Death on the Agenda

by Patricia Moyes

  Henry went out of the rest room, and into the filing room, where he submitted to the indignity of having his fingers rolled in ink and pressed onto a card. Then he went back to the conference room.

  With the exception of Annette, all the staff and delegates were reassembled there. A sudden and complete silence fell as Henry walked in. He looked around at each face in turn, and wondered which of them was the face of a murderer: a murderer who had, what was more, apparently taken pains to pin the crime onto Henry himself.

  Aloud he said, “Well, that seems to be that. We are free to go now, and I suggest that we do so. There’s no sense in trying to work today. The subcommittee will start work at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  He turned on his heel and walked out, fighting his way against the silence as if it had been a physical obstruction.

  Then he took a taxi back to the hotel.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE HOTEL DINING ROOM was almost deserted as Henry sat down to an unwanted lunch. He would dearly have liked to take the small amount of food he felt able to face in one of the more intimate little restaurants of the old town, but he felt that he must stay in the hotel, as he was more than half-expecting a visitor.

  He missed Emmy sorely, and cursed the luck that should have taken her, today of all days, out to lunch in some entirely unknown direction. He longed for her comforting presence, and at the same time dreaded having to break the news to her, for Emmy had been fond of John, and Annette was her friend.

  Henry tried to swallow another mouthful of what tasted to him like sawdust but was, in fact, an excellent grilled trout. On the table beside him lay a small notebook and a ball-point pen; he kept interrupting his meal to make an entry. He smiled a little grimly to think that Alfredo Spezzi, with his passion for timetables, would approve of this activity.

  The fact was that Henry’s mind was working with less than its customary efficiency. Last night at Paul Hampton’s party, and this morning before his gruesome discovery, there had been no thought in his head of recalling exactly who did or said what, and to whom, and when. People and places and voices swam mistily in his brain, merging and mingling in confusion. Hence the notebook, an attempt to sort out a coherent pattern from the chaos. As he wrote a pattern of some sort did indeed begin to emerge from the welter of unrelated facts, but it was vague and blurred in outline and full of gaps. In any case, Henry was not at all sure that he liked the look of the picture that was emerging.

  So absorbed was he in his work that the waiter had to tell him twice that he was wanted on the telephone before this simple fact penetrated his consciousness. He closed the notebook and walked out to the phone booth in the hall.

  “Henry? This is Bill Parkington.” The American voice was jagged with worry, and had lost its normal, cheerful boom. “Are you busy right now, Henry?”

  “No. I was hoping you might call.”

  “I think we ought to get together. Can I come to your hotel?”

  “Of course. I’m just finishing lunch. Come and have a coffee.”

  “Be seeing you.”

  The line went dead, and Henry wandered thoughtfully back toward the dining room. The problem which was chiefly exercising his mind was that of the note in his raincoat pocket. Of course, anybody could have put it there, as he had pointed out to Colliet. Any of the men, that is. A woman would have risked exciting comment, to say the least, if she had gone into the men’s cloakroom. No, how it got there was no great mystery, and everyone knew which was Henry’s coat, for he had worn the same lightweight nylon raincoat each day since the conference opened. The mystery was how and when John was induced to write it, for Henry felt convinced that the handwriting was perfectly genuine. Both Annette and Mary, independent witnesses, agreed that John was under the impression that he had an appointment with Henry. This was confirmed by his last, unfinished note. Somehow, someone had made contact with John Trapp between last night’s party and this morning, had conveyed a spurious message purporting to come from Henry, and had secured that damning note in return. There was, however, a brighter side to this dark speculation: whoever had contacted John might well have left a trail, and it would still be fresh. As soon as he had seen Bill, Henry decided, he would follow up this line of pursuit.

  It was then that he remembered, with a stab of annoyance, that he did not know John’s home address. He went back into the telephone booth and turned to the T’s in the directory. It was not difficult to find. “Trapp, John S. Fonct. int. 5 Chemin des Chênes.” Henry made a quick note of the address, and looked up to see Bill Parkington coming in through the revolving doors from the hotel foyer.

  “Where can we talk?” Bill asked abruptly with no preliminary greeting.

  “The coffee here is excellent,” said Henry, “and I haven’t quite finished my...”

  Bill gave him a brief look. “We can’t possibly talk here,” he said. “We’d better go out of town somewhere, by the lake.”

  “Good heavens.” Henry deliberately ironed everything out of his voice except a caricature of British imperturbability. “That seems rather melodramatic. And in any case, it’ll take some time. Have you any idea when the trains go?”

  “I have a car.” Bill was clearly not amused. “Come on, for Pete’s sake. Let’s get out of here.”

  Henry made no further protest, but followed Bill into the street, where a blue Volkswagen with Geneva license plates was parked. Bill opened the door.

  “Get in,” he said. He could not have been more emphatic if he had been holding a gun to Henry’s ribs. Henry got in.

  Bill jumped in beside him and switched on the ignition, shifted gears, and released the clutch in what seemed to be a single movement. The little car roared away into the traffic, as inconspicuous as a couple of thousand exactly similar vehicles in the city.

  “Where are we going?” Henry inquired.

  “Near Belle Rive,” replied Bill. This was the only remark he made until some twenty minutes later, when he drew the car to a halt at the end of a winding lane. Ahead, a small wooden jetty stepped shakily out into the limpid water of the lake. There was a little pebbly beach under the shadow of tall trees. The place was quite deserted.

  “Now,” said Bill, “we can talk.”

  “Yes,” said Henry, and waited.

  “First of all,” Bill went on, “I think you ought to tell me about John Trapp.”

  Henry made a small, helpless gesture. “I know nothing whatsoever about him.”

  “Look, Henry,” said Bill, with a kind of desperation, “I’m on your side. I mean that. I may be wrong, and I’m in a minority of one, but I don’t believe you killed the man.”

  “Thank you,” said Henry. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “I’ve come here to try and help you, but I can’t do a thing unless you’ll be frank and tell me all you know.”

  “I’ve already done so.”

  There was a pause. Then Bill said, “Hell, Henry. Don’t be this way. Look now. Nobody knew about the leakage of information last night except you and me. This morning Trapp knew about it. The note in the typewriter makes that clear enough. So, by a simple process of deduction, you must have told him.”

  “Unless you did, or he found out for himself.”

  Bill took no notice, but went on. “You told him, and you made a date to meet him this morning, as you had no chance to talk to him last night. It’s perfectly clear from the note that Trapp knew who the culprit was.” Bill paused. He was speaking slowly and deliberately, wrestling with each logical proposition in turn. “For some reason you didn’t keep your appointment. Was that deliberate, or were you just late?”

  “I suppose it’s no use my telling you yet again that I had no appointment?”

  Bill shook his head in slow exasperation. “You see,” he said. “We get no place.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The guy’s dead and I’m very sorry about it, but my concern is that security leak. I want to know what Trapp knew, and why he had t
o be killed before he could spill the beans. You’re the only person who could help me, and you won’t.”

  “I can’t.”

  “By taking this attitude you’re just simply pushing me into the other camp.”

  “Which other camp?”

  “Lenoir and Moranta and the rest of them. I think you should know that they’ve got it all figured out, and God knows they may be right. This is the way they see it. You had a date with Trapp, and you didn’t dare keep it. Why not? Because you had a guilty conscience.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Henry. “Do they all know about the security leak now?”

  “Sure they do.” Bill looked a little uncomfortable. “There was that note in the typewriter, you see. I telephoned Washington from the Palais after I’d seen Colliet, and they said to go ahead and give the Swiss Police all the information they needed. So I reckoned the delegates should know. I told them while you were being questioned.”

  “I see. Well, go on. I have a guilty conscience because I myself am responsible for the leakage of information. Is that it?”

  “More or less,” admitted Bill, embarrassed. “The way they figure it, when you eventually did show up this morning, you decided to go in and bluff it out with Trapp. You’re not even certain how much he knows. But as soon as you get into that office and read what he’s writing, you know the game’s up. So you kill him.”

  Henry laughed outright. “That’s the weakest story I’ve ever heard,” he said. “What about the dagger?”

  “Precisely. The dagger.” Bill slid around in the seat of the car to look directly at Henry. “They’re puzzled about the dagger. They can only think you took it on impulse last night, knowing this interview was coming up. But of course, they don’t know what I know, and I haven’t told them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told you I was on your side. I still am. But you’ll need to convince me. Look at it this way. Suppose—just suppose—their story was true. Suppose you were responsible for the security leak. As soon as I told you last night that the FBI were wise to it, you’d have known things were getting mighty dangerous. I seem to suspect Trapp, and that gives you a little hope. You talk to him last night, and from something he says you realize that he’s wise to you. You make this date for the morning, and you decide then and there to kill him. You take the dagger. It’s only later that you remember the security on our new suite of offices, and you realize that if you turn up at nine, with only you and Trapp checked in through the door, you’ll have no hope of getting away with it. So you don’t arrive until later, when the place is full of people. Then you walk in and kill the man. You meant, of course, to get the paper out of the typewriter, slip out of the office again, and let someone else find him. But Moranta comes into the office before you have time to do any of that. You’re virtually caught red-handed.”

  Henry considered this statement in gloomy silence. Then he said, “You seem to have it all worked out. Perhaps you’d better go straight over to the other camp and have done with it.”

  “I hoped you wouldn’t take that attitude.”

  “By the way,” said Henry, “have you told Colliet about the security leak yet?”

  “Not yet. I’m seeing him this afternoon.”

  “And will you tell him that I knew about it last night?”

  Bill looked extremely awkward. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to,” he said.

  “And did you tell Colliet this morning that I was planning to speak to John Trapp?”

  Bill looked away and lit a cigarette. “I didn’t mention what it was about,” he said. “Hell, I had to tell the guy.” There was a long, oppressive pause. “Look, Henry, I deliberately came to see you before I went to police headquarters. If you’d just tell me all you know, we could maybe clear this thing up here and now and I wouldn’t have to...to make things worse for you.”

  “My dear Bill,” said Henry, reasonably, “put yourself in my position. I didn’t kill Trapp. I went into that office and found him dead. I also found a pretty ingenious scheme for putting the blame on me. That means that somebody in that suite of offices is not only a murderer, but has it in for me in no uncertain way. I don’t know who that person is, and until I do, I’m bound to suspect everybody.”

  “You don’t seriously mean”—Bill’s ingenuous face under its thatch of red hair was comic in its shocked incredulity. “You don’t think that I...?”

  “Well,” said Henry, “just where were you when John was killed?”

  “In the filing room. I was checking a point for my speech.”

  “Anybody with you?”

  “Well...no.”

  “You see what I mean.” Henry sighed. “I’m afraid this isn’t a very satisfactory conversation we’re having, or not having. I have a lot to do. Do you mind if we go back now?”

  Bill suddenly smiled. “Gee, I’m sorry about all this, Henry. I guess I just hadn’t thought of it from your point of view.”

  Henry smiled back. “I’m just as keen to catch the informer as you are,” he said, “but I must catch the murderer first, from sheer self-preservation. I think they may well turn out to be the same person.”

  “Such as you,” said Bill, with a grin.

  “Or you,” said Henry.

  Bill started the engine, and roared the little car up the lane. As they approached the city on the lakeside road, Bill said, “Back to the hotel?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Henry, “I have a call to make. Do you know where the Chemin des Chênes might be?”

  Bill frowned. “This is my first time in Geneva,” he said. “I know the Route de Chêne, but Chemin—that’s a pretty small sort of street in these parts. I can’t help you.”

  “Never mind,” said Henry. “I’ll find it.”

  “There’s a gendarme on the corner,” said Bill. “We could ask him.”

  “I think not,” said Henry, “if you don’t mind. Just drop me here. Thanks a lot.”

  Bill looked at him curiously, but all he said was, “O.K. So be it.” He drew the car into the curb and leaned across Henry to open the door for him. “See you in the morning.”

  “I hope so,” said Henry.

  ***

  The Chemin des Chênes turned out to be one of the small, steep streets which lace Geneva, climbing between one main road and the next. Number 5 was a small, modern block of flats, built of white reinforced concrete, with jutting balconies angled to catch the sun. There was a gendarme standing in the glass-and-marble hallway.

  Henry walked over to the row of letter boxes and glanced quickly along it. It took no more than a flick of the eye to see the box marked “J. Trapp. 6 ième.” At the same time, he noted mentally that the sixth floor was also occupied by M. et Mme. Zeigler, P. Hirt, and Dr. A. Mahoumi, Avocat. The gendarme, who had been contemplating without any apparent pleasure a large rubber plant in the corner of the hall, now strolled casually over in Henry’s direction. Henry turned away from the letter boxes and went over to a door marked “F. Novari. Concierge.” He rang the bell. The gendarme edged a little closer.

  As the door of the concierge’s flat opened, the wail of a small child filled the hall, and Henry was struck smartly on the knee by a large red rubber ball, which he retrieved expertly, and held out as if it were a peace offering to the woman who stood inside the door. She was young and dark and disheveled, and she wore bedroom slippers and her hair in curlers. Before either she or Henry could say a word, the owner of the ball, a black-eyed and obstreperous boy of three or four, made a dash along the corridor, yelling imprecations in an unidentifiable tongue. The woman, with the skill of long practice, put out a hand and caught the child, delivering an abrupt scolding in shrill Italian as she did so. Then she said to Henry, “Monsieur?”

  They confronted each other, Henry holding the ball and the woman holding the child, who began to yell again. Henry smiled, and said in Italian, “Signora Novari? I think this ball must belong to your son.”

  “Yes, the little
demon.” The woman softened visibly, hearing her native tongue.

  “May I come in?” said Henry.

  The child was struggling and shouting.

  “Yes, indeed, signore. Please do.”

  Henry stepped inside, and the door was slammed in the inquisitive face of the gendarme. Not for the first time, Henry blessed his facility with European languages.

  Inside the flat, which smelled deliciously of garlic and olive oil and fried tomatoes, Madame Novari restored the ball to her son, cuffed him affectionately on the side of the head, screamed at him, and then propelled him firmly into the bedroom and slammed the door. Then she ushered Henry into the overfurnished living room.

  “I’m afraid my husband is out,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “I came to inquire if there might be an apartment vacant in the building,” said Henry, lying shamelessly. He knew enough about the acute shortage of accommodations in Geneva to realize that this would be a commonplace enough excuse to disarm suspicion.

  Madame Novari lifted her arms and shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of hopelessness. “An apartment? It is like asking for gold, signore. If ever we get an apartment free, it goes to friends of friends of...”

  “Mr. Trapp’s apartment will be free, of course,” said Henry, conversationally.

  “Free? Why should it be free? Is he going away?”

  So she had not yet been told. Henry imagined that her husband might well be with the police now, and marveled at his good fortune.

  “Someone told me he was leaving,” he said. “Perhaps I misunderstood.”

  “I think you must have, signore. Mr. Trapp is one of our oldest tenants: he has been here since the block was built four years ago. He would certainly have told me if he was leaving. He is a charming gentleman. A friend of yours?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “At least, a colleague. We’re working in the same department at the Palais des Nations.” He paused, thinking how to phrase his next gambit. Finally he said, “Of course, I realize that this wouldn’t be a very convenient place to live, working at the Palais. It must be a complicated journey each day without a car.”