The Janeites Read online

  Praise for Nicolas Freeling:

  ‘Freeling is not merely a great British crime writer, but a great European novelist. At a time when much detective fiction is literary junk food, it’s easy to forget that many of the greatest novelists – Dickens, Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Victor Hugo – were also crime writers. Like them, Nicolas Freeling recognises that yearning and despair, love and death, are the essence of both crime and art’ – Francis Wheen

  ‘Freeling has made the realm of EuroCrime his own’ – Observer

  ‘Here is an author who is as much concerned with the impulses and motives of the human heart as he is with the details of detection. The combination of elegant style and the continually interesting narrative give his novels their special flavour’ – P.D. James

  ‘The Village Book is always entertaining – like Freeling’s most recent novel Some Day Tomorrow, as perceptive a picture as you are likely to encounter of the impact of age and illness on the male psyche. The two can profitably be read side by side, as a prelude to publication of Freeling’s 38th novel, The Janeites’ – Vivienne Menkes-Ivry, Independent

  ‘Freeling’s whimsical and atmospheric style is here in force, along with his personal asides on the trivia of our existence … a rather special book’ – Patricia Highsmith

  ‘A major novelist of crime’ – New York Times

  ‘The mantle of Simenon seems to have been inherited by Nicolas Freeling. His Inspector Van der Valk – less rugged than Rebus, less parsonical than Dalgliesh, more Morse than Frost, and more Maigret than any of them – has become known as a placid but shrewd Dutch bourgeois with an interesting wife; at some point he metamorphosed into Inspector Henri Castang. Marvellous’ – Anita Brookner, Spectator

  ‘Strongly reminiscent of Simenon. For my taste Freeling is far more vital and colourful’ – San Francisco Chronicle

  ‘Freeling is the only British novelist of consequence to have tackled modern Europe. I have no doubt this expatriate Englishman joins Graham Greene and George V. Higgins as one of the great crime writers’ – Grey Gowrie, Daily Telegraph

  ‘Some Day Tomorrow is a subtle, sympathetic study of old age and sexual desire. A perfect choice to launch Arcadia’s Euro Crime series. May all their follow-ups be as successful’ – Philip Purser, Literary Review

  ‘I can cheerfully recommend Nicolas Freeling’s novels to anyone who enjoys the seriously good crime novel. It is unimaginable that he should ever tell a dull story, and he writes with a warmth and sensitivity all too rare in the genre. Whether he is working on a case for Inspector Van der Valk or creating a complex modern crime novel, the true mystery is always the mystery of the human heart. Intelligent, worldly wise and humane – that is the distinctive voice of Nicolas Freeling’ – Lesley Grant-Adamson

  The Janeites

  NICOLAS FREELING

  Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five

  EuroCrime from Arcadia Books

  About the Author

  Also by Nicolas Freeling

  Copyright

  Introduction

  In the plain, there are too many people.

  There are too many little roads which bump into one another. Because of this too many cars had also bumped into one another, and the Authority had spent a great deal of money making roundabouts: there were too many of these. Likewise signposts, pointing to places. Our dear Alsace; Oberhausbergen and Niederhausbergen (which nobody can ever find.) Well, in England they’ve a Nether Wallop and a Middle Wallop. Ray turned the car to the right anyhow; it was time to climb out of this dense world.

  Fields began to slope, and there were vines on them. Ray’s spirits rose with the road: fresher air up here and there were hills in front of him. It was a fine autumn day and the grapes needed all the sun they could get. He had been told to ‘look for the castle’: the road made a kink and there was the castle, across a valley and perched up on the scarp; charming remnant of a robber baron’s fortress.

  He came to the village and this was good, too. Not picturesque enough to be a tourist attraction, but some shapely old houses, and a Renaissance fountain for horses to drink from, and a pretty church early enough to be pre-Gothic. There was also a thirteenth-century old man smoking a pipe and sunning himself on a doorstep. His attitude said that labouring in the vineyard was for others.

  “Perhaps you know William Barton?” The sun was hot: the old gentleman wore a leather jacket buttoned up to the neck, and woolly carpet-slippers, and a woolly cap of equally violent check, with a pompom. The countrymen no longer wear berets much.

  “Ouais.”

  “You could tell me the way?” There was a bit of wondering whether this information were not too precious to part with.

  “Ouais.” Took the pipe to point with. It wasn’t even complicated.

  That way was the Château but a ways before that you turn, see, and there’s a track going up, quite steep and doesn’t go anywhere but it takes you there. Which it did too. Sharp up, and round some well-cared-for vines, and there was a gate, and a house built on the steepest of the meadow. Spectacular view, much like that of the castle further along – monarch of all it surveys – of the vineyards and the valley further down and the plain beyond, across to distant hills and the sunlight playing on the whole. Clouds were blowing up from the west. Ray had been wondering why this William lived in such an out-of-the-way corner; the situation explained some things. Modern house, quite big; splendid terrace on the far side, overhanging the drop. Plenty of room for garden (planned but nothing much done yet) and below that a drystone wall and the big sweep of vines. All this had cost a lot of money.

  A big man answered the door; tall and broad, with the look of the athlete: large open face, handsome, and smooth brown hair.

  “Apologies; I was looking for Mr Barton.”

  “Found him, too. Man selling, due for disappointment.”

  “Psst – they’re giving it away.”

  “So they can’t get rid of it. Even up here it’s what I don’t want.”

  “Name of Marquis help at all?”

  “You voting for him or he voting for you?”

  “Said that Bill’s the man to see.”

  “Now tell me what he really said.”

  “Said you were a thorough swine. Now would you like to give something for the widows and the orphans?” The meaningless citified talk – Ray is used to that, can do it too. He got a slow smile.

  “You better come in, it’s wet on the doorstep. You like a beer?”

  “Place like this and there’s no champagne?”

  “Siddown where I can see you. Now tell me. Cop you’re not, so who are you?”

  “Name of Ray, I’m just a friend.”

  “Of the Marquis; a real close friend. And he told you, Bill was eager to get enrolled?”

  “No, I only like girls.”

  “And you’ve come all the way from Paris, talk the language and everything.”

  “Yes, a clever little dick; I’m a Jesuit.”

  “Good christ, you’re a curé.”

  “They’ve threatened me with that a time or two – told them I wouldn’t be good at it.”

  “That Marquis, I’ll eat his balls.”

  “Better not, he might need them.”

  “A Jesuit – ho, a hard man. Intellectual.”

  “Got a hard God – otherwise no more than you.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “William – silly question. What are you doing? Scratching your arse.”

  “That’s right, I’m retired. Cruise liner, deckchair, swimming-pool here inna basement.”
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  “No future in that. Chess, gardening, give you an interest. Green Party maybe, for when the nuclear power goes critical.”

  “You sit there, while I get the champagne.” It was a strange room, well designed but oddly bare. Some bits of nice furniture, clean but it didn’t look lived in.

  “Take hold, curé. Here’s to us, salud y pesetas.”

  “You listen, now. I ran across the Marquis, he tells me ol’ Bill, here in this house, writing notices saying Achtung Minen! and sticking them round the shop. Asks me to look him up, he’s a nice chap. I plod out here in the bushes, you call me Curé.”

  “I’m suspicious by nature. And by training. Sit outside here with the shotgun across the knee like Duke Mantee. What do you want – to convert me?”

  “No no no, I’ve got more respect for you than that. Tickets for the prayer-meeting I don’t have. Be a Buddhist or a Moonie I don’t care. But planted there, saying Fuck You, I’m fireproof – that gets up my nose. You ain’t. You’re crossing the road, comes some prick on a motorbike, you’re in a little trolley, where’s my legs. Man, the holy nuns are looking after people like you, cup of tisane and a pill at bedtime.” William filled both glasses, drank his off, meditated.

  “I got a cancer, Marky tell you that?”

  “He did; I’m not just a Jesuit, I’m a doctor. At that, pretty good.”

  “Curé – I’ll call you Ray, okay? I’m planning to be what they call a Stoic.”

  “No bad idea. Be a bit of an Epicure too, maybe, let’s not disdain pleasures?”

  “My wife left me; was that on the news too? I didn’t take very kindly to getting all these items in a row, either.”

  “Let’s be serious.” Ray reached for the bottle to see what was left. “I’m no great expert on wives, myself I haven’t any. The crab is a tricky animal, there I’m something of an expert; we play chess together. You’re a young man and an athlete, mentally you feel defeated; that gives him an unfair advantage. Sit moping in the corner, that’s like giving him a pawn. You tell me who diagnosed you, what treatment he prescribed, I can look up all the technical dossier, think about a ploy. I win these games as often as not. Upon that note, let’s go out and have lunch; there are some goodish places as they tell me. If I may say so you’re looking like a fellow who opens a tin of baked beans.”

  “Whirl of bloody gaiety, are you?” siad William getting up.

  “I don’t have a consulting room. Work at the research institute. So a restaurant is as good a place as any, for listening to stories. While picking at the piece of fish… A Porsche, yet. I come visiting in a tin can, drive away in this.”

  “Yes; where I come from we were pretty well paid.”

  In the business, Dr Valdez is also widely known as Boogie Acetoso. These comics from Argentina (reading matter in research institutes will often startle the innocent onlooker) are violent – for sure – and vulgar, very: so after all is the crab. In Spanish ‘El Accitoso’ – the greasy one – could be rendered pedantically as ‘nobody gets a grip on him’. Ray is no Superman but like Boogie he has a talent for winning. In the research world, where they seek to get a grip on the crab, he is not thought of as an unusual technician. The Oncology people hold him in respect because he has a talent betimes thought uncanny: he can often outguess them when the crab – a champion at this game – looks to be winning. In plain terms he has brought off spectacular results, exercising ‘alternative medicine’: a sniffy phrase which ‘school-doctors’ often pronounce, and they mean it pejoratively.

  Dr Valdez drove home thinking, to be quite honest, about cars: the little Renault Four had been greatly beloved and so, in his wilder youth, had been his Deux Chevaux: did one really want a Porsche? The Jesuits might think it funny and just as likely they might not. There are doctors who would giggle and think ‘typical Ray’ – the present number being a Beetle many years old.

  Upon the whole, and with regret, a temptation which had to be resisted. The thing would be stolen within a week. Temptations do get resisted; some do anyhow. Jokes are made about casuistry, about being jesuitical. Dr Valdez is however the real thing, no mummery about that. The Society is and always has been eminent in the sciences and there is nothing in the least extraordinary about Raymond Valdez. Questions remain unanswered: to be a doctor is a help, in being a Jesuit? One dislikes the word ‘help’; a coloured, a loaded, almost a partisan word. It might be fair to say ‘contributes’. But turn the question round: being a Jesuit quite unambiguously helps towards being a good doctor. Such things aren’t in the least unheard-of. Believer and unbeliever frequent the altars of research institutes. Ray might instance Jacques Arnould ‘who does space studies’, adding rather naughtily ‘Of course, he’s a Dominican’. Unbelief, disbelief? One can refuse atheism but that’s no barrier to being anticlerical.

  Part One

  People think mostly of the Seine’s right bank as the ‘grand’ side of Paris, because of the Etoile and the vista up the Champs Elysées; the Louvre and expensive shops; pompous squares and immense avenues. Older people have a hazy notion that the left bank means students, and artists y’know, since here is the Sorbonne and what used to be the Latin Quarter. Here though runs – through the sixth and seventh districts – what Proust knew as the Faubourg Saint-Germain: here were the historic town houses of the dukes and princes.

  Nobody ever designed better architecture; the happiest mix of formal balance and intimate gaiety: the courtyards are especially delectable. Few now remain undivided, with their original furniture, pictures, panelling. They’ve been made into Ministries – swallowed by banks, monstrous finance corporations, with bits sublet to the enormously wealthy. There might still be a duke or so hidden away côté jardin; and there is a Marquis – with whom William is here concerned. His is one of the oldest names of royal France. Proust-readers remember that they’re all related; my cousin-This and my aunt-That: Monsieur le Marquis does this too. It is typical of him that he lives in the historic ‘Hôtel’ of his ancestors, and that he is extremely rich.

  Equally typical are many ramifications and relations in other worlds than that of dukes. Politics for example: he is old now, retired from ‘affairs’, seldom seen in public. But it is ‘remembered’ (memory is short in politics) that he has been a Minister of Foreign Affairs, had a stretch at The Interior. Under an earlier Republic he’d certainly have been Premier: the Duc de Broglie comes to mind, or (much better comparison) M. de Talleyrand.

  William is not intimidated by these surroundings; they are familiar to him. The concierge, a rude man (his wife is worse and they are known as les Cerbères), looked up and nodded. He crossed the courtyard noticing everything from old habit; the usual cars in their places and the Rolls too. Nothing changed here; the secretary was where he expected. Patricia (notable for independence of mind; she even refuses to eat here), a quiet, compact woman in her forties, smiled, they’d always got on well.

  “Hallo – what brings you here?”

  “Hoping for a word with the old man, what are my chances?”

  “Good, I should say. He’s in the library, be pleased to see you. No one at present, I should go on up. As well though to clear with Edith, just to be tactful.” Everything here is very Old-France, the boiseries and the marvellous stucco, the Beauvais upholstery, and furniture (he had learned) by Oeben, by Weisweiler. Fresh flowers everywhere, Edith’s work. She is the gouvernante, rules the household, the companion and betimes the nurse, certainly an ex-mistress (but there’s no evidence). Nobody makes jokes about Mrs Danvers. A strong personality. Her office is a pretty, sunny morning-room but she isn’t there. He picked up the house phone to call the kitchen.

  Charlotte answered, another strong character, insists upon her Sundays, goes to Mass at Sainte Clotilde, is from La Rochelle and has an earthy pattern of speech, enjoyed by the Master. Also a glorious cook – he used to eat in the kitchen with her and Léon the chauffeur and Jacqueline the Belgian housemaid. She squawked on hearing his voice.

 
“Are you back?”

  “Just dropped in I’m afraid. Edith’s not there?”

  “Was, a second ago, I’ll tell her if I see her. Come in for a cup of coffee, before you go.” They’d all been a happy family.

  He put the phone down feeling the presence: Edith was behind him. Neither smiling nor glacial; exactly as when she saw him daily.

  “Good morning William. You want to see him? Good, that’ll cheer him up – you know the way.” She never has been hostile; she knows that fidelity, here, is of long standing, thoroughly tested. He had been, for unusually long, the head of security here, the chief bodyguard. Others came and went but he had grown to be the old man’s intimate, and shadow. Between Monsieur le Marquis and himself came to be understanding and affection. Indeed when he left, the old man rang the Minister. ‘Don’t bother to send me more guards – I don’t want any.’

  One didn’t knock on doors here. He was sitting at the map table.

  “William! Agreeable surprise.” Always good manners, stands up at once, gives the old affectionate pinch to the forearm.

  “Make yourself comfortable. You’re looking well. Kind of you to think of passing.” In the six-month interval the old man had aged; something of a shock. The temperature was kept low in this house ‘because of the furniture’ (Patricia is always chilly), really because he hates it hot. Air-conditioning was another grievance. (When in Washington, two sources of complaint.) Now he has a cashmere shawl across the shoulders. Hair cut short, greyer and thinner. The fair-haired sixfooter has shrunk. No more jokes about Visigoths or Gaston Phoebus – ‘ancestor of mine’.

  Edith brought in the pretty coffee service with the forget-me-nots – he dislikes the Sèvres ‘bleu du Roi’.

  “Thank you. None for me. But what brings you to Paris? This can’t be just for me.”

  “Joséphine.”

  “Ah, of course. A mightier inducement.” That the Marquis had slept with her was certain. Well known for climbing into bed with every woman he comes across. No pretences are needed, no hints or allusions will ever be made. A thing he does. A thing Joséphine does? William’s wife was a complicated woman but this was all ancient history. The old man had never complained at his leaving; getting married was a thing people did. Some very good silver as a wedding present.