by Ann Bridge
‘This is the authorisation which I, as Aglaia Armitage’s guardian, give you to collect the documents; it is incontestable. It gives the account numéro. I have told them that the money will not be taken away at this stage; her lawyers or her bankers can do that later—it is their affair. But I have instructed them to show you, if you wish, the certificates which give the extent of her fortune.’ He paused, took a card out of his pocket-book, and scribbled on it. ‘Do not show the authorisation I have given you until you are in conversation with one of these two gentlemen,’ he said, handing her the card. ‘They are two of the directors of the Banque Républicaine who know me well. If possible speak with Dutour; Chambertin is sometimes un peu difficile.’
Julia read the card. It said—‘Je recommande chaleureusement Mademoiselle Julia Probyn, de Londres, qui voudra discuter des affaires bancaires.’ As she put the card away in her bag along with the other papers de Ritter chuckled.
‘They will think you want to open a numbered account,’ he said. Then—‘Where do you stay in Geneva?’ he asked.
‘I hadn’t thought. What’s a good hotel?’
‘How are you arranged for currency?’ he enquired.
‘Oh, plenty. I get a journalist’s allowance—I write for some of the weeklies, when I feel like it.’
‘Then do write about the Canton de Fribourg! Come back to us, and learn more! However, if you are not short of money you had better stay at the Bergues; it is delightful.’ He went out into the hall and there and then booked her a room. And the following morning her beautiful hostess once again dragged Julia’s luggage down to the station on the hand-cart, and she set out for Geneva and the bank.
Julia, unlike many English people, was always ready to talk in trains. After changing for Geneva at Lausanne she found herself seated opposite a neat little man with a large brief-case, on which he was scribbling notes on narrow sheets of typed paper that looked like invoices. Julia’s appearance of course produced its usual impact; he offered to put out his cheroot if she disliked the smell, enquired whether she wished the window up or down, and promised to show her Mont Blanc when it should come in sight. Soon they were in cheerful conversation—and it proved much more amusing to Julia than most casual conversations in trains. The neat little man presently explained that he held the Swiss agency for an English firm, who made surgical stays in a special air-light elastic weave—‘Corsette-Air’ was the trade name—and in Switzerland they had an immense sale; he named a figure for the firm’s annual turnover which astonished Julia. She was even more astonished to learn that he had never been to England, and had never met any of the directors of the Yorkshire firm who manufactured ‘Corsette-Air’—all had been arranged by correspondence, through people who vouched for him. More peculiar still, he could not really speak English, but he could read it sufficiently well to understand the letters from Yorkshire.
‘And do you reply in English,’ Julia asked, fascinated by this odd set-up.
Ah no, he always replied in German. ‘They send my letters to Birmingham to be translated, and then reply to me in English.’
To Julia it all sounded quite crazy; but if the sums he had named to her were accurate, obviously it worked. And the little man himself was so eager, so energetic and enthusiastic that she could credit his making a go of anything. In his excitement over telling her about his work he quite forgot to show her Mont Blanc at the place whence it is visible—‘Ah, quel dommage!’ he exclaimed. ‘From Geneva one seldom sees it; in fact you may say never.’ Like so many Swiss he was bilingual; he told Julia in French how he wrote to his English employers in German, and how—he glowed with pride as he spoke—‘Sometimes we even touch La Haute Finance; foreign business—not English, I mean; international. We are much used, because we are most discreet.’
‘How thrilling!’ Julia said, with her customary easy warmth, which really meant nothing.
‘Is it not? I see that Mademoiselle comprehends. Listen to this—only the other day I, Kaufmann, was called upon to act as intermediary between very important agences belonging to two different nations, and pass informations from one to the other!’ The little man was quite carried away, between Julia and his own enthusiasms; the girl could not help smiling at his idea of discretion, but merely said, as warmly as before, that this was formidable, that he must lead a passionately interesting life—to which he agreed eagerly. Then, as the train began to slow down at the outskirts of Geneva, suddenly he became cautious.
‘This is of course most confidential, what I have told Mademoiselle,’ he said rather nervously.
‘But naturally. I am discretion itself!’ Julia said soothingly. ‘And I am grateful to you for having made my journey so interesting.’ Whereupon the little man insisted on giving her one of his trade cards, and urged her to come and see him if she should be in his neighbourhood. The card depicted on one side a rather fully-formed lady wearing a Corsette-Air, and on the other bore his name and address:
Herr Viktor Kaufmann,
Villa Victoria,
Merligen-am-Thunersee,
B.O.
Julia suppressed a giggle at the letters ‘B.O.’—she already knew that in Switzerland they stand for ‘Berner Oberland’—not their usual English significance; she thanked the little man, put the card in a side pocket of her bag, and promptly forgot all about him.
The Hotel des Bergues at Geneva is indeed a delightful place; the Pastor had been quite right, Julia decided within the first five minutes. It is quiet, unobtrusively high-class, with excellent well-mannered service; it stands on the embankment beside the huge glass-green Rhône, close to where the river debouches from the lake, and exactly opposite the Île Rousseau, set with Claude-like trees. Upstream, on the lake shore, rises that exotic—and therefore so un-Swiss—fantasy, the only fountain in Europe which springs a clear three hundred feet into the air in a snowy jet which sways like a reed or a poplar in the breeze, glittering most beautifully in the sun against the distant blue shores. In theory the whiteness of the fountain’s spray should be a pendant to that of the summit of Mont Blanc; in fact that tedious mountain seldom shows itself to Geneva.
She unpacked first, as was her habit, and then tried to telephone to the Banque Républicaine—it was already closed, the porter told her politely. So she went downstairs and strolled across the bridge spanning the Rhône to the Île Rousseau, where she observed with interest the wired enclosure reserved for the black swans, tufted ducks, and other varieties; and laughed at the typically Swiss notice about feeding the sixty-odd ordinary swans who hung expectantly in the strong current below the footbridge leading to the island: ‘Please give your bread to the keeper; he will arrange it suitably to feed the birds’. She walked on to the farther side of the river, and strolled about a little; the whole place enchanted her, a city grey in tone, with an austere elegance combined with a certain simplicity. On returning to the Bergues she found that it had a tea-room close to the front hall; many people were having tea and cakes at small tables on the pavement outside, and Julia did the same, enjoying the warmth, the soft light, the shifting tops of the poplars on the island, the grey profile of the other half of the city beyond the river, and idly amused by the sight of the passers-by on the pavement beside her. One of these, a tall lanky man in a light suit of rather foreign cut suddenly checked, started, and came up to her, raising his hat—she recognised him as a man called Nethersole, whom she had occasionally met in London with her old admirer Geoffrey Consett.
Mr. Nethersole greeted her with the enthusiasm with which men usually greeted Julia, and sat down at her table. ‘What in the world are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘Oh, just sight-seeing. I’d never been to Geneva before. How beautiful it is.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? I adore it. But have you seen the oddest sight of all?’
‘No, I’ve only just arrived. What is the odd sight?’
‘Oh my dear, the Palais des Nations! Well you’d better come and have lunch with me there tomorrow; I w
ork there. Will you? One o’clock, in the restaurant. Oh, what a piece of luck this is!’
Julia accepted this invitation, mentally praising Mr. Nethersole’s tact in not asking if she had seen anything of Geoffrey lately. (Anyhow it is always nice to be invited somewhere in a strange place.) Nethersole soon flitted off, and Julia decided to go up to her room and write a full account of La Cure to Mrs. Hathaway before dinner; between helping Germaine and talking with the Pastor, she had only sent her old friend the scrappiest of notes. In the corridor beyond the main hall the lift doors were just closing; the lift-man politely opened them again for her, and she stepped in, saying ‘Troisième’. Three other people were already in the lift; one of them was the detective.
This time he grinned very broadly indeed, and murmured, ‘How we do keep on meeting!’ Julia put on her haughtiest expression, and made no response; she got out at the third floor, while he was borne upwards. This encounter disturbed her a little; if he really was one of Colin’s mauvais sujets, it was rather tiresome that he should be staying in the same hotel. And half-way through her letter she went down again to the hall and procured from the concierge a small plan of the city; back in her room she looked out the Avenue de la République. It was only a short distance away, across the bridge by the island. Fine, she would walk there tomorrow, and give no address to a taxi to be overheard by bell-hops, hovering for a tip.
She woke next morning in good spirits; Julia had the priceless gift of sound sleep. Leaning from her window— she had no idea of her good fortune in being given a front room at the Bergues at twenty-four hours’ notice, nor that she owed this entirely to Jean-Pierre—she first looked entranced at the fountain, profiled golden-white in the sunshine against the blue lake. But what was that, looming mistily and incredibly high into the sky?—also golden-white, and immense? It could only be Mont Blanc; it was just where the chambermaid had told her to look for it the evening before. Utterly satisfied, Julia rang for her breakfast, which she ate at her window; then, in high heart, she set out on foot for the bank.
The Avenue de la République is full of banks, all enormous, many of them new. The Banque Républicaine was one of the most grandiose of all; when she stepped onto a door-mat ten feet long, huge bronze and glass doors opened of themselves; within, marble pilasters flanked the doors opening off lobbies—there was no human being in sight. She pushed on through this mausoleum-like splendour into a vast central hall, rising to a height of three or four storeys, and furnished with armchairs and sofas; there was no sign of banking whatever except for a few clerks behind glass walls round the sides. There was, however, a single desk at which sat a pimply youth, curiously inadequate to all this pomp and dignity; to him Julia handed M. de Ritter’s card, and asked if she could see M. Dutour or M. Chambertin? The youth glanced at the card and went away, taking it with him—why not telephone, Julia thought, since there were two instruments on the desk. A long pause ensued—long enough to make her, at last, a little nervous. Eventually the youth reappeared accompanied by an older man, who led her to a lift and wafted her up to what he described as the salle d’attente.
The waiting-room was as rich as all the rest—a big desk, heavy leather armchairs, a deep pile carpet, some quite tolerable modern paintings on the walls. But the sun struck full into the room, and it was hot and stuffy; Julia went over and threw open a glass door onto a balcony. This was surrounded by window-boxes full of petunias and godetias—she was thinking how early it was for these to be in bloom when the door opened, and a man came in, holding de Ritter’s card in his hand.
‘I am Monsieur Chambertin,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
Julia took against Chambertin from the start. He was a short man; younger than she had expected, but somehow with an elderly expression, suspicious and slightly sour. As he seated himself behind the desk she decided that this was going to be a sticky interview; and sticky indeed it proved.
She began confidently enough, however.
‘You are doubtless aware that Monsieur le Pasteur de Ritter is the parrain and also the guardian of Mademoiselle Aglaia Armitage?’
‘Certainement,’ he said very coldly—indeed he seemed to stiffen a little at the girl’s name.
‘I come on her behalf—with Monsieur de Ritter’s authority, as you see.’
‘Mademoiselle, I do not see. This card refers only to “des affaires bancaires”, not to Mademoiselle Armitage at all.’
Julia apologised and handed over the Pastor’s letter. ‘I have other authorities also—pray have the goodness to regard them.’ She opened her large lizard bag and drew out the documents from England, which she laid before him on the desk: the copy of Thalassides’ will, attested by his lawyers; the authorisations from Aglaia’s bank and lawyers to hand over any or all of the property to Miss Julia Probyn, if so requested; finally the photostat of the death certificate, so liberally covered with official stamps. M. Chambertin, adjusting a pair of pince-nez, began to look at them, at first with a rather contemptuous air; but as he read through paper after paper his expression changed from contempt to one of bewildered consternation. ‘Mais c’est impossible, cela!’ he muttered to himself; then he rounded quickly on Julia.
‘Might I see your passport, Mademoiselle?’ he asked. For the first time there was nothing disagreeable in his manner, only what she recognised as genuine concern. She handed over her passport—he studied it, looked at the photograph, looked at Julia, and then raised his hands in a helpless gesture of despair.
‘This is all completely incomprehensible!’ he said.
‘Why?’ Julia asked. ‘Surely these papers are incontestably in order? What is the difficulty?’
‘Simply that Mademoiselle Armitage called here in person last week, and took reception of the money in the account.’
‘And took the’—Julia checked herself in time. ‘Took everything that you held in Monsieur Thalassides’ numbered Konto?’
‘Yes—all.’
Julia stood up. She was tall; at that moment she was menacing.
‘Monsieur Chambertin, you have been duped! Miss Armitage sailed for the Argentine to visit her mother on the 14th of May, the day before I left for Switzerland myself.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘It was in all the English papers. As Monsieur Thalassides’ heiress, whatever she does is news.’
‘La presse can make mistakes,’ Chambertin said, with the air of a man clutching at a straw.
‘Hardly, in such a case. But in any event her fiancé would not; and he is my cousin.’ She paused, thinking with intensity of the girl Watkins had noticed at Victoria, and of her two companions. ‘Did Mademoiselle Armitage come alone?’ she asked, sitting down again.
‘But naturally not—she is not of age. Her guardian was with her, and gave the authorisation.’
Julia was a little shaken by this.
‘Do you mean Monsieur le Pasteur de Ritter?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Did you see him? He says he knows you.’
‘No—I myself did not,’ Chambertin replied, a little unhappily.
‘Then who did? I can’t believe it was Monsieur Dutour; he is a personal friend of the Pastor’s too.’
M. Chambertin looked more unhappy than ever.
‘No. It was Monsieur de Kessler, another of our directors, who conducted this interview.’
‘Does he know Monsieur Jean-Pierre de Ritter personally?’ Julia asked sharply.
‘No, he does not.’ M. Chambertin’s unhappiness was now marked.
‘Ah. I expect these people carefully asked to see him, instead of you or Monsieur Dutour,’ Julia said. ‘They are probably very well-informed.’ Her confidence mounted with her anger. ‘Monsieur Chambertin, I think we had better see Monsieur de Kessler.’
‘So do I,’ he agreed uncomfortably, and spoke into the desk telephone. He turned back to Julia. ‘I can assure you that Mademoiselle Armitage and her party produced correct documents. We are extremely particular in these matters.’
/> ‘Oh, I am sure you are.’ But she pounced on the word ‘party’. ‘There was a third?’
‘I understood that the fiancé of Mademoiselle Armitage was also present.’
‘Nonsense! Her fiancé is in London. I have been speaking to him there on the telephone. And you should perhaps know that I came to Geneva yesterday from La Cure at Bellardon, where I have been staying for the last week; therefore I know perfectly well that Monsieur de Ritter knows perfectly well that Mademoiselle Aglaia Armitage, for the past fortnight, has been on a steamer on her way to the Argentine. Certainly her guardian never came here last week. Would he have given me this letter of authorisation if he had?’
Before Chambertin could answer the door opened and a white-haired man with a pleasant pink face walked in; he was really old, without any doubt.
‘Ah, mon cher de Kessler, how good of you to come up,’ Chambertin said respectfully, rising as he spoke—it was evident that de Kessler was very senior among the directors. ‘May I present you to Mademoiselle Probyn?’
De Kessler beamed on Julia as he bowed to her, and then asked Chambertin, rather bluntly, what he wanted?
‘A little more information about Mademoiselle Armitage’s fortune. Mademoiselle Probyn has been spending the past week at La Cure at Bellardon, and brings me now a letter from Monsieur le Pasteur de Ritter, in a handwriting which I recognise well, giving the number of the late Monsieur Thalassides’ Konto and requesting me to hand everything over to her, Miss Probyn. But I understand that you have already dealt with this matter yourself.’
‘Certainly—the account has been closed. Mademoiselle Armitage came in person—a charming young lady.’ He still only looked a little puzzled, and definitely repressive to his junior colleague.
‘You saw her passport?’ Chambertin asked.
‘But naturally.’