‘Francis!’ she cried and rushed across the floor to embrace him. ‘I am so pleased to see you!’
Powerscourt held her very tight. ‘I hope you haven’t been too worried,’ he said. ‘I usually manage to come back in the end.’
‘What have you been doing, my love? Why are you wearing these dreadful clothes? And what’s happened to your poor hair? It looks as if some wild animal has been pulling lumps out of it!’
Powerscourt explained about Marcel’s gang and his abduction to the pressoir and the lunatic asylum. It was, he told her, all the revenge of the Alchemist for ruining his privacy in London. His hair, he explained, had been cut off by one of the thugs who had virtually no teeth.
‘I’m so pleased you are back,’ she said, holding tightly on to her scarecrow. ‘The hotel people have been very good about things like telegrams, and there’s a helpful young man here from the British Embassy in Paris. And Johnny Fitzgerald is on his way.’
‘Very good,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Could I tell you what I’d like to do, Lucy? Right now, I need a bath. Washing facilities haven’t been too good in the company I’ve been keeping. Then I can get into some decent clothes. And then we can see what the food is like in this hotel. Where I’ve been it was rather primitive. And then I can tell you the rest of what’s happened and we can make our plans for tomorrow.’
As Powerscourt and Lady Lucy slept the church bells marked the passing of another day. There were two days left before Cosmo Colville was due to stand trial in the dock in Court Number Two of the Old Bailey on a charge of murder.
Shortly before three o’clock the next afternoon a cab took Powerscourt and Lady Lucy to the little village of Givray, up in the hills outside Beaune. The house of Monsieur Jean Pierre Drouhin, the Colville wine merchant who had disappeared, was at one end of a pleasant square. Lady Lucy had insisted on sending a note in the morning, saying they had come on Colville business and proposed calling on Madame Drouhin after lunch. The house itself was a handsome eighteenth-century building. Inspecting it as he got down from the cab Powerscourt thought that in England such a house would look masculine, wearing metaphorical braces and starched collars and a smart waistcoat. Here in France the building was feminine, adorned with imaginary ringlets and flounces and bonnets.
Madame Drouhin opened the door. She was a pretty woman in her early thirties with light brown eyes and very dark hair, dressed in sober grey. She led them up to the drawing room on the first floor with a fine view of the boulangerie across the street.
‘It’s very kind of you to spare us the time,’ said Powerscourt, smiling at the lady. ‘As we said in the note, we have come about your husband. Could you tell us how long ago he disappeared?’
‘Of course,’ replied Madame Drouhin. ‘It’s now a month and a half since he vanished.’
‘Did he behave strangely before he went?’ Lady Lucy said. ‘Was there anything odd about him then? Even the best of husbands,’ she glanced loyally at Powerscourt, ‘can have their strange moods, they can withdraw into themselves if you like.’
‘I don’t think there was anything strange about his going. He said he had to go to England on business. There was nothing unusual about that. He went to London a lot. He must have spent nearly half the year there, now I come to think about it. But he never wrote this time – normally he was a good if irregular correspondent. He just got on the train in Beaune one morning and disappeared out of our lives.’
‘And since then, madame,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you haven’t heard anything at all? Not even a letter or a card?’
‘Nothing, monsieur, not a word.’
‘And had your husband, madame,’ Lady Lucy was trying to sound as sympathetic as she could, ‘ever disappeared like this before? Gone to visit his family perhaps?’
‘Often he has left us,’ said Madame Drouhin, ‘but he has always told us where he was going and written to us while he was there. It was usually London or near London that he went to.’
For twenty minutes or more Powerscourt and Lady Lucy questioned Madame Drouhin about her husband and his movements. Finally Powerscourt felt he could delay no longer.
‘Can I ask you a question, Madame Drouhin?’ Powerscourt was leaning forward in his chair. ‘It may seem rather odd if the answer is No. Could your husband write equally well with both hands?’
‘How interesting that you should know that,’ she said with a smile. ‘Yes, he could. The children were always fascinated by it.’
Powerscourt had been looking carefully round the room. On a small table by the window there were some photographs but he couldn’t see them clearly.
‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there,’ said Madame Drouhin. ‘That’s why you’re here. There must be something wrong, very wrong.’ She looked at Lady Lucy with pleading eyes.
‘I’m afraid there is,’ she said. ‘Francis will tell you.’
Powerscourt pulled a photograph out of his pocket, the one Mrs Colville had given him while she was still sober. ‘Is that your husband, madame?’
‘Of course it is,’ she said. Randolph Colville was standing next to a punt by the side of the Thames with a boater on his head, smiling happily at the world. By his side was a handsome woman of about forty-five, some years older than Madame Drouhin. In front of them were a couple of children with determined smiles for the camera.
‘How very English,’ said Madame Drouhin with a note of bitterness in her voice. ‘On the outside we have the smiles, inside we have the cold hearts and the betrayal.’
‘Do you know who these other people are in the photograph, madame?’ Powerscourt was speaking very softly.
‘I do not know,’ she replied and her voice was filled with despair, ‘but I can guess. That is the English wife of Mr Drouhin, and those must be two of the children he had with her.’
‘You knew?’ said Powerscourt. ‘You knew your husband had two wives?’
‘I did. I have known for some time.’ Silence fell in the handsome room as Powerscourt and Lady Lucy digested this astonishing piece of information. Bigamy. They had suspected it might be here but to find it in reality was stunning. And terrible. Bigamy. A unique arrangement whereby one man could betray two women at the same time twenty-four hours a day. A clock on the mantelpiece announced that it was half past three. Outside in the square a group of starlings were holding a concert in the trees. Powerscourt felt so very very sorry for Madame Drouhin, so dignified with them this afternoon.
‘When did you find out?’ said Powerscourt, astonished that Madame Drouhin already knew.
‘It must have been about two months ago, maybe more.’
‘May I ask how you found out?’
‘It was silly, really, silly of Jean Pierre, I mean. He left a letter from his first wife in the back pocket of his trousers one day. He left his trousers on the floor as he usually did. The piece of paper virtually fell out when I picked them up. Normally you’d never find anything at all in Jean Pierre’s pockets. He was always very careful. Not surprising really with two different lives to lead. I took the letter to the schoolmaster and he told me what it said. All kinds of things about his life made sense to me then. Those regular trips to England for a start. There are a number of other merchants round here, you see, who have the same sort of business with other houses in London like the Colvilles. They only go to London two or three times in a whole year, these other merchants. My Jean Pierre was going ten or twelve times. Often I have suspected that he must have a woman over there. Only now do I realize that it wasn’t just a wife but a whole family as well.’