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SEVENTEEN

B y the end of the day, the police search for Alice Carling had yielded nothing.

It had seemed an impossible task from the very start. The village of La Gaude sat in the foothills of the Alps, the Préalpes d’Azur rising steeply behind it. The countryside, rich and unfathomable, stretched in every direction, all the way to Marseille and beyond, virgin territory with space enough for a million hiding places … or graves. There were valleys to the north and south where nobody walked and where Alice might even now be lying, fed on by insects and birds. There were rivers – the Cagne and the Lubiane, with its four and a half miles of rushing water – where she might have drowned. She could have been hidden in a cave, an abandoned windmill, a dry ditch, a meadow, a shepherd’s hut or the ruins of a Roman mausoleum.

And then there were the woods: mile after twisted mile of pine and olive trees, cork oaks and chestnuts, the floor a sprawl of wild mimosa, nettles, thickets and ferns. Agriculture and construction both added their challenges to the search. Alice could have been locked away in one of a hundred barns, stables, grain houses, caravans or cowsheds. Half-built houses, temporary offices and taverns provided yet more hiding places.

The weather also made success less likely. With the sun beating down and the air thickened by the heat, everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Almost nothing was moving. The birds were silent. Only the bees were droning lazily, barely completing their journeys around the tree trunks.

Voltaire had forty men at his disposal, but, given the enormity and complexity of the landscape, he might as well be searching for a single leaf in a forest. He had worked out that he had to start in La Gaude itself. There was a chance that someone might have spotted Alice before she left or while she was leaving. But the moment she’d found herself in the world outside, to all intents and purposes she would be lost to them.

What did he know?

It seemed almost certain that Alice had gone off with the man she believed to be her fiancé. Voltaire had spoken to Adeline, Alice’s friend from the bakery. She confirmed that she had never heard of any Charles Saint-Pierre. Alice had kept the relationship a secret, which suggested that the man would not have risked driving into La Gaude to meet her. But then things had changed. Alice had become scared. Perhaps she had been about to go to the police and had threatened the man she believed she was going to marry. The man who called himself her fiancé had acted quickly. He must have picked her up in a car.

So, around three o’clock on Sunday, there had been a vehicle that did not belong to anyone in the village either outside the house or somewhere nearby. A single road ran the full length of La Gaude and this was a community where everyone knew everyone. It was more than likely that someone would have seen Alice leave.

Voltaire deployed half his men on a door-to-door inquiry throughout La Gaude and the neighbouring village of Saint-Jeannet. Had anyone seen Alice in the company of a stranger that day, or indeed at any time in the past few weeks? Had anyone glimpsed her as she drove past? In addition, he focused on the bar tabac and the square where boules was played. They would be the centre of gossip and rumour-mongering. If anyone knew of an illicit affair, it would come to the surface here.

At the same time, it occurred to him that the mysterious man would have taken Alice somewhere they could talk. She believed he was complicit in Lady Chalfont’s death. He would want to calm her, to persuade her otherwise. Where might that be? The Baou des Blancs, a dramatic rockface that provided superb views over the surrounding countryside, was a favourite beauty spot for young people, with meandering pathways, trees and flowers. It was a few miles to the north-west. And then there was the Gairaut waterfall above Nice. Voltaire imagined Alice getting into the car, angry and suspicious. He would want to take her somewhere beautiful.

But not public. If he couldn’t persuade her that he was innocent of any crime, if he needed to silence her, it would have to be somewhere with no witnesses. The woods. The rivers.

He sent the rest of his men into the surrounding countryside. A dog handler had arrived with a Belgian Malinois, but they were looking as miserable as each other, faced with the enormity of the task ahead of them. Still, he sent them on their way. He had to look as if they were trying.

In the end, it was a fisherman who found her. Alice Carling had taken her last breath less than a mile from the place where she had been born.

Julien Lotte was seventy years old, bearded and sunburnt. He was in a good mood. There were two trout and a barbel weighing well over a kilogram in the oilskin bag he was taking home, following the River Var, heading south. When he noticed something lying on the shingle bank next to the water, his first thought was that somebody had abandoned a bundle of clothes. It was only when he was closer that he realised someone was still in them.

Lotte had served in the army as a young man and had seen action in French Equatorial Africa. He knew a dead body when he saw one. This was a young girl, not so pretty in life and less so in death, her eyes empty, any expression wiped from her face. There was nothing Lotte could do for her. He hurried back to his home on the outskirts of La Gaude and because he had no private telephone, he sent his wife out to the public phone box to call the police.

*

‘She was strangled,’ Voltaire said. ‘We are speaking to everyone who was walking in the area, but no witnesses have come forward so far, and the fisherman who found her saw nothing. The riverbank is a short distance from the main road, so it would seem that the killer parked his car there and the two of them walked the short distance to the shingle beach. Perhaps they talked. I am sure that he tried to persuade her that he had done nothing wrong. But when that failed …’

Voltaire was sitting in the main lounge of the Grand-H?tel, cupping a balloon glass of cognac. The sun had set by now and the waiters were serving dinner in the room next door. Pünd and Fraser were with him.

‘I blame myself,’ Voltaire went on. ‘When we first went to the office of Ma?tre Lambert and informed them that Lady Chalfont had been murdered, she was afraid. It should have been obvious to me that she was in some way connected with what had occurred.’

‘I, too, saw that she was nervous,’ Pünd concurred. ‘But like you, Monsieur Voltaire, I said nothing. There are some young people for whom the very idea of murder is frightening. It was not necessarily the case that she was involved in the crime.’

‘And then there was that business with the false name.’ Voltaire was still angry. ‘You saw that, Monsieur Pünd. I did not. Had I questioned her more …’

‘It would have made no difference, my friend. She would have denied that she had lied to you. Poor Mademoiselle Carling could not believe how fortunate she was to have found a man who loved her, who was perhaps wealthy and well connected. Doubtless, he had told her to keep his identity secret.’ Pünd had ordered a small sherry for himself. He took a sip. ‘She took that secret to the grave.’

‘But who was Charles Saint-Pierre?’ Fraser asked. ‘He couldn’t have been Elmer Waysmith, could he?’

‘No. He wasn’t Elmer Waysmith.’ Voltaire rested his glass in the palm of his hand, contemplating the dark, golden liquid. ‘But whoever the fiancé was, his luck has finally deserted him. He has made two mistakes.’

Pünd and Fraser waited for him to explain.

‘First of all, we spoke to the local telephone operator, as you suggested, Monsieur Pünd, and we have learned that the call Mademoiselle Carling received on the morning of her death came from the Chateau Belmar. In fact, she had received several calls from that number.’

‘Anyone in the house could have made those calls,’ Fraser said doubtfully.

‘Maybe, Monsieur Fraser. However, Mademoiselle Carling had her handbag with her when she was attacked next to the river, and that was the second mistake. Her killer should have taken it with him, or at the very least examined the contents.’ Voltaire emptied his glass. ‘He must have been in a hurry to leave. He was careless.’

‘What did you find in the bag?’ Pünd asked.

Voltaire removed a black-and-white photograph, about three inches square, and placed it on the table. It showed a young man with circular wire-framed glasses, wearing a pale blazer and a straw hat. There were faded red lipstick marks on one corner of the image, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, Fraser realised that Alice must have kissed it. At the same time, he recognised the man in the picture.

‘It’s Harry Lyttleton,’ he exclaimed.

‘That is exactly right,’ Voltaire agreed. ‘Harry Lyttleton who is married to Judith Lyttleton, the daughter of Lady Chalfont, and who visited the office of Ma?tre Lambert many times. He would have known Alice well.’ He picked up the photograph with a look of obvious disgust. ‘Knew her, took advantage and killed her. Or so it would seem.

‘Tomorrow, we will discover the truth.’