Here Be Monsters

'I was looking at the countryside, actually.'

'Uh-huh?' Richardson drove in silence for a time. 'Nice, isn't it? Myself, I don't like the French. But then my mother was Italian, so I suppose I'm biased. However… your Italian -

he has his faults, but he wants to be a gentleman, even when he's picking your pocket, or cutting your throat. But your Frenchman - he's got style, but no one would ever accuse him of being a gentleman.'

'Balderdash!' said Audley. 'Poppycock!'

'Possibly,' agreed Richardson equably. 'But when it comes to self-interest - call it La France, if you like - he can be mean and smart, is what I mean.'

'It isn't what he means at all, Elizabeth,' said Audley. 'Come to the point, Pietro.'

'Okay. Have it your own way.' Richardson shrugged. 'The further we drive up this pretty road - and if those clouds weren't in the way you might just see Mont Ventoux, Miss Loftus

- the further we drive up it, the queasier I feel.' Another shrug. 'If we were just tourists…

but no one's ever going to accuse you of being just a tourist, David… And if Andy Dale got just a whiff of KGB up there, at St Servan, before he glimpsed this French DST fellow…

And now you say that it was the Yanks led you to this old boy in the first place - ' Shrug ' -

God knows what he's done - I don't want to know, not now: I want to be able to say Mein Gott! I voss only obeying orders: I voss only drivink ze car! — just so we get in quickly, and then get out quickly. Will you at least do that?'

It was looking less and less like a good idea, and more and more like a stampeded amateurish error, thought Elizabeth. 'We won't stay for lunch, Mr Richardson. All right?'

dummy2

'I hope you won't, Miss Loftus - I hope you won't!'

'There's a two-star restaurant in St Servan,' said Audley.

'La Vieille Auberge.' Richardson nodded. 'Have you ever been in a French slammer, Miss Loftus?'

'Shut up, Peter,' said Audley. 'Just drive.'

'Onomatopoeic, Miss Loftus,' said Richardson. 'American slang for the sound of the prison door closing. And I'll bet there isn't a CIA man to be found in a thirty-mile radius of us now. Because they're not nearly as stupid as their allies like to think.'

'Shut up, Peter,' said Audley again. 'Just drive.'

Peter Richardson just drove.

'Have you been in the field long, Miss Loftus?' he said at length.

'Drive, Peter,' said Audley.

She couldn't even concentrate properly on the countryside, after she found she couldn't think straight. Not even when she saw a strange field, and caught a stranger smell.

'Lavender,' said Richardson obligingly. 'Or a sort of lavender. What they grow is some sort of hybrid - the real stuff grows wild, higher up, with thyme and rosemary. I remember stopping off up here - oh, it must have been fifteen years ago - when I was driving my first girl down to Amalfi, to see my mother's folks. We stopped off further north, though - Buis-les-Baronnies, it was… It was okay then, because there were no missiles on the Plateau d'Albion… Now, when I come over, I keep to the autoroute, just to be on the safe side.'

Eventually he stopped, quite deliberately.

'Phone-box here, just round the corner. Got to make a call.'

Elizabeth sat in silence, until it became oppressive.

'Have I made a mistake, David?'

Audley stared down the village street, in which nothing moved. 'We all make mistakes.

Maybe I made a mistake, a long time ago. If I did, then maybe we've both made another one now. Join the club.'

dummy2

Richardson came back.

'That's okay. He's just gone out on his terrace, to read his morning paper. He'll have his coffee. And then some more coffee. By the time we get there he'll be thinking about his first drink.' He let in the clutch.

'But I still don't think I made a mistake, Elizabeth,' said Audley.

Peter Richardson just drove, again.

There were hills now, and twisting valleys, up and down, and through and around, with scrubland rising up here and there above fertile fields, hinting at the wilder country of Peter Richardson's real lavender. And -

And that had been the country to which Haddock Thomas had taken his beautiful scheming Delphi, long ago. And had he returned here to die here, because this was where he had once been happy?

And there were villages, set high up on one side, or low down on another - low down, but still on promontories in their valleys, each with its ruined medieval castle tower and its church - each at once different from the last one, yet identical.

It was perched on the side of a ridge - a plateau, almost - also just as different, but just the same -

'I'll go straight in, and drop you off outside his place. I can turn round at the top, somewhere… I have to come down a different way, but I'll sound the horn - one short, one long, one short - as I come by, underneath his terrace.