Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart
‘No. The Belle Auberge, Rue Mirabell. Got it?’
‘Yes, thank you. Goodbye.’
And she rang off.
20
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked …
(Shakespeare)
When I came out of the telephone booth I found, in spite of the warmth of the night, that I was shivering. I hesitated, wondering if I dared spare the time to fetch my coat. I looked at my watch. The call had taken less than ten minutes. My room was on the second floor, and the lift was standing empty; it was the work of three more minutes to go to my room, pick up my coat, and reach the lobby again. I said a polite and, I hope, normal, good night to the concierge, and ran out into the Rue Mirabell, hugging the comfort of my coat close round me as I turned the corner and plunged once more into the dimness of the narrow street. Round the next bend in the road, past the shuttered Boucherie Chevaline, past the double warehouse doors and the heap of sand and stone where the pavement was being repaired, and there, across the street, was the long low window of the antique shop, with the bracelet on its velvet drape under the lamp. My steps faltered, slowed, and stopped. I stood in the shadows, staring across the road, while the night seemed suddenly colder.
The bracelet was still there. I could see it, pale against the velvet. But the lamp was out, and the shop had the still, deserted look of emptiness. Richard was nowhere to be seen.
I don’t know how long I stood there, stupidly staring at the shop, gazing up the street and down the street, alternately, as if somehow I could conjure his presence out of empty air. I even started back the way I had come, as if I could have passed him unseen on my way from the hotel, but I told myself sharply not to be a fool, and went back to my post in the shadows. Firmly I thrust back the stupid, formless fear that was fumbling at me with chilly fingers. I was over-excited, I told myself; I had had an exhausting day, and, before that, a shocking night. There was no reason to suppose that anything untoward had happened at all. I must simply wait. It was only fifteen minutes since I had left him, and after all – with a lovely wave of relief the simple explanation burst over me – after all, Richard had probably gone through to the back of the shop, into the proprietor’s office. I bent forward, peering, and then smiled to myself. There was, indeed, a line of light on the floor at the rear of the shop, that seemed to come from under a door.
I hesitated for a moment. Richard had told me to come back here. Should I wait where I was till he came out, or go across into the shop myself? I stood in the shadows, undecided.
Streets away, the traffic’s roar sounded like the surging of a distant sea. Twenty yards off, on business or pleasure bent, a scrawny cat slunk purposefully across the pavement. Somewhere near at hand an engine coughed, and a car moved away with a roar and a shocking gear-change. I realized that I was shivering again, whether from apprehension, or nerves, or cold, I did not know. But I was not, I decided, going to stand in the street any longer.
Sometimes, even now, I dream of that moment, of what would have happened if I had walked across the road, and of what it might have meant. And sometimes, in my dream, I do actually walk out of the shadows, over the road, into the shop … then, if I am lucky, I wake up screaming …
I was actually beginning to move forward when the blare of a car’s horn, as it swung into the little street, startled me, and made me take an instinctive backward step. The oncoming car was a taxi, and it shot down the narrow road, skidding to a stop beside me. Almost before it had stopped the far door opened, and a woman got out. She thrust money into the driver’s hand, and hurried across the pavement into the antique shop. The taxi jerked forward and roared away. I heard the shop door slam behind her, and the tap-tap-tap of her heels across the shop. I saw the door at the rear of the shop open, and she stood for a second, as brightly lit as if she had been on the cinema screen. It was Loraine.
I no longer had any desire to move out of the shelter of my doorway. Thankful for my dark coat, I crouched back, my mind racing, wondering how Loraine had traced David so quickly, wondering if Richard was still in the office, and, if so, what sort of a scene was taking place in there at this moment.
I was to know soon enough. The office door opened again, and swung wide. There were three people in the room. I saw Loraine quite clearly; she was standing gesturing furiously with a cigarette, talking to a man who sat in an arm-chair with his back to the door. I could see his arm in a short blue shirt-sleeve, and one navy-blue trouser-leg. It was certainly not Richard. There was another man, whom I took to be the owner of the shop; he it was who had opened the door, and now he paused for a moment to fling a remark at Loraine before he moved out of the lighted office towards me. He was big and broad, and, though his hair was grey, he did not walk like an elderly man. He closed the office door behind him, and came forward to the shop-front.
Really frightened now, I pressed myself back, closer into the shadows. But he did not come out into the street; he was only locking up. I heard the sharp click of the doorlock, and then he moved to the window and reached for the blind to pull it down. It came slowly and quietly, hiding his head, his chest, his body, until the whole shop-window was a blank, but for the big white hand that gripped the edge of the blind. In that uncertain light the hand, disembodied, looked like some monstrous white sea-beast, a squid or octopus, floating in the nebulous murk behind the glass. A monstrous, deformed creature of the dark … deformed.
I pressed the back of one shaking hand to my mouth, as I leaned against the wall, cold and sick. Even at that distance, and in that light, it showed quite clearly. The hand was crooked, and an ugly, puckered scar ran across the back of it, and down to the twisted fingernail.
The blind clicked down.
It was the trap.
21
Will you walk into my parlour?
(Nursery rhyme)
I don’t believe I thought at all. There was certainly no plan in my head. I just stood there, in the dark doorway, looking at the shop. It did not occur to me that I had exactly no chance at all against them, that I was a woman, alone, unarmed; that even if I had had a weapon I would not have known what to do with it. It did cross my mind, since I am a normal law-abiding person, to go to the police, but imagination quailed before the prospect of explaining, in a foreign tongue, an incredible situation to a sceptical officialdom. And there was not time. Richard and David were in there, and they must be got out.
I walked quietly across the road towards the shop.
The street was luckily still deserted, and no sound came from within the locked and shuttered shop. I had noticed, two doors from it along the street, a broken door which seemed to give on to a narrow tunnel running through the block of buildings to the back. I pushed this open. It creaked slightly, and I slipped through, groping my way down the tunnel into what seemed to be a warehouse yard. The dark shapes of buildings loomed up to right and left; there were piles of old boxes, and an orderly stack of crates; ahead of me I could make out a pair of solid double gates, and, beside them, the darker cavern of an open garage.
I waited for a moment in the mouth of the alley, until I had got my bearings, and in a very few seconds I found that I could see fairly clearly. The moon that Richard and I had watched rise was dispensing a faint light from somewhere beyond the roof-tops, and, in rivalry, the glow of the city streets threw the same chimneys into warmer silhouette. One lighted window on my left cast a line of light like a yellow bar across the blackness, but it was a smallish window, about ten feet up, and the shaft of light went high, to be lost among the deeper shadows of the open garage.
I threw one apprehensive glance at this window, which I guessed to be that of the antique-dealer’s office, and then I started on a hurried tiptoe search of the yard buildings. The garage offered the only real hiding-place, and I slid into its black cave like a ghost. Save for some boxes and a few drums of oil, it was empty. But a smell of stale exhaust still hung in the air, and with a flash like the springing open of
It gleamed faintly under the oblique light from the office window. Its surface was thick and slimy. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that it was only oil. My flesh seemed to shrink on my bones as I bent down, put a testing finger into the viscous pool, and sniffed at it. Oil. Nothing worse. I was straightening up when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something on the floor of the garage. It had fallen behind an oil-drum, and, if I had not stooped, I should not have seen it. It showed squarish and pale in the shadows.
Now was the time, I thought, with the tiny remnant of irony that insisted on denying the realities of my situation – now was the time to discover the monogrammed handkerchief with the message scrawled in blood – or oil, amended the other part of my mind, rather hurriedly. I picked up the pale object, which was, at any rate, certainly not a handkerchief, because it was hard, oblong, and about a quarter of an inch thick. It felt as if it could be a book.
It was a book. It was a smudged and ruffled copy of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
In something less than twelve seconds I was across that yard, and crouching in the shelter of some crates under the lighted window, with Marsden’s book thrust deep into the pocket of my coat. Suspicion, then, was certainty. Marsden had been in that garage; Marsden, in fact, might have been driving the car that I had heard.
But in this last supposition, it soon appeared, I was wrong, for, quite clearly from some four feet above my head, came the voice I had heard that night on the Rocher des Doms.
‘… Why you had to behave as if all hell was let loose, Loraine. Couldn’t you—?’
I had not missed much. They were still discussing Loraine’s outburst at the hotel. Her voice cut in, petulant and brittle: ‘It was all hell. That hotel … you don’t know what it was like—’
‘Don’t I? I was staying there myself.’
‘Yes, but you had something to do. Following that damned kid around. I hadn’t. I tell you—’
‘You still needn’t have lost your nerve to quite that extent, my dear.’ He spoke cuttingly, and she flared back:
‘It’s all very well for you, blast you. What d’you think I’ve been through, this last few months? You were sitting pretty while I – I’ve had nothing; no fun, nothing to do except cope with that – that bad-tempered iceberg, damn him. Then l’affaire Toni, and the police, and now this last business … all that waiting: d’you wonder it’s got me down? I tell you, I couldn’t help it. I’ve done my best, and for God’s sake, Jean, leave me alone.’
Jean. Jean Something-or-other, the husband. John Marsden.
A new voice cut across the interchange, a deep voice, speaking a guttural French that I found hard to follow.
‘Stop it, both of you. Loraine, pull yourself together; and you, Jean, leave her alone. She’s behaved like a fool, but there’s no harm done; what’s happened today has cancelled out any mistakes either of you may have made.’
Jean spoke soberly: ‘My God! we’ve been lucky! When I think of it – the kid walking in here as large as life, and his father after him!’
The antique dealer was curt: ‘All right, we’ve been lucky. Then it seems my luck has got to make up for your carelessness.’
‘Damn it, Max—’
Max. Max Kramer; John Marsden. The pieces fitting smoothly into place. The rats in the woodshed.
There was a crash as a fist hit the table. Kramer snarled: ‘Lieber Gott, will you listen to me? This isn’t the time to wrangle over what’s past. We’ve got those two to dispose of, and it isn’t until I see them officially reported as accidental deaths that this thing’s over. When that happens, and not before, you’ll get your money.’
‘And the papers,’ put in Loraine sullenly.
‘And the papers; and we’ll cry quits, and you two can go to perdition in your own way, and leave me to go mine. Is that understood?’
‘All right. What do we do?’ This from Jean.
Loraine said, still sullen: ‘I don’t even know what’s happened yet. Are they dead?’
‘No,’ said Kramer, and I felt a muscle jump and tighten in my throat. ‘The boy’s asleep; he should stay that way for quite a time; I gave him enough to keep him quiet till it’s over.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve always had a kind heart. His father’s had something to keep him quiet, too; perhaps it wasn’t administered quite so gently, but then Jean and I were hardly prepared. … He’ll be out for a bit – quite long enough, unless we waste any more time.’
His voice dropped, and I strained closer. ‘Now listen. I’ve been thinking hard since this happened, and I’ve seen how we can use things the way they’ve played themselves. It works out pretty well with what we planned before. The boy and his father will be found dead at the foot of the cliffs – at our arranged spot. They’ll be together in the wreck of Byron’s car.’
‘Have you got it?’
‘His keys were in his pocket, along with the garage chit. It’s in one of Bériot’s lock-ups.’
‘And the story,’ said Jean, with triumph lighting his voice, ‘will be that the boy bolted to meet his father; the two of them set off – for Italy, perhaps; and pff – an accident in the darkness!’
‘Exactly,’ said Kramer, with satisfaction. ‘The child really played into our hands by running away. He even stole his passport to take with him. There’ll be no reason why anyone should think about – murder. No one will look in that boy’s body for drugs.’
‘And any signs of violence on the man will be accounted for—’
‘Exactly,’ said Kramer again.
Then the purr of satisfaction faded, and his voice went hard and precise: ‘André’s taken the two of them, tied up in the van. He’s been gone about fifteen minutes. We should be there almost as soon as he is. He’s a bit of a fool, as you know, and he’s afraid of trouble; I told him we’d have to wait for you, Loraine, but that one of us would go after him as soon as possible, Jean—’
‘What?’
‘My car’s in the garage on the other side of the street. Here are the keys.’ I heard the jingle as he threw them. ‘You get straight after André. See that he parks well out of sight.’
‘Right. And you?’
‘I’ve got to get Byron’s car; it won’t take me long. If either of them wakes up and makes trouble—’
‘I’ll know what to do.’
‘So,’ said the German.
Loraine said: ‘What about me? Can’t I come? I want to watch.’
Jean sounded amused. ‘Chief mourner? What on earth did the poor sod do to you, ma belle?’
‘You’ll go with me,’ said Kramer flatly. ‘I want Jean’s mind on his job. Get going, Jean.’
‘Okay. Throw me my coat.’
I heard the chair-springs creak as he got up. I heard the small jingle of the car keys as he dropped them into his pocket. He was going. He took three steps, and the door opened. They were on their way to kill Richard and little David, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing. Somewhere out in the night, along that cruel coast, Richard and his son would hurtle to their deaths, and I would not even know where they lay, until I saw the headlines in the morning papers.
I suppose I was praying. I only know that my cheeks and lips were wet, and my hands were gripping the edge of a crate until the bones seemed to crack. Dear God, don’t let them die … not Richard, not little David; there must be something I can do … perhaps, even now, the police … there must be something I can do. There must be. If only I knew where they’d been take
‘Max,’ said Jean’s voice above me, half laughing, half casual, ‘I’m damned if I can remember whether it’s the first fork right after Aiguebelle, or the second.’
‘Lieber Gott! The second!’ said Kramer. ‘The first only goes to a cottage on the cliff. The track you want drops steeply away from the road just beyond those big parasol pines on the left. This is a hell of a time to ask a question like that!’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Jean insolently, and went out, whistling, into the shop.
I heard Kramer say: ‘Loraine. Quickly now. Get on the telephone to that hotel of yours—’ and then I was across the yard and fumbling for the catch of the double gates that opened on to the back alley. With Jean at the street door I dared not go that way. I must chance finding my way through the alley, back to the Rue Mirabell, and thence to locate my car. The road to Italy, the coast road, past Aiguebelle … I found myself whispering frantically as my hands clawed at the heavy catch of the gate: ‘Bergère Frères, 69 Rue des Pêcheurs … 69 Rue des Pechêurs … my car, please, quickly … the second on the right after Aiguebelle; on the left the parasol pines.’ And then, again, like a refrain: ‘Bergère Frères….’
The bolt was rusty, and my fingers slipped and strained. There was sweat on my hands. I thought I heard the outer door of the shop open and shut in the distance. I thought I heard a soft whistle in the street. I couldn’t move the bolt. I strained and tugged to move it, and it would not come, and something inside me strained too, and stretched to snapping-point. I couldn’t get out. They were going to murder Richard, and I couldn’t get out.
In another moment I’d have broken: I’d have been caught by Kramer screaming in his warehouse yard and beating the gates with my hands, but, just as the panic inside me swelled to bursting-point, a little door in the gate swung open like magic in front of me, and I was free. It was one of those little man-doors they cut into bigger ones, to save having to haul the latter open every time somebody wants to get out; and it swung wide in front of me, creaking ever such a little.