"Mary Stewart - Madam Will You Talk [txt]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

"Guilty," said Mrs. Palmer, tapping my arm. "Guilty as hell." She broke off and went rather pink. "That's what Mr. Palmer says, you understand, Mrs. Selborne. And it's my belief he was mad, poor soul, or he'd never have gone for the boy like he did, murder or no murder."
"Gone ... for the boy?" I repeated, a bit shakily.
"Yes. Terrible, isn't it?" I could see the easy moisture start into her pale kindly eyes, and I warmed towards her. There was nothing of the ghoul about Mrs. Palmer; she was not enjoying the story, any more than I was. "They found David unconscious in the bathroom near the bedroom where the body was found. He'd been knocked on the head."
"Did he say his father had done it?"
"He didn't see who hit him. But it must've been the murderer. Caught in the Act, as you might say. Oh, it was an awful business; I'm surprised you don't remember it, really. The papers went on about it for long enough."
"No, I don't remember it." My voice sounded flat, almost mechanical. Poor David. Poor little boy. "I don't remember hearing the name before at all. It's--it's terrible."
Mrs. Palmer gave an exclamation, grabbed her handbag, and rose.
"Oh, there's Father and Carrie, off down the other side of the square, they can't have seen me ... I must run. It's been lovely having a little chat, Mrs. Selborne, really lovely." She beamed at me. "And don't take on about poor Mrs. Bristol and the little boy. She's divorced from that Man, you know. He can't do a thing. And children do get over things, they say."
Over some things, yes.
"I'm glad you told me," I said, "I might have said something ... I had no idea."
"Well, if you didn't see the photos -" said Mrs. Palmer.
"Of course, Bristol isn't their real name, so you wouldn't have heard it. The real name was Byron. Richard Byron, that was it. And now I must run. Good night, Mrs. Selborne."
She went across the square, away from me, and I sat there for a long time before I even realized she had gone.

CHAPTER III


Sur le font d'Avignon

L'on y danse, I'on y danse Sur le font d'Avignon
L'on y danse, tout en rand.
(french nursery rhyme)

By ten the next morning it was already as hot as on the hottest day in England, but with no sense of oppression, for the air was clear and light. Louise, true to her word, retired with a book and a sketching pad to the little green public gardens near the hotel.
"You go and play tourist," she said. "I'm going to sit under a tree and drink grape juice. Iced."
It sounded a tempting programme, but to-morrow would be no cooler than to-day, and in any case the heat does not worry me unduly, so I set off for a gentle tour of exploration. This time I went out of the city gate, and turned along under the massive outer walls, towards the quarter where the Rhone races under the Rocher des Doms and then round the western fortifications of the city. It was a dusty walk, and not a very pleasant one, after all, I discovered. The verges of the narrow road were deep in dust and grit, the only vegetation, apart from the trees along the river, being thistles as dry as crumbling paper. Even along the flat edge of the Rhone itself, under the trees, there was no grass, only beaten dirt and stones, where beggars slept at night on the bare ground. A pair of enormous birds dipped and circled above the river.
But presently, round a curve in the city wall, the old bridge of the song came into view, its four remaining arches soaring out across the green water to break off, as it were, in midleap, suspended half-way across the Rhone. Down into the deep jade water glimmered the drowned-gold reflection of the chapel of St. Nicholas, which guards the second arch. Here, held by a spit of sand, the water is still, rich with the glowing colours of stone and shadow and dipping boughs, but beyond the sandbank the slender bridge thrusts out across a tearing torrent. Standing there, you remember suddenly that this is one of the great rivers of Europe. Without sound or foam, smooth and incredibly rapid, it sucks its enormous way south to the Mediterranean, here green as serpentine, there eddying to aquamarine, but everywhere hard in colour as a stone.
And then I saw David, playing with Rommel beside the pool under the chapel. Both boy and dog were wet, David, since he was in bathing trunks, more gracefully so than Rommel, who looked definitely better when his somewhat eccentric shape was disguised by his wool. I was on the bridge, actually, before I saw them below me. They seemed absorbed, David in building a dam, Rommel in systematically destroying it, but almost at once the boy looked up and saw me sitting in the embrasure of the chapel window.
He grinned and waved.
"Are you going to dance up there?" he called.
"Probably not," I called back. "It's to narrow."
"What's in the chapel?"
"Nothing much. Haven't you been up?" I must have sounded surprised.
"No money," said David, succinctly.
"Tell the concierge I'll pay for you on my way down."
"I didn't mean that, you know."
"No, I know. But I did. Only for heaven's sake hang on to Rommel. There's no parapet, and he'd be at Marseilles by teatime if he fell into this."
Boy and dog vanished into the concierge's lodge, and presently emerged on to the bridge, slightly out of breath, and disputing over Rommel's right to hurl himself sportingly straight into the Rhone.
But presently Rommel, secured by the inevitable piece of string, was reckoned as being under control, and the three of us cautiously went to the very end of the broken arch--cautiously, because the bridge is only a few feet wide and there is always a strong breeze blowing from the North--and sat down with Rommel between us. We sang "Sur le font d'Avignon" in the style of Jean Sablon, and David told me the story of St. Benezet who confounded the clerics of Avignon, and built the bridge where the angel had told him, and we watched the two big birds, which were kites, David said, and which soared and circled beautifully up in the high blue air.
Then we went down to the road, and I paid the concierge, and David thanked me again, and we set off back to the hotel for lunch.
It seemed impossible, on this lovely gay morning, that David's father might be a murderer, and that David himself had been struck down, for no reason, in the dark, by a hand that must surely have belonged to a madman.
"Where do you spend most of your days?" I asked.
"Oh, by the river, mostly. You can swim under the bridge at the edge, inside the sand-bank where there's no current."
"You haven't seen--well, the countryside? The Pont du Card, and the arena at Nimes, and so on? Perhaps you don't bother with that sort of thing?"
"Oh yes. I'd love to see the arena--do you know they have bull-fights every Sunday and one of the matadors is a woman?"
"Well I should hate to see a bull-fight," I said decidedly. "But I intend to go and see the arena to-morrow anyway, and if you'd like to come, there's plenty of room in the car. Do you think your mother would let you?"
"My step-mother," said David distinctly.
He shot me a little sidelong look and flushed slightly. "That's why we have different names, you see."
"I see. Would she let you come? That is, if you would like to come?"
He hesitated oddly for a moment, and once again I saw the mask fall across his face, and as before, for no reason that I could guess. It was as if he considered some grave objection, rejected it eventually, and finally shrugged it away.