Dorothy Eden (18 page)

He was looking ridiculously pleased to see her. His round, highly coloured face beamed with pleasure. In his tweed jacket, with his ruddy cheeks, pale blue eyes and carefully cut hair he looked very English and familiar. Kate realized she was almost as pleased to see him as he was her.

“I’d love to,” she said. “And if you’re here about Francesca you’re going to save me a lot of trouble. But why didn’t Mrs. Dix tell me she had sent you here?”

“And the moment I’d got back to London, confound her! She didn’t want to worry you. She said you were in enough of a flap already and the kidnapping, or whatever it was, hadn’t been your fault.”

Kate hesitated. “You knew Mrs. Dix was dead?”

Johnnie’s face sobered. “Yes, poor old girl. They cabled me. Jolly bad show. I’d have come straight home, but I thought the wisest thing was to settle this child business first, if possible. After all, those had been her last instructions to me.”

“And you have settled it?” Kate asked, with intense interest.

“Not a bit of it. Quite frankly, I’m no further ahead than when I arrived. I got a clue that the kid might be in Florence, so I hared off there yesterday, but no luck.”

“And I went to see Gianetta, the nurse, this afternoon. She absolutely denied ever having heard of Francesca.”

Johnnie nodded perplexedly.

“I know. That’s what I’ve met with all the time. Blank faces. Who’s Francesca Torlini? Dash it all, I can’t even trace her father. I’ve called on every Torlini in Rome. The whole thing seems to be one enormous myth. Is there anything at all to prove the kid really does exist?”

“Yes, her doll.”

“Did you bring it with you?”

“It’s here.”

Kate took the much-travelled, shabby doll out of her bag and handed it to Johnnie. He studied it casually.

“Nothing particularly ravishing about this. It feels light. Is it hollow?”

“It comes in half. I discovered that quite accidentally. Francesca had used it to keep her love letters in.”

“Love letters!”

“Oh, just a rather incomprehensible note from someone in London. Someone who was apparently expecting to see her quite soon.”

“Who?” Johnnie asked.

“There was no name. It had been torn off. I did call at the address, but there was no one home. Only the woman who lived in the flat above, and she said the house belonged to Lucian Cray. You remember, the man in Paris.”

“Ah! Indeed! So he wasn’t so innocent after all, by jove.”

“Apparently not,” Kate said miserably. “Because the woman said he was dead.”

“Dead!”

Kate nodded. “Drowned in the Tiber.”

“Here! Just recently!” Johnnie was horrified. “The plot thickens.”

“He must have come straight back to look for Francesca. He’d pretended on the train not to know her, but he must have, if he wrote that letter. And there was the man she was trying to tell me about who had talked to her on the train. She seemed very excited and pleased. It must have been him.”

“But, Kate, this is terrible!”

Kate nodded again and began to weep a little, remembering Lucian’s dark, sombre face with which, for a while, she had imagined herself falling in love. Johnnie put his arm around her in a comforting way.

“Poor Kate, you have taken this to heart, haven’t you? You shouldn’t have come back here, you know. I’d no idea the thing was as serious as this. I wonder what the racket is. One thing, I’ll bet that wily old fox, Mrs. Dix, knew.”

“Do you think her death might not have been accidental?”

“Well, that’s another thing.” He gave her a quick hug, and said, “Look here, let’s skip it for a while and have a little relaxation.”

“How can we skip it?”

Johnnie had picked up the doll, and lifting its clothing discovered the way its body pulled in half. Thoughtfully he peered into the empty interior.

“Well, there we are. A doll with an empty stomach and Francesca disappeared into thin air. I know what it is, the deuced doll has eaten her, eh? Dash it, I’ve worked hard this week, and it’s wonderful to see you again. Of course, we can take an evening off.”

“And go to another doubtful night-club?”

Johnnie grinned apologetically.

“That was a bad show. Something queer going on that night. I’m terribly sorry about it. No, I wasn’t planning to go night-clubbing. I thought I’d take you to see some people I know, after dinner. They live a little way out in the Alban Hills. We could drive out and be back by midnight.”

“Oh, no, Johnnie. Thank you very much. But I’ve come here to find Francesca and I can’t waste time. Did you say you had called on all the Torlinis?”

“Well, actually,” Johnnie admitted, “I wasn’t entirely skipping business tonight. These people I want to take you to are Torlinis. They say they don’t know anything, but I had a feeling they were hedging a bit. I think you might get them to talk, or you might put two and two together. Women’s intuition and what not. Frankly, I haven’t a clue what else to do. We’re up a blind alley.”

“Why didn’t you tell me who these people were?”

Johnnie looked wistful. “I’d have been more flattered if you’d just wanted to come with me. Not with this confounded kid’s ghost between us.”

“Oh, Johnnie! You are silly.”

His eyes swept over her, rather lingeringly. “And you’re—well, never mind. How long will it take you to get ready?”

“Ten minutes. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Right. I’ll have martinis laid on.”

Now she was happier and her immediate fear had gone. Good old Johnnie, not the world’s most perspicacious private detective, with his open face and his hearty voice, but at least a well-meaning one. Although the plot seemed to thicken ominously it no longer seemed so sinister. It would be difficult for anything to seem sinister in Johnnie’s cheerful presence. With his support they might even make a vital discovery this evening.

Alert with anticipation, Kate washed and changed her dress. She was just about to leave her room when the telephone rang.

Impatiently she answered it. Then her fingers tightened around the receiver and she was rigid.

“Kate, is that you? This is Lucian Cray.”

“Lucian!”
she exclaimed disbelievingly.

“I’ve just got a moment. Will you listen quickly?” His voice was rapid and breathless. The connection, also, was bad, and the sounds distorted. It seemed like Lucian, but he was dead, drowned. How could she be sure this was Lucian speaking?

“Francesca is in England. She’s with—” A whirring and clicking obscured what he said. Then his voice came clear again, “—and Caroline and Tony. You must go home at once. You should never have come here. Will you go home?”

Kate found her voice sufficiently to protest. “She can’t be in England. I had a letter saying she needed help here. Who sent me that letter?”

The connection was very bad. There was a roaring and clicking. The voice was more distorted and almost unintelligible.

“—Somerset, just outside Taunton.” Then the words, “Letter was a hoax,” came clearly, and, “Go home, you interfering little fool! It’s not safe here for you.”

That was all. The telephone clicked and the speaker, whoever he had been, was gone.

Kate sped down the stairs.

“Hey, have you seen a ghost?” Johnnie asked, getting up from the table in the lounge.

Breathlessly she told him what had happened.

“He said he was Lucian. But the old woman told me he was drowned. Is this a hoax, too?”

“Did it sound like his voice?”

“I couldn’t be sure. At first it did, but the connection was so bad. What reason would that woman in the flat have for telling me a lie, saying he was drowned if he wasn’t?” Kate pressed her hands to her hot face. “Does everyone in this thing tell lies? What am I to believe? If that was Lucian speaking and not someone impersonating him, he says Francesca is in Somerset, near Taunton. But supposing I get there and find it’s not true, that it’s just another method of getting me out of the way.”

“Poor Kate,” said Johnnie, with rather helpless inconsequence. “As if anyone would want to get you out of the way.”

“He said I was an interfering little fool. I don’t think Lucian would have talked like that.”

“Then it was a hoax, darling,” Johnnie said soothingly. His eyes were both bewildered and admiring. “You’re certainly a girl things happen to, aren’t you? I’ve been here for days and everyone’s mouth has been shut as tight as a clam’s. You’re here for five minutes and you get threatening phone calls.”

“It’s not funny!”

“No, darling, no. It’s just that you’re decorative enough to be conspicuous. When you arrive lights shine and bells ring. Look, drink your martini, and we’ll do as we planned this evening. Have some dinner, and then drive out to see these people. If nothing comes of it, then we can mull over the situation. Anyway, who does this know-all think he is? You can’t catch a plane at a minute’s notice. You must sleep on it, at least, before you decide.”

T
HEY MUST HAVE BEEN
some twenty miles out of Rome when the modest little Renault that Johnnie had hired broke down. It simply came to a quiet stop by the roadside, and Johnnie, after striking matches and vainly tinkering with the engine, had to admit that he knew almost nothing about cars mechanically, and that it looked as if they were stranded.

The situation was too old and hackneyed to be either amusing or particularly alarming.

Kate stood on the roadside, shivering a little in the cool wind that rustled the olive trees, and said coldly, “So what?”

“I say, dammit, I’m most awfully sorry. This will teach me to be more careful. I’m afraid the only thing to do is walk until we come to some kind of house or village. This is a little off the beaten track, unfortunately. We must be a good five miles still from the Torlinis. But I’m almost sure I remember a small
albergo
along this road somewhere. We can make for that. Or would you rather wait in the car?”

Kate looked around the empty countryside. The Italian moon, high and bright, showed the olive trees pitting the low slopes, the road a dusty white scar wandering into the darkness. There was no sound except the lonely rustling of the wind. It was an eerie and sombre landscape, like the mountains of the moon.

“I’m certainly not waiting in the car,” she said tartly. “But you might have told me this was going to happen and I’d have worn walking shoes.”

“You don’t think I planned it!”

Johnnie’s tone of outrage was so emphatic that it may have been assumed. But looking at the bulk of his figure, standing a little way off, perplexed and helpless, she couldn’t even indulge in the stimulation of indignation.

“No, I don’t suppose you did. It’s too ridiculous a place to be stranded. Do you think we’ll really find this
albergo
?”

“If we don’t we’ll come to the Torlinis. After five footsore miles. Dammit, what a bore this is. Come along, darling, I’ll take your arm. It’s terribly sweet of you not to be mad.”

“I am mad,” Kate said wearily. “But where does it get me?”

“Nowhere, my pet, I’m sorry to say. You’re absolutely dead right.”

Johnnie walked away with a swinging stride, surprisingly brisk for his slightly portly figure. At least the effort of keeping up with him had the advantage of shutting other things out of her mind. She stopped thinking of Gianetta’s strange behaviour, and of the unexplainable telephone call she had had from someone who was presumably dead. Was Lucian really alive, she wondered, his fine austere features not smudged out of recognition by water and mud? She did not dare to dwell on the fact. There was nothing in her mind but the painful hardness and roughness of the dusty road beneath her high-heeled shoes, and the absurdity of being stranded in the Alban Hills, twenty miles from Rome. At least Johnnie was a cheerful person with whom to be stranded. William would have cursed and stormed and she would have had to calm him down. Then he would have burst out laughing and kissed her, and for a moment the infuriating situation would not exist. Suddenly she wanted very much to be at home in her basement flat, with William sprawling in the easy chair, scattering matches and tobacco about him, filling the air with pipe-smoke, and the deep lazy sound of his voice. It was the first time, she thought, that she had had this aching pull towards him. Almost as if, at this moment he also needed her. Curious… Suddenly it was Johnnie tramping along, breathing noisily, beside her, Gianetta’s lies, and the unidentifiable, distorted voice on the telephone that were myths. Francesca, too, was a myth. And this Italian moon lighting up the arid countryside. Scenes out of a film. Reality was back in her flat in London.

If only instead of being persuaded to pursue the mysterious Torlinis, she had stayed in the hotel to see if Lucian—or his impersonator—rang again. That, in the end, might have achieved better results. But she could no longer bear the static waiting. So here she was, ridiculously stumbling down the lonely road, stranded out of reach of telephones or news for goodness knew how long.

After a long interval, and a distance of perhaps two miles covered, there were suddenly lights around the bend in the road, an isolated twinkling of two windows and a swinging sign over a petrol pump.

“I was right!” Johnnie exclaimed in triumph. “It
is
the
albergo
. Jolly good show. You could do with a drink, I expect.”

“And how,” said Kate thankfully. Can you speak Italian?”

“Enough to make myself understood.”

It was a shabby building, with a shutter flapping on an upstairs window, and the paint peeling beneath the lighted sign,
Albergo Garibaldi
. The half-open door led straight into a bar where a couple of men with flashing dark eyes and leathery skin leaned across the counter and an enormously fat barman refilled beer glasses.

Kate felt the three pairs of eyes fastened on her as Johnnie explained their predicament. It was as if they were summing her up, deciding whether she were a worthy cause for such a predicament. They would not for a moment think the breakdown of the car was genuine.

But it was genuine enough. Johnnie hadn’t enjoyed the walk any more than she had. He was out of condition, and for the last half-mile had wheezed and made grunted exclamations of annoyance. He needed a drink more than she did.