Bones in High Places (14 page)

Well, of course he had to see for himself. Couldn’t be satisfied with me just telling him. Oh no! Wanted piric evidence or some such, and wanted it there and then. Typical. Didn’t care that I had nearly busted a gut racing all the way back in that heat and needed a kip and some water. Couldn’t have cared less! ‘Show me immediately,’ the cat ordered, all prick-eared and bossy, ‘we haven’t time to waste while you loll around here slurping and snoring.’ I told him he wouldn’t like it – all those bones and patches of wet (he can’t stand either), but he just flattened his ears and said there were certain things in life above which one was required to rise … yes, that’s just how he said it. Couldn’t make out what he was on about at first, but I think it means something like grinning and bearing. Anyway, I asked him if we could take Clemso, but he said it would be bad enough having to cope with the wet and the bones without music as well.

So we set off on our own, and because by then I’d got the smell of things it didn’t take too long. But cor, was I hot! So hot, in fact, that after I had had a good sniff at the biggest bone and cocked my leg against the box thing, I jumped in the pool and did some very nifty paddling from one bank to the other. When I was a puppy my first master, Bowler the bank manager, used to say ‘Little bugger’s like a blooming beaver!’ and people would nod and say they were sure there was water spaniel in me … Well, that’s as may be, but all I know is that I like ponds and splashing about and such; so while Maurice was being important and checking the corpse and pussy-footing over the puddles, I was having a high old time in the water.

Didn’t last of course. I’d only been in a couple of minutes when there was a great shindig from the trees on the edge of the field, and who do you think hurtled out? F.O. and that Clinker person, rushing and crashing in our direction as if wolves were after them. ‘Dive, dive!’ the cat screeched and took off like a mog on a broomstick. Dive? What did he think I was, some sort of submarine?

No, what I
did
do was to scramble up on the bank, and then just like those Welsh collies herding sheep, I dropped my flanks and haunches and inched along on my belly in the long grass … got through the hedge and scarpered like hell. Those Taffies, they think they’re the only ones who can do that – but Bouncer knows a trick or two as well. Champion swimmer, champion crawler, that’s me!

When I got back the cat was in a bad mood, i.e.
nearly
having one of his sulks but not quite. Kept muttering that he was fed up with F.O. going around murdering people and that it was putting him to a great deal of inconvenience. Well, I’m not too hot on counting so I had to think about that for some time; but when I had finished thinking I said it seemed to me that our master had only bumped off one person so far – which wasn’t to say he wouldn’t have another go in the future. Maurice looked huffy and said that one or many, past or future, it was all the same as it messed up his routine and got on his nerves. What’s new? Things are always getting on the cat’s nerves.

Still, I felt a bit sorry for him as he had missed his evening milk and didn’t seem his usual cattish self – all this foreign stuff, I expect, getting him down. So I decided to tell him where I had hidden the thing that I had nicked from under the stiff’s ear … And that did it! Perked him up no end and he whizzed off like a kitten on skates. Just goes to show, play your biscuits right and things can change in a trice!

With the swastika project hanging over me, I had slept badly and was in no mood to appreciate Ingaza’s badinage at the breakfast table. The prospect of imminent gain and being one ahead of Climp and Mullion had put him in high spirits, and over the coffee and brioches he indulged in a waggish humour not entirely to my taste. It was too early, and the circumstances too disturbing. True, one had been spared the tedium of the excavations, and in comparison retrieving the swastika should not have been too difficult. But I was shocked by what had happened to Boris, and rattled at being the likely target of the previous day’s surveillance. Were the two incidents connected? Was it possible that my pursuers were also Boris’s killers? I brooded into my coffee seeing no obvious link, but fearful nevertheless …

‘Right,’ said Nicholas briskly, ‘are we all set?’ We were gathered outside the inn, a quartet of innocent ramblers about to savour the delights of the Auvergne and meander its winding paths. Admittedly the air of innocence was rather spoilt by Henri, who, clad in black from head to toe (though minus his priestly collar), somehow managed to look like a diminutive Al Capone. However, the rest of us appeared respectable enough; and so chatting casually we moved off down the hill in the direction of the Fotherington Folly.

Halfway along the narrow road, Nicholas said that he knew of a short-cut discovered on his earlier reconnaissance. It lopped off a good quarter of a mile and was worth the hazards of the long grass and muddy cart tracks. Thus, watched by a bevy of mercifully mild-eyed heifers, we clambered over the stile and made our way down the steep path. It had rained the previous night and the ground was damp underfoot, and at that hour of the morning – much to Primrose’s horror – one’s shoe would be met with the occasional lolling slug. However, as assured by our guide and amidst gasps of disgust from Primrose, we quickly reached the château’s perimeter wall.

Close up the place looked even more hideous than when first seen, and I surveyed it with fading spirit – the same response presumably as Elizabeth’s on her visit there just after the war. I shared that distaste … as I had shared her final moments in Foxford Wood. Yes, we were inseparable, she and I. And however hard I tried to arrange it otherwise, nothing could alter that fact. I put my hand on the crumbling wall, feeling its wet roughness and dank clinging ivy, and not for the first time wondered what on earth I was doing – or had done.

‘Chop, chop, old man!’ urged Ingaza, digging me in the ribs. ‘I don’t care what the poet said, we haven’t got all day to stand and stare. Work to do.’ He led us towards a corroded iron gate which creaked in protest as we levered our way though. ‘Better skirt round the edge,’ he instructed. ‘Can’t be too careful – eyes in every bush and gully, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He chuckled softly.

‘Don’t be so absurd, Nicholas,’ whispered Primrose, ‘there’s not a soul anywhere. Another crack like that and you’ll give Henri the vapours!’

Personally I did not think he was being in the least absurd. Images of Boris’s fate and my fears of being spied on at Le Petit Rêve had made me more than jittery; and I suspect that, far from looking the part of a casual rambler, I projected an air of furtive terror.

Keeping in the lee of the wall and picking our way carefully, we eventually broke cover and wandered as nonchalantly as possible towards the front entrance, a large imposing portico of raddled and poorly reproduced Doric pillars. With what he clearly thought was a deft sleight of hand, Ingaza whipped the key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. Nothing happened. He tried again with the same result. The thing was immovable; and despite twisting and pushing it remained so.

‘It not work,’ pronounced Henri.

‘Sharp of you,’ snapped Ingaza. We stared at key and door nonplussed.

‘But it’s obviously the right one,’ said Primrose. ‘Look, it’s got a label with “Folie” written on it.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ muttered Ingaza, ‘this is absurd.’ He shoved the key in once more and rattled it angrily. Useless.

I cleared my throat. ‘I say, do you think that it’s simply the wrong door? Surely there must be another entrance, at the back or somewhere.’

Circumventing nettles and bits of broken drainpipe, we scouted along the building’s flank, past boarded windows and flaking sills. Still no sign of a door, and despite my reluctance about the whole venture I felt an illogical pang of disappointment. But at that moment, there was a shout from Henri who had nipped ahead around the corner: ‘
Venez, venez!
’ he commanded. ‘
J’ai la porte!
’ We hurried after him. And sure enough, there it was: small, weathered and peeling – but displaying a gleaming, and presumably newly fitted, lock.

Before Nicholas had a chance to try the key the curé had seized it from him, and with a couple of twists, and for good measure a hefty kick, flung the door wide, and in beaming triumph exclaimed, ‘
Sapristi! Victoire!
’ A trifle theatrical, I thought, but at least a variation on the usual maledictions.

We jostled our way into what seemed to be a narrow passage, freezing cold and almost pitch dark.

‘There must be a light,’ hissed Primrose. ‘Do find it, Nicholas, I’ve just stubbed my toe.’ We edged along, feeling the walls for a switch; but nothing presented itself and I rather suspected that in all probability any electricals would have long since fused or been dismantled. But as we shuffled through the gloom, darkness gradually gave way to a pallid murk as the passage opened up into a large vestibule feebly lit by a grimy skylight. There seemed to be little there: a flagstoned space with a few ramshackle wooden chairs, a decaying sofa and a couple of trestle tables. On one of these, rather incongruously, stood a large hot-water urn and some randomly stacked plates.

‘Goodness,’ Primrose giggled, ‘do you imagine the Jerries held a farewell tea-party before they left?’

‘No, not them,’ I said, ‘the Birtle-Figgins. They must have used this area when they were catering for that village fête Lavinia was telling us about. Do you remember? She said they had been allowed access to the kitchen quarters as a special concession.’

‘Yes,’ Primrose replied excitedly, ‘and somewhere in those quarters is the back staircase and the lavatory with the wellington boot! We must be pretty close.’ She started to prowl around. ‘I wonder where –’

‘Over here,’ said Nicholas’s voice. ‘Look, these are the stairs.’

We peered into a further recess where he was standing, and I could make out the curve of a banister and the outline of newel posts. A door was there as well.

He grasped its handle and gave a tug. The effort was unnecessary: it opened easily, and from the light of a small unboarded window we had no difficulty in seeing a tiled floor, basin and lavatory bowl, and all the usual accoutrements of an ancient cloakroom. Dusty and musty, it presented a view of cobwebbed gardening tools, a collection of mouldering wicker baskets, two mackintoshes hanging like stiffened corpses on a gibbet, a single gym shoe, and a surprisingly large assortment of galoshes. Of the gumboot there seemed no sign.

‘It must be here somewhere,’ protested Primrose, ‘unless of course Boris was having us on, or hallucinating. The latter probably – he seemed to be living on another planet.’

‘Not any more he isn’t,’ said Nicholas drily, ‘unless he’s plucking a harp in some celestial sphere.’

‘Or banging a tambourine like Belvedere,’ tittered Primrose.

In desultory fashion we began to rummage among the bits and pieces, dislodging layers of debris and scuttling spiders. The search yielded nothing, and I was just about to suggest that possibly Boris had meant a different cloakroom, when I became aware that the place had become lighter. I glanced up at the window and saw a small patch of blue, a reminder that beyond these oppressive walls the world had grown bright and warm … But I also saw something else: on a shelf just below the window stood a pair of elderly rubber boots.

For some impractical reason the shelf was fixed too high for normal reach, and Henri was dispatched to fetch one of the chairs from the hall. Balanced precariously on its wobbling legs, I reached out, clasped the boots and clambered down. One of them felt distinctly heavier than the other, and with a sudden image of bran tubs and lucky dips, I plunged my fingers into its depths. There was something bulky wedged between heel and toe. Watched in silence by the others I gradually eased the thing out. It lay in my hand: the proverbial brown paper parcel tied up with string. However, it was not long in my grasp, for with a grunt of satisfaction Ingaza had whipped it from me, and with a pocket penknife was eagerly slicing at the binding … I hoped for all our sakes that the ‘dip’ would prove lucky.

It did. From the wrappings Nicholas extracted just what Boris had described: a dark metal Nazi swastika, about six inches in diameter and studded with pearls and what appeared to be rubies.

There was a gasp from Primrose. ‘Well, I must say, that’s a nice little trinket!’

‘It’s no trinket,’ said Nicholas slowly, ‘I think the stones are genuine.’

We continued to gaze at it. And then Henri, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, spat out a single word: ‘
Salauds!
’ It was the first truly relevant oath I had ever heard him utter. His eyes held a look of pain and fury; and like him, one was reminded of that awful time and those terrible events. The invaders may have been driven from French soil, but they could never be entirely expunged from the mind of Henri or thousands like him …

‘Let’s get going,’ I said. ‘We’ve got what we came for, no need to hang about.’ I had a sudden need to get out into the sunshine, into the fresh air and away from dust and fetid memory.

Exquisite! Smooth, spherical and brilliantly shiny, it was a toy of infinite, gleaming charm. I teased it with my paw, flicked at it with my tail, nudged it delicately with my nose, dribbled it across the floorboards where it skidded and spun in the most tantalizing way. It would tap, patter and rattle, gyrating in such a manner as to make me almost dizzy. And then when it was stilled and silent I would creep up from behind, and with the merest touch of my claw set it going again, rolling, spinning, shimmering. Sometimes I would pounce as if it were a mouse and toss it in the air, and then when it had landed give merciless chase among the chair legs …

Such were my activities when the dog’s voice interrupted as he wandered in from the veranda. ‘Ah, you found it then,’ said Bouncer. ‘Thought you might like it.’

I felt a flash of irritation to be so distracted but, being a cat of breeding and impeccable manners, I paused in my entertainment and thanked him profusely for producing such a rarity.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you don’t find many eyes like that, do you? A good bit of glass, I should say. Don’t know what it was doing under the stiff’s ear but it seemed a pity to leave it there, thought it might come in useful.’

I congratulated him on his prescience, said that it was indeed an excellent piece of glass and probably less to do with the corpse than with the upturned box which had contained the frightful bones. ‘That’s where it came from,’ I said, ‘along with those teeth.’

He nodded, and then emitted an explosive laugh. ‘You’re not good on bones, are you, Maurice?’

I agreed that I was not good on them.

‘Yes,’ he said, still chortling, ‘I remember when you discovered my special collection in the vicarage, it didn’t half give you a fright. I thought you were going to peg out!’ The memory clearly afforded him great satisfaction and normally he would have risked a claw to the snout, but my gaiety with the glass eye had made me benevolent and I let it pass.

Then as I was about to return to my plaything, the air was rent with a sudden blast of music from the hallway, and before I had time to scuttle out of sight, Clemenceau appeared. He stood poised on the threshold, panting and grinning, a fanfare of trombone and trumpet issuing from his collar. I sighed and flicked the eye into a corner. All good things must come to an end …

Raising my voice above the din, I addressed him affably in carefully enunciated English (having no intention of pandering to their linguistic peculiarities). ‘Good afternoon, Clemenceau,’ I said. ‘I trust you are spending an enjoyable day.’ He seemed not to understand, and with jaw hanging open, continued to grin vaguely while remaining mute. I do not share Bouncer’s raucous volume and assumed the dog had not heard me. Fortunately at that moment the noise switched itself off, so I tried again, evincing once more an interest in his day. There was the same response, i.e. nothing.

‘It’s no good,’ said Bouncer, ‘he’s Frog through and through, you’ll have to use the lingo.’

‘I most certainly will not!’ I exclaimed indignantly.

Bouncer made the equivalent of a human shrug and, going up to Clemenceau, started to grunt and growl in a very peculiar way. At first the dog looked puzzled, but as Bouncer persisted, he slowly began to twitch his ears and then launched into a spate of rapid gobbledygook.

There was silence as Bouncer knit his brows and digested this. Then he trotted over to me and said, ‘He’s got a different sort of accent from Pierre, but from I could make out he said: “Tell the cat that all my days are enjoyable.”‘

‘Hmm,’ I sniffed, ‘took rather a long time saying that, didn’t he?’

He nodded. ‘Yes – what you might call long-winded.’ And then pausing, he added quietly, ‘Not the only one of course.’

I had no idea what he meant by that – the dog often makes pointless and gnomic remarks. But I have to confess to being impressed by his knowledge of French (my own grasp of the tongue being academic rather than practical). You would think such talent alien to a creature of so little culture; but I recalled that he often spent time with Pierre the Ponce, and presumably some of that garrulous poodle’s expressions had rubbed off. There was also his knack of picking up snippets of Latin from his visits to the church crypt, so I concluded he must have a natural aptitude for such things. His ear for music (distasteful to me) could also be a factor … Well, I mused indulgently, just as well the dog has an aptitude for something! And mindful of his retrieval of the eye, I thought a word of praise might be in order – though naturally nothing excessive.

‘That’s most helpful, Bouncer,’ I mewed approvingly. ‘Quite a little skill you have there.’ He looked surprised, wagged his tail and said modestly that it was just his sixth sense. As mentioned before, the sixth sense features firmly in the dog’s mythology and I did not bother to dispute it. Instead, I told him to convey my compliments to Clemenceau and say that I was delighted to hear that his days were so felicitous.

‘What?’ he asked, looking baffled.

‘Tell the dog I’m glad he’s happy!’

‘Right-o,’ he answered. And clearly proud of his role as interpreter, he bounded over to the other and engaged in more broken mutterings – accompanied by a good deal of mutual sniffing and rear-end reconnaissance.

The hound lifted his head, beamed and uttered something unintelligible.

‘What was that?’ I asked.

‘Didn’t you hear? He spoke in English,’ said Bouncer.

‘Huh! Didn’t sound like English to me.’

‘Well, it was, sort of. He said: “I like
vairree
much
gingaire
cats.”‘

‘But I am not a ginger cat!’ I protested.

‘Oh well, not always easy to get your words right first go,’ the dog replied philosophically.

An
entente cordiale
is all very well, but the negotiations can be fatiguing and I was becoming a little tired of this trading of pleasantries and eager to return to the glass eye … Besides, I was fearful that the collar might reengage itself. Tactfully, therefore, I suggested that as it was a bright day they should continue their parlez-vous-ing on the veranda.

Alone at last I hastily reapplied myself to the eye, suspecting that at any moment my capers would be further thwarted by the entry of F.O. or the Brighton Type.