Mrs. Polllifax and the Second Thief

by Dorothy Gilman

  "When he wakes up," said Kate, "I think we should take a much closer look at those papers he stole—"

  "Borrowed," Mrs. Pollifax reminded her with a smile. "Yes, we must, we were tired last night, but since Farrell's still asleep I might point out that he suggested—under pressure— that I telephone Mr. Vica today and report his car abandoned in Erice. I have a much better idea, Kate, I think you and I should pay a personal call on this Mr. Vica this morning. I'd like to take his measure, especially if he's involved."

  "Mr. Vica?" said Franca, frowning. "Ambrose Vica?"

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "Yes, do you know him?"

  Kate said eagerly, "It sounds a capital idea, and Mr. Farrell will of course be furious?"

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. "One has to remember that Farrell is not himself just now; he has a fever."

  "We have become conspirators," Kate said with a grin.

  "I ¡ove conspiracies," said her aunt.

  "Yes, but does anyone know where Ambrose Vica lives?"

  "Oh yes, Peppino told me," Kate said. "A splendid palazzo well worth seeing, and I must say that meeting Mr. Vica sounds a good investment to me."

  Franca looked at her thoughtfully. "No, Caterina, not you. I am thinking for the sake of this man you brought here you should not personally go inside once you take Mrs. Pollifax to visit Mr. Vica .., if he will see her. From what you told me yesterday this angry Mr. Farrell must stay hidden and safe for a few days, but think of the vacations you've spent here! People notice you. People notice Americans. Mr. Vica need only say, 'who was that girl?' and someone may tell him, 'oh, she visits her aunt near Cefalu at the Villa Franca.'

  "Damn," murmured Kate.

  "Kate!"

  "Well, I'll miss all the fun but as usual you're right. Shall we go, Mrs. Pollifax? We can pick up some food on the way." Plucking several clusters of grapes from the counter Kate led the way out into the early sunlight.

  As they drove toward the front gate a young man lazily rose from a bench near the wall and Mrs. Pollifax noted that he carried a rifle. "Good heavens," she said, "there's a guard here, and at seven o'clock in the morning?"

  "How perceptive of Franca," said Kate, and rolling down her window, "Nito—buon giorno!" A few animated words were exchanged before Nito unbarred and opened the heavy gates. "Nito says there's to be a guard at each of the gates for so long as your friend Farrell is here."

  They made their exit and the gates swung shut behind them but Mrs. Pollifax, appreciative of such security, was puzzled. "I'm going to ask a very impertinent question, Kate. Last night your aunt's immediate reaction to our arrival—without a single question asked—was to tell Peppino to double-bar the gates and wear a gun. Nito guards the gate now with a rifle, and you carry a Smith & Wesson in your car. How is this?"

  She laughed. "It's the way it is here, that's all. It's not America. To live out here in the country and to prosper is to invite trouble. In general, you see, people are afraid in Sicily to live in the countryside if they can afford not to. The big landowners are absentee landlords, they've always lived in the cities, and only occasionally visit their farms and estates. It's considered—well, a little dangerous to live in rural Sicily." She hesitated before adding, "The people here are very poor, you know, and you can't blame them for resenting conspicuous wealth and sometimes—well, it can be a vulnerable place to live."

  "You mean robberies?"

  Kate nodded. "Robbers, bandits—at times, yes—but Franca is determined to live at Villa Franca. She's beaten the odds with her own personal crusade of developing the village just down the hill. She shares ownership with the villagers, although for now—and for a good many years—she's really been subsidizing it."

  "Subsidizing a whole village!" exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Yes, and it's been lovely seeing it change. It's quite a cooperative now, the people eat well, they work hard, they have purpose and because they respect her they protect her."

  "But isn't it," began Mrs. Pollifax tactfully, "or rather, doesn't it strike you as sounding—well, somewhat feudal?"

  "But much of Sicily is," said Kate. "That's what Franca's trying in her small way to change, and of course what counts most in the village is that she's a di Assaba."

  "A what?"

  Kate laughed. "She inherited the land and house from her grandfather, who was born on these acres. When she heard the property was hers she immediately resigned her job in New York—she was in advertising—and came here determined to find a way to paint her pictures and stay. That was fifteen years ago. She's not an outsider, you see, she's accepted, being part-Sicilian. Both her mother and mine were di Assabas, even if they went to college in America and married Americans. It's family that matters in Sicily."

  Awed by this disclosure Mrs. Pollifax said, "But it must taka a great deal of money to support a village! Her grandfather left a fortune as well?"

  Kate overlooked this and said with a wave of her hand, "This is Termini Imerese we're passing, there are some ruins there but mostly it's known for its macaroni. Are we being followed?"

  "Followed? Oh," said Mrs. Pollifax, still digesting the fact that Franca supported an entire village. "No . . . Yes . . . I don't know ... I don't think so, but there's a white car at a distance behind us."

  Kate nodded. "Keep an eye on it, will you?"

  It was with triumph that they reached their destination; the white car had not, after all, been following them, and Peppino's directions had proven to be perfect. At eight o'clock—an impossible hour, thought Mrs. Pollifax, but Kate was resolute— they drove through the gates of the Vica estate and followed a curving driveway up to an imposing mansion, a square and rather plain stone building to which had been added lacework iron balconies and a facade of arches to conceal its original severity.

  "Good luck," said Kate, leaning over to open the door for her.

  "Let's just hope he's an early riser," Mrs. Pollifax told her, and walked up to what she hoped was the front entrance, grasped the bronze head of a lion on the door and pulled it. After several more tugs at the lion's mane the door opened to a grave-faced man in black. Mrs. Pollifax explained that she was representing Mr. Farrell, whom Mr. Vica knew, and that she wished to speak to Mr. Vica.

  She was allowed just inside the door to wait in an enormous,

  high-ceilinged hall with a ceiling of glass and a floor of marble. It was impossible to be unimpressed, for the hall was filled with statues and hung with paintings and tapestries: she moved from a Braque to a charming Matisse and wondered if they were originals. She had just arrived at a Modigliani when distant doors opened, a young man in a business suit arrived breathlessly to say that he was Mr. Vica's secretary and what did she want.

  Apparently the name of Farrell was not without interest and she was escorted through an immense drawing room to a glass-enclosed room in the rear. Here Mr. Vica was breakfasting at a small table in the greenhouse, surrounded by trees in tubs and a profusion of flowers.

  He rose as she entered, napkin in hand, and each of them inspected the other with curiosity. Mrs. Pollifax's initial impression was that he looked like a thug in gentleman's clothes. He was short and square, with thin strands of very black hair— dyed, she guessed—artfully arranged across the forehead of a lined and sallow face. He was wearing black silk trousers, a velvet smoking jacket with a paisley silk cravat at his throat, and also—but she tried not to notice this—a pair of warm sheepskin bedroom slippers on his feet.

  He said in perfect English, "I am told you have news of my guest Mr. Farrell, who appears to have disappeared completely?"

  She nodded. "Yes. Your car had to be abandoned in Erice, he would like you to know this."

  "Erice!" Vica's brows rose. He said smoothly, without expression, "And there is perhaps some reason why my guest cannot tell me this himself? And may I ask how you know this when it is I whom he should be telling? Who are you, and where is he?"

  He was not inviting her to sit down and Mrs. Pollifax felt no intere
st in prolonging her visit under such circumstances. She said crisply, "He entered a certain house three nights ago, he said you would understand what he means, and he found it occupied by two men who fired shots at him; he escaped in the dark and was followed. Not knowing the country he ended up in Erice where it was necessary for him to remain for two days in hiding. Where he is now he prefers not to say. He feels that he may have stumbled into what he called a 'setup.'

  "Excuse me," said Vica, "this word 'setup'?"

  She thought, He knows its meaning very well, and inquired silkily if the word "trap" might be more familiar to him.

  Vica studied her with narrowed eyes. "Since you seem to have Farrell's confidence one may ask if this means that he met with no success in carrying out the job he was sent to do?"

  She decided it was wiser not to mention that Farrell's success was semi and quasi, and that he had removed some of the safe's contents. "There wasn't time," she told him. "He was interrupted."

  "How tiresome," Vica said. "Still," he added with a shrug, "there can be no accusations or suspicions or complications if the job was bungled. How amusing, I have made no progress at all!" With a sigh, "A pity he couldn't come away with something . . . yes, a great pity."

  "Mr. Vica," she said coldly, "your guest Mr. Farrell was shot and he was wounded. This doesn't concern you at all? He was working for you, wasn't he?"

  "True," mused Vica, "but how tiresome that he doesn't trust me enough to tell me this himself ... Of course, considering the circumstances . . ." He was thoughtful, and then sighed again heavily. "I do not understand how this happened. Please tell Mr. Farrell that when he is restored I would urge him to contact me." He added with a lift of an eyebrow, "You are leaving?"

  "I'm tired of standing," she told him.

  "Ah—I see. But it is very early," he pointed out politely, "and you have interrupted my breakfast, which is growing cold. I did not catch your name?"

  She smiled at him. "No," she said and left Mr. Vica to his breakfast.

  "Well?" said Kate when she climbed into the car.

  "I glimpsed a Cezanne, saw a gorgeous Modigliani, a Matisse and a Braque, and I've met Ambrose Vica."

  "Tremendous! And?"

  "He was very careful not to pressure me about where Farrell could be found, so I think we can expect to be followed. He finds it 'tiresome' that Farrell doesn't trust him enough to have returned to him, and he pretended to not understand the word 'setup.'

  Kate nodded. "Devious. What does he look like?"

  "His appearance is a shade above that of a common thug, but not quite that of a gangster, and he is very, very smooth. Ruthless too, I'm sure, and extremely rich."

  "I think," said Kate as they drove away, "he sounds quite the villain. If the Mr. Raphael whom he sent Farrell to rob is his enemy then I think Mr. Raphael's of interest, too, don't you? Of course only Farrell knows where the man Raphael lives, but—" She broke off to say abruptly, "How much danger is Farrell in, do you think? On a scale, say, of one to ten?"

  Mrs. Pollifax thought about this. She said slowly, "If it should be Aristotle who Farrell met—and that's a big 'if because I still find it so difficult to believe—but if he should be here the question I would have to ask is: how could an assassin imprisoned under tight security in France suddenly turn up in Sicily?

  You notice I don't ask why he'd be here, although this is of great importance, but how he came to be here."

  "With help," Kate said grimly. "Lots of it."

  "Exactly, so until we learn who is determined to harm Farrell it's obvious that he remains in grave danger."

  "He's certainly attractive," Kate admitted, and gave her a quick glance. "But there's you, too . . . From what's been said, you're even better known to Aristotle than Farrell."

  "He doesn't know I'm here," pointed out Mrs. Pollifax quietly. Yet, she added silently.

  "Damn," swore Kate. "More guns and shooting."

  " 'More'?" asked Mrs. Pollifax, made curious by the passion in her voice. "If it's not too secret, and if I'm not prying, what were you doing before you came here on vacation?"

  Without expression Kate said, "Technically this is a rest-leave, not a holiday. I was in Yugoslavia, stuck in Sarajevo during the bombings, the fighting between Serbs and Croats, you know." She shivered. "It was a bloodbath. Food and water running low, corpses in the streets—we had to hide for days in a cellar."

  "Good heavens," said Mrs. Pollifax in dismay. "How did you get out?"

  "Not easily. And once the Department learned I wasn't sleeping nights and had this tendency to cry at odd times they urged this rest-leave." She gave Mrs. Pollifax a smile as they stopped at an intersection. "You have to admit that Franca's farm is an excellent prescription for any insomniac. But this sudden request to help you sounded so easy and uncomplicated!"

  Mrs. Pollifax sighed. "They so often sound like that—as I've discovered all too often myself! But how did you happen to become an agent, Kate?"

  She laughed. "Oh that—it's what I always wanted to do. I was born very late to a father who had worked for Intelligence during World War II, back when it was the OSS, and for quite a while afterward, too. He didn't talk of it much but I knew, and I adored him, and it's what I grew up wanting for myself— much against his wishes, I can assure you! But a week before I graduated from college, and a month before he died, he very generously—like a gift!—made a few calls to Carstairs that led to a humble typing job in the Department. After a year of that I was promoted to mapwork and then trained for surveillance; they found I was good—and I was!—and finally I earned field work. Just what I wanted!"

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled faintly. "What strange ambitions some of us have . . , and do you think your father would be proud of you now?"

  Kate grinned. "Maybe he'd not admit it, because parents always want their daughters to be safe, but yes I think he'd be very pleased."

  "I think so, too," said Mrs. Pollifax. "And are you able to sleep again now?"

  "Yes, beautifully, and haven't shed a tear since I arrived in Sicily."

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded, and regretfully returned to the present moment. "Then I should perhaps tell you now that a blue car has been consistently making the same turns that we have, and has been following us all through Palermo."

  "Blue!" cried Kate. "Where did that come from?" At once she swerved across traffic and turned down a narrow lane just wide enough for their car; they bounced recklessly over cobblestones, under balconies hung with drying clothes and barely missed scraping the walls of tall, narrow stucco houses. "Lost them," she said triumphantly. "The blue car was too big for that street. Now let's head for the Villa Franca. Do you think the blue car belonged to Ambrose Vica?"

  "What I think," said Mrs. Pollifax firmly, "is that the Villa Franca is the only sensible place for us today. We are much too popular when we emerge from it and we simply can't afford to be followed back to it."

  Some thirty minutes later, without further incident, they turned off the highway and drove up the winding unpaved road to arrive again at the gates of the Villa Franca.

  KATE AND MRS. POLLIFAX SEPARATED AT THE door, Kate heading off to look for her aunt while Mrs. Pollifax went in search of Farrell. She found him in the garden, and was startled by the picture of gloom he presented; he was slumped in a chair still wearing his bedraggled Erice smock, and seeing her he said in a depressed voice, "So you're back."

  Observing the expression on his face she said tartly, "The sun is shining, the flowers are brilliant, your foot—albeit propped on a stool —has a very small bandage now, but you sound as if you've lost your last friend."

  "I wish we'd gone to a hotel, I don't like this place," he announced crossly. "What I have been sitting here pondering is not the loss of my last friend but the loss of my sanity, having clearly seen something in my room last night that I have been assured this morning was never there. I might also add that after you left, absolutely abandoning me, I was visited by a woman whom I'm told is a witch."
>
  "How interesting," she murmured with a twinkle in her eye.

  He nodded and removed his foot from the stool so that she could sit on it. "You won't believe what she applied to my ankle, I advise you to keep your distance because it smells dreadfully. It looked a mixture of mud, green things and manure."

  "And a real witch!"

  He nodded despondently. "But the accusation that I've been hallucinating worries me the more."

  "I think," said Mrs. Pollifax briskly, "that you'd better tell me about that. You seem to have had some extraordinary experiences during the two hours we were gone."

  "Nobody believed me," he pointed out darkly.

  "I will."

  He suddenly grinned. "Yes you would, bless you." Straightening, he said, "All right, I'll tell you. When I walked into my assigned bedroom last night, bearing my kerosene lamp like a vestal virgin, I spotted this incredibly old Hellenic vase on the shelf over the bureau, and I mean old, very worn, with a marvelous patina of age but its colors still splendid. I may not be an authority on pottery but I can recognize a museum piece when I see it. Before I could look at it closely Peppino came in to bandage my ankle. After he'd left I lay exhausted on the bed, staring at the vase and wishing I had the energy to get up and examine it .., but I fell asleep."

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "You were tired. Naturally."

  "This morning when I woke up it was gone. It had been replaced," he said bitterly, "by a cheap, gaudy imitation, very touristy, the sort you buy in a souvenir shop. Same size, garish colors, no patina. Frankly I was indignant, I went looking for Franca and told her that I wanted the vase back, wanted to examine it, that it was lovely. With great sympathy she said there had been no such vase in my room and that my fever must have been playing tricks on me—but I tell you, Duchess, I saw it, it was there. I think there's something very odd about this place.

  "Well, if it has a witch—"

  "A witch I can accept," he snapped, "but not being told I didn't see what I saw."

  "I wouldn't like that either," said Mrs. Pollifax, but thinking that it was unproductive to remain on the subject she tactfully changed it before he grew even more outraged. "How is your ankle?"