Death on the Agenda

by Patricia Moyes

  “I notice too,” said Henry, “that you yourself are apparently exempt from police instructions.”

  There was a distinct pause before Gamboni answered, but when he did so, it was in a voice of angry defiance. All he said was, “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, well,” said Henry, “let’s go.” He walked out through the door which Gamboni held open for him. As soon as they were in the corridor, the butler relocked the door and put the key into his pocket.

  Henry went back to the salon in a thoughtful frame of mind. Gamboni’s attitude was strictly correct. He was obeying orders, and would naturally be shocked and displeased to find a stranger wandering in forbidden territory. All the same, the circumstances did not seem to warrant the degree of sheer anger that the man had shown. It was puzzling, and interesting. No less interesting was the definite information that the dagger had been missing after the party. It was, of course, only what Henry had expected, but this decisive testimony formed yet another small piece of the jigsaw which Henry was patiently assembling in his mind.

  He found Gerda, Emmy, and Alfredo morosely drinking apéritifs. He was able to reassure them as to Natasha’s condition, but did not feel that he could confide to the Spezzis the true cause of her earlier distress. Since they were both bursting with curiosity, the atmosphere was uneasy throughout the excellent dinner which was served to the four of them in the long, elegant dining room. It was typical of Natasha, Henry thought crossly, to use somebody like Gerda as a convenient shoulder to cry on, and then dismiss her without a word of explanation, throwing in a free meal as compensation, and leaving the unresolved personal situation to be handled by someone else. It was also typical that Gerda’s very natural resentment should be directed at Henry rather than at the absent, languishing Natasha.

  After dinner, however, when Emmy and Gerda had left the men to their port, Henry did manage to persuade Alfredo to give him his account of the events of the morning. This did not add much to what Henry already knew. Alfredo declared that he had arrived at the conference suite at about twenty past nine. He had not been the first. He could not say for certain who was there before him, but he had noticed Helène Brochet talking to Zwemmer in the conference room as he came in. He had gone straight to the cloakroom, where he had been followed almost immediately by Bill Parkington, who had hung up his coat, arranged his papers, talked a little, and gone out.

  “That was when you came in, Enrico,” Alfredo went on. “Then you went out, and just as I was leaving, Lenoir came in. I went up the corridor to go into the office, for I wished to get a new notebook, but Mary Benson came out of the interpreters’ room and told me that Trapp was in the office—I could hear that for myself—and that he did not want to be disturbed. That was when you were talking to the secretary further down the passage. So I went on into the conference room. By that time it was empty; I don’t know where Helène and Zwemmer had gone. I found my place at the table and sat down to arrange my papers. Then a few minutes later Zwemmer came in and made some remark about the agenda. I can’t really remember what he said. I think he asked me if I knew whether there was to be a change in it or not, and I said I had heard nothing, but that he should ask you. We talked for a few minutes, and then we heard Moranta shouting murder. Zwemmer was standing near the door, and he rushed out in a panic. By the time I had got out to the corridor, everyone else seemed to be crowding into the office. That’s all I know.”

  “I couldn’t help noticing,” said Henry, “that you seemed rather less taken aback than anybody else.”

  Alfredo shrugged. “A leak in security always creates an explosive situation,” he said. “And people who deal in narcotic drugs are inclined to violence, as you know well.”

  Henry sat up very straight. “You already knew about the security leak this morning, when Trapp was killed?”

  Spezzi smiled. “You are sometimes naïve, Enrico,” he said. “Our friend Parkington is sincere and enthusiastic, but he cannot keep a secret, and his conversation is transparently easy to analyze. He did not tell me in so many words, but from what he said in the cloakroom this morning, I was in no doubt. Heaven knows how many of the others gathered the same information in the same way. Bill was worried, and he couldn’t hide it. I suppose you think that you were the only person who knew, but I am afraid there may have been others.” Alfredo twirled the beautifully cut wine glass in his long fingers for a moment, and then lifted it and drained it in a sudden movement.

  “Ah, well,” he said, “life is like that. Untidy. I wish you luck, Enrico. If I can help, you know you have only to ask me. Shall we go back to the salon now?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE NEXT DAY STARTED with a dreadful parody of normality. Even a murder is no excuse for holding up an international conference, and the delegates and staff assembled as usual at the Palais in the morning. At least, almost as usual, but not quite; for the suite of offices in which John Trapp had died was now out of bounds and swarmed with policemen and plain-clothes experts, who could be glimpsed through the glass panels of the locked door as they went about their business of detection. The subcommittee and its staff were directed to another, similar suite on the floor above.

  Henry got up early, and arrived at the Palais soon after nine. He was sad but unsurprised to be denied access to the scene of the crime, but somewhat consoled by the sight of the same lugubrious doorkeeper guarding the entrance to the new quarters. He produced his official pass and said, “Am I the first to arrive?”

  “Yes, monsieur.” The man was obviously bored and longing to talk. “What a terrible affair! I couldn’t sleep all night, thinking of it. Poor Monsieur Trapp. We all knew him well. He was greatly loved.” He blew his nose loudly. “My wife was distraught when I told her. Couldn’t stop crying. Of course, she never actually met him, but she is sympathetic. And then the gendarmes. Questions and questions. Anybody would think they suspected me of murder. I told the Inspector, ‘I’ve been eight years at the Palais, monsieur,’ I said, ‘ever since I retired from the Post Office. I’ve got a trained memory. I don’t make mistakes. In any case,’ I said, ‘it’s all written in my book, like it should be. That cannot tell a lie, eh?’ I had him there. Ah. well.” The old man shook his head. “Now my little book has become important evidence, Exhibit A, I shouldn’t wonder, and we start afresh.”

  With conscious self-satisfaction in a job well and accurately done, he looked up at the clock, and then wrote carefully, on the first page of a brand-new notebook, “Tuesday, 9th May,” and underneath, “0902. M. Tibbett.”

  “So the police have taken the book you used yesterday, have they?” Henry asked with exaggerated innocence. “I wonder what they want it for?”

  “To see the times when people arrived, monsieur.”

  “But with your trained memory, you could tell them that without looking at the book, I’ll be bound.”

  The old man reddened with pleasure but shook his head. “No, no, monsieur. Not the exact times, that would be too much. But I could tell them the order in which the ladies and gentlemen arrived.”

  “Will you tell me?” Henry asked. He saw no point in beating about the bush anymore.

  To his relief, the doorkeeper answered at once, “Of course, monsieur.” He threw back his grizzled head and closed his eyes tight in an effort of concentration. “The first, of course, was poor Monsieur Trapp. That was just before nine o’clock. He was in a hurry, I thought. He asked me if you had arrived, and I told him no, he was the first. Then a few minutes later Mlle. Benson came. After her, a little gap, and then Mlle. Brochet and Monsieur Zwemmer, together. Then came Monsieur Spezzi. After that, people came quickly, one after the other. Mlle. Delacroix, Monsieur Parkington, yourself. A little gap again, and then Monsieur Lenoir. Last of all was Monsieur Moranta. He came in and walked straight from here up to the office, monsieur, and then we heard his cry of murder. That was how matters arranged themselves.” He opened his eyes triumphantly. “You see, it is all there, in my head. I told the gendarmes.” />
  “Did they not believe you?” Henry asked.

  “Oh, they believed me in the end.” The doorkeeper chuckled. “With the book, how could they argue? They have no sense. I shouldn’t be surprised if they come from Neuchâtel, most of them. Can’t tell who you’re getting in the force these days. Figure to yourself, monsieur, they tried to tell me I had remembered wrongly, and that you had come in earlier and gone out again. I soon convinced them they were wrong. I’m not sure one of them wasn’t from Saint-Gall.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Henry. “You’ve helped me a lot.” He walked down the corridor, unable to suppress a smile at the time-honored contempt which the citizens of any one Swiss canton have for those of the others. He was still smiling as he went into the office.

  It bore an uncanny resemblance to the room in which he had found John Trapp dead. The layout and furniture were identical, and all the documents, files and equipment had been neatly transferred to their new quarters. The prim row of dark gray filing cabinets, the stacks of gaudily colored cardboard dossiers, the filing trays and the newly sharpened pencils were all there, exactly as they had been the day before. An identical typewriter stood on the heavy oak desk, with a virgin block of typing paper and a packet of carbons beside it. Henry looked around the room. For a moment it crossed his mind that there was something missing, but for the life of him he could not think what, and he dismissed the idea as nonsense. The only thing that was missing was John’s large, limp body in the swivel chair.

  The door opened, and a girl whom Henry had never seen before walked in, a short, dark, self-possessed little person in a navy blue cotton dress.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” she said briskly. “I am Marcelle Dunant, the new secretary. I understand there are some changes in the agenda to be typed before the meeting opens.”

  “New secretary?” Henry repeated. “Where’s Annette, I mean, Mlle. Delacroix?”

  “She is ill, monsieur. I have taken over.” Marcelle put down her handbag and made a quick, expert tour of the office, glancing at files, opening drawers, checking supplies. She reminded Henry of a small, efficient cat inspecting new quarters. Then she sat down at the desk, removed the cover of the typewriter, and said, “Everything seems to be in order. May I have the revisions now?”

  Feeling slow and clumsy, Henry extricated the scribbled-over copy of the agenda from the file in which some unknown, businesslike hand had deposited it. Marcelle glanced at it, nodded briefly, and inserted sheets of paper and carbon into the typewriter. The silence was ripped by metallic clicking. Marcelle had taken over. Henry wandered out into the corridor.

  To tell the truth, he felt aimless and useless. Apart from a desire to speak to the doorkeeper, a procedure he knew would not take many minutes, he had had no very clear idea of why he had come to the Palais so early. The unacknowledged motive was probably a desire to escape from his own melancholy company, to get the day started at all costs. Now it was still only ten past nine, and it was unlikely that other people would arrive before half past at the earliest. Henry felt isolated and unhappy, standing in the empty passage with the insistent clicking of the typewriter behind him (another bitter echo of yesterday), and no sign of human company except for the doorkeeper, who was now sitting in his little glass box, half hidden behind a copy of La Suisse.

  Consequently it was with great pleasure that Henry saw the entrance door of the suite opening. The watchdog lowered his newspaper and got up. Mary Benson came in.

  Of all the delegates and staff, Henry could think of no more welcome arrival. Mary looked cool and crisp in her lime-yellow linen suit. Her auburn hair was coiled into a shining chignon which was impeccably neat without being in any way unfeminine. To Henry she seemed the embodiment of attractive, sympathetic common sense. He could not help contrasting her admirable qualities with the machinelike efficiency of Marcelle on the one hand, and the super-feminine, hysterical abandon of Annette and Natasha on the other. To do Henry justice, it never even crossed his mind that he might be falling in love with Mary. It was with the pure pleasure of seeing a friend that he walked down the corridor toward her, saying, “Mary. I’m so glad you’re here. Come and talk to me.”

  Mary hesitated, and then smiled. “In a minute, Inspector. I’ll just dispose of these.” She indicated her shorthand typewriter and the trim portable tape recorder that she carried, and went into the interpreters’ room. Henry followed her.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been working overtime again,” he said.

  Mary began sorting the papers on her desk. In a light, steady voice, she said, “Working is better than brooding. Anyhow, there was a lot to do.” She picked up a sheaf of papers and glanced through them. “I had a chance yesterday to catch up on a backlog of work. You’d be surprised how much talking you people do, Inspector. I had half-a-dozen tapes to type.”

  “I didn’t know you worked from a tape recorder,” said Henry.

  “I don’t. At least, I only use it as a check when I’m working on my own, as I am now. The tapes I mean come from this little brute.” She gave an affectionate pat to the small shorthand typewriter on the desk, which was fed with narrow cylindrical rolls of white paper, reminiscent of those used in cash registers.

  “It seems very hard that you have to take work home,” said Henry.

  “Home? From a secret conference?” Mary gave him a reproving look. “I certainly didn’t take it home. I just came back here and worked in the afternoon, that’s all.” She saw Henry’s eyes move toward the shorthand typewriter, and added, “I take my equipment home because it’s my personal property and my livelihood. A verbatim reporter’s typewriter is like a tennis player’s racket or a musician’s instrument; the two are never separated. But I can assure you it went home empty. All the tapes and papers from a secret conference have to be handed in here, and they’re burned.”

  “Oh,” said Henry, rather bleakly. He had, in fact, been toying not very optimistically with the idea that the leakage might have occurred through some charwoman getting hold of secret waste paper. Now this last hope disappeared. It had to be one of the delegates or staff. He sat down on the window sill and lit a cigarette. Mary busied herself with her work.

  There was a long silence, during which Henry considered a number of conversational opening gambits. At last he decided to be blunt and to the point. “I suppose you know,” he said, “that they think I killed John Trapp.”

  “Yes.” Mary spoke quietly, without looking up.

  “You heard them talking about it in the rest room yesterday.”

  “I could hardly avoid it.”

  “Who was doing the talking?”

  Still with her back half turned toward him, Mary said, “Oh, Monsieur Lenoir and Señor Moranta, mostly. They said you were the only person who had the opportunity.”

  “Do you think I killed him?” Henry asked.

  “Of course not, Inspector.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Henry. “As it happens, I didn’t.”

  “I’m certain you didn’t.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, I mean...” Mary hesitated. “You’re just not the sort of person to...” She stopped.

  “Then who do you think did? I’d be interested to hear your ideas.”

  Mary did not answer at once, and Henry realized that she was deeply embarrassed. He did not blame her. This was the first time that he had spoken to her in any but a purely professional capacity, and the subject was, to say the least, a delicate one. He knew that she was hating the whole conversation, but his need for sympathy and information overrode his natural reticence.

  “Who?” he asked again.

  “I’ve no idea at all, Inspector. How could I possibly know?”

  “I just wondered if perhaps you might have noticed anything. People often give themselves away by little things.”

  Mary made a pretense of sorting some documents, and then, suddenly and surprisingly, she burst out, “The whole place is buzzin
g with horrible rumors, and nobody really knows anything at all. You should have seen the way people looked at me when I came in to work yesterday afternoon, as if I were a criminal. This damnable atmosphere of suspicion is intolerable. I don’t see how we can be expected to work like this.”

  “Nor do I,” said Henry. He felt unaccountably elated at having broken down her reserve. “But the only way we can be rid of it is to find out the truth. That’s what I’m trying to do. Will you help me?”

  “Of course, Inspector, if I can.”

  “I wish you’d call me Henry.” Mary said nothing, and he went on. “First of all, can we go over your recollection of what happened yesterday morning?”

  “Must we?”

  “Please, Mary.”

  “Very well. I can’t tell you much. I got here early, so as to have that transcript all ready for you to check. I thought I’d be the first to arrive, but when I went into the office, John was already there. He said he had a date with you, and I said that I had one, too, and that I considered I had a prior claim. I did notice that he seemed terribly nervous and on edge. He kept walking up and down, and then he looked at his watch and said, ‘Well, if the bloody man isn’t going to turn up...’ and then he said, ‘Mary, will you be an angel and see that nobody disturbs me until Henry comes? I’ll have to write it down, and it’s not for anyone else’s eyes.’ He sat down at the desk and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about, but it was none of my business. So I just said, ‘All right,’ and went out. He didn’t answer. He’d started to type by then. So I came in here. I had the door open, and when people began to arrive I stopped one or two of them from going into the office. I think that’s all. Then you came along and we checked the manuscript and...well, you know the rest.”

  “You mean,” said Henry, “that you had the office door under surveillance from the time you left John until...when?”