by Gavin Lyall
And don’t forget she may BE Mrs Langhorn, Ranklin reminded himself. It’s only my – and O’Gilroy’s – deduction that she shouldn’t be. I must keep an open mind.
Harland began in legal fashion: “You are Mrs Enid Langhorn, mother of Grover Langhorn who is now – unfortunately – the subject of an extradition hearing in London?”
“That I am, sir.”
“And before your marriage, you lived in Portsmouth?”
“Southsea it was, yes, sir.”
“And thereafter in the United States of America?”
“For nigh on twenty-two years, sir. Then me and James parted and I come over to be with my boy Grover. James, he’d taken to the drink something awful, he had, when he’d retired from the sea, and why should I stay around just to be bashed about? I tell you—”
Her voice was genuinely English English, without any strong regional accent or touch of American. Still, some people did cling to their original voices, perhaps the one thing from the Old Country that they could retain.
“Quite so,” said Harland, who had probably steered his career well clear of domestic violence cases. “And you now live in La Villette?”
“That’s where Grover was working, sir. I don’t say it’s the best part of Gay Paree, but the lodgings ain’t expensive and the folks round there—”
They Jay bustled in from the bedroom carrying a cable form. He smiled an apology at Harland and gave the form – blank – to Ranklin. Ranklin made a show of reading it carefully, and nodded to Jay. “Yes, that’s fine. Get it sent immediately.”
When Jay had gone out into the corridor, he smiled at “Mrs Langhorn”. “Sorry about that: I just got in from London this morning,” he said rapidly. “The police there have arrested one man – another resisted and was shot dead – for the murder of Guillet, the meat porter who was giving evidence against your son. And foiled an attempt to kidnap and possibly murder Berenice Collomb, and they’re looking for an anarchist Dr Gorkin who could have been organising all this, along with a certain Monsieur Kaminsky whom you may have heard of. All very complicated, but it does sound as if a big conspiracy’s been going on and you may – quite unwittingly, I’m sure – have been a part of it.”
Seated more or less beside Harland and St Claire, he couldn’t see their expressions. But he could sense the startled bewilderment radiating from them like sparks from a generator.
He hurried on tonelessly: “So it looks as if all the evidence against Grover was quite false and he should be released any moment now.”
There was a long silence when he had finished. And then a wide smile broke across “Mrs Langhorn’s” face – but late, far too late. She’d been so busy memorising the details of London’s happenings and deductions that she reacted too slowly to the one thing a mother would have cared about: her son was accepted as innocent.
Ranklin looked away quickly and murmured to St Claire: “I should have told you this earlier, but I’ll give you the details later.” He smiled blandly at Harland. “Please continue.”
“This . . . ah, doesn’t alter anything?”
“Oh no. But I do think we should take our time and get this dead right. We can have lunch sent up here, can’t we?” He smiled at “Mrs Langhorn”. “You can stay for lunch, I’m sure.”
Stay on for another three hours? – of course she couldn’t. But she didn’t let her act slip. In fact, she traded on it, dabbing a grubby handkerchief at imaginary tears of joy.
“Oh sirs, I’m that shook up with the news of our Grovcr, I can’t think of anything else. Oh dear, I just don’t know what to say. I couldn’t think of nothing else at this time, I really couldn’t.” She got to her feet, making a nice floundering motion of it, and clutching at her chair arm for support. The men sprang up, too. “Oh sirs, could I come back another time – this afternoon, maybe? I’ve just got to go and . . . my head’s in such a whirl . . .”
She fumbled her way to the door and out.
Harland was open-mouthed, his bewilderment quickly turning to annoyance with Ranklin. “Well, I don’t know where that leaves us. We don’t know where she’s gone, whether she’ll be back . . . I just hope you’re satisfied.”
“Indeed I am. She’s hurrying off to report what I told her about the conspiracy being spotted. And with any luck, complete the link with Gorkin.”
Also anxious but also baffled, St Claire asked: “Then you don’t think she was the real Mrs Langhorn?”
Ranklin was about to explain when Mrs Winthrop said in her well-bred voice: “I’ve no idea what this is all about, but if that woman is the mother of a boy on trial in London, then I’m Lillie Langtry.”
“But how could you tell?” St Claire was honestly puzzled.
She stood up from her chair in a corner and gave him a look. “Men.” Then she smiled at Ranklin. “Not including you – in a manner of speaking.”
14
Jay, a natural Ritz person, had been wandering about the front of the lobby consulting theatre pamphlets and the like while O’Gilroy sat in a corner reading a newspaper and refusing to take off his long topcoat. When “Mrs Langhorn” came downstairs – sooner than they’d expected – Jay strolled after her. O’Gilroy calmly folded his newspaper and drifted off in their wake, watching to see if Mrs L had any other admirers in tow.
He quickly spotted two: both men in nondescript dark topcoats, bowler hats and heavy moustaches, so similarly anonymous that his instincts told him “police” rather than “criminal”. But police followers didn’t mean there weren’t the other sort as well. Whether or not the lady was the true Mrs Langhorn (which he didn’t yet know), she would only be there by order of the villains (whoever they were) and they’d be fools not to cover their bet with a watcher or two. It troubled him that he couldn’t spot anyone.
Meanwhile, Jay was ahead on the Rue de la Paix, pausing to glance into shop windows, then striding out to keep “Mrs Langhorn” in sight. He wasn’t doing a bad job, but to an old hand like O’Gilroy he was concentrating more on not appearing to be a follower than on following. The two flics were taking one side of the road each in classical pattern.
At the Place de l’Opéra she vanished down into the Metro and there was an unobtrusive rush to be closer to her when she chose her platform. O’Gilroy hung back, following the last flic instead, so perhaps he was the only one to spot that a fifth man had joined the party. She must be taking a prearranged route and this one, dressed in what he probably thought was Grands Boulevards fashion and which made him look like a cheap swell, was there specifically to see if she was followed.
To a Londoner the new Paris Metro had a toytown look, with overlarge tunnels and over-small wooden carriages rattling in with a jaunty air. By the time their train arrived, O’Gilroy had positioned himself to get into the carriage behind. He found a seat at one end with his back to the other passengers, and began. First, he sprinkled a matchbox of talcum powder over his good-quality boots so that, at a glance, they looked dusty and thus cheap. He dumped the bowler hat and replaced it with a greasy cloth cap (in Paris, berets were for country yokels). Then he took off the long topcoat and revealed a torn, button-less jacket and out-at-the-knees trousers several sizes too big; the Ritz would have had the vapours to know what he’d been wearing under the coat. Finally he pocketed his tie and collar, rubbed his hands on the carriage floor and then on to his face.
He simply abandoned the coat and bowler, and never mind the Bureau’s accountants. The Bureau just wanted believability, and believability was O’Gilroy’s stock in trade: he was radiating it when he shuffled off at the next station and into “Mrs Langhorn’s” carriage.
Of course, if they turned out to be heading for some posh suburb, he was sunk. But there, Jay would come into his own again, and the further east they went, the less likely posh suburbs became. And the Metro had its standards, skirting around the nineteenth arrondissement to make sure that anyone visiting La Villette, or trying to escape from it, was doomed to a good long walk. Sure eno
ugh, the woman got out at Bolivar station and began the trek down the Rue Armand Carrel.
You might say that this was Paris’s equivalent of London’s East End, but that had been built on virgin land to cram the new breed of factory workers into a dreary, geometrical pygmyland. La Villette lay within Paris’s walls, so had started as farmhouses and village cottages, the gaps gradually filled in with whatever fitted the space and need until you had today’s above-ground warren of unmatched buildings and rambling alleyways. Even in the sunlight, it had a grey Northern bleakness. The slums of Naples might be worse, but their cracked and scabbed walls seemed to have soaked up colour from the Mediterranean sun. They could look quite charming – in paintings. Nobody bothered to paint La Villette. There was a dead cat in the roadway that had been there, judging by the smell, for days. That was the essence of the place: not just dead cats, but nowhere worse to put them.
If the flics hadn’t been involved, O’Gilroy would have signalled Jay to drop out: on these streets, he looked like royalty gone slumming. But as the police – almost equally obvious – were soldiering on, he let Jay persist. And the sheer number could be cover for himself: the swell might not have much experience of counting above three. Moreover, the sunshine had brought out modest crowds of locals, running children and odd loafers with the shambling preoccupation that was O’Gilroy’s speciality.
Then “Mrs Langhorn” stepped into a shop.
The flics instinctively bracketed it: one loitered, one went on past. Jay, now right out of his depth, just looked like royalty who’d taken a wrong turning. But O’Gilroy concentrated on the swell, who had kept going and even speeded up. By now, he reckoned, they were only a quarter of a mile and a few twists and turns from the Café des Deux Chevaliers – if that was where they were heading.
It lay, he recalled, halfway along a street whose other side was the arches of a railway that looped through the abattoirs a little further east, and as they got closer, O’Gilroy lagged back. He wouldn’t dare go into the place, however he was dressed, and doubly so on an occasion like this. What was the swell doing? Certainly not his job of watching “Mrs Langhorn’s” back, since he was running ahead of her.
Sure enough, the swell vanished into the café, but came out again less than a minute later with two tough-looking characters dressed much as himself. That answered O’Gilroy’s question: Jay and the flics had been spotted all right, and these were reinforcements. They hardly glanced at O’Gilroy as they hurried back up the street, but by then he was studying the gutter for cigarette ends.
He resisted the temptation to run after them once they had turned the corner – someone might be watching from the café – and shambled instead. It was obvious they were going back to dissuade “Mrs Langhorn’s” followers, but less obvious why. The flics must know about the café, and could raid the place at any time they had their own reinforcements. Was “Mrs Langhorn” heading elsewhere and preferred to do so unaccompanied?
So he decided to stay out of any street barney, much as he liked the tactical idea of taking the café thugs from behind. And as he rounded a corner he saw “Mrs Langhorn” come around the one ahead, pass the three toughs with a brief word, then keep going. O’Gilroy paused, apparently watching them as they waited by the corner, and as “Mrs Langhorn” went right ahead past him towards the Avenue d’Allemagne, he followed.
Behind him, there was a shot. Then a burst of several, from at least two guns. “Mrs Langhorn” didn’t even glance back.
The long trudge on those crumbling pavements had scraped away at Jay’s temper. He was observant and quick-witted, and could have given a good performance as an aimless local ne’er-do-well – but not in the dark suit, topcoat and bowler which had belonged so well in the Ritz. Still, there was nothing he could do about it except plod on, ignoring suspicious and deriding glances, and hating everyone who had got him into this. The big Army revolver in his topcoat pocket – he was a firm believer in the knock-down power of the government .455 bullet – made him feel lopsided and uncomfortable, too.
He had spotted the two flics since getting off the Metro and guessed who they were (though who could they think he was?), so even apart from the gun, he felt quite safe. Just obvious, pompous, angry and hot. And, when the woman vanished into the shop, quite baffled. There was no other shop window to gaze into, not that he’d have wanted to buy anything for miles around. Or could act as if he might. So he consulted his watch, then took out a piece of paper and pretended to be searching for an address. When three ruffians came around the corner ahead and confronted him, it was almost a relief. He stepped close to the wall to cover his left side, and smiled pleasantly, feeling suddenly alive and at ease.
The one in the most garish clothes snarled something at him in an incomprehensible patois. Jay said: “Vous desirez de la monnaie?” and reached for his pocket. The man pulled out a large Mauser pistol, the twin of the one the man in Stepney had used (could anarchists have done a bulk-purchase deal with the Mauser company?). Jay reacted with exaggerated fright, cowering back a couple of steps and looking aghast.
The flic on the other side of the road shouted something and started across. The gunman swung, levelled his aim, and fired. The flic staggered. Jay took out his own pistol and shot the gunman twice in the ribs. The impact knocked the man off his feet and sprawled him in the dirty roadway, dead or alive but out of the fight. Then everyone was shouting and more than one firing; Jay crouched against the wall, making himself as small as possible and waiting for a clear shot at someone who looked dangerous.
And suddenly it was over. The other two roughnecks had run, one flic was helping the other to the pavement and blowing a whistle furiously, and neighbours were flocking out of doors. Jay went over to the gunman, who was wheezing and trying to sit up but not bleeding too badly, and collected the Mauser.
By then the flic had sat his colleague, who had only an arm wound, on a doorstep and took time off from blowing his whistle to start asking questions. Jay gave him a visiting card and offered to surrender his pistols.
The flic puzzled out the words “attached to the War Office” and asked: “L’Intelligence?”
Jay rocked his hand to indicate “you might say something along those lines” and the flic nodded. They understand these things so much better in France.
Once they had crossed the Avenue d’Allemagne, the buildings became substantial warehouses and the people more purposeful. Now O’Gilroy was getting suspicious glances not because he was a stranger but because he might be a pilferer. The world had taken a step up from the streets of La Villette.
Then “Mrs Langhorn” turned left along a broad rectangle of water which O’Gilroy realised must be the bassin of La Villette, unloading point for the cargoes of grain and whatnot brought in from the countryside along the canal. Nothing much seemed to be happening, which was normal for any port he had seen, but the bassin was jammed with long low barges that seemed very wide to British eyes. The cobbled quayside was lined with warehouses, chandleries, shipwrights, a few stubby cranes and occasional crowded dockers’ cafés.
Carts and a few lorries gave some cover, and O’Gilroy was working his way closer around one when “Mrs Langhorn” vanished. He kept his head bent but his eyes flickered all around, and there was a glimpse of her crossing behind the cabin of a moored barge to the one tied up outboard of it. This had to be the end of the line, unless she proposed to swim, and all he needed now was the name of the barge and he’d call it a day.
But that wasn’t so easy. Apart from all being “barges” to the layman, the craft were very varied: some were just open metal tanks, some had raised hatches, others had tarpaulins stretched over their holds, and their cabins were of all sorts. What they had in common was the obscurity of their names. Perhaps their very individuality made names superfluous – to other bargees. So trying to find the name of one that was mostly hidden by the quayside one, while still looking like a passing tramp, in the end defeated O’Gilroy. He memorised a rough de
scription and was shuffling away when a man ran along the quayside behind him and danced his way across to the outer barge. News of the shooting affray?
So he sat on a bollard almost out of sight for twenty minutes, but nothing more happened.
* * *
They had decided to meet at the buffet at the Gare du Nord, which was cosmopolitan and roughly halfway towards La Villette anyway. Ranklin hadn’t rushed there, but still had to wait through three coffees before seeing a figure looking like the roadside flotsam which had so fascinated him and disgusted his mother when he was a small boy. He nodded at his Inverness cloak, hung on a nearby peg, and O’Gilroy covered his shame with that. It was too small, of course, but its looseness hid a lot.
“Ye’ve heard nothing of young Jay?” O’Gilroy asked (Jay was about his own age, but newer to the Bureau). “Was a bit’ve shooting jest after I saw him last, so mebbe he was in that.”
Ranklin was startled. “The devil he was! He could be hurt.”
“He can take care of hisself. Anyways, was a couple’ve flics following her as well, so mebbe they helped out – un grand au lait, s’il vous plaît – et une fine,” to a hovering waiter. “How it went was . . .” and he told the tale.
“Hm.” Ranklin wondered whether to roast O’Gilroy for not going to Jay’s help, but decided no: the job had been to follow the woman and he’d done that. If Jay couldn’t look after himself in a Paris street fight, then he had to be expendable. Such conclusions were inseparable from being in command, but that didn’t mean he liked them. He switched thoughts. “So they – whoever they are – could be hiding out on a barge. And the police may not know about it, or at least they don’t think they know. But you don’t know what it’s called?”
“I know where it is, and I got a drawing . . .” He produced a crude sketch, although not much cruder than the way those vessels were built anyway. “ ’S’got a green cabin and red handle thing to the rudder and—”