The Takeover

by Muriel Spark

  ‘You tell me you had nothing in advance? She paid you nothing?’

  ‘Not a dollar, not one little dime,’ said Ian, very quickly and definitely, and the other two murmured agreement.

  ‘Then you are imbeciles,’ Hubert said. ‘I know that woman. She once said to me, “Faggots are things that you put on the fire.” Very amusing. She thinks you’re expendable. I will never know for sure whether you three boys meant it, either.’ He locked the two guns and, placing them under the sheet beside him, lay back. ‘Give me some brandy,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you would have had the nerve to go through with it, anyway. Maggie has always been utterly foolish. She never consults the experts.’

  Early next morning, Massimo returned to the house ostentatiously with a removal van, waving a file of documents that might have contained anything. To establish himself well as an outsider he stopped at the post office to ask the way to Hubert’s house, volubly explaining that he had come on behalf of his client, the Marchesa Tullio-Friole to order the house to be vacated.

  One by one the contents were stacked into the van and taken away to a safe place. Hubert was left with a bed, a stove, his everyday clothes, the television, the refrigerator, four kitchen chairs and four deck chairs. His tattered green robes as well as the good ones went with the van. His documents, so neatly arranged by Pauline in their boxes, went too. The pictures, fake and real, were stacked carefully and so was the furniture, expertly packed in the movers’ cartons. Off went all these goods, under the tutelage of Massimo de Vita, and Hubert sat in the kitchen with his boys. ‘It’s like that previous summer before Maggie got married,’ he said. ‘Darlings, find something to cook.’

  After lunch Hubert telephoned to Massimo de Vita. ‘Just to check,’ he said, ‘that the goods are in a safe place.’

  ‘They are safe, don’t worry,’ said Massimo.

  ‘When will they be leaving the country?’

  ‘Be careful on the telephone,’ said Massimo softly and then, in a louder voice, he said, ‘With valuable stuff you have to be careful of thieves listening in, you know. Your possessions, Mr Mallindaine, will be leaving Italy within a few days. I have an export permit and all the documents. As a foreigner, you are easier to export than many other clients.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  MAGGIE WAS BEING DRIVEN, by car from Geneva to Lausanne when she remembered the hired assassins she had sent to Hubert. Seen in the light of the greater outrage perpetrated upon her by Coco de Renault, the arrangements she had made with these frightful people now seemed foolish. She hoped they had been too weak or had lacked the opportunity to carry out her orders. She had made no advance payments, only a gold watch apiece, each one slightly different to show good taste; and Mary would have to stand by her if there were any accusations. When she reached Lausanne Maggie put a call through to Mary from her hotel.

  ‘Mary,’ said Maggie, lying on the bed wrapped in towels, for the call had come through while she was in her bath, ‘I’ve drawn the ace of spades in the game of life.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Mary.

  ‘I say I’ve met with disaster.’

  ‘Oh, have you had an accident?’

  ‘Coco de Renault has completely disappeared with all my money.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Mary said.

  ‘I have to find him,’ said Maggie, ‘and I have to get back home. My cheques here are bouncing and my bank managers are not in the office when I want to see them; they are all otherwise occupied to a theatrical degree. I’ve never felt so humiliated in my life. Tell Berto to send me some money.’

  ‘All right, Maggie. But there must be something wrong.’

  ‘Don’t tell Berto about Coco’s disappearance. I don’t want to give him a shock. He’d be furious.’

  ‘Berto’s in trouble,’ said Mary. ‘He had a burglary.’

  ‘But I thought he warned the police about those two men who came to case the joint.’

  ‘I know. Two detectives went along, and they said the burglar alarm was O.K., then the next day, it was only on Tuesday, Guillaume let in a couple of carabinieri, only they weren’t carabinieri, they were people dressed up like carabinieri. They tied up the servants and they took the Veronese and all the silver, and they also took that portrait, school of Titian. Berto says they will hold the paintings for ransom as they’re no use on the market, but Berto won’t pay ransom. He says his hairs have gone grey overnight, but he already had grey hair. I like Berto so much, Maggie.’

  ‘What about my jewellery?’ Maggie said.

  ‘They took that too, Maggie.’

  ‘Guillaume!’ shrieked Maggie. ‘I don’t trust that Guillaume. He must have been in with it. It was an inside job. Guillaume has to go. I’ll tell Berto. It’s either Guillaume or me. Berto must choose.’

  ‘Maggie, the police questioned all the servants and the police believe the servants. Guillaume got hurt in the struggle, too. Didn’t you read the papers? It happened Tuesday and it was all in the papers yesterday. Berto says—’

  ‘My jewellery,’ Maggie said, ‘is the important thing to me at this moment, and Guillaume has it.’

  ‘Maggie, there’s an echo on the line; it’s an awfully bad line.’

  ‘It wasn’t in the papers here,’ Maggie said.

  ‘It was in the Italian newspapers. Maybe it isn’t a big enough robbery to make the international headlines,’ said Mary. ‘There have been an awful lot of robberies.’

  ‘A Veronese is an international robbery,’ Maggie shouted frantically.

  ‘Well, some art thieves took a Rembrandt from Vienna the same day. Did you read about that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. The press is hushing it all up,’ said Maggie.

  ‘I guess there are too many to report,’ Mary said.

  ‘Look,’ said Maggie, ‘I’m coming home. Tell Berto to get me some money here by tomorrow morning. I have to get out my best jewellery from the bank and sell it, and Berto has to sell some of his land. We’re paupers. Guillaume has to go to jail and I have to get the contents of my house from Hubert. I hope nothing has happened to him, Mary; it was silly of us to—’

  ‘Not on the phone,’ Mary said. ‘I told Michael what we’d done. He was so furious. He said not to mention it on the phone. Anyway those boys are staying over there in that house with Hubert and all the furniture’s been taken away by your lawyer. They had an orgy, couple of weeks ago, but I wasn’t there, myself. Everyone else was.’

  ‘Which lawyer took my stuff?’ Maggie said.

  ‘Massimo something. The one in Rome.’

  ‘He’s a crook,’ said Maggie. ‘He’s a Communist and he’s working for Hubert. I gave Hubert’s boys each a gold watch and all they can do is have an orgy. Did the police break it up? Why didn’t you call the police?’

  ‘I wasn’t there. Nobody denounced them to the police. Everyone was afraid and they got away. The police went round last week to have a look but all they found was Hubert and the boys in the empty house.’

  ‘Berto will never believe it,’ Maggie said, ‘and I’m going to fight every inch of—’

  ‘Berto doesn’t know a thing,’ Mary said. ‘We can’t hurt Berto. He’s too nice.’

  ‘And what about me?’ Maggie said. ‘Doesn’t anyone have any feelings for me?’

  ‘Oh, yes, we do, Maggie,’ Mary said. ‘Oh, yes, we do. We love you and we care for you a lot.’

  The first thing Maggie did when she put down the telephone was to order as many Italian newspapers as possible. Maggie was still, so far as was known, one of the hotel’s wealthiest clients, but the best the night porter could do at that hour, well after midnight, was to send to the station for the early morning edition of Il Tempo which he delivered to Maggie at about one-thirty. She was still awake, putting her disasters in order of priority. There was no word of the robbery at Berto’s villa; it had evidently become old news. But the headline in the Roman crime section caused her to put another call through to Mary.

  ‘Oh, can
’t you sleep, Maggie?’ said Mary anxiously. ‘Michael said I shouldn’t have told you all those things, I should have waited. Berto is going to call his bank in Geneva tomorrow morning. He tried to call you but he couldn’t get through. It’s terribly difficult from the villa. Can’t you sleep? Berto says I shouldn’t have told you about your jewellery because he should have liked to be with you when you heard.’

  ‘Well, I want to know about your jewellery,’ Maggie said. ‘You said you were putting it in an out-of-the-way bank for safety.’

  ‘Oh, goodness, yes. It’s all in a bank, I don’t know, Michael’s trying to get to sleep. It’s on the Via Appia.’

  ‘Banco di Santo Spirito?’ said Maggie.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. If you need money that bad, Maggie, I can get you a loan without pawning my jewellery. You just talk to Michael when you come home; I can talk to Daddy, and—’

  ‘Number 836 Via Appia?’ said Maggie.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I guess there’s only one Santo Spirito on the Via Appia.’

  ‘Get up and look,’ Maggie said. ‘I must know the exact bank and the exact number of the exact street. There has been a robbery at the Santo Spirito. It says here in this morning’s Tempo, Wednesday, 16 July, that there was a robbery over the weekend and they found on Monday that the gang ransacked the strong-boxes. Get up and see if that’s your bank.’

  ‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’ Mary said. ‘It can’t be. I haven’t heard anything. Maybe they tried to get me. We just got back this morning from the villa.…’ Maggie then heard her say, ‘Michael, wake up, my jewellery’s been robbed. What is the address of my bank?’

  It was indeed Mary’s bank which the belated report referred to. Mary also informed Maggie that she hadn’t insured this jewellery, believing it to be safe in its vault. Her voice was strange; she spoke with awe as if she was in church. ‘What an experience for you!’ Maggie said. ‘You poor child, what an ordeal to have to wait till the bank opens in the morning before you can find out whether your box was one of the unlucky ones or not.’ She spoke with genuine concern, thinking mainly of a special diamond brooch and an emerald ring of great value that she herself had given to Mary. But Michael came on the telephone, unreasonable with anxiety and short-tempered. ‘What sort of a woman,’ he said, ‘would ring us up in the middle of the night, twice, with the very worst news? You could have let us sleep till the morning. Now Mary’s crying. She wants me to call the bank manager. How can I call him in the middle of the night, what good will it do? I don’t know him. Mary isn’t a bit materialistic, that’s what you don’t realize, Mother. There’s an economic crisis and you’ve got to face it. It’s what—’

  ‘We’re ruined!’ Maggie shrieked back. ‘We’ve all become paupers overnight, and the first thing that happens when a family is ruined is always a quarrel unless they are very rare people, very exceptional. And I’m just so sorry to see that you are very, very ordinary, and also common from the Radcliffe side. The whole family quarrelled over their trusts and their wills, and what’s more, it was only an hour ago that Mary told me you all cared for me and loved me. It isn’t my fault if Mary’s lost her jewellery. Maybe she hasn’t. I hope not. I’m going to speak to Berto.’ Maggie hung up at this point, looked at herself in the glass and was amazed to find herself still glowing and handsome. She took a bath, telephoned for a bottle of champagne, asked to be wakened at eight, and went to bed where she slowly sipped three glasses before she went to sleep.

  It made Lauro very happy indeed to be summoned from his honeymoon cruise by Maggie, although he was putting on a great air to the effect that she had done something outrageous in putting through a call to the captain of the Panorama di Nozze, that cruise ship with twenty-one newly-wedded couples on board on which he and Betty had been spending their honeymoon. Lauro had already, in times past, visited the Greek islands with Maggie’s entourage, he had seen the labyrinthine home of the Minotaur and he had been to the Acropolis. The tone of the honeymoon company appalled him. Twenty-one pairs of newly-weds; every morning a round of sniggery remarks; dancing until three in the morning with uproarious jokes about exchanging partners and which is the way to your cabin? The awful brides whispering together over cocktails, and Betty no better than the rest.

  He sat with Betty now in the comfortable lobby of the hotel in Lausanne, while Maggie, reassuringly radiant, heard out his outraged complaints with an obligingly penitent expression that meant only that she had more important things on her mind than to waste words in defending herself.

  ‘You’re so right, Lauro,’ she said. ‘I should have realized…I should have been more thoughtful.…Your honeymoon. It happens once in a lifetime, doesn’t it?’ She turned to plump, bridal Betty who had clearly been to the hairdresser and had dressed very carefully for this meeting. ‘I do apologize,’ Maggie said, ‘if I may call you Betty?’

  Betty drooped her lids and shrugged, as if not prepared to show any lack of support for her husband’s complaint. ‘We nearly didn’t come,’ she said. ‘But then the captain made out it was so urgent, and the transport being all arranged, Lauro thought maybe you were ill and so we came ashore that day.’

  ‘Lauro could easily have come alone,’ said Maggie, ‘and left you to finish the cruise.’

  ‘What a suggestion,’ said Lauro. ‘How could I leave my wife alone on a honeymoon cruise, Maggie, are you crazy?’

  ‘Well, now that you’re here, Lauro, may I have a word with you?’ Maggie said.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Lauro, refilling all three glasses with the champagne that Maggie had ordered for the party.

  ‘Well, it’s business, Lauro. Betty must, of course, get used to business practice, and as you are my confidant and secretary I must speak to you alone. If Betty will give us half an hour. I’m sure there’s some shopping she wants to do. The boutiques of Lausanne are charming; she can get some ideas for her boutique in Rome, don’t you think?’

  Betty said, ‘Just what I was thinking myself,’ and put down her glass with a sharp tinkle.

  Lauro considered the matter importantly, with his lips pouted together. Then he said, ‘Yes, I think Maggie is in the right. Come back in half an hour, Betty, all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said brightly, ‘lovely.’

  They watched her as she passed through the lane of little tables to the vestibule, and out of the swing doors, in her cream and brown linen suit.

  ‘Are you happy?’ said Maggie to Lauro.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lauro. ‘Betty is a wonderful wife. She’s beautiful and also intelligent. We Italians, you know, like women to be women, and to be shapely.’

  ‘I often think Italian girls are very mature in their appearance,’ Maggie said, ‘a little over-full, but it’s a matter of taste.’

  ‘I won’t hear a word against Italian girls,’ said Lauro, ‘and especially my wife.’

  ‘You’re perfectly right,’ Maggie said in hasty conciliation. ‘I only meant that maybe the trouble is that they have their Confirmation too early. In the Anglo-Saxon countries they aren’t confirmed till they’re fourteen.’ She waved the subject vaguely aside. ‘It’s a matter of national custom, that’s all. I’m sure I’m not bigoted. Well, Lauro, I’ve got something really serious to discuss with you. It’s serious and it’s private, and I can’t thank you enough for breaking off your mass-honeymoon for me, Lauro.’

  ‘It was a very lovely and very expensive, exclusive honeymoon cruise,’ said Lauro. ‘Today we were to go on donkey-back into the mountains.’

  ‘All on donkeys together, twenty-one sposi!’ marvelled Maggie.

  Lauro looked sour.

  ‘But Lauro, I’m in trouble, darling,’ Maggie said. ‘I really am.’

  Lauro cheered up. ‘What’s your problem?’ he said.

  ‘I see in the newspapers,’ said Maggie, ‘that a lot of people are getting kidnapped. In Italy it’s becoming a national sport. Every day there’s someone new. Where are all the millions going to?’

  ‘It’s a
criminal affair,’ Lauro said, ‘mainly run by the Mafia but there are independent gangs, maybe political, I don’t know. Why don’t you keep your bodyguard? What happened to your gorilla?’

  ‘I can’t afford a bodyguard. I’m broke,’ said Maggie.

  Lauro laughed. ‘If that were true why would you be afraid of being kidnapped?’

  ‘When it’s known that Coco de Renault has disappeared completely with all my holdings, all my real estate, all my trusts, all my capital, I won’t have to fear being kidnapped.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Maggie?’ Lauro said. ‘You ask about kidnaps, then you tell me this story of de Renault. I think you try to make out you’re poor because you’re afraid. But no one will believe you, Maggie. You have to take care. It’s not nice to be kidnapped. Sometimes the victim never comes home. Remember how they cut off young Getty’s ear. They keep you in a dungeon for weeks.’

  ‘Coco has disappeared. I’ve tried to trace him. I’ve had private detectives and my lawyers trying to trace him. They say he’s somewhere in the Argentine; that’s all the news I can get. I’m not sure if they’re right or wrong. Maybe the investigators can’t be bothered any more. In the meantime, the detectives have to be paid, lawyers’ fees have to be paid.’

  ‘And the police?’

  ‘Which police? He belongs to no country. Then if I make a scandal, the tax people will start nosing into my affairs, that’s all. I want to kidnap Coco, that’s what I want to do. I want to extort my money out of him. At least I might get a part of it, something. I want to kidnap Coco de Renault.’

  Lauro said, ‘It’s a criminal offence, kidnapping.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Maggie said. ‘I know. Why shouldn’t I be a criminal? Everyone else is.’

  ‘Maggie, your husband—’

  ‘He’ll never know,’ said Maggie.

  Lauro sat back in a worldly way with an unworldly expression. ‘You’re a wonderful woman, Maggie. What’s in it for me?’

  ‘Ten per cent,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Twenty,’ said Lauro.