Vintage Stuff

Chapter 15

He was not alone in this. Mr Hodgson, the scrap-iron merchant who had been dying for a slash and had been the recipient of one of Major Fetherington's Specials, was still incapable of doing more than scribble that he'd been the victim of an attack by one of those damned foreigners and the sooner he got home to Huddersfield the safer he'd feel. Dimitri Abnekov's opinion, also given in writing, was that a deliberate attempt had been made by a CIA hit-team to silence the Soviet delegate and was a violation of the UN Charter and the Helsinki Agreement as regards the freedom of speech. Signor Badiglioni, having been subjected to Dr Keister's clinical approach to what she called 'reciprocated sensuality' and he didn't, wasn't prepared to say anything. And Sir Arnold Brymay preferred not to. Professor Zukas had been too engaged in a polemic with the Mexican delegate on the question of Trotsky's murder and the failure of the Mexican government to collectivize farms it had already distributed to the peasants to remember anything so contemporary as his encounter with Peregrine. Finally, Mrs Rutherby and Mr Coombe, once they have been extricated from one another by Dr Voisin, were blaming their agonizing ordeal on Mrs Branscombe, the bull terrier judge, who denied that she made a habit of entering other people's bedrooms to indulge her latent lesbianism by hurling buckets of water over heterosexual couples.

Only Pastor Laudenbach approached the problem at all rationally. 'The question we must ask ourselves is why a young man should want so desperately to find a countess. It is a phenomenon not easily explicable. Particularly when he was obviously British.'

'Oh, I wouldn't say that,' said Sir Arnold, who could see an extremely awkward international incident heading his way.

'I would,' said Dr Grenoy, the French delegate. He had slept through the whole affair but the honour of France was at stake and in any case he was looking for an opportunity to divert the symposium away from his country's role in Central Africa. On the other hand, he was anxious to prevent the scandal reaching the media. 'I am sure mere is a simple hooliganistic explanation for this regrettable occurrence,' he continued. 'The essential factor is that while we have all been put to some inconvenience, no one has actually been hurt. In the morning, you may rest assured that adequate protective measures will have been taken. I myself will guarantee it. For the moment, I suggest we return to our rooms and...'

The Soviet delegate was protesting. 'Where is the American Botwyk?' he whispered, 'In the name of the Union of '

'Let's not get too excited,' pleaded Dr Grenoy, now as anxious as Sir Arnold to avoid an international incident. 'The Professor's absence is doubtless due to a comprehensible prudence on his part. If someone will go to his room...'

Pastor Laudenbach volunteered but returned in a few minutes to announce that Professor Botwyk's room was empty and that his bed had not been slept in.

'What did I say?' said Dr Abnekov, 'There has been a deliberate conspiracy to destabilize the conference by elements...'

'Oh Lord,' said Sir Arnold, appealing uncharacteristically to his French counterpart, 'can't someone bring an element of common-sense to this trivial affair? If that damned Yank had instigated anything he wouldn't have been idiotic enough to disappear. Anyway, there were no political implications. The lunatic simply wanted to know where some Countess was. I told him she was in Antibes. He's probably pushed off there by now.'

'Countess? Countess? Mere subterfuge,' said Dr Abnekov, finding his voice. 'Typical imperialistic tactics to obscure the real issue. There are no Countesses here.'

Dr Grenoy coughed uncomfortably. 'I am afraid to announce that there are,' he said, 'The proprietor of the Château...' He shrugged. The name Montcon was not one he wished to announce to the world.

'There you are,' said Sir Arnold more cheerfully, 'The woman has some lover...'

He was interrupted by the arrival of one of the ambulance drivers.

'There appears to be an explanation to the disappearance of Professor Botwyk,' Dr Grenoy announced after a whispered consultation with the man. 'He has been found on a rock in the river.'

'Dead?' asked Dr Abnekov hopefully.

'No. In the company of another man. The Emergency Services have been alerted and they should be rescued at any moment.'

The delegates trooped out onto the terraces to watch. Behind them Dr Grenoy and Sir Arnold consulted one another on the need to reestablish Franco-British collaboration, at least for the time being.

'You keep the British out of this and I won't spread the word about Madame de Montcon,' said Sir Arnold.

'It's the wretched American I'm worried about,' said Dr Grenoy. 'He may demand an enormous security operation. Thank God we don't have a representative from Libya.'

They went out onto the terrace in time to see Professor Botwyk and Glodstone being ferried across the river by several frogmen with an inflatable dinghy.

'I just hope he doesn't insist on holding a press conference,' said Sir Arnold, 'Americans make such a song and dance about these things.'

Beside him Dr Grenoy made a mental note to see that the State-controlled French television refused facilities.

But Botwyk was no longer interested in anything to do with publicity. He was more concerned with the state of his own health. In addition to being strangled, dropped into the river and made the victim of Glodstone's suggestion that he might have broken his back, he had also been subjected to the attentions of the Château's sewage disposal system. Being hit in the face by an unidentified sanitary napkin had particularly affected him. With a haunted look he was hauled up the bank and helped into an ambulance. Glodstone was brought up too and together they were driven up to the Château. Only then did Botwyk open his mouth briefly.

'Just get me into a disinfectant bath and a bed,' he told Dr Voisin as he stumbled out into the dawn light. 'If you want any further information, ask him.'

But Glodstone had his own reasons for being reticent. 'I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,' he said, 'I was passing and saw him fall. Swam across and got him out.'

And conscious that he was now in the enemy's camp, he followed Botwyk and the doctor miserably up the stairs to the bathroom.

From the far side of the valley Peregrine watched these proceedings with interest. It was good to know that Glodstone was still alive but rather disappointing that the swine who had said he was dead had somehow survived. Anyway, there was nothing he could do now until darkness came again. He wriggled back to the bivouac and hung his clothes out to dry and climbed into his sleeping bag. For a moment he wondered if he shouldn't take the precaution of moving somewhere else in case they tortured Glodstone into telling them where the base was, but Gloddie would never talk no matter what they did to him. On this reassuring note he fell asleep.

Deirdre, Comtesse de Montcon, never slept in the Château during the holiday season. She would never have slept there at any other time if she could have helped but during the summer she had her anonymity to think about, and besides, by staying the night in Boosat, she was sure of getting the best vegetables in the market and the finest cuts of meat at the butcher. Nobody at the Château Carmagnac could complain that the cuisine wasn't excellent or the service poor. Nor would they know that the expert cook was a countess. More importantly, no one would suspect that the woman who drove up in the Renault van each morning and spent the day scurrying about the kitchen and shouting orders to the other servants was English or that her greatest ambition was to retire to an even greater anonymity in her bungalow in Bognor Regis. Above all, they must not know that she had a past.

Born Constance Sugg, of 421 Selsdon Avenue, Croydon, she had risen by a series of changed identities and useful adulteries to her present title. In fact it could be truthfully said that she had a great many pasts. She had been Miss Croydon at seventeen, a starlet in Hollywood at nineteen, a masseuse in an extremely dubious parlour in San Francisco at the age of twenty-two, a hostess at a dude-ranch three years later and for ten years the wife of Siskin J. Wanderby. By then Wanderby, a man who believed in putting his money where his mouth was, had made and lost several fortunes and Constance, now Anita Blanche and mother of Anthony B. Wanderby, had divorced him on the grounds that never knowing from one week to another whether she was the wife of a millionaire or something destined for Skid Row constituted a particularly sadistic form of mental cruelty. At the time, Wanderby had been on the point of making a fortune out of capped oil wells in Texas and had looked good for a gigantic alimony. Instead, the oil glut had put paid to her hopes and she had been forced to provide for her own future. Since she was in Las Vegas she had changed her name to Betty Bonford and had stayed on as sucker-bait at Caesar's Palace. It was there she met her future husband, Alphonse Giraud Barbier, Comte de Montcon.

At fifty, the count had already gained a considerable reputation as a playboy, a gambler and a piss-artist, a consequence of his having followed his widowed mother's advice to the letter. 'Don't marry for money, Alphonse,' she had told him, 'go where money is.' And Alphonse had. By the time he landed in Las Vegas he had been to almost every expensive hotel, ski-resort, exclusive club and casino in Europe and was down to his last million francs and the Château Carmagnac. He was also under orders to marry the first rich woman who would have what was left of him. Again the Count had done what he was told and had proposed to Deirdre Gosforth (she had changed her name once more for this eventuality) in the mistaken belief that a woman who could win a hundred thousand dollars three nights running in crap games had to be loaded. The fact that it was the dice that were, and that she handed back her winnings to the management, never occurred to him, even when she had steered him in an alcoholic haze through a marriage ceremony and onto a jet to Paris taking with her, for once, all her winnings.

It was only when they reached the Château that the Count realized his mistake and the new Countess knew that in hooking her last sucker she had been hooked herself. Worse still, there was no way she was going back to the States with a hundred grand of the Syndicate's money. She had reconciled herself with the knowledge that any man who breakfasted on black coffee laced with Armagnac was heading for the hereafter at a rate of knots and as his widow she'd be able to flog the Château. The illusion hadn't persisted. The Count's constitution proved stronger than his intellect and while the Château might be in his possession it couldn't be in his will. Without an heir it would revert to the family and the Count's two sisters had no intention of losing it to a Yankee gold-digger. In fact they had done their damnedest to get the marriage annulled. Deirdre had fought back by keeping the Count's alcohol level too high for him to remember where he'd been married, or to care.

In the ensuing vendetta neither side could be said to have won. Deirdre's premature announcement that she was pregnant had driven the two sisters to consult the family lawyers while her efforts to achieve the only partially desired result had killed the Count. Since the traumatic moment when she had realized his brandy droop was terminal and that for the past ten minutes she had been having coition with nothing more responsive than a corpse with a strangulated hernia, the Countess had come to an accommodation with the family.

'You want me out, you buy me out,' she told the relatives after the funeral, 'and that means a million.'

'Francs?' asked ancient Uncle René hopefully.

'Dollars.'

'Impossible. Impossible. Where would we get such a fantastic sum?'

'By selling this dump.'

'Only a madman would pay...'

'Not as it stands,' said Deirdre, 'We turn it into a Château de luxe. Best food in France, the finest wines, get top ratings in the Guide Bleu. We climb on the cuisine gravy train and charge through the nose.'

The relatives had looked at one another thoughtfully. Money talked, but they had their family pride to consider.

'Are you expecting us to become restaurateurs?'

'Leave it to me,' Deirdre told them, 'I run the joint and '

'The name Montcon means something still in France. We are not petit bourgeois,' said one of the sisters.

'So we don't muddy the name. I'll take the flak. You can keep your hands clean and inside five years we put it on the market and scoop the pool.'

After a great deal of argument, the family had agreed and the Countess, now plain Deirdre, had set to work only to discover that she had been taken for a sucker yet again. The family had no intention of ever selling. She could have her cut of the profits but that was all. Even her threat to drag the name of Montcon through the mud of the courts had backfired. The family no longer existed and the sisters and nieces were content with their husband's names and the income they drew from Deirdre's efforts. Worse still, the youngest sister of the late Count had married Dr Grenoy, the Cultural Attaché to the Embassy in Washington, who had used his position to look a little more closely into Deirdre's background. From that moment, Deirdre had become a dependant. Dr Grenoy had made that clear enough. 'There are...how shall I say?...certain gentlemen in a town renowned for gambling and violence who have long memories. It would interest them to know where their money has been invested.' Deirdre's eyes had hardened and Dr Grenoy continued. 'However that need not concern us. In France we are more civilized. Naturally we will have to readjust your percentage to prepare for any unfortunate contingencies...'

'Hold it there,' said Deirdre, 'I work my butt off and you tell me...'

'Madame,' interrupted Dr Grenoy, 'there are additional advantages I have yet to mention. I need not stress your understandable desire for anonymity but I have something to offer. Conferences funded by international corporations', UNESCO, the World Wildlife Conservation. I am in a position to influence the venue and with the service you provide...Need I say more?'

'And the cut off my percentage goes to you?'

Dr Grenoy nodded. Deirdre had agreed, with the private reservation that she'd keep meticulous records of Dr Grenoy's new source of income. Two could play that game. And one of these days she would skip France and resume her original identity in her bungalow at Bognor Regis. Constance Sugg was not a name she'd have chosen for herself but it had the great advantage of being on her birth certificate.

Now as she drove the little van back from Boosat her mind was concerned with a new problem. Once it had been impossible to get money out of Britain and easy to shift it from France. The situation had changed and the little gold bars she had slowly accumulated over the years, while they had appreciated enormously in value, made the matter even more difficult. Perhaps if she bribed a fisherman to take her across to Falmouth...At least there would be no trouble with Immigration Officials. She was a British subject born and bred...But the problem was never to be resolved.

As she drove into the courtyard and saw the ambulance, her mind switched to the terrible possibility that one of the visitors had gone down with food poisoning. Those mushrooms she had used in the coq au vin...She got out and hurried into the hall and was stopped by Dr Grenoy.

'What has happened?' she asked.

'I can't explain here,' said Grenoy, hustling her into the dining room and shutting the door. 'They've found you. A man with a gun was here during the night looking for you.'

The Countess sat down. She felt sick. 'For me?'

'He demanded of the guests where you were. He asked specifically for the Countess.'

'But no one knows. Except you and Marie-Louise and some of the servants,' she said. 'This is all your fault. They must have traced me through you and your stupid enquiries in the States.'

'I didn't make enquiries myself. I hired a detective. He didn't know who I was.'

'He knew you were French. And doubtless you paid him by cheque.'

'I paid in cash. I am not indiscreet. You think I wanted my wife's family to be known to be involved with such people? I have my reputation to consider.'

'And I've got my life.'

'Exactly,' said Dr Grenoy, 'You must leave here at once. Go to Paris. Go anywhere. This affair could become a national scandal. Professor Botwyk has already had to be rescued from the river and the Russian delegate and the dreadful Englishman, Hodgson, were both assaulted. Not to mention other most unpleasant events concerning the wife of Mr Rutherby and Mr Coombe. The situation is extremely awkward.'

Deirdre smiled. It had occurred to her that there was another explanation. They wanted her out of the Château and she had no intention of leaving except in her own good time. 'Dr Grenoy,' she said, 'with your influence I am sure I shall be well protected. In the meantime, no one knows who I am and, if what you say is correct, no one need know. I shall speak to the servants. You need have no worry. I can take care of myself.'

She went down to the kitchen and found Dr Voisin gleefully helping himself to coffee from the pot on the stove. 'Ah, madame la Comtesse,' he said, 'my illusions of a lifetime have been destroyed. I had always believed that French women, my dear wife in particular, were the most possessive in the world. But now I know better. Madame Voisin, and I thank the good God for it, is only interested in possessing material things. True, one may count the male organ as material, though for myself I prefer a more personalistic approach. Monsieur Coombe shares my prejudice. But Madame Rutherby...what a woman! Passion and possessiveness to that degree are fortunately beyond my experience. And one speaks of women's liberation...'

'What on earth are you talking about?' asked the Countess, when she could get a word in. 'I understood a gunman was here...' She stopped. The less said about the purpose of his visit the better.

'The English,' continued Dr Voisin. 'An amazing species. One cannot designate them as a race. And one would not describe Madame Rutherby as a particularly desirable woman. It is all a mystery. And finally to find that the American has been rescued by an English eccentric with one eye who claims to be on a walking tour in the middle of the night, no, that is not explicable either. And when I offered him a sedative it was as though I was trying to poison him.'

'An Englishman with one eye rescued Mr Botwyk? Did he give his name?'

'I think he said Pringle. It was difficult to tell, he was in such an agitated state. And how the American came to be at the foot of the cliff is another mystery. But I must be off. I have my other patients to think of if I can bring my thoughts to bear on anything except the English.'

And muttering to himself about barbarians he went out to his car and drove off. In the kitchen, the Countess busied herself with the preparations for breakfast but her thoughts were still on the bizarre events of the night. A one-eyed Englishman? Where had she heard of such a person before? It was only when Marie-Louise brought the two men's clothes down to be laundered and dry-cleaned that the puzzle was resolved. And made more mysterious. Inside Glodstone's shirt and underpants were sewn little labels on which were written his name. It was something the school laundry demanded and he had entirely forgotten.