The Lantern's Dance, page 9
At last, he steered in through a gate and up a drive to a cluster of buildings, something between a hamlet and a large family’s farm. Damian snorted awake, the doctor stretched hard with a squeak of enquiry, and Estelle sat upright to push her nose against the glass.
Holmes brought the lorry to a halt before the main farmhouse, pulled on the brake, and shut off the motor. He ached all over.
Damian cleared his throat. “What is this place?”
“Think of it as a holiday home for the deserving.”
“It looks like a farm.”
“It is that as well. One occasionally needs a bolt-hole outside of London, for others if not for oneself. And because some of the temporary residents are individuals who require a change of scenery to, shall we say, settle their nerves, the neighbours are well accustomed to strangers coming and going.”
“You own this?”
“I have an interest in it. I cabled ahead to ask them to have one of the cottages ready for you.”
“Where are we?” the doctor asked.
“Slightly over a mile from the fortified walls of Carcassonne. And yes, Damian, there is a space for you in which to paint. One thing, before we get out.” He waited until Estelle had turned to look at him. “Some of those who stay here are brave men who were badly injured fighting for their country. We try not to stare at them. And if we have questions about how they look or act, we wait until they are out of hearing before asking.”
“Like Oncle Pierre,” she said.
“That’s right,” Damian said, adding to Holmes, “Mme LaRue’s brother, who lives in the back. You’ve brought us to an asylum?”
“Call it a refuge. Ah, and here is Madame.”
Madame was a short, muscular woman of sixty, with steel-rimmed glasses and close-cropped grey curls. She’d been a nun, then a front-line nurse during the War, and now oversaw this combination holiday home and psychiatric ward for soldiers whose injuries were only in part physical. Holmes had first met her during a case in the spring of 1914, then again a few years later on a more personal investigation.
He got out, trying to conceal the stiffness of his joints, and opened the door for Damian to clamber out.
Hair awry, clothing rumpled, shoes in the lorry somewhere, Damian helped his daughter climb down from the lorry, then straightened to look around him—and his face changed.
“Sister Aubert?”
“None other. My dear Capitaine Adler, it gives me joy to see you well.”
“Good Lord. What on earth are you doing here? The last time I saw you, I was in gaol.”
“I go where I am needed, and currently where I am needed is here. Which brings the added pleasure of a climate that makes my bones happy and the occasional chance at seeing new faces. And here is your daughter? Ah, what a beauty. Estelle, that is your name, child, n’est ce pas?”
“Oui, Madame.”
“And the doctor-wife. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Call me Marie, all of you.”
“Aileen Henning,” she said. “Doctor, yes, but not yet wife.”
The one-time nun waved away the niceties of legal documents, and kissed all the cheeks in sight, including those of Sherlock Holmes.
“Leave your things, Théo and the boy will bring them in, once you’ve chosen where you want them. My friend here thought you would be staying for at least a few days.”
Holmes cut in before Damian could object. “The young man needs a place to set up his canvases and work. I said there would be one here.”
“But of course. And perhaps the ladies will enjoy seeing something of the town. They may even like to help with the garden. Do you like figs, young lady? Ah, your face tells me perhaps not. What about plums? The Mirabelles are still coming ripe.”
“Oh yes, please, Madame Marie.”
“Oh good! I have some set aside for your breakfast—come, all of you, the kettle should be hot, I shall make coffee. Or perhaps, Mlle Henning, you would prefer a pot of good strong thé anglais?”
The grey-haired woman was gathering her two female guests towards the house. Damian, watching in bemusement, said, “Where on earth did you find her?”
“Through a lawyer, oddly enough. Two or three times, I have been presented the case of a soldier accused of criminal intent, when the only thing of which he was guilty was shell shock. I met Sister Aubert before you did, and after the War, found her too valuable a resource to waste. I helped her arrange for a retreat. She is generous about welcoming my guests as well. Even those who are not wounded soldiers. And yes, she knows about your…intruder. The compound is as well guarded as you could hope.”
The two of them watched the women make their way inside, then Holmes laid a tentative hand on his son’s shoulder. “Now come, put on your shoes, and prepare yourself for a proper French farm breakfast.”
Chapter Fourteen
I was finding that grim thoughts about abducted children, past and present, had begun to undermine my enthusiasm for the already difficult task of translating the journal. Fortunately, the next morning provided a distraction both from code-breaking and from tales of exploitation.
Two distractions, in fact.
The first was generated when I saw a pair of heads passing by the kitchen door, and scrambled and hopped over to get the door open.
“Monsieur LaRue?” I called.
“Oui, Madame?”
He was holding a basket of new-laid eggs. The man with him took no great thought to identify. “And you must be Mme LaRue’s brother.”
“Ah, apologies, Madame—yes, this is Pierre, who has the cottage at the back. Anything you need, he is happy to be of assistance.”
The siblings must have looked alike once. One could see vestiges of a pleasant face on the half of his that was not scar tissue.
“Bonjour, Pierre,” I said easily. “I’ve been enjoying the garden, which I understand is largely your work?”
He dipped his head to acknowledge both introduction and praise, rather than meet my eyes. I imagine that was a habit any man in his condition would soon adopt, rather than see the horror in people’s faces. I merely nodded and returned to his brother-in-law.
“M. LaRue, the photographer who reproduced Damian’s sketch. Could you ask him to come and take some photos for me? At an hour when the sun is strong, with a camera and lens capable of doing very close-up work. I’d pay twice his usual rate if he can come today.”
“If I may use the telephone?”
“Certainly.”
He handed the basket to Pierre, who continued around the house while M. LaRue cleaned his tidy-looking boots on the mat and went through the kitchen into Dr Henning’s surgery. His voice came for some time, with two long silences generated, I thought, by the call being not to the photographer himself, but to a nearby shopkeeper with a telephone.
He eventually returned, triumphant.
“Monsieur will come during his dinner break, and put a sign on his door. I did say we would feed him.”
“Heaven forbid we should rob a Frenchman of his midday meal,” I agreed.
“There is also a person coming who may have seen the man in the drawing.”
“ ‘May have’?”
“A girl of fifteen, who assists her mother in the small shop near the photographer. The mother says her daughter only wishes a reason to feel important. However, I said we would pay for her to take the bus here this morning, and add a few francs for her trouble. I trust that was correct?”
“Absolutely.”
He nodded, pleased that he had judged my interest correctly. “I told the child where to come. I imagine she will be here in one hour, or perhaps two.”
“Thank you, M. LaRue. And I should ask, your brother-in-law, Pierre: Does he speak? His injuries, that is…”
“His throat is fine, he simply doesn’t have much to say.”
I spent the time with a bath, then sorting out laundry, and finally hunting through Damian’s study for the equipment I needed before the photographer came. Since that included crushing a charcoal stick into fine powder, I then had to scrub again and add another shirt to the laundry.
When those distractions had played themselves out, I reluctantly made my way to the dining room, where I had left the translation and notes. The night before, I had wrestled the long, polished table over to the wall, so the lead of a desk-lamp would reach the room’s single outlet, but I saw now that the table had been returned to its place and an extension flex added to the arrangement.
The notes did not appear to have been touched.
But before I could settle to my efforts again, a welcome interruption arrived at the kitchen door.
“Madame?”
“Oui, Mme LaRue,” I called, “I’m just coming.”
The girl with Mme LaRue wore a clear expression of dismay as she examined the workaday kitchen. If she’d spoken aloud, it could not have been more obvious that she had expected more from the abode of a famous foreign artist and his exotic red-headed wife. She was herself barely into adolescence, although her hair showed the valiant attempt at a bob and traces of red around her mouth betrayed a hasty attempt to remove the Hollywood lipstick she’d come here wearing.
She perked up when she laid eyes on me, a young woman with cropped hair, a cane (that promised a tale to take home with her!), and actual, in-person trousers such as she’d only seen on the screen.
“Voici Dorothée Fontaine,” said Mme LaRue. Her disapproving glance at the girl’s mouth told me who had been responsible for the hasty démaquillant.
“Cole me Daunt,” the child purred.
I waited in vain for my ears to provide a translation, then decided to try fitting the syllables into English instead: Call me…ah: Dot.
“Hullo, Dot,” I said, and held out my hand. She looked at it with uncertainty, then remembered and stuck out her own hand, enormously pleased at this opportunity to participate in a glamorous ritual.
Normally, I would have taken her to the sitting room to ask my questions, but I was afraid that her excitement would drive all thoughts from her head. So instead, I thanked Mme LaRue and picked up the kettle myself, to fill it and set it on the hob, then sat down and gestured the child into the chair on the other side of the table.
Mme LaRue was shaking her head as she went out of the door, and little Daunt looked disappointed, but the familiar surroundings did their work and gave me a glimpse of the sensible French schoolgirl beneath the paint.
“Thank you for coming here so quickly.” I started off in English, but seeing how intently she followed the movements of my lips, shifted into French. “I hope your mother is not too troubled by your absence from the shop. I imagine she depends on you a great deal.”
She gave a pleased shrug, and did not try to assemble the English for her reply. “We have a girl who comes in some days, to help.”
“I shall try not to keep you too long. So, Dot, M. LaRue told me that you saw the person in the drawing.”
“Him? No, I don’t think so.” My heart sank and my irritation rose—but before I could express either, she explained. “I said that I saw two men who might be with that man, although they were dressed very differently.”
“I see. Then perhaps you could tell me about the two men. Let’s start with when you saw them. This was in Délieux, was it not?”
“Yes, in my town. It was the Wednesday—not yesterday, last week. I have the afternoon off, and because the new films come to the cinema on Thursday, if there is one I saw before but want to see again, I will sometimes go before it leaves. And there was—with Ronald Colman. Don’t you love Ronald Colman? I dream of him. I saw A Thief in Paradise three times—once I hid behind the seat after it showed so I could watch it again! And Her Sister from Paris—so naughty, that one! I did not tell my mother that story!”
A year or so earlier, I had spent far too many days surrounded by a bevy of blonde, would-be starlets. They’d taught me how to keep a conversation on track: ignore all distractions and press on. “And one of the men looked like Ronald Colman?”
“No! Nothing like! No, it was because one of them made me think of the newsreel that had played during intermission, that showed the Queen of India going to church, and I had noticed that some of the young Indian men with her were very handsome, the ones without all the beards and turbans. There had been some handsome young men in another film about a young woman who sails to India and falls in love, although my friend Marianne and I had an argument about that because the man the girl falls in love with, he’s a major from England who was once in love with her mother! And even though they decided they weren’t really in love, and wanted to be just friends, that still would mean that he was her mother’s age and that’s really too old for a girl to fall in love with, don’t you think?”
I was not about to touch that particular question. “So, the film’s English major reminded you of these two men?”
“No no! Again, some of the handsome young Indian men—in the background, waiters and friends of passengers, you know?—they showed me what an Indian person looks like. And when I saw the two men leaving the train station in Délieux, after I had just seen the newsreel that reminded me of the Innocent Danger film from earlier in the summer, well, I thought that, although they were wearing ordinary clothes, they might be Indian.”
“But not wearing turbans or salwar—or Indian clothes?” I thought I had grasped the key elements of her narrative.
“That’s right. One man was very handsome, and dressed very well. Linen suit, with the kind of coat that has two rows of buttons. Shiny brown shoes, the kind with the stitching all over the toes. A red silk tie—dark, not bright. He wore a nice hat, a sort of straw fedora, tipped a little. I like that on men.”
Double-breasted summer suit, Panama hat at a rakish tilt, maroon tie, brown Oxford brogues: as identifying marks, all of those could be shed in moments. “But what did he look like? Tall or short, fat or not? Anything distinctive about his face? Why did he seem Indian to you?”
“Taller than me. And a nice shape, not too thin. I didn’t look at his face too much. I didn’t want him to think I was being forward. He did have a thin moustache, I could see that. And his skin was a little darker than most people’s. But to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’d have immediately thought ‘That man is from India’ if it hadn’t been for the other one. He was much darker, and heavier, and his moustache was thick, like in the movies and newsreel. His clothes weren’t as nice, either. Ordinary.”
I considered this for a minute. “Did they look like friends, or as if the one man worked for the other?”
“Not friends. Maybe…they might have been related? The darker one could have been old enough to be the other’s father, but not old enough to have gone completely grey. Anyway, if they were related, the younger man had more money. As I said, the older one didn’t dress as well. Though he did have a golden ring.”
“What kind of ring?”
“It didn’t have a jewel—it was one of those with a flat place on the top with a design cut into it. He was wearing it on his little finger.”
“A signet ring. I don’t suppose you were close enough to see the design?”
The childish features screwed up in thought. She shook her head. “No, not really. It had some curly shapes on it, but that’s all I saw.”
“How old were the two men, would you say?” I did not have much hope for accuracy here, since girls of her age could think of someone my age as being “old.” But she made a try.
“The younger man was maybe my cousin’s age, he’s thirty. The other…I don’t know. He was old.”
“You said he wasn’t completely grey. Was he a little grey?”
“Yes! He had mostly black hair, but I could see some bits of grey under the hat.”
She’d given me more of a description than I’d hoped for. Although it did not sound as if either of these men was the one who had climbed in through Damian’s window, four days later.
“Now, can you tell me what the two men did? Where did you first see them? Did you speak with them at all?”
“They came into the shop. I’d seen them perhaps an hour earlier, coming out of the train station—at half past eleven, so it was the Paris train. They stood for a minute looking around, then turned up the main street and went into the news-agent there. I had to go help a customer then, but I saw them a while later, talking with Old Mme Auclair, who was feeding the cats. She feeds the town cats every day at noon, but she doesn’t talk to people, and she didn’t talk to them. After a minute they moved on, to the hotel. Half an hour later, I saw them in conversation with Père André, who is happy to lean on his bicycle and talk to anyone. But I’d guess he didn’t know the person they wanted, because they walked away while he was still talking.
“At any rate, a while later, they came into the shop. Mother was there, so they didn’t talk to me at first, but they wanted to know if there was anyone in the area named either Adler or Vernet, or was related to the Vernets who were painters—artists, not house painters. She said she’d never heard of any in Délieux, but I know who M. Adler is. He comes from the train sometimes, a tall man with a big beard and nice eyes. So I told them, and they asked—the younger one, that is, the older one didn’t say anything—he asked if we thought the artist might live in Ste Chapelle. I suppose someone in the town had seen him there, and told the men, but neither Mother nor I had ever been to Ste Chapelle. He asked us a few more questions, as if he wasn’t sure to believe us—he acted a little irritated—and he and the older man were talking some foreign gabble as they left. Mother was cross as well, since they didn’t buy anything or even say ‘thank you.’ ”
