TimeLocke

by Jack Barnao

  “What are you planning? Just wait here for Eric?”

  “I think that’s best.” She was still bright, and I got the impression of a lover waiting for her other half. What she and Wainwright had going was important to her.

  “He probably won’t be here until late. The Concorde flies from New York to Paris; then he’ll have to change planes for Marseilles and drive up. We’ll be here all day.”

  She looked up inquisitively over her cereal. “Does that bother you?”

  “Just so long as you don’t go talking to people. Labrosse will hear about it, and we’ll have trouble. Perhaps Eric has contacts with the Gendarmerie and can ease things for you.”

  “Perhaps he does.” She smiled. “Why so suddenly law-abiding, John? Hélène told me what you did to those two men. That was hardly legal.”

  “That was a response to an attack. Attacks put all the normal rules on hold.”

  She half-smiled but said nothing. And then I heard a car coming up the drive. We went to the back window and saw a big Citroën making its way slowly over the ruts. I slipped my jacket on to cover my gun and put the Colt revolver into my right-hand pocket.

  “Stay here.” I whisked out the door and down the steps, covering the half-dozen paces to the woodpile before the car came around the corner of the house. I crouched behind the logs, waiting until the car stopped. There were two men in it. I didn’t recognize the driver, but the other was Eric Wainwright. He got out of the car and spoke in French to his driver. He called him by name, I got that much, and the name he used was Chrétien.

  I came out from behind the logs, moving like a man who’s been out for a morning stroll. “Good morning, Major. How are you?”

  “John?” He looked surprised for a moment, then stuck out his hand. “How are you, and how’s Amy?”

  “Come on and see for yourself. We were just having breakfast when we saw the car.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “And you came down? Very good. Very professional indeed.”

  “A lot’s been happening.” I led him toward the steps to the apartment. “Amy will fill you in.” I was thinking as we walked. It was impossible for him to have flown from Canada in such a short time. That meant he must have been in France. And yet she had called his number in Toronto and spoken to him herself the night before. Call forwarding, I supposed; I’m ignorant of most technology except where it directly affects my work. Could it shunt a call to Canada and back without the caller’s noticing? And in any case, why had he lied?

  Any doubts I’d had about his relationship with Amy were swept away by her greeting. She kissed him full on the lips and hugged him. “Eric, what a wonderful surprise! John was just saying you’d be late today.”

  “Ah, these days anything is possible if you’re prepared to pay the price,” he said.

  It wasn’t a full answer, but she didn’t need one. She was hanging on to his arm and steering him to the table. “Have some coffee.”

  “That would be lovely.” He sat down, and she fussed with another cup. “Oh, John. Would you be so kind as to call Chretien, please. He could use some of this as well.”

  “Sure.” I went down to the car. Chretien was sitting in the driver’s seat and, being a Frenchman, was smoking the inevitable cigarette. “Café?” I asked, smiling.

  “Oui, merci.” He got out and stomped on his cigarette and followed me back upstairs. I was sizing him up as he moved. Around forty, compact and slope-shouldered, what a boxing trainer would describe as a useful build, long reach. I wondered whether Eric had retained him solely for his driving skills, or was he under the same kind of pressures as the Armands? Was that why he had offered me a bonus for some unspecified action? Perhaps for killing Orsini? As Alice in Wonderland has it, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

  When the driver and I got upstairs, Amy chatted to the man as she gave him coffee, but she suspended her conversation with Wainwright. As soon as Chrétien had finished, Wainwright sent him back down to the car, and Amy cut loose with her story of what had been happening. Wainwright listened intently, not interrupting, and when she had finished, he said, “Perhaps you should abandon this project, at least for this year, my dear.”

  That wasn’t the reaction she’d been looking for, and her face fell. “But Eric, it’s such a good story. It’s turning into a mystery now, trying to track down Le Loup. Signor Orsini won’t tell me flat out that he was the man. I have to dig it out for myself. And if I can find out, I’m sure I’ll have a bestseller on my hands.”

  His answer surprised me. “You’re dealing with old wounds here, my dear, deep wounds.”

  “But we’re talking about nearly fifty years ago.” There was a touch of the old petulance in her answer. “Most of us weren’t even born then.”

  “Those of us who were saw a lot of ugly things happen. People lost friends, brothers, husbands, lovers.” He looked every year of his age as he spoke. “Really, my dear, in the light of what happened to Pierre Armand, laying off your project would be the respectful thing to do.”

  “You’re asking me to throw away my past year’s research.” She stood up, angry now, her arms folded across her chest. “There’s no proof that Pierre was killed because of my work, and even if there was, it means that he died for nothing if I stop now.”

  It was time for some truth. “There’s more to it than that,” I said. “Please sit down, Amy, I have some more news, and it’s even harder to take.”

  She stood defiantly, glaring at me. “Go ahead.”

  “Not until you sit down.” I learned a lot from my officers’ training. You don’t back down on orders. I waited, looking at her until she quietly sat.

  “I lied to you last night.”

  Eric was the first to speak. “About what?”

  “When we got here last night, the dog didn’t bark. I told Amy it was because he had recognized my scent. It wasn’t. His throat had been cut, the same way as Pierre’s.”

  Amy gasped. But she kept her control. “What do you think it means?”

  “I know what it means because I searched Constance’s apartment. She’s been murdered.”

  Amy shrieked and sagged in her chair. Wainwright just looked at me, his mouth open in astonishment.

  “And you told me everything was fine,” Amy babbled. “You let me come up here and sleep as if nothing was wrong.”

  I said nothing. Wainwright did it for me. “It was the right thing to do, child. I would have done the same thing. Any good officer would have done it.”

  So I had his approval, for whatever that was worth. He addressed his next words to me. “What did you plan to do about it today, John?”

  “I figured to wait for you. It seems to me that you have a better in with the Gendarmerie than we do. You’re a businessman with important contacts in this area; we’re just a couple of snoops who leave death behind them as they go.”

  He stood up and walked over to stand behind Amy’s chair, stroking her shoulders soothingly. If she noticed him, she gave no sign, and after a moment he spoke to me. “Who did it?”

  “The best bet is Orsini. Or one of his heavies. I imagine he came here yesterday looking for Amy, questioned Constance, then killed her to keep her quiet.” As I spoke, I remembered how tight the Armands’ chauffeur had been with Orsini’s man. Perhaps he had simply called and told them where Amy was. That might mean that somebody else had murdered the old lady downstairs. But I wasn’t convinced. Orsini was the only guy around with a track record of murder.

  “But he was so normal,” Amy said. She was getting hold of herself again, and she threw in the next words, looking into my eyes almost pleadingly. “Not like last year. He was courteous, helpful. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “What do we do next?” I put the question to Wainwright. “So far we’re covered. We came home and went to sleep. Period. But everyone knows that Amy and Constance are good friends. Especially after what happened last year. People will expect us to go downstairs and say ‘Hi.’ We can’t lea
ve her any longer.”

  He took his hands from Amy’s shoulders and walked over to the window. At last he turned and said softly, “I suppose the question is, what can we expect to win?”

  I waited. He was thinking like a commanding officer. That was good. We needed some guidance here. It was no use simply going to the gendarmes. Someone as well schooled in nastiness as Orsini wouldn’t have left any loose ends. The police wouldn’t be able to pin anything on him. And if they did, he would have enough clout to squirm out through some loophole. If we were going to stay here to finish Amy’s bloody book, we needed Orsini either in jail or dead.

  Amy was the first to answer. A selfish answer, but I’d expected that. “I want to finish my work.”

  I looked at Wainwright. “Is that the object of the exercise? To let Amy finish her book?”

  He looked at me, then away. We both recognized that we had a spoiled kid on our hands here, someone who wanted only what was convenient for herself. That wasn’t a good enough reason to play fast and loose with the law by leaving Constance’s death unreported. The only problem was that he was too caught up with Amy to be able to bring up the subject, so I did it for him, speaking directly to her. “You mean to leave Constance’s body lying downstairs all summer while you flit about talking to people?”

  She gasped; then her face tightened. “You have no right to talk to me like that.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a foreign country. They’re going to be very angry if we neglect this, and I don’t intend to spend time in one of their jails.”

  She opened her mouth to tear into me, but Wainwright held up his hand. “John’s right, Amy. We can’t ignore what’s happened. We have to find some way to help the police. If we do that, they’ll be better disposed to let you continue your work.”

  She threw her hands in the air. “What can we do? The place was crawling with gendarmes yesterday when Pierre was killed, but they’ve done nothing.”

  “They’ve done what they can. The investigation is still going on. You can’t expect them to solve a murder in twenty minutes.” I was beginning to hate myself for taking this tack. I’d seen Constance. I was personally angry enough to find the guy who’d done it and tear his head off, but here I was the voice of sweet reason.

  Wainwright turned and looked out of the window again. It didn’t seem as if he was any better able to find an answer than I was. It was time to give him more facts. “Eric. If you wouldn’t mind. Can I speak to you in private, please?”

  Amy stood up angrily. “Oh, that’s fine. The men will get together and talk sense and then put their tails between their legs and run away where it’s safe. That’s great!” She shoved her chair under the table, so violently that it tipped over. But she didn’t pause to right it. She stormed off upstairs.

  Wainwright watched her go, looking as if he wanted to follow her and tell her everything was going to be all right. When he didn’t turn back to me, I said, “Okay. Let’s sit down and discuss this thing calmly. I’ve got some information that may be useful.”

  Now he turned his back on the stairs and walked with me to the end of the sitting room, where he sat down in an armchair. I sat on the couch that had been my bed. “There are things going on that have nothing to do with Amy,” I said.

  “Such as?” I had his attention now.

  “Such as pressure on the Armands from Orsini. He’s trying to push them out of business and take over. Hélène told me that much.”

  He allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “And you always believe anything a beautiful woman tells you?”

  “She asked me to kill Orsini. And then their chauffeur tried to kill her, and finally, two thugs from out of town tried to abduct her last night as Amy and I were trying to leave the place. I stopped them. I figured they were after Amy, but Hélène wanted me to kill them, to shove their car over a cliff somewhere.”

  His smile vanished. “This is very serious.”

  “It’s why we’re having this talk. So far as I can make out, Amy has fallen into the middle of some kind of squabble between Armand and Orsini. The gendarmes are blaming her because that’s the way the police mind works, but the truth is, there’s a war going on here.”

  He sat for a long moment, then said, “But how would that cause the death of the old woman downstairs?”

  “Beats the hell out of me. I’ve told you my guess, that Orsini came here looking for Amy.”

  “And yet when he came to visit her, he was courteous. She told me that herself.” Wainwright had lost his objectivity. A soldier or a cop would have wondered about Orsini’s good behavior. It meant either that there had been something phony about Amy’s story of the previous year’s encounter or that the guy was planning something sneaky. But Wainwright didn’t seem able to analyze what he’d heard. He accepted it as gospel and never wondered about it, like a novice in Holy Orders.

  I pushed the conversation ahead. “What it boils down to is this. What do we gain by not going to the police?”

  Wainwright rubbed his eyebrow with his forefinger. It’s a thing only old men or actors ever do. But it seemed to help his thinking. “Nothing,” he said at last. It was the sensible answer, but he muddied it up immediately. “But it means that Amy loses her chance to work, and that costs her a year of research.”

  I was about to tell him that not calling the police could cost her a year or two of her freedom, but I didn’t have the chance. From up on the hill behind the house came the crisp, echoing report of a rifle shot.

  I dropped to my knees and craned up slightly to peek out of the window. Chrétien was lying beside the car, blood seeping out of a hole in his shirtfront. I pulled back my head, and in the next instant there was a vicious whine, chased by the sound of the rifle shot as a second bullet ricocheted off the stone sill, inches from my face.

  CHAPTER 12

  Behind me I heard Wainwright gasp, and I turned to him. “Your driver’s hit. Could be dead. It looks bad.”

  “Good God.” He was grim but not panicky; that was good news. His war had been a long time ago, but he hadn’t lost the old reflexes. I pulled out the revolver. “Get up to Amy’s room. Take this with you and keep them out if they come for her.”

  “Right. What are you going to do?”

  “Constance has a phone downstairs. I’m going to call the police.” I set the gun down on the floor and ducked away below the level of the window, toward the back door of the apartment.

  He took the gun, then dropped flat to squirm past the window and make for the stairs. Amy’s face appeared at the door of her room. “Stay in there, I’m coming up,” he said, and ran up the stairs at surprising speed for a man of his age, shoving her back through the doorway. They would be safe if they stayed put. Even the inside walls of the house were made of thick stone. Unless the guy on the hill had a heavier-caliber weapon than the one he’d used on Chrétien, his bullets wouldn’t break through to them.

  And if they stayed low, in the corner, he would have no chance of hitting them with a bullet through the roof.

  I eased the front door open. Nobody fired. If there was only one man out there, I was safe. The roof of the drive shed where the cars were kept was too low for my movements to be seen from the hill. I would be under cover until I got to ground level.

  I didn’t use the steps. Instead, I crouched low on the flat area outside the door and dropped the six feet to the ground, rolling in behind my car. Glancing up, I checked that I was still out of sight, unless the man had come down the hill almost level with me, so I stood up to check the window in the wall. It was closed, and I rolled again, behind Constance’s car now, to reach her back door.

  It was an ancient thing of crude planks painted gray. The lock had been put in a hundred years ago; it took a big old key that might have gotten me into the Bastille. I checked that it was locked and then straightened and slammed it with my foot. The lock held, but the shock was too much for the tired old timbers, and the middle of the door caved in. I hit
it again, and it gave completely, allowing me to force it once more with my shoulder and split it in two.

  I ducked inside as a bullet smashed through the tiles on the roof behind me, zinging angrily around the confined space.

  If anybody had been waiting, they would have been in the corridor, aiming at me as I came through the door, so I flattened myself against the far wall, covering the room with my pistol. Nothing moved. I’d seen the telephone in her living room, so I headed that way, keeping below the level of the back window. There was still a chance that another man was waiting in the living room. I knew firsthand how easy it was to break in, or there could be a second sniper, out in the oak trees in front of the house, waiting for me to come into view as I went for the phone.

  I crouched at the doorway, listening. Nothing moved in the room. All I could hear was the faint buzzing of the first flies to discover Constance’s body. After a pause I stepped into the room and rolled behind the couch, then knelt up to cover the area with my gun. The place was empty except for Constance, and she didn’t count anymore, thanks to Orsini. The telephone sat on a coffee table next to her favorite chair. I grabbed the whole unit and ducked back behind the couch, scanning the orchard as I moved, checking for movement or the glint of a weapon.

  Nothing moved outside, and I lifted the receiver and waited for the dial tone. But there was none. A glance told me that the wall connection had been torn out of the wall. I swore automatically, then started thinking. Perhaps there was only one man, on the hill behind us. From there he could cover any attempt to get away, once our car reached the driveway. But that would call for some fancy shooting on his part, and some luck. No, they probably had a second man outside, down in the bushes, waiting for us. He could drop the driver with one shot and kill or abduct the survivors with no trouble.

  That seemed the best placement for limited numbers, but it didn’t mean there was no one outside the French windows at my level. I paused and weighed the signs again. If they had a sniper out there, he would have taken a shot at me as I came in. All things considered, it was worth trying to get out.