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Madam, Will You Talk?
Mary Stewart




For
My Mother and Father




CHAPTER I

Enter four or five players.

The whole affair began so very quietly. When I wrote, that summer, and asked my friend Louise if she would come with me on a car trip to Provence, I had no idea that I might be issuing an invitation to danger. And when we arrived one afternoon, after a hot but leisurely journey, at the enchanting little walled city of Avignon, we felt in that mood of pleasant weariness mingled with anticipation which marks, I believe, the beginning of every normal holiday.
No cloud in the sky; no sombre shadow on the machiolated walls; no piercing glance from an enigmatic stranger as we drove in at the Porte de la Republique and up the sun-dappled Cours Jean-Jaures. And certainly no involuntary shiver of apprehension as we drew up at last in front of the Hotel Tistet-Vedene, where we had booked rooms for the greater part of our stay.
I even sang to myself as I put the car away, and when I found they had given me a room with a balcony overlooking the shaded courtyard, I was pleased.
And when, later on, the cat jumped on to my balcony, there was still nothing to indicate that this was the beginning of the whole strange, uneasy, tangled business. Or rather, not the beginning, but my own cue, the point where I came in. And though the part I was to play in the tragedy was to break and re-form the pattern of my whole life, yet it was a very minor part, little more than a walk-on in the last act. For most of the play had been played already; there had been love and lust and revenge and fear and murder--all the blood-tragedy bricabrac except the Ghost--and now the killer, with blood enough on his hands, was waiting in the wings for the lights to go up again, on the last kill that would bring the final curtain down.
How was I to know, that lovely quiet afternoon, that most of the actors in the tragedy were at that moment assembled in this neat, unpretentious little Provencal hotel? All but one, that is, and he, with murder in his mind, was not so very far away, moving, under that blazing southern sun, in the dark circle of his own personal hell. A circle that narrowed, gradually, upon the Hotel Tistet-Vedene, Avignon.
But I did not know, so I unpacked my things slowly and carefully, while, on my bed, Louise lay and smoked and talked about the mosquitoes.
"And now--a fortnight," she said dreamily. "A whole fortnight. And nothing to do but drink, and sit in the sun."
"No eating? Or are you on a cure?"
"Oh, that. One's almost forgotten how. But they tell me that in France the cattle still grow steaks ... I wonder how I shall stand up to a beefsteak?"
"You have to do these things gradually." I opened one of the slatted shutters, closed against the late afternoon sun. "Probably the waiter will just introduce you at first, like Alice--Louise, biftek; biftek, Louise. Then you both bow, and the steak is ushered out."
"And of course, in France, no pudding to follow." Louise sighed. "Well, we'll have to make do. Aren't you letting the mosquitoes in, opening that shutter?"
"It's too early. And I can't see to hang these things away. Do you mind either smoking that cigarette or putting it out? It smells."
"Sorry." She picked it up again from the ash-tray. "I'm too lazy even to smoke. I warn you, you know, I'm not going sightseeing. I couldn't care less if Julius Caesar used to fling his auxiliaries round the town, and throw moles across the harbour mouth. If you want to go and gasp at Roman remains you'll have to go alone. I shall sit under a tree, with a book, as near to the hotel as possible."
I laughed, and began putting out my creams and sunburn lotions on what the Hotel Tistet-Vedene fondly imagined to be a dressing-table.
"Of course I don't expect you to come. You'll do as you like. But I believe the Pont du Card -"
"My dear, I've seen the Holborn Viaduct. Life can hold no more. ..."
Louise stubbed out her cigarette carefully, and then folded her hands behind her head. She is tall and fair and plump, with long legs, a pleasant voice, and beautiful hands. She is an artist, has no temperament to speak of, and is unutterably and incurably lazy. When accused of this, she merely says that she is seeing life steadily and seeing it whole, and this takes time. You can neither ruffle nor surprise Louise; you can certainly never quarrel with her. If trouble should ever arise, Louise is simply not there; she fades like the Cheshire Cat, and comes back serenely when it is all over. She is, too, as calmly independent as a cat, without any of its curiosity. And though she looks the kind of large lazy fair girl who is untidy--the sort who stubs out her cigarettes in the face-cream and never brushes the hairs off her coat--she is always beautifully groomed, and her movements are delicate and precise. Again, like a cat. I get on well with cats. As you will find, I have a lot in common with them, and with the Elephant's Child.
"In any case," said Louise, "I've had quite enough of ruins and remains, in the Gilbertian sense, to last me for a lifetime. I live among them."
I knew what she meant. Before my marriage to Johnny Selborne, I, too, had taught at the Alice Drupe Private School for Girls. Beyond the fact that it is in the West Midlands, I shall say nothing more about the Alice Drupe as it is virtually impossible to mention it without risking a heavy libel action. Louise was still Art Mistress there, and owed her continued health and sanity to the habit I have described, of removing herself out of the trouble zone. As far as it was possible to do this at the Alice Drupe, she did it. Even there, she saw life steadily. At any rate she saw it coming.
"Don't speak too soon," I warned her. "You may yet come across Lloyd-Lloyd and Merridew sipping their Pernod in the restaurant downstairs."
"Not together, my dear. They don't speak now. The Great Rupture paralysed the whole school for weeks. ..." She paused and wrinkled her nose. "What a revolting metaphor . . . And not Pernod, Charity; Vichy water." She lit another cigarette.
"What happened?"
"Oh, Merridew put up a notice without asking Lloyd, or Lloyd put one up without asking Merridew, or something desperately frightful like that," she said indifferently. "I wasn't there."
Naturally not.
"Poor things," I said, and meant it.
Louise flicked her ash neatly into the bowl, and turned her gold head on the pillow.
"Yes, you can say that. You're out of it now for good, aren't you? You're lucky."
I didn't answer. I laid Johnny's photograph gently back in the case, where I had just come across it, and picked up a frock instead. I shook it out and laid it over a chair, ready to put on. I don't think my expression changed at all. But Louise happens to know me rather well.
She ground out her cigarette, and her voice changed.
"Oh God, Charity, I'm sorry. I forgot. I am a fool. Forgive me."
"Forget it," I said, lightly enough, "I do."
"Do you?"
"Of course. It's a long time now. I'd be silly and unnatural not to. And I am lucky, as you said." I grinned at her. "After all, I'm a wealthy widow ... look at these."
"My dear girl i What gorgeous undies. . . ."