Free Crazy Lady by James Hawkins Page B

they’ll help her.”
    â€œShe was OK when she wuz here,” complains Browning, seeing Creston’s funding slipping away.
    â€œAnd so she ran away?”
    â€œShe’s confused, she doesn’t know what she’s doing or saying, she’s kinda lost her mind.”
    â€œPerhaps she needs a psychiatrist?” suggests Creston, then questions himself,
What if she recalls too much?
“What does she remember?” he asks guardedly.
    â€œHard to tell; all she does is pray.”
    â€œSo, the chances are they would think that she is a little unstable?”
    â€œSir, your wife’s a nut. You know that.”
    â€œShe’s still my wife,” Creston insists sharply, then comes to a decision. “Hire someone… a private detective, a pro, money’s no object. I want her kept out of jail. Do you understand?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œAnd I want her found.”
    Bliss is still searching, still seeking direction as he prowls the quays and streets of St-Juan-sur-Mer. His manuscript is shrinking daily as he pares off one implausible scene after another while trying to find a point of historical solidity from which to build his ending. His sticking point is that the fortress on the island of Ste. Marguerite, the Fort Royal, wasn’t the first prison to house Louis XIV’s famous masked prisoner, and neither was it the last.
    The sight of the majestic cliff-top building rising out of the Mediterranean stops Bliss as dawn arrives with a crimson slash across the horizon and the sea shifts from cobalt to azure. “That’s what I call impressive,” he muses as if the show has been orchestrated just for him.
    The smell of hot bread and croissants draws him from the scene to his favourite boulangerie just off the promenade, and as he sidles through the narrow doorway of the ancient bakery, he’s salivating. A blonde-haired woman with her mind on her breakfast nearly butts him as she meets him headfirst in the doorway.
    â€œ
Pardonnez-moi,
” he mumbles, stepping back.
    She glances up momentarily to reply,
“Merci.”
    If their eyes meet for a nanosecond neither notices, and Bliss is already at the counter silently practising his order,
Deux croissants, s’il vous plait
, before he feels a tingle of unease.
    â€œBonjour, monsieur,”
calls Marie, the baker’s little wife, her beaming grin barely making it over the mounds of warm bread and pastries.
    â€œBonjour…”
he begins, though stops abruptly when he finds his gaze locked onto the spiralling coils of a
pain aux raisins
, his mind spinning as he thinks of the woman.
    â€œMonsieur?”
queries the rotund woman with a smile, but he’s stuck in the swirling coils of the sticky pastry, trying to fathom who she was.
    â€œAnd how is zhe writing,
monsieur?
”
    Around and around goes his mind — she must be a local, just a familiar face. Then he stops and catches up to Marie. Disastrous; terrible; feel like giving up. The words are there but they won’t take shape amid his confusion, then a prod from behind jump-starts him.
    â€œSorry. Very good, thanks, coming along nicely.”
    Marie smiles in relief as she takes his order and adds a complementary shortbread in celebration of his apparent success. “It must be very nice to be famous, is it not?” she continues chattily, happy to practise her English.
    â€œI am not famous,” he protests, but she stops him with a floury hand.
    â€œHere, everyone, they say to me, ‘How is zhe famous number one English writer today?’ And I say, ‘He is very good.’” The she leans in closely to add. “But I know zhat you are also zhe detective who finds zhe secret of
l’homme au masque de fer.”
    â€œThe Man in the Iron Mask,” murmurs Bliss as he sits on the quay wall eating breakfast, but his mind is still on the woman in the baker’s doorway as he looks ahead at the