CHAPTER 10

 

 

That was when the other shoe finally dropped and I understood why she had whisked me off to bed so promptly. She had me figured for a killer. She needed this little job of tidying up done and had figured she could get it done for free, if you didn’t count the wear and tear, by rolling me in the hay, making me feel that she was wild for me, and bingo, I’d take all her worries away.

When I didn’t answer for about a minute, she started the soft sell, squirming closer to me, kissing my ear. “Will you do it?” she whispered.

I had to be cagey. If I got on my high horse, she would holler rape. Nobody would take my word over hers. Beautiful women are pure as the driven snow. I’d be inside a French jail before I could get my pants on. “What has he done that I must kill him for you?”

“He murdered my brother,” she said. As the Brits would say, that was a load of cobblers. She didn’t care about her brother. She had some other reason for wanting Orsini dead. But I played along, the personification of sweet reason. “How can you be sure? If he’d done that, he would never have come here today like he did.”

She spoke softly, placating me. “You are a soldier, John, a man of action. A good man. He is a Corsican.”

“Well, if you’re certain he’s done it, let’s go to the gendarmes and have him arrested.” I took pains to sound as if I were working things out, not pleading with her. I had to seem strong and as close to silent as I could; otherwise, I’d be on the outs. With this bird of prey, that could be downright dangerous. Ask Orsini.

“You’re not afraid?” a teasing question.

“Not of him, no. But I’m a bodyguard. I don’t go around killing people unless they’re trying to kill me.”

She changed gears, leaving her problem alone for a while, cranking up the charm instead. “John, you are precious to me. This has never happened to me, not to see a man and know he is the one. You are the very first.”

Maybe if I watched the soaps I’d be ready for dialogue like that. I played along, anyway. “And you are very dear to me, Hélène. But if something goes wrong and the police find what I have done, I won’t see you again.” Ever, probably; they still use the guillotine on murderers in France.

“Nothing can go wrong. We will do it together. I have a plan.” Her voice was pure syrup, but her pacing made me sure she’d worked out every move before she undid that first button on her blouse.

“How?” I kissed her, high on the forehead, and stroked her flank, the besotted swain, ready to leap tall buildings, even with a rope around my neck.

“When he comes tomorrow to visit Amy, I will invite him to an assignation. He will come. He is vain, that one.”

“And then, while you’re blowing in one ear, I’ll stick my gun in the other?”

She slapped me playfully, but I could feel her spine stiffening. She was getting impatient. “You will find a way.”

“And then what? When he is dead, you will thank me and go away.” I said it wistfully, as if I didn’t know for a dead certainty that was the program.

“Then we will be together always.” Not a whisper of marriage. Either she didn’t believe in the institution or she thought I didn’t and didn’t want to make me gun-shy. “We could have a wonderful life. You will love Paris. We will live there and travel together and spend all our nights like this.” Not a bad idea, except I wondered how many of them would be spent planning murders.

“I must think about this.”

She was silent for a moment, and then her hands began to move. “No. You must think about this,” she said, and I did.

Half an hour later she was asleep. She had made love to me ferociously, as if she were either mad for my body or extremely skillful at what she was doing. I figured it was the latter, but I’ve always enjoyed watching experts at work, and afterward she didn’t bother doing any more selling. She just said, “We will make our plan in the morning,” confident that she’d burned out any resistance I might have harbored.

When I was certain she wasn’t likely to wake up, I slipped out of bed and got dressed. As far as Orsini was concerned, this was still Amy’s room, and somebody might make a move on it. I didn’t want to greet them in the altogether. When I had my clothes and shoes on, I sat on the floor beside the bed with my back to the wall, watching the window.

I was drowsing when he came. The scraping on the roof alerted me, and I stood up silently and moved away from the bed, staying opposite the window, waiting for a man’s shape to grow against the square of grayness.

Hélène was a fresh-air freak, and the window was open about two feet. He didn’t even have to raise it. He slithered through like a snake, silently taking his weight on his hands and drawing his legs in after him.

I let him advance toward the bed. My night vision was clearer than his; he was used to the starlight outside. I’d been sitting in darkness for three hours. I saw him approach the bed and raise a pistol. Without waiting, I put a bullet into his shoulder, high up.

He screamed in pain and surprise and fell sideways. I heard his gun clatter to the floor and then Hélène’s own scream. I clicked on the light. “Stay down,” I said, and she squeezed herself under the pillows. I walked over the bed and looked down at the guy on the floor. He was holding his injured shoulder in his left hand, he eyes wide with pain and horror. His gun was a yard away from him, but he made no attempt to go for it, didn’t even look at me. He had suddenly realized that pain hurts.

I stepped down and kicked the gun farther away from him and then tapped his left elbow with my toe. He looked up at me owlishly, like a drunk. It was Armand’s chauffeur. “Okay, Hélène, ask him who sent him.”

She sat up, wrapping the sheet around her. If the chauffeur hadn’t been in shock, he would have been exhilarated, for her body was tightly outlined under the sheet, her nipples standing out like the winner in a wet T-shirt contest. She hissed at him in French, and he said nothing, just looked at her, then at me.

I lowered my pistol and pointed it between his eyes. “Tell him he’s got ten seconds or I blow his brains out.”

He didn’t need a translation. He babbled for mercy, but she shut him up curtly and repeated her question, and his answer poured out.

“He says he met a man in the village. The man offered him ten thousand francs to kill Amy. He doesn’t know the man.”

I laughed. “Tell him he watches too much television. I need the man’s name. Ask if it was the guy you don’t like.”

“I have a better idea,” she said savagely, and came around the bed to kick him hard in the injured shoulder before I could stop her.

He screeched in pain, and behind her the door burst open, and Armand almost tumbled in, followed by Amy. They all babbled at one another too fast for me to follow, and Armand came around the bed and saw who was lying there. He gasped, and I saw him clutch his chest. Lord. That was all we needed, a heart attack now. “Get your father’s pills,” I snapped, and Hélène let her sheet drop as she sat him down gently on the bed and took the vial from his dressing-gown pocket. She put one under his tongue, and he whispered something.

“D’accord, Papa.” She grabbed her sheet and scooped up her clothes and headed for a screen in the far corner of the room.

Amy was looking at me, seeming to be more concerned that I had seen Hélène nude than the fact that this man had been in the room with a gun. “He came to kill you,” I said, improvising quickly. “I heard him come into the room and saw he had a gun, so I stopped him. He says he met a man in the village who offered him ten thousand francs to shoot you.”

“Me? Why?”

“With luck we’re going to find out.” I picked up his pistol. It was a neat little Beretta .32, plenty big enough to do the job he’d come for. I slipped the magazine out and worked the action. He had a shell up the spout, and I caught it as it flew out and put it and the magazine in my pocket. “If there’s a phone on this floor, call the gendarmes. Tell them what’s happened.”

“On this floor?” She was bewildered and fluttery, more so than she had been when we found Pierre’s body.

“They may have other guys downstairs; they could see you through a window and finish this.”

Hélène came out from behind the screen, wearing her jeans and top, barefoot. “I’ll go,” she said.

Armand spoke. “No.” It was a painful whisper. “No gendarmes. We will end this here.”

“This guy needs a hospital.” Armand had lots of clout, I knew that much, but he was about to break the law, and I could end up taking the fall for it. I’d pulled the trigger.

“Wait outside,” he whispered, and waved at the two women. They went, Hélène moving confidently, Amy backing out, not knowing what was about to happen here but afraid.

When she had gone, Armand smiled at me shyly, like a new recruit. “We will find out who sent him,” he said, and asked the man a question.

The guy answered rapidly. I made out the word blessé, wounded. It didn’t soften Armand’s heart. “Kick him,” he told me.

The guy was in agony. I could see that. My bullet had shattered his upper arm and penetrated his side. Probably it had stopped against his ribs. He was hurting like he’d never hurt before, but he wasn’t about to die. I kicked him lightly on the sole of the left foot. He hissed with the jolt, but he could handle it. “Tell him the next kick is on his wound,” I instructed, and Armand did it, then repeated his question in a slow voice.

He answered, speaking fast, apologetically.

Armand turned to me. “As I thought. He was working for Dubois, the man you fought today.”

“That means he was working for Orsini,” I said.

Armand put the question, and the man shook his head. It must have hurt him not being able to shrug, but his shrugging days were on hold until that shoulder healed.

Armand repeated the question, and this time the man agreed. I could tell by the tone.

“Shoot him,” Armand told me.

“No.” I put my gun in its holster. “I’m a bodyguard. I did my job, and I can support that. I don’t shoot wounded men.”

I’d tossed the chauffeur’s empty gun on the bed, and Armand picked it up. “I will do it myself,” he said, and pointed it at the man’s head.

The man babbled and covered his face as Armand pulled the trigger. It clicked, and Armand swore, dropped the gun, and flopped back on the pillows, exhausted. “Get my daughter.”

I went to the door. Hélène was in the corridor with Amy. “Your father wants you.”

She came into the room, and he gave her an order in rapid French. She nodded and left. “What did he say?” I asked Amy, who was still holding on to the door frame. She was wearing a white nylon nightdress and looked delicious. That she was bewildered and not so much in charge as usual didn’t hurt a bit.

“He asked her to get the doctor from the village.” She hesitated a moment and then put a question shakily. “John, what’s going on?”

“He came to shoot you.” She trembled, and I caught her by the elbow. She came into my arms like a baby, trying to make herself safe. I held her tight, patting her shoulder rhythmically. “He was sent by the man who drives Orsini’s car,” I said. “You’ve got to leave this place, Amy. Go back home where you’re safe.”

She didn’t reply, just stood there, warm against my chest, shaking. “Come on,” I said after a moment. “Get your dressing gown on. You’re freezing.”

At my urging she turned and walked slowly down the hallway to her room. I waited at the open door while she put on her housecoat and turned to face me. She was pale but had stopped trembling. “Why is all this happening?” she asked in a whisper.

“I’m not sure, but it’s not about you. Not just about you, anyway. I’m sure of that.” It probably didn’t matter, anyway. When news of my shooting somebody reached Labrosse, he would ship both me and Amy home, at the least. The alternative wasn’t worth thinking about, that he would charge me with wounding and sling me in jail. I wanted the ten grand this assignment would earn me, but not enough to do hard time for it.

“There is something going on,” she said softly. “M’sieur Armand has a serious hate going for Victor. I could tell from his face when they met outside this afternoon. He was polite, but he was angry.”

I didn’t answer. I was beginning to realize they were in trouble. Hélène wanted Orsini dead, and yet she didn’t seem to care for her brother at all. The way I was reading it, Orsini was trying to muscle into the family business and take it over. I got back to my own business. “Will you be all right here for a minute? I have a feeling Armand is liable to start kicking the guy I shot.”

“Yes. I’m going to get dressed, and I’ll join you.”

“Don’t go anywhere without telling me. There could be somebody else outside waiting for you. You’re in danger, Amy.”

“All right.” Her voice was dull. Her worry circuits were all overloaded. I gave her a cheerful thumbs up and went back to the other bedroom. There was no problem with the wounded man, but Armand was in distress, trying to take another pill. I took the bottle from him and shook out a pill and gave it to him. He put it under his tongue without acknowledgment and lay back.

I leaned against the wall and waited for the women to return. Hélène arrived first, trotting down the corridor from her father’s bedroom. “The doctor is coming,” she told me.

“Good. Before he comes, tell me. Where did your dad find this guy? He looked like a hood to me when I saw him on the street. Did you hire him for protection, or what?”

“He was recommended to us.”

“By whom? It wasn’t the local bishop!”

She didn’t answer at once. I watched her beautiful face, almost able to see the wheels turning inside her head. At last she said, “I have not told you everything, John.” I said nothing and after a pause she looked at her father, then at me, and made a slight beckoning motion with her head. I followed her out the door, and she said, “Orsini is trying to force us out of the business. He has some kind of hold over Papa. He is the one who insisted we hire this man as protection.”

“Protection from whom? It sounds as if the only problem around here is Orsini. Having his man in the family is like inviting the fox into the henhouse.”

She shrugged. “Do not ask me why. Papa does not tell me everything. I know only that Orsini must be killed.”

She didn’t add anything, just looked at me, her face pale but still stunningly beautiful. I could read in her glance a tacit repetition of the question she had asked me in bed. Would I kill Orsini. It was appealing to hear the truth like this, although it still didn’t make me want to jump on a white horse and rush off to slay her personal dragon, but I reached out and patted her arm reassuringly. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

There was the noise of a car outside. “That will be the doctor,” she said, and left. I waited there while she went downstairs and came back with an elderly man carrying a medical bag. He went over to the injured man, but Hélène spoke rapidly to him, and he turned to her father first. He took his pulse and listened to his heart, then took his blood pressure. He said something to Hélène and she turned to me. “The doctor says Papa should be in bed. Will you carry him, John?”

“Sure.” She spoke to her father, and I picked him up. He wasn’t very heavy, and I carried him in my arms down the corridor to his own room, laying him on the bed and covering him. He lay back and shut his eyes, and I went back down the hall to watch the doctor work. There was a syringe on the top of his bag, and the chauffeur was lying flat, his eyes closed. The doctor had raised his injured arm and cut away his shirt. He was digging into the smaller wound under his arm. He brought out the flattened bullet and held it up, looking at me fiercely but saying nothing.

Hélène caught the glance and spoke to him sharply, picking up the guy’s pistol and waving it. The doctor shrugged and laid the bullet and his tweezers aside and dressed the wound under the arm. Then he turned his attention to the shattered arm, tutting sharply and speaking to Hélène again in rapid French. She answered, and he bound up the arm and gave the man another injection.

At last he stood up, and he and Hélène talked for a while. Then she translated for me. “He is going home to get a proper splint for Torrance. I have said we will put him in his room and hire a nurse to take care of him. Can you get him back to his room?”

“Sure. Can you show me the way?”

I picked the man up over my left shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The doctor stood aside, and Hélène led me out of the room and downstairs. The factor of the business was awake, peeking out of the kitchen, but Hélène spoke sharply to him, and he closed the door as we went out through the back door. I drew my pistol and dangled it in my right hand as we crossed the yard and climbed the stairs to Torrance’s apartment over the garage. It was a big, comfortable room, but he lived in it like a pig. There were clothes everywhere, and the bed had not been made for days by the look of it. Hélène hissed and pointed to a chair. “Set him down.”

I dropped him on the chair and waited while she quickly changed the linen on the bed, finding what she needed in a cupboard at the top of the stairs. She seemed so familiar with the place that part of my mind niggled at the thought that she may have tried her charms on the chauffeur at some time. Anything seemed possible on a crazy night like this.

I took the man’s clothes off and put him between the sheets. She had filled a water jug, and she set it and a glass on the table next to the bed. “Right. He will live,” she said. “I will wait here for the doctor to return. You go back to Amy.”

I made my way back to the house. I was looking all around but I saw nobody anywhere. The factor of the property must have gone back to bed, because there were no lights on the ground floor and no sound. As I went upstairs, the doctor came down. He looked at me without speaking, and I stood aside for him. It looked like he had me pegged for dumb muscle, hurting poor innocent Frenchmen for no reason except a paycheck.

The light was on in the room where the shooting had happened, and Amy was in there, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt, sitting on the bed. I joined her, and she said, “I don’t know what to do, John.”

“The smart thing would be to leave. There’s a whole gang war going on here. Orsini is being charming to you by day, but he sent a man to kill you tonight. Now that he’s failed, he may come out of his closet and try harder tomorrow. We should clear out.”

She looked at me sightlessly, staring into the space behind my head. At last she said, “I’m going to phone Eric in Toronto.”

It seemed like the best bet. I had no doubt he would reinforce what I’d said and we’d be on our horse by morning. “Okay, the phone’s in the billiard room.”

She got up like a sleepwalker and went downstairs. I went with her and sat on a couch, listening while she phoned. Surprisingly, she spoke to him in French. To keep the conversation private, I guessed.

At last she said, “D’accord. Au ’voir, Eric.” Her tone was soft; she sounded like a lover.

When she turned around, she said, “Eric is coming over. He’s taking the Concorde from New York. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Unless he’s bringing a bag of money to buy Orsini off or a company of Gurkhas to hunt him down, forget it. His presence isn’t going to make any difference.”

“He says I should go back to Constance’s. Not to tell anyone where I’m going, just get back there and wait for him.”

“And you’re going to?”

She tightened her face like an angry child. “I have no choice.”

“You mean he pulls the strings and you move. Is that it?”

“No, that’s not it.” I thought she was going to stamp her foot with exasperation. “That’s not it at all. But that’s what I’m going to do. Okay?”

My job was to guard her, not guide her, so I stood up and waited for her to move. Outside I saw a car pull up in the driveway and pass the house, heading directly for the garage. The doctor, coming back to attend to his patient. “Go up and pack. I’m going to see that everything’s okay with the guy I shot. I’ll tell Hélène that you’re heading back to Paris.”

“Fine.” She walked briskly out of the room and across to the stairway. I switched off the light and slipped out of the French doors and around the side to the garage. I don’t know why I didn’t go through the house and out the back door, but if it was divine guidance, then I ought to spend more time in church. The car was not the doctor’s little Renault that I’d seen at the side door earlier. It was a Mercedes, and a man was standing beside it smoking a cigarette.

I waited in the darkness beside the house, and then I heard a commotion on the stairs leading up to the chauffeur’s room. I could make out Hélène’s voice, breathless and angry. It sounded as if she were being forced downstairs, probably by somebody with an arm around her throat.

The smoker beside the car took one last drag, then dropped the cigarette and put his foot on it. I didn’t hesitate. I drew my gun and ran up to him before he could turn around properly. He was half-facing me when I got there, and I clouted him with the butt of the gun on the side of the jaw. He gasped and dropped, and I caught him and laid him down, then took his place beside the car, keeping my foot on his throat.

I had been right. Another man came down the stairs, struggling with Hélène. He thought I was his partner and called out to me in a low voice. I grunted something and came forward as if to help him. It was dark, and he was busy enough with Hélène that he didn’t catch on to his mistake. I stepped up beside him as if to help and slammed him in the temple with the butt of the pistol. It didn’t drop him, but he released Hélène and staggered, and I kicked him hard in the knee and clubbed him on the back of the neck, putting a lot of follow-through into it. He collapsed without a sound.

“Now we call the gendarmes,” I said. “You’ve got a cast-iron case.”

“No.” It was a command. “This one saw Torrance. He will tell the gendarmes, and it will be you who is in trouble.”

That made sense, and I didn’t argue. “What do we do instead?”

“You know the road outside Faucon?”

“Yes. You mean where it drops off into the ravine on the east side?”

“We will put them in the car and push them off there.” She said it in the tone of voice she might have used to tell her dressmaker to raise the hemline an inch.

“Whoa.” I held up one hand. “That’s murder.”

“And what do you think they were going to do with me?” Her question was contemptuous.

“That’s not a defense for cold-blooded murder. I’ve spoken to Labrosse. He’s a good cop, he’d find out what happened. Probably wouldn’t have to work to do it. Torrance would tell him, and if he didn’t, Orsini would. We can’t do it, Hélène. What’s your second choice?”

“Get rid of them.”

“I’ll get Amy. We’re driving back to Paris. She wants to go home. I’ll put her on the plane and then come back here.”

She grabbed my arm. “How can I be sure you will? How do I know you won’t get on the plane with her?”

“You have my word on it.”

Before she could answer, one of the men groaned. I stooped to check him. It was the first one I’d stopped. He was coming around. His mouth was filled with blood. I guessed his jaw was broken. He wouldn’t be much of a threat, but I searched him, anyway. He had a switchblade in his left sock, no gun. Then I searched the other one. He had a pistol as well as a knife. I jammed all the weapons into my pockets, then removed their belts and tore the support buttons and the zippers out of their pants. It’s an old Gypsy trick. It meant they would need one hand at all times to keep their pants up. That plus their injuries would stop them from getting belligerent.

“Go and help Amy down with her bags. Leave mine in the room.”

“You do it. I’ll stay here.”

She may have been protesting my chauvinism or more likely looking for a chance to stick a knife in both guys. Either way, I couldn’t risk it. “If we’re going to work together, we have to divide the job properly,” I said. “Go and help her down to the car. I’ll get these guys out of sight before the doctor conies back and sees them.”

“All right.” She left, crunching away across the gravel to the back door. I tumbled the two men into the rear seat of the car and drove it into a vacant stall in the garage, next to the car I’d hired. I sat there with the lights out and waited. After a while a small car drove up. I watched it in the mirror and saw the doctor get out. He said something brisk under his breath and then took his bag and climbed to the apartment over the garage. I slipped out and over to the back door of the house, thankful that Torrance was such a lousy housekeeper. The doctor would not make out the signs of the struggle Hélène had put up.

I was worried that the women would come downstairs and alert him, but he’d left before they appeared, so I went back to the car and waited. The man with the broken jaw had come to, and he sat up groggily when I opened the door, then groaned and mumbled something in French. Probably telling me his jaw hurt. I opened the door a fraction so that the roof light came on and he stared at me incredulously. “Siddown,” I told him loud and clear, the way my mother speaks to foreigners. It worked. He sat back in the seat, spitting into his handkerchief.

A minute later, the women came out. I got out of the car and put the bags into the trunk. Amy asked, “Why isn’t yours here?”

“I’m coming back. I’ll explain later. You’re going to drive the rental car. I’ll follow in this one. Make your way to some really quiet road. I’ll flash my lights, and you stop while I dump these guys.”

“What will you do with them?” Hélène asked.

“I’ve already done it. They’re hurt, and they can’t run. I’ll take the car keys away and leave them. It will be morning before they get word to their boss. By that time I’ll be back.”

“Do not forget.” Her voice had a husky edge to it, like the heroine in A Man and a Woman. It may have fooled Amy, but I took it in stride.

“You have my word.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed me passionately. I heard Amy gasp in surprise, but it was a good kiss, so I let it run its course, then said, “A demain.” Until tomorrow. Hell, I’ve seen as many French movies as the next guy.

Hélène stood back and then hugged Amy and said something rapid in French. Amy answered, and I said, “Okay, let’s go. Remember, we want them off the track. Lead off in a different direction to the one we’ll end up going. Got that?”

“Yes,” Amy said tartly. I gave her the car keys, and she got in and started it up, noisily. I patted Hélène on the arm and got into the Mercedes. Amy backed out, and I followed her down the driveway and out to the left, the opposite direction from our real destination.

She drove for fifteen minutes, turning off at last onto a winding road that didn’t seem wide enough to accommodate a car coming the other way. After about a mile she slowed, and I flashed the lights. She stopped, and I did and took the keys out of the ignition. I opened the door and turned to check the two men. Broken Jaw had recovered as much as he would without dental surgery, and the other one was awake. I pulled his head toward me and checked the pupils of his eyes. They were both the same size, a good indication that he wasn’t concussed. He stared into my eyes as I checked him, but I don’t think he was registering any features. He was wondering how his plan could have come unstuck so easily. I patted him on the shoulder. “She’ll be right.” It’s an Aussie expression too colloquial for any shreds of English he might have known, but I was sure he would be okay, so I got out and walked ahead to join Amy in the other car. As I got into it, I tossed the Mercedes ignition keys over the low hedge. Nobody would find them in a year. More problems for the lads.

She said nothing, still dwelling on Hélène’s fond farewell. I sat back and let her get on with the driving, not speaking.

After a few minutes she asked, “How come you said you’d be going back?”

“Hélène thinks you’re leaving the country. I promised her that I wouldn’t. Once you’re installed with Eric, I can sort it all out.”

“Why would you lie to her?” The cold, hard voice of jealousy.

“Security,” I said. “Your security.”

She was silent for another mile or two, then said, “That was some kiss she gave you.”

“I’d just saved her from a fate worse than death. Those two guys were not planning to discuss existentialism with her before they killed her.”

She said no more, just drove, a little too aggressively, all the way to La Fongeline. There were no lights on, and Amy drove right to the parking spot at the back door. She opened the door briskly and slid sideways to get out. I reached over to check her, and she looked at me angrily. “What is it?”

“I don’t like it,” I said. “Her dog isn’t barking.”