A Pigeon Among the Cats (10 page)

Rose told her and left the table to avoid more argument. She had only half meant what she said, but there was a small element of truth in it. Her inner confusion lasted until it was time to join the coach, which meant that she had to hurry down the stairs instead of waiting for the rather slow service of the lift. ‘Roseanna's' complement had arrived in the hall in a block, talking and laughing and dropping their keys on the reception desk as they passed it.

Mrs. Lawler joined them to put down her own key, turning as she did so to find Gwen at her shoulder.

“So you're coming, after all?” she said.

“Of course,” Gwen answered. “Look there! Billie's waving at us to buck up.”

Billie was doing no such thing, Rose decided, but she did not contradict, only went forward quickly. Gwen dropped her room key on the desk, picked up Mrs. Lawler's and stuffed it into her handbag. She climbed into the coach directly behind her friend and sat down, breathing rather quickly.

“Well, at least there doesn't seem to be another thunderstorm on the way,” she said as they started.

“Thank heaven for that,” Rose answered. “Are you expecting Mr. Strong to turn up again as it's fine?”

Gwen was not disturbed.

“Not really. The engine of his car stalled in a deep puddle yesterday. I told you that, didn't I? It would have to be dried out, wouldn't it?”

“Perhaps. I don't know much about cars.”

“And you in the W.A.A.F.! Driving, weren't you?”

“Well, no. I was in a radar section. Taking down results. Nowadays the computer would do it all, I suppose.”

The subject flagged, the coach made its skilful way to the duomo, where they all got out. Sight-seeing began in earnest.

In spite of her misgivings that morning and later at the Uffizi gallery, Rose was neither disappointed nor disillusioned. The great works of art, in architecture, painting and sculpture moved and excited her as she had not believed they could do any longer. Afterwards she had to admit that she had not noticed when Gwen Chilton had left her side. But neither could Myra or Flo name a time.

“She was with us when we were crowding in to get a look at the Baptistry doors. I remember seeing her there,” Myra said firmly.

“That was quite early on. At the Pitti Palace, then?”

“No. I don't believe she was with us, then.”

“What about you, Flo?”

“I think I did see her at the Pitti. Does it matter?”

They were walking in a group, behind others of their tour, on their way now to a leather shop where they were to be shown the craft of decorating various leather articles with intricate patterns in gold leaf. An ancient craft, they were told, with traditional designs. Clearly an invitation to buy souvenirs and gifts.

“I think I've had enough for one morning,” Rose said, suddenly. “But you two carry on. I'm going back for an hour's rest before lunch. I want to be able to join the trip out to Monte Scenario this afternoon.”

She did not wait for replies or reproaches or argument, but seeing what appeared to be an empty taxi at the kerb, she ran quickly to it, got inside and gave her instructions. The driver, accustomed to tourists, set off at once.

Rose's impulse was not without foundation. She had not seen Gwen's actual departure from their group but she thought it could not have been many minutes before she missed her. It must have been when they were all walking, led by their guide, from the region of the Pitti Palace to that of the leather shop.

So there were two questions to which she must find an answer. Had Gwen left to join Owen again, keeping an appointment made with him the afternoon before? Or had she suddenly caught sight of him and run away to meet him or to avoid him? And if the latter, since it was the obvious place of refuge, gone back to the hotel?

Arrived there, standing at the reception desk asking for her key, a third solution presented itself! For her key was not on the rack.

“I left it on the desk here,” Rose insisted.

“The senora must be mistaken. It is not in her bag?”

“It is not.”

“The senora saw it placed on the hook?” He turned round to put his finger in the appropriate empty place.

“No. We were all a little late for getting into the coach. We put our keys down for you people to cope with after we'd left.”

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?

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.