by Heron Carvic
“If we meet trouble, wave your trick at ’em, smells or not.” Memory and instinct helped Miss Seeton to unzip the briefcase and raise Mantoni’s gun and, instinct failing her, memory dragged up from some forgotten film or book:
“Halt, or I fire”—since neither memory nor instinct had suggested “Stop, or I’ll make a smell.”
The words and tone caught his attention and Tolla saw the pistol’s silencer a bare foot from his face. He reared in alarm and springing backward to get clear, he landed on the umbrella’s ferrule. Thus abused, the umbrella raised its crook as though in protest and caught the ankle of his other leg, still flailing for a foothold, and overturned him in a neat parabola. In a series of backward somersaults he hurtled down the slope and at the bottom crashed head on into a stone trough with flowers, arched slowly and ungracefully over it and sprawled into the Rue Saint Leger a little farther down than his late and unlamented driver.
Thrudd, racing back across the road to take on the next comer, lost his stride and nearly fell on seeing MissEss, her hat over one ear, kneeling beside a prostrate Mme de Brillot, holding a gun with some whacking great tube on the muzzle in both hands and shooting the living daylights out of a black man. And she’d said it only made a smell. Some pong. He’d let her fool him again with her pretended innocence. Well, this was it. The end. Next time he’d get behind her skirt and let her call the deal. Reaction hit him now the affray was over. He’d never killed a man before—never even thought in terms of killing. Weak-kneed, he tottered over.
“Congratulations, ma’am—nice marksmanship. You trained at Bisley?”
“But I didn’t fire it,” Miss Seeton protested. “I only waved it at him as you told me and he fell. It’s dreadful. I’m very much afraid he broke his neck.”
Mme de Brillot, on her feet, massaged her throat. “More quickly and more kind than what he tried to do to me.”
“You all right?” Thrudd asked.
She nodded. “Yes, and thank you for what you did.”
“Think nothing of it.” The reporter was beginning to recover his aplomb. “Anytime—anytime at all; just call on me.” He addressed Miss Seeton. “And you, MissEss, you thought I thought you shot him? Perish the thought. Never crossed my mind. I know the gun just jumped out of the case, then grabbed your hand and fired. Nothing to do with you. Just blind luck it knew which way to aim.” He looked down the slope, past the passive umbrella, to where the remains of Tolla lay. “But between us, one way—and of course another—we’ve rather littered up the Rue Saint Leger.” He glanced around. “Lucky there’s nobody about up here at night—nor traffic down there. Still, with your permission”—he bowed—“maybe we’d best call the cops and get this place tidied up.”
“Leave that to me, Mr. Banner.” Mme de Brillot took command. “There is a crashed automobile on the Promenade Saint Antoine and”—her expression was bleak—“other matters to be what you call tidied up. I will inform the proper authorities and make arrangements. Where is your car?”
“By the hotel.”
“Good. Then we will put Miss Seeton in the back and I will take you down to the Richesse.” She pulled her seat forward to allow Miss Seeton, her handbag, her umbrella—none the worse for its adventure—and the briefcase with the pistol to squeeze into the narrow space behind, while Thrudd went around and opened the passenger door. “And please, Mr. Banner,” she continued, “there must be no reporting of tonight’s affair—unless you have permission from the police. You may find that they will prefer that the whole matter should be forgotten. Including,” she added, “the fact that you have killed a man.” Thrudd settled in his seat and for once in his professional life forbore to argue. Mme de Brillot’s fingers lingered on the ignition key. “What happened to Mantoni?”
“Mantoni? That the little half-pint that was following MissEss? No idea, though I found his case in the passage. There’s where our MissEss got her cannon. Maybe this Mantoni of yours was down the hole; the case was on the edge of it. Come to think of it, I kicked something when I jumped. Maybe it was him.”
“Hole?”
“Yes, the passage is closed, with a whacking great hole in the fairway.”
Miss Seeton was straightening her hat. “Yes,” she agreed. “There was a board over it but when I crossed it, it tilted and fell in.”
Oh, it did, did it? thought Thrudd, still under the influence of renewed skepticism. So that was why she’d hopped in there when she saw it was forbidden, pitched the board down the hole, laid in wait, then conked the little squirt and chucked him down as well. In God’s name, why, he wondered, did everybody feel bound to protect MissEss? Protect? Talk about teaching your grandmother . . . “I expect,” he suggested, “your Master Mantoni’s down the pit still wondering”—he jerked a thumb toward the back seat—“who hit him.”
Mantoni was not wondering who hit him. He knew. That wicked, terrible woman had ensnared him into a grave she had prepared, then, striking a match to gloat on what she had done, seeing him try to save himself, in cowardice, had hit him on the head with a stone, had traitorously stolen his case, his pistol, and had left him there for dead. He should have known—he should have recognized . . . Native superstition now held the Italian in thrall. Who but one with the evil eye could follow him as she had done? Know his every move as she had done? See through a painting as she had done? Mock him as she had done? Who but a sorceress would push aside a loaded pistol in contempt as she had done, knowing it could not harm her? Allora, now that he knew from where she derived her power, never, never would he come within her influence again. Whatever the man on the telephone in future might command, whatever he might say, he, Elio, would refute. Mantoni was not to learn until next day that the man on the telephone would say no more; and that the same grapevine of the underworld would inform him that single-handed this same sorceress had wrecked a car and then destroyed three men. All this and more he tried to explain through the muzziness of headache and a slight concussion to his fellow follower who had helped him out of the pit. Take care, he insisted, put yourself on guard, avoid her, for she is one of those who do not sleep in bed but fly by night.
Miss Seeton was preparing for bed. The events of the evening, which even she was forced to admit were unusual—for her, that was to say—had tired her a little. All that running. Thank heaven she had done her exercises earlier, or she would have been very stiff tomorrow morning. Also there was no denying that her habitual equanimity was disturbed. It would be some weeks before she would dismiss the affair, if by then she remembered it at all, as a manifestation of the instability of the foreign temperament. Meanwhile she had to face it and could not ignore, or not entirely, that she herself was in some measure involved, personally. Which did not suit her conception of her personality. Why should she, a modest, retired and retiring art teacher, become caught up in an immodest and vulgar brawl? Her natural resilience came to her rescue and produced the answer. She had not. It was, of course, nothing to do with her personally. Obviously it concerned those papers from the bank. Mr. Telmark had been most emphatic on the question of their privacy and someone must have discovered that they were, temporarily, in her possession and was determined to lay hands on them. She must make sure to get the papers back to Mr. Telmark first thing in the morning. She left the briefcase with the pistol on the occasional table, then taking her handbag with her, she knelt and pushed it under the bed. She straightened in confusion when the door behind her opened without warning.
“Madam der Bree-oh,” she exclaimed. “I—I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Evidently.” Mme de Brillot closed the door and crossed to the armchair by the table. “It is time to talk,” she continued in a flat voice, “for the two of us.” Under the light from the floor lamp her expression was somber. She looked—Miss Seeton sought for the adjective and found it—she looked implacable. So very like, in fact, that sketch that one had done of her as Lady Macbeth.
Although she had said that it was time to talk, Mme d
e Brillot appeared to be in no hurry and Miss Seeton tried to make conversation.
“Tell me, did you by any chance see Vee—I mean Miss Galam? We left her by that alley. I didn’t like to, but she said that she must stay there, but that we shouldn’t. Stay, I mean. And Mr. Banner was insistent, too.”
The Frenchwoman roused herself and cut in. “Yes, I saw Vee. I am afraid that she has gone.”
“Gone? Oh, I’m sorry,” Miss Seeton regretted. “I should like to have said good-bye and thank you. Such a kind person. And that lovely voice. I did wonder if she had left when she wasn’t there at dinner. But later, at the top of that alley, when she was—there, I mean—I imagined . . .”
Mme de Brillot’s mouth twisted. “For once your imagination is at fault; she has gone. And now will you please tell me what it is you know—what you have discovered that makes them attack you.”
“Why, yes, I . . .” Miss Seeton stopped. “You are a friend of Mr. Telmark’s, aren’t you? You were with him in the picture gallery.”
Mme de Brillot rose, picked up the telephone receiver, asked for a number and, after a moment:
“Karl?” She spoke rapidly in French, then, after another pause: “D’ac . . . D’ac . . . D’accord.” She handed over the receiver.
Distantly, metallically, Karl Telmark’s voice told Miss Seeton that she was to treat Mme de Brillot as himself, to tell her anything, to discuss anything, with no reservations, none at all. Miss Seeton knelt beside the bed, groped under it and retrieved her handbag, took out the papers referring to the deposits and withdrawals in the joint Stemkos account and handed them to her visitor.
“It is these,” she explained. “Mr. Telmark told me that they were private, and, even though I don’t entirely understand them, I can see that they would be, and clearly someone is trying to get hold of them.”
Mme de Brillot flicked through the papers. “And you are convinced that these are the sole reason for tonight’s trouble?”
“Why, yes. What other reason could there be?”
Putting the papers on the table, Mme de Brillot noticed the briefcase, opened it and extracted the pistol. “Do you always hide your handbag beneath the bed and leave pistols lying on the table for anyone to take?”
Miss Seeton was indignant. “It has nothing to do with me. Mr. Banner told you he gave it me and that it belonged to that man you called Mantoni.”
The Frenchwoman tipped the rest of the contents onto the table. A crumpled piece of paper caught her attention and she smoothed it out. “Is this the paper he snatched from you earlier this evening?”
Miss Seeton looked at it. “Oh, how very fortunate. It will save me having to write it out again.”
“To whom do these jewels belong?”
“Jewels?” Miss Seeton floundered, then laughed. “It has nothing to do with jewelry. It’s only a list of colors—rather fancifully put, perhaps, but a reminder, as it were, for when I try to work from memory after I’ve made a sketch of it by day. The lake, that is. Just one of my impressions of Geneva.”
“One?” Mme de Brillot sat up. “There are others?”
“No,” Miss Seeton answered quickly, then wilted under an accusing glance and ended lamely, “that is to say, no.” Mme de Brillot held out her hand. “But I assure you,” Miss Seeton protested, “that they are not impressions—not of the city, that is—but merely notes on people.” The hand remained outstretched, reminding her of Chief Superintendent Delphick and the way in which he made her surrender any sketch that she made, however private, insisting that, since she was on a retainer to the Yard, he had the right to view all work she did during the course of an inquiry in case it should have some bearing. The reminder was so strong that she obediently fetched her sketchbook, unhappily aware of the likeness of her interlocutor as Lady Macbeth, which, like the list of colors, now appeared to her as “rather fancifully put, perhaps.”
Mme de Brillot studied the drawings for a long time; so long indeed that Miss Seeton felt that some justification on her part was necessary.
“I think, perhaps—” she began.
“J’vous en prie.” The other waved her to silence.
Could this woman be the innocent she would appear, or was she an intrigant? The caricatures were clever—some, like the one of Natalie Stemkos as a pair of nutcrackers, wickedly so; all ruthlessly exposed character. She reexamined the sketch of the overpainted Gainsborough—another type of exposure. But was it possible that so much revelation could derive from nothing but intuition? Or was it based on knowledge? She raised her head, her eyes accusing.
“My reputation is to be gay, superficial and amusing, and I flatter myself I play the part well. You depict me as une femme fatale, with cloak and dagger. Why?”
“I . . .” Miss Seeton was at a loss. “It just came out like that. I didn’t mean it to. It was meant to be a study of the bones. But I did wonder afterward if, perhaps, at one time, you’d been upon the stage. Lady Macbeth, you see.”
A flicker of amusement at the lips. “No, I have never acted—on the stage. You draw Vee Galam as a boy and surround the head with wig, false eyelashes, et cetera, in mockery. Why?”
Miss Seeton was roused. “I did nothing of the kind. In mockery, I mean. It’s only that the hair and lashes were so very extreme that I tried, by taking them off, to see what was beneath.”
The lips twisted wryly. “You succeeded.” Mme de Brillot examined again the head of the boy she had once known as Vincent Gardnor—one of the most promising, bravest and most reliable of their younger operatives. Vincent, who, after a more bitter and prolonged struggle with his own nature and his inclinations than ever he had waged against his country’s adversaries, had undergone an operation, changed his sex, but had remained with them as Vee—for Vivienne, Ventura, Veronica, always V—and, using fantastical makeup as disguise, had still remained their best, their bravest and their most reliable operative. “So be it.” She handed back the sketchbook. “Though, if I may, I will borrow this later to take photostats. I will take a risk and will rely entirely on your judgment of these characters and we will act on the assumption that you know these people better than they know themselves.”
“But I don’t,” expostulated Miss Seeton. “I don’t know them at all. Those are only private notes of how they seem to me.”
The Frenchwoman’s expression lightened and the blue eyes began to sparkle. “In regard to Natalie Stemkos as a nutcracker—she seems so to me too. That one I know is true. Elio Mantoni skiing toward a precipice on paintbrushes for skis—likely to be true. Librecksin as the Devil spearing a litter of paper money with a two-pronged fork—I believe to be true. And Heracles Stemkos as your jolly English King Cole—that we will now pray to be true.”
Her decision made, she moved quickly to the bed, sat and used the telephone. After the number had been obtained Miss Seeton concentrated on the rapid flow of French, of which all she caught was “Monsieur Stemkos? . . . Mme de Brillot something . . . Miss Seeton . . . Hôtel de la Richesse . . .” then a lot which she failed to understand, followed by the inevitable “duck . . . duck,” which she now recognized must be a shortened version of d’accord—that was to say, “It is agreed”—and finally “something . . . something . . . En dix minutes.”
Mme de Brillot put down the receiver, lifted it again and spoke to room service. “Trois cafés en dix minutes, avec”—she considered—“avec alors du paté de fois, des friandises, et également,” she supplemented, “du cognac et du whisky. . . . Entendu, en dix minutes.”
She returned to her chair, shuffled Miss Seeton’s sketches into order, laid on top of them the reports from the Banque du Lac, then, on a thought, searched in her bag and found a newspaper cutting from the previous week which read:
MME STEMKOS ROBBED IN PARIS
At the Hotel Ritz-Palais, the beautiful Mme Stemkos, fifth wife of Heracles Stemkos, the Greek shipping millionaire, was attacked and robbed of thousands of pounds’ worth of jewels. A chambermaid discovered Mme St
emkos bound and gagged in a chair and the room rifled.
Last night Mme Stemkos was still too shocked to comment, but it is believed that the value of the jewels stolen runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds. The police have a full description of the stolen items, some only recently purchased and all fortunately insured.
She placed the cutting among the bank papers, glanced round the room, fetched an upright chair from the writing table, ousted Miss Seeton’s clothes from another, grouped the chairs round the table and sat down again, satisfied with her arrangements.
“B’en,” she remarked. “We are now in the hands of God, or rather”—her eyes twinkled at Miss Seeton—“in yours—though we will pray that the good God takes over the business. If He does not, my career will be cooked to a point and you will return to your village to do whatever it is you do in villages—always provided that we live.”
Miss Seeton smiled in sympathy. It was so pleasant to see her visitor animated again after the sad embittered woman who had entered the room.
“You,” said Mme de Brillot, pointing, “will place yourself there, I here and we will put M. Stemkos in the armchair to improve his mood.”
“Mr. Stemkos?”
“Oh, la-la, I forgot to translate. M. Stemkos will be here in a few minutes and I have ordered coffee, brandy, whiskey and some bagatelles to eat, all for the sake of improving his mood and, let us hope, increasing his understanding.”
“But why—” Miss Seeton began, then, looking down, “Good gracious, I must dress.” Did people abroad, she wondered, always arrange meals in other people’s bedrooms late at night? So like what one had read of bohemian Paris in the olden days—Trilby, and things like that.
“You cannot dress now,” Mme de Brillot informed her. “We do not want to waste time when he arrives. And better”—she laughed for the first time that evening—“much better to be caught in a very proper dressing gown than in improper déshabillé, and we shall give him so much to think of that he will have no opportunity to imagine that either of us is trying to seduce him. Tiens—” She put the silenced pistol on top of the briefcase. “There, that will add a touch of drama and lend weight to our story.” Miss Seeton opened her mouth to say—What could one say? In the event she was forestalled by a knock upon the door. Mme de Brillot rose. “Entrez,” she called.