The front room in the entre-sol was assigned to them. It was an old-fashioned room with a wooden bedstead, a peeling flowered wall-paper, and a threadbare carpet, but all was clean. Mary had to help her mother up the stairs and lay her on the bed. Her strength seemed to have given way. The porter staggered up the stairs with the trunk and dumped it on the floor: Mrs Fraser groaned with pain at the noise. To her daughter’s anxious questions, she answered faintly that she was feeling very ill: that she supposed it was fatigue; that she might sleep. But she was flushed and swollen, and Miss Fraser determined to send for a doctor, and went down to the manageress.
A doctor? Yes, the Manageress knew a very good doctor—Duphot was his name. All her English visitors when they were ill sent for him and spoke well of him afterwards: she could get him to the hotel in five minutes. Presently Dr Duphot made his appearance. He was the typical French doctor, as round as ball, wearing a black beard cut like a spade. Mary explained the case as well as she could. The doctor listened without speaking, and then made a systematic examination of the sick woman. At last he stood up and addressed Mary Fraser:
‘Mademoiselle, there is no cause for anxiety. I shall telephone for the necessary remedies. In the meantime, stay here with Madame. I shall return in a few moments.’
Mrs Fraser had sunk back exhausted. She was breathing quickly and seemed to be half-delirious. The doctor tarried, and at last Mary, unable any longer to bear the strain, went out to the head of the stairs to call him. She did not go down because from her position she could see his back and shoulders in the telephone-box. He seemed to be speaking emphatically; and the Manageress was hovering about outside, listening. Why all this fuss about her mother unless she were very ill indeed? Mary could bear the suspense no longer: she was on her way down when the doctor left the box and met her on the stairs.
‘You should not have left your mother, Mademoiselle!’ he said gravely, leading the way back into the sickroom. ‘Now listen; there is no cause for anxiety, but it will save time if you go yourself to fetch the drug I require. My colleague, whose address is on this card, will give it to you. As soon as you receive it, come back. I have ordered a cab for you. You can quite safely leave your mother in my care. It is only for a few minutes: you will soon be back.’
There seemed nothing to do but to obey. Mary ran down to the cab and drove off. The sun had set: it began to grow dark as the cab threaded its way through a maze of narrow streets. The distance seemed interminable. At last they crossed the Seine and plunged into another maze. Mary became uneasy and questioned the driver, who answered shortly that the house was now quite near. But it was dark when at last they pulled up at the door of a large block of flats. In spite of the distance they had come, Miss Fraser was surprised at the lowness of the fare. She climbed the interminable stairs to the fifth floor, and touched the bell. The door flew open and a florid woman in a decorated dressing-gown received her as the expected guest. She took her into a tiny sitting-room and bade her feel at home. The doctor was expected every moment: he had gone out on the very business of Mrs Fraser’s illness. And then she branched out into the wonders of Paris. Did Mademoiselle know Paris? Was she under the charm of this capital of the world, so different from London with its gloom and its fogs? She would buy dresses? No? Ah, there was the telephone. Such an infliction, these telephones. She bustled off into the next room and through the communicating door Mary Fraser heard half the conversation and understood about a sixth of it. ‘Up till what hour?’ ‘Eleven?’ ‘Good’—and the conversation ceased. She waited many minutes: her hostess did not return. A clock struck a half-hour. The clock in the room marked eight: her wristwatch 9.30. Heavens, had she been all that time? She would wait no longer. She distrusted this glib, plausible woman. A terror lest she had fallen into a trap began to take hold of her. She crept softly out into the hall to let herself out by the front door. It was locked. She was trapped.
In her terror she shouted ‘Madame’! The door of the telephone room was next to that of the sitting-room. She knocked and, getting no answer, turned the handle. That, too, was locked. She beat upon it with her hands.
The door flew open and there stood Madame, flaming with indignation. What was this? Why all this noise? Locked in? Impossible! No one but their two selves was in the flat. She had not locked the front door and therefore, if it was locked, it was Mademoiselle herself. If she chose to leave just when the doctor was due—he had telephoned that he was coming—well, she was free to go. Mary saw her fumbling in her pocket for the key, and she was first to the door to pull on it. Madame tried it herself and cried, ‘Tiens! It is indeed locked, but how?’ Could she herself have turned the key in absence of mind? What an extraordinary thing! And so saying, she released the catch and threw it open. Before she could close it again Mary was through the gap and racing down the stairs, hearing imploring cries of ‘Mademoiselle!’ growing fainter behind her.
Safe in the street she was not free from her troubles. It had begun to rain and not a vehicle, not even a foot passenger, was to be seen. She hurried from street to street all silent and deserted. At the last she saw the lights of a vehicle which stopped and discharged passengers. She ran and reached it breathless just as the horse began to move. It was a cab and a cab ready for a fare. She gave the name of her hotel and settled down for the interminable drive. But it was not interminable. Two streets, a bridge, the Place de la Concorde, the Rue Cambon, and in five minutes she was at her hotel. It was closed. She rang and a night porter—one she did not know—appeared and asked her politely what she wanted. She replied that she wanted to return to her room. The man admitted her and asked for her name. Fraser? Was she registered? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Produce the register and I will show you.’ But the name of Fraser was not in the register, nor the name of ‘Dupont,’ the gentleman who wrote his name with a flourish, nor any other name that she had seen on the page.
‘This is the Hotel des Etrangers, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Mademoiselle, but you must have mistaken your hotel.’
She looked round the hall. It was the same. She asserted that she had been given No. 4 on the first floor.
‘No, Mademoiselle,’ said the man, consulting the room list. ‘There is no one in No. 4.’
‘Then send for the Manageress.’ But this, it seemed, was not to be thought of. When Madame had once retired for the night it would cost him his place if he disturbed her. Mademoiselle had better try to find her own hotel: it must be one of the others in that street. But Mademoiselle was firm. If he would not call the Manageress she would, if she had to force her way into every room in the house. He went off unwillingly to do the deed that might cost him his place and presently Madame, in a dressing-gown and curling pins, appeared. It was the same woman, stern, uncompromising and cold.
‘You wish, Mademoiselle…?’
‘Madame, you know me. I want to go to my mother.’ The woman looked puzzled.
‘Please explain yourself, Mademoiselle. I have never seen you before.’ Mary explained; the register was consulted; the woman persisted that she knew nothing of her story. No doctor had been summoned to the hotel that evening. None of the guests had complained of illness. But, as Mademoiselle appeared to be lost and the hour was late, she would let her sleep there. In the morning she could go to the British Consulate!
And so Mary was assigned a room on the second floor and when all was quiet she took her candle and crept softly down to No. 4 to find her mother. The number was on the door; she was in the room, but it was not the same room. There were no roses on an old wall-paper, but a blue art wall-paper, devoid of pattern: no wooden bedstead, but a brass bedstead of the modern kind: no worn carpet, but a staring new floor covering. The washhandstand was of mahogany with a white marble top. The crockery was different, and so were the chairs. It was not the same room. She was worn out. In her own room she sobbed herself to sleep.
They brought her coffee in the morning, an
d when she went downstairs to pay for it she found that there was no charge. The Manageress, repenting of her rudeness overnight, was polite and even sympathetic.
At ten o’clock she related her story to the British Vice-Consul, whose only comment was to ask her for the address of her relations in England. It was clear that he did not believe her, but she gave him the address of her uncle in Kensington. He introduced her to a colleague, a pleasant man of middle-age, who took her out to lunch with his wife. She gathered that he was the Consulate doctor, and that he was probing her hallucination to its source. His wife, to whom she told her story, was the first person who believed her, and perhaps it was this sensible lady who procured her another interview with the Vice-Consul and an offer to accompany her to the hotel. He explained his mission to the Manageress, who consented to a questioning of the hotel servants on one condition—that the Police Commissary of the district should be present.
This functionary arrived presently with his clerk and a semi-official enquiry was opened. Mary told her story and the Commissary remarked judicially that two witnesses ought to be called—the red-bearded cabman and Dr Duphot. The clerk went to the telephone while the Manageress was answering the Vice-Consul’s questions. She reasserted that she had never seen Mary Fraser before she arrived late in the evening, that no doctor had been summoned and no lady had complained of illness. The Vice-Consul scrutinized the hotel register and then the cabman was announced. He, too, had never seen Mary, had carried no large trunk, had driven no one to the hotel on the previous day. Yes, he had driven foreigners, of course, but never to this hotel for several weeks. And then the doctor—the same man with his square cut beard. He had never seen Mademoiselle in his life—nor had he been called to the hotel yesterday, or indeed for more than three weeks. His evidence was strictly professional and the more convincing on that account. The Vice-Consul asked to see the room, to question the concierge, and when all was done he took leave ceremoniously and escorted Mary to the Consulate.
She, poor girl, saw from his manner that he was now convinced beyond hope of redemption that she was mentally unstable, but at the Consulate she had no time for brooding: her uncle had arrived from London. Mr Anderson, of Mincing Lane and Vicarage Gate, was not a sympathetic person. He had quarrelled with his sister, Mrs Fraser, many years before and he had come over in response to the Consul’s telegram unwillingly—from what he called a sense of duty, which was really, though he did not know it, the insistence of his wife. After a brief interview with the Vice-Consul he announced that they were leaving by the train at four, and that they must leave for the Gare du Nord immediately.
It was a melancholy journey. Mr Anderson made no reference to his sister, and if he spoke at all it was about the weather. Mary replied in monosyllables. Her aunt’s warm-hearted welcome made up for much, but she, too, said nothing about her mother, nor about Paris or their travels. It was very late and all trooped off to bed. Mary did not sleep.
The details of the story reached me at a later date. All that we had at first was the paragraph in the French newspaper which had published a garbled version of gossip from the Consulate clerks. Mr Pepper was pondering noisily: I did not like to interrupt him, although to me the case seemed simple enough. Miss Fraser, I thought, must be one of those neurotic young women who imagine things. She must have lost first her memory, then her luggage and then herself. The hotel she pitched on as the site for her hallucination about the loss of her mother refused to admit her, and somewhere her mother must be searching for her and for all we knew might already have found her. Mr Pepper fetched a book from the laboratory—an American book about Secret Societies—and while he was turning over the pages with his thick fingers I ventured to ask whether he had formed any theory. He made no answer until he had found the passage he was looking for, and then he said, ‘I want to hear what you think, Mr Meddleston-Jones.’ I told him. He gave a short laugh.
‘The young woman was telling the truth.’
‘Then you think it was a murder?—that she murdered her mother?’
‘Not at all.’ There was a triumphant note in his voice that convinced me that he had solved the problem. I was puzzled and expectant.
‘You noticed,’ he went on, ‘that the daughter described how she was spirited away to the other side of Paris and detained there for hours.’
‘To get her out of the way?’
‘And that when she returned she found the room entirely changed—new wall-paper, new furniture, a new carpet.’
‘You mean that they re-furnished the room while she was away? But why, unless someone had murdered her.’
‘And that these two ladies had come from Naples?’
‘Yes, but I don’t see the connection—’
‘Evidently you’ve never heard of the Mafia.’ Light was beginning to dawn on me.
‘You mean, Mr Pepper, that she was kidnapped by the Mafia.’
‘I mean that this lady, Mrs Fraser, had been dabbling in Naples with politics, as so many of your English women do; that the Mafia took her measure and hunted her out of the place; that she knew too much. First they tried to poison her on the train—a waiter in the restaurant car dropped a pinch of powder into her food, but she was a Scotchwoman and it wasn’t strong enough—and then they went to work in Paris in their usual way. They terrorized the hotel management, the cabman and the others; got the daughter out of the way, terrorized the furniture man and changed the room—’
‘But the doctor?’
‘Oh, he wasn’t a doctor at all. He was the head of the Mafia outfit in Paris. I think I could lay my finger on him in five minutes.’
‘And Mrs Fraser is dead?’
‘Probably not dead yet: she is being held to ransom while they are going through her papers. If she can’t pay they will drop her into the Seine in a sack, probably to-morrow or on Thursday.’
‘Do you know that Mrs Fraser is the sort of woman who would dabble in Neapolitan politics, Mr Pepper?’
‘They all do, or if they don’t the Mafia think they do, which comes to the same thing.’
‘But this is frightful. What are you going to do about it?’
‘I am going to get that Mafia outfit before they get me. That’s what I am going to do. I may want you to run over to Paris some day this week. You speak French, I know.’ He had risen and was putting on his coat. I took the hint and made for the Club with my head full of the impending fate of that poor lady held to ransom in the attic of a filthy Italian lodging-house, with death hanging over her head.
The only man in the smoking-room was Jimmy Boyd, whose practice at the Bar was growing so fast that one scarcely saw him in these days. He laid down his evening paper and seemed inclined to talk.
‘Someone told me that you were mixed up with that Yankee detective fellow, Pepper,’ he said. ‘What’s all this nonsense about a Mrs Fraser and the Mafia?’ He pointed to a paragraph and gave it me to read. These reporters are extraordinarily indiscreet. Nothing escapes them. The paragraph was an English version of the French newspaper account, but it went on to say that Mr Pepper, ‘the world-famous American detective,’ was engaged upon the case and that sensational developments were expected; that there was now reason to believe that Mrs Fraser had been the victim of a widespread secret conspiracy, from which, unless it was unmasked by Mr Pepper, no English traveller would be safe.
‘What I want to know,’ said Boyd, ‘is the identity of Mrs Fraser. It is a common name. In my dancing days I used to know a mother and daughter of that name. They lived in Hampstead when they were not travelling abroad. They were charming people. I wouldn’t have anything happen to them for worlds.’
I had to confess that I did not know them, and could not say where they lived.
‘This Pepper fellow who is always getting his name into the newspapers—’ At this moment a club waiter came up and, addressing Boyd, said, ‘You are wanted on the telephone, sir
.’ He left me for a few minutes and returned in some excitement.
‘A most extraordinary thing, Meddleston-Jones. Do you know who called me on the telephone? Miss Fraser herself. She wants me to go to her in Kensington at once. Have you had lunch?’ I had not. ‘Because I want you to go with me. She asked me whether I knew anyone who could help her and begged that I would bring him with me.’
I had no thought of lunch, nor had he. While we were bowling along to Vicarage Gate he told me about Miss Fraser’s journey and her position in her uncle’s house—disbelieved by everyone and treated as a person suffering from delusions. All this she had contrived to tell him on the telephone after two unsuccessful attempts to find him earlier in the day.
Miss Fraser was at luncheon when we arrived, but she came out of the dining-room at once. She was a handsome, slender girl of about twenty-five, a little nervous and overwrought, but perfectly collected. I hung back when she showed us into her uncle’s den, something in her manner and Boyd’s having warned me that they had better be left alone together. In earlier days, I fancy that there must have been a dawning romance between them.
Presently I was called in to hear the whole story from her lips. I don’t know what Boyd had been saying about me, but she treated me as if I were a master of detective science—as if I were the Master himself. It was very flattering to my self-esteem. I was certain after hearing and seeing her that Mr Pepper had been right: she was telling me the actual truth, but when Boyd said suddenly, ‘I believe that Mr Meddleston-Jones is prepared to cross by the next boat if you ask him,’ I was taken aback. How could I do this without consulting Mr Pepper?
Resorting to Murder Page 13
