Алистер Маклин - Caravan to Vaccares

‘Blackmail!’

‘Blackmail? I don’t understand. I’m offering you a place of safety. Do you mean that you’re prepared to come with me?’

She nodded. He looked at her consideringly.

‘Such implicit trust in a man with so much and so very recently spilled blood on his hands?’

She nodded again.

‘I still don’t understand.’ He gazed forward through the windscreen. ‘Could it be that the fair Miss Dubois is in the process of falling in love?’

‘Rest easy,’ she said calmly. ‘The fair Miss Dubois has no such romantic stirrings in mind.’

‘Then why come along with me? Who knows, they may all be lying in wait – the mugger up the dark alley, the waiter with the poison phial, the smiler with the knife beneath the cloak – any of Czerda’s pals, in fact. So why?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’

He started up the Peugeot. ‘I’m sure I don’t know either.’ But he did know. And she knew. But what she didn’t know was that he knew that she knew. It was, Bowman thought, all very confusing at eight o’clock in the morning.

They’d just regained the main road when she said: ‘Mr Bowman, you may be cleverer than you look.’

‘That would be difficult?’

‘I asked you a question a minute or two ago. Somehow or other you didn’t get around to answering it.’

‘Question? What question?’

‘Never mind,’ she said resignedly. ‘I’ve forgotten what it was myself.’

Le Grand Duc, his heliotrope-striped pyjamas largely and mercifully obscured by a napkin, was having breakfast in bed. His breakfast tray was about the same width as the bed and had to be to accommodate the vast meal it held. He had just speared a particularly succulent piece of fish when the door opened and Lila entered without the benefit of knocking. Her blonde hair was uncombed. With one hand she held a wrap clutched round her while with the other she waved a piece of paper. Clearly, she was upset.

‘Cecile’s gone!’ She waved the paper some more. ‘She left this.’

‘Gone?’ Le Grand Duc transferred the forkful of fish to his mouth and savoured the passing moment. ‘By heavens, this red mullet is superb. Gone where?’

‘I don’t know. She’s taken her clothes with her.’

‘Let me see.’ He stretched out his hand and took the note from Lila. ‘ “Contact me Poste Restante Saintes-Maries.” Rather less than informative, one might say. That ruffianly fellow who was with her last night–’

‘Bowman? Neil Bowman?’

‘That’s the ruffianly fellow I meant. Check if he’s still here. And your car.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘One has to have the mind for it,’ Le Grand Duc said kindly. He picked up his knife and fork again, waited until Lila had made her hurried exit from the room, laid down knife and fork, opened a bedside drawer and picked up the notebook which Lila had used the previous night while she was acting as his unpaid secretary when he had been interviewing the gypsies. He compared the handwriting in the notebook with that on the sheet of paper Lila had just handed him: it was indisputably the same handwriting. Le Grand Duc sighed, replaced the notebook, let the scrap of paper fall carelessly to the floor and resumed his attack on the red mullet. He had finished it and was just appreciatively lifting the cover of a dish of kidneys and bacon when Lila returned. She had exchanged her wrap for the blue mini-dress she had been wearing the previous evening and had combed her hair: but her state of agitation remained unchanged.

‘He’s gone, too. And the car. Oh, Charles, I am worried.’

‘With Le Grand Duc by your side, worry is a wasted emotion. Saintes-Maries is the place, obviously.’

‘I suppose so.’ She was doubtful, hesitant. ‘But how do I get there? My car – our car–’

‘You will accompany me, chérie . Le Grand Duc always has some sort of transport or other.’ He paused and listened briefly to a sudden babble of voices. ‘Tsk! Tsk! Those gypsies can be a noisy lot. Take my tray, my dear.’

Not without some difficulty, Lila removed the tray. Le Grand Duc swung from the bed, enveloped himself in a violently-coloured Chinese dressing-gown and headed for the door. As it was clear that the source of the disturbance came from the direction of the forecourt the Duke marched across to the terrace balustrade and looked down. A large number of gypsies were gathered round the rear of Czerda’s caravan, the one part of the caravan that was visible from where Le Grand Duc was standing. Some of the gypsies were gesticulating, others shouting: all were clearly very angry about something.

‘Ah!’ Le Grand Duc clapped his hands together. ‘This is fortunate indeed. It is rare that one is actually on the spot. This is the stuff that folklore is made of. Come.’

He turned and walked purposefully towards the steps leading down to the terrace. Lila caught his arm.

‘But you can’t go down there in your pyjamas!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Le Grand Duc swept on his way, descended the steps to the patio, ignored – or, more probably, was oblivious of – the stares of the early breakfasters on the patio and paused at the head of the forecourt steps to survey the scene. Already, he could see, the parking lot beyond the hedge was empty of caravans and two or three of those that had been in the forecourt had also disappeared while others were obviously making preparations for departure. But at least two dozen gypsies were still gathered round Czerda’s caravan.

Like a psychedelic Caligula, with an apprehensive and highly embarrassed Lila following, Le Grand Duc made his imperious way down the steps and through the gypsies crowding round the caravan. He halted and looked at the spectacle in front of him. Battered, bruised, cut and heavily bandaged, Czerda and his son sat on their caravan’s steps, both of them with their heads in their hands: both physically and mentally, their condition appeared to be very low. Behind them several gypsy women could be seen embarking on the gargantuan task of cleaning up the interior of the caravan, which, in the daytime, looked to be an even more appalling mess than it had been by lamplight. An anarchist with an accurate line in bomb-throwing would have been proud to acknowledge that handiwork as his own.

‘Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!’ Le Grand Duc shook his head in a mixture of disappointment and disgust. ‘A family squabble. Very quarrelsome, some of those Romany families, you know. Nothing here for the true folklorist. Come, my dear, I see that most of the gypsies are already on their way. It behoves us to do the same.’ He led her up the steps and beckoned a passing porter. ‘My car, and at once.’

‘Your car’s not here?’ Lila asked.

‘Of course it’s not here. Good God, girl, you don’t expect my employees to sleep in the same hotel as I do? Be here in ten minutes.’

‘Ten minutes! I have to bath, breakfast, pack, pay my bill–’

‘Ten minutes.’

She was ready in ten minutes. So was Le Grand Duc. He was wearing a grey double-breasted flannel suit over a maroon shirt and a panama straw hat with a maroon band, but for once Lila’s attention was centred elsewhere. She was gazing rather dazedly down at the forecourt.

‘Le Grand Duc,’ she repeated mechanically, ‘always has some sort of transport or other.’

The transport in this case was a magnificent and enormous handmade cabriolet Rolls-Royce in lime and dark green. Beside it, holding the rear door open, stood a chauffeuse dressed in a uniform of lime green, exactly the same shade as that of the car, piped in dark green, again exactly the same shade as the car. She was young, petite, auburn-haired and very pretty. She smiled as she ushered Le Grand Duc and Lila into the back seat, got behind the wheel and drove the car away in what, from inside the car, was a totally hushed silence.