He shook his head. “Item,” he continued. “Lucienne urges me to go to Paris, and then is frantically insistent that I attend a party given by her dear friend Houghton Graham. Lucienne hasn’t exchanged a civil word with Graham for ten years; nobody has, of course, but that’s beside the point. The point is that she desperately wanted me to attend that party.”
He took a long swallow of scotch, and set the glass down. “Item,” he said. “Who should appear at the party but Charles Raynaud, fresh from Mexico, and a touching reunion of old chaps takes place. Suddenly, quite naturally, you are at my side.”
Pierce sighed, squeezing Dominique’s neck tighter. “I knew, of course, that you were coming, Charles. That was why I had you investigated. I wanted to know everything about you that I could learn. About you and your venom business. I prepared myself as best I could.”
“Item,” Raynaud said, “you’re not making any sense.”
“Oh, but I am, Charles. Excellent sense. Lucienne has hired you, has taken pains to see that you accompany me, without my knowledge. That makes very, very good sense. And I am prepared, old buddy, to double her best offer.”
“What offer?”
“Come, come, Charles. Lucienne’s offer to have me killed. That’s why you’re here.”
“Is it?”
Pierce sighed. “It is.”
“You really believe that?”
“I know it, Charles.”
“As a matter of fact,” Raynaud said, choosing his words carefully, “she is eager to see you alive.”
“Bullshit.”
“Think about it.”
“Bullshit. She’s wanted me dead as long as she can remember.”
Raynaud shook his head. “No.”
“Then what?”
Raynaud said nothing. He stared in silence at Pierce, who held Dominique’s neck in one hand and a drink in his other.
“What is it, damn it?”
Raynaud said nothing.
“Tell me.”
Raynaud was thinking swiftly. He planned moves and countermoves, letting them flash through his mind. How much did Richard know? How much did Raynaud know?
“I can’t tell you,” Raynaud said.
“The hell you can’t I’m paying you two thousand dollars a day—”
“And frankly,” Raynaud said, “I don’t trust you as far as I can spit.”
Pierce stared at his drink, swirling it in the glass. “How much did she offer you?”
“To do what?”
“Kill me.”
“One hundred thousand dollars,” Raynaud said.
“The bitch. I’ll double it.”
Raynaud hesitated. “You haven’t got the money.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“When I inherit the estate. And that,” Richard said, “will happen if I remain alive.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, you will have two hundred thousand reasons to keep me alive.”
“No guarantee I’ll ever see the money.”
“That’s right.”
“Hardly satisfactory,” Raynaud said.
Pierce smiled wryly. “If I don’t pay up,” he said, “you can always kill me.”
“Not very lucrative.”
“But satisfying, I’m sure. Tell the truth: haven’t you wanted to kill me for a long time?”
“Off and on,” Raynaud said.
“You see?” Pierce laughed.
Raynaud got up and made himself another drink. He suddenly felt tired; things were too complicated. “There’s only one problem,” he said. “Lucienne didn’t hire me to kill you.”
“No?”
“No. She hired me to keep you alive.”
Pierce laughed. “That’s absurd. You believed her?”
“She wants to assure her guaranteed income of thirty-six thousand pounds a year.”
Pierce was stunned. He stared in silence, and finally said, “What guaranteed income?”
“The guaranteed income specified by the will.”
“There is none,” Pierce said.
“Yes. Three thousand pounds a month.”
“No,” Pierce said. “Look, I’ll show you. I have a copy of the will right here.”
He released Dominique, disappeared into the bedroom, and returned minutes later with a gray, cardboard-bound folder in his hand. Across the cover was typed: “Last Will and Testament of Herbert Edgar Pierce.”
Pierce flipped through the pages quickly, then stopped. “There are only two important passages. This is the first. It lists all the charities to which the estate will go in the event that the sole heir, Richard Albert Pierce, shall die as a consequence of unforeseen circumstance, medical or emotional illness, civil disaster, national emergency, accidents either on foot, or traveling in any motor vehicle, or by foul play.”
He paused. “Very clear on that.”
He continued on, turning pages. “The second passage is this one, which says that when Richard Albert Pierce shall inherit the estate, Lucienne Pierce née Ginoux shall relinquish all claims and rights to the estate, or any part thereof, including all properties, interests, royalties, leasing rights, stocks, bonds, common issues…”
He snapped the folder shut and handed it to Raynaud.
“Help yourself,” he said. “It’s slow reading, but fascinating in its way.”
Raynaud slipped the will under his arm, determined to read it slowly and carefully from beginning to end.
“But the point, old buddy,” Richard said, “is that she lied to you. And Lucienne never does anything without a reason.”
“But why?”
Pierce shrugged. “She wants me dead.”
“That wouldn’t help her.”
“It might,” Pierce said, “give her a moment of satisfaction. Think about it.” He glanced at his watch. “But don’t be too late in dressing. We have a party tonight.”
“Another one?”
“This is important. An opening at the Wheatstone Galleries for Julian Weiss.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Nobody has. But everyone will be there, positively everyone. An opening at the Wheatstone Galleries is not to be missed. Right?”
“Whatever you say.”
“That’s the boy,” Pierce said. He patted Dominique on the head. I never go anywhere without my bodyguard,” he said.
“Tonight,” Dominique said. “Do I come?”
“You come every night.” Pierce laughed.
“I mean, to the party.”
“Sorry, love. This is the boys’ night out.”
She pouted.
“Sorry, love. That’s the way it is.”
Raynaud sat in his room, smoking and reading the will. He did it slowly, going over several passages three and four times. As he read, he found himself feeling great respect for Herbert Pierce.
No fool, that man.
For example, Richard would not inherit full control of the estate, but rather would be given provisional control for a five-year period, subject to review by the board which could, however, only overrule him by unanimous decision.
There were other, equally cautious and astute clauses. In fact, the whole will was an elaborate system of checks and balances.
Yet there was nothing about Lucienne’s guaranteed income. Pierce was right: nothing at all.
Why had she lied to him?
What did she hope to gain by keeping Richard alive?
He went back over the will and read it more carefully. It was eight in the evening before he found the paragraph he was looking for. The one logical paragraph which made sense of everything.
Or, at least, nearly everything.
It was a long and cautiously worded paragraph, but it was clear enough in its intent. Richard could not inherit the estate if he were incarcerated in an institution of criminal correction, if he were hospitalized for serious medical illness, if he were hospitalized for emotional disturbances or disorders.
Under such circumstances, the estate would remain in the hands of Lucienne and the board, until such time as Richard were released from said institution, or until such time as he died, in which case the estate would go to charity.
In other words, if Richard were in the hospital, or in jail, things would continue as they always had.
That was Lucienne’s only way out.
And he was sure she was going to use it.
But how?
As he thought about it, he became convinced that the murder attempts were crucial to the whole business. The sideswiping in Paris; the little man in Soho; the gunshots in Belgravia.
He had to find out about them.
Now.
“What? Not coming with us?”
“I’ll join you there,” Raynaud said.
“But I might be killed,” Pierce grinned, “on the way.”
“Doubt it.”
“Charles, I really must—I say, you’re not going to run back to Lucienne, are you?”
“No,” Raynaud said. “I’m not.”
“When will it be?” Lucienne said, holding the phone tightly in her hand.
“In two days,” Black said. “The girl has just arrived. She is definitely quite lovely. Richard will be certain to seek her out”
“And the death?”
“In two days.”
“You’ll tell Richard about the girl before?”
“Oh, yes. I’m arranging that.”
“Make certain he is furious.”
“Oh.” Black laughed. “He will be. Don’t worry.”
When she had rung off, she smiled. She was not worried. Not about Black, not about Richard, not about anything.
Think of it: a vast scandal. Richard, about to lose his little project, because of a stock sale—a stock sale Lucienne had gone to great pains to engineer.
When Dominique died, and the police arrived, it would be a pretty little scene. Richard in financial trouble, and with a dead whore on his hands. His only companion, a smuggler from Mexico. The police would be investigating it for months.
And it would all come out. The bribes, the business, the sly moves, the illegal bank transfers.
She smiled, Richard would be lucky if he got away with twenty years. And Charles—poor Charles, sitting in the dock trying to convince the jury that Lucienne had hired him to keep Richard alive. Such an absurd idea! No one would ever believe him, and he hadn’t a shred of proof. She had been quite careful about that.
At the very least, he would be deported. It would be that, or a jail sentence.
And that left only Jonathan. Fat old Jonathan, scheming away. She was certain he had some untimely end planned for her. But it wouldn’t work, because she would see that he was implicated in the scandal. It shouldn’t be hard. After all, he was the one who would kill Dominique.
She laughed: child’s play, all these men. Mere child’s play.
2. MITCHELL
JANE MITCHELL STOOD BEFORE the mirror in her room at the Connaught and combed her long, straight blond hair. She decided as she combed that she was tired of it, and ready for a change. After all, that was why she had come to London: for a change.
There was a knock on the door. That would be room service.
“Come in.”
A small, dark fellow, rather timid-looking, peered around the door. “Lait grenadine?”
“Yes,” she said. “Put it on the table.”
He did, and brought over the bill. She signed it, adding a three-shilling tip. She wondered if that would be all right; she was never sure how much to tip in foreign countries. And the natives always complained that American tourists overtipped.
Jane did not want to be thought of as an American tourist, or even a tourist at all. She wanted to blend into the scene, to merge, to lose herself. And to forget. Forget New York, forget the whole bit.
And particularly to forget Cooper.
She continued brushing. The telephone rang, and she picked it up with her free hand. “Hello?”
“Jane? Peter Dickerson.”
She smiled. He would never say simply “Peter”; he would be stuffy and formal until the day he died. Maybe even afterward.
“Yes, Peter.”
“How’s your room?”
“Fine. Great.”
“That’s good. The hotel is crowded this time of year, and I was worried—”
“It’s a fine room, Peter.” Looking out the window, she could see the quaint poulterer across the street, and Grosvenor Square farther down the block.
“Good,” he said. There was an uncomfortable pause.
“Anything else on your mind?” she asked, hoping that he would cancel out of dinner. She couldn’t take him at dinner, not after six hours next to him on the plane, listening while he made polite, stuffy conversation with his briefcase set primly on his knees.
“Look, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make dinner. There are some last-minute things to check before the meetings in the morning. Which reminds me: do you want to be present?”
“For what?”
“The meetings.”
“God, no.”
“All right, then. I’ll call you late tomorrow. Is there anything I can do in the meantime?”
“No, Peter. Thanks.”
She hung up and continued brushing. Poor Peter. So polite around the clients, so proper. And he really wasn’t bad looking, all things considered. But dull. Dull as hell.
God, Jane thought, what did Mrs. Dickerson do? Or was she used to it by now, after twenty years of solid suburban marriage to a solid New York lawyer.
Well, at least she was free for the evening, and the next day as well. Jane Mitchell did not want to spend her two weeks in London with Peter Dickerson. She was perfectly content to let him handle the business, so long as he left her alone. Anyway, she was useless in discussions of stocks and money; she neither understood nor cared about it. The New York firm of Whitman, Lockhardt and Dickerson acted as trustees of her estate. They were paid to take care of her money.
In theory, they were also paid to take care of her. There was a clause in the will about “moral and personal advice” which Daddy had inserted, and for a time it had caused her no end of hell. When she had been involved with number three, Carter James, old man Whitman had taken it upon himself to drive up to Poughkeepsie and advise her to break it off. Not good for a Vassar girl to be messing around with a producer. Did she know what kind of man he was? How many office secretaries he was seeing, along with her?
She had been furious with old Whitman. Only much later was he proven correct: Carter was a skunk, a handsome lousy skunk, just as Whitman had said.
But it was to Whitman’s credit that he never mentioned Carter to her again, never held it over her head. Obviously, Whitman was smarter than he looked. And Dickerson, too, was probably smarter than he looked. At least, Jane hoped so.
On the plane, she had toyed with the idea of seducing him. He was so proper he infuriated her. He had gone to Harvard and to Yale Law School and had married a Smith girl and had three nice little blond girls that he was fond of, but not too much because he didn’t want to give them complexes. Dickerson was so damned logical. He was thought-out. He probably didn’t even go to the john without considering the pros and cons first. He weighed everything, including himself. Once a day, he hopped onto the scale. She had been told that fact somewhere after the third martini, and the image of middle-aged Dickerson stepping onto the scale each morning before stepping onto the 8:03 from Darien was so absurd to her, so hideous and so ludicrous, that she began to think of seducing him. It might jar him into becoming a human being.
But she didn’t, of course. She had resisted the impulse and had listened to him quietly and properly, with her hands folded in her lap. And she thought about her own father, who had had a high opinion of Whitman, Lockhardt. Her father had once explained that just because everybody in the firm acted as if they’d had a curtain rod shoved up their ass didn’t mean the
y weren’t clever and perceptive. It had taken Jane a long time to decide that he had been right.
A year after her parents died, Whitman had recommended selling a lot of stock in oil and buying into some damned firm that made copying machines. It had seemed absurd to Jane, but she went along. Now she had fifty thousand shares of Xerox, one of the fastest-growing assets in her holdings. The other recommendations of the trustees had been equally astute, so that a month ago, when they advised her to sell her stock in Pierce Copper and Brass, Ltd., she had readily agreed.
And when she heard that the stock sale required a trip to London, she had gone along, though it was not strictly necessary. She could have signed over power of attorney for the transaction. But she wanted to see London, and she wanted to get out of New York.
She sighed, licked her eyebrow pencil, and started to do her eyes. No false lashes, she decided. Everything was going to be different. New eyeshadow color, new lipstick, new dress, everything.
When she finished with the makeup, she stared at her face in the mirror. She looked good, though tired: still on New York time, she reminded herself. At least her eyes were not bloodshot. That usually happened when she was tired.
She went to the closet and selected a dress. She wanted something outrageous, and finally chose a sheer dress of black and white checks. She slipped into it and looked in the mirror. Christ, she thought, it barely covers it. If I sit down, I’m finished.
George would have liked this dress. It would have appealed to him. But then George was a skunk, a real prick of a human being. Handsome, to be sure, but underneath a complete louse. George had been number five. She’d broken off him two months ago.
Thinking of George depressed her slightly. She remembered numbers one, two, three, and four—they were no better. Skunks, the whole bunch. Handsome, charming, smooth-talking skunks. Number one had been in advertising, number two and three were television people—producers—and number four was an actor. George had been independently wealthy, and didn’t do anything. Except louse up girls.
A real prick.
She hoped to hell she met some decent men in London.
At twenty-seven, Jane Mitchell was a startlingly attractive young woman. She was very American-looking, tall, blond, and leggy the way only American girls could be leggy. With a straight nose and fine eyebrows, her face had an understated, regal look, marred only by a slight tic in her left eye which became exaggerated when she was upset or drunk.
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