Dorothy Eden (24 page)

In which of these lofty rooms had Johnnie Lambert sat drinking with Cesare and the half-blind caretaker while keeping out of the way of the amateur theatricals that were taking place at the Albergo
Garibaldi
?

It didn’t matter. They had to get another inspiration quickly.

Giovanni said something and Lucian nodded. “There’s money in this racket, all right. Giovanni says that group looks like a Bernini.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, we’re not on an art appreciation tour!” Kate exclaimed. “I think we’ve made a mistake. We should have stayed in Rome. Let’s go back. After all, the Tiber—”

“Bodies can be transported by car,” Lucian said, with unthinking callousness. “Giovanni is going to take a quick look in the cellars. But I think you’re right, Kate.” Then he patted her shoulder. “Cheer up. This trip hasn’t been wasted. We’ve discovered Mrs. Dix’s ghost, and we know Rosita lives here. Probably her family previously owned this place, but it takes illicit wealth to keep it up now. My guess is that she’s Major Dix’s mistress.”

“And Mrs. Dix found out, just the other day!” Kate said intuitively. “That would be it. She adored her husband, you know. She pretended to revere his memory, but really it was his live self. She probably agreed to do anything for him, no matter if it were illegal. And then she must have found out suddenly that he was making love to Rosita. It would shake her badly. Perhaps she threatened to go to the police.”

“I think you’ve got it, Kate. This character has his deserts coming to him. But long overdue. Here’s Giovanni. Now, Kate, shut your eyes and pray for an inspiration. I’m foxed, I admit it.”

Somewhere near the Tiber, Kate muttered to herself. The daylight was fading inexorably. Although the speedometer needle touched a hundred kilometres, it seemed to be almost dark when they got back into Rome.

The Pantheon, Kate muttered, the Colosseum, Hadrian’s Arch, the Baths of Caracalla, the Catacombs, the Appian Way… Where was her inspiration to come from? Where was the name that held a clue?

Not these ancient monuments. Some modern place, some connection with today or yesterday. Connection! The telephone! The mysterious number Mrs. Dix had asked for, seemingly at random, which had proved to be a cardboard box factory. But was it indeed such a place?

Tense with excitement, Kate sat forward, murmuring numbers to herself.

“What is it?” Lucian asked a little disturbed.

“The telephone number. I can’t remember it. I wrote it down, though. Where did I write it? Oh, I know. On the telephone pad at the flat. Oh, Lord, I’ll have to ring Mrs. Peebles. What’s the time? Have we time to get a call through to London?”

“I don’t follow one word of what you’re talking about, but if you want to call London, Giovanni can get some priority. I don’t think I told you. Giovanni is a member of Interpol. But that’s not for general consumption. A telephone, Giovanni.
Pronto
!”

Mrs. Peebles’ high-pitched and uncomprehending voice at the other end of the wire was maddeningly aggravating. Kate had to repeat slowly and patiently what she wanted, all the time watching the dying light and praying Mrs. Peebles had not torn the top sheet off the telephone pad.

William could look after himself pretty capably, she kept reminding herself.

Even if the moon rose before Mrs. Peebles’ dull brain rose equally to the occasion.

“You mean these numbers written here,” came back her incredulous voice. “You’re phoning me all the way from Rome for these little bits of numbers! Your writing’s horrible. I can hardly read it. I’ll have to get my glasses.”

“Please, Mrs. Peebles! Hurry!”

There was a short interval, then the voice came back, laboriously reading.

“Good,” Kate said. “Good. Thank you, Mrs. Peebles.”

“When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. I’ll let you know.”

“Things have been quiet since you left. No scrabblers at the window. Oh, a friend of yours called with a cat. I sent her to—”

Regretfully Kate cut her off.

“Here’s the number. Find out what place it belongs to. It’s only a hunch. They said it was a box factory.”

“It may be near the Tiber,” Lucian said. He handed the slip of paper to Giovanni who began to make another telephone call. In a few moments he had the address. It was a factory, he said, and it was in the poorer area. They’d go out and take a look at it. He added doubtfully that the signorina might wait, but the signorina said firmly that she was going, too, and was in the car ahead of both the men.

It was only a hunch, she told herself, but now she was tense with apprehension and hope.

Through a labyrinth of streets and then down a meaner, darker one where the shabby cafés and houses dwindled to a space of waste ground, and beyond that a large building that looked derelict. The moon, flame-coloured and enormous, was just beginning to rise. Kate hypnotically watched it appear over the low, uneven rooftops. Then, as Giovanni slid the car to a noiseless stop, she scrambled out after him, and picked her way over the rubble to the deserted hulk of the building.

“Kate—” Lucian whispered.

“Don’t say it. I’m coming.” She added sensibly, “The place isn’t derelict because it still has a telephone connection and someone who answers the telephone. Let’s look for the office part.”

The main doors were locked and bolted. Lucian tried them carefully, but there was no hope of getting in that way. The windows were boarded over. Another smaller door failed to give access, but around at the back, where suddenly there was a gleam of water in the distance and the smell of its coldness on the rising wind, there was another window, unboarded.

Giovanni’s efforts to open it were unsuccessful. Suddenly he smashed a pane of glass with what Kate realized shakily was a gun. The noise was shatteringly loud, but when it had died away the dark building was utterly silent. Giovanni thrust his hand in, opened a catch, and slid up the window. In a second he was inside and Lucian had followed.

“Wait there, Kate,” begged Lucian.

“Here! All alone!” she asked incredulously, and clambered after them into the damp, cold darkness.

Giovanni produced a torch and shone it cautiously. They were inside the main part of the factory which was obviously disused. There were boxes manufactured and unsold, piled high, and some pieces of rusty machinery. The place looked as if it had been out of use for a long time, probably since early in the war when the business had been closed down or failed.

But somewhere there was a telephone.

It was Kate who found the door. She leaned against it accidentally in the darkness, as Giovanni, with his torch, and Lucian following him, picked their way across the rotted and uneven floor.

It gave behind her and she fell inward.…

A hand circled her throat, and something hard stuck into her ribs.

“Stay right where you are!” came William’s voice, harshly.

As quick as a flash she twisted herself free.

“William, you clot!”

“Good God, it’s you, Kate!” William said in surprise.

“Yes, it’s me and you’ve nearly choked me. Where are some lights, for heaven’s sake!”

Lucian was there, and Giovanni with his torch, but William had reached over and turned on a glaring, unshaded light in the room into which Kate had stumbled.

“Don’t mind the bodies,” he said laconically.

One, the small, slim, light-footed man with the Chinese-yellow skin, lay face upwards, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with the heavy breathing of unconsciousness. The other, neatly trussed, like a parcel, was lying half under the desk. William, with the bruised face and rapidly blackening eyes that Kate had expected, was grinning cheerfully.

“These birds made a mistake about my left-hook. I haven’t tried it out since Varsity days. Well, what did they expect, giving me a lift into Rome and bringing me to this dump. I admit I had a bit of a time getting free.” He grimaced as he rubbed deeply wealed wrists. “I won’t go into that now, but I’d just made it when I heard you people breaking in and I thought I had to take on another half dozen. As an editor, I’m a bit rusty.”

“You shouldn’t have trusted them!” Kate stormed. “I told Lucian you’d do something idiotic like that. If you knew the search we’ve had.”

“Was I up for ransom or something?” William asked, interestedly.

“Well, don’t gloat over it,” Kate snapped. She moved back a little. “Are those men dead?”

“The Chink’s breathing,” said William. “The other one was tougher. He nearly had me, that one.”

“Major Dix,” Kate whispered fearfully, as Lucian and Giovanni knelt over the silent, trussed figure, dragging him out from beneath the desk and turning his face to the light.

“Oh, no, it’s not!” she gasped, turning white. “It’s Johnnie Lambert!”

Lucian loosened the gag around Johnnie’s mouth.

“I think your first guess is right, Kate. Major Dix.”

The pale, protuberant eyes blinked up at Kate. There was no heartiness in them now, only an enormous disgust and contempt.

“The next time you fall in love, Kate,” he said, in the clipped, cultured voice that made the familiar hearty tones she remembered a burlesque, “do me a favour and choose someone who isn’t an ex-heavyweight champion.”

“I’m not in love,” Kate began automatically.

William’s swollen eyes looked at her.

“Aren’t you?” he said belligerently. “Then I promise you soon will be. If we can’t get a marriage licence by tomorrow then we do without it. Do you agree, Kate?”

Quite suddenly and helplessly, Kate began to cry. She gasped through her tears, “I’m only crying because I’m happy. It’s absolutely the only time I cry. Yes, yes, I long to do without a marriage licence. In the meantime, that is…”

Giovanni was at the telephone, the instrument that so recently had been used for the threats to William’s life. The yellow-faced man on the floor stirred and groaned. Major Dix, alias Johnnie Lambert, looked up into Lucian’s narrowed, ruthless eyes, and his too-plump and ruddy face seemed to wither. His slack lips worked. He was no longer the casual, good-natured, rather noisy companion of an evening out; nor was he the absent husband for whom Mrs. Dix hungered and was eternally faithful to; nor Rosita’s dashing lover, giving her back her family home and the luxuries she demanded. Even less was he the cool, clever brain behind an organization of international jewel thieves. He was a man facing his supreme test of courage and failing dismally.

“Don’t call the police,” he begged. “I’ll pay you. I’ll make it up to your sister and her kids. Dalrymple’s death was an accident. So was my wife’s. She got difficult. She’d been drinking and her heart was bad. I’d have told her about buying the villa for Rosita. Damn Rosita, anyway. Damn all women. Just undo these cords, there’s a good fellow. I’ll pay you. I’m not a poor man…”

Lucian lifted his head. His profile was austere, unyielding, devoid of emotion.

“The moon’s up,” he said, in a voice of deadly quiet.

Johnnie began to struggle violently. His eyes flickered from Lucian’s avenging face to Kate’s. Their fear was replaced by a look of rage. “It was you, you interfering little bitch!” he said thickly.

Then he began to sob.

Kate thrust her fingers in her ears and blindly ran into the dark outer room. William followed her. At the broken window he caught her and helped her out. As she swayed, in the cool moonlight, he took her in his arms and drew her into the shadow of the building.

“Kate!” he whispered. “Kate, Kate, Kate!”

They were still there, in the shadow, when the police car drew up. Presently the footsteps, coming and going, ceased. The car started up and swept away. Lucian called tentatively, “Kate!” There was a laugh that was Giovanni’s, then Giovanni’s car started and moved away. After that it was quiet. The moon, no longer flame-coloured, but a pure, clear yellow, made the distant patch of water gleam. And it was warm and safe for ever in William’s arms.

T
HE SUN SHONE AGAIN
in the morning. The chestnuts clung to the last remnants of their vanity, and with deliberation relinquished another ill-spared handful of leaves. The trams rumbled by, the street vendors shouted in their shrill, long-drawn-out syllables, and the great city hid its memories beneath an unshadowed exterior.

Lucian found Kate and William still at breakfast.

“Well, you two! Not married yet?”

“We decided we couldn’t disappoint my stepmother and Mrs. Peebles by depriving them of a wedding,” Kate said serenely. “Besides, William can’t take two black eyes into a respectable church, and I don’t look so madly beautiful myself. But no one can stop us enjoying Rome. We’re going to sit like lizards on old stone walls for hours and hours. And later of course we have to throw coins in the fountain, or that darling receptionist will shed tears of disappointment. Oh, and we’ve had a telephone call from Miss Squires. She says she can’t locate Francesca, but she’s met a village constable who is awfully helpful, and oddly enough is even more besotted about cats than she is.”

“You’re talking too much, Kate,” said William. His grin was slightly lopsided because of a swollen cheek. “But all that she says is more or less true. How, by the way, are the casualties?”

“In the right hands,” said Lucian briefly. “There are a few accessories to the fact to be rounded up, in Paris and London, but that should be child’s play, comparatively. The police have located Rosita, spitting like Miss Squires’ cat. The case will be a
cause célèbre,
I fear. I wonder if you two lizards can spare half an hour from your sun-bathing this morning.”

“Of course,” Kate agreed. She added ingenuously, “I’m going to like you again, Lucian, when you get that avenging look off your face.” But her hand crept into William’s and was lost in its capacious grip.

“Better come to our wedding, old chap,” said William.

“Thanks, I’d like to. Giovanni’s outside. Can you be ready in ten minutes or so? This won’t take long. I thought you’d like to be there. Kate, anyway.”

“Where?” Kate asked curiously.

But Lucian had turned away, and even later in the car he made no explanation.