Riviera Gold

by Laurie R. King

  I held the torch while Holmes dropped to his knees in front of the suspicious patch of wall. His sensitive fingers ran up and down the roughly painted surface, concentrating on an area that looked marginally more grimy…

  It clicked.

  I expected a cubby-hole, a place to store small, but valuable possessions. I watched Holmes lean inside the cleverly disguised doorway—then he rose and stepped through it.

  “Good lord—an actual smugglers’ cave?” My voice echoed, suggesting size. The light from Holmes’ torch bounced over pale, lumpy walls, from somewhere beyond a turn in the passageway. I climbed through the narrow door, avoiding the crate of beer just inside the entrance, and followed the boards laid across the damp floor—inadequately, as one foot sank into a chalky puddle, giving me a shoe to match those of Niko and Mrs Hudson. The space was tight, the ceiling pressed down, but if Holmes had gone before…

  Once past the turn, the walls fell away. I straightened, and my jaw dropped.

  The room was immense, our torches barely adequate to illuminate the stalactites dribbling down above our heads. Holmes turned his beam onto the nearby walls, but I kept mine pointed upwards, staring into the mesmerising fingers. A drip echoed from some distant puddle. I was dimly aware of a metallic rattle, then the scrape of a match, and a warm light filled the cave. Shadows leapt, then went still, as Holmes hung a paraffin lamp from its hook near the entrance.

  The cavern became marginally less immense. Towards its walls, many of the descending calcium fingers had been broken away, either deliberately or at the passage of some load. On the floor, stalagmites had been hacked off to clear the ground for the smugglers’ goods. Vestigial steps had been carved into a rise at the back, some thirty feet away, beyond which our beams suggested further rooms.

  Another drip sounded.

  At last, we pulled our attention away from our surroundings and on to the reason for our presence here: the contents of this smuggler’s cave.

  On either side of the central pathway, crude tables and cruder hunks of wood served to keep valuables from the damp floor. Some of the boards on the ground were former tables, long since collapsed, while others looked like crates that had been emptied and smashed flat. I had seen smugglers’ caves before—Sussex has a long history of contraband goods and the efficient plundering of wrecked ships—and while this cave was certainly large enough to funnel illicit rum into half of France, it did not appear to have ever been used to the full.

  But it had been used recently. Shipping crates narrow enough to clear the entrance waited on either side. The rough tables close to the door had little dust on the tops, and some of the footprints in the wet patches had not had time to lose their definition.

  Holmes went to examine the boxes to the left, leaving me those on the right. Without a pry-bar, I could not see into all of them, but only one had a snug lid, and most of the things bore an air of abandonment. A case of cigarettes so ancient and damp, even a desperate old lag would look askance. Six bolts of once-spectacular Indian silk fabric, mouldering to destruction under a waxed-cloth tarpaulin. Five identical gramophones with inlaid wood cases that would have brought a tidy sum—before the Great War, and before dampness had frozen the works and sprung the veneer. Two cases of perfume bottles with peeling labels. Mother-of pearl buttons, ivory-handled boot-hooks, Deco-styled hairpins that had long lost their gleam.

  “A lot of old tat over here,” I told him. “No sign of drugs, just some cigarettes that have fallen to pieces. If Madame Crovetti’s son was smuggling, he was either very bad at it, or someone has cleared out the good stuff.”

  His reply was a thump and a screech of nails. I turned to find him prising up the top of a wooden case some thirty inches wide, using an iron bar so large he could not possibly have brought it in his pocket. Laying the top aside, he plunged his hands into tangles of excelsior. The aroma of fresh wood was startlingly crisp and alive in this place.

  I went to look over his shoulder. “That box hasn’t been sitting here since 1910,” I said. The others on his side were also of a more recent vintage than those I’d been poking through.

  Beneath the packing material were half a dozen identical leather jewellery boxes. He opened one, and held it up to show me a beautiful silver filigree-and-carnelian necklace with matching earrings, barely tarnished. He put it aside. The next box held another set, equally stunning, but made of pale gold with blue Turkish chalcedony. The next three were silver, each a different personality, each with unique stones, some clear and faceted, others opaque. The last was the most beautiful yet, rose gold with a spray of faceted gemstones that seemed to dance in different colours.

  “That’s a striking piece.”

  “A stone called diaspore,” Holmes commented. “Mined in Turkey. Its colour changes with the light.”

  He shut the box to excavate the second layer. Smaller boxes, of the same manufacture, containing bracelets with faceted stones.

  He thrust the pry-bar under a second lid. This crate held the equivalent decorations for men: sets of shirt-studs and cuff-links in one layer, intricately engraved cigarette cases in the next, some with gems inset, each in its own fitted leather case. Two other boxes held similar bits of expensive beauty, from hair bandeaux and hat decorations to cigar-cutters and key fobs.

  There were two cases that did not match those with the jewellery. One was larger, and filled with Cuban cigars. The other held dozens of vicious-looking knives that had nothing to do with food preparation.

  When we had finished, we packed it all away, straightening the nails and tapping them into place. At the end, we stood back, thinking.

  “Those are all things with a heavy luxury tax.”

  “And knives of the sort forbidden in Italy,” he pointed out.

  “Maybe those were on their way out of the country? But the necklaces and money clips look like the expensive souvenirs sold by shops near the Casino.”

  “Shops such as Madame Crovetti’s?”

  “Perhaps I should drop by and have a look.”

  “Interesting that there is no sign of cocaine,” he mused. “That seems to be the smugglers’ favourite at present.”

  “Matteo Crovetti has been gone for six months,” I said. “So these boxes have to be Niko’s work. He’s definitely been in here—that delicate foot-print is from his boot. But that doesn’t explain Mrs Hudson’s presence. A stranger, dropping straight into a smuggling ring within weeks of her arrival? I suppose the chalk on her shoes could have come from elsewhere. There must be other caves in Monaco? Oh good heavens,” I exclaimed. “The police station on Spélugues Street. I thought it meant a grotto with a saint—but it meant cave. Right?”

  “I understand that portions of Monaco resemble a petrified sponge, with everything from purpose-built wine cellars to a vast natural complex rumoured to be underneath the Jardin Exotique. But demanding a different source for the grey mud requires us to accept the possibility of coincidence—”

  “Which God forbid,” I muttered.

  “—and it is, you will admit, more probable that matching stains on the shoes of two immediate neighbours would come from the same place. Beyond that, I would require the use of a microscope.”

  “Mrs Hudson as the partner of a smuggler? That doesn’t exactly match her known history.” Unless our landlady had spent the past twenty years as a secret member of the age-old fraternity of Sussex smugglers? Clara Hudson: the Moriarty of the Sussex Downs. A pirate in disguise…

  I shook my head, wondering if the oxygen was thin in the cave, then noticed the motion extending down my shoulders. “It’s cold in here, Holmes. Can we move back into the building?”

  But his eyes travelled across the cavern to the primitive stairway. “You go back. I’d like to see what lies beyond.”

  So naturally I went with him, and naturally I slipped on the greasy rock—twice—and scraped my alre
ady abused hands. I didn’t know if he was looking for a murdered Matteo Crovetti or the crated-up Crown of St Edward, but all we found were indications that this had once been a busy smuggling operation, mostly suspended now.

  In the third, last, and smallest cavern, a natural stone seat had clearly found use throughout the ages. The centuries of litter around its base included a peculiarly shaped stalagmite that, on closer examination, proved to be a bottle placed there so long ago, the drips of stone had entirely enveloped the glass beneath.

  “No cocaine, no dead bodies. Not even any paste tiaras,” I said to Holmes.

  “Plenty of nooks and crannies,” he noted.

  “Do you want to search all of them?” I asked. “If so, we’ll need more paraffin for the lamp.”

  To my relief, he turned back to the steps so we might slither our way through the smugglers’ cavern to the entrance, and the warmth beyond.

  It was three a.m., and I was wrapped in one of Niko’s bedcovers. My shivers were starting to recede, thanks in part to a glass of the dead man’s brandy in my hand. Holmes had one, too, and was making use of an ash-tray he’d found in the room next door—where his quick search had also given us a spare key, a suspicious absence of financial records, and a casual assortment of smuggled alcohol and tobacco. Though no indication of drugs.

  “Is she in danger, Holmes?”

  “Mrs Hudson? No.” He then spoilt the reassurance by adding, “At any rate, not immediately.”

  “A man was killed in her home.”

  “Yes, a man—not her. I believe the intention of laying a body literally at her door was to have her arrested. Although I cannot yet see if the arrest served merely to remove her from the playing field for a time, or was meant as a threat.”

  “People don’t generally commit murder as a threat.”

  “Some people do. And this was no random victim. Whatever the point of using Mrs Hudson’s sitting room may have been, someone wanted to be rid of Niko Cassavetes. That young man is the centre of this, somehow. A Greek sailor, come to Monaco some three years ago, hires himself out as an homme à tout faire, letting rooms from a family with a history of smuggling, who provide him a place to stash goods. He meets an English housekeeper with a criminal history, who’s in need of an income, and arranges for her to take rooms with that same smuggling family.”

  “But Holmes, we’ve already agreed that the Riviera is a small village, especially in the off-season. Wouldn’t it be more extraordinary if a ‘fixer’ and a free-lancing housekeeper didn’t know each other?”

  “To find Russian nobility joined with artistic Americans is not so preordained. That appears to be Niko’s doing.”

  “But to what purpose? And what about Lillie Langtry? She must be Mrs Hudson’s nameless friend, who introduced her to Niko in the first place.”

  “But not to Basil Zaharoff. The three of them seem to be old…acquaintances.”

  “Well, I suppose I could return to Antibes and see what Sara and Gerald can tell me about Niko. Do you wish to join me?”

  “I need to speak with Count Vasilev.”

  “I’d bet Mrs Langtry would be happy to help you there. She seemed very taken with your moustache.”

  Fortunately, he did not grace the remark with a reply, merely ground out his cigarette in the ash-tray, then took it and the glass back to Matteo Crovetti’s side of the quarters. I returned the borrowed wrap to the bed and followed, carrying the key that he had found.

  “Will anyone notice if this key is missing?” I asked.

  “Will it matter if they do?” So I used it to lock the door as we left, and dropped it into a pocket to return.

  It was nearly four in the morning as we walked the silent lanes, our voices little more than murmurs. “I can take the train to Antibes tomorrow—later today, I mean—but I’d like to hear what Inspector Jourdain has to say. Do you think he’d mind my joining you?”

  “No more than he minds speaking to me in the first place. But yes, you go back afterwards. I shall keep the room here at the Hermitage. Our business in Monaco is far from over.”

  Parting already? I pushed down my disappointment. “I also want to see Mrs Hudson before I leave. I’ll ring Mrs Langtry first, to make sure she’s there.”

  “No doubt the hotel exchange can connect you. Is there any reason for me to come?”

  There was every reason for him to stay away, but I did not think it would ease matters to put it so bluntly. “No, I just wanted a chat without the guard listening in. Just to say hello. We can both go see her in a day or so.”

  To my relief, he agreed, and I cheerfully tucked my arm through his as we walked through the pre-dawn city. At the Hermitage, our late entrance caused less distress than the dust on our clothing. Clearly, guests of the Hôtel Hermitage were expected to dress properly for all late-night excursions.

  * * *

  —

  At a more reasonable hour, quite a long time after dawn, we rose and broke our fast with coffee and rolls. Inspector Jourdain was expecting us—or half of us, at any rate—in the park at ten. Though perhaps he would not appreciate a female person wearing evening dress, chalk-smeared trousers, or a frock that had been worn for scrubbing a floor. I sighed and rang down a third time to see if my French lady’s maid could summon yet more garments out of the air.

  Unfortunately, she was unavailable. And her replacement, though armed with my measurements, was also armed with a peculiar sense of taste.

  I had no time to protest, or even look too closely at the frock, I merely threw it on and bolted out of the door.

  As we might have guessed, Jourdain kept us waiting. As we sat on the designated bench in a quiet corner of a dull park, I took my first look at what I was wearing. It had been chosen by someone with an Edwardian sense of taste. Either that, or a malicious sense of humour.

  “I look like a chintz armchair,” I said.

  Holmes glanced at the girly frock, and turned away—but not before I saw the brief quirk of his lips.

  I plucked at the stiff sprig of lace on my inadequate bust, and sighed. “I suppose it could have been worse.”

  “Yes?”

  “At least the flowers aren’t too pink.”

  “As a disguise, Russell, it is effectively misleading.”

  “I hope I can make it to my room in the Cap before the Hon Terry spots me.”

  “Mrs Hudson will be entertained,” he commented.

  Inspector Jourdain was not, but then I didn’t imagine that sour face would find much in his world to amuse him. He was no more approving of Holmes’ trim suit than of my fashion atrocity, or indeed, my very presence.

  “Who is this?” he demanded.

  “My partner, Miss Russell.”

  “That was not what we agreed.”

  “Did you bring the files?”

  “I cannot show you official police files.”

  “Why not? I don’t need your interview notes, merely the photographs and anything of interest which your coroner may have found. He has done his autopsy, I trust?”

  “Saturday morning.”

  “I don’t expect he’s written up his report yet, but no doubt he at least gave you a verbal one?”

  Jourdain hesitated—but if he hadn’t meant to show us what he had, why agree to meet?

  With a show of irritation, he snatched an envelope from his inner pocket and slapped it down on the bench beside Holmes. Though when Holmes pulled out its contents fully within my view, the policeman drew breath as if to protest.

  I found him staring at me with a look of outrage. Perhaps Holmes had been right: the dress disguised me, making me into a person who would faint at the photograph of a dead man. I gave the poor fellow an encouraging smile, and turned to the photos. The policeman lit a furious cigarette and began to pace up and down.

  There were,
as I had feared, only a handful of photos. The first, taken in situ, showed Niko Cassavetes, head resting on the little carpet Madame Crovetti had discarded, the rest of him surrounded by the black pool that I had spent the previous day removing. I found myself rubbing my fingertips as if his blood remained beneath my finger-nails, even though I’d worn gloves. He lay between the wall and a settee, face up but turned slightly onto his left side, left arm sprawled across the floor, wrist up, his right arm draped over his chest. He was wearing casual duck trousers and shirt-sleeves, the shirt either white or some pale colour, its sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. The photograph was not completely clear, but he appeared to have a single bullet hole directly over his heart.

  Holmes thumbed through the other pictures, looking for an autopsy photograph of the victim’s back, and failed to find one. “Did the bullet go all the way through?”

  “No,” I said. Jourdain’s pacing stopped. “I cleaned the room. There was no bullet hole in the wall or furniture behind him.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed at this contradiction between my appearance and my words, but he nodded. “She’s right. The coroner dug it out of him.”

  “The calibre?” Holmes asked in a patient voice.

  “Nine millimetre.” The policeman then added, reluctantly, “Possibly the Browning Long.”

  “Used by half of northern Europe’s police and military for the past twenty years,” Holmes remarked.

  “I have a Browning myself.”

  If the bullet had passed all the way through Niko’s chest, more blood would have pooled beneath him. It had not, but as I thought earlier, the stain was too wide for death to have been instantaneous. The heart had beat a few times before stopping, sending the blood welling up over his chest but not hard enough to spray the room with blood.

  Holmes dug out his pocket magnifying-glass and bent over the earliest photograph, showing the body as the police had first seen it. “What did your analysts make of the blood-drying time?” he asked.