The Village Gossip

  If Littlejohn had got up when the early Angelus sounded and taken a stroll in the village as the thin crowd of old women were coming from the first Mass, he would have found himself rather popular, for it had got around that in the small hours he had restored the village baker to life.

  Now, however, at nine o’clock, things were different again. News of Hénoch Rossi’s disappearance had travelled fast and the villagers were wondering if the strange Englishman was mixed up in that, as well. When he crossed the road to the church, the women washing clothes at the fountain and those standing gossiping in small knots at cottage doors, gave him sidelong glances and followed his progress out of the corners of their eyes.

  It had been too late when he returned to tell his wife all the events and all his thoughts about the adventures in the dead of last night. So, over breakfast, he had given Letty a full account. He had certainly collected a fine gallery of characters, if nothing else.

  César Alivon, for example, the very man under whose roof they were living, and who, as likely as not, judging from the tell-tale fumes of his pipe, was listening behind doors to their conversation whenever he could. He had entered the hotel as Littlejohn left it, just after the priest had sounded the alarm on finding the baker unconscious. Had he been abroad before the alarm? If not, he’d covered the ground to the scene of the accident and back in record time. He’d also, in spite of his first-aid training, tried to give the unconscious man a drink of brandy which might have choked him, and he had been corrected by the curé when he said he didn’t know the nature of the accident. Then, he’d been in no hurry to get the doctor and Littlejohn had boiled over and told him to get a move on. César Alivon was in the employ of the Marquis de St. Marcellin...

  The curé himself, Monsieur Chambeyron, was a bit of a mystery, too. He owed his job to the patronage of the people at the château, and showed signs of distress at the suggestion that the death of Lovell and his wife had been anything but an accident. A bitter, disappointed man, beholden to the Marquis, he was obviously anxious not to offend his master; otherwise, he might be thrown into the world outside again and end his days in some hole-and-corner parish far away from his native heath.

  And what had the mayor been doing abroad in his car in the direction of the château in the small hours after the events of the previous night? Had he been giving a full report to his “boss”, and had the disappearance of Hénoch Rossi followed it?

  “The trouble is,” complained the Chief Inspector, “I daren’t make the least show of being curious about it all. It’s supposed to have nothing whatever to do with me. I’m a casual visitor here and, if I ask questions, I shall probably be told to mind my own business. On the other hand, I’m sure our arrival precipitated poor Rossi’s trouble. Whether it was just that he talked too much to the world in general after taking too much wine, or that he talked too much to me, I can’t think. In the latter event, someone suspects already what I’m here for.”

  He tried to look casual as he crossed to the church. He smoked his pipe and enjoyed the fine morning. The storms in the mountains the night before seemed to have cleared the air. Everything stood out distinctly; the plane trees on the roadside, the cypress in the churchyard, even the pebbles in the road. A hot breeze moved the leaves of the trees gently, and brought the scents of lavender and thyme from the upland fields. Littlejohn paused and looked at the village and its situation, which seemed quite different from his first impressions of yesterday afternoon.

  St. Marcellin was dominated on one side by crags and a kind of rocky plateau. On the other, the ground slowly rose from the village to a chain of gently undulating modest hills, with pastures and rows of vines and olive trees. Beyond, the rising ground grew wilder, covered with juniper, myrtle, thyme and lavender, and then, in the background, the rocky bastion of the alps of High Provence. It was as if St. Marcellin had grown up in a little fertile valley in the wilderness and the sullen, passionate peasantry were incessantly engaged in a battle with nature to hold their own; and that over their habitation hung an atmosphere of impending misfortune.

  A group of hens, pecking in the road, scattered with noisy cries as Littlejohn approached them, and a gander, leading four geese under the trees, hissed at him and then went for him with open beak. He beat a retreat and entered the church.

  After the bright sunlight outside, it was like entering a tunnel and Littlejohn paused on the inside of the door to recover his sight. Indifferent stained-glass took away the necessary light and the dirty condition of the windows did the rest. The place smelled of candle-grease and incense and the light came mainly from an odd taper or two burning before images and near the high altar. A dim sanctuary-lamp flickered in a side chapel, the only one in the place, and, unlike the rest of the church, was furnished with new rush-seated chairs and a prie-dieu, instead of batteries of hard, cheap benches. Presumably the chapel of the people from the château.

  The sacristan shuffled about the building, preparing the altar for High Mass, collecting dead candle-ends and putting them in a canvas bag, dusting the two shabby confessional-boxes with a feather duster. He took no heed of Littlejohn, who was just going to ask him if the curé was about, when the Abbé Chambeyron himself emerged from the sacristy. He had his vestments over his arm. When the priest saw the Chief Inspector he looked ready to turn about and run for it. Then, he slowly walked to meet him.

  “Good morning, Monsieur Littlejohn.”

  “Good morning, father. How is the patient?”

  Littlejohn knew it already, but wanted the priest’s tale without having to ask for it.

  “You must excuse me if I leave you hastily, monsieur. I have to take the Viaticum to Madeleine Tatin.”

  Madeleine Tatin again! The poor woman seemed to be the excuse for anybody in St. Marcellin who wished to run away. Like the traditional dog men went to see about, at home in England!

  “I am waiting for the choir-boy. They are always late.”

  It was difficult to assess the curé’s expression, for his face was illuminated by the reds, yellows, greens and purples of a window showing Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, but his whole attitude was one of nervous tension.

  “... Meanwhile, I take it Monsieur Rossi is getting along well?”

  “I don’t know... He left my house in the dead of night and nobody knows where he has gone.”

  “Indeed! Not even his brother, who was watching by his bed?”

  The priest fidgeted with the vestments over his arm.

  “I had fallen asleep in the armchair, just after you left me. I was very tired and I didn’t wake until two hours later. I hastened upstairs to see how Hénoch was getting along. I found both brothers gone.”

  “Hénoch is not at home, then?”

  “No. His brother says he left him sleeping and went back to attend to the batch of baking for the morning. He is as puzzled as we are... I can’t think...”

  “Do they live over their shop?”

  “No. Once they did, but they made a little money and took a small house at the end of the village. It was healthier, they said, and I’ve no doubt they were right.”

  “It was a good thing you were abroad last night, Monsieur l’Abbé... It saved Rossi’s life. I must have been the first to hear your shouts for help and get to the spot.”

  “That is right, Monsieur Littlejohn. I shall never cease from thanking the good God for your timely arrival.”

  “Alivon wasn’t there before me, then?”

  “Alivon?”

  The curé paused, but he had said enough.

  The door opened and a small boy put in his head, greatly to Monsieur Chambeyron’s relief. A young imp, with a peasant’s face and a tuft of hair on top of his head, which wouldn’t lie down in spite of the fat with which he’d liberally anointed it. He slid past Littlejohn and the priest, entered the sacristy, and then emerged transformed and looking like a little angel, clad in a surplice too large for him and carrying a small handbell.

  “Excuse me, monsieur.”

  The Abbé Chambeyron hastily put on his vestments, took up his breviary, and, preceded by the acolyte ringing the bell, went solemnly on his way to comfort the dying.

  Outside, the village was almost deserted. Another cart of manure with huge wheels grinding the road and the whiff of rotten straw and ammonia... A man on an old bicycle... The tumbledown bus to Manosque ready to leave in half an hour and already half full of peasants afraid it might start without them. Mrs. Littlejohn waving to him from the window of the bar at the Restaurant Pascal, where she was writing letters. Eiderdowns and pillows hanging over the balconies of the bedrooms. The sound of Marie Alivon washing glasses and moving bottles. Four men sitting outside at the tables, drinking together. They looked sheepishly at Littlejohn and saluted him respectfully. In the bowling-alley, a small group of players hurling the steel balls about the beaten earth...

  Mrs. Littlejohn had asked her husband to get some stamps, and he turned in the small, dark grocer’s shop next door to the mayor’s house.

  Another tunnel, with shadowy forms converging round the counter. The chatter of voices ceased when Littlejohn entered. There was a heavy mixed smell of coffee and spices, half-rancid fat, sour cheese, and garlic on the air. A sanded stone floor, and shelves, counter, doors and cupboards of dirty yellow wood, stained and time-worn. The light came from two windows at the front, filled higgledy-piggledy with anything from shoe-laces and string to soiled dummy packets of chocolate and jars of pickled olives. The dark figures in the gloom of the shop hastily did their business and trotted out, leaving Littlejohn and the woman behind the counter alone. Thérèse Colomb, according to the name above the door.

  Littlejohn ordered his stamps and was served from a grubby portfolio which the woman took from under the counter. Then, he asked for cigarettes.

  “I do not sell them.”

  The answer came with venom, as though this were a standard grievance. By the light from the window, Littlejohn could see the dark malevolent eyes of the slatternly, middle-aged woman flash with temper. She was more mercurial and eloquent than the other women Littlejohn had encountered in St. Marcellin. Tall and thin, she must have been good-looking in her youth and perhaps until the perpetual gloom of the shop had withered her in body and spirit.

  “I do not sell them... You are the Englishman staying with his wife at the Pascal, hein? You will get them there. It is easy to get a licence to sell tobacco when one has Monsieur le Marquis in one’s pocket, like Marie Alivon has.”

  “They wouldn’t give you a licence, then?”

  “Tobacco licences are not easy to come by unless one has friends. I am a foreigner. I have only been here for ten years and that is almost to be a stranger. I came from Sospel. My first husband and I were happy there... A happy place, monsieur. Then I married Colomb and he persuaded me I needed a shop in his native village. And here we are. You will have seen him. He is sacristan at the church. Twenty years older than me and a miser into the bargain. Every night he counts the money and almost takes stock to be sure I haven’t cheated him.”

  The door opened, a woman appeared, and then withdrew when she saw Littlejohn.

  “They are a secret lot here. That woman, the wife of the village policeman, is afraid you will find out how much she spends, so she withdraws until you have left. She is a secret eater of chocolate, which she buys from the housekeeping money her husband gives her. And then she takes cheap rancid ham and stale cheese and tells her husband it’s my fault. He ought to beat her.”

  “A pity about the tobacco, though.”

  “A pity, did you say, monsieur? It’s a scandal. I can see you are a just man. You will agree that it isn’t right for the snobs at the château to dish out all the privileges. This isn’t the Middle Ages, although you’d think so to live here. The Marquis has everybody under his thumb. He owns some of the farms and those he’s sold have farmers who were so scared of the people at the hall in the past, that even now, when they’re their own masters, they knock at the knees if Monsieur le Marquis says ‘booh’. He bullies the priest, and the mayor licks his boots because the Marquis could get him sacked if he wanted. I tell you, if the folks at the château get their knife in you, you might as well pack up and go.”

  Thérèse Colomb had found a stranger to whom she could open her heart, and Littlejohn’s apparent sympathy and understanding had got her in full spate. She leaned her elbows on the counter and began again.

  “I daren’t talk this way to everybody. You aren’t like the rest, I can see. They’d run right off to the bailiff’s office and tell him what I said, just to curry favour... Then, I’d be out. As it is, they just say I’m a bit queer. I don’t mind what they say so long as they leave me alone. I only hope one of my sisters-in-law will die soon and then I can go and live with one of my brothers in Sospel. I’ll leave Colomb to count his money alone then.”

  “The Marquis is a friend of the Alivons?”

  “Well... César works on the estate and...”

  She lowered her voice and thrust her face further across the counter.

  “... You’ve seen that Blanche, who works in Manosque and gets herself up like a cheap little tart? I can see you have, monsieur, and I’m sure you’re disgusted. She is Marie Alivon’s daughter, you think? That’s what she calls her... Ask any of the villagers and they’ll say the same. They all hang together. But I know different. My lady Blanche is really Marie Alivon’s niece. Her mother died years ago... of shame. Went off her head and drowned herself in the lake at the château. An old woman I once did a good turn for, told me. The father was said to be one of the fine gentry at the château and, if it wasn’t the Marquis, it was one of his philandering friends. Céleste Alivon, that was Blanche’s mother, was a maid up at the house.”

  “A sad affair.”

  “Sad! It was shameful, and César Alivon hasn’t been the same man since. If he’d any guts, he’d have taken a shotgun to whoever did it. But, oh no... Nobody must question the doings of Monsieur the Marquis.”

  “A funny thing about the baker... Did you hear about his accident last night?”

  “Accident? Accident, did you say, monsieur? Some of my customers earlier this morning said Hénoch had been drunk last night and talking too much about another accident. . . . Two people killed on the hill outside the village in February this year. Hit a tree in their car. More friends of Monsieur le Marquis. So the enquiry was hastily done, the doctor, old Mengali, to whom I wouldn’t trust a sick cat, certified death due and proper, and the magistrate from Manosque found it accidental. Just as quick as that, sir.”

  She hit the counter with the flat of her hand.

  “All so that the Marquis, whose friends they were, shouldn’t have any trouble. And those two poor things lying in the church dead in the prime of life. An Englishman, like you, sir, and his pretty French wife...”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper again.

  “A pretty girl, whom the Englishman stole from the brother of the Marquis years ago. I was told, in confidence, the brother, who was then Marquis himself, killed himself for love of her when he lost her.”

  “So, you don’t think the affair in February was an accident?”

  “I could tell you things, monsieur.”

  She bent closer and then recoiled. Shuffling footsteps from behind the shop, and the man Littlejohn had seen pottering about in the gloom of the church earlier that morning, entered. A little dried-up chap, with sharp button eyes and a bald head, partly protected from the elements by a black skull-cap. He didn’t even look at Littlejohn but, with grubby mean hands, emptied the till, separated the notes from the coin, and started to count the money on the counter. His lips moved as the notes’ slid through his clawing fingers. “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty... Four thousand...”

  Littlejohn bade the woman good day and left the shop.

  The doctor’s car was standing in front of the mayor’s house. It was a tumbledown, out-dated model, almost like a hearse. Dr. Mengali was just closing the door of the mairie.

  “Good morning, doctor... How is the patient?”

  “Madeleine Tatin, you mean?”

  Again!

  “... She’s taken a turn for the better. We’ll soon have her up and about.”

  In the distance, the priest and the choir-boy were returning with less ceremony than they went. The choir-boy was carrying his surplice over his arm and holding the clapper of the little bell to keep it quiet. He said something to the priest, who took both bell and surplice from him, boxed his ears, and sent him off in the direction of the school.

  “I meant the baker, doctor.”

  Mengali waved his arms about.

  “A perfect farce, Monsieur Littlejohn! The man recovered and then he must have gone off his head. He got up and ran away. Always a bit unstable...”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Don’t ask me. They have relatives all over the place. Some in Marseilles, some in Paris, some in Grenoble. He might be anywhere. And after the time that was wasted last night... It makes my blood boil to think I dragged him out of the very jaws of death... yes, death itself... and then he does this.”

  No mention of Littlejohn’s efforts!

  The doctor chattered on, his beard wagging like that of an old goat, flecks of indignant foam in the corners of his mouth. Littlejohn wondered when and where he’d graduated and whether he was really any good. A typical Balzacian country doctor.

  “Hénoch was telling me last night you attended to a countryman of mine and his wife, killed here earlier this year.”

  “They were dead when I arrived. Killed driving their car against a tree on the hill there. The road is bad and they must have been travelling at high speed.”

  “Hénoch suggested it might not have been an accident.”

  The goat beard seemed to rise almost horizontally on the little man’s chin. Give him a cheroot and he’d have looked like Captain Kettle himself, in a bad mood, too!

  “Who told him that? He knew nothing about it. He was always a bit mad. I tell you, it was an accident. What else could it be?”

 

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