THE VISCOMTE’S “ARMY” WAS responding to the explosion with the same alacrity with which it had been mustered by a bugle call in the Sahara. Men in the familiar black uniform with red trim came out of the house; some took up positions by the wall, others went to the back of the château, and a relief team went out to the main gate.
I watched from a corner of the stable yard. I was safe temporarily but only as long as I was thought to be dead. I had to get out, but how? Some of the guests must be leaving today. I might be able to stow away in a car. I made my cautious way in the direction of the garages.
A servant came out of the kitchen with a barrel of trash and I ducked hastily out of sight. When he had gone back inside, I continued and reached the garage area. One glance was enough to show that the idea was not feasible. A pair of uniformed men were by the door, and inside, I could see two more examining vehicles.
All that was left was a getaway on foot. This presented two difficulties—first, to reach the wall unobserved, and second, to scale it. The former was the greater problem and as I reached that thought, a uniformed man came across the yard and went into the garage. Was that the answer? Put on a uniform and be like G. K. Chesterton’s Invisible Man?
I headed back toward the kitchen area where the staff should be less militaristic and therefore easier to overcome. I thought of a chef’s outfit but that would be out of place inside the house.
I went inside cautiously. A short corridor led past storage rooms, a couple of them with open doors and sacks, crates, and boxes neatly stacked inside. I went farther and came to another room, where steel filing cabinets covered two walls. A uniformed man wearing an apron was bending down, opening the lowest file drawer.
Planning had been my intention rather than precipitous action but this was too good a chance to miss. I planted a foot against his behind and pushed with all my body strength. His head crashed into the drawer and he went down on the floor like a sack of potatoes. This was easier than I had expected.
I kicked the door shut and was unfastening his buttons when he moaned and opened his eyes. His head must have been been baked hard by the African sun—to my horror, he started to struggle to his feet. I grabbed the lapels of his tunic and banged his head hard against the file cabinet door, then again. He slumped unconscious.
I stripped off my clothes, stuffed them into a cabinet, then pulled off his uniform. It wasn’t easy to get off but at least it was a near fit. I couldn’t find any rope but I came across a roll of heavy tape and used that to bind the man’s wrists and ankles, gag him and secure him to the handles of a file cabinet. I grabbed an empty cardboard box and put it on my shoulder to use as a screen for my face.
I followed the corridor into a large room that looked to be a lounge. One of the staff came out of an adjacent room and walked toward me. For a long second, our eyes met. He went on. I fought the overpowering impulse to look back because I recognized him as the man who had wielded the crossbow that had killed Elwyn Fox.
His footsteps on the polished wood floor continued. Deciding where to go, I saw an alcove. In it was a telephone.
Communication was only secondary to getting out of the château and its grounds, but a message to Aristide of the Huitième Bureau would bring help—maybe I could survive until the French Marines arrived. I picked up the phone.
The voice that answered immediately was male, deep and stern. I asked for an outside line. “I’ll connect you, sir,” was the response. “What number do you wish?”
I didn’t know Aristide’s number offhand and the voice sounded as if it belonged to an in-house operator, so I couldn’t ask for the police. I remembered Veronique’s number, though, and I asked for that. There was a short pause, then the voice said, “I’m sorry, there seems to be a fault on that line. Please try again later.”
I went on, turned near the foot of the grand staircase in the entry hall, and had gone only a few steps when a door opened ahead of me and Simone emerged. Her smart blue shirt with a white collar and darker blue skirt made her look more attractive than I would have believed. She stopped in mid-stride when she saw me and her eyes widened as she overcame the contradiction of the uniform.
“You! They said you were dead!” Emotions were flashing across her face—first bewilderment, then fear, then horror. She raised a hand to her mouth in a little-girl gesture.
“But—but who … who was in the plane?”
“It was Arundel,” I said softly.
“Oh, no,” she moaned. Her hand dropped. Her body tightened. “Alex brought me here, I had hoped that we—” Her expression changed to anger. “You killed him!” she spat in a flash of fury. “You forced him to fly!”
“I wanted him to fly me out of here,” I admitted, “but Lewis had a gun—”
She didn’t let me explain. She beat her fists on me in a rain of blows and I was trying to protect my face when she shouted, “Murderer! Murderer!”
“Wait a minute! Let me—”
She raised her voice even more, screaming, “He’s here! He’s not dead! He’s here.”
I tried to clamp a hand over her mouth but she snapped at my fingers with sharp white teeth. A pair of strong hands seized me from behind and I was powerless. Another uniformed man arrived to help—the man I had passed in the corridor, the man who had shot Elwyn Fox with a crossbow. Simone took a step back, gave me a look of loathing, then ran down the corridor, sobbing.
“Well,” said a voice in English. “You didn’t take the last plane out after all.”
Grant Masterson—or the viscomte de Rougefoucault-Labourget—came down the last few steps of the staircase. He looked suave, dressed for a day in the French countryside in a mint green polo shirt, cream slacks, and white shoes.
“A last-minute change in the passenger manifest,” I said. “Lewis Arundel felt his need was greater than mine.”
Masterson might be dressed in cavalier style but his voice and attitude were grim and uncompromising. “Yes, I noticed when I talked to him last night that he was beginning to entertain some wrong ideas about me. Pity, after he had been so useful.”
“Same with Suvarov,” I told him. “Your charm is fading fast—who’s next, you must be wondering.”
“You’re an irritating fellow, you must learn to choose your words more carefully.” His voice hardened. “But I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”
A peal of bells cut into his last words and all heads turned to the main door across the hall. The uniformed man on duty there opened it and spoke briefly to someone outside. He turned to Masterson.
“An ambulance is here. They say they had a report from the village that a body was seen to fall from the sky and land inside the grounds.”
Masterson turned to glare at the crossbowman.
“Impossible,” the man grated. “A kilo of plastic explosive was wrapped round that fuel tank. Neither of them could have remained in one piece.”
“Send them away,” snapped Masterson to the guard at the door. “Tell them we have found no bodies.”
The guard pulled the door open a few inches and spoke quickly. A flow of voluble French came from outside. The guard argued. Voices were raised. Masterson glared in exasperation and was calling to the guard to get rid of the unwanted ambulance when Simone reappeared. She was pale and tense. One arm was behind her back and I thought she was coming for me but instead she confronted Masterson.
“I heard you,” she said in a voice that trembled. “It was you—you killed Alex!”
Her eyes blazed fiercely and before either of the uniformed men could intervene, the arm came from behind her back and she swung a long, curved dagger, evidently pulled from one of the weapon racks on the walls. She slashed viciously at Masterson. Taken unawares though he was, he had enough presence of mind to throw up an arm in defense. The blade sliced deep through the fleshy part of his forearm and bright red blood spurted.
“Bring those ambulance men in!” I shouted loudly. “We have a man here bleeding to death!”
Behind me, the grip of my captor hadn’t relaxed, but he didn’t move, uncertain. Simone hefted the dagger for another swing. The noise had attracted another guard and he grabbed Simone’s arm, saving Masterson from further damage.
The guard at the door stared mesmerized at the sight of the blood spattering the flagstones of the hall, then another peal of bells was accompanied by a thunderous banging. The door swung open.
A man in a black suit and a black homburg came in, carrying a black bag. He pushed his way past the flustered guard and behind him came three white-garbed attendants. The newcomer in black looked at Masterson, shocked and frozen, staring at his arm still spouting blood, then at Simone with the dagger still in her hand, and finally at me, immobile in the grip of the guard.
“Take care of that man!” he ordered in clipped tones. Unaccountably, his three attendants stood, unsure what to do, then one of them opened a large white metal case with a green cross and moved to the stunned Masterson.
I was looking at the doctor. Somehow, those black clothes didn’t belong … and that black homburg seemed out of place … then I recognized the bristly black mustache and the round glasses. It was Aristide Pertois.
“I need medical attention too,” I called out. “So does this woman.” I nodded to Simone.
“Bring them all out to the ambulance,” ordered Pertois in a voice of command. The grip on me hadn’t relaxed, but I pulled against it, toward the door. We might have made it, but Simone called out in a high-pitched voice.
“This man is a murderer!”
She pointed to Masterson with the dagger, which still dripped blood, even though a guard hung onto her arm. “He killed Alex Suvarov and I will testify to it
“Bring them to the ambulance,” repeated Pertois, but Simone turned to him. “You’re a gendarme. Arrest him!”
The confused guards stared at Pertois. For a second, he looked nonplussed. He would have preferred to maintain his masquerade as a doctor and avoid a confrontation, but now it was too late.
It was Masterson, the viscomte, who recovered first. Still spurting blood, he sprang to the partly open door and dashed through. The engine of the ambulance roared and gravel screeched and clattered.
The guard released me and I ran to the door. The ungainly white vehicle bounced and swayed as it rocketed toward the main gates. The engine bellowed in a crescendo of noise as it gained speed.
The gates were closed. Masterson was leaning out of the driver’s window, waving and shouting at the guards, but it was not until he was about a hundred meters away that they must have recognized him. The big gates began to swing open.
If Masterson had slowed, he would have made it through, but his foot must have been flat on the floor and he didn’t relax it. Another meter wider was all he needed.
Instead, the ambulance hit the gates endwise and they sliced into the front of the vehicle like two giant knives. The frightful impact was transmitted to the stone pillars; one held firm but the other splintered with a crack like thunder and the ambulance disappeared in a cloud of dust and gravel.