Here Be Monsters

Then I'll fill up the tank at the gas station, and I'll have a drink at the auberge - for an hour?' Richardson glanced over his shoulder at Audley. 'Same signal -okay?'

Elizabeth cracked. 'And if everything isn't all right?'

'Long-short-long… if I'm lucky.' He signalled and slowed to leave the main road. 'Dead silence if I'm not. Okay?'

Elizabeth craned her neck to try to take in the terrain of St Servan-les-Ruines, but too late, because of listening to Peter Richardson: the huddle of the village was already lost behind a screen of trees, and she had lost the shape of everything. But it was still so peaceful that the whole charade was utterly unreal, anyway.

'Here we go, then,' said Richardson, in a voice so suddenly-serious, like a fighter pilot dummy2

making his low-level run, that she was jolted from unreality to reality.

It was larger than it had seemed, on that first uninformed look, when it had been just another village: there was a street, and another street, with shops in it - even a shop with dresses in it, which no English village would ever have possessed; but then no English village she knew of still had a baker's shop - a butcher's shop - never mind a two-star auberge —

The Fiat swung sharply, through 180 degrees, under a cliff of ancient stonework, towards a tiny fortified gateway, under a cascade of flowers which reminded her insanely of old Mr Willis's cottage far away in soft green England, which was so near in time, but so desperately and helplessly far away in miles.

'Where are the ruins?' She heard her own voice almost with surprise, it was so sharp and confident.

'What ruins?' Richardson slowed to negotiate the gateway.

'St Servan-les-Ruines?'

'Search me.' He changed gear once he was through. 'It all looks fairly ruined to me. I never thought to ask.'

Just as unexpectedly as they had arrived in the village, they were unexpectedly out of it again, into an area of stunted old oaks and scrubby vegetation, but with an equally sudden view of a fertile and well-cultivated valley below, bathed in hot sunshine.

Yet not quite out of it after all, maybe: the narrow road fell gently towards a final huddle of houses perched on a flat shelf in the hillside amid a cluster of shade trees.

'Prepare to abandon ship,' said Richardson. 'Dale's people will have their eye on you from up there.' He pointed up the hillside, to a modern house almost on the crest of the ridge, not unattractive, but sited with fine (and presumably French) disregard for an otherwise unspoilt landscape. 'He was lucky to pick that up, it overlooks the old dog's kennel perfectly… They're supposed to be a honeymoon couple. But I won't tell you any more, just in case the worst comes to the worst.' He twisted towards Elizabeth as he slowed down. 'Honeymoon couples inspire a certain delicacy even in the worst and most nosey of people, Andy Dale reckoned, Miss Loftus. And they keep themselves to themselves.'

Where had she heard that before, just recently - ?

'Out,' said Richardson, just as she remembered. And the remembrance of Haddock Thomas dummy2

and his bride here all those years ago, and in the very year which mattered, was a cold and desolate thought, quite unwarmed by its irony.

But Audley was already out of the car, and had skipped round to open her door with uncharacteristic good manners.

'Good luck - ' Richardson's glasses were black in the glare ' - to us all, Miss Loftus.'

The house was very old, and not very large though unnaturally high for its size, but sturdily restored up to the iron water-spouts under its pantile roof.

The car accelerated away, leaving Audley standing somewhat irresolute before the choice of a front door and the wrought-iron gate in a shoulder-high garden wall. Then he resolved his irresolution simply by peering over the wall on tip-toe, and choosing the gate for her.

There was a little shady garden, under a pergola of some sort of vine, with all the light and colour concentrated on the edge of a terrace, where a man in a panama hat sat amidst a blaze of red flowers and scatter of books and newspaper pages, with a glass in his hand and a puff of blue-grey tobacco smoke above him.

But the gate had squeaked, and the man changed the picture as it fixed itself, turning towards her.

'Dr Thomas?'

'Hullo there - ?'

Slow, gravelly voice, the sound filtered through many years and many bottles. But years of what else? wondered Elizabeth: just many years of hie, haec, hoc, and Caesar's Gallic Wars?

Or many years of treason?

She felt Audley's large presence at her back, pushing her forward, overawing her from behind even in the shadow. And in that instant she steeled herself against disappointment.

For, whatever he was, and whatever he had been, Haddock Thomas could only be an anti-climax in the flesh, innocent or guilty.

'Hullo there?' He peered towards them over his spectacles, which had slipped far down his nose.

Elizabeth advanced. Just for this brief moment she might be as beautiful as Helen of Troy for all he knew, and that wouldn't do at all.

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'Dr Thomas?' She whipped off her dark glasses and entered a shaft of sunlight which cut through the canopy above.

'Yes.' He placed his glass carefully on the table beside him, rose to his feet, and finally removed his panama.