A Prince Without a Kingdom (25 page)

“I’ve been waiting for a car since this morning,” said Boulard, “but I’ve rather given up hope.”

“There are no taxis.”

“I was thinking as much. Might you be kind enough to take me a little closer to my destination?”

“There are no taxis,” repeated Mr. Gregor, who owned the only shop outside the station, but who regretted daily that he had opened up a paint shop instead of a bus station.

Boulard turned to glance at the road, where the rain was pelting down.

“I do believe I can see a vehicle with your name on it alongside the curb, Mr. Colors.”

“Mr. Gregor.”

“Gregor, yes.”

“That vehicle is for deliveries only.”

The superintendent nodded.

“Of course. Deliveries. What a pity. Well, it only remains for me to wish you a pleasant afternoon.”

Boulard walked toward the door.

“But I can sell you an umbrella,” Gregor called out brazenly.

“Well, well,” said Boulard, turning around. “An umbrella? Good idea!”

Francis Gregor took out an umbrella and demanded an exorbitant price.

“Gracious me,” said Boulard, rummaging in his pocket. “What’s your umbrella made of? Amaranth? Or ebony from Makassar?”

He took out the money and put it down on the counter before heading once more for the door, whose glass was all misted up from the rain. The umbrella had stayed on the till.

“You’ve forgotten your umbrella.” Gregor sneered at the superintendent.

“Not at all. I won’t be taking it with me now.”

Gregor’s eyes bulged.

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t specify my requirements,” added Boulard, retracing his steps and folding up his glasses. “I should like it to be delivered.”

The boss’s jaw dropped. Andrei was riveted.

“A delivery . . . for the umbrella?”

“Yes.”

“To which . . . address?”

“I told you, to the house of a charming young lady on the other side of Loch Ness.”

“But —”

“Now, as for how to get there, it’s rather complicated to explain. So I’d better accompany you, Mr. Colors.”

Mary and the Princess of Albrac had broken down by the side of the road. Mary had left the princess in the car. The open hood was steaming in the rain. There had even been the beginnings of a fire, which the housekeeper had put out with her coat. As a result, Mary was standing by a ditch, in the pouring rain, waiting for a car to help them out. She had draped her charred coat over her head. Each drop of rain was like a water bomb. In the Scottish Highlands, the rainfall can achieve levels of two or three meters in an especially wet year. Enough to drown the frogs.

Mary was ruing getting them into this mess. A few hours earlier, the princess had run out of knitting wool. She had been offered all sorts of balls of wool at Everland, but none of them were right. She was very fussy about texture and color. And so, without telling anyone what she was doing, Mary had sat the princess in the car. She wanted to take their guest to the mill where the wool from the Everland sheep was spun.

“Your Highness, you’re going to choose your wool on the animal itself!”

The aging princess was excited by this prospect. On the animal! Madame Boulard gave a little round of applause from the backseat. The two women got on so well, and the jaunt had been very jolly for a while. They had forgotten that neither of them knew how to drive.

Mary could have kicked herself for not having alerted Ethel before setting off. She was agonizing over what might have happened if the car had gone up in flames and she had returned the Princess of Albrac in cinders.

The road was muddy and slippery. Andrei was at the steering wheel of the van, where Boulard had tried to engage him in conversation, but the boy gave only the briefest of answers. No, he hadn’t been working there for long. Yes, Mr. Colors was a good boss. No, he had never heard of Everland Castle. And yet he had driven fast, avoiding all the potholes as if he were familiar with them. With each bend they could hear the umbrella, which was the only item to be delivered, rattling about in the trunk.

Suddenly, half a kilometer away, they saw a car that had stopped.

Andrei began to slow down. He felt overawed, returning to these parts after an absence of several months. But he hadn’t needed any persuading when his boss had assigned this delivery job. Everland still held an irresistible attraction for him. He had glimpsed Ethel only once over the winter, when she had come into the shop to choose some paint, no doubt for the airplane. Nicholas had been waiting for her in the car outside. Andrei had hidden in the stockroom while the boss served Ethel. She took her time. He had heard her reading out the names of the colors: “Cobalt Blue, Burnt Umber, Naples Yellow . . .”

She was whispering the names as if they were a poem. “Caramel, Nymph’s Thigh, Sumac . . .”

Andrei felt his head spinning, and it wasn’t because of the solvents.

When Ethel left the shop, he had nipped out of the back of the stockroom to keep watching her. He suspected that Nicholas had recognized him as they drove off. Deep down, perhaps that was what he had been hoping for. But Ethel never came back.

As he drove along the road toward Everland, all he knew was that he wouldn’t go as far as the main entrance. Nobody should know that he was still in the region.

Andrei braked a little more.

“Those poor people must have had an accident,” tutted Boulard. “Pull up just after them.”

They were less than fifty meters away. Steam was rising from the car, and somebody was sheltering under a cape.

Andrei leaned forward to have a look. It was rare to see a breakdown on this stretch of road.

“There’s someone inside the car as well,” he pointed out.

“Are you sure?” asked Boulard.

A face appeared to be pressed to the back window. The van belonging to Gregor’s Colors paint shop was now almost level with the broken-down vehicle.

“Well, I never,” whispered the superintendent, shuddering. “The woman signaling to us, beneath that coat, is Mary!” He hadn’t yet had a chance to recognize his mother, who was sitting in the back.

Andrei slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and the car skidded for a moment before shooting off at top speed. The mud churned up by this spurt of acceleration splattered Boulard’s window, just as his passenger door came level with his mother’s. All that the superintendent glimpsed was a gray shape flickering like a ghost.

“Are you mad?” bellowed Boulard.

Andrei put his foot down even harder. Had Mary had enough time to recognize him? He covered the remaining distance on his hubcaps, to the sound of Boulard’s reproaches.

“A poor lady in distress on the side of the road! Young man, you’re a savage! I demand that you turn around.”

Andrei dropped his passenger off at the bottom of the drive, at the exact spot where he had arrived two years earlier.

“Philistine! Lady splatterer! Umbrella deliverer! You’re worse than your boss!”

The superintendent’s barrage of names for his driver continued, but the van had already departed via a different route.

Back at Everland, everyone was in disarray. The shouts rose up from all quarters. They had searched the estate high and low, including in the hydrangeas. The princess was nowhere to be found.

Ethel could have kicked herself for not taking more precautions.

“Someone’s carried her off; I’m sure of that,” she told Scott.

The cook was wide-eyed. He was remembering stories from his childhood about princesses carried off by dragons. But who carried off eighty-eight-year-old princesses? Elderly dragons?

Ethel leaned against the window. Where should they look for her? Glancing up, she noticed a small figure virtually swimming in the middle of the drive as it failed to open its umbrella.

“That’s him!” she exclaimed on closer inspection. “That’s Boulard!”

She tore downstairs and rushed outside. The superintendent was waiting for her, as upright as possible. His boots made a squelching noise every time he moved. She was convinced that Boulard had gotten his mother back.

“What have you done with her? Where is she?” Ethel shouted at him.

The superintendent wasn’t sure how to react.

“It was for her own good!” Ethel went on. “She’s so attached to you. I know she wrote to you in Paris. Tell me where you’ve taken her.”

Boulard was at a loss. Who was this young woman talking about? Suddenly, Mary sprang to mind.

“Wait,” he said, thinking he’d understood at last. “You’re mistaken. I haven’t taken anybody. It’s pure coincidence. She’s on the road, in a broken-down car. You need to get her out of there.”

Incredulous, Ethel made for her own car, with Boulard following.

“Yes, she wrote to me in Paris,” he admitted. “Don’t tell anyone, Ethel. How did you know? Her words expressed powerful feelings. Yes, I admit my heart stirred. But do you really think I would come like a desert tribesman to carry her off? Me, Superintendent Boulard? No, I didn’t come for her.”

“Out in the rain,” muttered Ethel. “The poor woman, by the side of the road . . . at her great age.”

“I think you’re overstating it a bit,” he protested, trotting along behind. “Of course, I’m considerably younger than she is. But she’s a very handsome woman.”

Ethel stopped. She had a doubt. Was he really talking about his own mother?

“I’m sorry, Superintendent. We are talking about . . .”

Boulard looked down, and the rain from his hat dripped onto his feet.

“Emotions . . .” he said. “We’re talking about emotions.”

“But whose?”

He was all fired up now.

“The emotions of a policeman who is also a man. Of a heart that beats beneath its Legion of Honor medal and its military cross. Of a —”

“What about her?”

“Mary? Oh . . . I think she’s understood that I’ll always be a veteran bachelor. Our story won’t go much further.”

Ethel seemed so taken aback that Boulard felt obliged to offer an explanation. “Don’t worry; I won’t put it to her like that. She’ll understand.”

“Was Mary the only woman you saw at Everland?”

“What do you take me for? A lady-killer? Do you think I seduced all the servants?”

“I meant, did you see anyone else by the broken-down car?”

“There was a female passenger, I believe, in the back, but I couldn’t —”

“Thank goodness for that.”

“Who is she?”

“A guest. Miss . . . Turtledove.”

“Turtledove?”

“Yes. We had no idea where she’d gone.”

The three days that followed were like the three acts of a farce. First of all, there was the reunion between the superintendent and the housekeeper. This involved a long silence with lowered gazes and fluttering eyelashes. As chance would have it, Madame Boulard had caught a cold, so she stayed in bed, cloistered in her bedroom. Mary and the rest of the staff were instructed that under no circumstances were they to mention the superintendent to the Princess of Albrac. Mary’s curiosity was piqued by this mystery. But when Ethel explained to her that it was on account of a very old and private bond between the princess and Boulard, Mary was deeply moved.

“The wound must not be reopened,” Ethel had told her.

The idea that she might be rival to a princess was, for Mary, a feather in her cap. She no longer walked in the same way. She felt great compassion for this broken woman and was prepared to defend her secret like a guard dog.

As for Boulard, he was informed that the guest on the first floor, Miss Turtledove, was highly contagious. He should have no contact with her.

All this resulted in an intricate piece of theater. Doors could be heard banging. And shadows roamed the corridors at night.

But alongside this theatrical comedy, something completely different was being played out.

“Ethel, I’d like to speak with you about Vango.”

The superintendent had closed the door of the small library after dinner. They were alone. Ethel wanted to leave, but he was blocking the way.

“This time,” he declared, “I’m here for his own good. Things have changed. I can’t be certain about Vango anymore.”

“You’re the only person who ever was certain about him.”

“Mademoiselle, before you stands a hunted man.”

“You poor thing.”

“I left the police headquarters via the drains.”

“What a shame.”

“Do you hear me? By the drains!”

“Yes, I heard you, and I can smell it too. Let me out or I’ll scream. Your Vango no longer interests me.”

“Sit down for a minute. Hear me out.”

“I don’t like sitting. I stand or I lie down.”

“Ethel, I’ve come to ask for your help. I have to see Vango. I think I know who’s after him. I can help him, Ethel. He’s in danger.”

“In danger?” she echoed sarcastically. “That’s not his style.”

“I know that he is linked to a man named Zefiro. Have you heard of Voloy Viktor?”

No answer.

“Voloy Viktor is a killer,” said Boulard.

“You enjoy scaring the ladies, Superintendent Boulard.”

“Vango can help me find Viktor.”

Ethel pointed an accusing finger directly at Boulard.

“You see. You came here because you want to use him.”

“No.”

“Let me go to my bedroom.”

“Zefiro tried to attack Viktor, and now his island has been ravaged. There’s nothing left. I recently sent someone over there. You heard it from me; there’s not a single survivor. Just ruins. That’s what awaits Vango.”

“As I say, you enjoy scaring the ladies.”

Boulard sighed.

“Give me an address; tell me where he is.”

“My parents are dead, and my brother, Paul, might be dying in battle in Spain for all I know, so if I really could save my one friend, don’t you think I would?”

There was a long silence. Boulard observed every tremor on Ethel’s face. He himself had experienced neither personal tragedy nor passion. The only hand he had held tenderly had belonged to a little girl from the Aveyron when he was ten years old. But he did understand the human soul.

“But what if I believe you know where he is?”

“Let me through.”

“One day,” said Superintendent Boulard, opening the door, “you’ll receive a cry for help from him, and it will be too late. And then you’ll remember me.”