Page 74 of Marble Hall Murders

‘According to Maître Lambert, your daughter believed herself to be engaged to him.’

‘Alice would never have found herself a young man without telling us,’ Tom Carling exclaimed. Voltaire’s comment had clearly angered him. ‘He’s talking nonsense.’

‘He’s mistaken.’ Élise was more composed. ‘He does not understand that although she is an adult, our Alice is still very much a provincial girl – by which I mean that she is respectful to her parents and she is a good Catholic. She is quiet. She works hard. She is in many ways very ordinary. But she is also a daydreamer. She visits expensive homes in Nice and Saint-Tropez and she sees the great wealth that is arriving in the area. Is it any wonder that she plays make-believe, that she dreams of a life which she may never have? She is young, despite her years, and it is quite possible that she has been led astray. But I will tell you this, monsieur. I am her mother and I am quite certain that there is no Charles Saint-Pierre. Never did she mention this name to me.’

‘So where is she?’ Tom Carling demanded, gazing at Voltaire. ‘What do you think has happened to her?’

‘We do not know,’ Voltaire said. ‘But have faith, monsieur. We will find her.’

*

Once he was outside the house, with Pünd and Fraser, Voltaire slumped against a wall and lit a cigarette. His face was grim. ‘We will look for her,’ he said. ‘But it may already be too late.’

‘If I may make a suggestion,’ Pünd said.

‘Anything …’ Voltaire looked up.

‘She must have telephoned from the house to arrange to meet the man to whom she believed she was engaged. Or it is possible that he called her. They will have spoken many times. Is it not possible that the local operator will have kept a record of the numbers that have been requested?’

‘Of course. It is certainly something I will investigate.’ Voltaire straightened up. ‘My men will be arriving soon and I must also organise the search.’

‘You have much to deal with, Monsieur Voltaire. We will return to the hotel. If there is anything we can do to assist you, that is where you will be able to find us.’

‘Thank you, Monsieur Pünd.’

‘And there is one other thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Might it be a good idea to return to the Pharmacie Lafayette with a photograph of Mademoiselle Carling?’

Voltaire nodded slowly. ‘I see there is nothing that passes before you that you do not notice. You are thinking of the young woman who came in and asked the time.’ He almost smiled, and might have but for his fears concerning Alice Carling. ‘She came in and asked the hour. “As-tu l’heure?” Those were exactly the words she used, according to thepharmacien. “Do you have the time?” But I did wonder why she used such an informal type of address. Any young woman addressing a stranger in a shop would ask: “Avez-vous l’heure?”’

‘It would suggest that the meeting was deliberate,’ Pünd said. ‘She knew the person to whom she was speaking.’

‘But what on earth was the point?’ Fraser asked.

‘To establish the time!’ Pünd replied. ‘Thepharmacienis old. He has bad vision. But he has been told that it is twelve fifteen.’

‘It could have been earlier,’ Voltaire muttered.

‘Exactly. If it was indeed Elmer Waysmith who was in the chemist’s shop, and it was, let us say, just a few minutes after twelve, he would have given himself more time to enter the hotel, change out of his clothes and still be at the gallery at the agreed hour for lunch.’

In the distance, they heard the two-tone air horns of not one but several police cars approaching the edge of the village. ‘I will keep you informed if there are any developments,’ Voltaire said. He threw down the cigarette and ground it out. Suddenly, he looked exhausted. Fraser watched as, with shoulders hunched, he limped away to arrange the search for Alice Carling.

SIXTEEN

‘To be honest with you, I’m confused,’ James Fraser remarked to Atticus Pünd as they sat in the back of a taxi taking them from La Gaude to their hotel in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

‘And why is that, James?’

‘Well, it seems quite likely to me that Elmer Waysmith killed his wife – so why haven’t you and Mr Voltaire arrested him yet? As far as I can see, there are no other suspects. It’s not like that business we had with Sir Magnus Pye where anyone could have done it. It had to be Waysmith who went into the Pharmacie Lafayette. He tried to disguise himself with the hat and the sunglasses. He bought himself an extra fifteen minutes by getting poor Alice Carling to come in and ask the time. Maybe he told her it was for a joke or something, but the point was, it allowed him to change his clothes at the hotel and arrive at the gallery by twelve thirty. Things only went wrong when Alice heard that Lady Chalfont had been murdered with aconitine. She put two and two together and realised the part she had played – so he had to kill her too.’

‘There I disagree with you, my friend. If you accept that Alice Carling assisted Elmer Waysmith in the purchase of the poison, are you also suggesting that he was the mysterious“Charles Saint-Pierre” whom Alice hoped to marry after the death of his wife? That seems to me most unlikely, given that he was so very much older than her – old enough, indeed, to be her father.’

‘Well, she was a young country girl. She was out of her depth. She could have been foolish enough to believe it.’ Fraser considered. ‘And if it wasn’t him at the pharmacy, who was it? His son?’

‘Robert Waysmith was on his way back to Nice from Antibes. He could have arrived earlier than he told us.’

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