The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  ‘Sit down, Mr Carver, and state your business quickly.’ She pointed with a long ebony stick that had rested across her knees, to a small gilt chair by the fireplace.

  I sat down, knowing the chair would stick to me when I got up.

  I said ‘I’ve been employed by the London Fraternal Insurance Society to try and recover the gold python arm bracelet which was stolen from you.’

  ‘I thought the police did that kind of thing?’ She had a nice voice, a faint little gaspiness in it as though she suffered from a weak chest, though you would not have thought so looking at it. Somewhere, too, there was the echo of an accent, though I couldn’t place it.

  ‘The police rate of recovery is so low it hardly comes on to the graph. As you know, because you’ve been through it, they’re very sympathetic, take down all the particulars and then—and you probably don’t know—they go back to the police canteen for a quick one and forget all about it. So, insurance companies prefer people like me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I get paid for the job and a commission on all recoveries. A sergeant-detective could recover the Cullinan diamond and still get only his pay packet and go on worrying about his hire-purchase payments.’

  ‘The Cullinan diamond doesn’t exist. It was cut up into one hundred and five separate stones.’

  ‘It was a figure of speech.’ But I was impressed, and followed it up. ‘You know about diamonds?’

  ‘A little.’ The pale, creamy pink lips moved to something like a smile.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘something about the Tennant Diamond.’

  ‘It is a perfect yellow African stone measuring an inch by one and one-eighth inches. Sixty-six carats. But I’m not in the mood for quiz games. What do you want from me that I haven’t already told the police?’

  ‘With the greatest respect, the London Fraternal Insurance Society finds it hard to believe—though they would never say so, they leave that kind of thing to me—that while you and your maid were out someone entered this flat, using a key, walked off with a python bracelet from your dressing table and took nothing else.’

  ‘It might have been someone who specialized in Indian antiques. Just like these art robberies. They select what they want.’

  ‘True. But why did they leave old Buddha there?’ I nodded at the coffee table. ‘He’s antique enough. And Indian.’

  ‘He’s from the Tanjore district. Seventeenth century. But don’t ask me why he was left, or other things. I’m not interested in the psychology of the thief. My bracelet was insured. I’ve made a claim for the loss. Just tell the company to pay me. The thing is perfectly straightforward. You don’t think I’m lying to you, do you? Yes, or no?’

  I’d had that kind of question before—mostly from women, too. Believe me, it’s harder to answer than ‘have you stopped beating your wife yet?’

  Of course, there was no doubt in my mind that she was lying. The police weren’t happy with her story, and neither was Hawkins of the L.F.I.S. And having seen this place, I wasn’t happy with it. There was a gold cigarette box on the side-table close to me, and plenty of other stuff around the room that any villain with an eye for tomfoolery would never have passed up.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  I stood up. Of course, the damned chair came with me. I prised it off and gave her a look full of confidence.

  ‘I’m absolutely certain you’re not,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a very nice thing to say.’ She was smiling.

  ‘It took no effort.’

  ‘But you only did it out of politeness.’

  ‘Noblesse oblige.’

  ‘Crap.’ The underlying accent was stronger. I’m no Professor Henry Higgins, but I thought I could hear something North Country or Midlands in it. She raised her ebony stick and gave one of the cushions a whack. ‘I only like people who tell the truth.’

  I said, taking a chance, ‘With looks like yours and a quarter of a million pounds, it can’t happen often. You’ll only hear what people think you want to hear.’

  She gave me a long look, and said, ‘Let’s try again. Am I lying?’

  ‘If I can recover the bracelet it won’t matter either way.’

  ‘Don’t spare my feelings, Mr Carver.’ She picked up my card which lay on a cushion at her side. ‘Mr Rex Carver. Where the hell did you pick up a name like Rex?’

  ‘I was told there was a two-week argument between my father and mother. He won. I’ve never forgiven him. I go round thinking I should have been a golden labrador. How come Gloria?’

  ‘It’s Gloriana, really. My father. He had a thing for Spenser. Faerie Queene.’

  ‘Educated man.’

  ‘Self-educated. He was an iron-puddler in a steel works at Scunthorpe. I think it was a puddler, anyway. He was a strict disciplinarian. Every Saturday night when he got back from the pub he used to beat my mother, me and my brother.’

  ‘Made for a quiet Sunday, no doubt. And coming back to the main point—yes, I do think you’re being less than honest about the bracelet. Maybe it was stolen, but not the way you tell it.’

  I began to move towards the door. If she could whack cushions with a wrist movement that Arnold Palmer would have admired, she could also throw things.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Nothing to it.’

  I put a hand on the door knob. It was a glass job with fancy brass filigree over it.

  ‘Do you do anything else except recovery work for insurance companies?’

  ‘Pay me the rate for the job and I do anything—except babysitting, unless they’re above the age of consent.’

  ‘Funny man.’

  ‘Humour is the oil that—’

  ‘Stuff it.’ The accent was strong this time.

  ‘As you say.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Stankowski—and thank you for sparing me the time.’

  ‘It’s the only thing I give away . . . usually.’

  I inclined my head a few degrees, butler fashion, opened the door and went out. I couldn’t make out whether she liked me or not. Anyway, it wasn’t a problem I was going to go to a psychiatrist about.

  Outside the door, granite-faced ‘Will-ye-cum-in-the-noo’ was hovering. She steered me carefully past the semi-circular marble hall table and opened the flat door.

  I said, ‘What’s her problem? Thinking that nobody will love her, except for her money?’

  She said, ‘Ken this well, keep your gab steeket in guid company and gie your ain fish-guts to your ain seamaws.’ At least, it sounded like that.

  ‘You’re dead right,’ I said.

  Dimble phoned just before five and said that nobody in the regular trade was handling a gold python arm bracelet at the moment. He would keep his eyes open and call at the end of the week for his money. I rang Hawkins and said that as far as I could tell—tell him, that was—Mrs Stankowski’s story of the arm bracelet was on the level. He said what level? Knowing where that would lead, I pretended that the connection was bad and rang off. Then I sat and thought a bit about Gloriana. Stankowski came too hard off the tongue, Her old iron-puddler of a father might have been a self-educated man, but so was I, having been to a Devon grammar school. ‘Her angel’s face as the great eye of Heaven shyned bright, and made a sunshine in the shadie place. . . . ’ Spenser. Well, I had an idea—which meant I was feeling better—that there were quite a few shady places about. If you were going to pick up a little cash or excitement there were no better spots than shady places. Cash, at the moment, didn’t too much interest me—though that would come naturally if everything else was right—but excitement did. It was better than strychnine glycerophosphate (0.0025 gr.) in the blood.

  When I said good night to Wilkins she said, ‘Try to be nice to my sister when she’s here. She makes a great sacrifice to come.’

  I said, ‘Is she bringing that basset hound with her?’

  ‘She has to, since there’s no one to leave it with at home.’

  I
went on thinking about the long, mournful streak of dog. I’d be tripping over it six times a day and, since it favoured my desk chair, sitting on it even more often. I will say this for it, though—no matter what the indignity, it never bit. Just looked at me with sad, reproachful, blood-rimmed eyes.

  I had a couple of whiskies in Miggs’s office with him, on the way home. Behind his garage he had a small gymnasium. He had been a sergeant in the Commandos and for a couple of guineas a half-hour session gave work-outs to a mixed clientele, and taught some of them how to kill a man with bare hands—twenty different ways—in twelve sessions.

  ‘Manston,’ he said, ‘was in for a refresher today.’

  ‘I hope he dusted the floor with you.’

  ‘He did. He asked after you, health, finances and sex life.’

  ‘Tell him to keep away from me.’

  Manston was an old friend of mine, though the friendship was usually in a bad state of strain. He worked in the same line of business, but in a much higher bracket. His monthly cheque came fat and regularly through the Treasury. He also knew thirty different ways of killing a man with his bare hands.

  I took the Central Line home; home being a flat in a small street near the Tate Gallery.

  Parked outside the house was a 1930 Phantom Two Rolls-Royce. It was ivory coloured and immaculate. There was a chauffeur, looking as though he were carved out of wood, behind the wheel. He wore a black uniform with tiny lines of white piping on collar and cuffs.

  Mrs Meld, next door to me, and a great friend of mine, was leaning on her gate waiting for Mr Meld to come back with the supper Guinness in time to catch ‘Coronation Street’. ‘Gives a bit of tone to the place, eh?’ she said.

  ‘One of your rich relations?’

  ‘The only one with money in our family is my brother Albert. He keeps a whelk stall at Southend and drives a Ford Consul. No, it’s a visitor for you, Mr Carver. I let her in your place.’ She winked at me. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Not with a red-headed type. Otherwise you might be biffed over the nut with a bottle. She was carryin’ one.’

  CHAPTER 2

  Something Large and Bulky Fell Out

  The flat consisted of a bedroom, a sitting room, bathroom and kitchen. From time to time, when I had had it, I had spent a lot of money on it. Mrs Meld came in and did for me in the mornings but somehow the place always looked untidy. From the sitting-room window, by risking a cricked neck, I could get a fair glimpse of the river.

  When I went in there was no sign of Gloriana, except a new bottle of Vat 69 on the sitting-room table. I got two glasses and a soda siphon, and opened the bottle.

  She came through from the bedroom, obviously the end of her tour of inspection, and said, ‘Why on earth do you need such an enormous bed?’

  ‘I sleep diagonally.’

  I poured whisky into the two glasses.

  ‘Water, not soda,’ she said.

  I went through into the kitchen for water and called back, ‘Thanks for the present.’

  ‘You seem to take it very much for granted.’

  I came back with the water.

  ‘It’s happened before. People who change their minds sometimes bring a peace-offering.’

  I fixed her drink and sat her in my best armchair with it. She looked good against the brown leather; red hair, a green tailor-made with mink collar and cuffs, and crocodile shoes. She smiled at me and then lowered the whisky in her glass in a way which would have made her old father proud of his daughter.

  She said, ‘How do you know I’ve changed my mind?’

  I said, ‘Where did you get that Phantom Two?’

  ‘It was my late husband’s. Jan was very fond of it and I’ve never liked to get rid of it.’

  I said, ‘Is it really a quarter of a million? It’s important, you know, when it comes to fixing my fee.’

  ‘Nearer a million.’

  ‘Good. Now tell me about the bracelet.’

  ‘You’re a presuming bastard, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been in this business a long time. I can read the signs like a Master Magi.’

  ‘Magus. Singular. By the way, is the girl at your office always so cagey about giving your home address?’

  ‘She can’t get it out of her head that I’m not grown up and don’t have to be protected. She’s seen this, too.’ I handed her the art photograph.

  ‘Lord, those old things.’ She reached down for the crocodile bag at the side of the chair and slipped the photograph in.

  ‘Now, what about the bracelet?’

  ‘It was taken, stolen by my brother. So, naturally, I didn’t want to tell the police that.’

  ‘How did he manage it?’

  ‘My maid—the silly old haggis—let him in when I wasn’t there. She dotes on him. He took the bracelet and five thousand pounds in cash from my safe.’

  I shook my glass to get the soda bubbles working again. ‘He makes a habit of this kind of thing?’

  ‘When he gets the chance. But usually only small things like the bracelet. Normally he writes within a week, sending the pawn ticket and apologizing.’

  ‘And you get them out of hock and forgive?’

  ‘Normally.’

  ‘My husband said one should always have a substantial cash float, just in case. Jan was—’

  ‘I get it. You fond of your brother?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Why should he steal from you, then? Why not just give him a handout occasionally? You can afford it.’

  ‘I did. Sometimes a hundred, maybe five hundred, once or twice a thousand. But in the end I got fed up.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘He’s a dreamer. Not poetic. Big-business dreams, big schemes for making money. It always seemed unfair to him that I had so much from just marrying.’

  I stood up, took our two glasses and began to refill them. ‘Well, you’re not going to miss five thousand or the bracelet. Equally, clearly, this isn’t one of the times when you are prepared to forgive—otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘All this happened two weeks ago. I haven’t heard from him. I don’t know where he is, and I’m worried about him.’

  ‘Maybe for a bracelet and five thousand he reckons he should wait three weeks, perhaps a month?’

  I handed her a drink and sat on the stool. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs for comfort two feet from my nose. I had a controllable desire to reach out and run a finger over the right patella and tibia.

  ‘But he’s always been very punctilious.’

  ‘It’s a good word. But you wouldn’t be here, bearing gifts, and with a touch of Femme by Marcel Rochas behind each ear, over a matter of punctilio.’

  ‘I said I was worried. He’s left his job, and they don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘He was a foreign correspondent for Intercontinental News Services.’

  ‘Didn’t he give them any reason?’

  ‘They had a letter of resignation from him. It was written on Excelsior Hotel notepaper—that’s Florence.’

  ‘Was he based there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, five thousand’s a good reason for chucking a job. When it runs out he can get another. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.’

  ‘But there is. I’m absolutely sure that something has happened to him.’

  ‘Sure is a very strong word.’

  ‘That’s why I used it. He’s missed my birthday. That was four days ago. Ever since we both left home, no matter where he’s been in the world he’s always sent me a cable.’

  ‘A man of fixed habits.’

  ‘In some things.’

  ‘You want me to find him for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m expensive—particularly when it comes to foreign travel.’

  She stood up. ‘He’s my brother. I don’t care how much it costs.’

>   I stood up, slopping whisky over one trouser knee.

  ‘I’ll think it over and give you a ring in the morning. The cost, I mean. What’s his name? Freeman?’

  ‘Martin, yes.’

  ‘Where did he hang out in this country?’

  ‘He had a room in a Dorset Square hotel. The Mountjoy. I phoned them. He gave it up the day after he took the bracelet and the money.’

  I cuddled my left palm under her right elbow and led her to the door. For a moment I thought of asking her to stay for dinner, poached eggs on toast, with a thin smear of Marmite on the toast, delicious, and a bottle of Spanish chablis. Then I remembered her flat and the ivory Rolls and decided against it. She’d think I was after her money with some homespun approach.

  Her blue eyes frankly on me, her lips slightly parted, the length of her body slightly hipped out in a Vogue pose, she said, ‘You will do your very best?’

  I said, ‘Yes—if you’ll tell me what it really was that made you decide to come to me between the time I left your flat today and now. And no malarky.’

  For a moment she said nothing. Then with a smile she said, ‘I knew I was right about you. I have an instinct about people.’

  ‘Come to the point.’

  ‘Half an hour after you left I had an anonymous phone call from some man telling me not to worry about my brother.’

  ‘Then why worry?’

  ‘Because the last time it happened—an anonymous phone call, I mean—he got mixed up in some awful currency affair in France and only Jan’s influence put it right for him. Jan was very fond of him. They got on well together.’

  ‘Thank you for being frank with me. How many times has he been in jail?’

  It took her ten seconds flat to decide not to give me a backhander, and then she said, ‘Once—when he was twenty-five. He did two years for some . . . well, it was something to do with the City and the share promotion. I told you. He’s a dreamer, always after big money, big schemes. The trouble is he’s hopelessly incompetent, really.’ The smile flashed on. ‘You will help me, won’t you?’