Vintage Stuff

Chapter 20

Halfway down the drive the Countess paused in her flight. Too many days in the kitchen hadn't equipped her for long-distance running and anyway she hadn't been shot at. Nobody had chased after her either. She sat down on the wall to get her breath back and considered the situation grimly. She might have saved her life but she'd also lost her life savings. The seven little gold bars in the suitcase had been her guarantee of independence. Without them she was tied to the damned Château and the kitchen stove. Worse still, she might have to go elsewhere and struggle on satisfying the whims and lusts of men, either as someone's cook, housekeeper and general bottle-washer or, more distastefully still, as a wife. She would lose the bungalow in Bognor Regis and the chance of resuming her interrupted identity as Constance Sugg safe in the knowledge that her past was well and truly behind her. It was an appalling prospect and wasn't helped by the fact that she was fat, fair and forty-five. Not that she cared what she looked like. The three Fs had kept the fourth at bay but they wouldn't help her in a world dominated by lecherous men.

It was all the more galling that she would have escaped if it hadn't been for Glodstone's clumsiness. Another damned man had fouled things up for her, and an idiot at that. Baffled by the whole affair, she was about to move on when another thought struck her. Someone had certainly come looking for her and having found her they'd let her get away. Why? Unless they'd got what they'd wanted in her suitcase. That made much more sense. It did indeed. With a new and nasty determination the Countess climbed off the wall and turned back up the drive. She had gone twenty yards when she heard footsteps and the sound of voices. They were coming after all. She slipped into some bushes and squatted down.

'I don't care what you think,' said Glodstone, as they passed, 'if you hadn't come out with that bloody gun and yelled "Freeze" she wouldn't have run off like that.'

'But I didn't know it was the Countess,' said Peregrine, 'I thought it was one of the swine trying to get round behind me. Anyway we rescued her and that's what she wanted, isn't it?'

'Without her suitcase with all her clothes in it?'

'Feels jolly heavy for clothes. She's probably waiting for you at the bridge and we can give it back to her.'

Glodstone snorted. 'Frighten the wits out of the poor woman and you expect her to hang around waiting for me. For all she knows I'm dead.'

They passed out of earshot. In the bushes the Countess was having difficulty understanding what she had just heard. Rescue her? And that was what she wanted? What she wanted was her suitcase and the madman with the gun had said they could give it back to her? The statements resolved themselves into insane questions in her mind.

'I must be going crazy,' she muttered as she disentangled herself from the brambles and stood in the roadway trying to decide what to do. It wasn't a difficult decision. The young lout had her suitcase and whether he like it or not she wasn't letting him disappear with it. As the pair rounded the bend she took off her shoes and holding them in one hand ran down the drive after them. By the time they reached the bridge she was twenty yards behind and hidden by the stonework above the river.

'What's that over there?' asked Glodstone, peering at the wreckage of the police van and the remains of the driver's seat which had burnt itself to a wire skeleton in the middle of the bridge.

'They had some guards there,' said Peregrine, 'but I soon put paid to them.'

'Dear God,' said Glodstone, 'when you say 'put paid to'...No, I don't think I want to hear.' He paused and looked warily around. 'All the same, I'd like to be certain there's no one about.'

'I shouldn't think so. The last I saw of them they were all in the river.'

'Probably the last thing anyone will see of them before they reach the sea, if my experience of that bloody torrent's anything to go by.'

'I'll go over and check just in case,' said Peregrine. 'If it is all clear I'll whistle.'

'And if it isn't I'll hear a shot I suppose,' muttered Glodstone but Peregrine was already striding nonchalantly across the bridge carrying the suitcase. A minute later he whistled but Glodstone didn't move. He was dismally aware that someone was standing behind him.

'It's me again, honey,' said the Countess. 'You don't get rid of me quite so easily.'

'Nobody wants to get rid of you. I certainly...'

'Skip the explanations for later. Now you and me are going to walk across together and just in case that delinquent gunslinger starts shooting remember I'm in back of you and he's got to drill you before he gets to me.'

'But he won't shoot. I mean, why should he?'

'You tell me,' said the Countess, 'I'm no mind-reader even if you had a mind. So, let's go.'

Glodstone ambled forward. In the east the sky had begun to lighten but he had no eyes for the beauties of nature. He was in an interior landscape, one in which there was no meaning or order and everything was at variance with what he had once believed. Romance was dead and unless he was extremely careful he might join it very shortly.

'I'm going to tell him not to do anything stupid,' he said when they reached the ramp.

'It's a bit late in the day for that, baby, but you may as well try,' said the Countess.

Glodstone stopped. 'Peregrine,' he called, 'I've got the Countess with me so it's all right. There's no need to be alarmed.'

Behind the wrecked police van Peregrine cocked the revolver. 'How do I know you're telling the truth?' he shouted, and promptly crawled away down the bank so that he could get a clear line of fire on the squat figure silhouetted against the sky.

'Because I say so, you gibbering idiot. What more do you want?'

'Why's she standing so close to you?' said Peregrine from a different quarter. Glodstone swung round and the Countess followed.

'Because she doesn't trust you with that gun.'

'Why did she ask us to rescue her?' asked Peregrine.

But Glodstone had reached the limits of his patience. 'Never mind that now. We can discuss that later out of the way.'

'Oh all right,' said Peregrine who had been looking forward to bagging another victim. 'If you say so.'

He climbed up the bank and Glodstone and the Countess seamed past the shell of the police van.

'OK, so what's with this business of my wanting to be "rescued?" asked the Countess, pausing to put her shoes on. 'And who's friend with the itchy trigger finger?'

'That's Peregrine,' said Glodstone, 'Peregrine Clyde-Browne. He's a boy in my house. Actually, he's left now but '

'I don't need his curriculum vitae; I want to know what you're doing here, is all.'

Glodstone looked uneasily up and down the road. 'Hadn't we better go somewhere more private?' he said. 'I mean the sooner we're out of the district the less chance they'll have of following us.'

It was the Countess's turn to hesitate. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to go anywhere too private with these maniacs. On the other hand there was a great deal to be said for getting the hell away from burnt-out police vehicles. She didn't fancy being questioned too closely about the little gold bars in her suitcase or what she was doing with several different passports, not to mention her son's housemaster and a schoolboy who went round shooting people. Above all she wanted to put this latest piece of her past behind her. Bognor Regis called.

'Nothing like burning your bridges,' she said. 'Lead on, MacDuff.' And picking up her bag she followed Glodstone across the road and up the hillside. Behind them Peregrine had taken her words to heart and by the time they reached the ridge and paused for breath, smoke had begun to gather in the valley and there came the crackle of burning woodwork.

'That should keep them quiet for a bit,' he said as he joined them. Glodstone stared back with a fresh sense of despair. He knew what he was going to see. The Château looked deserted but the wooden bridge was ablaze.

'Quiet? Quiet? every bloody fire-engine and policeman from here to Boosat is going to be down there in twenty minutes and we've still to break camp. The idea was to get back to the car before the hunt was up.'

'Yes, but she said '

'Shut up and get moving,' snapped Glodstone and stumbled into the wood to change into his own clothes.

'I'll say this for you, boy,' said the Countess, 'when you do something you do it thoroughly. Still, he's right, you know. As the man said, the excreta is about to hit the fan.' She looked round the little camp. 'And if the snout-hounds get a whiff of this lot they be baying at our heels in no time.'

'Snout-hounds?' said Peregrine.

'Tracker dogs. The ones with noses the cops use. If you'll take my advice, you'll ditch every item back in the river.'

'Roger,' said Peregrine, and when Glodstone finally emerged from the undergrowth looking his dejected self it was to find Peregrine gone and the Countess sitting on her bag.

'He's just destroying the evidence,' she said, 'in the river. So now you can tell me what this caper is all about.'

Glodstone looked round the empty dell. 'But you must know,' he said. 'You wrote to me asking me to come down and rescue you.'

'I did? Well, for your information, I...' She stopped. If this madman though she'd written asking to be rescued, and it was quite obvious from his manner that he did, she wasn't going to argue the toss with him in the present fraught circumstances. 'Oh well, I guess this isn't the time for discussion. And we ought to do something with Alphonse's suit. It reeks of mothballs.'

Glodstone looked down at the clothes he was holding. 'Can't we just leave them?'

'I've just explained to young Lochinvar that if the police bring dogs they're going to track us down in no time.'

But it was Peregrine who came up with the solution when he returned from the river. 'You go on ahead and I'll lay a trail with them that'll lead in the wrong direction,' he said, 'I'll catch you up before you get to the sawmill.' And taking the suit from Glodstone he scrambled down to the road. Glodstone and the Countess trudged off and two hours later were on the plateau. They were too preoccupied with their own confused thoughts to talk. The sun was up now and they were sweating but for once Glodstone had no intention of stopping for a rest. The nightmare he had been through still haunted him, was still with him in the shape of the woman who quite evidently didn't know she had written to him for help. Even more evidently she didn't need helping and if anyone could be said to have been rescued Glodstone had to admit she'd saved him. Finally, as they reached the woods on the far side of the Causse de Boosat, he glanced back. A smudge of smoke drifted in the cloudless sky and for a moment he thought he caught the faint sounds of sirens. Then they were fighting their way through the scrub and trees and after another half an hour stumbled across the overgrown track to the sawmill.

The same atmosphere of loneliness and long disuse hung over the rusting machinery and the derelict buildings, but they no longer evoked a feeling of excitement and anticipation in Glodstone. Instead the place looked sinister and grim, infected with death and undiscovered crimes. Not that Glodstone had time to analyse his feelings. They rose within him automatically as he made his way across to the shed and thanked God the Bentley was still there. While he opened the doors the Countess dropped her suitcase and sat down on it. She had ignored the pain in her right arm and her sore feet, and she tried to ignore them now. At least they had a car, but what a car! Yeah, well, it fitted. A vintage Bentley. You couldn't beat that for easy identification. A one-eyed man in a Bentley. Even if they didn't have road-blocks up the cops would still stop them just to have a look at it. On the other hand, vintage car owners didn't usually go around knocking off Professors. And there was no going back now. She'd just have to say she'd been kidnapped and hope for the best.

In the shed, Glodstone replaced the plugs and started the car. He had just driven it out when Peregrine appeared, panting and dripping with sweat. 'Sorry I'm late,' he said, 'but I had to make sure they wouldn't come this way. Went down-river a couple of miles and found an old man who'd been fishing so I stuffed those clothes in the bag of his moped and waited until he rode off. That'll keep them busy for a couple of hours. Then I had to swim about a bit before doubling back. Didn't want to leave my own trail.'

'Go and shift those trees,' said Glodstone, getting out and shutting the shed doors. The countess climbed into the back seat and five minutes later they were on the road. On the wrong side.

'Drive on the right for Chrissake,' squawked the Countess. 'We aren't in England and at this rate we won't be. And where do you think you're going?'

'Back to Calais,' said Glodstone.

'So why are we on the road to Spain?'

'I just thought...' said Glodstone, who was too exhausted to.

'From now on, don't,' said the Countess. 'Leave the brainwork to me. Spain might not be such a bad idea, but the frontier's the first one they'll watch.'

'Why's that?' asked Peregrine.

'Because, dumkopf, it's the closest. So Calais makes a weird sort of sense. Only trouble is, can Old Father Time here last out that far without writing us all off?'

'Of course I can,' said Glodstone, stung into wakefulness by the insult.

'Then turn left at the next fork. And give me that map.'

For a few miles she pored over it while Glodstone concentrated on keeping to the right. 'Now then,' said the Countess, when they had swung onto a road that led through thick oak woods, 'the next question is, did anyone round here see this car when you came down?'

'I shouldn't have thought so. We did the last two hundred miles at night and we were on roads to the South.'

'Good. That's a bonus. So the car's not what they're going to be looking for. It's clean and it's too conspicuous to be likely for a getaway. But if they do stop us those guns are going to put you inside for a long, long time. So you'll ditch them, and not in any river. The flics have a penchant for looking under bridges.'

'What's a penchant?' asked Peregrine.

'What those gendarmes didn't have when you blew that van up. Now shut up,' said Glodstone.

'Yes, but if we get rid of the guns we won't have anything to defend ourselves with and anyway they're supposed to go back in the School Armoury.'

Glodstone's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. 'Listen, you damned moron,' he snarled, 'hasn't it got through your thick skull yet that we aren't going to get back to the school unless we use our wits? We'll be doing life plus thirty year in some foul French jail for murder.'

'Murder?' said Peregrine, clearly puzzled. 'But we killed some swine and '

'And however many gendarmes you blew out of that truck. That's all! So keep your murderous little trap shut and do what the Countess tells you.'

In the back seat the Countess listened to the exchange with interest. It was beginning to dawn on her that, by comparison with Peregrine, Glodstone was practically a genius. More to the point, he was frightened and prepared to follow her orders. 'Stop the car here,' she said to test her authority, 'and switch the motor off.'

Glodstone did so and looked at her questioningly.

'This is a good a spot as any,' she said after they had sat in silence for a minute listening. 'Now then, you, trot off into the wood a couple of hundred metres and bury those gats before anyone comes.'

Peregrine looked at Glodstone. 'Must I?' he asked. But the look on Glodstone's face was enough.

'Not a very advanced form of life,' said the Countess when he'd gone. Glodstone didn't reply. From the depths of his exhausted mind the question had surfaced again. How had he ever come to be in the power of this foul woman? He wasn't going to put it to her now but if they ever got back to Britain he'd want an answer.

'One dead, another mutilated and how many missing?' asked Inspector Roudhon.

'Two,' said Dr Grenoy looking unhappily out of the window at the little helicopter perched on the terrace. 'Madame la Comtesse and an Englishman called Pringle.'

'An Englishman called Pringle? Description.'

'Middle-aged. Medium height. Balding. Small moustache. A typical Englishman of a certain class.'

'And he was staying here?'

'Not exactly. He rescued the dead American from the river yesterday morning and he was exhausted so he was given a room and a bed.'

'If he rescued the man who was shot he doesn't sound like a killer,' said the Inspector.

'Of course he wasn't a killer. Ask your own men. They had to get him back across the river with Professor Botwyk. He was on a walking tour.'

'And yet he has disappeared?'

'In the circumstances very sensibly, Inspector,' said Dr Grenoy. 'If you had been here last night you'd have tried to leave.' He was getting irritated by the Inspector's failure to appreciate the international consequences of the night's events. The Glory of France was at stake, not to mention his own career.

'And the night before a man was here looking for Madame la Comtesse,' continued the Inspector.

'That's what I've been told. But it must be said that he made the first attempt on Professor Botwyk then. Last night the Professor was shot down in cold blood, capote-wise. And your men were supposed to be on guard for his protection.'

'So they were, but they weren't to know they were about to be attacked by terrorists. You said it was Madame la Comtesse who was in danger.'

'Naturally. What else does one think when an Englishman with a gun...or an American, demands to know where she is? It was your responsibility.'

'If we had been told they were terrorists it would have helped, monsieur. We can only act on the information we are given. And the roads were guarded. They didn't come from Boosat or Frisson.'

'And what about the river? They could have slipped past your road blocks in canoes.'

'Perhaps. It was clearly a well organized operation. The aim was to assassinate the American, Botwyk, and...'

'Castrate the Soviet delegate. Presumably to put the Siberian gas pipe-line agreement in jeopardy,' said Dr Grenoy. His sarcasm was wasted on the Inspector.

'But it is the Americans who oppose the deal. It is more likely the Iranians who are involved.'

In the dining-room the exhausted delegates were being interrogated. They too were convinced they had been the victims of a terrorist attack.

'The crisis of capitalism expresses itself in these barbaric acts,' Dr Zukacs explained to a bemused gendarme. 'They are symptomatic of the degenerate bourgeois mentality and the alliance between monopoly fascism and sectors of the lumpen proletariat. Until a new consciousness is born...'

'And how many shots were fired?' asked the policeman, trying to get back to the facts.

Dr Zukacs didn't know.

'Fifteen,' said Pastor Laudenbach with the precision of a military expert. 'Medium-calibre pistol. Rate of fire, good. Extreme accuracy.'

The cop wrote this down. He'd been told to treat these members of the intelligentsia softly. They'd be in a state of shock. Pastor Laudenbach obviously wasn't.

'Your name, monsieur?'

The Pastor clicked his heels. 'Obergruppen...er...Pastor Laudenbach. I belong to the Lutheran Church.'

The policeman made a note of the fact. 'Did anyone see the assailant?'

Dr Hildegard Keister pushed Badiglioni forward. 'You met him in the passage,' she said.

The Professor cursed her under his breath. 'That was the night before. It may not have been the same man.'

'But you said he had a gun. You know you did. And when you '

'Yes,' said Badiglioni, to cut short the disclosure that he had taken refuge in her room, 'he was a young Englishman.'

'An Englishman? Can you describe him?'

Professor Badiglioni couldn't. 'It was dark.'

'Then how did you know he was a young Englishman?'

'By his accent. It was unmistakably English. I have made a study of the inter-relationship between phonetics and the socio-economic infrastructure in post-Imperial Britain and I would say categorically that the man you are looking for is of lower-upper-middle-class extraction with extreme right-wing Protestant inclinations.'

'Sod that for a lark,' said Sir Arnold. Ulster was going to be on the agenda again at this rate. 'You were into Dr Keister's room before he had a chance to speak to you. You told me that yourself.'

'I heard what he said to Dr Abnekov. That was enough.'

'And where did you pick up your astounding capacity for analysing the English language? As an Eyetie POW, no doubt.'

'As a matter of fact I was an interpreter for British prisoners of war in Italy,' said Professor Badiglioni stiffly.

'I'll put him down as English,' said the policeman.

Sir Arnold objected. 'Certainly not. I had a fairly lengthy discussion with the fellow and in my opinion he had a distinctly foreign accent.'

'English is a foreign language in France, monsieur.'

'Yes, well I daresay it is,' said Sir Arnold, getting flustered. 'What I meant was his accent was European-foreign if you see what I mean.'

The cop didn't. 'But he did speak in English?'

Sir Arnold admitted grudgingly that this had been the case. 'Doesn't mean he's British though. Probably a deliberate ploy to disguise his real nationality.'

Another helicopter clattered down onto the terrace and prevented any further questioning for the time being.

In Bordeaux Dr Abnekov was undergoing micro-surgery without a general anaesthetic. He wanted to make sure he kept what was left of his penis.