Thunder On The Right (23 page)

"Before the accident," said Jenny softly. "Yes."

Across the hissing lamp the gray eyes met hers again, bemused, uncertain, the blank childlike gaze of the person whose past has been wiped out."

There was a little pause.

Then Jennifer straightened up, with a little shivering breath that was almost a breath of relief. At least, now, she knew where she was. And the issue lay before her in all its plain impossibility.

She had to get Gillian away. Whatever Bussac's intentions toward her it was, of course, out of the question to leave Gillian with him. All other considerations apart, Gillian was ill. . . . She must, somehow, be made to listen, and to trust. She looked down into the gray eyes, now so pitifully lost and bewildered.

"Then you must let me remember for you, Marie. It's true I'm your cousin, but never mind that now. You must trust me. There's no need to be frightened of Bussac. If you'll come away with me now------"

"I'm not frightened of him. But the police——"

"Why should you be afraid of them? You've done nothing. They can't hold you responsible for anything he's done."

Gillian's hands twisted whitely together in her lap. "They can. They can. They want me, too. That affair in Bordeaux------"

"So he told you you were mixed up in that, did he? I suppose that was one way of ensuring that you'd keep out of everyone's way. I begin to see. . . ." She ran around the table and laid an urgent hand on Gillian's arm.

But Gillian had turned her head at some sound outside. The gale slammed against the shutters, and, as Jennifer's heart leaped into her throat there came, like an echo, another slam that was not of the storm.

The door opened on a gust of wind, crashed shut.
"En bien, mademoiselle?"
said Pierre Bussac grimly, and slid the bolt home behind him.

All at once it seemed as if the sounds of the storm had receded, leaving the kitchen still and quiet. A log hissed; the clock ticked quietly, the lamp sang; but the small sounds held the silence tensely, while Jennifer, dropping Gillian's arm, backed away from the anger that blazed in Bussac's eyes.

He said, "What have you come back for?"

Gillian put out a hand. "Pierre------"

He paid no heed to her. He looked at Jennifer across the table. "What are you doing here? What have you been telling my wife?"

She said, more bravely than she felt, "You know quite well what I've been telling her.

She's my cousin, Gillian Lamartine! And what's more, you know it, Monsieur Bussac!"

"That's nonsense," he said roughly. "She'll tell you herself------"

"She can't tell me anything, as you must be perfectly well aware. She doesn't remember anything. But she's my cousin and I can prove it!"

He took a quick step forward at that, and she saw a gleam in his eyes that frightened her. He said softly, "Can you indeed? And you came up here . . . alone, mamselle?"

She licked her lips. "I—no, I------"

He said, "Where's your friend? Where's the Englishman I thrashed this afternoon?'*

Gillian had been standing, supporting himself by the table, following the exchange with the same expression of dazed bewilderment. Now, when Jennifer did not answer, she said, soft-voiced, "She says he's coming."

Jenny moved sharply, but Bussac only laughed. "Let him come."

"With the police. Now. Soon."

He looked at Jennifer, his eyes narrow and dangerous. "So he did go for the police?"

"Of course!" Her voice was shrill with defiance. "He went as soon as we left here!

What did you expect? You must be a fool. Monsieur Bussac, if you thought we'd do nothing."

"No. Not such a fool as that. I thought he might go. But you see there are no police to find on a Wednesday, mademoiselle. It's Aristide's day off, and he goes—in his car—to play in the pelota match at Luz. Your friend will find it's a long way to Luz, when there's no transport!"

"There's a telephone," said Jenny harshly.

"There is also," he said pleasantly, "a thunderstorm. Corentin tells me that the lines have been out of action since three o'clock."

He smiled down into her eyes, the smile deepening at what he saw in her face. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again, lifting a hand in a boneless little gesture which was poignant in the helplessness it conveyed. Something of this must have touched Gillian, for she seemed to rouse herself now from her weary apathy.

She turned to Bussac and touched his sleeve.

"Pierre—what is it, Pierre? What's all this about? She said she knew me. She said I was her cousin." The eyes she raised to him had a lost, hesitating look that under any other circumstances would have been heartbreaking. Now, it made Jennifer want to scream. "What does it all mean?" asked Gillian.

His hand closed over the one she had laid on his arm. The gesture was one of protection, even of tenderness, and his voice and look were gentle. Jennifer, though prepared for something of this kind, was startled by the suddenness and completeness of the change in him. Why, she thought, I believe the man loves her.

That's why he wouldn't listen to Stephen's proposals. And now I'm trying to get her from him. . . . Oh, Lord, oh, Ix>rd, it only needed that. What do we do now?

Bussac said gently, "It means nothing, ma mie. It's she who's confused. She's mixed you up with somebody else. I've told you who you are. You belong here."

"But this cousin------"

"Is dead.
Dead
, d'you hear me?" His hand tightened over hers, but he was speaking straight at Jennifer. "She was the woman who died at the convent; I told you about her. Remember?"

Jennifer could stand this no longer. "Marie! Listen to me!"

"Be silent, you!" His voice blazed as he turned from gentleness to such fury that she shrank, and obeyed him.

He lifted Gillian's hand gently from his own and held it for a moment, bending over her with an urgency in his deep voice that was uncommonly convincing.

"
Ma chere
, you heard all this talk about police. It's true. You remember what I told you before, that the police were looking for us over what happened in Bordeaux?"

She nodded dumbly. "Well, they've found us out. This girl and the Englishman have brought the
flics
down on us. That's why we're leaving. I didn't tell you before because I didn't want to scare you. But that's why we're getting out, and fast." He patted her hand, smiled at her, and dropped it. "Now we must go. I think there's probably still time enough, but the sooner we go, the better."

"What about—her?"

He was smiling at Jennifer again. He looked huge in the lamplight, a big, confident, handsome brute whose shadow dwarfed the room. He said softly, "She wanted to meddle in my affairs. She mayn't find it quite so easy to get out of them again...."

Gillian made a sharp little movement. "You're not to hurt her, Pierre!"

He said, not taking bis eyes off Jennifer, "Oh, no, I shan't hurt her. . . ." But his eyes were dangerous.

Jennifer said desperately, "We've told you we'll forget about your affairs. We don't want to interfere with you. All we want is for my cousin to be safe------"

He said roughly, "Your cousin's dead, you little fool, and the sooner you realize that, the better it'll be for you. As for my wife, she's safe enough with me."

"Where are you taking her?"

"That's my affair." He swung around on the other girl. "Now, enough of this foolery: it's time we went. Are you ready, Marie?"

She nodded.

"I got Corentin's mule. It's in the shed. Can you manage to saddle it? Good. Hurry if you can. There's a lantern out there."

She turned to obey him, with a troubled look over her shoulder at Jennifer standing white-faced by the fire. "You'll come soon?"

"Yes, yes.
Go
now, quickly."

The door slammed. The lamp fluttered in its globe, and was steady again. Jennifer said shakily across the table, "Monsieur Bussac, please listen to me—please, just for one moment. ..."

"En bien?" He had taken a coat down from a hook in the corner, and was hastily cramming the packages of food into the pockets, keeping, all the while, between Jennifer and the door.

She forced herself to speak calmly. "Let's be honest with one another, Monsieur Bussac—now that there's nobody to listen. You were expecting Lally Dupre that night. Did you know her by sight?"

He hesitated, then said flatly, "No."

"Then you—and Doña Francisca—both thought that this girl you call Marie was Lally Dupre. But when I started asking questions, Doña Francisca realized fast enough who it was you were keeping here. When I asked her to describe the woman who died, she described Gillian—Marie. She'd guessed. And she came straight up here last night to tell you that whereas before it had been folly not to send your—guest —straight into Spain, now that 'Marie' was certainly Madame Lamartine, keeping her was suicidal. I followed her here— you know that. I heard her. You must have known then, Monsieur Bussac, what had happened on the night of the storm."

The black eyes held hers for a moment. "And if I did?"

"Nothing," said Jennifer, "except that you know and I know that I'm telling the truth."

"Oh, yes," said Pierre Bussac indifferently, "you're telling the truth."

"Then for goodness' sake believe me when I say that I'll make no trouble for you!

You know she's hardly fit for this journey, whatever it is. Tell her some tale—you can do it— and let her come with me!"

His voice was rough. "Damn you, can't you grasp what I tell you? I want her with me!"

"You've no right!"

"She's my wife."

"
Is
she?"

He shot her a look under lowering eyes. "What d'you mean?"

"She only came up here three weeks ago. I suppose she was hurt in the car crash, and lost her memory as a result. She tells me she has been married to you for a year.

Why did you tell her that lie, Monsieur Bussac?"

There was a pause. Then he spoke quietly. "All right. You wanted it; you can have it.

You've guessed the rest fairly enough. I was being paid by Marcel Dupre's lot to smuggle Lally out into Spain. She was to have met me in the gorge below Gavarnie, at a place called Chaos. I'd been told she was getting a lift from a woman called Lamartine. I took the mule down that night, but she wasn't there. After a while I went on along the river, and I came on the car, smashed up. She—Marie—was there. I must have missed the real Lally Dupre in the dark. Marie was lying near the car. I thought she was dead at first, then I found she was just unconscious. I looked for her papers, purse—anything that would identify her. I couldn't find any, so I assumed this was Lally Dupre—the description I'd had fitted fairly enough—and that the Lamartine woman had picked up her own stuff and gone for help. I knew that Lally had got to be got away quickly before anyone came, and besides . . ."

He had thrust his way into his coat while he was talking. In it he looked bigger than ever. He took a step forward and put his fists on the table, leaning toward her with a dark look that blazed.

He said, "She was lying on the grass in the torchlight with her hair spread out and her clothes half torn off her. She was lovely, and I wanted her." His teeth showed. "Just

—like—that. Do you understand that, you pale little English miss?
I wanted her.
"

The black gaze held hers. "So I picked her up and brought her here. And then in the morning I heard about the other woman at the convent. I'd been worried about her, because in the normal way I'd have had my passenger over the hills and far away before morning, and no evidence to prove she'd ever been near me, and here I was stuck with a girl who couldn't be made to travel. But my luck held." He grinned briefly. "It always does. The woman at the convent held her tongue. Lally must have wondered why the police didn't ask about the 'passenger' she'd left for dead in the wreck, but she'd be too thankful for the ready-made alias to risk breaking it by asking questions. If she'd known that the señora was with me . . . but, of course, no one knew that." He paused. "At any rate she played safe and kept quiet. I simply assumed she'd been too ill to recollect having a passenger—and then she died. More luck."

"And luck too," said Jennifer unpleasantly, "that my cousin had lost her memory?"

"As you say. She wouldn't have stayed with me otherwise, would she? As it was, when I found she remembered nothing, I was only too pleased she wasn't in a hurry to leave for Spain. I told her she was my wife—there may have been other tales in the village, but she never left the farm, and no one interferes with me."

"And you told her, I gather, that she'd been mixed up in the affair at the Bordeaux bank?"

"Of course. I had to give her some reason for keeping her close. I thought it was true, anyway. I didn't tell her it was murder; I told her just enough to keep her in hiding and not enough to make her anxious to leave. . . . And when I found out who she really was, I saw no call to change my story. It came to the same thing in the end, didn't it? She'd stayed here with me, though God knows she must have found the life up here hard and a bit strange, and me, perhaps, not exactly what she'd been used to. ..."

He smiled at her as he straightened up his big body. "I thought it would shake you,
mademoiselle l'anglaise
. . . you little Snow Queen of an English girl; you're all the same. She has it, too, that look ... I find it—exciting." The smile widened. "No, don't look at me like that. I've other things on my mind just now." And he turned aside to pull open the table drawer.

"You're—
vile
!" said Jennifer shakily.

He had taken a flashlight out of the drawer, and thrust it into his pocket. He lifted an indifferent shoulder. "You think so? She seems to like me well enough."

She said hoarsely, "Where are you taking her?"

"Where you'll not find her."

"They'll follow you "

"They won't; not the way I'm going." He gave a hard little laugh. "How d'you think I've evaded the frontier guards so long, my dear, if I hadn't my own road into Spain?"