ELEVEN

Monsieur Barde’s house was a small country manor. Something like Sabine’s, in fact, but much grander, more bijou, gayer, and lots more paint on the window-frames. Money inside, too, no doubt. The wrought-iron grille was rococo openwork, and a formal French garden could be seen, with a geometric maze of box hedges going from square to circle through octagon. On either side, trees. None of those huge, wet dripping trees, whose roots tripped you up, thrusting awkward humid fingers through the bedroom window. Lush, but trimmed, bowers, with showers of flowers.

     The manor had a dinky pepperbox turret amongst other nineteenth-century follies. A stable, too, and part of this was a garage. And in the garage, a shiny dark blue car, with sheepskins on the seats. Not, though, a vulgar modern Peugeot. One might have guessed, at that. Gentleman’s car, 1937 or thereabouts, Delahaye. Regretfully, nobody would mistake it for a modern one: its lovely radiator was well back of the elegant front wheels.

     The front door was opened by a phenomenon, a young pretty girl in a black frock and white swiss-embroidery apron; a maid, no less, and whose nubile charms were set off by the harness. A soubrette. Castang gave her his card.

     ‘Like to see Monsieur Barde. You could say I’ve an introduction from Maître le Tarentais.’ The soubrette smiled winningly and tripped off: he couldn’t remember ever having seen anybody tripping off before. He stood in the hallway, where swords and things decorated the walls. She came back and hooked on, and towed him along.

     A large, light room, the depth of the house, window in front and French window onto terrace behind. Pretty and pleasant; stucco ceiling, painted panels of Pompadour pink and apple-green, like Sèvres china. Furnished in English style with low sofas covered in chintz, and a marble chimneypiece with bright brass fire-irons, and a fire too of logs smelling of fruit-wood, even on this warm afternoon. He was taken aback by the warmth, both of the room and the welcome.

     ‘My dear Monsieur Castang. Come along in. Sit down, do; make yourself comfortable. And let’s be talking, as Mrs Kenwigs said. You don’t know Dickens? Pity, you’d like him. Now, what can I offer you this chilly weather? A whisky would be just the job? Or would you rather a glass of sherry?’

     Overwhelming. The wave, arriving while one wades gingerly out from the beach, water striking a bit chill round the gut, so one takes one’s time. The wave sends you spluttering and feeling for a footing. No harm done. Just you’d have liked to choose your own moment to get soused, less boisterously.

     ‘It all sounds very English,’ he said feebly: there was a big boom of laughter.

     ‘Terrible country, England. I like it, even the warm sherry, and a fuss about decanters. Now here you are.’ A cut-crystal glass shaped like a thistle-flower. Castang, who had seen this object embroidered upon the shirts of Scottish rugby players, drew the right conclusions and got another boom.

     ‘Splendid, and shows you’re a detective. Right, right, we should have water too from some beck, but since there isn’t any, we drink this as she comes. Not going to abuse this with frightful ice cubes. So fall on, as the English said to the French when they fixed bagginets. That’s Sam Weller. Tell me what you think about that.’

     ‘Sensational,’ rightly guessing this meant the whisky and not the mysterious phrases in English. ‘Doesn’t taste like whisky though.’ Third boom.

     ‘Not like that blended muck they give you in bars, no. Single malt, my dear boy.’

     ‘You aren’t English, are you?’ still feebly.

     ‘Certainly not. Or parish pump French either. A Norman, my boy, Norman as Maupassant.’

     Castang took a swig to give himself countenance. He had got a frame of reference by now. He knew a wine-shipper down in Aquitaine, where they talked about Queen Eleanor, gave their dogs English names, sent the children to Cambridge to polish their accents, and were snobbish about the Rothschild family.

     Monsieur Barde was tall and massive, with pale straight features and pale brown hair. He was surely sixty, and the hair dyed, but he didn’t look a day over fifty, and with excellent digestion. He wore a shirt with an open collar, a cashmere pullover the colour of a Victoria plum, riding breeches – beautifully cut. And boots which would cost two months of Castang’s pay. There was money in the family, one might say. Broad acres, pedigree cows, thoroughbred horses, all very Norman. And literature too. Who was Sam Weller, anyway?

     Humbled by the boots and the whisky he felt like a stable-boy, being congratulated after the owner has had a good win at Cheltenham. This sofa was too low and the cushions too thick. And Monsieur Barde…standing in front of that fire, warming his behind and sipping at the single malt, whatever that was. All affable and patrician. Castang didn’t want to be towered over. He got up.

     ‘We’ve had a death in the neighbourhood.’ Parochial. He put his glass on a silver tray, presented no doubt by grateful foxhounds, and lit a vulgar, parish-pump Gitane with a filter tip.

     ‘You mean poor Sabine Arthur. Very sad indeed. And I’m in burglar alarms up to here, and I just hope they do me some good.’ He saw from the policeman’s civil-service facial expression that it sounded a bit too tittuppy. ‘Poor Sabine. She was an old friend. I was deeply distressed.’ He wasn’t pleased with ‘deeply distressed’, thought about it in a search for something better, gave it up. All those funereal phrases sound insincere.

     ‘But you haven’t had any trouble round here with housebreakers? Wealthy neighbourhood – looks tempting from the road.’

     ‘No. No. Not to my knowledge. I didn’t go to the funeral, I’m afraid. Should have. Smell of chrysanthemums affects me like ether. Felt guilty about it.’ So one saw. Why else all the excuses, and the emphasis on how deeply he’d been distressed.

     ‘Had any calls, from furniture dealers, or purporting to be such? In the last couple of months, say?’

     ‘Not that I know of. My housekeeper wouldn’t bother me with such. And if I want a dealer I go to the Quai Voltaire. Local people’s prices are too high.’

     ‘And you’ve never had a break-in? Can I ask the servants, whether they’ve seen people wanting to buy or sell things?’

     ‘Of course. Ring for tea by and by; ask what you like. But is this visit just a warning to look out for phoney dealers?’

     ‘The notary mentioned your name, as an old friend of the Lipschitz family.’

     ‘I see. The burglar after objects of art – that’s the accepted theory, is it?’

     ‘More or less. I’ve only just begun.’

     ‘Of course. Yes, well, Le Tarentais is a bit of an old ass, you know. Country notary’s business – nothing much to stretch the brains. Dear old gentleman but the grey matter gone a bit to seed, like a dandelion. True enough, Sabine was an old friend. I haven’t laid eyes on her in donkey’s years, that’s all. In the far-off glorious days of youth we used to sit up talking till all hours of the night,’ sentimentally. By the fireplace was a broad ribbon ending in a tassel: he pulled it and an electric bell sounded faintly.

     ‘She decayed, you know,’ said Barde. ‘Dusty little province this. I would myself, without effort.’

     The door opened and the pretty maid stood waiting, well trained.

     ‘Tea, for two, would you tell Céleste, and would she help bring it because I want her… delicious crumpet,’ fruitily, as the door closed. ‘That catch-hold-of-me-bottom walk… Sorry, rather a sudden pull up, Sammy, ain’t it? Tony Weller.’

     Janey, he’s being Dickensian again.

     ‘Still – you can ask Céleste if there’ve been any hawkers. She’s a cranky old devil: if I wasn’t here she might refuse to say, or invent heaven knows what. Called Melanie really: Céleste is after Proust of course. But to go back to what we were saying – Sabine when young, dear me yes. Swiftness, supple phrase, the swallow’s wingtip, absolutely. A felicity of wit in that gentle voice. But she got old, poor dear.’

     ‘You knew Lipschitz too?’

     ‘Indeed I did. Can’t exactly say we were all students together – but we were contemporaries.’ Would put him at about sixty-five, thought Castang. Must be all the bottom-pinching keeps him young.

     He must have had a mental arithmetic look, because ‘I was a lot younger really,’ added Barde, ‘but seems contemporary at this distance. Poor old Vincent.’

     Why was he so overwhelmingly loquacious? They were always like that in these small towns – nobody to talk to.

     ‘Had talent; undoubtedly he had talent. All renounced for love of Sabine. Her roots were here in the countryside: she detested Paris, poor thing. And Vincent as poor as a church mouse. Had this thread of erudition, a taste for archaeology. Stuck to this small affair and worked it up, quite brilliantly I’m bound to say. Can’t think of a provincial museum more excitingly displayed. Oh, here’s tea; do praise it: the old dear will be ever so pleased.’ The corners of Castang’s mouth were turning down a bit. There was something about Monsieur Barde’s praise of others that was approval of himself… Provincial celebrities! Sabine had not been like that. Somehow it put him on her side. Simplicity, the navy blue pullover, the shabby trousers, and the alert eye that took things in.

     The pretty girl brought in the tea with a hobbly but spry old witch to supervise while goodies got circulated: scones and things all very English. He took something to be polite. Barde, who as he explained – everyone would be interested – got up early, and lunched at twelve, and always did, and was busy with unspecified but energetic things concerned with horse and hound, sabred away at the honey and stuff. His mouth might be full, but it didn’t stop him talking, and supplying the answers too.

     ‘You’ve never had any phoney antique dealers here come to the door, have you, Céleste? I felt sure you hadn’t, or you’d have told me about that, wouldn’t you?’

     Castang had a feeling of being carted. Bit of a dealer in fake antiques himself, this Barde.

     ‘Lipschitz was a bit of a disappointed man?’

     ‘What makes you think that?’

     ‘I don’t know – an impression. Childless couple too. This boy’s adopted from what they tell me. Sole heir, if I understood Le Tarentais aright.’

     ‘Yes?’ vaguely. ‘I saw little enough of them in these last years. Know what you mean, of course, that the boy was a disappointment – true, I think. Vincent didn’t talk of it, and Sabine was always an intensely secret person. I say though: you’re digging away at ancient history, aren’t you?’

     ‘Tidying,’ said Castang. ‘A good thing to check up on, when there’s an unexplained homicide, is to see whether anyone had a financial interest.’

     ‘Oh quite. Have another cup. Oh, nonsense, man.’

     ‘But this boy’s sole inheritor. No conflict of interest there.’

     ‘No, I suppose not.’ Castang had thought Barde would gossip, but he seemed disinclined.

     ‘I don’t know much about it. You should have asked old François dear old man, if rather a bore.’

     ‘Who?’

     ‘François-Xavier Martigues, Poet of Our Region. He was close to them. Took an interest in the boy and all that: I’m vague, myself. Sabine was very headstrong about it all, as I remember: dare say she came to regret her impetuosity.’

     Not much use, this Barde, as a source of information or even of gossip. He was nicely embedded in honey, and it gave him eternal youth, and he wasn’t going in for children, thanks. Noisy objects, tiring, tending to break china or come bursting in just as he had his hand up the parlour-maid’s skirt. Not that that was police business.

     Very polite though; insisted that he take a cigar.

     ‘One last thing, by the way,’ said Castang. ‘You asked whether the burglar notion was the accepted theory. You might have had a faintly sceptical tone, saying that? I dare say I’m mistaken.’

     Barde was looking surprised.

     ‘Don’t well see what else it could be. I’m not a policeman, naturally.’

     ‘You find it plausible, though? Good stuff in the house for example? Looked nice to me, but I’m no judge.’

     ‘Yes indeed. I’ve not been there in ages but Vincent had taste. Nothing outstanding perhaps, but good early china, some fine old country furniture, not to be sneezed at nowadays. Worth a pillager’s trouble, no doubt of it. They wouldn’t touch the Gallo-Roman stuff.’

     ‘Many thanks. Lot of help.’

     ‘Pleasure, dear man. Chap gets bored. Police make a nice change.’

     Not everyone’s sentiment, maybe, but in this small-town world one could see what he meant.