The Venetian Affair (32 page)

It was a sheltered place—a large and glorified swimming pool, Fenner thought—with a few highly polished motorboats drawn close to one edge. Their owners were not grouped together, talking and scouring, as the gondoliers had been. They wore natty tweed jackets, correct collars and ties, nautical caps at a jaunty angle on good haircuts, and a proud look. “The jet pilots of the lagoon,” Fenner said with a grin. “And which is ours?” He didn’t wait for Claire’s guess, but started toward a boat, lying a little apart, whose owner seemed only interested in lighting a cigarette. “Hotel Vittoria?” Fenner called to him.

“Right here,” the man said, and waved them casually on board. He was a young, dark-haired Italian, with interested brown eyes even if the manner was cool and nonchalant. Amidships there was the usual glass-enclosed cabin with pleated curtains, sashed and befringed, giving privacy. A good deal of privacy, Fenner realised as he handed Claire through the small front door and ducked inside after her. There was a man sitting in one of the neat red leather armchairs. From the jetty,
the cabin had seemed empty.

“Fasten your seat belts,” the stranger said as the engine roared, the boat curved sharply toward a narrow tree-lined canal, and they were jolted wildly together. “Hello, Claire. You’ve had a pleasant day in the sun, I see.”

“Hello, Chris. Where’s Neill?”

“I like boat rides, so I am here. And is this Mr. Fenner? How do you do?” The English voice was cold. “I’m Holland.”

There was tension in the small cabin. Claire glanced anxiously at Chris Holland, as much as to say, “Come on, make one of your funny remarks. I’ve talked you up. Don’t let me down!” But the Englishman was making no further remarks at all. He shook hands briefly, lit another cigarette. He was, in spite of his concentration with his lighter, studying Fenner critically.

Of course, Fenner remembered, I was Rosie’s choice for this little expedition. Neill Carlson had been against it. No doubt Holland was, too. In his phrase, but in my New England accent, I am the bloody amateur who clutters up the landscape. So I’ll keep quiet, he decided, let Holland talk; and if I have to talk, I’ll do it in short questions and not flat statements. The opinion of an amateur was not worth much around here.

Fenner settled himself comfortably in the chair opposite Claire. He lit a cigarette, too, and studied the Englishman in turn. An amateur could do that, at least. Christopher Holland
was of medium height, weight, and age; his features, even, pleasant, but unremarkable; his hair, neatly cut, well brushed, greying brown; eyes, an indeterminate mixture of grey and brown, but certainly observant; lightly tanned, unlined skin; his clothes of brownish-grey mixed tweed, worn most casually. A medium kind of man in every way, Fenner thought, one you’d scarcely notice in an empty street, and quickly forget. A man without worries or troubles, you would guess, even meeting him as closely as this, until you noticed the ashtray beside him, filled with half-smoked cigarettes.

Claire was reporting. “They are definitely interested in us, Chris. We have been watched and monitored ever since we left Paris.”

“One minute—” Holland said in his quiet, even voice. They were zooming into the lagoon, two scimitar-shaped waves curving up and out from the boat’s sharp prow. He slid open the rear door’s panel. “Dammit,” he bellowed, “what’s the rush, Pietro?”

Pietro grinned cheerfully. He had had his flying start. He eased the speed of the boat and shouted back something that blew away in the wind. Holland shook his head, closed the door again.

“First,” Holland said, “let’s talk about the message you sent me. Your rooms are no good. No good at all. Change them.” He was looking at Claire. Claire looked at Fenner.

“So Rosie did not book those two rooms on the terrace?” Fenner asked.

“No. He arranged for two rooms on the second floor, no connecting balcony with any other rooms. Also, two of his men have rooms on that floor, close by. We’ve been
outmanoeuvred”—he smiled, thinly—“by film producer Wahl, who could very safely use the name of Mr. Stephen York.”

“Are they friends?”

“Not at all. But it was safe to use York’s name. He is making a picture in deepest Africa. We checked.” Again there was a touch of acid amusement. “Wahl was never known for his lack of impudence.”

“Wahl,” Fenner said reflectively. “Not Kalganov?”

Holland was startled, certainly less diffident in manner. He looked at Fenner thoughtfully. “We don’t know that Wahl is Kalganov, do we?”

“Where is Wahl?”

“Switzerland, they tell me.”

“Not Venice?”

Holland’s quiet stare asked for an explanation.

“Claire thinks Kalganov is in Venice. We saw Jan Aarvan today.”

“Where?”

“On a raft.” Fenner relented and grinned. “About a couple of hours ago, or more.”

“You are sure?” Holland looked at Claire for confirmation.

“Bill recognised him. I didn’t. Really, Chris, that’s an awful photograph in Inspector Bernard’s files. Aarvan has thinned down, for one thing. And he must be fifteen years older.”

“Also,” Fenner said, “he is dyeing his hair. It was brown yesterday on the train. It’s almost black today. Miracles of modern science. When I first saw him, from Vaugiroud’s window, he was blond. How is Vaugiroud, by the way? His arm was broken, I heard.”

“You must introduce me to your sources,” Holland said.
“They sound more accurate than mine.”

“Is he all right?”

“He is all right. He escaped the second attempt on his life, too.”

“There was
another
one?”

“We can talk about that later.” Holland stared at his cigarette stub, let it drop into the ashtray with distaste. His thoughts had drifted on to something unpleasant. He tried to pull them away from it, said, “Now, about your message, Claire—” He was half-lost in his own thoughts again.

Claire looked astounded. She exchanged a puzzled glance with Fenner. “Yes,” she said, “I was beginning to wonder if it had fallen flat on its funny little face. There were three questions in it. We haven’t even finished with the first one. Rooms to be changed. How? That isn’t easy, without warning Comrade Wahl that we are suspicious.”

Holland said, a little sharply, “That’s your problem, old girl.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Fenner said quietly. “What was the second point in your note, Claire?” The sooner Claire’s note was dealt with, the more quickly he’d learn about Vaugiroud. There was something wrong. That, he could sense.

Claire was watching Holland curiously. “It dealt with the coat of arms on the gondola that collected Sir Felix Tarns.”

Holland was in control of his thoughts again. He even produced an unexpected smile. “You describe the coat of arms as either a crocodile rampant or a sea horse sitting on its tail, with either a thin pineapple or a fat palm tree in support.”

“Well,” Claire said, “I only had a quick glimpse. You know how gondolas float away.”

Fenner looked at her blankly. He hadn’t paid any attention to the coat of arms. He had been too busy thinking, as they stood on the Vittoria’s landing stage, what a damned silly piece of nonsense it all was, following Tarns out there.

“Crocodile and palm tree,” Holland was saying, “the most useful piece of information we’ve had today.” He seemed to enjoy the expression on Fenner’s face. He explained, with some slight amusement, “We lost Lenoir and Fane last night, after they arrived at Lido Airport. Their launch behaved very much in the way that Pietro is steering our boat at present; most erratic, very difficult to follow. They vanished somewhere in Saint Mark’s Basin; never docked at the Danieli, where we expected them to stay. And since then, there’s been a bloody flap. Not a clue where they were until”—he gave Claire a nod of approval—“your crocodile and palm tree reached us. After that it was easy, of course.”

“Of course,” said Fenner. “A crocodile and palm tree, after all.”

“It’s the coat of arms of the Longhi family, who own a retiring little
palazzo
known as Ca’ Longhi just off the Grand Canal,” Holland clarified. “It was leased for the summer—the Longhi family is down to one survivor and none of the cash it made in Near Eastern trade three centuries ago—to an American, who calls herself—” He broke off, and then murmured apologetically, “I’m afraid she went back to using your name, old boy.”

“What?”

“Yes. Mrs. William Fenner. She has almost as much impudence as Wahl. Or perhaps it was another of his comic touches. I suppose her old passport was easy to bring up to date
for the agent who leased the place last May. So, crocodile and palm tree saved us a lot of time, a lot of investigation.”

“You’d have tracked down Ca’ Longhi—” Claire began. She was taking her small triumph well, Fenner thought. There hadn’t been even a flicker of an eyelash in his direction saying “See?”

“Yes,” agreed Holland. “With some co-operation from the Italians, we would have. But even with all hands on deck, Ca’ Longhi might have taken a full day’s work to uncover. Instead, we could set up a close watch on the place early this afternoon. Most rewarding. There has been a series of visitors for Fernand Lenoir since our noble Sir Felix left him at half-past two.” Holland’s voice was icily contemptuous for that one reference. He dropped Tarns there. “It seems as if the briefing session has begun at Ca’ Longhi,” he said, watching Fenner.

“Already?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t get it,” Fenner said worriedly. Sandra would deliver the letter and make her escape, tomorrow evening, well ahead of either the attempted assassination or the big lie. She had told Rosie that the crisis could be. expected by Friday. And here was Lenoir, meeting his contacts today. “I’d have thought the later Lenoir left that briefing session, the safer for them all. Or is he just preparing the ground before he starts planting the lies?”

“Frankly,” Holland said, watching Fenner with growing interest, “I don’t get it either. Unless—as you say—the ground needs a good deal of preparation. Tell me, how much do you think we can trust Sandra Fane?”

Fenner hesitated. He phrased his answer carefully. “At present—I think we can.”

“But in the long run—not at all?” Holland asked quietly.
He was a sharp character, Fenner decided. The question had been only rhetorical: the unspoken agreement spared Fenner an answer. Strange, he was thinking, that Claire is the only one with whom I’ve discussed Sandra quite willingly. He looked at Claire, and Holland noticed it. (What have we here? Holland wondered: whatever it is, I don’t think I like it; nor will Rosie.) Quickly, he said, “About that third point in your message, Claire: the man in the brown suit. Not to worry. He has been noted. So have the others. We have marked them all, once they showed an interest in you.”

Fenner was amused. “So we’ve been watched by your experts, too?” To Claire, he said, “You know what we are? A couple of lambs staked out for the tigers.”

Holland almost smiled. “Cheer up, chum. You’ve been very useful. Rosie sends his thanks.”

“Is Rosie
here
?” Claire asked, suddenly grave.

“Arrived an hour ago.”

“But why—?”

“Rosie wants you both to play things very loose indeed. No strain. Just get through the next twenty-four hours as normally as possible. Leave the problems to us. Except the change of rooms. You’ll do that right away?”

“First thing,” Fenner assured him.

“Good. I remember, in Budapest, we had the same situation. Bloody balcony connecting several rooms. We lost a good man that way.” He glanced out through the glass panel in the cabin’s rear door, opened it, signalled to Pietro, who, if he couldn’t make high speed, had at least been having a merry time crisscrossing the lagoon’s Sunday traffic, mingling and disentangling skilfully from various groupings. of boats. “Ten more minutes
and then up to the Giudecca Canal,” Holland shouted. “Drop me at San Sebastiano.”

Pietro nodded, shouted back cheerfully. Holland shut the door, pulled its curtains securely together. In fact, Fenner noted, all the windows around Holland were thoroughly screened.

“We are getting close in,” Holland said. “Keep together, you two. Don’t look at me. Look as if you were chatting only to each other. Any further problems?”

Fenner shook his head.

“Then we can talk about Vaugiroud.” He would make as good a bridge passage as any, Holland thought. His voice became quite emotionless. “Just around noon yesterday, when that bomb went off in the Café Racine, Vaugiroud’s flat was entered and searched. Rather violently. The concierge says her husband allowed a man to go upstairs to the flat. She thinks it was the same man who loitered in front of the house on Friday afternoon. Her husband has been arrested; so far, he is sticking to his story. He swears he allowed only a telephone repairman to go upstairs. Once we get Aarvan, of course, and have a little confrontation scene, the husband may decide it’s wiser to tell the truth.”

Holland pulled a folded sheet of newspaper out of a jacket pocket. He unfolded it slowly, spoke rapidly. “So, with all this attention on Vaugiroud, we expected there might be another attempt on his life. We announced he was being transferred from one hospital to another, and sent out an empty ambulance to make that journey. A truck smashed into its rear. Truck driver jumped, was caught, pleaded brakes had not worked properly. Ambulance a mess.”

“I hope its driver jumped, too,” Fenner said to Claire.

“He is one of our very best jumpers,” Holland said dryly. “Here’s the newspaper story. We thought it a good idea to announce that Vaugiroud had been killed. Saves us a lot of bother in the next few days.”

“Where is he?”

“Much hidden.” Holland handed over the unfolded sheet to Fenner, and Claire changed her seat to read, too. “It’s from the early-morning edition. Rosie brought it with him. I circled the paragraph for you.”

“Vaugiroud’s friends are going to be in an uproar,” Fenner said, after he and Claire had read a brief but highly vivid account of the accident.

“For a few days,” the calm voice said. “There will be a retraction, a plea of mistaken identity, a blushing apology and general thanksgiving.”

“And what does the poor journalist do who wrote these immortal lines? Cut his throat?”