M.C. Beaton: The Love from Hell

At last, Agatha walked out on the steps in the sunshine and looked over Paris. Tourists moved up the steps and down the steps in a colourful, almost hypnotic, stream. She sat down and lit a cigarette. If I find James, then I’ll quit again, she told herself. I quit before. I can quit again.

She then rose and went to a café and ordered coffee and a sandwich, realizing she was hungry. She looked at her watch when she had finished. The hour was more than up.

Agatha walked back to the Avenue Junot to find Charles emerging from a block of flats. He looked smug, and when he got into the car he smelt of fresh soap, as if he had just taken a shower. Had he had sex with the mysterious Yvonne? And if he had, why should the very idea upset her and make her feel old and lonely?

“How was Yvonne?” she forced herself to ask.

“Same as ever. Except she got four – four! – noisy brats and one of them puked over me, so a pleasant time was wasted while she and her husband sponged my clothes and I took a shower.”

Agatha’s spirits lifted. Paris spread before them as they sped downwards through the ever-thickening traffic. Perhaps she should try to put ideas of finding James out of her mind and just enjoy a holiday.

Charles suggested they should break their journey in Aries and carry on to Agde on the following morning, and Agatha, anxious now to delay what she was sure was going to be a disappointment, readily agreed.

♦

When they started out from Aries the following morning, it had begun to rain, cold, drizzling, chilly rain. The weather seemed like a bad omen. The windscreen wipers clicked backwards and forwards like a metronome.

Then Charles said, “There’s a little bit of blue sky just ahead. In my youth they used to say that if you saw a bit of blue sky, enough to patch a sailor’s trousers, then it was going to get sunny.”

“Huh,” grunted Agatha, who was beginning to feel depressed again.

But Charles was right. As they headed ever south, the rain stopped, the clouds parted and a warm Provencal sun shone down on red-tiled roofs, vineyards and fields. They stopped in Agde for a meal, and Charles in his impeccable, if English-accented French, asked for directions to the monastery of St. Anselm.

“South a bit from here, towards the Pyrenees,” he said cheerfully.

“I don’t know if I said so, but this is very good of you,” said Agatha awkwardly. “I mean, it is a bit of a wild-goose chase.”

“Worth a try,” said Charles amiably. “You’ll need to start trying to drive on the other side of the road, Agatha. Delicious sea food and no wine to go with it. Only water for me.”

“I’ve only had water as well. I didn’t want to arrive at the monastery smelling of booze.”

“Those monks probably smell of booze the whole time. Right, let’s go.”

Charles, under instructions from the restaurant owner, had drawn a map. After they had been following the coast road for some miles, he turned off onto a narrower road and the car began to climb up a steep gradient.

“That must be it at the top,” said Charles after a while. “It looks more like a medieval fortress.”

He parked outside the main door of the monastery. There was one of those old bell-pulls at the side. Charles gave it a tug.

“Charles,” said Agatha urgently, “maybe it’s not such a good idea, you being with me. I mean, if James is here, it might upset him.”

“If James is here, I’ll make myself scarce.”

A panel in the door opened and a monk looked out at them through the grille.

In French, Charles asked if they had a Mr. James Lacey in the monastery.

“I do not recall anyone of that name,” said the monk courteously, replying in English.

Agatha pushed forwards. “I am Agatha Raisin,” she said eagerly. “And he has been missing, and we knew he came here before and we wondered…” Her voice faltered and died. She suddenly felt silly. What on earth was she doing outside a monastery in the south of France?

The monk bowed his head. “I will make inquiries.”

They waited. A cloud passed over the sun and the cicadas set off a droning chorus.

They seemed to have been waiting for quite a long time when the monk came back. “I am sorry,” he said. “I cannot help you.”

They walked slowly back to the car.

“That’s that,” said Agatha gloomily. “All this way for nothing.”

Charles stood frowning. “He was away a long time, and when he came back, he did not say, “We have no one of that name here.” He said, ‘I cannot help you.’”

“Forget about the whole thing,” sighed Agatha.

“I could do with a bit of a holiday after all we’ve been through,” said Charles. “We passed through a village before we turned off to climb up here. I saw a little auberge. Let’s book in. Do no harm to ask a few questions before we call it quits. I saw monks working in the fields. They have to sell their produce. Maybe someone’s heard of an Englishman at the monastery.”

He swung the car round, and as they drove down, Agatha saw the monks working in the fields. But she did not think James could be one of them. James was probably lying dead in a ditch somewhere in England.

The landlord of the auberge said that, yes, he had one double room vacant. His wife was an excellent cook. Would they want dinner?

Charles said cheerfully, yes, they would. The landlord replied that as they were such a small inn, the guests ate en famille. Would they mind? Charles, with a grin, said, “Of course not,” although wondering what Agatha would make of a dinner during which she would not be able to understand a single word.

The room was clean and dominated by a double bed. “You on your side and I on mine,” said Agatha firmly.

“The bathroom’s along the corridor. No en-suite bathrooms here, Aggie.”

Agatha felt better after a soak in a deep and ancient tub. She had carried her clean clothes to the bathroom, so she dressed there and made her face up in an old greenish mirror.

The landlord, his wife, and two sons and one daughter were at the dinner table when they entered. Charles rattled on in French while Agatha ate a delicious fish soup followed by roast guinea fowl.

As the wine passed round, Charles, taking a chance, began to talk about the reason for their visit. The family listened electrified to the story of murder and lost husband. Then, when he had finished, the landlord began to talk. Charles listened carefully and then at last turned to Agatha.

“The landlord says he buys vegetables from the monastery from an old boy called Pierre Duval. Duval comes at six in the morning. He says if I’m up and about by then, I can question him. I gather that Duval doesn’t talk much, but our host is hinting that for a little bit of money, he might tell all he knows.”

“I don’t know how you can keep on hoping that James is there when I’ve given up hope,” said Agatha.

“Just a hunch.”

The meal ended with an apricot tart with lashings of cream. How on earth did they manage to produce such first-class food in such a tiny place? wondered Agatha.

♦

She had been sleepy after the long drive and all she had eaten and drunk, and when the alarm went off at five-thirty she would have gone back to sleep had not Charles shaken her awake again.

“May as well do our investigations thoroughly,” he said, stripping off his pyjamas and searching in his suitcase for underwear. It must be great to be able to be so unselfconscious in one’s nakedness, thought Agatha, as she retreated to the bathroom. Or maybe men didn’t bother. Maybe it was only women who worried about love handles and unshaven legs.

When she emerged, it was to find Charles had already gone downstairs. She walked down, following the sound of voices, and found Charles at the kitchen door talking to a wizened old man while the landlord listened intently. Correctly assuming the old man to be Pierre Duval, Agatha saw him repeatedly shaking his head.