The Dave Bliss Quintet, page 14
Hugh is not smiling. “This is your fault, Brubeck. Mavis and I aren’t stopping, thank you. We just wanted you to know that, thanks to you, we’re still here.”
“Still here,” trills Mavis.
“It’s Burbeck,” corrects Bliss, but then he’s lost for words. “Um … I’m not with you.”
“I thought you’d deny it,” says Hugh sternly, and turns to Jacques for support. “Fortunately we have a witness.” Then he pauses to put emphasis behind his words. “Sunstroke,” he declares, adding accusingly, “Your fault, Brubeck. Keeping on about the beach all the time. You should be more careful about what you say.”
Bliss shouldn’t have guffawed. It was Jacques’s fault — creased in laughter under the table.
“You might laugh,” complains Hugh, “but now we’re stuck in this pestiferous hole for another two weeks.”
“Why two?” enquires Bliss, straightening his face a notch.
“We couldn’t move on Saturday — had to call the doctor — the only thing to do was to take the next booking. Now we’ve paid we might as well stay.”
“You’re in luck.” Jacques smirks. “The pesky winds of zhe last few weeks have blown away completely. Now zhe easterly wind, la levantade,will bring us zhe peaceful weather and sunny skies.”
“I thought he was going to thump you,” says Bliss, after Hugh and Mavis have stormed away.
“He is un couillon,” laughs Jacques.
“A what?”
“No matter,” he says. “Buy yourself a dictionary.”
Bliss’s attempt to follow Grimes again fails at the first hurdle. Taking the same path to the edge of town has been easy, with the Bastille Day drunks still thick on the ground, but the guards of the hillside villas are on high alert. The first hulking shadow steps straight out in front of Bliss, demanding a light for his cigarette. Feigning deafness, Bliss sidesteps and walks into a roadblock. “What you want?” demands the second man.
“This is a public road —” he starts, but the first man cuts him off.
“You live here?”
“No,” he admits under the weight of the demand.
“Then go.”
Heavily outweighed, he turns, but at least he now knows the potter must live there. The guards obviously recognized him, he reasons, as he slinks back to the promenade on his way home, and Grimes would never be able to buy these guys off with a gooey look and a wet clay pot.
The Monday morning blues for Bliss are the azure sea and the navy sky, and he dances around the apartment with Brubeck blaring “Blue Rondo a la Turk” while tossing his dirty laundry straight into his suitcase — marking time until England catches up.
At ten o’clock precisely, though still only nine in London, he phones New Scotland Yard and gushes while Richards struggles out of his raincoat. “That’s him, Guv. I’ve nailed him positively. He’s on his yacht the Sea-Quester.” Then he relaxes, home clear and free, thinking, I’ll probably stay on for a day or two to finish research for the book; I’ve definitely got to take a peek into the château, one way or another, and probably fit in another trip to Île Ste-Marguerite, just to confirm the viability of my theory — Frederick Chapel’s theory — of the identity of the masked prisoner.
“So that’s it, Sir,” he says, thinking: And any devious plan you and Edwards hatched to keep me quiet has just come unstuck, because I shall tuck myself away at home and write my novel. And, apart from an occasional trip to a good library — the British Library, probably — to confirm a few things my schoolboy history could be a bit wobbly on, I’ll keep my head down until Edwards’s disciplinary hearing in September.
“OK,” says Richards. “Stay with him. I’ve gotta call a few people. See what we’re going to do.”
What’s this, “Stay with him?” Bliss is wondering when the vagueness in the commander’s voice begins ringing bells. “I thought you said you’d get a warrant,” he starts.
“We will, Inspector … probably. Just takes time, that’s all.”
“This is not on, Guv,” he complains. “I’ve been here three bloody weeks. I’ve got black rings around my eyes.”
“Not enough sleep, Dave. You wanna watch that.”
“No,” he spits, close to insubordination, “peering through effin’ binoculars trying to spot bloody Johnson.”
Richards’s voice rises warningly. “You’re getting paid, aren’t you? Don’t go all girlie on me, Dave. I told you it’s a delicate job. You’ll just have to hang on for a bit.”
“A day or so.”
“All right.... Now where exactly is he?”
“I’ve no idea.”
The strangled, “What the fu —?” is in response to the steaming coffee Richards has accidentally dumped in his lap, but Bliss, unaware, remonstrates tetchily, “My job was to confirm his identity — that’s all you said.”
“Don’t be a bloody idiot, man,” shouts Richards, and then reigns back. “Sorry, Dave, but use your loaf. We need to know where he is now — where to send the troops.”
Bliss’s monosyllabic explanation is intended to be as rude as it sounds. “Sir. This guy is on a boat in the sea. But I don’t have a boat, Sir, so I can’t keep up with him ’cos I can’t walk on water.”
“All right, Dave, you’ve made your point. But surely he’s not always on the move?”
“Ninety percent of the yachts here never go anywhere, as far as I can tell,” he explains, calming. “They’re just floating gin palaces. But Johnson is on the go all the time. I thought you’d know that. That’s what drug smugglers do.”
“Who said anything about drugs?” enquires Richards, throwing Bliss completely off balance.
“Ah —” he starts, but Richards saves him. “You’re just going to have to stay there and call me the minute he hits port.”
“Bugger,” swears Bliss as he drops the phone. “They don’t even know what Johnson’s up to, and all that wishywashy stuff about having to talk to people. If this was a genuine job they’d already have a warrant sworn out.”
“That was a waste of bloody time,” he mutters, dragging his laundry back out of his suitcase and shoving it in the washing machine. Then he stands in the sun on the balcony, letting the warmth and the breathtaking panorama pacify him. A few more days won’t hurt, he concedes, especially as he still has work to do, and a glance into the garden reminds him he meant to tell Richards about Johnson’s ownership of the apartment, and that his wife was downstairs with some kinky guy in a cage. He also intended to challenge Richards on the tête-à-tête he’d been having with Edwards, though now realizes it would have been pointless. However, he never intended to reveal that he has solved the case of the prisoner of Île Sainte-Marguerite. That will be his secret — and his swansong from the police force — and he smiles, imagining the look on Edwards’s and Richards’s faces when they discover that in their effort to silence him they’ve given him not only the tools to solve the cause célèbre of the seventeenth century but also the time to write the book.
“If Commander Richards wants me to stay,” he says to the air, “then I’ll stay. As long as he doesn’t expect me to waste my time running after Johnson and his whacko entourage, I’ll play their game — put my feet up and write my book.”
The public library in Cannes, unlike the one in St-Juan, is open, but is still a disappointment. After three hours he gives up trying to find information about the Château Roger and turns his attention to English history. But this is no British Library, and the only reference he finds of Richard Cromwell seemingly dismisses him as the likely wearer of the iron mask. According to the chronicler, rumour placed Tumble Down Dick back in England at the time in question, keeping a very low profile on his Chesham estate lest his creditors should lynch him or have him thrown in debtor’s prison. The age-old undependability of rumour, thinks Bliss, absorbing the information, though still preferring to believe it possible Louis XIV had the maladroit man welded into an iron mask, perhaps to use as a bargaining chip in the war with the Grand Alliance under King William and Queen Mary.
Leaving the library, itself housed in an impressive château, Bliss suddenly stops with an idea and rushes back. Ten minutes later he emerges with a complete inventory of the works of François Couperin — at least now Frederick Chapel will have an idea of the man whose name he’s taken.
Manuscript in hand, Bliss heads along the seafront of Cannes, seeking lunch and a quiet place to write — but it’s now the middle of July, and he’s hit the Parisian holiday season. The packed beaches heave with the constant flux of occupation, and seaside paraphernalia remorselessly shifts to dominate the space available as the city savvy hordes take tenure. Here, an abandoned mat risks being swept aside by a northern tide of newcomers, swamping the beach with inflated plastic toys and mattresses as they struggle along the sand, bare breasts to the left, bare bums to the right. “Mind that kid,” shouts the wife.
“I didn’t see the kid.”
“You weren’t looking.”
“Why would I?”
Lost kids scream for parents, while parents of unlost kids scream, “Get lost,” and, like Patagonian penguins, the welter of new arrivals continually disturbs the colony until, mid-morning, with territory secured, everyone settles.
With a quick check to make sure the Sea-Quester hasn’t returned to its berth, Bliss sits on the seafront with a wedge of Camembert and a baguette. Pulling out his manuscript he attempts to place himself in Frederick Chapel’s mind and tries to picture Cannes before mass mobility, and the movie industry, turned it into a tourist mecca. With his pen poised, he tries to wash away three centuries of development and dig back to the sand dunes and dehydrated seagrass, but the constant bustle of trendy tourists, with chattering cellphones and flashy cameras, get in the way, so he gives up and watches the masses drift back and forth, while others snooze in the seafront bars, allowing the tide of life to drift past as they absorb the local wine, musing, “Ah! c’est la vie en rouge.”
A skinny woman with an overstuffed poodle sits beside him and articulately lights a cigarette as lingua franca. “Hi,” she puffs as the cigarette says, “Watch the lips.”
“What you write?” she asks, using it as a pointer.
“A novel.”
The powerful word demands a meditatively lengthy pull.
“What your name?” escapes amid a puff of smoke.
“Dave Burbeck.”
“I have read,” she replies, takes a quick drag, and blows a smoke ring as punctuation before adding, “Gates of wrath.”
“Close,” he coughs, snaps his book shut and heads for the quiet of his apartment.
He walks the coast road back to St-Juan, knowing it will take him past the château’s grounds and perhaps afford him a glimpse of the great house through the trees. Spurred on by natural inquisitiveness, and led by a detective’s nose that smells sardines when something as innocuous as the presence of an old château make peoples’ asses twitch, he is more than ever determined to find a way in. He wants to bury himself in its character, to absorb its ambience, to slide his hands over the walls and feel the vibes of the builders and occupants, perhaps even meet a ghost or two, but, more than anything, he wants to establish whether or not the crux of his theory will hold water. There has to be a way in, he thinks, as he passes the southern boundary of the château’s grounds and considers a pre-dawn raid — although the signs on the twelve-foothigh steel fence make him pause. “Chiens méchants,” they warn — vicious dogs.
Maybe it’s a conspiracy, he briefly wonders. What if the locals all know who the man in the mask was, and that the château might house a clue to his identity, but want it to remain a secret to preserve the tourist trade?
The gentle onshore breeze, the vent de midi, dies with the sun, but will return tomorrow, as constant and dependable as the clear blue sea and sky. But, as Bliss takes his seat at L’Escale this evening and Angeline cheats the Grim Reaper with a deft feint that sends a Citroën into a spin, he feels a change in the air. Maybe Jacques’s forecast is right at last, he is thinking, feeling a distinct lightness and freshness, although looking about him he realizes nothing has changed — only him.
“Here is your friend,” says Angeline, spotting a familiar face as she places his wine on the table.
“Brubeck, old chap,” says Hugh, offering a sheepish hand. “Can’t stop. Just wanted to say that I think I might have been a bit hasty last night. Sorry about that.”
“It’s Burbeck,” reminds Bliss, adding with a smile, “No problem, Hugh. No harm done.” Although he’s itching to say, “I guess you’re worried you’ll show up in my book as a caricature.”
Then Daisy springs along the promenade, and he leaps to apologize for dumping her the previous night, saying, “It’s only fair to warn you I’ll probably be leaving in a few days.”
“Why you go?”
“Back to work — get my book finished.”
“But I don’t understand,” she says, crestfallen. “Your apartment is booked until zhe end of September.”
“OK, Commander Richards, and your bosom pal Chief Superintendent Edwards,” Bliss seethes under his breath, “this is war.”
chapter nine
It is the last Saturday in July. The long cloudless days stretch into warm moonlit nights as Bliss whiles away his weeks in the sun. The real Dave Brubeck has played “How High the Moon” on his headphones a hundred times and more, and similarly his character, Frederick Chapel, has wandered the beaches and bays, humming snippets of François Couperin’s harpsichord composition “La Visionnaire” while looking for ways to unmask the enigmatic prisoner on Île Sainte-Marguerite. Frederick Chapel has also struggled, along with his creator, with the problem of entering the Château Roger’s grounds without being murdered or mauled, though Bliss has virtually given up hope of ever finding a way into the ancient building. Even Jacques, though seemingly interested, proved unhelpful.
“What château?” he asked at its mention, apparently as blind as the rest of the inhabitants. “But why do you want to know?” he wondered after Bliss described its location.
The temptation to disclose his amazing revelation regarding the man in the iron mask was considerable, especially in view of the fact that Jacques’s piscatorial predecessor, Jean, was playing a significant role in his novel.
“I know the château’s secret,” he started, but left it at that, realizing that the less people knew the better. The chance, however slight, that the locals were conspiring to keep the prisoner’s identity under wraps was enough to keep him quiet.
“What secret?” Jacques scoffed and tried to worm the reason out of him, but he closed his manuscript and refused to be drawn.
Summer Saturday evenings on the promenade at St-Juansur-Mer are usually quieter than other evenings. The Saturday arrivals, dragging suitcases, kids, and granny halfway across Europe, have collapsed comatose into lumpy beds to dream of Sunday — being comatose with a bottle of cheap plonk on the beach. This Saturday is no exception, as Hugh and Mavis pull up chairs at Bliss’s table outside the bar L’Escale.
“How’s the old book coming on?” asks Hugh.
“Evening, Hugh … Mavis,” Bliss acknowledges with a nod. “Nicely, thanks. I guess this is your last night.”
Mavis spies a seagull in the distance as Hugh leans forward. “Thought we might stay on for a bit actually, old chap. That’s the nice thing about being retired; you can blow with the wind.” Then he whispers, “Mavis wants to work on her tan a little more.”
“Oh.... Good.” Bliss smiles.
“I thought you were in a rush to get back, though,” says Hugh, as Angeline sends a motor scooter skidding into the path of a speeding Toyota.
“Close one,” breathes Bliss, as the scooter driver escapes by mounting the curb, swerving through three tables of tourists, skimming the Napoleon monument, and driving off without a backward glance.
“Not me,” he says, realizing that, to all intents and purposes, he has disappeared.
In the past two weeks Samantha called once, and he phoned Richards just to tell him there was nothing to report. Richards seemed relieved. Why wouldn’t he be? Bliss thought, but his problem will come September 1, when I turn up at the Yard, bronzed as a button, to testify against Edwards.
“It’s been a nice day again,” Bliss adds to Hugh, as Angeline delivers their drinks, but every day has been nice — brilliantly clear skies and turquoise seas rucked only by the vent de midi. La levantade proved as shifty as the other winds forecast by Jacques, and its absence was followed by that of la bech — a very nasty southeasterly, according to Jacques, which would most assuredly sweep up the full length of the Mediterranean and storm head on to the beach of St-Juan. The vent de midi breezed its way ashore the following day as usual, and Jacques, true to form, ducked under the parapet for awhile.
Bliss has met Daisy for dinner several times since their night at La Scala and, while she sloughed off his attempts to discuss the Château Roger, he vigorously avoided a show of her etchings.
“It is a very bad place,” she insisted one evening, when he pushed her on the building’s disposition.
“I was thinking of buying it,” he lied, hoping the prospect of a juicy commission might soften her stance.
“You cannot,” she shot back without consideration.
“Why not?”
Pausing with a deeply calculating look, her eyes held a glimmer of interest as she asked, “Do you have a lot of money?”
So — what is your price, Madame? he wondered, answering, “Maybe.”
“It is not possible — is not for sale,” she said, quickly backtracking.
But everything here is for sale, he told her. “À vendre” signs are everywhere: on villas, houses, apartments, yachts, and even that most coveted possession — a parking space for a car.
Daisy wouldn’t budge, huffily insisting, “Zhe château is not for sale.”
Pinky and Perky have formed a trio with a dulcimerplaying shrew who pecks away on his instrument with little hammers and dances as he keeps time with both feet. “Guantanamera” sounds good on a dulcimer — but only the first time, Bliss decides, as a sour-faced group of hoteliers start pulling chairs into a forum.
