by Ann Bridge
‘In August? And she has not yet returned it in October?’ Luzia observed, shocked.
‘Oh, Nell is so careless, and forgetful! I ought to have asked her for it long ago, but first she was so busy with the famille Luxworthy, and then so much happened—and of course I went to Gralheira straight from the clinic, and never thought about it.’
‘She should not have needed to be reminded to send such a thing back,’ Luzia said, still with disapproval.
‘Oh, Nell is not like other people; she is very bad at returning things. A book, I would never lend her—but then she does not ask to borrow books, for she never reads!’ Hetta said, laughing. ‘I telephone her now.’
The telephone call revealed yet more of Nell’s misdeeds. She confessed that—in typical haste and carelessness—she had broken the ultra-secure and delicate lock, and had sent the case down to the leading precision-lock firm in Madrid to be repaired before returning it. ‘I know Luis took it, and I’m sure he brought it back—I feel awfully that I forgot to send it to you, but you see you went away, darling. Now where on earth is it? you want it today? Oh dear! Can you hold on while I look? Now where would he have put it, I wonder? In my room, maybe. Oh I’m so lost without Luis, Hetta, you’ve simply no idea!’
Hetta had a very good idea, from Nell’s often-repeated lamentations—she didn’t wait to hear any more now.
‘I will ring off, I have rather a lot to do. But please ring me up in ten minutes, and then I will arrange to have it fetched.’ She replaced the receiver.
Nell Parrott did ring back, actually in a quarter of an hour; she had found the case, should she bring it round, she asked penitently. No, not to bother—‘If you go out, leave it with the servants, and I will send for it. Thank you, Nell’—and again she rang off.
‘We have said Goodbye already,’ she said to Luzia—‘there is so much to do, and she will only go on complaining about this creature Luis. It makes me so irritable! Was I unkind?’
‘No—she is foolish,’ Luzia said. ‘She should understand that you are busy.’
When Richard came in for luncheon his wife told him what had happened. ‘Could you perhaps go round by the Martinez Campos this evening, and pick it up?’
‘Yes of course, darling—I’ll be leaving the Chancery a little early—I’ve promised to have a round of golf with Mansfield. So I’ll pick it up on my way home—I shall have to come back to change anyhow.’
‘Oh, thank you, dearest. That will be perfect. Then I can get it packed today.’
‘Cross off one more item in the luggage-book, eh?’ he said teasingly.
‘Richard! You know this is useful, to have lists, and know what is in which piece of luggage,’ she protested.
‘Of course it is, darling.’ He gave her a kiss.
Hetta was in her bedroom, sorting out gloves, scarves, and handkerchiefs for bestowal in various pieces of luggage when Richard came in—he set the missing jewel-case down in front of her on the dressing-table.
‘There you are, Madame! Shall I get the stuff out of the safe for you?’
‘Oh do—that would be kind. Why does one have so many clothes?’ Hetta said, getting up and taking a pile of gloves across to join others on the bed.
‘Can’t imagine, unless it’s just for the sake of having plenty,’ he said gaily as he went out. But when he returned she was looking distressfully at the pretty case; the pale crocodile-skin was smeared on one side with some whiteish-greyish stuff, at which she was rubbing ineffectually with her handkerchief. He set down the little tissue-wrapped parcels and the small leather and shagreen cases beside it on the dressing-table. ‘Some of this old Victorian stuff weighs a ton,’ he said. ‘If I were you I should sell it. One gets quite a good price for gold these days.’ He bent and kissed her on the nape of the neck as he spoke.
Hetta stopped rubbing at the leather, and lifted the case, a little to one side to make more room for the jewellery. ‘But that is funny,’ she said. ‘It feels heavy too. Can that crazy Nell have left some of her own things in it?’ She picked up the two little gilt keys to open it. Before she could do so Richard picked it up, weighed it in his hand, and put it back on the dressing-table; then he noticed the grey smear, and suddenly bent and sniffed it. He straightened up slowly, a grim expression coming over his face—for once it was he who had an intuition.
‘No, don’t touch it, Hetta—put those keys down,’ he said, so sharply that she jumped; tears of fatigue and vexation started into her eyes.
‘Oh what is the matter, Richard? Do let me get on; I shall never get everything packed in time if you keep hindering me!’ she said pettishly.
But he had been thinking quickly, and came up with a prompt excuse; he did not want to alarm her yet again, after her many ordeals.
‘Darling, you can’t travel with it like that, all dirty—I’ll take it to the shop and get it cleaned properly. You shall have it back tomorrow,’ he said. ‘That miserable Nell!’ Hetta protested, but he turned it off lightly. ‘Dearest, your jewellery won’t take all that long to pack—you’re no Barbara Hutton yet, I’m afraid, in that respect!’ And when she continued to remonstrate he made a silly, tender little joke about its being his last chance, probably, for months and months to play the masterful husband, and surely she wasn’t going to thwart him?
At that her tears flowed in earnest; he bent and gave her a quick kiss, and then firmly picked up the case, keys and all, and carried it away. The grey smears, the faint almondy smell—though he had had little to do with S.O.E. in the war, during his time in Paris he had learned quite enough about Plastic Explosive to know its physical attributes. He put the case in his small safe, and then first rang up Commander Mansfield to cancel their round of golf, and then got hold of Ainsworth.
‘Could you come round at once?’
‘To the Chancery?’
‘No, to the flat. It is rather urgent—at least it may be.’
‘Not more trouble for Mrs. Atherley?’ Ainsworth asked, rather anxiously.
‘A near miss, I think. Can you come right away?’
‘Yes, I will of course.’
Richard went back to Hetta.
‘What about all this jewellery stuff?’ he asked. ‘Can you put it in a drawer, just for tonight?’
‘Oh yes—I shall be in here most of the time. Put it in that bottom drawer. I am sorry I was silly,’ she said, looking up at him with candid penitence. ‘But oh, I do wish I were not going away!’
Richard had never been more thankful that she was than at that moment, but he refrained from saying so. ‘I hate it too, darling—but there it is. Where’s Luzia?’ he asked then.
‘She was going to play with Richenda, so that Élise could do some packing. Do you want her? Ought you not to change for your golf?’
‘Oh, there’s not all that hurry,’ he said easily. ‘Don’t get too tired, darling.’
‘No, I only sort things out. Speranza will put them in the cases.’
He found Luzia in the nursery, and took her off to his study. He had not paid much attention at lunch-time to the business of the jewel-case, merely registering that Nell Parrott had failed to return it, and that it was to be fetched. Now he felt that he ought to know as much as possible. Luzia repeated what Hetta had passed on to her of Nell’s account, including the fact that she had broken the lock, and had sent the case to be repaired before returning it.
‘Ah!’ Richard said. ‘Could Luis have taken it to the locksmith?’
‘She said that he did, and brought it back—also that he would remember where it had been put, when she could not!’ the girl said scornfully. ‘That was why Hetta told her to find it, and then telephone again.’
‘I see,’ the man said slowly. ‘Thank you, Luzia. Right—I won’t keep you. But don’t tell Hetta I asked you about this,’ he added.
‘Something goes on?’
‘Yes. Look—’ as a bell sounded in the distance—‘could you go to her and somehow arrange to keep her in her room for the
next twenty minutes?—help her to pack, or something?’
‘Of course. I do this.’ She scudded away—a moment later Ainsworth was shown in.
‘What goes on now?’ he asked at once.
‘A parting shot from our friend Luis, I fancy,’ Richard replied, looking grim again.
‘Luis? But he’s been out of the country for weeks! Don’t tell me he’s made his way back?’ Ainsworth said, looking thoroughly disturbed.
‘No, I think he must have fixed this up between the performance at Toledo and getting jugged himself—he’d just have had time, by my reckoning.’ He repeated the story of the borrowed jewel-case. ‘He may have got it repaired before—that miserable Mrs. Parrott would never remember!—and taken it back to arrange his booby-trap after he learned that my wife was a Hungarian; or Mrs. P. may only have told him then to get it seen to.’ As he spoke he raised the picture on the wall, opened the safe, and taking out the jewel-case set it down gently on the desk. ‘The former, I fancy—it looks like a rushed job, to me, or they’d have cleaned it properly. Smell it,’ he added, as Ainsworth stared in bewilderment at the pretty object.
Ainsworth bent, and sniffed—he started back. ‘Plastic, by God!’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes, so I thought. I imagine the lock activates the detonator when the key is turned.’
‘How hellish! Where is the key?’
‘Here.’ Richard took the keys out of his pocket. ‘I thought I would keep them well separated,’ he added, wrily. ‘But Ainsworth, is there any means of getting the charge out without exploding it? My wife is rather fond of this case.’
‘Not a hope, I shouldn’t think. But I’d like to get Johnnie on to this—he’s our new expert. May I use your telephone?’
‘Yes, by all means. Who is Johnnie?’
‘Young Miller—you met him that day when you came up to the frontier.’
‘Oh, ah, yes.’
Ainsworth telephoned to his new assistant, who promised to come at once. ‘Bring the jeep,’ Ainsworth told him, ‘and the usual anti-booby-trap outfit.’
‘Why the jeep?’ Richard asked, while giving his guest a drink.
‘Well if he has to blow the whole thing up, as I’m afraid will prove to be the case, I thought he had better take it out to where that new outer road is being built; they’re dynamiting some rocks to make a level stretch, so there are bangs going on all the time—one more won’t be noticed,’ Ainsworth said with a slight grin. ‘But it’s pretty rough going.’ Then he looked grave again.
‘Does Mrs. Atherley know about this?’
‘No. If you decide to blow it up I suppose I shall have to tell her,’ Richard said gloomily. ‘Mercifully I noticed the smell just as she was going to unlock it, and made the excuse that I would get it cleaned for her to take away, and carted it off at once.’ He sighed suddenly, remembering his sharp words, and Hetta’s tears.
‘Good Heavens! That was the closest shave yet,’ Ainsworth exclaimed. ‘You’d have gone to glory too, you know.’
‘Oh yes—plastiqueurs aren’t very selective,’ Richard said, coolly; in fact he felt far from cool, realising how close he and Hetta had both been to death, only a few minutes before.
When Johnnie Miller arrived Ainsworth showed him the case and the smear on the side—he picked it up and weighed it, jauntily, in his hands; he too sniffed it, and then set it down smartly on the desk.
‘Look out!’ Richard exclaimed involuntarily.
‘Oh, not to worry!—it won’t go off,’ Miller said blithely. ‘That’s the best of plastic; you can practically play tennis with it! It’s not like dynamite.’
‘Well, what the Counsellor wants to know is whether you can get this lot out without wrecking the case?’
‘I shouldn’t think so for a moment. Can I see the keys?’
Atherley gave them to him—he examined them carefully, then put a magnifying monocle into his eye, and with a pencillight peered into the lock of the case.
‘Ye-e-s—I think I can see the connecting wire. But I’m afraid there’s no hope of saving the case—I should have to cut the back open anyhow to get the plastic out, and one couldn’t be sure of doing that without disturbing the detonator. I’m sorry, Sir,’ he said, very nicely, to Richard.
‘It can’t be helped. How shall you set it off?’ Richard enquired, curious.
‘Oh, wires and things! All quite safe and easy,’ young Miller replied cheerfully. He turned to Ainsworth. ‘Shall I take it away now?’
‘Yes, do—for God’s sake get it out of the house!’ Richard ejaculated.
‘I’ll come with you—we’ll go up to the new road, where all that blasting is going on,’ Ainsworth said. “Bye, Atherley—I’m sorry you’ve had this extra bother.’
‘Thank you for coming. Oh, if you’re going with Miller, shall I get your car sent back?’
‘Oh thank you, no—I’ll pick it up on our way home.’
When they had gone Richard decided to get a new case at once; then at least Hetta would be able to pack her jewellery tomorrow. He had not yet made up his mind about telling her what had happened; he would have to play that as it came. He put his head in at Hetta’s bedroom door—Luzia was with her—and said ‘Just going off’; then he drove down to Loewe, the best maroquinier in Madrid. It was there that, at a ruinous price, he had bought the one which Johnnie Miller was about to blow to pieces out on the new road—somehow the small fact of having to spend so much money all over again, so soon, increased his exasperation with Luis, and indeed with Nell Parrott too. If she were told of this performance of her beloved chauffeur’s perhaps she would, at last, shut up about him, he thought angrily.
Loewe, fortunately, had another case of just the same pale shade of crocodile skin that had so pleased Hetta, with the delicate special lock and charming small gilt keys; while they wrapped it up Richard wrote a cheque for it—he never carried as much money as that on him, and as he did so his irritation increased, especially against Mrs. Parrott. Really, she ought to know the sort of person she had been harbouring, he thought, as he drove on down to the Embassy to sign his letters.
Going in he met the Ambassador.
‘Oh, hullo, Richard! I thought you were playing golf with Mansfield,’ Sir Noël said.
‘I was going to, but I had to cancel at the last minute.’
‘Nothing wrong with Hetta, I hope?’
On an impulse—‘Just not,’ Richard said, with a curious emphasis on the word ‘just’.
‘Not the baby?’ his chief asked, anxiously.
‘Again, just not—and just not me, either,’ Richard said. ‘If you’ve got a minute I’d rather like to consult you.’
‘Of course—come into the study.’ There—‘What’s happened?’ Sir Noël asked.
‘It didn’t happen—by about fifteen seconds!’ Richard said. ‘A delayed action booby-trap of the famous Luis, passed on by Mrs. Parrott.’
‘Have a whisky,’ the Ambassador said, ‘and then tell me everything from the beginning.’ He could see that his normally cheerful Counsellor was seriously upset. ‘And a cigarette’—he held out the box,
‘Thank you very much.’
When they had both got their drinks—‘Now, let us have it,’ Sir Noël said easily.
Richard told him the whole tale, from Nell’s borrowing of the jewel-case to the moment when he smelt the plastic on the stained leather, and shouted at his wife to put down the keys. ‘It was as near as that,’ he said.
‘How quite ghastly,’ Sir Noël said slowly, frowning. ‘What have you done with it?’
‘I got Ainsworth to come up and have a look, and he sent for young Miller, who is apparently his anti-booby-trap expert; they’ve taken it out to the country to blow it up. I’ve just been to get Hetta another,’ Richard said, indicating the parcel on the floor beside his chair. ‘But look, H.E., don’t you think the time has about come for Mrs. Parrott to be told the truth about Luis? Only today she was moaning to Hetta about how lost she is without him.�
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‘I suppose there’s no doubt that this was his doing?’
‘Oh, not the slightest, I should say. Mrs. P. confessed that she broke the lock, and sent him to get it repaired; she couldn’t even remember where it was, and said that he would know—hence the moans!’
‘Would he have had time to do it, between the car crash and when the Security Police pounced on him? Because before that, he would have had no very obvious motive,’ Sir Noël said thoughtfully.
‘Yes, just nicely, I think. The car was towed back from Toledo the same night, the Sunday; Hetta told me about the ambush on Monday evening, and I told you; you saw her on Tuesday morning, and then we activated Ainsworth, who saw his American opposite number, and Parrott—but it was only before lunch on Wednesday that Luis was picked up. So he had two clear days, even if the actual repairs had already been done, to take it to some of his chums and have the doings put in.’
‘Yes—plenty of time. Yes,’ Sir Noël said again, thoughtfully. ‘Richard, I understand exactly how you feel about this; but I think the sensible thing is to let Hetta get away before anyone tells Mrs. Parrott about Luis. Of course personally I should like to put her across my knee!’ Richard laughed. ‘No, but she would only make more fuss, of some description or another,’ the Ambassador went on. ‘When Hetta has got clear I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a word with Ainsworth, and let him discuss it with that nice Intelligence man of theirs—isn’t his name Day?—and see what he thinks. Poor wretched little woman, she’s so pathologically silly that she’s almost more of a hilarity risk than a security risk!—in Packer’s place I should long to be rid of her.’
‘Thank you, H.E. Of course you’re right,’ Richard said, after a pause. ‘I’ll leave it till Hetta’s gone.’
‘Shall you tell her?’ Sir Noël asked.
‘I shall probably have to confess to the new case, anyhow,’ Richard said rather ruefully—‘She’ll almost certainly spot that, and I haven’t been able to think of a very good excuse yet.’
‘I daresay she’ll guess, knowing Hetta! If she doesn’t, I think I should tell her—tomorrow, not tonight,’ he added, quickly.