A Pigeon Among the Cats (22 page)

But the younger passers-by stayed on. They saw the woman had not got the use of her left arm. An accident? An injury? Of course, the ambulance siren was sounding. What had happened inside the bank? Was it a hold-up? Had anyone heard a shot? Seen the thugs rush out?

Mrs. Lawler heard the siren too, with a feeling of great thankfulness. Owen had rung up after all. Her shock, horror even, at his callous, even brutal behaviour to Gwen, was swept away. She had misjudged him again. Poor Owen. In her relief at the restoration of her fantasy, she forgot to pity poor Gwen.

Her French was scarcely adequate to explain the position to the ambulance men, but they had no need for explanations. The woman on the pavement was coughing up blood. That was enough for them. They had Gwen on to a stretcher and into the ambulance in very quick time. As they were folding up the steps and preparing to close the doors Owen arrived beside them. He was carrying four suitcases which he handed over, saying briefly in Swiss German, “Their cases. Ya, it was I who rang you. Which hospital? Thanks I will follow.”

The man nodded, fastened the doors, drove away.

Mrs. Lawler stood, holding Gwen's hand, watching the colour drain still further from her face, the grip on her own hand grow more feeble. She stared out of the back window of the ambulance. Yes, Owen was following. Why had she begun to distrust him? So suddenly, too. It was Gwen's fault for holding on to the keys. Why had she done that? What
was
this important suitcase, anyway?

Quite idly, she watched Owen keeping his place behind them. When another car intervened, she looked for Owen's car number, and afterwards found it at intervals until they had nearly reached the hospital, when with a twinge of conscience she saw for the first time that the ambulance man who had travelled inside with them was giving Gwen oxygen. After that her attention was wholly with the patient and continued so after the stretcher went inside. For the case had become very serious indeed, as she knew without being told. Suitcase or no suitcase, there ought to have been no delay. The injury was worse than either she or Owen had imagined. It might, she was told, be fatal. An immediate operation was necessary.

Only then did she look about for Owen. Only then did she learn that he had not arrived at the hospital.

“A man put these bags in the ambulance just outside the bank,” the chief porter said. “For a Madame Lawlere, one of the ambulance men said.”

He waited until she said, “I am Mrs. Lawler. Two bags are mine. These. The others belong to Mrs. Chilton.”

She produced her passport. She took the passport from Gwen's handbag, which she had carried with her own from the steps of the bank and had kept with her own until this moment.

Now she looked inside the passport. It had an unfamiliar cover. She had seen Mrs. Chilton's British passport but never this thing. The photograph was of Gwen. The passport was Swiss: the name Genevieve Chillon.

Her suitcases were marked with the initials G.C. This seemed to satisfy both the porter and the ambulance men.

“I must stay until I have news of my friend,” Mrs. Lawler told them in her heavily accented French.

“Bien entendu, madame,” the porter answered politely.

Another figure appeared behind Rose. He spoke in English much more fluent than her French.

“You are Madame Lawler?” he asked.

She still had the two passports in her hand. She offered them to the stranger.

“Yes,” she answered. “Are you the police?”

The man looked at her with cold eyes.

“Madame expected it?”

“Now, yes. Until five minutes ago, no.”

“Come with me, please.”

She hesitated, seeing endless difiiculty ahead.

“I do not speak French at all well — I think perhaps … the British Consul …”

“Come this way, please.”

She followed, shaken by his persistence, fighting for time, to arrange her thoughts about Owen, about Gwen, about those presumably dead criminals, her would-be murderers.

“I must not leave the hospital until I have news of my friend, I must stay … speak to her when she is able to see me …”

A young man in a white coat came marching quickly to where she stood, half-way to the door. He spoke in French, but slowly, carefully.

“You are Madame Lawlere?”

She was tired of the repetition and replied sharply, “Yes. Why?”

“I have to tell you, with much regret, your friend has died.”

“Oh
no
!”

“I regret. She was unconscious before the operation commenced. She did not survive it.”

Poor Gwen. Poor silly, weak, criminal Gwen. Rose felt the tears well up behind her eyes. It was the porter who brought forward a chair. But Mrs. Lawler waved him back, turning to the first stranger.

“I will go with you,” she said, “when you tell me who you are.” And when he showed her his card and his authority she verified the truth of it first with the young doctor and then, for full measure, with the porter.

“I have our luggage,” she said, pointing at the four suitcases. “They must go with me.”

“Evidemment,” he agreed and the porter took them to carry them out to the waiting police car.

“I regret … so much …” the doctor stammered.

“It was not your fault in any way,” Mrs. Lawler told him, and turned and followed the porter through the open door, the police sergeant bringing up the rear.

At the police station Mrs. Lawler was put into a small bare room with a table in the middle and four stiff chairs against the walls. A policewoman guided her in, directing her to one of the chairs while she herself stood near the door with her back to it. Rose heard the door being locked on the outside.

So they think I am a criminal, too, she decided. Well, they have every excuse for that opinion. At present, until they hear my story. More important still, they must have time to establish that I really am the person I pretend to be.

Pretend. This should be easy in her own case, where there was no pretence at all. In fact she did not expect any difficulty over her own identity. But the others, all of the others, and her extraordinary involvement How could anyone believe in it? Very deliberately Mrs. Lawler began to review in her own mind the long chain of events that had ended on the steps of the Swiss bank — no, later than that — at the hospital where Gwen had died and where Owen had not appeared.

So intent was Rose upon this process that she was quite startled to hear the door unlocked and to see a uniformed man who addressed her politely and asked her to follow him.

She was taken to a larger room, with a larger table, really a desk, with papers, telephones, and other machines upon it. Behind the desk a more senior officer was sitting. Opposite him there was a much larger, more comfortable chair than the one in the small room. She was invited to sit in it. Her guide and the policewoman, still in attendance, retreated to chairs near the wall behind her.

The senior officer looked at her for a few seconds without speaking. Mrs. Lawler returned the look. Then he nodded.

“We were obliged to satisfy ourselves of your identity,” he said at last, in very good English.

“Naturally,” she answered and added, “I could not expect anything else.”

He nodded again, clearly pleased by her manner and general appearance, since it fitted exactly with all he had so far heard about her.

“We know that your passport is correct in every particular. That you have been with an English touring party. That you left it at Venice, very early this morning, having given notice of your intention in writing in a note addressed to the courier, enclosed in a letter to one of the members of the tour.”

“Mrs. Myra Donald, a member of the British Civil Service,” Rose said, as the other paused.

“Just so. You went with another member of the tour, a Madame Genevieve Chillon …”

“I knew her as Mrs. Gwen Chilton. I also know that she had two passports. The Swiss one she used today and a British one.”

Again he nodded, but went on.

“Also with a man, who drove the car, but was not a member of the tour.”

“We met him first at Siena,” Rose began, but the officer, stopped her.

“I want you to tell me, in exact detail, the course of your drive to Geneva; where you stopped, all that happened on the way.”

Mrs. Lawler protested.

“It won't mean anything until you know why I suddenly rushed away from the hotel on the Lido in the early hours. Not a thing I would ever mink of doing …”

“I feel sure of that. Tell me, then, but as shortly as possible.”

He leaned forward to switch on what she decided was a recording machine. Having already gone over her story so many times in her mind she gave it now without hesitation, in well-arranged detail, fluently. Seeing incredulity on all three faces in the room, she said, “Yes, I know it sounds like a fairy story, a Grimm's fairy story, but I
can
swim, you can verify that and those villains exist — or did
exist
.”

The faces had relaxed, almost smiled, at the mention of Grimm, so she added, “You must remember I was a schoolmistress — sports and gymnasium — I was trained to think and act quickly in physical ways and to teach children to do that.”

“I am sure you succeeded admirably,” the chief officer said with a little bow. “So proceed, Mrs. Lawler, from the time of leaving Venice.”

She gave a very clear account of it all, including her failed watch on Gwen, the assumed betrayal, the scene on the mountain, Gwen's insistence upon not going to hospital until she had recovered her property at the bank.

“You already knew this woman was a criminal and an associate of criminals. When did you first suspect this?”

She told him then the full story of Gwen's attempt to steal her photographs and all that lay behind it. She disclosed the whereabouts of all her photographs; she suggested that Mr. Banks might add to the story of Gwen's activities. All the time she brought Owen as little as possible into the story, but she could not conceal the fact that he had added to Gwen's injury by pulling her down the steps at the bank.

“And failing to appear at the hospital?”

“Yes. But he put all our cases into the ambulance.”

“After taking the one from the deposit over to the car, where no doubt he looked inside it and found nothing to his liking, perhaps. Perhaps some money. We may never know.”

“I don't understand.”

“I do not intend at the moment that you should. It would help us if you can give me a closer description of this man. Also of his car.”

“I never know the makes of cars.”

“The number?”

“Oh yes, that was …”

She stopped, remembering perfectly that she had watched the car's progress through the traffic. Why did they want to know? Clearly Owen had meant to steal Gwen's case but had changed his mind because she was ill. Dying, her conscience told her. But still …

“Well, Mrs. Lawler. The number?”

“I think Owen was not altogether honest,” she said, stalling. “But this time he gave back the case when perhaps he meant to take it.”

The officer was angry.

“He gave it back because he knew he couldn't use the stuff in it. He gave it back because he knew he'd killed the girl and he had to get out quick.”

“
He
killed her! It was Abe! I told you — with the gun in Jake's car, leaning out of the window. Firing …”

“Mrs. Lawler,” the officer said, “I have a report from the hospital. It tallies with the account you have just given me. The woman was lying on her face with her feet up the road towards you. You have said this. The shot, then, had thrown her
forward
, not stopped her from in front. The wound of entry of the bullet was in her back, the wound you dressed was the wound of exit. No, I do not blame you. You could not see how it was. You did not examine. He would not have allowed it.”

She shuddered. It explained many things. That Owen had worked only for himself from start to finish. That he had not meant to kill Gwen, only stop her from joining those others and then destroy them.

“Gwen was not really very ill at first,” Rose said. “I'm sure he only meant to stop her helping Jake, joining him again. Until she fell down the steps …”

“That was his doing as you describe it The medical report shows the apex of the lung was injured by the bullet and was probably further torn by the fall and displacement of the pad you put on the wound. She died from severe haemorrhage of the lung.”

So he was the murderer. Oh Owen, Owen, she mourned, bending her head in sorrow and shame for him.

“I will give you the number of his car,” she said at last.

After that Mrs. Lawler was taken to another room where a more senior policewoman attended her with great kindness and consideration. Her suitcases were brought in, a police doctor came to see her, advised a hot drink and sedation. She was asked to wait a little longer in order to help the inquiries that were going forward with all speed. There was a couch in the room. The policewoman got Rose to lie down on it and covered her up. She slept for four hours.

At the end of that time, which she saw by her watch was still as early as eleven o'clock of the same night of the same unending day, she roused herself to sit up and look about her. Yet another policewoman was now in attendance, jumping up at once to ask if there was anything she wanted. This one spoke in French, seemed not to understand English, Rose found, but did gather that she wanted first a wash, then something to drink. For her mouth was almost too dry for speech and her head ached abominably.

The policewoman took her to a bathroom which was also a lavatory, gave her a clean towel and left her to lock herself in. So they were treating her now more as a visitor than a criminal, Rose decided. Or perhaps chiefly as a fairly valuable informer. She expected to find her escort outside the door when she unlocked it and in this she was right. They went back to the room where she had slept and directly afterwards a young police officer came in with a tray of food, a bowl of excellent soup, some fresh rolls, cheese and fruit.