The gate keeper had told him about the mad Englishwoman when he came on duty before she left.
“She is very tall and thin,” the gate keeper said. “Also quite old, but extremely active. She is fond of swimming and indeed swims very well. But reckless, like so many of her race. And self-willed. Married, but a widow. No control for many years, one would suppose. She has not yet come up from the beach.”
“So what?” he had asked.
“So you work as usual. You lock the huts as usual.”
“And if I find this Englishwoman’s clothes and her towel?”
“She is sure to be in by dark. But if not, you bring her things here and lock that hut as well.”
“And notify the police?
The gate keeper had considered.
“Not immediately. She may be mad, but not stupid, I feel sure. But she could over-estimate her strength, perhaps.”
“Being old, as you say.”
“Being less strong than she feels she is. After midnight, if she has not come in, you may notify her hotel. Let them notify the police.”
The night watchman thought this was the right way to go about things. At nightfall he collected Mrs. Lawler’s clothes, securing at the same time the metal tag with the number of her locker at the gate house. At half-past eleven he set out on his second round of the huts. It was then that he discovered Mrs. Lawler, guided by her sounds of distress.
When she saw the dark figure of a man behind the torch he directed at her, Rose was uncertain whether to scream or run away. But the voice she heard was reassuring.
“Do not be alarmed, signora,” the voice, an elderly one, told her in slowly spoken Italian. “I see you have been bathing. Am I right in believing you are an English signora, with a tourist party from England?”
Rose did not understand the whole of these remarks, but she did realise that the man was some sort of official and that he thought he knew who she was or at any rate knew her nationality.
“You are right,” she answered in Italian and continued partly in that language but chiefly in English to tell him she had been for a long swim and was upset when she found the hut locked and so could not change back into her clothes.
“I have them safe at the lodge,” the night watchman told her, pointing his torch in the direction of the gate house. “Come with me.”
He shone the torch on the ground and walked beside the dripping mad woman, who stumbled a little when they left the soft sand for the gravel paths above the beach, but otherwise gave no trouble. He took her inside where her clothes and towel lay on a chair. Her metal number was in his own pocket.
“Have you the number of your locker?” he asked.
Mrs. Lawler did not understand. He took out the disc, holding it upside down.
“My number?” She thought hard. “Yes, I left it with my clothes.”
She gave him the number she remembered. He turned the disc over. It corresponded. For the first time the night watchman smiled. This was indeed the right mad Englishwoman. She had not drowned. The gate keeper was right. But so tall, so thin, so lacking in all a woman should be.
“I must change,” Mrs. Lawler said, stooping forward to pick up her towel and beginning to dry herself.
“I wait outside,” the night watchman said hastily, stepping to the door. Mrs. Lawler laughed.
There was no difficulty about securing the rest of her possessions. The night watchman had access to Rose’s small locker where she found her watch, her handbag with her wallet, passport, make-up things and handkerchief inside, together with a cardigan she had provided in case the late afternoon grew cold.
This last she greeted with a little cry of joy that made the night watchman knock at the door to ask if she had need of help. She told him to enter, which he did with misgivings, wondering what he would see. But it was simply the mad lady fully dressed, even to the ubiquitous woollen garment now worn world-wide by women on the upper halves of their bodies. On Mrs. Lawler, together with her equally regrettable but usual trousers, they took away all trace of the fantastic, the disturbing, effect of an elderly female, just out of the sea, prostrate on the sand, crying her heart out.
Besides, his problem was now solved. The last of the bathers was disposed of. Very often it had been a couple, enjoying a moonlight bathe or a love-making, full of apology for their late departure and a tip for his tolerance. He had never yet found occasion to notify the police or the hotels, for was it not the holiday season, a time for indulgence?
The night watchman escorted Mrs. Lawler to the gate, which he unlocked for her with a flourish. She presented him with a generous tip and an expression, in her halting Italian, of thanks for his kindness. He watched her walk away with a steady gait not fast but perfectly firm.
It was not until the next evening, when he described the whole occurrence to the gate keeper, that he heard its possible explanation.
“I was warning a party not to stay on too long or swim out too far,” she said, “when a gentleman told me ‘We saw an odd thing yesterday. A woman tourist was picked up by a launch just outside the bathing limit. It went out to sea with her and never came back as long as we were down on the beach.’ That could have been your lady.”
“I suppose so. But why not land her at the pier?”
“In her swimming costume?”
“But so late. Nearly midnight. I was about to ring up her hotel when I found her.”
They both shrugged. It was inexplicable.
Rose got back to the hotel at half-past twelve. The front door was open, there was one young man at Reception, reading a newspaper by the light of one lamp on the desk. He handed her the key of her room without comment, returning immediately to his paper.
“Thank you,” Rose said. “Can you tell me if Mrs. Chilton has come in?”
The young man lifted his eyes, polite but totally uninterested.
“You know the number of her room?”
Rose gave it. She felt foolish. There were very few gaps in the rows of keys. At this hour of the night — morning, now, of course — gaps due to absent guests were probably very few. Night life on the Lido could not be so very extensive. Or not for ‘Roseanna’s’ tourist patrons, anyhow.
So Gwen was back. Rose took the lift to her own room first. She was by now desperately tired. Her arms and legs ached with growing stiffness; her head ached from exhaustion and an unaccustomed twelve-hour fast. But she could not rest. Those wicked men and their weak, silly accomplice had meant to kill her and had failed. She must escape at once, from any further possible contact with them. Myra and Flo would be in bed and asleep two hours or more. In any case, much as she liked their company, they were not real friends. She shrank from confiding in them the wider implications of her present predicament.
For it was true she had tried to find out more about Gwen Chilton than she had ever imagined she would try or even want to do. And she knew she had done this simply on Owen Strong’s account, because she pitied him for his wartime injuries, because Charles had suffered in like manner, because of the lasting guilt for Charles’s death she could not surmount even now, twenty-seven years later.
So what should she do? Go to bed, get up in a few hours’ time, appear at breakfast with a joking story of late bathing, watch Gwen’s shock at her reappearance, see the girl go quickly to the telephone and then what? Wait for Jake to strike again, in Verona, in Cremona, their final one night stop, even at Genoa Airport. Even on the plane going home!
But Gwen was weak, obedient to her evil master, but not always totally complaisant. So the best plan, the only plan, was to intimidate Gwen. Frighten her off telling Jake his intended victim had tricked him. Jake would blame her for knowing so little about Mrs. Lawler after travelling with her for nearly two weeks. She would impress this upon Gwen. And keep her away from a telephone for the rest of the trip? It couldn’t be done, she told herself.
But still she could not rest. To be in bed would only mean to lie awake while the aches and pains grew
. Impossible. Pulling on the white summer coat in which she had left England but never worn since then, she went along to Gwen’s room which was on the same floor and knocked at the door.
She had to knock three times before she heard a reluctant hand unloosing a bolt and then turning a lock. The door opened, Gwen fell back with a low cry, instantly suppressed, and Rose stepped forward. Owen, holding the collapsing girl with a hand over her mouth, pushed her into Mrs. Lawler’s arms while he re-locked the door, bolted it and put the key in his own pocket.
They were both very scantily clothed, Rose noted, if clothed at all but only wrapped, one in a flimsy dressing gown and the other in a towelling beach coat. She pushed Gwen into a chair, turned and said briskly. “You here! Well, I am glad!” So she was, for she saw a possible real escape from her fear and danger.
“Yes, it’s me,” he answered. “And may I express an equal pleasure in seeing you. Gwen has just led me to suppose …”
“Gwen is a very silly girl,” Mrs. Lawler said, as severely as she could. “She exaggerates.”
“She’s a compulsive liar,” Owen said. “But I think this time she was trying to tell me the truth.”
“You two …” Gwen struggled to speak. “Bloody liars yourselves! She said she couldn’t swim, not far, she said. She acted like … like …”
Gwen began to cry. Neither of the others took any further notice of her.
“Seriously,” Rose said. “There was an attempt on my life. It failed because they were so intent on faking a natural bathing accident.”
She went on to tell him what had happened from the moment she was kidnapped and forced on board the launch. She explained how she had recovered her clothes and valuables. The old watchman had taken no steps about her absence. She was asked no questions at the reception desk when she reached the hotel. She saw from the key board that Gwen had got back before her.
“So you came along to take the mickey …”
“Far more than that. Owen, they mean to kill me. If they know they’ve failed, they’ll try again. I don’t know why, but I’m sure of it.”
“Gwen knows why. Tell her, darling.”
Gwen had stopped crying when she saw no one was interested. She sat up straight and said sulkily, “I’ve got to finish the bleeding tour, then Jake will pick me up at Gatwick and we’ll go to Geneva to pick up the bag from my safe deposit. Now the heat’s off.”
“You understand?” Owen asked politely.
“I understand she’s more than just the little hotel thief I took her for,” Mrs. Lawler answered.
“How dare you …”
“Belt up!” Owen told her savagely and once more the tears flowed, disregarded. He went on, “I agree you are in danger, Mrs. Lawler, Rose, if I may. Gwen, too, is now in danger. Since these thugs have never seen me, I am not in danger. Nor can they trace me.”
“I had to tell Jake you’d booked into this hotel,” Gwen interrupted.
“I am due to leave it in a few hours’ time,” he went on, making no answer to this. “I have a hired car in the ferry car park. I intended to drive to Geneva in any case. Now I propose to take you both with me. Gwen has already agreed to come with me, haven’t you, love?”
She did not answer, but nodded, wiping her eyes.
“So if you care to come with us, Rose, you can get a plane from Geneva back to England. Jake’s lot could never sort all that out. Once safely there you can set the dicks on him if you want to. Interpol would help them to pick him up, but I think he’d be back in the U. S. by then.”
“And Gwen?”
“Well, we’ll probably make a go of it, won’t we, honey?”
Again Gwen was silent. Poor Owen, Mrs. Lawler thought, these compassionate efforts seldom come off. The girl’s no good, basically corrupt, unreformable. In her continued indulgence towards Owen, Rose was ready to ignore his obviously criminal intention to secure whatever it was Gwen held at Geneva; not to mention his already established relationship with her, a breach of the moral code Mrs. Lawler had been reared in. How could she blame him, when he had just shown her the way to safety?
“Tell me how all this can be done?” she said.
Owen explained. He repeated that he had a car at the ferry car park on the Lido. He would bring it to the hotel, or better perhaps send it with a chauffeur to pick up both the women and their suitcases in time to catch the first ferry out that morning. He was not sure of the time but it would be about four or half-past. He himself would take over from the chauffeur at the ferry.
“I must let Billie, our courier, know we are going,” Rose said. “I should like to leave a note for one of my friends, too.”
Owen thought, then said, “Why not put a note for the courier into your letter to the friend and leave the letter at Reception for her to get when she goes down at the usual breakfast time. We don’t want anyone to know earlier than that.”
He jerked his head towards Gwen as he spoke.
“Gwen and I will stay together all the time, won’t we, Gwen?” Rose said. “No second thoughts yet again. Promise.”
“I promise. After what Jake did … Tried to do …”
“Forget all that, love,” Owen told her. “You follow Rose from now on.” He made for the door, Rose at his heels.
“Are you actually staying in this hotel?” she asked, as he unfastened the door, this time leaving the key in the lock. He surely could not have come in and gone to Gwen’s room clad only in a beach robe?
“Two nights paid in advance,” he answered with a wide grin. “But not under the name you know me by.”
It was a curious way of putting it; a warning really, though she failed to understand this.
He added, in a whisper, “Stick with her. Don’t at any price, let her use the phone.”
“I won’t,” she answered, but could add nothing for he was already gone, with the speed and silence she had observed in Rome, in Florence.
She turned back into the room, this time the one to secure the key. Gwen had not moved.
“Well, you heard the plan,” she said, trying to keep the desperate weariness from her voice. “Pack your things, Gwen, then you can bring your case to my room and watch me while I do my own packing. We must get a move on if we’re to be ready in time.”
Chapter Sixteen
They were ready in very good time. While Gwen packed her bag Rose wrote a brief note to Myra to explain that she had found it necessary to leave the ‘Roseanna’ tour in Venice, but hoped she would see something of her and of Flo when they were all back in England. She gave her home address. She asked Myra to give the enclosed note to Billie.
To the courier she wrote that owing to unforeseen circumstances she and Mrs. Chilton were obliged to leave Venice in advance of the tour and return to England. She apologised for giving no notice of their intention. She would write to the travel firm and the travel agency who had arranged her personal trip. Her action had nothing whatever to do with the tour, which she had enjoyed very much and regretted leaving.
As she wrote these notes she kept Gwen in sight but the latter made no attempt either to attack her or to get at the telephone, which was at Mrs. Lawler’s elbow on the table. When Gwen had finished they moved to Rose’s room and the action was reversed.
But Gwen had no letter to write and Rose was now moving to and fro filling her two suitcases, one large, one smaller. Again Gwen remained quiet. She even offered to carry Mrs. Lawler’s larger case as well as her own single one. The lift was working, however, and the distance to it was short. Rose kept control of her own baggage.
The same night clerk was at Reception when they gave up their keys and settled their outstanding petty accounts, such things as the use of the beach hut, for which Rose paid with a sense of irony. After that they sat down at a little distance from the desk and waited.
The car was punctual. The chauffeur walked in, small, dark, Italian, wearing a creased suit and a chauffeur’s cap, which he took off when he saw the ladies.
“For the ferry, signora?” he asked, looking at Mrs. Lawler.
“You come from Signor Strong?” she asked.
“Si, signora,” he answered, with a little smile she did not understand.
He took up all the bags and walked out of the hotel. The clerk at Reception eased himself into the doze that had been interrupted by the mad Englishwoman and her friend.
At the ferry park Owen took over. He paid Tito for his services and dismissed him. As soon as it was allowed he drove on to the waiting vessel. He would be one of the last to get off, but he preferred to have the shelter of the ferry’s deck as early as possible. The vessel filled up with lorries and three other private cars. No coaches. They left punctually on time.
There were already lights in the upper enclosed deck. Mrs. Lawler remembered the coach’s voyage over to the Lido. There had been coffee and small things to eat up there. Perhaps now.
“I’m literally starving,” she said to Owen. “I want to go and see if the ferry restaurant is open.”
“You do that,” he said. “I’ll stop with Gwen in the car. That is if we don’t both come up too, now we’ve got going.”
“I don’t want anything,” Gwen said sulkily. “Only to leave this bloody place.”
“You’re an effing bore,” Owen told her, with careful moderation of his language.
There was coffee, French breakfast coffee at that. Also biscuits and with the advent of a body of workmen from the deck below, some hot dogs, copying the American basic dish. Rose ate two of these and drank two large coffees and bought two packets of biscuits, praising heaven for the spread of international foods in foreign lands. Then she went down to the car.
The dawn was breaking and the ferry terminal only a few minutes away.
“I nearly sent Gwen up to find you,” Owen said reproachfully.
“Sorry. But I couldn’t have gone on otherwise. I’ll be all right now for another twelve hours if necessary.”
“You had dinner on the launch,” Gwen broke in suddenly.
A Pigeon Among the Cats Page 15
