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Close to my ear Philippe whispered: "Mademoiselle."
I opened my eyes. His face was close to mine. It was scared. He breathed: "There's someone on the hilltop behind. He's just come through the wood. I think it's Bernard. D'you suppose he's in it too?"
I nodded and put a swift finger to my lips, then lifted my head cautiously and peered through the screening whins towards the hill behind us. At first I saw nothing but the trees and the tangling banks of scrub, but presently I picked him out. It was Bernard. He was above us, about two hundred yards away, standing beside a big spruce. There was no need to tell Philippe to keep close; we both lay as still as rabbits in our thicket of green. Bernard was standing motionless, sca
He was coming quickly down the hill in our direction.
I suppose a rabbit stays still while death stalks it just because it is hoping against hope that this is not death. We stayed still.
He had covered half the distance, not hurrying, when I heard the Cadillac coming back.
My hand pressed hard over Philippe's on the short turf. I turned my head and craned to stare up the road. My muscles tensed themselves as if they would carry me without my willing it straight down into his path.
I don't know to this day whether I really would have run to him then or not, but before I could move I heard the brakes go on. The tyres bit at the soft gravel of the road and the car pulled up short some fifty yards away from us. I could see him through my screen of whins. He was looking uphill towards Bernard. The horn blared twice. Bernard had stopped. I saw Raoul lift his hand. Bernard changed course and walked quickly down the hill towards the car. He jumped the ditch and hurried up to the door. Raoul said something to him, and I saw Bernard shake his head, then turn with a wide gesture that included all the hill from where we lay back to Dieudo
The Cadillic went slowly by below us. Raoul was lighting a cigarette and his head was bent. Bernard was talking earnestly to him.
I turned to meet Philippe's eyes.
After a while I got up slowly and reached a hand down to him. "Come along," I said, "let's get back from the road and find somewhere to have lunch."
After we had eaten we took to the woods again without seeing another soul, and some time in the middle of the afternoon our path led us out of a wild tangle of hornbeam and honeysuckle onto a little green plateau; and there, not so very far to the north of us we saw at last, through the tops of the still-bare trees, the blue levels of Lac Léman.
CHAPTER 17
Upon thy side, against myself I'll fight,
And prove thee virtuous…
Shakespeare: So
"This," I said, "is where we stop for a while."
Philippe was surveying the little dell. It was sheltered and sun-drenched, a green shelf in the middle of the wood. Behind us the trees and bushes of the wild forest crowded up the hill, dark holly and the bone-pale boughs of ash gleaming sharp through a mist of birch as purple as bloom on a grape. Below the open shelf the tangle of boughs fell steeply towards Thonon. Those bright roofs and coloured walls were, I judged, little more than a mile away. I saw the gleam of a spire, and the smooth sweep of some open square with brilliant flowerbeds and a white coping above the lake. Even in the town there were trees; willows in precise Chinese shapes, cypresses spearing up Italian-fashion against the blue water, and here and there against some painted wall a burst of pale blossom like a cloud.
At my feet a small stream ran, and a little way off, under the flank of a fallen birch, there were primroses.
Philippe slipped a hand into mine. "I know this place."
"Do you? How?"
"I've been here for a picnic. There were foxgloves and we had pâtisseries belges."
"Do you remember the way down into Thonon? Where does it land us?”
He pointed to the left. "The path goes down there, like steps. There's a fence at the bottom and a sort of lane. It takes you to a road and you come out by a garage and a shop where they keep a ginger cat with no tail.”
"Is it a main street?"
He wrinkled his forehead at me. "We-ell-"
"Is it full of shops and people and traffic?"
"Oh, no. It has trees and high walls. People live there." A residential area. So much the better. I said: "Could you find your way from there to the Villa Mireille?"
"Of course. There's a path between two garden walls that takes you to the road above the lake and then you go down and down and down till you get to the bottom road where the gate is. We always went by the funicular."
"I'm afraid we can't. Well, that's wonderful, Philippe. We're practically there! And with you as guide"-I smiled at him-"we can't go far wrong, can we? Later we'll see how much I can remember of what you told me about the Villa Mireille, but just for the moment I think we'll stop and rest."
"Here?"
"Right here."
He sat thankfully down on the fallen birch. "My legs are aching.
"I'm not surprised."
"Are yours?"
“Well, no. But I did miss my sleep last night and if I don't have a rest this minute I shall go to sleep on my feet."
"Like a horse," said Philippe, and giggled, albeit a little thinly.
I flicked his check. "Exactly like a horse. Now, you get tea ready while I make the bed."
"English tea?"
"Of course."
The grass was quite dry, and the sun stood hot overhead in the calm air. I knelt down beside the birch-log and carefully removed two dead boughs, a thistle, and some sharp stones from our "bed", then spread out my coat. Philippe, solemn-eyed, was dividing the last of William's biscuits into equal parts. He banded me mine, together with half a stick of chocolate. We ate slowly and in silence.
Presently I said: "Philippe."
"Yes, mademoiselle?"
"We'll be down in Thonon pretty soon now. We really ought to go straight to the police."
The big eyes stared. He said nothing.
I said: "I don't know where the nearest British Consul is, or we'd go to him. I don't suppose there's one in Évian, and we can't get to Geneva because you've no passport. So it should be the police."
Still he said nothing. I waited. I think he knew as well as I did that the first thing the police would do would be to face us both with Léon de Valmy. After a while he asked: "What time will my Uncle Hippolyte get home?"
"I've no idea. He may be here already, but I think we may have to wait till late… after dark."
A pause. "Where is this Monsieur Blake?"
"I don't know. He may be out somewhere in Dieudo
Still he said nothing. I looked at him a little desperately. "You want to go and look for your uncle first? Is that
it?"
A nod.
"Philippe, you'd be quite safe if we went to the police, you know. We-we should do that. They'd be frightfully nice to you, and they'd look after you till your Uncle Hippolyte came- better than I can. We really should."
"No. Please. Please, Miss Martin."
I knew I ought to insist. It wasn't only the eloquence of Philippe's silences, and the clutch of the small cold hand that decided me. Nor was it only that I was afraid of facing Léon de Valmy… though, with the anger spilt out of me and dissolved in weariness, my very bones turned coward at the thought of confronting him in the presence of the police.