Carlotti said, "Did this car belong to her?"
I said I didn't know.
Grandi broke in impatiently to say that he had already checked the registration plates. Helen had bought the car ten weeks ago: soon after she had arrived in Rome.
I wondered where the money had come from. It puzzled me. I told myself that it was possible that she had cabled to her father, and he had sent her the money but, remembering what he had said about her keeping within her allowance, it didn't seem likely the money had come from him.
We trooped into the lounge. Carlotti asked me politely if I would sit down and wait while he examined the villa.
I sat down and waited.
They spent some time in the bedroom. After a while, Carlotri came out carrying a small leather box: the kind of box you buy in Florence when you're hard put to give a friend at home a present.
"You had better take charge of these," he said, putting the box on the table. "They must be given to il Signor Chalmers. Perhaps you will give me a receipt?"
He lifted the lid. In the box were some pieces of jewellery. There were two rings: one of them had a large sapphire stone; the other had three diamonds. There was a collar of diamonds and a pair of diamond ear-rings. I don't know much about the value of jewellery, but even I could see that these would be worth quite a lot.
"They are very nice," Carlotti said. He sounded a little wistful as if he coveted the jewels. "It is fortunate no one broke in here while the place was unguarded."
I remembered the tall, broad-shouldered intruder.
"Where did you find them?" I asked.
"They were on her dressing-table for anyone to steal."
"They're genuine? I mean, they're not paste?"
"Of course they are genuine." He frowned at me. "I should say at a rough guess they are worth three million lire"
While he was scribbling out a receipt for me to sign, I stared at the box and its contents. On her dressing-table for anyone to steal! I felt a little chill of uneasiness crawl up my spine. It didn't seem then that the intruder I had seen had been a sneak thief. Then who had he been? The sound of the telephone bell startled me.
Carlotti answered it.
He said, "Si ... si. … si." Listened for a long moment, then grunted something and hung up.
Grandi came into the room. His face wore an expectant expression.
Carlotti lit a cigarette before saying to me, "They have just had the autopsy report."
I could see something had upset him. His eyes were uneasy again.
"Well, you know how she died," I said in an attempt to bridge ever the long pause that followed.
"Yes, there is no doubt about that."
He moved away from the telephone. I could feel his uneasiness the way you feel the touch of a hand in the dark.
"Is there anything else?"
I was aware that my voice had sharpened. I saw Grandi turn to look at me.
"Yes, there is something else," Carlotti said and grimaced. "She was pregnant."
II
It was close on three-thirty by the time Carlotti had completed his examination of the villa and his interrogation of the woman from the village.
I didn't see her.
I could hear the faint sound of their voices as he talked with her in the kitchen. I remained in the lounge, smoking cigarette after cigarette, my mind a squirrel cage of panic.
So Helen had been pregnant.
That would be the final nail in my coffin if they ever found out who Douglas Sherrard was. I knew I was not only innocent of her death, but also of her pregnancy, but if ever the facts came out, no one would believe it.
What a mad, crass stupid fool I had been to have ever got tangled with the girl!
Who had been her lover?
I thought again of the broad-shouldered, mysterious intruder I had seen the previous night. Was he the man? It was possible. It was obvious now that he hadn't been a thief. No thief would have left three million lire's worth of jewellery on the dressing-table.
I went on turning this situation over in my mind, watching the clock on the overmantel, knowing in another half-hour I would have to give Chalmers the details of her death.
The more I thought about it, the more acutely conscious I became that one false step would be my complete finish.
Carlotti came into the lounge as the hands of the clock on the overmantel moved to three forty-four.
"There are complications," he said gloomily.
"I know. You said that before."
"Do you think she was the suicide type?"
The question startled me.
"I don't know. I tell you, I don't know anything about her." I felt compelled to drive this point home so I went on, "Chalmers asked me to meet her at the airport and take her to her hotel. This was about fourteen weeks ago. Since then I have scarcely seen her. I just don't know anything about her."
"Grandi thinks it is possible that her lover deserted her." Carlotti said. I don't think he paid much notice to what I had said. "He thinks she threw herself off the cliff in despair."
"American girls don't do that sort of thing. They're too practical. You will have to be careful how you suggest a theory of that kind to Chalmers. He might not like it."
"I'm not suggesting it to il Signor Chalmers, I'm suggesting it to you," Carlotti said quietly.
Grandi wandered in at this moment and sat down. He stared at me with cold, hostile eyes. For some reason or other, he didn't seem to like me.
"Make all the suggestions you like to me," I said, looking steadily at Carlotti. "It won't help you one way or the other, but be careful what you say to Chalmers."
"Yes," Carlotti said. "I understand that. I am relying on you for help. It seems there was a love affair. The woman has told me that the girl came here two days ago. She came alone. She told the woman that she was expecting her husband to join her the following day - that would be yesterday. The woman says there is no doubt that she was expecting him. She was very gay." He broke off to stare at me. "I'm telling you what the woman said. Women are very often reliable concerning such matters."
Go on," I said. "I'm not arguing with you."
"This man was supposed to be arriving at Sorrento from Naples at three-thirty. La signorina told her she was going to meet the train, and she was to come in at nine in the evening to dear up the dinner things. The woman left the villa at eleven in the morning. Between that time and the rime it was necessary for la signorina to leave to meet the train something happened either to prevent her from meeting the train or that made her change her mind about meeting it."
"What kind of thing?"
He lifted his shoulders.
"She may have received a message. There is no record of her receiving a telephone call. I don't know. I think it is very possible she learned somehow or other that her lover wasn't coming."
"You're guessing," I said. "You'll have to watch out not to guess with Chalmers."
"By then we may have some facts. I am trying theories." He moved restlessly. I could see he was perplexed and unhappy with tile situation. "I am seeing if Grandi's theory fits that in a fit of
depression she killed herself."
"Does it matter?" I said. "She's dead. Can't this be put through as an accident? There's no need to broadcast the fact that she was pregnant, is there?"
"The coroner will have the autopsy report. There is no way of keeping it quiet."
Grandi said impatiently, "Well, I have things to do. I have got to find this man Sherrard."
I felt as if someone had touched the back of my neck with a splinter of ice.
"I am going to call il Signor Chalmers," I said, trying to make my voice casual. "He will want to know what is happening. What shall I tell him?"
The two men exchanged glances.
"It would be wise to tell him as little as possible at this stage of the investigation," Carlotti said. "It would be unwise to mention this man Sherrard, I think. Couldn't you say that she fell off the
cliff while using her cine camera, that there will be an inquest and a full investigation and until then ..."
The telephone interrupted him. Grandi lifted the receiver, listened for a moment, then looked across at me. "It is for you."
I took the receiver from him.
"Hello?"
Gina said, "Mr. Chalmers phoned through ten minutes ago. He said he was flying out right away, and you are to meet him at 18.00 hours at the Naples airport to-morrow."
I drew in a long, slow breath. This was something I wasn't prepared for.
"How did he sound?"
"He was very curt and sharp," Gina said. "He didn't sound like anything except that."
"Did he ask any questions?"
"No. He just told me the time he would be arriving and asked for you to meet him."
"Okay, I'll be there."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"No. Go home, Gina. I won't be needing you now."
"If you do, I'll be at my apartment all the evening."
"Okay, but I won't worry you. So long for now," and I hung up.
Carlotti was watching me, his eyes frowning.
"Chalmers will arrive at Naples at 18.00 hours to-morrow," I said. "Between now and then, you'd better get some facts. There'll be no question of telling him as little as possible. He'll have to be told everything, and in detail."
Carlotti grimaced as he got to his feet
"We should be able to find this man Sherrard by to-morrow evening," he said, and looked over at Grandi. "Leave your man here. He is to remain here until he is relieved. You can drive us down to Sorrento. Don't forget the jewels, Signor Dawson."
I picked up the leather box and slipped it into my pocket.
As we went down the steps and down the drive to the police car, Carlotti said to Grandi, "I'll leave you in Sorrento. Try to find out if anyone knows Sherrard and if he was seen in Sorrento. Check up on all American visitors who arrived yesterday especially on any American travelling alone."
In spite of the heat, I realized that the sweat on my face felt cold.
III
I got to the Naples airport at a few minutes to six o'clock. They told me the New York plane was on time, and was due in at any moment.
I went to the barrier, lit a cigarette and waited. There were four people waiting; two of them elderly women, the third a fat Frenchman and the fourth was a platinum blonde with a bust on her you only see in the pages of Esquire. She was wearing a white sharkskin costume and a small black hat with a diamond cluster ornament that must have cost someone a pile of money.
I looked at her and she turned. Our eyes met
"Excuse me: are you Mr. Dawson?" she asked.
"That's right," I said, surprised. I took off my hat.
"I am Mrs. Sherwin Chalmers."
I stared at her.
"You are? Mr. Chalmers hasn't already arrived, has he?"
"Oh. no. I've been shopping in Paris for the past week," she said, her deep violet eyes searching my face. She had the hard beauty of a New York show-girl. She couldn't have been more than twenty-three or four, but there was a worldliness about her that made her look older. "My husband cabled me to meet him. This is dreadful news."
"Yes."
I fidgeted with my hat
"It's a terrible thing . . . she was so young."
"It's bad," I said.
There was something in the way she kept looking at me that made me uncomfortable.
"Did you know her well, Mr. Dawson?"
"Hardly at all."
"I can't understand how she could have fallen like that."
"The police think she was taking photographs and didn't look where she was going."
The sound of an approaching aircraft cut this uncomfortable conversation short.
"I think the plane's coming in now," I said.
We stood side by side, watching the aircraft land. After a few minutes, the passengers began
to alight. Chalmers was the first off the plane. He came quickly through the barrier. I drew back and let him greet his wife. They stood talking together for a few moments, then he came over to me and shook hands. He stared at me, then said they wanted to get to the hotel as quickly as possible, that he didn't want to discuss Helen at this moment and for me to arrange a meeting with the police at his hotel at seven.
He and his wife got in the back seat of the Rolls I had hired for them and, as I didn't get any encouragement, I got in front with the chauffeur.
At the hotel, Chalmers dismissed me with a curt, "See you at seven, Dawson," and they were whisked away in the elevator up to the fourth floor, leaving me feeling a little breathless.
I had seen photographs of Chalmers, but in the flesh he was more than life size. Although he was short, fat and built like a barrel there was an atmosphere about him that reduced me and the people around him to the size of pigmies. The best description I can give of him is that he reminded me of Mussolini in his heyday. He had the same ruthless, jutting jaw, the same dark complexion and the same ice-pick eyes. It didn't seem possible that he could have been the sire of a girl like Helen whose brittle, uncoarse beauty had been so fatally attractive to me.
When, at seven o'clock, Carlotti, Grandi and I trooped into the lush lounge that the Vesuvius hotel had provided for him, he had changed, obviously shaved and showered, and was now sitting at the head of a big table in the middle of the room, a cigar between his teeth and a glowering, dark expression on his hard face.
Sitting by the window was his wife, June. She had on a sky-blue silk dress that fined her like a second skin and her long, shapely legs were crossed, showing beautiful knees that attracted Grandi's eyes and made his usually gloomy dark face take on a more animated expression.
I introduced him and Carlotti and we sat down.
For a long moment Chalmers stared fixedly at Carlotti. Then he said in his barking voice, "Okay, let's have the facts."
I've known Carlotti pretty intimately for the past three years. Up to this moment, I had never thought much of him as a policeman. I knew he was thorough, and he had a reputation for solving his cases, but he had never struck me as having any great talent for his job. But the way he faced up to Chalmers during the next twenty minutes gave me an entirely different opinion of him.
"The facts, Signor Chalmers," he said quietly, "will be painful to you, but since you ask for them, you shall have them."
Chalmers sat motionless, his freckled, fat hands clasped on the top of the table, his cigar, drifting smoke past his hard face, gripped tightly between his teeth. His small, ice-pick eyes, the colour of rain, stared fixedly at Carlotti.
"Never mind how painful it is," he said. "Give me the facts."
"Ten days ago, your daughter left Rome and flew to Naples. She took the local train from Naples to Sorrento where she paid a visit to an estate agent," Carlotti said as if he had rehearsed this speech for some time, learning it by heart. "She introduced herself to the estate agent as Mrs. Douglas Sherrard, the wife of an American business man on vacation in Rome."
I sneaked a quick look at Chalmers. He sat impassive, his cigar glowing, his hands slack on the table. I looked from him to his platinum blonde wife. She was looking out of the window and she gave no sign that she was listening.
"She wanted a villa for a month," Carlotti went on in his quiet, excellent English. "She insisted on a place that was isolated, and the cost was immaterial. It so happened that the agent had such a place. He drove la signorina to this villa and she agreed to take it. She wanted someone to come in and look after the place during their stay. The agent arranged with a woman of a nearby village to do the necessary work. This woman, Maria Candallo, tells me that, on 28th August, she went to the villa where she found la signorina who had arrived a few hours earlier in a Lincoln convertible."
Chalmers said, "Was the car registered in her name?"
"Yes," Carlotti said.
Chalmers touched off the ash on his cigar, nodded, and said, "Go on."
"La signorina told Maria that her husband would be arriving the following day. According to the woman, there was no doubt in her mind that la signorina was very much in love with this man whom she called Douglas Sherrard."
For the first time Chalmers gave a hint of his feelings. He hunched his broad shoulders and his freckled hands turned into fists.
Carlotti went on, "Maria came to the villa at eight forty-five on the morning of the 29th. She washed up the breakfast things, dusted and swept. La signorina told her she was going down to Sorrento to meet the three-thirty train from Naples. She said her husband was coming from Rome on that train. Around eleven o'clock Maria left. At that time la signorina was arranging flowers in the lounge. That was the last time, so far as we know, that anyone saw her alive."
You Find Him – I'll Fix Him Page 7