself over into the road, I heard the engine's note change. He was gathering speed. Some devil of impatience had jabbed at him and he let the Cadillac go for just those few seconds-just those few seconds.

She went by below me with a sigh and a swirl of dust and I fell back into the darkness of the wood.

If reason had spoken to me then I would have stayed where I was. But reason could not be heard for the storm of my heartbeats and the silly little prayer on my lips. "Please, please, please," it was, and it spun in my brain like a prayer-wheel to the exclusion of any kind of sense or thought.

I didn't stop. Two more sweeps of the zigzag, and the Valmy bridge and-he was away. I left the path and simply went down the shortest way between my bank and the next northerly hairpin. That it was a reasonably smooth slope carpeted with nothing worse than dog's-mercury and last year's beech leaves was my luck-and better than I deserved. I fetched up against the trunk of a beech near the banked-up road while the car was still only half-way down to it, but I made no attempt this time to climb the bank into the road.

My beech-tree was at the edge of a rocky little drop, and below me lay the bridge itself. The white mist that marked the river swirled up into silver as the Cadillac took the bend beside me and bore away again for the last steep bend to the Valmy bridge.

I went over the drop. The stone glowed queerly in the light that came off the mist. The rock was rough and steeply-piled, but it was solid enough, and easy to scramble on. I suppose I got scratches and knocks, I don't know. I do know that I slipped once and gripped at a holly-bush to save myself and even as I bit off the cry I heard the shriek of the Cadillac's brakes.

I found out later that something had run across the road. I like to think it was the same anonymous little creature that had been there the first time Raoul kissed me. At any rate it stopped the car for those few precious seconds…They were enough.

I dropped into the road just as his lights swept round the last curve. '

I ran onto the bridge. The mist swirled up waist-high. It was grey, it was white, it was blinding gold as the glare took it.

I shut my eyes and put both hands out and stayed exactly where I was.

Brakes and tyres shrieked to a stop. I opened my eyes. The mist was curling and frothing from the car's bonnet not three yards from me. Then the headlights went out and the grateful dark swept down. In the small glow of the car's sidelights the mist tossed like smoke. I took three faltering, trembling steps forward and put a hand on her wing. I leaned against it, fighting for breath. The little prayer-wheel still spun, and the prayer sounded the same: "Please, please, please"… But it was different

He got out of the car and walked forward. He was, on the other side of the bonnet. In the uncertain, fog-distorted light he looked taller than ever.

I managed to say: "I was… waiting. I've got to… see you."

He said: "They told me you'd gone." He added unemotionally "You little fool, I might have killed you."

My breathing was coming under control, but my legs still felt as if they weren't my own. I leaned heavily on the wing of the car. I said: "I had to tell you I was sorry, Raoul. It's not exactly -adequate-to tell a man you're sorry you suspected him of murder… but I am. I'm sorry I even let it cross my mind. And that was all it did. I swear it."

He had his driving-gloves in his hand and he was jerking them through and through his fingers. He didn't speak.

I went on miserably: "I'm not trying to excuse myself. I know you'll not forgive me. It would have been bad enough without what-was between us, but as it is… Raoul, I just want you to understand a little. Only I don't somehow know how to start explaining."

"You don't have to. I understand."

"I don't think you do. I was told, you see, told flatly that you were in it, along with your-with the others. Bernard had said so to Berthe. He told her that you had done the shooting in the wood. I imagine he realised, even when he'd gone so far, that he'd better not own to that. And he may have thought you would condone the murder once you saw the advantages of it. I didn't believe it, even when she told me flatly. I couldn't. But the rest was so obvious, once I knew about… them, I mean, and there was nothing to prove you weren't in it with them. Nothing except the-the way I felt about you."

I paused, straining my eyes to see his expression. He seemed a very long way away.

I said: "I don't expect you to believe it, Raoul, but I was fighting on your side. All the time. I've been through a very private special little hell since Tuesday night. You called it a 'damnable exercise', remember? Everything conspired to accuse you, and I was half silly with unhappiness and-yes, and doubt, till I couldn't even trust my own senses any more… Oh, I won't drag you through it all now; you've had enough, and you want to be done with this and with me, but I-I had to tell you before you go. It was simply that I couldn't take the chance, Raoul! You do see that, don't you? Say you see that!"

He jerked the gloves in his fingers. His voice was quite flat, dull, almost. "You were prepared to take chances- once."

"Myself, yes. But this was Philippe. I had no right to take a chance on Philippe. I didn't dare. He was my charge-my duty." The miserable words sounded priggish and unutterably absurd. "I-was all he had. Beside that, it couldn't be allowed to matter."

"What couldn't."

"That you were all I had," I said.

Another silence. He was standing very still now. Was it a trick of the mist or was he really a very long way away from me, a lonely figure in the queerly-lit darkness? It came to me suddenly that this was how I would always remember him, someone standing alone, apart from the others even of his own family. And, I think for the first time, I began to see him as he really was-not any more as a projection of my young romantic longings, not any more as Prince Charming, the handsome sophisticate, the tiger I thought I preferred… This was Raoul, who had been a quiet lonely little boy in a house that was "not a house for children", an unhappy adolescent brought up in the shadow of a megalomaniac father, a young man fighting bitterly to save his small inheritance from ruin… wild, perhaps, hard, perhaps, plunging off the beaten track more than once… but always alone. Wrapped up in my loneliness and danger I hadn't even seen that his need was the same as my own. He and I had hoed the same row, and he for a more bitter harvest.

I said gently: "Raoul, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have bothered you with this just now. I think you've had about all you can take. What can I say to you about your father, except that I'm sorry?"

He said: "Do you really think I would have shot him?"

"No, Raoul."

A pause. He said in a very queer voice: "I believe you do understand."

"I believe I do." I swallowed. "Even the last twenty-four hours-with the world gone mad and values shot to smithereens -I must have known, deep down, that you were you, and that was enough. Raoul, I want you to know it, then I'll go. I loved you all the time, without stopping, and I love you now."

Still he hadn't moved. I turned back towards the chateau. I said: "I'll leave you now. Goodnight."

"Where are you going?"

"Someone'll take me to the Villa Mireille. Your Uncle Hippolyte asked me to go there. I-I don't want to stay at Valmy."

"Get into the car. I'll take you down." Then, as I hesitated: "Go on, get in. Where did you think I was going?"

"I didn't think. Away."

"I was going down to the Villa Mireille to look for you." I didn't speak; didn't move. My heart began to slam again in slow painful strokes.

"Linda.” Under the quiet voice was a note I knew.

"Yes?"

"Get in."

I got in. The mist swirled and broke as the door slammed.

Swirled again as he got in and slid into the seat beside me. It was dark in the car. He seemed enormous, and very near.

I was trembling. He didn't move to touch me. I cleared my throat and said the first thing that came into my head. "Where did you get this car? Roulette?"

"Écarté. Linda, do you intend to stay at the Villa Mireille for a while with Philippe?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought things out yet. I'm awfully fond of him, but-"

Raoul said: "He'll be lonely, even with Hippolyte. Shall we have him with us at Bellevigne?"

I said breathlessly: "Raoul. Raoul. I didn't think-" I stopped. I put shaking hands up to my face.

"What is it, sweetheart?"

I said, very humbly, into my hands: "You mean you'll still… have me?"

I heard him take a quick breath. He didn't answer. He turned suddenly towards me and pulled me to him, not gently. What we said then is only for ourselves to remember. We talked for a long time.

Later, when we could admit between us the commonplace of laughter, he said, with the smile back in his voice: "And you've still not made me own it, my lovely. Don't you think it's time I did?"

"What are you talking about? Own what?"

"That I love you, I love you, I love you."

"Oh, that."

"Yes, damn it, that.”

"I'll take a chance on it," I said. And those were the last words I spoke for a very long time.

And presently the car edged forward through the mist and turned north off the Valmy bridge.