Madam, Will You Talk?

by Mary Stewart

Genres: Literary Fiction; General Fiction

Synopsis

The pioneer of romantic suspense, Mary Stewart, leads listeners on a thrilling journey through a dangerous and deadly Provence in this tale perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Barbara Pym.

It sounds idyllic: a leisurely drive through the sun-drenched landscape of Provence. But Charity's dream holiday turns into a nightmare when she becomes embroiled in a sinister plot to kidnap a young boy. She soon finds herself in a deadly pursuit and must uncover whom to trust...and whom to fall for.

Whenever I look back now on the strange and terrifying events of that holiday in Southern France, I remember the minutes I spent gazing at the golden arches of the Roman aqueduct over the Gardon...the last brief lull before the thunder.

Release date: May 26, 2011

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

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 machicolated walls; no piercing glance from an enigmatic stranger as we drove in at the Porte de la République and up the sun-dappled Cours Jean-Jaurès. And certainly no involuntary shiver of apprehension as we drew up at last in front of the Hôtel Tistet-Védène, 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 bric-à-brac 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 Provençal 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 Hôtel Tistet-Védène, 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 sight-seeing. 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 Hôtel Tistet-Védène 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 Gard—’

‘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! What gorgeous undies. …’

And the conversation slipped comfortably back to the things that really matter.

When Louise had gone to her own room, I washed, changed into a white frock with a wide blue belt, and did my face and hair very slowly. It was still hot, and the late sun’s rays fell obliquely across the balcony, through the half-opened shutter, in a shaft of copper-gold. Motionless, the shadows of thin leaves traced a pattern across it as delicate and precise as a Chinese painting on silk. The image of the tree, brushed in like that by the sun, had a grace that the tree itself gave no hint of, for it was merely one of the nameless spindly affairs, parched and dust-laden, that struggled up towards the sky from their pots in the hotel court below. But its shadow might have been designed by Ma Yüan.

The courtyard was empty; people were still resting, or changing, or, if they were the mad English, walking out in the afternoon sun. A white-painted trellis wall separated the court on one side from the street, and beyond it people, mules, cars, occasionally even buses, moved about their business up and down the narrow thoroughfare. But inside the vine-covered trellis it was very still and peaceful. The gravel between the gay little chairs was carefully raked and watered; shade lay gently across the tables, some of which, laid for dinner, gleamed invitingly with glass and silver. The only living thing in the court was a thin ginger cat, which was curled round the base of my spindly tree, like – who was it? Nidhug? – at the root of Yggdrasil.

I sat down by the half-shuttered window and began to think about where I should go tomorrow.

Avignon Bridge, where one dances, of course; and after Avignon itself, the Pont du Gard – in spite of the fact that I, too, had seen Holborn Viaduct. I picked up the Michelin Guide to Provence, and looked at the sketch of the great aqueduct which is on the cover …

Tomorrow, I said to myself, I would take things easy, and wander round the ramparts and the Popes’ Palace. Then, the day after …

Then fate, in the shape of Nidhug, took a hand.

My cue had come. I had to enter the stage.

The first hint I had of it was the violent shaking of the shadows on the balcony. The Chinese design wavered, broke, and dissolved into the image of a ragged witch’s besom, as the tree Yggdrasil vibrated and lurched sharply under a weight it was never meant to bear. Then the ginger cat shot on to my balcony, turned completely round on a space the size of a six-pence, sent down on her assailant the look to end all looks, and sat calmly down to wash. From below a rush and a volley of barking explained everything.

Then came a crash, and the sound of running feet.

The cat yawned, tidied a whisker into place, swarmed in a bored manner up an impossible drainpipe, and vanished on to the roof. I got up and looked over the balcony railing.

The courtyard, formerly so empty and peaceful, seemed all of a sudden remarkably full of a boy and a large, nondescript dog. The latter, with his earnest gaze still on the balcony, was leaping futilely up and down, pouring out rage, hatred and excitement, while the boy tried with one hand to catch and quell him, and with the other to lift one of the tables which had been knocked on to its side. It was, luckily, not one of those which had been set for dinner.

The table, which was of iron, was very heavy, and the boy seemed to be having some difficulty in raising it. Eventually he let go the dog, and taking both hands to the job, succeeded in lifting the table almost half-way. Then the dog, who appeared to be a little slow in the uptake, but a sticker for all that, realized that his prey was gone from the balcony and leaped madly in several directions at once. He crashed into the boy. The table thudded down again.

‘Oh Rommel!’ said the boy, surprisingly enough.

Before I could decide what language this was, the boy looked up and saw me. He straightened, pushed his hair back from his forehead, and grinned.

‘J’éspère,’ he said carefully, ‘que ce n’était pas votre chat, mademoiselle?’

This, of course, settled the question of his nationality immediately, but I am nothing if not tactful. I shook my head.

‘My French isn’t terribly good,’ I said. ‘Do you speak English, monsieur?’

He looked immensely pleased.

‘Well, as a matter of fact, I am English,’ he admitted. ‘Stop it, Rommel!’ He grabbed the dog with decision. ‘He hadn’t hurt the cat, had he? I just saw it jump for the balcony.’

‘It didn’t look very worried.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then. I can’t persuade him to behave decently, as – as befits a foreigner. It seems funny to be foreigners, doesn’t it?’

I admitted that it did indeed.

‘Have you just arrived?’

‘At about four o’clock. Yes.’

‘Then you haven’t seen much of Avignon yet. Isn’t it a funny little town? Will you like it, do you think?’

‘I certainly like what I’ve seen so far. Do you like it here?’

It was the most trivial of small-talk, of course, but his face changed oddly as he pondered the question. At that distance I could not read his expression, but it was certainly not what one might expect of a boy – I judged him to be about thirteen – who was lucky enough to be enjoying a holiday in the South of France. Indeed, there was not much about him at that moment, if you except the outward signs of crumpled shirt, stained shorts, and mongrel dog, to suggest the average boy at all. His face, which had, even in the slight courtesies of small-talk, betrayed humour and a quick intelligence at work, seemed suddenly to mask itself, to become older. Some impalpable burden almost visibly dropped on to his shoulders. One was conscious, in spite of the sensitive youth of his mouth, and the childish thin wrists and hands, of something here that could meet and challenge a quite adult destiny on its own ground, strength for strength. The burden, whatever it was, was quite obviously recognized and accepted. There had been some hardening process at work, and recently. Not a pleasant process, I thought, looking at the withdrawn profile bent over the absurd dog, and feeling suddenly angry.

But he came out of his sombre thoughts as quickly as he had gone in – so quickly, in fact, that I began to think I had been an over-imaginative fool.

‘Yes, of course I like it. Rommel doesn’t, it’s too hot. Do you like the heat?’ We were back at the small-talk. ‘They said two English ladies were coming today; that would be you – Mrs. Selborne and Miss Crabbe?’

‘Cray. I’m Mrs. Selborne,’ I said.

‘Yes, that’s it.’ His grin was suddenly pure small-boy. ‘I’m bad at remembering names, and I have to do it by – by association. It sometimes goes awfully wrong. But I remembered yours because of Gilbert White.’

Now most people could see the connection between cray and crab, but not many thirteen-years-olds, I thought, would be so carelessly familiar with Gilbert White’s letters from his little Hampshire village, which go under the title of The Natural History of Selborne. I had been right about the intelligence. I only knew the book myself because one is apt to be familiar with most of the contexts in which one’s name appears. And because Johnny—

‘My name’s David,’ said the boy. ‘David Shelley.’

I laughed.

‘Well, that’s easy enough to remember, anyway. How do you do, David? I shall only have to think of the Romantic poets, if I forget. But don’t hold it against me if I address you as David Byron, or—’

I stopped abruptly. The boy’s face, smiling politely up at me, changed again. This time there could be no mistake about it. He went suddenly rigid, and a wave of scarlet poured over his face from neck to temples, and receded as quickly, leaving him white and sick-looking. He opened his mouth as if to speak, fumbling a little with the dog’s collar. Then he seemed to make some kind of effort, sent me a courteous, meaningless little smile, and bent over the dog again, fumbling in his pocket for string to fasten him.

I had made a mistake, it seemed. But I had not been mistaken when I had sensed that there was something very wrong somewhere. I am not a person who interferes readily in other people’s affairs, but suddenly, unaccountably, and violently, I wanted to interfere in this one.

I need not have worried; I was going to.

But not for the moment. Before I could speak again we were interrupted by a woman who came in through the vine-trellis, from the street. She was, I guessed, thirty-five. She was also blonde, tall, and quite the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The simple cream dress she wore must have been one of Dior’s favourite dreams, and the bill for it her husband’s nightmare. Being a woman myself, I naturally saw the enormous sapphire on her left hand almost before I saw her.

She did not see me at all, which again was perfectly natural. She paused a moment when she saw David and the dog, then came forward with a kind of eye-compelling grace which would have turned heads in Piccadilly, Manchester, on a wet Monday morning. What it did in Provence, where men make a hobby of looking at women, I hesitated to think. I believe I had visions of the cafés along the Rue de la République emptying as she passed, as the houses of Hamelin emptied a different cargo after the Pied Piper.

She paused by the upturned table and spoke. Her voice was pleasant, her English perfect, but her accent was that of a Frenchwoman.

‘David.’

No reply.

‘Mon fils …’

Her son? He did not glance up.

She said, evenly: ‘Don’t you know what the time is? And what on earth happened to the table?’

‘Rommel upset it.’ The averted head, the sulky-sounding mumble which David accorded her, were at once rude and surprising. She took no notice of his manner, but touched him lightly on the shoulder.

‘Well, put it right, there’s a good boy. And hurry up and change. It’s nearly dinner-time. Where have you been today?’

‘By the river.’

‘How you can—’ She laughed and shrugged, all at once very French, then reached in her bag for a cigarette. ‘Well, put the table up, child.’

David pulled the reluctant Rommel towards a tree, and began to tie him to its stem. He said flatly:

‘I can’t lift it.’

A new voice interrupted, smoothly:

‘Permit me, madame.’

The man who had come quietly out of the hotel was dark and singularly good-looking. His clothes, his air, no less than his voice, were unmistakably French, and he had that look of intense virility and yet sophistication – the sort of powerful, careless charm which can be quite devastating. It was all the more surprising, therefore, that the woman, after a glance of conventional thanks, ignored him completely, and lit her cigarette without glancing in his direction. I would have gone to the stake for my conviction that she, where men were concerned, was the noticing type.

The newcomer smiled at David, lifted the heavy table without apparent effort, set it straight, then dusted his hands on a handkerchief.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said David. He began untying Rommel again from the tree.

‘De rien,’ said the Frenchman. ‘Madame.’ He gave a little bow in her direction, which she acknowledged with a faint polite smile, then he made his way to a table in the far corner of the courtyard, and sat down.

‘If you hurry,’ said David’s mother, ‘you can have the bathroom first.’

Without a word the boy went into the hotel, trailing a somewhat subdued dog after him on the end of the string. His mother stared after him for a moment, with an expression half puzzled, half exasperated. Then she gave a smiling little shrug of the shoulders, and went into the hotel after the boy.

The Frenchman had not noticed me either; his handsome head was bent over a match as he lit a cigarette. I went quietly back through my window, and stood for a moment in the cool shade of the room thinking over the little scene which, somehow, had hidden in it the elements of oddity. The exquisite film-starry creature, and the dilapidated dog … Christian Dior and Gilbert White … and she was French and the boy’s accent was definitely Stratford-atte-Bow … and he was rude to her and charmingly polite to strangers.

Well, it was no affair of mine.

I picked my bag up and went downstairs for a drink.

Ther saugh I first the derke ymaginyng

Of felonye …

When I got down into the little courtyard, it was beginning to fill up. Louise was not down yet, so I found a table in the shade, and ordered a Cinzano.

I looked about me, resigned to the fact that almost everybody in the hotel would probably be English too. But the collectio. . .