16 - The Splintered Sunglasses Affair

by Peter Leslie

  By the evening of that day, they had identified many of the witnesses whose testimony they could read in these xeroxed sheets—the fat man and his even fatter wife who ran the tobacco kiosk let into the post office wall opposite, the uniformed war veteran who opened and closed the post office doors, a lean man who walked up and down selling papers, the curvaceous and come-hither redhead with the tie shop next door, the blind matchseller who sat all day on the sidewalk outside the kiosk, the three waiters at the cafe-bar on the corner and the sloe-eyed, bosomy girl who operated its espresso machine, and the two smart, bespectacled women who owned the flower shop immediately underneath their office.

  Twenty four hours later, they had begun to recognize many of the "regulars" from the office buildings around.

  They knew that the post office doorman became angry if customers stayed too long after the door was supposed to be closed at noon and he missed his usual corner seat at the bar during the lunch hour. They recognized most of the typists and clerks who took an aperitif and a sandwich at the cafe. They had noted the number of the Savona-registered Maserati in which a dark, smooth young man called for the girl who ran the tie boutique every lunchtime and evening. And they had been told by the concierge that—despite their airs and graces—the flower ladies below were doing so badly that they brought their own lunch in a paper bag and ate it behind the closed shutters as they took turns to cross the road and bring back from the cafe the smallest possible amount of hot chocolate in a jug. They could tell, also, which taxi it was that was calling to take home the blind man, and which one had been ordered to help with the shopping by the wife of the man who ran the kiosk.

  What they did not know was anything more about the killing of Leonardo.

  On the third day. Solo sighed and took the binoculars away from his eyes at eleven thirty. "We could get them to send our retirement pensions here," he said. "This is getting us nowhere, Illya. Let's vary the thing a bit, eh?"

  "Alter the routine, you mean?"

  "Exactly. Let's check up the characters we see, when we see them, with the statements they gave the police after the murder. We'll see if they fit the ambience of their statements! You keep a look-out and tell me who you see; I'll look up what they said—and we can both decide if it sounds right!"

  "The porter has come out on to the steps to look at the sky," Illya reported a few minutes later. "He shakes his head. He thinks it will rain. So do I."

  Solo flipped over pages. "Let's see... porter... Here we are!" he said. "I quote. 'Hearing a disturbance on the steps, I went out and saw a small crowd of people at the bottom of the flight. Some were on the steps and some still on the sidewalk. They were gathered round a tall man who had been coming into the post office and had fallen back down the stairs so that his head was now on the pavement. He was cleanshaven and his eyes were open. I could see that he was dead. There was plaster on the steps and blood underneath the man."

  "That seems to stack up very well with the man I can see," Kuryakin said. "Old soldier trained to observe. Crisp, factual comments. Eye for detail."

  "Yes. I guess the plaster was the result of the third bullet; the one that missed him... what is it?"

  "Another customer. The wider of the flower shop ladies is going to get her chocolate."

  Solo consulted his list again. "The wider one. That'd be Signora Rastoldi... 'I heard my cousin cry out. I looked up. A tall man in dark glasses was lurching about on the post office steps across the road. He sat down suddenly and fell back into the road. Then people rushed up and I couldn't see any more'."

  Twenty minutes later, Kuryakin said: "Glamour girl's boyfriend has arrived in the Maserati. She's locking up the shop and getting into the car."

  "On the day Leonardo was killed," Solo said, "she went to the post office first to register some letters before lunch. Estrellita Palomari... 'I heard what I thought was a backfire. I thought my friend's car was perhaps being temperamental, again, but when I reached the steps there was this man lying there with people all around. He was on his back sort of staring at the sky. Somebody told me he was dead."

  "The porter has closed the doors," the Russian said a little later. "He has bought his usual box of matches from the blind man... now he's at the cafe."

  "Did they take evidence from the blind man?... Ah, yes!... 'There was a clatter and a thump from just beyond where I sit. Something heavy fell down the stairs... footsteps dashed up and someone said send for an ambulance. It was some time before I could catch anyone's attention to ask what had happened.'... Now let's see—I know she's not there just now—how it looked to someone who saw it all. 'I noticed a tall man in sunglasses coming up the stairs towards me. I happened to glance up over his head and I saw three puffs of smoke, one after another, float away from a window of the new apartment block beyond the lot across the road. It was blue smoke.

  "I imagine there was about ten seconds between the first puff and the last. I heard the sound of the three shots just as the man gave a kind of cough and fell against the wall. Then he sat down and fell back into the street. My dress was covered in plaster dust and something stung my cheek'."

  "That's the housewife the Commendatore was talking about?"

  "Yes; Signora Rastafia. Do you notice anything so far?"

  "About the various statements? You mean...?" Illya sketched a gesture in front of his face with both hands.

  "Yes. I mean," Solo said grimly. "There's a discrepancy, isn't there? But before we get our teeth into it, let's have a look through the glasses."

  He took the binoculars and scanned the street below. "Think of the evidence and look carefully," he said at last. "'On the left, there's a little entry leading through an arch to a warehouse or something..."

  "It's where the post office vans go in and out, actually."

  "So it is. Thanks, Illya. Then comes the tie boutique. Then the body of the post office itself, with the stairs leading to the doors on the right. The matchseller sits with his back to the right-hand pillar framing the stairs. Immediately beyond him is the tobacco kiosk, then double doors leading to offices, apartments, and so on. The news vendor's stand. And finally the cafe-bar on the next corner..."

  Solo paused suddenly, sharpening the focus of the glasses with the centre finger of his right hand. "Illya," he said urgently, "quick! Do you see that big man coming down the steps there? There now he's turned towards the cafe... He's stopped to buy cigarettes at the kiosk!... Get after him, boy. That's our Mr. Carlsen! He knows me but he won't know you from Adam unless he meets the girl who met you at Caselle. Don't worry about making contact. Get after him and see what you can find out!"

  After one long glance into the street to fix the image of Carlsen in his mind, the Russian slipped out and sped down the staircase into the street.

  Solo continued watching. At twelve thirty, Giovanna came up to relieve him for lunch and he went across the road to the cafe. After a couple of abortive attempts, he managed to engage one of the waiters in conversation and obtain yet another eyewitness account of the death of Leonardo.

  Before he went back to the office hideout, he made one telephone call. After he had given Solo the information he wanted, the man at the other end relayed a message from Waverly in New York.

  The agent returned to his eyrie satisfied enough and released the girl to continue her freelance patrol.

  At ten past four, Illya Kuryakin returned, flushed with success. Panting, he dropped into a chair and drew an envelope covered in scribbled notes from his hip pocket. "It wasn't too difficult at first. Napoleon," he said, "especially as Carlsen doesn't know me by sight and had no reason to think he was being followed anyway."

  "Don't underestimate him, though, that's all!" Solo said. "He's smart."

  "So I found out. He bought a paper after I picked him up, and then he went to have lunch—at the same place we were at the other evening."

  "Angelo's?"

  "That's it. He ordered an aperitif and read the paper for a while. Then, around one f
ifteen, he chose his lunch and began to eat. At... let me see... yes, at one forty, he was joined by—you'll never guess who."

  "The man we saw going away from the lifts in Leonardo's apartment block."

  Kuryakin looked quite put out. "However did you guess?" he complained.

  "It was a reasonable deduction. We thought it was the man we'd seen leaving Angelo's from the next booth to ours when the lift incident happened. Now here you are at the restaurant again. And anyway, there's nobody else in the cast it could be, Illya!"

  "I suppose not. Anyway, he came in and sat down at Carlsen's table and began to have his lunch too. They seemed quite intimate, on quite good terms."

  "You weren't able by any chance, I suppose, to—"

  "To hear what they were saying? No, I'm afraid not. I said he was smart. He had chosen a table... You know they have that piped music relayed by speakers here and there about the room at Angelo's?... Well, he had chosen a table right under one of the blasted things and I couldn't make out a word!"

  Solo grinned. "Okay. One to him. What happened then?"

  "I managed to grab a taxi when they left, and I followed them from the restaurant to a car park, and from there to a huge new block of luxury flats out on the southwest side of town, near the Fiat factory. Carlsen parked his Cadillac out front and they rode up to the seventeenth floor."

  "And you rode with them?"

  "No. There was an indicator. There are only two apartments to a floor when you go above, the twelfth—it's one of those multi-tower places after that. I found out easily enough which apartment they were in and I listened—"

  "Hey, hey, hey! Just a minute there! You blithely say you listened... but how did you get there to listen? Ring at the bell and say you were the gas man?"

  "Er ... no. The painter."

  "The...?"

  "The painter. There was a cradle, you see, hanging down the side of the tower from the top. And in Italy workmen don't return from their siesta until around four. And so I—er—borrowed it."

  "And you hung in mid-air just outside their window, which they had obligingly opened," Solo said affectionately, "and listened to everything they said?"

  "No, no. Not exactly. I maneuvered the cradle one apartment to the side and one floor down, so if they did look out to check it wasn't too near."

  "But you wouldn't hear anything there, man!"

  "Not directly, no. But I had had an ER/2 with me and somehow—er—it seemed to have found its way into Carlsen's jacket pocket at lunchtime... "

  Solo laughed. "Well, you really take the cake, Illya, for sheer effrontery!" he said. "It worked all right? You were not out of range down there?" The tiny transistorized bugs would normally pick up a conversation within ten to twelve feet of where they were lodged and, provided the listener had the right equipment to receive it, would broadcast this a distance of a further thirty to forty feet, according to conditions.

  "It received very well, thank you. Carlsen seemed to be in the middle of a kind of briefing when I first tuned in. He said..." The Russian turned back to his notes once more "... that the other man, the blue-chinned one we saw at the lifts, must lay off the murder attempts for the time being. All plans for assassinating the men from U.N.C.L.E. were to be held in abeyance. That meant us, Napoleon. It felt awfully funny hearing it, you know."

  "It must have done, yes. I'm falling about."

  "He said that now they had confirmed that a hologram had been made and was in New York, but that we hadn't yet found out how it had been shot and had so far not succeeded in tracing the medium, then it was more to their advantage to lie low and wait. They could allow us, this way, to do all the work and actually locate the medium—and then they could destroy it, and us, at their leisure."

  "Charming! And what happened then?"

  "The grey man—I'm sure he's local talent, you know: a small time chiseller cashing in on the big time—he said okay, Carlsen was the one who was hiring his services; if that was the way he wanted it, then he'd pull out his men and wait until he was asked for. And Carlsen said, great! That was what he did want: it would be much better that way, letting us do all the work; and anyway, since he had now got us so well-covered, the killing bit wasn't so important."

  "That's a bit ominous, that one about having us so well covered. What do you make of that, Mr. Eavesdropper? Did they say anything more on that kick?"

  "Er... well, you see, there was a bit of a fracas just then. One of the painters came back from his lunch and there was some dispute as to who had the right to occupy the cradle. And then he called a few of his mates and... well, since I didn't want to attract the attention of the people in the apartment, I thought it best to—er—leave."

  "I have a suspicion that I've just heard the understatement of the decade, but let it pass! I'm glad to hear that the heat's off, though—for I, too, have news."

  "You've seen something important?"

  "Not seen. Heard. And it wasn't from this little love nest: it was on the telephone, while Giovanna was relieving me at lunch time."

  "On the phone? Not from Waverly?"

  Solo nodded. "Just a message. The Commendatore told me that New York had left word that your friend Trevitt has definitely tied the kidnap car in with a known Thrush member."

  "So that means we are dealing with one adversary... not two?"

  "Exactly. And it also means that Carlsen and Lala Eriksson are Thrush since they were behind the snatch. And it means, for good measure, that Carlsen must moreover be the Supreme Council Member for Southern Europe—and of course that it was from the house where I was kept that Leonardo stole the list."

  Kuryakin gave a low whistle. "It certainly simplifies the scene; but I can't say it makes me wild with joy, all the same!"

  "No. They're playing for the highest stakes, so they'll be bound to play it rough. But we have something to go on at last. I told you I was glad the heat was off because I wanted to act. I haven't yet told you why ... for there was one thing more I learned from the Commendatore."

  "And that was?"

  "I asked him a question. His answer was... that the body of Leonardo, when it was brought to the morgue, was without glasses."

  "But... but. Napoleon..."

  Solo inclined his head. He picked up the S.I.D. dossier and leafed through it again. "I know... 'He was clean-shaven and his eyes were open'—that's the porter... 'He was on his back, sort of staring at the sky'—that's the beauty from the tie shop... and yet Signora Rastoldi speaks of a 'tall man in dark glasses' lurching about on the steps, and the woman who saw the smoke from the gun also mentions 'a tall man in sunglasses' coming towards her. What do you make of that?"

  "If he was wearing glasses, especially sunglasses, the witnesses would hardly have noticed whether his eyes were open, or whether he was staring at the sky."

  "Exactly. And the statements which mention the glasses are those from people who were in at the kill, as it were. Whereas those which seem to imply no glasses are from witnesses who arrived after Leonardo had already fallen."

  "There are only two possibilities, then, Napoleon. Either the dark glasses were knocked off when he fell—"

  "In which case," Solo interrupted, "they would have been picked up and taken to the mortuary with the body, one would think. And they weren't."

  "Or else..."

  "Quite. Or else ... Or else some person or persons unknown removed those glasses between the time Leonardo was hit and the arrival of the later witnesses. What we have to do now is find out who that was and why they did it!"

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Questions And Answers

  There was no doubt about it whatever. The redhead who ran the tie shop was a most beautiful girl. Solo and Kuryakin had never found it easier to think up questions to ask, especially as they could talk in English, which she understood.

  "And this Dutchman who was shot—would you say, signorina, that he was typical of his race?" Solo asked when they had led the conversation round to the shooting
.

  "Dutch? Him? You must be joking!" the girl said. She undulated across to a display case where Illya was fondling a selection of cravats in amber and orange and beige.

  "No, really. It's true!"

  "Well, honestly," the girl said. "If he came from Holland, then I'm... "

  "... a Dutchman!" Illya and Solo chorused, bursting out laughing and then looking rather sheepish.

  The girl repressed a smile. "This one is rather nice, don't you think? The color's definitely you," she said, sidling up to Kuryakin and picking up a length of oyster-green silk. Her voice was husky and her skin, dark above the decolletage of a white pique dress, positively glowed.

  "No, but I'm interested," Solo pursued. "I believe there is such a thing as a national type and Leonardo was typically Dutch. Tall, big-boned, with those bland features and opaque blue eyes—"

  "What d'you mean, blue!" the girl interrupted. "His eyes were brown."

  "Never!"

  "But they were! I noticed particularly. They had already filmed—"

  "I don't see how you could tell, anyway," the agent cut in, "since he was wearing dark glasses."

  "He wasn't wearing glasses. I tell you I particularly noticed the color of his eyes."

  "Oh, well," Solo shrugged. "It's not important, I guess... I think I'll take this one with the double stripe, please."

  "Yes," Illya said, "and I'll have the black-and-white spot and that one in turquoise and charcoal."

  "Don't you like the oyster-green cravat?" the girl breathed.

  The Russian dragged his eyes away from the tight contours of the pique dress. "Oh... yes—er—very much," he gulped. "I'll... I'll have that too..."

  "Thank you very much, gentlemen," the girl said demurely. "That will be three thousand lira each for the ties, and four thousand five hundred the cravat, thirteen thousand five hundred altogether. I'm much obliged."