Adèle And Co. Read online

  A noise like a death rattle was followed by a definite chunk.

  My brother-in-law replaced his receiver with a sigh. “He seems to have rung off,” he said. “I can’t think why.”

  Jonah smiled a grim smile.

  “Good for you, brother,” he said. “If we all do as well at luncheon, we’ve nothing to fear.”

  I cannot pretend that we did. But we were as cordial as ever, and the girls fairly spread themselves. Casca was very soon at the top of his form. And before the meal was over he had accepted our invitation to pay us a visit when we were installed near Dieppe.

  2: Expert Evidence

  ‘The Villiers’ place’ lay roughly ten miles from Dieppe. The house was large and stood in a pleasant park through which a curling drive ran down to the Rouen road. I had passed it a hundred times and marked its comfortable bulwarks and its spreading apron of pasture which the highway edged like a ribbon for half a mile. Indeed, for such as passed by, a mansion had been set among meadows with woods upon either side. No one, I think, would have dreamed of what lay behind; and I cannot forget the first time I stood on the terrace which ran the length of the villa towards the South. It was perched at the head of a valley some two miles long. Its sides were clothed with woodland which stood up on either hand to meet the sky: its floor was all green meadows, and right in the heart of these a wandering vein of silver argued a running stream. The dale was flooded with sunshine from end to end, and distance melted into a haze of heat: what wind there was passed by this sanctuary: only the song of birds bedecked the infinite silence, as stars the velvet of the night. As for privacy…

  We knew the Villiers well, and three telegrams were enough to make the property ours for the next two months. All the same, until we had servants, we should have been well advised to stay in the Place Vendôme. My sister’s maid was on holiday: so was Jill’s. But we had all been infected with Jonah’s obvious impatience to get away, and since the caretaker’s wife was ready to be our cook, we determined to take possession as soon as ever we could. Once we were there, we argued, servants would apply for such posts as had to be filled. Moreover, Jonah’s man, Carson, was on his way from town with my cousin’s Rolls, and Piers had left for White Ladies to fetch the Lowland coupé, which I had given Adèle.

  It follows that on Monday morning we travelled down to Dieppe. Carson was there to meet us, and, after instructing him to buy some things in the town and bring them out with our luggage by motor-van, we took our seats in the car and made for the Rouen road. Twenty minutes later we sighted the Château de Nay.

  “Yes, I think it’s lovely,” said Berry. “As battle headquarters I don’t think it could be improved. When do we lunch?”

  “Well, we can’t lunch yet,” said Daphne. “We’ve nothing to eat. Would you like to walk to the village and get some things?”

  Her husband regarded the heaven. The sun was blazing: there was not a cloud in the sky.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll think I’ll stay here – and make the beds.”

  “You needn’t make mine,” said I. “And I don’t think I should make Jonah’s. He’s funny like that.”

  My brother-in-law frowned.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said slowly. “It is rather menial work. Supervision’s more in my line. Er, what about a bottle of beer?”

  “No, you don’t,” said Daphne. “Either you walk to the village, or pull your weight in the house. There’s a bed that’s got to be moved.”

  “How far is the village?” said her husband.

  “Two miles and a half,” said Adèle.

  “Thanks very much,” said Berry. “How big is the bed?”

  When I explained that the bed must be taken to pieces, he picked up his hat.

  Then he turned to his wife.

  “Of course your staff-work” he said, “is enough to induce palsy. When you saw there was no manna, what did you let Jonah go for?”

  My cousin was gone to Rouen, to make inquiries for someone he wished to find. And Carson with him.

  “One can’t think of everything,” said Daphne. “You must get some bread and some butter and slices of ham.”

  “Not real ham?” said her husband. “But how delicious. I know. Jean can go.”

  Jean was the caretaker.

  “Jean’s out raking up servants. You know what the French for slice is?”

  Berry closed his eyes.

  “Voulez-vous me donner dix tranches de jambon York?” he said obediently.

  Jill began to shake with laughter.

  “That’ll do for our lunch,” said Daphne, “unless you should see any cheese. Meanwhile I’ll talk to Anna and make out a list, and as soon as Jonah comes back you can go in again.”

  “I see,” said Berry slowly. Again he looked at the sky. Then he stepped to the balustrade and felt the stone with his hand. “Marvellous weather, this is. Might be July. You know, I’m not at all sure I want any lunch.”

  “Well, we do,” said Daphne shortly. “And what about drinks?”

  Her husband stared.

  “Well, what’s the beer done?” he said.

  “The beer hasn’t come,” said Adèle.

  “Not come?” screamed Berry. “Not come? Oh, don’t be blasphemous.”

  “It’s not Carson’s fault,” bubbled Jill. “The brewery’s stuck, or something, and no one would let him have bottles to bring away. Jonah’s going to bring some from Rouen.”

  In a silence big with laughter Berry took a short walk with his hand to his head.

  When he returned—

  “I’d better have a handcart,” he said.

  Though the others protested, I was inclined to agree. I deeply suspected the water, which came from a well: Jonah might return before midnight, but then he might not: I was already more thirsty than those who have liquor to hand permit themselves to remain. After a short discussion, I went off in search of transport – of any kind.

  There was, of course, no handcart: there was a garden-roller and there was the biggest and heaviest wheelbarrow that I have ever seen: of the two, the roller had it: no common man could have wheeled that barrow a furlong and been the same. Reference to the kitchen proved more fruitful: on being besought to obtain us something on wheels, the caretaker’s wife produced a collapsible perambulator, which may once have looked a picture, but was now past its prime. Moth and rust had vied with each other in corruption. On being erected, however, the vehicle moved.

  Standing at the head of the steps, Berry regarded his assistant with starting eyes.

  “I don’t want to seem fastidious,” he said, “but is that the best you can do?”

  “It’s that or the roller,” said I, brushing the dirt from my hands.

  “I see,” said my brother-in-law. “All right.”

  He passed down the steps and set his hand to the rail.

  “I suppose you don’t know any child that wants a lift. I mean, it seems almost selfish…”

  A moment later he was descending the drive.

  As I turned to the house –

  “But why,” wailed Adèle, “why didn’t he choose the bed?”

  “Because he’s thirsty,” said I. “All the beer he brings back won’t be in the pram.”

  The burden of the next three hours, I like to forget. I had no conception of the labour which precedes inhabitation of an ordinary furnished house. I unrolled carpets, I scaled and descended stairs, I fetched and carried bedding, until I felt faint. In the absence of Jean, I was forced to stoke the furnace and climb about under the tiles looking for taps. The electric plant was not working, and I had to pump for one hour to fill the tanks. And all this, with nothing to drink. At half past two I gave in and swallowed some milk.

  At a quarter to three Jean returned from his tour, to say that three stout servants would report the following morning at seven o’clock. The tidings were politely received. By rights we should have been jubilant. Just at the moment, however, we were living for other things – the t
hings my brother-in-law had been sent to get.

  At three o’clock we met in my sister’s room.

  “He’s gone to Rouen,” said I. “You know what he is. Got a lift in a car for a monkey. When he’s had a hell of a lunch at the best hotel, he’ll buy the bread and the ham and hire a car back. And he’ll pitch some tale of having been carried on past the village before he knew where he was.”

  “I refuse to believe it,” said Daphne. “He’d never dare.”

  “Well, where is he, then?” said I. “He left here soon after eleven, and now it’s three. I mean, five miles in four hours…”

  A shuffle upon the terrace brought us pell-mell to the window to learn the truth.

  We were just in time to see Berry cross the flags and come to the balustrade. That he was heavy-laden I cannot deny. On his back was a sack to the neck of which he was clinging as though it were full of gold. He reminded me of a gnome in a fairytale.

  The balustrade he used as a porter’s rest. Gingerly he lowered the sack till it rested upon the stone: then he turned round and lifted it down to the flags. Then he lay down on his back and closed his eyes.

  All this in a pregnant silence we dared not break. His air was that of a saint from whom great tribulation has taken the urge to live.

  My sister steadied herself and lifted her voice.

  “Are you very done, old fellow?”

  Her husband opened his eyes.

  “Hush,” he said. “There’s illness in the house. At least, not in the house: on the terrace. Somebody’s seriously ill. I don’t think they’re going to live.” He closed his eyes again. “They’ll have to be fed, of course. There’s some stuff that looks like jelly irrigating the ham. You can sort that out, if you like and tempt them with that.”

  “To be frank,” said I, “I made certain you’d wangle a lift.”

  “So did I,” said Berry faintly. “I suppose the time was a bad one. Nothing but brakeless limousines seems to employ that road. Oh, and a tar-waggon: but I didn’t like to stop that. And in the village they told me a short cut back. It’s quite a good way, if you can find it. At least I suppose it is. I only found the first mile. I thought they said ‘Turn to the left at the fourth dunghill,’ but I think they must have meant the fifth.”

  So soon as I could speak –

  “And the – the handcart? “ I said.

  Berry shuddered.

  “Ugh,” he said. “Was that real? I was hoping it was only a dream.”

  “You left here,” said I, “with a pram.”

  Berry sat up.

  “With a baby carriage?” he said. “A thing like The Step Pyramid? That was black and smelt and had two detachable wheels?”

  “Had it?” said I.

  “Yes,” said Berry, “it had. The way you get one off is to push it for half a mile. Then you walk slowly back looking for a small, black nut by the side of the road. When you’ve wasted twenty minutes, you chuck the wheel over the hedge and proceed with three. This is just possible – I don’t know why.” He lay back and closed his eyes. “It takes about two miles to get the second one off.”

  We waited breathlessly.

  At length –

  “Go on,” said Adèle tremulously.

  “You can’t,” said Berry. “No one can. No man born of woman can push a pram on two wheels.” He sat up again with a jerk and flung out his hands. “You see the poisonous point, don’t you? You see the snare – the stinking pit you’ve been at such pains to dig? If you wanted to destroy the swine, you might as well have done it at home. Instead of that, you’ve shoved it two statute miles, two sodden, soul searing miles, up to its doom.” He covered his face. “What breaks your heart is that you don’t destroy it even then. You – you try to mend it first.” He sighed profoundly. “I don’t think they like being mended. I may be wrong. But without an anaesthetic it isn’t a one man job. It’s while you’re trying to mend it that you go out of your mind. You scream and seize it and—”

  “Don’t say you’ve broken it,” said Daphne. “We shall have to pay the woman—”

  “I didn’t break it,” screamed Berry. “The filthy thing was broken before I left this house. What I did was to reduce it to impotence, to smash its power for evil once for all.” He sucked in his breath. “No one else will ever push it two miles. A breakdown gang may get it off the kilometre stone it now surrounds, but no one will ever push it. They wouldn’t know which way to go.”

  “Well, I call that wanton,” said Daphne. “Some poor child…”

  I put my arm round her waist and drew her into the room. There are times when she will not see danger. Already her husband was making a sizzling noise.

  Of such were the first few hours which we passed at Nay. But Jonah returned at teatime, and, with the Rolls to serve us, the position sensibly improved. That night we dined in Rouen and dined extremely well, and when my cousin announced that in coming to Nay we had done rather better than we knew, the trials of the day were forgotten as though they had never been.

  “It’s nothing very much,” said Jonah, “but I’ve located a friend. A very knowledgeable fellow. He was in the Secret Service during the War. I hope to see him tomorrow. And I think Boy and Berry should meet him. So if you can let them off for a couple of hours…”

  “And Piers,” cried Jill. “Piers will be here tomorrow, and—”

  “So he shall,” said her brother. “But not just yet. Besides, he must go to bed. We shan’t leave here before midnight. The man we’re meeting doesn’t keep office hours.”

  “I hope he’s quite nice,” said Berry. “I mean, Mother always told me—”

  “He’s good at his job,” said Jonah. “So good that he was released to serve the Secret Service and help us to win the War.”

  There was an excited silence.

  “When you say ‘released’,” began Berry…

  “I mean ‘released,’” said my cousin. “He was doing five years for robbery under arms.”

  The Wet Flag is a café which none of the guidebooks to Rouen see fit to commend. It is convenient and quiet, and it stands in the heart of the town: the cooking is good, and its cellar is better than most. Indeed, it is well worth using – provided some regular patron will take you under his wing. Otherwise you will be unwelcome. The Wet Flag is more than a café: it is as good as a club.

  No hush greeted our entry, and nobody stared: but before two minutes had passed I became acutely aware that our presence was under discussion by everyone in the place. It was a curious feeling which nothing could justify. The shrugged shoulders, the laughter, the confidential remarks might have related to any topic you please. In fact they related to us. The air was charged with resentment which was deliberately masked. I am not very sensitive, but only a full-blown idiot could have failed to perceive the atmosphere of ill will. And I knew in my heart that if I were to get to my feet and step to the door, one or more of the company present would instantly do the same.

  But if we were not at our ease, we had nothing to fear. We were three strong men, and Jonah and I were armed. Besides, we were there on business. We had an appointment with an habitué. Still, veiled suspicion is a very unpleasant thing. No one likes to be weighed and found wanting. But when one is weighed and found wanting by forty or fifty people all of whom live by defying the criminal law, it is much more than distasteful. It is almost embarrassing.

  I crossed my legs and took a pull at my beer.

  The place was clean and not unpleasantly hot. The floor was of some composition on which the waiters’ feet made next to no sound, and while the room was well lit, the lights were carefully shaded, to spare the eyes. A woman sat at a desk beside the bar, but the host himself was playing the part of a waiter and wearing the long, white apron as well as his men. Of his guests a full third were women, none of them shabby and some of them very well dressed. By no means all were French, and half the men I could see were of English or American blood. I cannot pretend that they were a nice looking lot. Sh
rewd, hard-bitten, tough, five out of six of them looked the rascals they were, but here and there was a face which no one would have suspected, and I cannot forget a gentle, mild-eyed old fellow who had the air of a prelate and was reading La Vie Parisienne. No one was dancing, although a space was kept clear, and the band, when it played, discoursed its music so softly that those who wished to converse could do so without an effort to make themselves heard.

  “What would happen,” said Berry, “if I got up and shouted ‘I’m not a copper’s nark’?”

  “I can’t imagine,” said Jonah. “But I hope very much you won’t. For one thing, the statement would be supererogatory.”

  “Then what’s the trouble?” said Berry. “I feel that I’m misunderstood.”

  “So you are,” said Jonah. “This crowd has an animal instinct. Whatever they don’t understand, they at once suspect. If you were leading their life, you’d be the same.”

  “I see,” said my brother-in-law. “Have they any other – er – animal instincts? You know. Lying in wait, or pulling down their prey, or – I mean, for instance, some animals don’t like being watched while they’re feeding. Of course it’s very foolish, but…”