Tour de Force (3 page)

‘As long as I do get to know you better,' said Louli, ‘I'll take a chance.'

She said it with the little friendly, half teasing, half indulgent air that had already conquered its corner in the arid old heart of Detective Inspector Cockrill. Leo Rodd accepted defeat. ‘We'd better have a drink on it.' They were the only people left up and about, but the bar-tender remained with Italian enthusiasm, glued to his post. Leo signalled to him to come out and take an order. ‘Meanwhile my name is Rodd: Leo Rodd. And yours?'

‘Well, I'm Louvaine Barker,' said Louli, with the little blush.

‘What an odd name,' said Leo. ‘It sounds like a woman novelist. Here's the chap. What'll you drink?'

She said she was hungry and would have a Pimms No. 1. ‘It's divine here, masses of fruit and veg., a sort of an alcoholic minestrone.' She glanced up at him from beneath the egg-white eyelashes, naïvely inviting admiration for her wit; but he had heard her swapping the same joke earlier in the evening with Mr Cecil and refused to be impressed. He took out his wallet and, laying it flat on the edge of the balcony before him, struggled to take out a note. She put out a casual finger and held down one side of it, but otherwise offered no assistance. He paid the waiter, picked up the wallet and, clumsily refolding it, replaced it in his pocket. ‘Thank you, You are the first woman I have encountered in the past sixteen months who would not have taken out the money, paid the waiter for me, folded the thing up and put it back in my pocket with a kind little pat.'

‘I know,' said Louli. ‘I was watching you at dinner.' At dinner, Vanda Lane and one or two persons unknown had shared a table with the Rodds. He gave a bitter smile at the memory of it. ‘Miss Lane or whatever her name is could hardly keep her hands off me; and as for my wife, my wife is a dear, sweet thing, but my God! – if she could predigest my food for me because I've only got one arm, I do believe she would.'

‘It must be horrid,' said Louli, ‘always having to choose the things on the menu that don't have to be cut up.'

‘Horrid,' he agreed, sarcastically moderate. He added: ‘I will forestall your next question by informing you that I did
not
lose it in the war.'

‘No, I know,' said Louli. ‘You fell off your bike and got gas gangrene into it. I saw it in the paper and your photograph, “Concert Pianist Loses Arm” and things. It was on a page where I had a review,' she added candidly, ‘or I don't suppose I'd have noticed it.'

His eyes clouded over with the old, dark memories, never far behind: the absurd, the ludicrous tumble off the bicycle, the first stab of doubt, the uneasy fears, the mounting terror, the ultimate long despair. Concert Pianist Loses Right Arm. But she wouldn't have noticed except that – something about a review. ‘You thought it was not of any great importance?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Louli. ‘I cried.' And she turned away her head and bit her lip and mumbled that she was nearly crying now, she had been nearly crying all the evening, only she was certain that egg white would melt.

‘
Egg
white?'

‘My eyelashes,' said Louli, turning her face into the moonlight so that he could see.

They were terrible, they were like bent hairpins; but it was true – the blue eyes were brimming with tears. Many women had wept for him, many had uttered words of tender pity; but here were words blessedly unspoken, here were tears that struggled
not
to be shed. Such as had been shed, had been shed in private, over a stranger, over a headline and a scowling photograph. ‘You cried? For me?'

‘Well, not actually howled,' she admitted, again with that odd little air of candour that, coming from so much determined sophistication was somehow so absurdly endearing. ‘Just sort of mizzled. But it seemed so awful for you – never being able to play the piano again.…'

‘I see,' he said. He turned away from her and stood again, staring out across the bay, black and silent now under the brilliant moon. ‘You looked at a photograph of my ugly mug and you cried – because a stranger couldn't play the piano any more.' He thought about it. ‘Are you so fond of music?'

‘Music?' said Louli. ‘Oh, no – it bores me stiff.'

He burst out laughing. He stretched out his one arm and pulled her to him, suddenly, and kissed her lightly upon her painted mouth; and let her go. ‘Well, you're going to hear some now,' he said. There was a piano in a sheltered corner of the balcony; two nights a week a stout Genoese lady played it for dancing there. He went over and sat down and twiddled on the stool a couple of times to adjust it to his height; and then, first with one finger, then with two, then with his whole, poor depleted complement of fingers, he began to play a little tune.

Standing in his striped pyjamas on his bedroom balcony above them, Inspector Cockrill looked down and listened and recognized the tune. Well, well, well, he thought; so this is a conducted tour! They don't waste much time.

He was by no means the only person in the hotel that night who heard and reflected upon that gay, that triumphant little tune.

And next morning there was a dip in the glorious, mud-coloured Mediterranean, sweetened by the sewers of Rapallo. Louli Barker bobbed and screamed, Mr Cecil bobbed and screamed, Miss Trapp in knee-length stockinette, dabbled her toes and squealed: Mr Fernando rolled like a porpoise, glistening with sun-tanned muscle, the Rodds swam out away from the rest of them side by side, she with the quiet elegance with which she did everything, he with a steady, overarm stroke which he had presumably evolved for himself since the loss of his arm. But Vanda Lane – Vanda Lane came suddenly into her own and, blue-black as a swallow in her tight black satiny bathing dress and cap, walked quietly out and executed three high dives as swift and graceful and exquisitely perfect as the swallow's own flight; and quietly retired again. They piled once more into the coach, en route for Siena. Miss Trapp, a little heady from the attentions last night of that rather
earthy
Mr Fernando, sat in her place of honour just behind him; further back, Leo Rodd and his wife dozed fitfully, he hot and cross, she elegant and cool, looking out indifferently upon the route through glasses as large and round and yellow as Mr Fernando's own. Behind them again, Vanda Lane sat in a dream of happiness to come, because Leo Rodd had congratulated her upon her performance and asked her to help him evolve some method of diving which might compensate for the loss of his arm. In the back row, Mr Cockrill irritably drowsed while Cecil and Louli Barker giggled over their collaboration in a travel book, to be entitled Incontinent on the Continent, and dedicated to The Queues. In his seat beside the driver, Mr Fernando reached forth for his microphone. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, a brief stop now at Pisa, out for a jiffy to look at the Leaning Tower, and then to lovely Siena – three nights, ladies and gentlemen in Siena, expeditions through the country all about Siena; and after Siena, to the wonderful island of San Juan el Pirata which has been called The Cathedral in the Sea. En route, then, ladies and gentlemen, for Pisa. En route for Siena. En route for San Juan el Pirata …'

En route, ladies and gentlemen for – Murder.

Chapter Three

M
R
F
ERNANDO'S
choice of ‘first-class hotels' was by no means that laid down by the agency and appeared to vary startlingly between millionaire standard and a new low in third-rate pensions. The hotel at Rapallo had been in the very top grade, their three nights in Siena were to be spent in a dreary
albergo
that hit the very bottom. The angular widow felt it worst and became known to all members of Il Grouppa as Mrs Moan, a pair of timid schoolteachers travelling together and already regretting it, tried to pluck up courage to ask for their money back and abandon the tour, but without success, and Mrs Sick, gobbling her way through the curious evening meals, would then take possession of the one and only
ritirata
, to the discomfort of ladies and gentlemen alike, for the rest of the night. But Siena itself was breath-takingly lovely, seen for the first time in the light of an Italian summer evening and, as the dreamy days went by, even the handsome niece began to question her aunt's sagacity in matters of Romance; and Miss Trapp trembled on Mr Fernando's arm as he squired her on their conducted excursions or dawdled after the rest through the narrow streets of the town. They went on their last night for a farewell visit to the Duomo. ‘You do not come often abroad, Miss Trapp?'

No, indeed, said Miss Trapp, she had not been abroad for – for ages. Not since the war, really. The currency restrictions had made it hardly worth while. And then … ‘At my age, one does not care for travelling about on one's own.'

‘People may take advantage of your youth and inexperience,' said Fernando gallantly; but she was no fool, he had found that out over the past few days and he said it with a smile, with a little teasing bow.

She longed to be easy and gracious, to accept the silly compliment at its face value, to handle the whole affair like a woman of the world. Instead, she felt a red stain spread over her pale face, and she said brusquely that she hadn't meant that at all: all she meant was that she didn't like going about alone.

‘But you have many friends!'

‘No, I haven't,' said Miss Trapp gruffly.

‘Ah – it is true. The rich cannot really have friends. I think, Miss Trapp, it is difficult for rich people to know who are their real friends?'

Miss Trapp's thin mouth took on a bitter line, a hurt and bitter line. ‘Yes, I think it is. Very difficult. There is always uncertainty; and then – suspicion, and once that's there, nothing can ever be the same again.' He squinted at her uneasily but it was not meant for him, her mind was far away. ‘There's no happiness in having money, none. You can't be happy unless you have friends, unless you can trust people; but such a lot of them you can't trust, you get hurt and deceived so often that at last you come to believe that nobody cares about you at all, just for yourself alone.'

‘But you, Miss Trapp,' said Fernando, gallantly, ‘so nice, so charming –
you
cannot doubt that your friends must care for you “for yourself alone”?'

‘I've just told you – I have no friends,' said Miss Trapp.

He was nonplussed. It was difficult to progress in flattering attentions to a woman who refused to accept, who bleakly repudiated, the inevitable little implied untruths. He fell to boasting about himself instead. ‘No solitude, Miss Trapp, if one is a courier! One travels about – Spain, Italy, Austria, now for the moment my territory is Italy and San Juan el Pirata – and always with people, new people, people gay and on holiday; some dull, of course, some unattractive, some tiresome – between ourselves, Miss Trapp, always one or two Mrs Moans! – but so many, like Miss Trapp, very nice, very charming.' He tripped them both up with another of his florid little bows as they walked along. ‘This way, come, I show you the Duomo in the moonlight.… Yes, Miss Trapp, they say to me in the office, “Mr Gomez, you should not waste your powers going out with the parties.” But this is my pleasure, I don't want no stuffy office, I prefer to go as simple courier. You see – don't say it to the others, but I am not truly just a courier, I am partner in Odyssey Tours, I am the continental partner, based upon Tangiers. This, of course, you did not realize?'

‘No, indeed,' said Miss Trapp faintly. (Partner in a flourishing business – not just a courier!)

‘You have not seen my dear Gibraltar, you do not know Spain? One day I take you there, I show you my villa, outside Gib. on the Spanish coast, a villa with white walls and terraces down to the sea, terraces of flowers, bougainvillea, jasmine, every colour of geranium. I shall show it to you one day, you shall come with me …'

Miss Trapp privately thought it in the last degree unlikely that Mr Fernando would ever have the opportunity to show her his villa by the sea. She replied politely, however, that it sounded most charming.

‘Ah, charming yes; but for a poor bachelor like me, too large – and too lonely.' Mr Fernando lifted up his face and appeared to be about to bay the moon. ‘You are not the only person who can be lonely, Miss Trapp.'

Miss Trapp's forthright soul rebelled. ‘You've just said that
you
couldn't; because of being a courier.'

Making hay with Miss Trapp was not a smooth-going affair. Mr Fernando, however, was glibly equal to all occasions. ‘Ah friends, acquaintances; but I speak now, to you of something else, Miss Trapp. I speak now of love.'

Of love? And to her? Was Mr Fernando on this, the fifth day of their ever having met one another, speaking of love – and to her? Miss Trapp's good, common common-sense rebelled against so improbable, so ominous an idea. And yet … The black and white stripes of the cathedral swam and jiggled before her in the moonlight, her bowels turned to water in her thin, hungry frame. To be loved! For however base a reason – to be desired! He certainly was dreadfully shiny, dreadfully ‘foreign', quite, quite dreadfully earthy and masculine: and yet – to ‘belong'! Not to be lonely any more, not to be solitary any more, to have this strong, this really almost repellently strong male arm to lean upon, to become Mrs Gomez and share the white-walled villa on the coast of Spain.… (To become Mrs Gomez and not to have to share the villa was no doubt more than any woman could ask of fate.) Her lips were trembling, she withdrew her hand from his arm abruptly and grasped at the handles of her big brown bag, hugging it tight up under her pointed chin. Mr Fernando looked, rather startled, into her face and saw that her eyes were brimming over with tears. ‘Miss Trapp – you are crying?' He stood before her, helplessly, his big arms hanging uselessly at his sides. ‘You are sad?'

‘No, I'm not, I'm just stupid, that's all.' She shook her head so that the tears were flicked out on to her cheeks. ‘Don't worry about me, I'm a fool.'