The Lonely House (Lowndes)/Chapter 8

S they walked along the broad road which leads steeply down from Monte Carlo to the quaintly named Condamine, M. Popeau began talking almost as much to himself as to his young companion.

“The man we're going to see,” he said, “is an autocrat, Miss Fairfield—one of the last real autocrats left in Europe. He has absolute power in this little country—I mean in Monaco. From his ruling there is no appeal. I remember he once caused an Englishman to be what would now be called deported. A fearful fuss was made about it! The man—his name was Johnson—was a nasty, cantankerous fellow, and it seemed that he had some relation in your Foreign Office. The affair dragged on for months—frightful threats were uttered. The British Ambassador in Paris was brought in—in fact it is not too much to say that had Monaco been a real country, with a fleet and an army, war might have resulted. But friend Bouton stuck to his guns, as the British so cleverly and truly say, and poor Johnson never came back!”

They were now turning into a very quiet, shadowed street composed of small but prosperous-looking houses.

“Just one word, Miss Fairfield!” Lily's companion, guide, and mentor, stopped walking.

“Please do not volunteer any information unless you are asked a direct question,” he said gravely. “Even then it is not necessary for you to answer a question unless you wish to do so. I will tell the Commissioner of Police what happened, and I hope—I am not sure, but I think I may say that that will be the end of the matter as far as you are concerned.”

“I suppose I shall have to show the police where I found the body?” asked Lily in a low voice.

“I trust that will not be necessary.”

A few moments later they were standing in a formal-looking sitting-room, on the ground floor of the house to which they had been admitted by a pleasant-looking bonne à tout faire.

After they had waited some minutes the door opened and a tall, thin man, with a napkin tucked in his collar, entered with hand outstretched.

“This is an unexpected pleasure, dear friend! What can I do for you?” he exclaimed. “You have come just too late to share our Sunday lunch. My married daughter, her husband, and her two children have come over from Nice and we have been having something of a festival. Sit down—sit down!”

As he spoke he was measuring Lily with what she felt to be a pair of very sharp eyes.

“I am ashamed to have come on a Sunday,” began M. Popeau.

“Not at all—not at all! I am delighted to see you,” said M. Bouton, “and there are certain things that will not wait. I hope Mademoiselle is not a new victim of the gang of thieves I mentioned to you yesterday? So far they have spared the Hôtel de Paris. But I have a clue—and it will not be long before they are laid by the heels.”

“I am here,” said M. Popeau quietly, “because a sad thing befell this lady, Miss Fairfield, to-day on her way to the English Church service. She is staying in a villa called La Solitude, some way above Monte Carlo, and, wandering a little way off the path, she suddenly came across a dead body! Of course, it gave her a terrible shock.”

To Lily's astonishment, M. Bouton did not look surprised.

“Very sad,” he murmured. “The matter will have my very earnest attention. If Mademoiselle will give me a few particulars as to the locality where she made this painful discovery I will see to the matter at once. Would you kindly come this way?”

He opened the door, and passed on, in front of them, into a room built out at the back of the house. It was obviously his own study.

“Here is the plan of our Principality,” he observed, and Lily, glancing up, saw that a huge map covered one entire side of the room.

“Will you point our the exact spot where you made your sad discovery?” went on M. Bouton, handing her a long, light stick.

Lily stared anxiously up at the map, but she had no bump of locality on her pretty head.

M. Popeau took the thin stick from her hand. He laid the point lightly on the map, and pushed it up and up and up!

“Here is La Solitude,” he said at last, “so now we shall be able to find the exact place.”

“Ah, yes,” said M. Bouton. “o [sic] Solitude belongs to Count Antonio Polda. He and the Countess are nice, quiet people, almost the only people in Monaco with whom I have never had any trouble! It is my impression that somewhere about the fourteenth century a Grimaldi married a Polda—so the Count is distantly related to our sovereign.”

“Mademoiselle is a niece of the Countess Polda,” said M. Popeau quietly. “She is staying at La Solitude for the winter.

M. Bouton looked at Lily with enhanced respect.

“Now take La Solitude as the point of departure, and try to concentrate your mind on where you found the body,” said M. Popeau, handing Lily back the cane.

She moved the point slowly, hesitatingly, down the map.

“Surely you are going too far!” cried M. Popeau.

“Perhaps I am”

She knitted her brow in some distress. “Do you remember the place where our taxicab stopped?” she asked.

“Of course I do—it's marked here.”

He took the wand from her hand. “Here it is—this little white spot.”

“It was just below there,” said Lily.

“Was it? How very strange!” exclaimed M. Popeau. And then he looked at the other man. “Do you remember what happened just there, six years ago, the last time I was at Monte Carlo, Bouton?”

The other shook his head.

“The affair of the Mexican millionaire!” exclaimed M. Popeau.

The Commissioner of Police turned round quickly. “I remember all about it now! Why, you're right—it was just at that spot that he was found dead, too. What a strange coincidence! They mostly do it, as you know, within a very short distance of the Casino. You'd be astonished to know the number of poor devils who go and destroy themselves in that rather lonely place just beyond the station. They rush out of the Casino full of anguish and despair, and wander down the road. I always have a man stationed on point duty there—he has stopped more than one poor fellow from destroying himself. Ah, our beautiful, brilliant Monte Carlo has a very melancholy reverse side, has it not?” and he sighed.

But M. Popeau was still staring at the map. “It is indeed an amazing coincidence!” he muttered. “The more one thinks of it, the more amazing it is.”

“Yes, it certainly is a very curious thing that the Mexican should have been found in that very plantation,” said the Police Commissioner thoughtfully, “but life's full of odd coincidences.”

“It will be quite easy for your people to find the body without further troubling Mademoiselle, will it not?”

“Certainly it will,” said M. Bouton. “Mademoiselle must try to forget this painful incident; and if I may offer a word of advice—” he waited, and looked rather searchingly into Lily's candid, open face—“I counsel that Mademoiselle does not talk of what happened to any friends she may have in Monte Carlo. It naturally annoys the Casino Administration when these painful accidents are made the subject of gossip. Can we rely on Mademoiselle's discretion? Is it necessary that she should tell anyone about the matter?”

A troubled look came over Lily's face. “I feel I ought to tell the Count and Countess Polda,” she said reluctantly. “For they knew the poor man quite well.”

“Did they, indeed?” exclaimed the Commissioner of Police. “You did not tell me that, Mademoiselle.” He looked surprised. “Then can you tell me the suicide's name?”

M. Popeau was standing behind M. Bouton, and Lily was astonished to see how upset he looked—he even made a sign to her to stop talking. She hesitated. But M. Bouton looked straight into her face and said sharply: “I don't understand! I thought Mademoiselle had come across the dead body of an unknown man, I had no idea that she knew who the man was.”

He turned on M. Popeau. “You did not tell me that!” he exclaimed.

“There was nothing to tell,” said M. Popeau quietly. “Mademoiselle did not see the dead man's face. She thinks it possible the body she saw was that of a man who dined at La Solitude about a fortnight ago. That is all.”

“Only a week ago!” corrected Lily. “And I am sure it was the man I saw. He wore a peculiar kind of gold bangle or bracelet on his wrist, and there was a gold bangle on the wrist of” she faltered, overcome with the vision her own words evoked of that stiff, stark arm lying across her path.

“What was his name and nationality?” asked M. Bouton, taking a writing-pad and pencil off the table.

“His name was Ponting,” said Lily slowly, “P.O.N.T.I.N.G., and I think he said he came from Pernambuco.”

M. Bouton suddenly uttered an exclamation of mingled surprise and relief. He rapidly unlocked a drawer in his writing-table, and took a packet out of it. “Your discovery, Mademoiselle, sets a mystery at rest! I was a fool not to think of it at once, for we have had urgent inquiries all this last week about this very man. But it never occurred to any of us that he had committed suicide—everything seemed against it! This is another proof that in a place like Monte Carlo you never can tell,” he went on, addressing his French friend. “People come here when they are desperate—not only desperate with regard to money—though, of course, that is the most common case—but desperate with regard to other things; they come to drown disappointment and sorrow—they fail in doing so, and then they kill themselves! Perhaps that is what happened to this man Ponting.”

”Yet he seemed quite happy,” observed Lily thoughtfully.

M. Bouton hardly heard what she said. He was showing his friend and colleague the little packet of letters he held in his hand.

Lily waited a moment or two. “Then I may tell the Count and Countess Polda?” she asked.

“I think we shall save you that trouble, Mademoiselle. After the body is found we shall have to ask the Count and Countess to submit to a short interrogation. We should not dream of troubling them were it not that this Mr. Ponting had a friend who is much distressed at his disappearance. We shall be glad, therefore, to know exactly how he spent his last evening. Did you yourself see him leave La Solitude?”

“No,” said Lily. “I had only arrived that day, and I went to bed early; but I heard the Countess say good-bye to him about a quarter of an hour after I had gone upstairs. As the house is not very substantially built, one hears everything.”

“That is an important point,” said M. Bouton. “You heard him leave the house, and then no more? You did not hear the shot fired, Mademoiselle?”

“I heard nothing at all. But I was very, very tired, and I went to sleep at once.”

She wondered if she ought to say anything about the burglary which had taken place that night. Then she remembered what both the Countess and the banker had said that bringing the police into the affair would only make a fuss and an unpleasantness for nothing. So she remained silent.

At last M. Bouton conducted them to his front door. He bowed to Lily, and shook hands warmly with M. Popeau.

“Without knowing it,” he exclaimed, “you've done me a great service, my good friend! I confess I do not like being disturbed on Sunday—the weekdays are full enough of trouble and of perplexing affairs. But I am more glad than I can say that what I may call the Ponting mystery has been cleared up in so satisfactory a manner. We've had a great deal of worry over the matter. But the cleverest of my detectives—I call him the bloodhound—was convinced that M. Ponting was not only alive, but far from here engaged in having a very good time! The theory of suicide we had completely dismissed from bur minds. Does not this show how wrong even the most experienced people may be when dealing with human life and human problems?”

After they had walked a little way in silence, Lily suddenly turned to her companion and exclaimed: “I'm afraid you did not approve of my telling M. Bouton that I knew about poor Mr. Ponting?”

“As a general rule, my dear young lady, the innocent cannot say too little to the police. But I confess that this time I was wrong; I'm very glad that you spoke with complete frankness, though I do not suppose the Count and Countess will be pleased”

“I don't see why they should mind,” but even as she uttered the words a slight feeling of discomfort came over Lily.

M. Popeau smiled rather mysteriously.

“People do not care to be mixed up with affairs of this kind, especially in Monte Carlo. You heard what our friend said? The Count and Countess, though they have lived here many years, have never troubled the police. They have never even had a row with one of their servants! Well, now that record is broken. A suicide has been found oh their property.”

”Not on their property,” corrected Lily. “Near their property.”

“That makes it all the harder for them to be brought into the matter,” said M. Popeau good-humouredly. “Mr. Ponting ill-repaid their hospitality.”

At that moment they both caught sight of Captain Stuart hurrying down towards them.

“Well?” he called out, “is it all right?” There was a note of anxiety in his voice.

“Yes,” replied M. Popeau, “quite all right! And now we must think of something to distract and interest Miss Fairfield for at least two or three hours. By that time everything up there at La Solitude will be over, and I do not want her to be associated with it in any way.”

Captain Stuart nodded. He thoroughly approved.

“I don't suppose you feel in the mood for the Casino?” He turned to the girl. “Besides, it's Sunday—and even I have an old-fashioned prejudice against gambling on Sunday!”

“Why shouldn't we go up to the Golf Club?” suggested the Frenchman. “It's quite a pleasant expedition, and from there it's an agreeable walk to La Solitude.”