A Pigeon Among the Cats

by Josephine Bell

  “I wasn’t going to help her,” Miss Hurry said frankly. “Except to tell her she’d have to go into hospital.”

  “I was sorry for her and I don’t mind saying so,” the older woman said in spite of her niece’s effort to stop her. “You don’t have forty years’ experience as a fully qualified midwife, as I did, without learning that a bit of sympathy and tolerance don’t do anyone in this world any harm and sometimes prevents a tragedy.”

  Miss Hurry turned back on to her face, ashamed of her aunt’s garrulous give-away. But Mr. Strong hardly seemed to have heard it. He was already talking about the view and the little sailing boats moving about in the light breeze beyond the bathers. He said a few words about two of the three older women as they left the sea and walked back up the beach. He noticed Mr. Banks join them and Mrs. Lawler turn to swim or wade farther out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Owen stayed talking to the nurses for nearly half an hour after he had coaxed that potential gold nugget from the fat old midwife.

  So now he knew for sure — well, pretty nearly for sure — why Penny had been rushed off to hospital. An abortion, of course, begun illegally and inexpertly, as so often in former times in England. Odd no one seemed to have thought of the possibility except these two professionals. They were all so conditioned to drugs being the natural feature of the hippy complex. Freak clothes, long hair, bad manners, sullen temper, violent response to criticism, they’d seen it all displayed by Penelope Banks, the silly twit. So they must pin on crime as well. Even he, himself, had been ready to believe she’d been shipped off inside, not to hospital at all.

  While he continued to chat with Mrs. Franks his busy mind darted from one place to another. A fat lot of good to move into the tour hotel; to settle with Gwen to leave for Geneva the following night; to order Tito to rustle up a car and have it in the park ready for the ferry not later than tomorrow afternoon and then find he hadn’t enough dough to settle with the poor chap. Not to speak of the journey, petrol, food, servicing, and again petrol. So that interview with Dad Banks, that crucial interview, must be arranged and must succeed, by nightfall that day, no later.

  Even nightfall might be too late if it meant clearing with a bank … So …

  “I can see Mrs. Lawler in the sea and her friends walking back,” he said, pointing to where she and Mr. Banks still wallowed in the waves, “But I don’t see Gwen. No, you said she hadn’t come.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And there’s Mr. Banks, isn’t it? But not Mrs. B.”

  “She doesn’t bathe,” Miss Hurry said. “They were talking about it at lunch. Penny hadn’t turned up for lunch. I think she stayed in Venice with the boy-friend. Mr. Banks wanted a swim, so he said he’d come down. I don’t think she ever goes in.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Mrs. Franks added. “She told me she never goes in, her circulation won’t stand it.”

  “You mean she gets too cold?”

  “I suppose so. It’s a common excuse for not learning to swim, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Owen told her, losing patience.

  He watched Mr. Banks come back up the beach, he watched Mrs. Lawler swim out a fair distance and then come in. He waited until he saw Rose Lawler and her friends, changed into their summer dresses, so correct so dull, go past behind the huts towards the gate into the road. Then he said goodbye to the nurses and moved away.

  He moved slowly, searching among the nearby huts for his marked quarry. At first he thought the nurses had let him down, but presently he caught sight of Mrs. Banks, or rather of her knitting, borne before her as she emerged from the fourth of the hotel’s reserved huts. He stopped to help her out over the step and as he did so glanced inside. A pile of masculine clothes lay at one side of a bench running round three sides of the little building, with hooks in the walls above the bench.

  “I thought I saw Mr. Banks beginning to walk up from the sea,” he said, guiding her to a long chair on the sand.

  “I wouldn’t wonder,” she answered. She gave a quick glance seaward before unrolling her knitting. Owen, who had just had a promising idea, went on. “I came along with that intention myself, but they wouldn’t hire me a towel at the gate.”

  “They don’t,” Mrs. Banks said. “Nor costumes.”

  “Oh, I’ve got trunks with me,” he explained, “I just thought I need not bother to carry a towel down and take it back wet.”

  She did not answer, knitting steadily.

  “You don’t mind if I change in your hut?” he asked.

  “Of course not. All these five belong to the hotel, I think. Mrs. Lawler and her friends were here but they’ve gone back. Reg decided to have a second dip. He came up to tell me.”

  Owen went in to the hut and came out very soon, leaving his own clothes on the bench at a little distance from those of Mr. Banks.

  “I’ve just been talking to Mrs. Franks and Miss Hurry,” he said. “They thought I might find you and Mr. Banks. But not Penny.”

  “Not — what?”

  “They said Penny must have stayed over in Venice with the boy-friend, instead of coming back to lunch.”

  Put like that, with a suggestion of something not quite discreet about Penny’s behaviour set Mrs. Banks to rolling up the knitting and struggling to her feet.

  “I think I’ll go and talk to them,” she said.

  When she had gone Owen gave his short, silent laugh as he walked briskly to the sea. He pushed his way through the first wave, dived neatly through the next and came up, as he intended, about ten yards from Mr. Banks. He flung back his rather thin but shortish hair and said heartily, “Hullo, there!”

  “Hullo!” said Mr. Banks. He had been too far off and much too preoccupied with his bathing to notice Strong’s arrival, nor was he particularly pleased to see the fellow, whom he still vaguely distrusted.

  “Marvellous, isn’t it?” Owen said, allowing himself to sink on to his back so that he could float while looking about him. But the water was too shallow and the third wave broke over him so that he emerged spluttering and laughing, but inwardly raging. Mr. Banks, he saw, had begun to move towards the shore.

  It looked as if he had done this deliberately as an avoiding action. So much the worse for him if he was going to make the touch more difficult, Owen promised himself. But he decided not to cut short his own bathe. Banks did not know yet that they were sharing the same hut, but he would find that out from his wife if she had gone back there from her visit to the two nurses.

  He watched Mr. Banks’ progress to the beach, stepping high, pushed forcibly forward when a wave struck him in the back, but making steady progress. His speed increased when he reached the sand. It became difficult to distinguish him from the crowd of beach walkers, games players, child minders and so on. But persevering Owen was able to pick out his intended victim again as soon as he reached the prostrate forms of the sunbathers near the huts. Was that Mrs. Banks in the long chair where he had him self ensconced her? Too far away to be certain. Too far away to see if any of the figures near that hut was knitting. Too far away, but too soon to go out himself. Give Banks time to dress first.

  Lazily Owen waded further off-shore. He was not a strong swimmer, nor an elegant one. He could put on a show of the modern crawl for a few strokes at a time, but he soon reverted to the simple froglike breast stroke he had learned as a boy. Nevertheless he managed, part swimming, part walking, to reach the official limit of the swimming area and stood up, the water now shoulder high, to look first at the beach where he could no longer distinguish one hut from another and then out to sea.

  The small sailing boats he had noticed when he first walked down to the water were still there and seemed to be about the same distance away. They did not appear to have made much progress towards Trieste where he had thought before they might be heading. It was difficult to assess their size, so far off. But there was a new feature now, a white motor launch, at first moving across the seascape at about the leve
l of the yachts, then altering course to drive straight for the beach.

  Straight for me, thought Owen, if the fools don’t alter course again, as they must, as they surely must. He began to swim again, uncomfortably aware that he had gone out farther than any other bather, that he was a particularly slow swimmer and that the noise of the launch’s engines was growing louder every second.

  He did not want to stop swimming, to show his incompetence, but he knew he was getting into shallower water and so the pursuing boat, if it was really pursuing, must soon turn off to avoid going aground. So he stopped his desperate floundering attempt at speed, let his feet sink, found the sand sooner than he expected and faced about, with his hands up to his eyes to sweep away the water, but his small cold eyes peeping through the gaps between his fingers.

  The launch was indeed just turning away. It was sideways on now, apparently all set to move to the narrow pier that stuck out to sea from the end of the private part of the beach some distance along the coast.

  But it was not the launch and its manoeuvres that sent a thrill of shock through Owen as he turned to swim again towards the beach. It was the clear view he had had of its occupants, who were the three that had sent him fading instantly from Mrs. Lawler’s side at St. Mark’s Square that morning.

  Jake and Jake’s bodyguard. The whole opposition, in fact. Why the launch? Why this patrol along the shore? Looking for Gwen, who had not joined the bathing party? Or looking for Gwen’s friends? Where had Nurse Franks said they would be? Farther along the beach? Changed their minds and gone sight-seeing? Unlikely. And Gwen? She’d have had time to leave the hotel garden and go to the quayside, only five minutes walk away, to join the launch. So was she in it? Had she recognised him? Told Jake, or simply kept out of sight? Was she reliable enough not to betray him? He doubted it.

  Common sense told him to get out while the going was — not good — but still possible. But greed held him, linked with that possessive feeling, half attraction, half contempt, he still had for Gwen. He could not give her up, nor the hope of gain.

  His mind was still in a turmoil of questions unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, when he finally arrived at the hut where Mrs. Banks sat knitting as before and Mr. Banks reclined on a rubber mattress, dressed only in a pair of white trousers, his broad chest exposed, sun-tan oil glistening from its sparse greying hairs.

  Owen sat down on the sand near them. He had worn his bathing trunks under his trousers and now regretted he must dry off in the sun, having no towel. This process would not last very long, he hoped, because the second move he must take with the Banks couple depended upon his getting into his clothes before Reg Banks went into, the hut again for his shirt and jacket.

  The beach was too hot, the afternoon sun was still high overhead, so the drying business happily took no more than half an hour. At the end of this time, Owen got up to brush the damp sand from his seat and the backs of his thighs.

  All this time he had chatted at intervals with Mrs. Banks, who responded without enthusiasm, but well within the bounds of good manners. Mr. Banks had volunteered little to the conversation, but enough to show that his eyes, behind his dark glasses, were not closed in sleep, but against the direct rays of the sun.

  “I’ll go in and dress now,” Owen said, “Unless you want the hut Banks.”

  “No, you go ahead,” the latter grunted. But he rolled over and sat up on the rubber mattress, planting his feet on the sand beside it and supporting himself on his spread arms.

  Owen went through the bare open outer part of the hut into the small cubicle behind it. Mr. Banks’ clothes were in the same place as before, the same neat pile apart from the white trousers. His own pile was quite undisturbed. He must put them all on, he decided, then there could be no discussion about how they had appeared to Banks when he went in to dry himself and get into his trousers.

  It did not take him more than a few minutes to dress. He had cigarettes in a packet in the side pocket of his jacket. He took one out, but did not light it. Nor did he put the garment on. Instead he moved his pocket diary into his hip pocket and his wallet that had been there into an inside breast pocket of the jacket. Now was the moment. Action.

  Mrs. Banks was startled into dropping her knitting when Owen burst from the hut, wild-eyed, his jacket over one arm, his shirt unbuttoned.

  “My wallet!” he gasped. “It’s gone!”

  “What’s gone?” asked Mr. Banks, who had relapsed on to the mattress, this time face down.

  “My wallet!” Owen dragged out his diary from his hip pocket. “This … look … it’s my diary. Same sort of size. I didn’t notice when I put on the bags. Same sort of feel — deliberate — must have been!”

  By this time Mr. Banks had hoisted himself from the mattress and struggled to his feet.

  “Are you saying you’ve been robbed of your wallet?” he said in a slow, accusing voice.

  “Looks like it,” Owen answered. He had put his jacket down on an empty deck chair while he lit his cigarette from a lighter he had taken from the same pocket as the packet of cigarettes. He now more calmly buttoned his shirt and put on the jacket. He patted the various pockets, pulling out a handkerchief and refolding it, putting away the diary he had pulled from his hip pocket. All the time he drew on the cigarette with every sign of internal dismay, surrounding himself with a little cloud that made him cough. He beat it away, whereupon it enveloped Mrs. Banks who coughed as well.

  “Oh, sorry!” Owen said in a disturbed voice. “I do beg your pardon!”

  “You’ve had your wallet stolen?” Mr. Banks repeated, less accusing now than astonished. “How on earth could anyone … Mildred’s been sitting here the whole afternoon …”

  “Not quite all of it,” she said. “I did go along to talk to Mrs. Franks for a few minutes.”

  “Leaving the hut unguarded?”

  “Well, I could see it from their hut.”

  “When was this?”

  “Must have been after I arrived,” Owen said. “I had a few words with the nurses on my way here. I saw several of the tour people and you, Banks, in the water. Mrs. Banks said I could shed my things in your hut, so I did and went off to the sea almost at once.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “After you’d gone I went along for a few minutes. It can’t have been long, because you came out, Reg, not ten minutes after Mr. Strong went in and I was here again when you got back, wasn’t I?”

  “That’s right.”

  They were all silent then, looking at one another with anxious, wary eyes.

  “So whoever nicked my wallet must have been on the prowl,” Owen said. “Easy enough with the huts in a tight row, as they are. Nip in and out. Could be anyone … visitor, tourist even. They keep the general public out with their thick hedge and the gates and the gate keepers. But there must be a lot of casual staff, hut cleaners and that you’d think.”

  “What will you do?” Mrs. Banks said. “Go to the police?”

  “I’d much rather not. The wheels of the Law in this country grind very, very slowly.”

  “Was there much in your wallet?” Mr. Banks asked.

  “Just my spending money and my traveller’s cheques. In fact everything till the banks open tomorrow.”

  “But they’ll …” began Mrs. Banks, but her husband checked her.

  “I expect your hotel in Venice will fix you up,” he said firmly. “I think we’d better get a move on, Mildred. I’ll just get dressed. Excuse me, Mr. Strong.”

  Mrs. Banks rolled up her knitting. She made no further effort to talk. Nor did Owen. The touch had failed almost before it got going. That was plain enough. Ask his hotel, indeed. When he was now booked into the tour hotel in the name of Culver. Was that a mistake? No. Not really. Banks need never know. He did not propose to have any meals in the place. He had paid in advance for his room for the two nights he would use it. Reg Banks would get, the full treatment in the morning. The very full treatment, he promised himself.

  He laughed a
s he waved goodbye to the pair when they left him. He stretched himself out on Mrs. Banks’s long chair, looked at his watch and decided he had nearly an hour left before he must meet Tito and take delivery of the new car.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Owen had left her in the hotel garden Gwen waited there for another half-hour before setting off for Venice again. Since she went straight for the quayside she did not encounter any members of the tour. All the beach parties had long since reached the shore and Owen was with Tito, hidden behind the oleander hedge while everyone outside it was hidden from him.

  Gwen was rather late in reaching the Square but Jake, sitting with his bodyguards on the shady side of it, did not reproach her. Instead he announced a treat for her.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  He got up before she had time to sit down.

  “Come and see,” he said.

  They moved out of the Square to the waterside, passing the ranks of gently moving, moored gondolas and coming to three launches, white-painted, their brasses sparkling as they swung lazily at their moorings.

  There they stopped. Jake gave an order, the bodyguards leaped on to the nearest vessel and while one of them dived below to attend to the engines, the other took hold of the stern warp to draw the boat in close to the quay. Jake stepped on board, handed Gwen over after him and took her with him to the wheelhouse. At a shout from below the man on deck stepped ashore, untied the warp near the bollard and with both strands held firmly jumped back on to the launch as the engines broke into a roar.

  “Fend off!” Jake shouted from the wheelhouse. There were rubber tyres hanging on both sides of the launch. Being on the outside of the row, with a substantial gap between it and the gondolas, there was little risk of a collision. They made a clear, neat start, such a smart getaway that it attracted a certain amount of tourist attention, with children’s arms waving and levelled cameras clicking.