A Pigeon Among the Cats (23 page)

Mrs. Lawler drank the soup very thankfully, but had little appetite for anything else. There was too much she wanted to know but feared she would never be told. As before her chief anxiety was Owen. She did not, could never as long as she lived, forgive him for killing Gwen, but he had not meant to kill, nor even to wound severely. Of that she was certain. He was greedy for money and — other things — Gwen, for instance. But he was not violent, nor brutal. She had closed her mind to those moments, when an evil stranger took over the kind eyes, the gentle speech. He had suffered in his youth, too much, like Charles; he had not been helped to find a new life. And now she had betrayed him, because Gwen had died and he was wanted as her murderer.

She had barely finished her meal when the young policeman came back to take away her tray and speak privately to the policewoman. The latter then said, speaking in very stilted English, “You will come, please, madame.”

“Of course,” Rose answered, wondering what the next interview would demand or disclose, hoping it would be the last and she would be allowed to go away to a hotel for the night, after booking a place on a plane to England in the morning.

She was taken to the same room where her earlier interview had been held. The same senior Swiss police officer was there and with him two other men, not in uniform but in suits so clearly English in cut, colour and style that her heart rose in instant thankfulness. With no surprise she was introduced to the local British consul and to Chief Detective Superintendent Wonersh of the Fraud Squad at Scotland Yard.

“That name will perhaps explain,” the Swiss said as they all sat down.

“Not altogether,” Mrs. Lawler answered. “But I take it Superintendent Wonersh has something to do with the contents of poor Gwen's deposit case?”

“You take it correctly,” the Superintendent said, smiling.

“May I know?”

“Not the detail, I'm afraid.”

“I shouldn't understand that, I'm sure.”

“Perhaps. In any case, it is only part of a big operation being attempted by an American fraud gang, using forged share certificates, forged currency, forged travellers' cheques and so on. The particular offshoot that concerned the woman you knew as Mrs. Chilton is, or was, only one of several. The overall boss or bosses have never appeared this side of the Atlantic. The man you knew as Jake, with Gwen and a varying bodyguard, has been operating between England and the Continent for several years. She was originally English which is how we began six months ago to trace how they worked.”

“But she's dead,” Rose said. “And so are those thugs. Surely?” She turned to the Swiss officer. “Surely you know this now, don't you?”

“We have found a car and three bodies,” he answered. “I hope you will be willing to identify them.”

As she recoiled from this prospect the consul said, “It is a request, Mrs. Lawler, which I hope you will decide to meet. Seeing that you have done such a truly magnificent action in breaking up this gang and indeed disposing of them.”

“Very well,” she answered. “But it wasn't only me. There were other people on the tour who saw Jake. And a Mr. Banks, who noticed Gwen in the bank at San Gimignano.”

“Where she used her Swiss passport,” the Superintendent said. “Among other useful information the tourists gave this evening at Cremona, Mrs. Lawler. Mr. Banks was particularly helpful in regard to Mr. Strong, as you call him.”

Rose, who had been hoping all the talk about the international fraud plot had put any further questions about Owen out of their minds, was disappointed by this, and then blamed herself for her still lingering hopes for his escape. In her mind she now called his action unintentional, unpremeditated manslaughter.

“In what way?” she asked.

“General suspicion,” Wonersh answered, looking at her very sternly. “Our colleagues in Cremona got nothing definite from Mr. Banks except suspicion of the way the man Strong was following Mrs. Chilton from place to place. With intent, he said.”

No need to ask what sort of intent, Rose thought. She knew the kind of intent a Mr. Banks had in mind. Most of the tour people also. What a flutter in ‘Roseanna' tonight! Poor Myra and Flo! Thank God she wasn't there.

After a few moments of silence the consul said, “Shall we go, Mrs. Lawler?”

“
Go
?”

“To the mortuary.”

“Oh! Oh, yes.”

The Swiss police officer again apologised for submitting her to this ordeal.

“But you have shown such outstanding courage, madame. You have defeated single-handed, and exposed completely, a most important set of criminals. Your country and mine are so grateful. I am sure …”

She could not bear it. She had escaped from the launch by her own action, but for the rest she had relied on Owen. He had saved her from Jake on the road at the Furka Pass.

Useless to point this out to them. Useless, really, to persuade herself of the real truth of the matter. That ruined face still haunted her.

She got up, saying briefly, “Let us go, then.”

The identification was managed very discreetly, very calmly. Jake's ugly face had not been mutilated in his death. His crushed-in skull did not show from the front of his head. There was no difficulty at all for her. She moved from Jake's body to that of Abe. Here there was a difference: a hole in the man's forehead; the bullet must have killed him instantly.

“I suppose Owen shot him,” she said. “I didn't see, I was face down on the road near Gwen. But this man was leaning out of their car window with a levelled gun.”

“We have the gun,” the Swiss officer said. “We recovered it from where it had been thrown down the hill after the car. There was also a bullet hole in one front tyre and skid marks on the road. But this gun had not been fired.”

They left the mortuary. The Swiss officer again thanked Mrs. Lawler, shook her hand, told her the English Superintendent Wonersh would explain more to her and the consul would look after her.

The consul said, “My car should be around here by now. There it is.”

Wonersh said, “May I come with you? I think we do owe Mrs. Lawler a little more information.”

She did not understand what he meant until they were all three in the consul's private house to which he had driven them. Then, when they were all sitting comfortably in his study the consul said, “I have brought you here, Mrs. Lawler, partly to explain that I have already been able to book you a seat on a plane tomorrow — well, today it is now — partly because I hope you will allow my wife and me to put you up overnight, what there is left of it, and partly so that Superintendent Wonersh here can give you more detail about the man you know as Owen Strong.” He held his hand up as she began to protest. “No, please. I have heard the tape recordings of your adventure at Venice. And of the appearance of this man earlier in your trip. I think you ought to know more of him. I'm afraid you are in some way blaming yourself for his behaviour. Mr. Wonersh will tell you this is quite unnecessary.”

“I know he is what you call bent,” she said, still defiant, looking at the Superintendent.

“Very bent, Mrs. Lawler,” Wonersh began. “Good professional stock, third in a family of four, two boys, two girls. Happy home, good school, average learner, average at sports. Began to steal at school, but got away with it by adding blackmail if anyone accused him. Enough leaked, however, for him to be sacked — expelled, they called it then.”

“How old is he really?” Rose asked.

“Born 1915. Father in wartime job at home. Over forty. Not called up.”

“Fifty-eight, then. About what I thought. Go on.”

She was very calm. It all fitted. In his twenties in the second war, like Charles.

“After the disaster at school he went out to cousins in Canada where he stayed just six months before they threw him out, with a ticket for a ship home.

He sold the ticket and went to the States. We have no detail but he kept himself by his wits, by which I mean his crimes, with very few arrests and convictions and only very short sentences or fines. Until he enlisted in the U.S. forces and came to England with a part of their Air Force.”

“The U.S. Air Force,” Rose broke in again. “He told me that, but I thought he meant the R.A.F. A pilot, of course.”

“By no means.” The Superintendent for the first time allowed contempt to creep into his voice. “In the catering department at one of their Air Fields in England. From which he was duly fired for attempted blackmail and theft from the mess. We have no record for the rest of the war, but later, after it was over, he turned up on the French Riviera, playing his old games, chiefly blackmail. He plays it carefully, I understand, always on the better class victim who can afford a reasonable sum but who has no means of rubbing him out, as a tycoon might. People almost never try to shop him, because of the scandal. He plays France, Italy, and also Switzerland, where he can pick up other villains stashing their gains in the very private deposits they go in for over here. As this Jake did, through Gwen. Her real name was Mabel Smith, incidentally. Failed actress on third-rate tour in the States, but English. Manager of the tour scarpered, leaving them all broke. Asset to Jake and too dim ever to leave him, I gather from their records. Even through his prison sentences.”

He paused, looking at Rose, who seemed puzzled, no longer listening carefully. Presently she said, turning an anxious face in his direction, “Have they stopped Owen? Have they arrested him?”

“Not yet. The car whose number you gave, was picked up in the town here, abandoned. It was checked out with the car-hire firm in Venice. He had hired it in the name of Culver. He was registered at the hotel on the Lido as Culver.”

“I see.” She did indeed see now how he had managed to stay at the tour hotel unseen and unknown to them all.

“He had a great many aliases,” the Superintendent went on. “Strong, Culver, Martindale … His real name is John Fareham.”

“So where is he now?” she asked.

“Who knows? Probably borrowed or stolen another car and is out of Switzerland into France to hide up while the heat is on. The frontier is very close to Geneva. He might be anywhere. But for the first time he is no longer a nuisance, as he has been. He is a murderer, a wanted murderer. And with that face of his …”

“Yes,” Mrs. Lawler said. “That face. That scarred face. He
must
have flown in the war to get that face. Burned. A pilot, shot down …”

She could not go on.

“
No
,” Wonersh said in a voice that made her stare at him in amazement. “I am sorry to upset your romantic conclusion, Mrs. Lawler, but this so-called Owen got those scars in a gang fight in Chicago, soon after the war on the only visit he ever made back to the States. Acid burns, thrown acid, not war wounds at all.”

She covered her face with her hands, then deliberately took them away to tell them how Charles, her husband, had been burned, how he had survived, how he had died. How she had felt pity for a like victim, not romantic, but a fool all the same, an old fool.

“Not at all. Very natural,” the consul said, highly embarrassed.

But Superintendent Wonersh, who had a deeper knowledge of the strange twists and turns of guilt in its endlessly various forms, was not embarrassed. He said carefully, “I'm sure we none of us misunderstood your apparent regard for Owen, Mrs. Lawler. Perhaps you have always blamed yourself too much for your husband's suicide. If you will forgive me, I think he must have been a very vain man to be unable to stand his altered appearance. Not much consideration for you when you were expecting his child. Those skin grafts in the war settled down wonderfully in a lot of cases. In time, you know. I've seen them.”

He stopped, partly because Mrs. Lawler was crying quietly now, relieved at last of a great measure of the old grief she had forced into remorse. The Superintendent did not try to comfort her, but the consul suddenly jumped to his feet saying “God bless my soul! The cable!” and rushed from the room.

As Rose understood a little later, the various inquiries in England and with the tour had revealed a cable waiting to be delivered to her the next day at Gatwick on her return. It was to the effect that her son and his wife would be flying over the following day and hoped to meet her at Heathrow, apologies for short notice and love.

Rose was overwhelmed. She could not wait. She must go at once.
At once
.

“But you must rest a bit,” the consul's wife implored.

“Rest!” Mrs. Lawler could not find word for her impatience.

But the Superintendent said, “You can come with me, Mrs. Lawler. Plane at 1.30 a.m. Heathrow. My other chap here can swop tickets with you. Get your things and we'll go off to the airport at once.”

“The woman's been up for over forty-eight hours without, a break,” the consul protested as his wife took the excited Rose from the room.

“Policemen and doctors do it frequently,” was all the answer he had to that.

“She's over sixty! She'll throw a heart attack on you in the plane!”

“Not she. Tough as old boots,” Wonersh said with conviction. “She'll meet that selfish son of hers right on time at Heathrow. Takes after his father, I shouldn't wonder.”

First published in 1974 by Hodder & Stoughton

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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ISBN 978-1-4472-2201-9 EPUB
ISBN 978-1-4472-2200-2 POD

Copyright © Josephine Bell, 1974

The right of Josephine Bell to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.