Dorothy Eden (19 page)

He had a long and rather excited conversation with the barman, then brought two glasses of beer to the table where Kate sat and slumped down angrily.

“There’s absolutely no one here who knows anything about cars. The best they can do is for Cesare—that scoundrel there”—he pointed to one of the lolling men—“to drive me into the next village and either find a mechanic or arrange for a tow.”

“How long will that take?” Kate asked in dismay.

“Heaven knows. All night, probably. It’s past eleven now, and these fellows have no idea of urgency. Tomorrow, next week, the next, blasted year, will suit them. Frankly, darling, I think you’d better go to bed.”

“To bed!”

“Our fat friend behind the bar who is, incidentally, the proprietor of this dump, says he has four bedrooms, all empty, all equally desirable. We may have two if we wish, though why we wish two—” Johnnie’s eyes popped with a gleam of his old hearty humour. “Well, that’s just another idiosyncrasy of the English. Actually, I don’t expect I’ll see much of mine, by the time I’ve collected that damn car.”

There was no use in being angry. It was a quirk of fate that something, not tragic but farcical, happened each time she went out with Johnnie. The lights going out in the Paris night-club, and now this being stranded in a seedy-looking
albergo
with three frankly-puzzled inhabitants obviously discussing at length and with deep interest why two bedrooms should be required.

Kate shrugged fatalistically.

“Well, I can’t sit here half the night being stared at. So I’d better have one of the rooms. But if you get back in reasonable time at all, we’ll go back to Rome.”

“Splendid,” said Johnnie in a relieved voice. “I must say you’re being a sport about this. No recriminations?”

“It could happen to anyone.” Kate made the expected rejoinder mechanically. She already hated this place with its dreary brown walls, its dirty floor, the curled and shabby posters of impossibly blue lakes pinned on the walls. But perhaps the bedrooms would be better. Once again her mind was clouded with a mist of tiredness. She had suddenly to prop up her heavy eyelids with her fingers and remember who she was and why she was there.

Sitting in a dubious
albergo
in the Alban Hills was not going to find Francesca.

But did Francesca really exist at all?

A girl of seventeen or so, with a round, lively face, and wearing a rather grubby, peasant blouse that was cut much too low for the leering eyes in the bar, took her up an uncarpeted staircase to her room.

She unlocked the door with a flourish, displaying, with misplaced pride, what would have been better left undisplayed. Kate looked unenthusiastically at the iron bedstead, its brass knobs dull and fly-specked, the sunk-in-the-middle bed covered with a cotton spread, the cheap chest of drawers and mirror, also fly-specked, the unashamedly bare floor. There was dust on the window-sill and the chest of drawers. A mosquito whined in a thin ghostly sound, and periodically the hanging shutter outside flapped and creaked.

If Johnnie had really planned that breakdown he had done it with singularly little foresight. For even if he had meant, later, to burst through that thin door, who could imagine romance in a room like this?

Again the situation was farcical. But she was too tired to be amused.

The girl had a towel of doubtful whiteness over her arm. This she laid ceremoniously on the bed, and going to the open door pointed down the corridor. Kate realized she was politely indicating the toilet—there could not possibly be a bathroom in a place like this—and thanked her. The girl went out, closing the door.

Alone, Kate looked distastefully at the bed. She sat gingerly on its edge, feeling its unyielding hardness. Nothing, she thought, would induce her to get into it, or to undress. In any case, she had no night things. She would curl up on the cotton counterpane with her coat over her. If she were forced to spend the night here she must get a little sleep, for last night had been spent on the train, and once again, as so often in this turbulent fortnight, weariness was her enemy.

The mosquito continued to whine about the room. One could close the shutters, of course, but that would be unendurable. The cool wind that creaked the hanging shutter, and rustled in the olive trees, made the room chilly, though that was infinitely preferable to its inevitable stuffiness were the shutters closed. The only thing to do was to put out the light and lie down in the darkness and try to sleep a little.

She found her way to the distasteful toilet and had a sketchy wash. There did not seem to be anyone else on this floor. The four or five doors along the corridor remained closed, and no sounds came from within the rooms. Later, she supposed, Johnnie would come banging up to bed, but she hoped by then to be sound asleep.

When she put the light out the moonlight came in and softened the squalor of the room to the austerity of a cell in a monastery. Kate lay down and began to relax. The sounds outside were country sounds, a goat, tethered somewhere near, giving soft bleats, as if to its kid, the rustling of the olive trees, and someone’s footsteps dying away down the road. The shutter creaked intermittently, and once there was a small outburst of voices from below, a woman’s, shrill and rapid, and a deep, domineering man’s voice, probably that of the stout proprietor. Then they ceased, but no footsteps came up the wooden stairs to bed. Obviously this, the guest floor, was untenanted except for herself, and later, Johnnie, if he did not wisely choose to doze in the car.

Creak, bang of the shutter, a cat on the prowl, lifting its thin lugubrious voice, the muttered baa-a of the nanny goat, the rustle of the olives, like a stiff, silk dress she had once had in which she had felt very sophisticated and gay and important. Her first dance dress. But the boy she had gone dancing with had not even particularly noticed it. He had been a youthful Johnnie, lapsing into silence, banishing the smooth romance that a moonlit night in the idyllic English countryside should have held. She had not, she thought, had the romance one dreamed of, the dark, exciting lover who spoke caressingly in her ear, and lifted her on to floating clouds. Lucian Cray might have done that, she thought drowsily.

But she had been stuck with the youthful Johnnie types, who talked about the Budget, and horses and the latest hunt, and then William, who was appallingly honest and left her no vanity, but who sometimes, unexpectedly, produced those floating clouds.

In spite of the hard bed, the whining mosquito, and the unfamiliar country sounds, she must have fallen asleep, for it seemed much later that she heard the fumbling at her door. Someone was opening it.

Not Johnnie! Oh, not Johnnie, she thought unbelievingly. That would be too ludicrous.

She sat up sharply and fumbled for the light. But the switch was at the door, of course. One could not expect a bedside switch in the
Albergo Garibaldi.

“Who’s that?” she demanded, as the opening door showed a deeper darkness beyond than the moonlight darkness of the room.

There was no answer, but the door closed, and a figure stood clearly within the room. A man’s figure.

Kate pressed her hand to her mouth.

“Johnnie—if that’s you—”

“It’s not Johnnie,” came a low, grating voice. “I’ve come to find out where you’ve hidden the diamonds. You’d better tell me quick.”

The man was coming nearer. The moonlight caught his face for a moment, and Kate thought—surely she imagined—she recognized the Oriental cast of the features.

Oh, for a light! But the switch was beyond this menacing intruder, out of reach.

“Get out of here!” she whispered. “If you don’t I’ll scream.”

“Where are the diamonds? That’s all I want to know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kate gasped. She began to struggle off the bed, but suddenly her wrists were seized. The man’s breath was on her cheeks. His face, dark, featureless, with only the faint, terrifying gleam of his eyes, was close to hers.

“If you don’t want to end with Cray in the Tiber, tell me where you’ve hidden them.”

“I don’t know! I’ve never seen any diamonds! I don’t know!”

Kate’s voice rose. As she screamed the fingers tightened on her wrists. She struggled violently. The grip on her wrists was iron. For a moment she was held immobile.

“So you won’t tell. We’ll see about that. You wait.”

Abruptly she was flung back on the bed and as quickly as a cat the figure moved across the floor, opened the door and was gone.

The door shut with a careful click. There was no need now for silence, for her scream must have aroused the whole house. In a moment someone—the round-cheeked girl, the fat proprietor—would come pounding up the stairs.

Kate lay breathing quickly, limp with shock.

Strangely enough, no one came. All at once the house was completely silent. As if there were no one in it at all except herself, and the violent intruder… who had melted away as quickly as a form in a nightmare…

Kate struggled up and felt her way to the door to switch on the light. But the switch did not work. At least, nothing happened. She clicked it up and down uselessly and the light did not come on.

There must be a fuse, she told herself feebly. It couldn’t be possible that her light was deliberately not functioning. Because it would not be advisable for her to look fully at her midnight visitor.

This was too much! She was leaving this room at once, and going downstairs to find someone. Where was Johnnie? Hadn’t he come back? Why hadn’t he heard her scream?

Angrily Kate fumbled for and found her shoes, and thrust her feet into them. She snatched up her bag and made for the door.

But the handle refused to turn. It was locked. From the outside.

For one minute, then, she gave way to panic.

She was locked in here to starve, to die. Unless she confessed the whereabouts of some completely mythical diamonds.

Was that why the Chinese-looking man had been stalking her—because he thought she was a jewel thief, or a diamond smuggler? But how had he crept into this hotel, and cared so little about her screams? Why was she locked in?

Kate flew to the window to look out hopefully. But the sill represented a sheer drop to the ground a long way beneath. She could not escape this way without a broken neck or, at best, a broken limb.

The mournful countryside, beneath the high, bright moon, showed no sign of life. There was only the ceaseless sound of the wind, and the creak of the banging shutter, a monotonous sound, as useless as her scream.

Kate looked at her watch and in the moonlight managed to see the time. It was half-past two.

Then where was Johnnie? He must be back by now. Had she slept so soundly she had not heard his return, and was he now sunk so deep in slumber that he did not hear her scream? She couldn’t know. She could only sit rigidly on the side of the bed and think that in four hours or a little more it would be dawn, and then there must be someone walking by below whose attention she could attract.

But supposing the man with his cat’s walk and his flat, yellow face came back, unlocking her door from the outside…

It seemed to Kate that she could not turn her eyes from the dim shape of the door. But she had nodded and half-dozed before the careful turning of the key made her leap upright.

This time, as the door carefully opened, a sliver of light ran across the floor, then vanished as the door closed, and the intruder stood within.

“I warn you I’ll scream the place down,” Kate got out before, in her fright and the blurred darkness, she made out that this time her visitor was a woman.

“Oh, no, you won’t, Kate, dear,” came a friendly voice with the faintest Italian accent. A familiar voice. She had heard it before. Where?

“For one thing there’s no one here to hear you. I mean, no one who will pay any attention.”

“There’s Johnnie!”

“Oh, him. He’s not back yet. Cesare is seeing to him. But surely you remember me?”

An indolent voice from a couch, a pair of languorous dark eyes watching her, a petulant complaint that she was not strong enough to travel…

“Rosita!”
Kate exclaimed.

“None other.” The woman crossed the room and sat on the bed beside Kate. She smelled of some expensive scent, her shape was curved and enticing. She was no longer an alien, deserted and peevish, in a foreign country. She was completely Italian, warm and low-voiced and conscious of her feminity.

“But how did you get here?” Kate demanded. “I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to tell you about Francesca. How on earth did you find me here, and where
is
Francesca?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Rosita answered languorously. “We really couldn’t worry about her. Troublesome little creature.”

“You mean you don’t care about her!”

“Why should I? She’s really no concern of mine.”

“No concern! But she’s your daughter!”

Rosita gave a light laugh. “That’s what you think.”

“She’s not your daughter! That’s a lie, too?” Kate peered exasperatedly into the darkness. “Why can’t we have some light? What’s wrong with this place? Why has someone locked the door? Why did that man creep in and ask me where the diamonds are? I know nothing about diamonds.”

“Actually,” said Rosita, in her soft, lazy voice, “that’s what I want to know, too. Tell me what you did with them. You must have saved them when Francesca was kidnapped. Otherwise, why did you let her go? Come now, don’t play the little innocent any longer. You’re in this right up to your neck, and you know it. There’ll be light, and the door will be unlocked when you’ve told us where you’ve hidden them.”

Kate got up warily. She was measuring the distance from the bed to the door. But the other woman had suspected what she was doing, and quickly moved in front of her.

“Don’t try that, Kate, dear. There’s someone out there with a gun. We’re quite serious, you know. We want those diamonds. They’re valuable.”

“For the last time,” Kate declared angrily, “I know nothing about diamonds. If Francesca was carrying them—” She stopped as suddenly the thing began to come clear, the whole clever gamble that had so nearly come off. The doll, Pepita. The shabby doll with the hollow stomach. Pepita’s diet was diamonds, cut or uncut, one didn’t know which. But she was fed with them, and disgorged only for the little jet-eyed jeweller in Hatton Garden, Nicolas Grundy.