Death on the Agenda

by Patricia Moyes

  “Herr Zwemmer,” said Paul Hampton. “you may say and do what you like to me, but I ask you to show some mercy to my wife, if you know the meaning of the word.”

  “Mr. Hampton, I am moved.” Zwemmer turned slightly to look Paul Hampton full in the face. “I had no idea...”

  It was at this moment that they heard the gentle scrunch of rubber on gravel as the Rolls came back into the drive. Henry felt a moment of sheer panic. It was impossible that Gamboni could have taken Spezzi to a hospital and returned so soon. What, then, had become of Alfredo? He thought of Gerda, and his spirit sank under the weight of intolerable responsibility. If only he had known sooner.

  The front door opened, and banged shut again. Nobody breathed. Then the door of the salon opened, and Gamboni came in, with the gun in his hand once more. Zwemmer raised his eyebrows. Gamboni nodded.

  Quietly Zwemmer said, “Paul Hampton, in the name of the Government of Western Germany, I arrest you for...”

  Without warning, pandemonium broke loose. Paul Hampton made a rugger-tackle dive for the door, and all the lights went out. There were two earsplitting shots, and suddenly the room seemed to be full of people, struggling and breathing and cursing in the darkness. Henry grabbed Emmy’s hand and began cautiously to steer her toward the window. They had almost reached it when the lights went on again, revealing a scene which remained etched in Henry’s memory for the rest of his life.

  Paul Hampton was lying on his back in front of the dying fire. Natasha was on her knees beside him. Gamboni and Zwemmer stood looking down at him, each with a gun in his hand. The background was filled in with the blue-gray uniforms of the gendarmes. As they surged forward, Zwemmer halted them with a short, decisive gesture.

  There was a moment of dead silence. Then Natasha, as though unaware that there was anybody else in the room, said, “Paul. Darling Paul. Don’t be afraid. You know I love you. I won’t let them...”

  The wounded man on the floor murmured something inaudible. Natasha slid down beside him, and laid her cheek against his. “Go to sleep,” she said, softly. “My darling, go to sleep. I’m here. I won’t go away.”

  Nobody moved. Paul lifted his right hand with a great effort and put it over Natasha’s. Then he gave a great sigh, smiled at her, and died.

  For a long moment, Natasha lay quite still. Then she stood up and said steadily, “He is dead. You can do what you like now.” And she turned her back on all of them and walked out of the room. Nobody tried to stop her.

  ***

  A hundred years later, it seemed, Henry was sitting with Zwemmer in the library of the Villa Trounex. Between them lay a pile of papers, each innocuous enough in itself, but, taken together, ample evidence that the greater part of Paul Hampton’s fortune had come from the highly organized distribution and sale of narcotic drugs in almost every country in the world.

  Henry lit a cigarette. He was almost too tired to raise it to his lips. Outside the sun was already turning the mountaintops to a glowing pink, and the clear sky presaged a perfect day.

  “I haven’t even said thank you yet,” he said.

  Zwemmer smiled coolly. “You have been a great trial to me, Inspector. I suppose I cannot altogether blame you. Hampton chose you as the scapegoat for this murder, and apparently did not reckon on the fact that you were capable of defending yourself. This last bid to get you out of the way was a very desperate stratagem.”

  “I realized that,” said Henry. “I had my suspicions all along. It was clear that the brain behind the narcotics organization was somebody of ability and wealth, and Hampton fitted the part perfectly. He finally gave himself away this evening when he told me that the chief of the Geneva Police had informed him about the security leak, as well as other details of the case. No policeman would ever do that.”

  “I suppose he told you, too, that a German dope-runner had denounced you?”

  “He did.”

  “That was quite true.”

  “I’m sure it was. Hampton was powerful enough to be able to arrange that without any trouble. If he had merely planted the evidence, and let things take their natural course, I would have been in a much worse position. As it was, he made one grave mistake.”

  “And what was that?” Zwemmer was interested.

  “Never mind.” Henry passed a hand over his forehead. “Tell me, what made you finally decide that I was not Hampton’s agent?”

  Zwemmer gave another of his humorless smiles. “I am still not completely sure that you are not,” he said. Then, silencing Henry’s indignant protests, he added, “That was my little joke, Inspector. Seriously, however, I suspected you up until a very short time ago. The biggest point in your favor was that the murder seemed to have been deliberately pinned onto you—and, of course, Hampton would have tried to divert suspicion from his own man. Even when you told Helène about the girl with the faked message, I thought that you might be inventing it to draw suspicion away from yourself. You will admit that your conduct was not reassuring. Gamboni was extremely disturbed to find you in here, for example. Disturbed and angry, poor man. He had been waiting months for Hampton’s departure for Paris in order to get in here, only to have the room sealed by the police. It had taken him all day to obtain a duplicate key. Ah, well, as it happens, there was no harm done.”

  “You still haven’t told me,” Henry said, “what finally convinced you that I was innocent.”

  “Helène is efficient,” said Zwemmer. “She telephoned me promptly when you mentioned the mysterious girl with the message. My agents in Italy were able to trace Signora Novari and confirm the story just before that unfortunate accident. Then I knew that you were innocent and that the murder was being pinned on you, for if you yourself had sent a girl with a message, you certainly would not have told anybody so, while at the same time denying any appointment with Trapp. Finally, I knew you could not be in league with Hampton when I saw that you had stationed the good Spezzi in the drive tonight. I much regret that I had to shoot at him, but he will be well soon. The police car was waiting outside the gates and rushed him to the hospital. Nevertheless, he should not have attacked me like that in the garden. I might easily have killed him in error.”

  “Tell me more about yourself.” Henry was desperately tired, but Zwemmer fascinated him.

  “I am afraid I had to deceive you to a certain extent,” said Zwemmer. “My government had suspicions, and I was sent here in a double capacity, as delegate and secret agent. I have worked with Helène for many years.”

  “Where does Helène come into all this?”

  “Helène was born German,” said Zwemmer. “She and her parents were considered politically unreliable, and sent to a concentration camp when she was very young. I was working in the anti-Nazi underground, and we met when I helped to organize her escape with her mother. She was luckier than I; both my parents died. Helène went first to France and then, after the war, to England. I returned to Berlin. We kept in touch. It was no surprise to either of us to find the other enlisted for secret service duties. We had both hoped for political assignments, but the authorities—rightly, I think—decided that we were both too emotionally involved in such matters. So we found ourselves working together in the Narcotics Branch. We have been after Hampton for some years.”

  “And you finally got him.”

  “I would not say that.” Zwemmer sounded grim. “He gave himself up to us by this ridiculous and meaningless murder. I had not intended to bring matters to a head this evening, but I could not allow you and your wife...”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” said Henry.

  “Don’t thank me.” Zwemmer was stating a fact. “I did not act to save your skin, although, of course, you would not have left the house alive if you had persisted in your refusal to go to South America. Hampton would have preferred you to go voluntarily, not from any humanitarian motives, but because bodies are inconvenient things to dispose of. No, when Gamboni telephoned me this evening, I was afraid that Hampton would
spirit you away, which the police would have taken as irrefutable evidence of your guilt. The case would have been closed, and we might never have cornered Hampton. Even as it is, the affair is most unsatisfactory. I wished to take Hampton alive. It was Gamboni who killed him, as I was afraid he would if he got loose with that gun. So, we still do not know who was his agent in the conference. We still do not know who killed John Trapp, or why.”

  Henry looked out of the window. The sun was up now, and the lake was a beguiling blue, smooth as a mirror.

  “I know the answer to all those questions,” he said.

  Zwemmer leaned forward. “You do? Then tell me.”

  “John Trapp was killed by mistake,” said Henry.

  “Ah. You mean that somebody else was the intended victim?”

  “No. I mean that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, largely my fault.”

  Zwemmer looked at Henry with growing skepticism. “I don’t pretend to understand you, Inspector.” he said, “but please go on.”

  “We all thought that Trapp was killed because he knew too much. In fact, he was killed because Paul Hampton thought he knew too much, and all the time poor John knew nothing at all.”

  Zwemmer smiled grimly. “If you are right,” he said, “there is a nice irony in the situation which appeals to me. But who killed him, and how?”

  “Trapp was obviously not killed by Paul Hampton,” said Henry. “He was in Paris at the time, and he could not have got in to the Palais des Nations. However, Hampton planned his murder, and forced an accomplice to carry it out—the accomplice who had been supplying him with secret information on the conference.

  “Who?” Zwemmer was insistent. “Who was responsible for that leakage? It is vitally important for me to know.”

  “I could tell you,” said Henry. “But proving it would be a different matter. Please give me until ten o’clock this morning. I promise you that that will be the end.”

  ***

  The hired car was still in the drive, and Henry and Emmy drove back in it to Geneva. It was eight o’clock, and the town was stirring into its morning bustle. Already, sought-after parking spaces were filling up, and serious-faced businessmen with briefcases were hurrying to their offices. Bright, clear light whitened the gray stone houses, and the neat flowers in the public gardens glistened with color under the ministering sprays of an army of gardeners.

  Back at the hotel, exhausted physically and mentally, Henry and Emmy clung to each other like lost children. The small squabbles of the day before had disappeared, burned up by the searing horror of the night. At last Emmy managed to smile and say, “Well, thank God that’s over.”

  Henry did not smile back. “Dear Emmy,” he said, “it’s not over yet.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Go and have a bath and get some sleep,” said Henry. “I have to go out again.”

  “No. No, I won’t let you.”

  “Please, Emmy.” Gently, he disengaged her clinging hands. “I promise you, there’s no danger. When I come back, please don’t ask questions.”

  Emmy looked at him quickly. He seemed suddenly worn out, an old man. She squeezed his hand briefly and said, “All right, darling.”

  ***

  It was ten o’clock in the morning when Henry got back to the hotel. He came into the bedroom and went straight to the bathroom where, even though he was not dirty, he washed himself carefully from head to foot. Then he lay down on the bed beside Emmy. He did not move nor make any sound. After a moment or two, she put out her hand tentatively toward his, and grasped it. There was no answering pressure, but his fingers, encircled by hers, flexed slightly, in recognition and gratitude. Then, in spite of himself, he fell asleep.

  At half past two in the afternoon, Henry woke with a dry mouth and the full, remembered horror to face. Emmy was dressed, sitting on the bed beside him.

  “They’ve been telephoning since noon from the Palais,” she said, “but I wouldn’t let them wake you. It seems somebody has disappeared. They didn’t tell me any details.”

  “Stay here, please,” said Henry. “Wait for me. I’ll be back.”

  He dressed quickly, and took a taxi to the Palais des Nations. The final expiation, the washing-out of all sins, was very close now. At the Palais, he joined forces with Colliet and Zwemmer, and drove off in a police car. Henry directed the driver where to go.

  The beach was as empty and sunny as it had been the day before, except that there was a green cotton dress weighted down neatly by a big stone, and a letter in bold handwriting folded carefully into it. This was addressed to Henry, and he opened it quite calmly.

  MY DEAREST HENRY,

  Thank you for coming to see me. You see, I have kept my promise. Don’t blame yourself, because I would have done this anyway, rather than be killed by Hampton, like the wretched Novaris—and make no mistake, I would have been killed, for I had become dangerous. My life is quite worthless, and it seemed to me a good idea to trade it for yours. I didn’t realize that you were more than able to look after yourself.

  I have left a full account of everything for Inspector Colliet, but this is just for you. Please don’t judge me too harshly. I was brought up tough, and the actual, physical act of killing was not very difficult. Of course, I had no choice—it was kill or be killed. Nevertheless, the burden of it was too great to live with, especially after I came to know you. Please believe me that I was not spying on you yesterday.

  I love you.

  Mary.

  P.S. You are very clever. I thought the tape recorder idea was foolproof. So much for vanity.

  P.P.S. You will find the transcripts of yesterday’s meeting in the green file in the office. They may need some correction.

  It was not long before they found her, a slim, brown body in a black swimsuit, with a drift of auburn hair, floating quietly in toward the beach. Henry did not stay for the agonizing formalities. He asked the police driver to take him as far as the Pont du Mont Blanc, in the center of the city, and walked back to the hotel from there.

  It was a blazingly sunny afternoon, and the streets were full of the slightly frenetic liveliness that is the essence of Geneva—the crossroads city, the city of brief encounters and unstable relationships, built on a foundation of placid prosperity; a foundation solid enough in itself, but slippery to the feet of the transient, the expatriate, the impermanent.

  As he crossed the busy bridge and looked away down the lake toward Lausanne, Henry knew that his life could never be quite the same again. Old, unquestioned values had been turned upside down. The black-and-white view of morality which he had accepted as his middle-class heritage had gone forever. He forced his mind to consider the facts, clearly and brutally, so that they might have their full, salutary impact.

  Mary had been a paid informer and a murderess. No amount of subsequent remorse or nobility on her part could alter that. And yet he had loved her, and his love, obstinately, refused to diminish in the face of what he now knew. He himself was a murderer, for he had caused Mary’s death—Mary, whom he loved—as surely as if he had stabbed her as she stabbed John Trapp. Yet he felt neither guilt nor remorse, just an ineffable sadness which in its own way was right and true and the stuff of tragedy.

  For Paul Hampton he could feel no pity, and yet his life and death had been curiously ennobled and etched with fire by Natasha, who loved him, and who was worthless. What would happen to her now? Henry had no illusions. As Paul’s widow, she would be rich. She would indulge every frivolity, every passing fancy, every fly-by-night lover. She would grow old and painted and ridiculous, and a by-word for lechery, and she would never again love any man, or rediscover her one moment of nobility. Yet, having known it, she would never again be quite without honor.

  And Zwemmer? He and Helène would pursue their dark star of vengeance, always on the side of the angels, always striving to deaden the pain, to cure the wound that went so deep in them that a thousand deaths, a thousand victims, could not begin
to heal it. Henry remembered a moment, early that morning, when he had said to Zwemmer, “Why don’t you marry Helène?” and had received the short answer, “Impossible. We have our work to do.”

  Thank God, Annette was not like that. Her wounds were superficial, of the flesh in every sense. Henry wondered if she would, in fact, marry Juan Moranta, and if Juan would have the magnanimity to accept John Trapp’s child as his own. Henry decided that he probably would. He had, after all, gone straight to Annette’s side when he heard of her arrest, absenting himself from work on the excuse of illness; and he had stayed to comfort her even after he must surely have heard of her pregnancy.

  Henry smiled to himself as he recalled Annette speaking on the telephone in her apartment, the first evening that they had met her in Geneva. “C’est un peu difficile ce soir, John,” she had said, and because John Trapp turned up almost at once, he had jumped to the conclusion that it was to him that she had been speaking. But once he thought of it, he remembered that she referred to John always as “Jean,” for their common language was French. What he and Emmy had taken for “John” was Annette’s French-accented pronunciation of “Juan.” Juan, mature, humorous and kind, the faithful admirer, ready to salvage the wreck of her grand, ill-fated passion for John Trapp. Henry hoped that Annette would appreciate what she was getting.

  His mind ran on. Bill Parkington, stunned and inarticulate as a child in the face of Mary’s confession, unable to reconcile in his honest mind her good and bad qualities; trying with desperate lack of success to reduce the matter to the simple terms of good and evil on which his life was built. Jacques Lenoir, volatile and irrepressible as yeast, already working on the story in his mind, blending and fashioning it into sufficient material for a lifetime of brilliant dining-out.

  He thought of Alfredo, pale but quickly recovering in the Cantonal Hospital. Poor Alfredo, he was a little ashamed now of his ignominious part in the affair... “But how was I to know, Enrico? He was creeping through the bushes like an assassin”... Zwemmer had sent him an enormous bunch of grapes, and Gerda was furious about the whole thing. Alfredo and Gerda had nothing to worry about. They had each other.