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

"Here, have another cigarette." I heard him light it for her, and there was a pause.
"Those damned English police," she said bitterly. "If they'd known their job this would never have had to happen. He ought to be dead and done with." The way she repeated it made me shiver, "Dead and done with," she said.
"Well, he's not," said the man briskly, sounding as if he were dragging back the conversation, with an effort, on to a less dramatic and more practical level. "He's here, in France. And there's nothing to be scared of. He can't do a thing to you, after all. All you've got to do is keep your nerve and hang on to David. We ought to go back, I think. You go first--come down to the corner with me till we see if there's anyone about." He must have turned to go, for his voice grew suddenly fainter.
She stopped him for a moment. Her tone was calmer, and the note of fear was gone, but I could hear the tautness of her nerves through it, for all that.
"I meant to ask you--that girl, Selborne I think her name is--she offered to take David out in her car to-morrow. I suppose it's all right?"
There was another pause. I think he took her arm, because I heard them begin to move off together, but I heard his reply, faintly, before they went out of earshot.
"Quite all right, I imagine. In fact, it might be a good idea...."

The palms of my hands, I found, had been pressed so hard against the stone of the parapet that they were sore. I stood perfectly still for some time after they had gone, slowly rubbing my hands together, and thinking.
It was not a particularly pleasant thought, that somewhere near at hand, possibly even in Avignon at this moment, was a man who was probably a murderer; a man vindictive enough, if I had understood aright what I had heard, to pursue the wife who had divorced him after the trial, and dangerous enough to frighten her as Loraine Bristol was being frightened. She was not, I thought, a woman who would frighten easily.
Why was he apparently following her? Did he want her back, was he hoping for reconciliation . . . no, that wouldn't do, she wouldn't be so afraid if that were all. Then was he angry at her action in divorcing him at such a time, was it revenge he was after? No, that was absurd; people just didn't behave that way at all, not rational people . . . that must be it, I thought, and went cold ... he was not rational. Mrs. Palmer had said that he was mad, and no sane man, surely, would have struck down his own son... David.
It wasn't Loraine he was pursuing at all, it was David.
I pressed my now tingling hands to my cheeks, and thought of David and the dog Rommel, building dams under the Pont St. Benezet, and as I thought, some of the loneliness of the child's situation dawned on me, and made me feel chilled. I knew a lot about loneliness. And I knew that, come murderers, come hell, come high water, I should have to do something about it.
I slowly descended the zigzag walk to the level of the Palace square, on the alert in case I should run into Mrs. Bristol, who might be waiting about somewhere to give her companion a start.
Her companion? I had not recognized the lowered voice, the rapid French. But that it was someone at the hotel I felt sure.
Then, in the narrow dark little street that skirts the foot of the rock where the palace is built, I saw someone standing, a man. He did not see me, but stood gazing in the direction of the main square, and, as I paused in the darkness under the palace steps, I saw him slip out of the shadows, and saunter down the street and into the light.
I recognized him all right.
It was Marsden.


CHAPTER IV

Old moniments . . .

(spenser)

Towards mid-morning the next day I eased the Riley down the narrow main street of Avignon, and out on to the perimeter road. Louise sat beside me, and in the back were David and Rommel, wrangling as usual over the necessity of chasing every cat we passed. We skirted Avignon, following my route of the previous day, but before we reached the old bridge of St. Benezet, I turned the car over the narrow suspension bridge which crosses the Rhone. We crept across its swaying, resounding metal surface, then swung through VilleneuvelesAvignon and headed south for Nimes.
The heart of Roman France ... I thought of the legions, tramping behind their eagles through the pitiless heat and dust, across this barren and hostile country. The road was a white and powdery ribbon that twisted between slopes of rock and scrub. Whin I recognized, and juniper, but most of the shrubs were unfamiliar--dark green harsh foliage that sucked a precarious life from the cracks among the screes and faces of white rock. Here and there houses crouched under the heat, clinging to the edge of the road as if to a life-line; occasionally a grove of olives hung on the slopes like a silver-green cloud, or a barrier of cypress reared its bravery in the path of the mistral, but for the most part the hot and desert slopes rose, waterless and unclothed by any softer green than that of gorse and scrub.
"Mustn't they have felt hot in their helmets?" said David, breaking into my thoughts as if he had known exactly what I was thinking. "Though I suppose Italy's just as hot."
"And they fought all summer," I said. "In winter they retired "
"To winter quarters--I remember that," said David, grinning. "In my Latin Grammar, if they weren't going to the city to buy bread, they were always retiring to winter quarters."
"I believe they went to the coast. There's a nice little place east of Marseilles where Caesar made a sort of spa for his veterans."
"Aren't the Michelin guides wonderful?" murmured Louise. "And incidentally, Charity--I hate to interfere, but you have seen that bus, haven't you?"
"I could hardly avoid it," I said drily. "It's in the middle of the road."
"Oh, I just thought--what's the French for 'breakdown'?"
"Dtpannage. Or in this case, just plain accident. Haven't you got used to the French way of driving yet? You should have."
We were rapidly overtaking a bus which was indeed thundering along in the very centre of the narrow road. But I knew my stuff by now, after the hundreds of heartbreaking miles before I had discovered that the "courtesy of the road" means very different things in France and England. I swung to the left, bore down on the bus with every appearance of intending to ram it, and put the heel of my hand down hard on the horn. The bus, responding with an ear-splitting klaxon, immediately swerved to the left, too, straight into our path. I didn't even brake, but put my hand on the horn and kept it there. The bus, with an almost visible shrug, moved over about a foot to the right, and we tore by.
Louise let out a long breath. "I'll never get used to that!"
"If he'd seen the GB plates we'd never have done it. The British are despicably easy to bully on the roads."
"Did you see who was on the bus?" said David.
"No, I was busy. Who was it?"
"That man from the hotel. I think his name's Marsden. He sits at the table by the big palm."
"Oh. Yes, I've noticed him."
I eased my foot off the accelerator, and glanced at the bus in the driving-mirror. It might conceivably turn off at Pont du Card for Tarascon, but I had the idea that the AvignonTaras con buses went another way. In which case, this must be the bus for Nimes, and Marsden was on it. And after what I had heard last night up at the Rocher des Doms, I was not quite sure what I thought about the possibility of Marsden's following us to Nimes.
I slowed down a little more. With a triumphant screech of its klaxon, the bus overtook the Riley, and demanded the road.
I glanced in the mirror as it loomed up behind the car. Yes, unmistakable, even in mirror-image: NIMES.
I put my foot down again, and we drew away. I was trying to think, but I had too little to go on. It was like groping for a window through curtains of spiders' webs, only to find that it was dark outside the window, and that when the webs were all torn down, the window would be still invisible.
I thrust the problem aside, and passed a small Citroen with concentrated care.
At Pont du Card we drew in under the shade of the trees, opposite the hotel. Louise began to gather her things together.
"David," I said. "Will you do something for me?"