A Pigeon Among the Cats

by Josephine Bell

  Most of this speech she spoke in English, far too fast and idiomatic for the desk attendant. He shrugged and said nothing.

  “Perhaps my friend, Mrs. Chilton, is in her room?” Rose said, her third surmise about Gwen growing in conviction. She gave the number, for she had learned it the day before, since her room was on the same floor and only a few doors from Gwen’s own.

  “The signora’s key is not here, either,” the man said.

  His assistant, who had followed the foregoing exchange with some interest, came nearer to explain that the Signora Chilton had taken her key only a few minutes before.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Lawler said. “Please go on looking for my key. I suppose there will be a room maid upstairs on my floor?”

  “Si, si, signora,” the two men assured her, glad to be rid of her, convinced she would find her key, retrieved by the staff, in the door of her room.

  There was no reply to her knock on Gwen’s door. But she did not really expect it. She found one of the floor maids, explained what she wanted in her halting but careful Italian and walked with her back to her own door. The maid turned the lock, pushed open the door and stood aside for Rose to pass her.

  Gwen Chilton was on her knees beside Rose’s larger suitcase. She had the lid thrown back and was rummaging in the pockets of the case.

  “Well, Gwen,” Mrs. Lawler said in an icy voice. “I must say I didn’t expect this!”

  Which was a lie because she had half expected something of the sort ever since she had remembered in the taxi that she had told Gwen the night before about the photographs she had taken of Owen Strong, or rather of his long black car.

  The maid, terrified by the menace in the English lady’s voice and the chalk-white stricken look upon the other’s, summoned enough courage to ask faintly, “The key, signora?”

  “Is here in the lock, thank you,” said Mrs. Lawler, and giving her a gentle push into the corridor, shut the door on her, locked it from the inside and put on the catch that would defeat any further attempted entry.

  Having put the key into her handbag Rose turned and said, “You’d better get up, Gwen, and sit down and tell me what you think you’re doing. Incidentally, how did you manage to undo my case? I left it locked.”

  As Gwen continued to kneel, trembling all over, her mouth fallen open, Rose stepped up to her and bending down pulled a small bunch of keys from one of the locks of the suitcase. After giving it a surprised look, she dropped it into her handbag beside the hotel room key.

  The action brought Gwen scrambling to her feet, her colour returning at what she felt was an outrage.

  “That’s mine!” she cried.

  “Hardly,” Rose answered. She wondered if the little thief had a weapon, wondered too if her superior physical skills could find any place against a sudden outburst of rage and fear from a desperate young woman.

  She moved quickly to the bedside and laid her hand on the telephone.

  “Go over to that chair by the window and sit down,” she ordered, “or I shall call the police.”

  She had no idea, really, how this could be done, but it was a phrase that every Englishman knew from childhood. She hoped it would work.

  Gwen was not alarmed by the phrase since she knew it would not work, or not as Mrs. Lawler intended. Indeed, probably in a contrary manner. But she must get her own keys back and she must pacify the old girl, which meant explaining why she had done this very unfortunate thing. How the devil had the old bitch guessed? She must have second sight? Or had she seen …? And then pretended …?

  “Well, go on! Explain!” Mrs. Lawler urged. “Or would you rather …?”

  She picked up the receiver, but put it down when Gwen held out an imploring hand.

  “No. No please Mrs. Lawler — Rose! I — I must have asked for the wrong room number!”

  “Rubbish! The desk would have corrected you!”

  “I — I meant to keep my key with me, so I put it in my bag. Only it was yours I picked up …”

  “Yes. You picked up my key as we left and kept it in your bag. But you didn’t think it was yours, for you asked for yours when you came in. They told me so at the desk.”

  Gwen began to cry, not noisily, but as she always did, tears running pathetically down pale cheeks, at first individual large round tears, later a delicate stream caught in, then overflowing, a small limp handkerchief.

  “Stop that!” Mrs. Lawler said, contemptuously. “You stole my key, you left your group on purpose to come here and get into my room. Why? What for?”

  “Don’t you know?” Gwen said, suddenly seeing a possible way out of this horrible situation. “Don’t you remember telling me about the photographs you had taken in Assisi of Owen in that black car. Well, it was in the paper I got this morning. It wasn’t his.”

  “What wasn’t his?”

  “The car. It gave the owner’s name. English tourist on the French Riviera. He stole it. He must have.”

  “Owen stole that black car? So what?”

  She had no wish now to ring up the police. They could get on with their job by themselves. Her threat to Gwen was meaningless but the threat to herself and the man with the war-scarred face was very real. If it depended, as seemed possible, upon photographs she had taken, she must hide them from Gwen. Whatever the girl’s real motives in all this, she was a declared thief with her bunch of suitcase keys; not to be trusted ever again.

  The immediate need was to get the girl out of her room.

  “You don’t expect me to believe a word you say now, do you, Gwen?” she said coldly. “You must leave my room at once. If you have taken anything of mine you must put it back first. Before I go through everything.”

  She looked at her watch.

  “I came away from the tour early because I didn’t like the way you sneaked off without telling us. You can make what explanation you like at lunch. I shall not contradict you. Now, anything to hand back?”

  “No, Rose, I swear I didn’t take a thing. I just wanted …”

  “My used film. Very well. You may like to know I have already sent my first lot of pictures home to be processed.”

  “Then the ones of Assisi …? You haven’t finished that film yet?”

  “Really, Gwen, you don’t expect me to tell you that?”

  “My keys …”

  “If I find there is nothing missing in my case, I will give them back to you at lunch. Now go away before I change my mind and send for Billie and denounce you.”

  Just like a third-rate historical novel, she thought, Victorian housewife and cringing between-maid.

  Gwen, sulky, with downcast eyes, obeyed the command.

  Nothing was missing, much to Mrs. Lawler’s relief. She tidied the contents of the suitcase, locked it up again and turned to her camera that was lying on the bed where she had thrown it when she discovered Gwen in the room. Fortunately, with the snaps she had taken that morning, there was only one unused picture on the film in it. She wound on to the end, took out the roll of film and put in a fresh one. The used one, safe in its little can, she packed, addressed, stamped and carried down at once to post in the hotel box. How fortunate she had provided herself with the correct postage. How lucky she had followed this plan for her photographs, to avoid having them ruined by an airport inspection for metal in passengers’ luggage. If needed, her evidence would be ready for her by the time she got back to England. And she would refrain from taking pictures of cars belonging to doubtful characters. She did not expect to see Owen in the long black car again. What colour would his next one be?

  Chapter Eight

  It was yellow. A very ugly shade of mustard yellow, that might be conspicuously helpful at night to other drivers on the road, but which clashed with almost any landscape.

  The car was moving slowly up the hill, road when ‘Roseanna’, climbing magnificently in spite of its great load of tourists, passed it, took a very sharp corner and then turned into a narrow lane, which it blocked completely.

/>   Rose glanced at Gwen by her side but said nothing. The girl had been staring ahead since the coach started; she had made no sign whatever when they passed the yellow car. It was Mrs. Lawler who had looked down and seen and caught a very brief glimpse of the pulled-down panama hat she had recognised at Assisi.

  So Owen Strong was again pursuing, not even waiting until his black car was mended. If it was his; if Gwen’s almost incoherent story was another of her lying fantasies, as Rose was now inclined to believe. And surely it must be, if Owen could get hold of another car and drive it quite openly. Police methods in these Latin countries might be peculiar; certainly in Italy they seemed to the northern foreigner to be haphazard. But they must be aware of the newspaper story, if it was true there had been one. Gwen could have lied about that, too.

  Mrs. Lawler controlled these thoughts when they had completed their unprofitable circuit in her mind for the third time. She transferred her attention to wholly outward things, finding plenty there to occupy her, for the scenery as they climbed the narrow road to the monastery at the summit of the hill was of extraordinary beauty. Mile upon mile, she gazed, as at Fiesole, into a distance of tree-covered mountains, some tall, some no more than hills, with wide fields at their base washed emerald by the recent storm and fading away in the distance to a blue mist where the sun still drew up the rain the thirsty ground had not had time to suck down.

  The coach passed through gates guarded by two monks in long black gowns. One or two private cars were drawn up outside the gates, evidently not allowed any further. The occupants, apparently all tourists, perhaps Italian, for they were certainly not peasants, stood in little groups near each of the guards, who carried large sticks with which to control the movements of straying children.

  The coach party, deposited in the shade of trees beside the drive, assembled at the foot of a wide flight of steps that led up from the gravel to the entrance doors of the monastery. Billie explained that they would be taken round the establishment by a priest, not a monk, and as he was not sure of his English he would explain to her in Italian and she would translate this.

  So they waited, chatting quietly among themselves. They had a new and interesting topic to enliven them, for Mr. and Mrs. Banks and the quarantined couples had joined them again from Perugia. But Penny Banks was still absent. Gwen stood with Mrs. Lawler and her friends. She seemed as apathetic as usual, not sulky, only withdrawn.

  “Until her sudden, indrawn breath and startled eyes, staring back down the drive, brought the other three to look in the same direction.

  Owen Strong, was walking towards them, not hurrying, not dawdling, just approaching steadily to an expected appointment a faint smile lifting the corner of his scarred mouth, dark glasses hiding the eyes that did not share the smile.

  “Good afternoon,” he said politely as he reached the coach party.

  It was addressed to Gwen and her immediate companions, but in a voice loud enough to bring response from the others who had seen him before; notably the Blundells and the Woodruffs.

  Gwen said nothing, only drew nearer to Flo Jeans. Mrs. Lawler said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Strong. I thought it was you in the yellow car.”

  “You passed me,” he aswered, not in the least put out. “It doesn’t climb like my old ‘Success’.” He paused, then said, the smile growing to clown width, “I suppose Gwen told you we were half-drowned in the thunderstorm the day before yesterday?”

  “Yes. And the car put out of action.”

  “Only temporarily. They have lent me this yellow job while the drying-out goes on.”

  At this point Billie reappeared at the top of the steps with a young man in a black sweater and neat black slacks. To the astonishment of the tourists, who had expected an elderly gentleman in gown and biretta, she introduced him as the priest who would act as guide.

  By this time the Italians whose cars were parked outside the gates arrived to join the party, so bi-lingual explanations suited them all. Mrs. Lawler said to Owen, “This will be good for my Italian, which is not much more than basic. You speak it fluently I believe.”

  “Pretty well,” he answered quietly.

  They all moved up the outside staircase and into the building. Gwen, with a brief greeting, moved away from Owen to join Mr. and Mrs. Banks. She had avoided Myra and Flo since lunch, for mat meal had been so awkward, so silent so embarrassing that she felt sure Rose Lawler had told the others the story of her own exposure in the schoolmarm’s room, in spite of her promise not to do so. Mean old cow, seeing she had not taken anything belonging to the old bitch! So she attached herself to the recently returned Banks couple instead, hoping she might perhaps change to their table now that it seemed plain the little camp daughter had left the tour.

  “Has Penny gone home after all?” she asked, as the whole party moved into the building.

  “Oh no,” Mr. Banks answered after a little pause, while Mrs. Banks looked away, apparently concentrating on Billie’s translation of the young priest’s remarks.

  This was not encouraging. Had the girl been taken into custody or just warned off? Had she been charged with having, using or even peddling the cannabis Gwen’s nose had already detected, in spite of the opened window in the coach. Had Penny exchanged a hospital bed for a prison cell? If so surely her parents would exhibit rather more emotion over their neglected child? But perhaps not; they were stupid enough to feel very little about anything. Gwen, still smarting from her untimely exposure, was determined to climb back upon the shortcomings of the Banks family to her former hard-won peak of self-confidence.

  Owen watched her carefully without at all being suspected of doing so. Why this change in her? What could have happened, apart of course from the fact that she had probably also seen the newspaper paragraph about the car. So had the garage where it was being serviced. But he had no fears over that. He had hired the thing in Nice from friends who ran a very convenient hire service, using vehicles supplied without questions asked by other friends and acquaintances, including himself. If the present garage chose to check the engine number of the black job, he had his hire-car receipt and they in Nice had theirs for buying it, in a wholly fictitious name. And there the search would end unless the irate owner …

  “But you expect the ‘Success’ to be dried out by tomorrow?” Mrs. Lawler was asking him.

  “Oh yes. I don’t see why not. I hope so.”

  “We go to Venice tomorrow,” Rose said. “Where do you go next?”

  “Venice, of course,” he answered, laughing, which made the nearby tourists look round and frown, so she stopped asking questions, only wondered at his persistence in following such an unprofitable quest, a dangerous one perhaps, certainly worthless. Ought she to warn him? No, that would be going too far. And it was not the kind of thing anyone of her generation would consider possible. But Gwen of all people! A little hotel thief … practised too, with that bunch of suitcase keys! Though she had not time to steal anything from her, herself. With her story of a stolen car, of wanting photographic evidence against Owen! He had not behaved like a car thief when he spoke about the “Success” and its present substitute. Far from it.

  During the course of the tour inside the building Rose found herself no longer beside Owen; so she joined her friends and stayed with them until they all went out on to a wide terrace.

  Here they found again the marvellous views of the Apennines they had enjoyed on the way up the hill. But now spread out on three sides in all their grandeur, row upon row dissolving to the north and east into the blue horizon, falling to the sun-filled south below where the monks cultivated a few acres for the monastery. Beyond lay Florence baking beside the Arno.

  Rose swung her camera into position to begin taking pictures. Owen’s voice behind her said “May I?” and before she could speak had slipped the strap over her head and taken the camera from her to begin fiddling with the various adjustments.

  She was shocked, outraged and suddenly in face of his cool insolence and s
leight of hand, afraid. Photographs! Again their possible importance flashed through her mind. She laid her hand upon his which was holding her property as if it were his own, and said as steadily as she could manage: “I have it properly set. This is a new film, so don’t mess it up, will you?”

  “No,” he said. “Of course not. I see it’s new. I just want — may I please — to take a picture of you and your friends. I left my camera behind this morning. Stupid of me.”

  He was half laughing, but had moved away from her, still holding her camera, brushing off her hand as if it was no more than a fly, she told herself. And now Myra and Flo were beside her and Gwen just behind them.

  “Perfect background,” Owen said loudly. “Gwen, come a bit forward. On the parapet side. That’s O.K. Now all of you — watch the birdie — say cheese — Fine!”

  He clicked and wound on and gave the camera back to Mrs. Lawler with a little bow. “I shall expect a print of that,” he concluded.

  Rose said nothing. Her astonishment, her anger, had freed all those emotions she usually kept locked away where they did not trouble her. But now they were tumbling out to find excuses for him, to forgive his boyish effrontery in a rush of pity for this maimed, middle-aged, lonely man, driving about the Continent looking for — what? Solace, affection, lost gaiety, destroyed happiness, battered health …

  She leaned on the parapet, staring out at the mountains. Gwen and the other two had moved away. But Owen remained.

  “I think you must have been in the R.A.F. in the war,” she said, speaking with an effort.

  He was surprised, but saw that she was very serious and responded to it.

  “Yes, I was,” he answered.

  “In a fighter squadron?”

  “Yes.”

  Feverishly he tried to remember the name of the airfield where he had served, but failed. But it did not matter as she went on speaking.

  “You must have been brought down — in flames. Was it over the Channel? Did you manage to get out in time?”