Birdcage

by Victor Canning

  He drank and-then suddenly chuckled out loud. That bloody girdle thing. Fancy that turning up. Jean had never known but she had saved his life financially, and from that moment he had never looked back. Kerslake . . . now there was a chap who, if you could get him away from Birdcage, you could train. The first-class men, brilliant, but with the hidden flaw which made them vulnerable. Oh, yes—he had a nose for picking them. Just as a kestrel could catch the turn of a leaf from a foraging beetle two hundred feet below so, he guessed, Kerslake could catch the flicker of a thought in the blink of a man’s eye and read it. A knack? Telepathy? Mind reading? Useful man. If there were diaries he would find them. She’d always denied she kept one. Aye, a denial with a smile. But what a woman. Packed with nitroglycerine. Don’t upset. He laughed aloud and realised that first the P.M.’s and now his own brandy was getting to him. What was it? Claret for boys. . . port for men, but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. Perhaps in wartime. But not in the political dog fight. One more, and he was for bed. The girdle of Venus. Where the devil had he had that copy made? No matter. When he had first given it to her he had made her strip to the buff and wear it for him. Virtus Vincit. Like hell it did.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KERSLAKE HAD ASKED Sarah and Richard to have dinner with him at eight o’clock. They left the villa at half-past seven and Kerslake, who had parked his car down a side road off the one which they had to take and then walked across country to the slope above the villa, watched them go through his field-glasses. Keeping in the cover of trees and shrubs he walked down to the front of the villa. The two servants were safely in their lodge at the drive entrance.

  He took the key from under the stone trough, unlocked the door, put the key back in its hiding place, and then went in letting the door lock itself on the automatic catch. Women, he smiled ruefully, remembering Margaret, were great ones for forgetting things. If they came back he would hear the car and have plenty of time to make his way out through a rear window. In the hall he picked up the telephone and called his hotel to give a message to the receptionist. He was expecting a Senhorita Branton and a Senhor Farley to dinner—would they please present them with his apologies and tell them that he would be a little late because he had been held up on the road from Faro with a puncture? In the meantime they were his guests and would the hotel please serve them with any drinks they wished to have.

  There were only two rooms he wished to search in detail, Sarah’s and the man Farley’s. He did Sarah’s first. He took the key from the bureau and opened the safe. It held only the letters from Mrs Ringel Fanes’ husband. Closing it and swinging the bookcase back he ran his hand along the back side of the three rows of books and then his eye carefully over the books themselves. They were mostly paperbacks, some religious works, and some hard-covered book club editions.

  He next searched the bureau in the window. In one of a series of ivory-knobbed little drawers mounted at the back of the bureau he found the note from Lady Jean Branton, witnessed by Father Ansoldo and the maid, Melina, leaving the contents of a parcel—containing, he guessed, the Venus girdle —to Sarah. With it was the card giving information about the belt, stating that it had been given to her by Lord Bellmaster. If it had been worth thirty thousand pounds in 1948, he thought, God knew what it was worth now. Lord Bellmaster had been a generous lover . . . but then, the man had millions. But for all his money and power, he thought, he had no way of ridding his mind of the maggot of fear which worked there.

  Methodically, efficiently, and quickly he went through the bedroom. This was no training course exercise now with Quint in the sidelines watching and appraising. Everything he saw and touched he would remember. On a small table by a side window was a scatter of needles, cotton, threads and scissors and a summer dress with the skirt hem tacked-up in preparation for shortening it. Sarah was obviously making over some of her mother’s or her aunt’s clothes. He stood in the doorway for a moment before leaving the room. The conviction was hard in him that Sarah had had nothing to hide. She was simple-minded and would have used the safe had there been anything she wanted to keep private. Safes were for secrets.

  He went along to Farley’s room. All his possessions would go easily into the shabby suitcase. On his bedside table was an old copy of Country Life and a battered copy of D. H. Lawrence’s The White Peacock. Farley was clearly a man who travelled light. The last stub in his cheque book, which he found in the back pocket of an old pair of blue canvas trousers, showed that he had two thousand seven hundred and sixty escudos in his current account still. Probably nothing on deposit. Well, that would all change when he had the Venus girdle to sell. He had the feeling though that money meant little to Farley. He knew the type. Day to day was as far as it looked. Well, if that was what suited you, it suited you—and, by God, thousands were getting away with it these days.

  Leaving Farley’s room he went quickly through all the others on the same floor and then made a quick foray through the downstairs rooms. Walking back to his car he unexpectedly had a sudden uneasy feeling, remembering a stricture of Quint’s. If people know they have something to hide, and they hide it—then there’s no problem. Given time you can find it. The real trouble comes when people have something which it never occurs to them to hide. They leave it right under your nose and you don’t see it. Lady Jean Branton— now, there was a type quite different from her daughter—if she had had dirt on Bellmaster, a diary, she would have . . . No. Now he knew what was happening. It was the same feeling he had used to get in the training sessions; that moment before he turned to face Quint, smooth-faced, to say Clean. The moment of harrowing doubt because so much depended on your word.

  He got into his car, locked his camera in the dash-pocket and drove off.

  They had a pleasant dinner. He slipped easily back into his solicitor role, and he found he liked Farley. The man was easy and natural and, after a few drinks, an amusing talker. Before they left, and while Sarah had gone to the powder room, Farley said to him, “I wanted a word with you alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is between ourselves, but as her solicitor you should know. When she left the convent she tried to drown herself. She had a crazy notion—quite wrong—that she was going to have a baby. I saved her life. I won’t go into the details. But I think you should know, too, that she wants to repay me by giving me this Venus belt. She’s got it firmly in her mind. But I don’t want it. I wish to God if you got a chance you could . . . well, make her see sense about it.”

  “She has mentioned it to me. But in the circumstances you can see that there’s nothing I can do. You did her a great service. She’s got a generous nature—and she’s well provided for now by her father.” Kerslake smiled dryly. “I think you’ve just got to accept or, if you really feel so strongly, quietly disappear before she gets the chance to hand it over to you.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But I’ve a dirty idea she might come charging after me.”

  “The world’s a big place.”

  Farley laughed. “I just wonder if it’s big enough.”

  “I’m sorry. I appreciate your position, but there’s nothing I can do. It must rest between you. May I say, too, that I respect your attitude. Also I’d like to say that I think your being with her over this period must have been a great help to her.” When they had gone Kerslake went up to his room and put in a call to Lord Bellmaster and then a call to Birdcage, leaving a report for Quint detailing his actions and the substance of his talk with Lord Bellmaster, who had made no attempt to disguise his relief at learning no signs of a diary had been found.

  * * * *

  Two days later Farley went down to see François Norbert, whose wife, Elise, had telephoned the previous afternoon while Farley had been out and left a message with Sarah that her husband had made the valuation on the girdle of Venus. He would have asked Sarah to come with him, but that morning the solicitor, Kerslake, was seeing her to collect various documents and complete his business with her.
r />   He drove down slowly to the coast. The crunch, he thought, was coming. Once he was back at the villa with the belt he would have to make a decision—and he knew what his decision must be. He could not take the girdle. It was a pity really because he knew it meant he must leave the villa. After a few days in a place he always began to feel at home and reluctant to move on. But move on now he must and—he saw this clearly— he would not be able to make an open departure. He would have to move away while she was out and leave a farewell note for her. For a while he wondered idly whether his real objection did not rest in a now long-acquired reluctance to accept any responsibility or commitment for anyone but himself. He did not want the responsibility of having a lot of money and the commitment—which would be urged by Sarah—to do something with it to improve . . . what? His station in life, his future prospects? There was a tenacity of concern for other people and a continuing interest in the welfare of those to whom she gave affection and friendship which would make her hard to shake off. She had all the makings of a managing, driving woman— perhaps some character echo from her mother—which in anyone less attractive and naive would quickly become intolerable. He did not want to be managed or organised. Never had. And there were plenty more like him in the Algarve. Lotus-eaters. Well, why not? It was a life style which harmed nobody.

  François was sitting on the terrace reading a two-day-old copy of The Times, a carafe of white wine and two glasses waiting on the table. The lawn sprinklers were on, the sunlight lacing their sprays with rainbow arcs and a pair of golden orioles were bathing in a grassy puddle of water.

  François greeted him warmly and poured wine for them, saying, “I have-an apology from Elise. She has gone to Faro shopping so there are no grilled sardines. Then I have another apology—to be so long with this business of the girdle. But I wanted to write to a friend of mine for some information which I thought you might like to have.” He reached down to the empty chair at his side and picked up the long red case. He raised the lid, leaving it open, but made no move to take the golden belt from it.

  “Well, what is the verdict, François?”

  François shrugged his shoulders. “A very interesting one. But perhaps not such a happy one for your friend.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not so fast. I begin at the beginning and we take it step by step.”

  At that moment, not knowing how he knew—except that he knew François’ mannerisms so well—he sensed that the news was not going to be good. Bluntly he said, “No—let’s start the other way round. It’s a fake, isn’t it? That’s why Elise is not here.”

  François ran a finger down the cleft of his chin and then nodded. “Yes, a fake. But it is really too hard a word. It is the most beautiful piece of replica work I have ever seen. In its own right it would be worth two or three thousand pounds. This disappoints you—for your friend, I mean?”

  “For my friend, yes. But happily she is not short of money.”

  “Then that is something. You wish me, naturally, to tell you about its history?”

  “Naturally.” Farley drank a little of his wine. He felt suddenly at ease and unburdened and knew himself unconcerned at Sarah’s coming disappointment. That he could face and then move on to his own freedom. Selfish, maybe. But much better than stealing away in the night and leaving her with a genuine gift which he did not want.

  François said, “I wrote to this friend of mine in Paris who is a world authority on antique jewellery, also an adviser to the Musee de Cluny, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and dozens of others, as well as being in the business himself. You understand, Richard, that these so very eminent experts live in a closed world where they know everything and everyone connected with antique jewellery. Oh, yes . . . they know, far, far beyond me.” He paused, his eyes fixed curiously on Farley. “You want that I go into all the details of this, or just a very broad history? From your face, I think not too long, eh?”

  “It’s a fake. That’s the main thing. But, yes, I’d like to know generally.”

  “Then I will keep it short.” He reached for the carafe and topped up their glasses with wine.

  Farley sat, watching a green lizard on the terrace wall, as François talked. The genuine girdle had been bought in 1948 from an old French family by an English millionaire, a Lord Bellmaster. In 1950 Lord Bellmaster had had the fake girdle made by an Italian jeweller who specialised in the very highest class replicas.

  “. . . a necessary art, you know, Richard, for the genuine things are always at risk. At these great banquets, you know, the ladies do not always wear the real thing.”

  In 1951 Lord Bellmaster had sold the genuine girdle privately to a German industrialist who on his death had left it to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, where it still was.

  When François finished, Farley said, “Do you know anything about this Lord Bellmaster?”

  “No. Except he is still alive. So my Paris friend wrote me. This will all be unhappy news for your friend?”

  “Yes. . . yes, I think it will. Not because of the money, but because it isn’t genuine.”

  “You can tell her that the real girdle in Vienna was made by a pupil of Gilles Legare long after Legare’s death. But this replica, sadly, though beautifully done is . . . alas . . . worth very little compared to the value of the real thing. I am sorry to give you such disappointing news.”

  “Well, there it is. But anyway, François, it was good of you to take all the trouble. I wonder why Lord Bellmaster had a copy made.” „

  François chuckled. “Rich men are careful with their money. That way they become rich. You give your mistress the real thing and then at a good moment you have a copy made which goes back to her and she never knows the difference. To sell the real thing then is easy since it is so often done privately to collectors without publicity. So it is a cheap way to please an expensive mistress.”

  When Farley left François he drove up to Herman’s little holding. Bad news could wait, and he shut from his mind the thought of the time when he would have to tell Sarah the truth. In some ways he saw that the blow to her would be greater than his refusal of the girdle had it been genuine. As he got out of the car and waved to Herman who was hoeing down his maize rows there came into his mind the sharp memory of the night when he had heard her screams coming from the darkness. The ways of the Lord could be severe and beyond human comprehending. Maybe, but it was—without any power in him to stop it—now beginning to hit him hard that he should have had a moment of selfish unconcern about her reaction. She was, he knew, going to be desolated and there would be nothing he could do to comfort her . . . Hell, hell.

  Herman came up to him grinning, wiping sweat with the back of his hand from his forehead, and said cheerfully, “And how is life at the Villa Lobita?”

  Farley grinned. “My days there are numbered.”

  “And then—you go where?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Your philosophy is a simple and fatalistic one—even selfish.”

  “Sure.”

  “Involvement to you is like putting a wild bird into a cage. I met the Alvarez couple last night at the Palomares Hotel. They are off to Bermuda for two months soon and were asking after you. You could move over there.”

  “Maybe I’ll give them a ring.” The Alvarez villa was at the eastern end of the Algarve, between Faro and Tavira, where Sarah was unlikely ever to trace him.

  “Good. You stay now to eat something with me?”

  “I’d be delighted.” He was in no hurry to get back to the Villa Lobita.

  * * * *

  Lord Bellmaster and Quint were having lunch at Lord Bellmaster’s club in St James’s. They had a secluded table at the far end of the dining room in a window recess overlooking a small paved courtyard which the sunlight touched briefly once a day. Its centre was dominated by a bronze statue of a bewigged statesman of the eighteenth century, his shoulders snowed with the droppings of pigeons and sparrows. They had talked mild generalities th
rough lunch and now they were taking their coffee and port at their table and the room was fast emptying. In a few moments Quint knew that Bellmaster would come to the point—if there were one—of this rare invitation.

  At that moment, almost as though he had read his mind, Bellmaster said, “Your boy, Kerslake.”

  Quint sipped his port and said, “A promising young man. Everything before him—as once you and I had.” He could see that Bellmaster was relaxed.

  “And still have. He’s done a good job for me down in Portugal. I wanted to thank you for the loan of his services.”