It was eleven o’clock when Latimer, having been awake for about a quarter of an hour, finally opened his eyes. There, on the bedside table, were Mr Peters’ three pieces of paper. They were an unpleasant reminder that he had some thinking to do and some decisions to make. But for their presence and the fact that in the morning light his room looked like a rag-picker’s workshop, he might have dismissed his recollections of the visitation as being no more than part of the bad dreams which had troubled his sleep. He would have liked so to dismiss them. But Mr Peters, with his mystery, his absurd references to half a million francs, his threats and his hintings, was not so easily disposed of. He…
Latimer sat up in bed and reached for the three pieces of paper.
The first, as Peters had said, contained the Geneva address:
Wladyslaw Grodek,
Villa Acacias,
Chambésy.
(At 7 km. from Geneva.)
The writing was scratchy, florid and difficult to read. The figure seven was made with a stroke across the middle in the French way.
He turned hopefully to the letter. It consisted of only six lines and was written in a language and with an alphabet which he did not recognize, but which he concluded was probably Polish. It began, as far as he could see, without any preliminary ‘Dear Grodek’, and ended with an indecipherable initial. In the middle of the second line he made out his own name spelt with what looked like a ‘Y’ instead of an ‘I’. He sighed. He could, of course, take the thing to a bureau and have it translated, but Mr Peters would no doubt have thought of that, and it was unlikely that the result would supply any sort of answer to the questions that he, Latimer, badly wanted answered: the questions of who and what was Mr Peters.
He supposed that the fact of Mr Peters’ being on friendly terms with a retired professional spy should have been an important clue, but it was a clue that led in no particular direction. Taken in conjunction with the man’s astonishing behaviour, it was, no doubt, suggestive. A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what? He went over as much of their conversation as he could remember, and as he remembered more and more of it he became increasingly angry with himself. He really had behaved most stupidly. He had allowed himself to be intimidated by a pistol which its owner would not have dared to fire (although, of course, it was easier to think that way when both the pistol and its owner were absent), he had allowed himself to be drawn into a discussion with the man when he should have been capturing him for the police, and worst of all, not only had he been wearied into abandoning a strong negotiating position, but he had also allowed Mr Peters to depart, leaving behind him a note in Polish, two addresses and a cloud of unanswerable questions. He, Latimer, had not even remembered to ask how the man had got into the room. It was fantastic. He should have taken Mr Peters by the throat and forced him to explain himself – forced him! That, he reflected, was the worst of the academic mind. It always overlooked the possibilities of violence until violence was no longer useful.
He turned to the second address:
Mr Peters,
aux soins de Caillé,
3. Impasse des Huit Anges,
Paris 7.
And that brought his thoughts back to their starting point. Why, in the name of all that was reasonable, should Mr Peters want him to go to Paris? What was this information that was worth so much money? Who was going to pay for it?
He tried to remember at exactly what point in their encounter Mr Peters had changed his tactics so abruptly. He had an idea that it had been when he had said something about having seen Dimitrios in the mortuary. But there could surely be nothing in that. Could it have been his reference to the ‘treasure’ of Dimitrios that had…
He snapped his fingers. Of course! What a fool not to think of it before! He had been ignoring an important fact. Dimitrios had not died a natural death. Dimitrios had been murdered.
Colonel Haki’s doubts of the possibility of tracing the murderer and his own preoccupation with the past had caused him to lose sight of the fact or, at any rate, to see in it no more than a logical ending to an ugly story. He had failed to take into account the two consequent facts; that the murderer was still at large (and probably alive) and that there must have been a motive for murder.
A murderer and a motive. The motive would be monetary gain. What money? Naturally, the money that had been made out of the drug-peddling business in Paris, the money that had so unaccountably disappeared. Mr Peters’ references to half a million francs did not seem quite as fantastic when you looked at the problem from that point of view. As for the murderer – why not Peters? It was not difficult to see him in the part. What was it he had said in the train? ‘If the Great One wills that we shall do unpleasant things, depend upon it that He has a purpose even though that purpose is not always clear to us.’ It was tantamount to a licence to murder. How odd if it had been his apology for the murder of Dimitrios! You could see his soft lips moving over the words as he pulled the trigger.
But at that Latimer frowned. No trigger had been pulled. Dimitrios had been stabbed. He began to reconstruct the picture in his mind, to see Peters stabbing someone. Yet the picture seemed wrong. It was difficult to see Peters wielding a stabbing knife. The difficulty made him begin to think again. There really was no reason at all even to suspect Peters of the murder. And even if there had been a reason, the fact of Peters’ murdering Dimitrios for his money still did not explain the connection (if a connection existed) between that money and the half a million francs (if they existed). And, anyway, what was this mysterious piece of information he was supposed to possess? It was all very like being faced by an algebraic problem containing many unknown quantities and having only one biquadratic equation with which to solve it. If he were to solve it…
Now why should Peters be so anxious for him to go to Paris? Surely it would have been just as simple to have pooled their resources (whatever that might mean) in Sofia. Confound Mr Peters! Latimer got out of bed and turned on his bath. Sitting in the hot, slightly rusty water he reduced his predicament to its essentials.
He had a choice of two courses of action.
He could go back to Athens, work on his new book and put Dimitrios and Marukakis and Mr Peters and this Grodek out of his mind. Or, he could go to Geneva, see Grodek (if there were such a person) and postpone making any decision about Mr Peters’ proposals.
The first course was obviously the sensible one. After all, the justification of his researches into the past life of Dimitrios had been that he was making an impersonal experiment in detection. The experiment must not be allowed to become an obsession. He had found out some interesting things about the man. Honour should be satisfied. And it was high time he got on with the book. He had his living to earn and no amount of information about Dimitrios and Mr Peters or anyone else would compensate for a lean bank balance six months hence. As for the half a million francs, that could not be taken seriously. Yes, he would return to Athens at once.
On the other hand, there was the disturbing reflection that, but for Peters’ intervention, he would by now have been on his way to Belgrade to unearth, if he could, more information about Dimitrios. After all, all that had happened was that a mysterious person named Peters had suggested unearthing it in Switzerland instead of in Yugoslavia. The fact that Mr Peters had, in making the suggestion, created an additional problem should have nothing to do with the original proposition. Besides, he was inclined to doubt his ability to put Dimitrios and Mr Peters out of his mind. Was honour indeed satisfied? Not by any means. That stuff about impersonal experiments in detection was nonsense and always had been nonsense. What real detecting had he done? None. His interest in Dimitrios had already become an obsession. ‘Obsession’ was an ugly word. It conjured up visions of bright, stupid eyes and proofs that the world was flat. Yet this business of Dimitrios did fascinate him and in an unaccountable way. For instance, would he be able to get on with his work knowing that there might be a man named Grodek in existence who could tell him things he was curious to know? And if the answer to that were ‘no’, then would it not be a waste of time to go back to Athens? Of course it would! Again, would his bank balance really be lean six months hence if he were a few weeks late with his new book? It would not.
He got out of the bath and began to dry himself.
There was the matter of Mr Peters to be cleared up, too. He could not reasonably be expected to leave these things as they were and hurry off to write a detective story. It was too much to ask of any man. Besides, here was real murder: not neat, tidy book-murder with corpse and clues and suspects and hangman, but murder over which a chief of police shrugged his shoulders, wiped his hands and consigned the stinking victim to a coffin. Yes, that was it. It was real. Dimitrios was or had been real. Here were no strutting paper figures, but tangible evocative men and women, as real as Proudhon, Montesquieu and Rosa Luxemburg. The worlds of escape, the fantasies you created for your own comfort were well enough if you could live within them. But split the membrane that divided you from the real world and the fantasies perished. You were free and alive, but in a world of frustration.
Aloud Latimer murmured: ‘Comfortable, very comfortable! You want to go to Geneva. You don’t want to work. You’re feeling lazy and your curiosity has been aroused. In any case, the detective story-writer has no business with reality except in so far as it concerns the technicalities of such things as ballistics, medicine, the laws of evidence and police procedure. Let that be quite clear. Now then! No more of this nonsense.’
He shaved, dressed, collected his belongings, packed and went downstairs to enquire about the trains to Athens. The reception clerk brought him a timetable and found the Athens page.
Latimer stared at it in silence for a moment. Then:
‘Supposing,’ he said slowly, ‘that I wanted to go to Geneva from here.’
On his second evening in Geneva, Latimer received a letter bearing the Chambésy postmark. It was from Wladyslaw Grodek and was in answer to a letter Latimer had sent enclosing Mr Peters’ note.
Herr Grodek wrote briefly and in French:
Villa Acacias,
Chambésy.
Friday.
My dear Mr Latimer,
I should be pleased if you could come to the Villa Acacias for luncheon tomorrow. Unless I hear that you cannot come, my chauffeur will call at your hotel at eleven-thirty.
Please accept the expression of my most distinguished sentiments.
Grodek.
The chauffeur arrived punctually, saluted, ushered Latimer ceremoniously into a huge chocolate-coloured coupé de ville, and drove off through the rain as if he were escaping from the scene of a crime.
Idly, Latimer surveyed the interior of the car. Everything about it from the inlaid wood panelling and ivory fittings to the too-comfortable upholstery suggested money, a great deal of money. Money, he reflected, that, if Peters were to be believed, had been made out of espionage. Unreasonably he found it odd that there should be no evidence in the car of the sinister origin of its purchase price. He wondered what Herr Grodek would look like. He might possibly have a pointed white beard. Peters had said that he was a Polish national, a great lover of animals and a beautiful character au fond. Did that mean that superficially he was an ugly character? As for his alleged love of animals, that meant nothing. Great animal lovers were sometimes pathetic in their hatred of humanity. Would a professional spy, uninspired by any patriotic motives, hate the world he worked in? A stupid question.
For a time they travelled along the road which ran by the northerly shore of the lake, but at Pregny they turned to the left and began to climb a long hill. About a kilometre farther on, the car swung off into a narrow lane through a pine forest. They stopped before a pair of iron gates which the chauffeur got out to open. Then they drove on up a steep drive with a right-angle turn in the middle to stop at last before a large, ugly chalet.
The trees in front of it had been cleared and, through the drifting mist of snow turned rain, Latimer could see, on the slope below, a small village with its white, wooden-steepled church. Beyond and below the village was the lake, grey and lifeless without the sun. A steamer churned its way towards Geneva. To Latimer, who had seen the lake in the summer time, it was a desolate scene; desolate in the special way that a theatre is desolate when the dust sheets are on the stalls, the curtain is up and the stage, in the pallid glare of a single gas-filled lamp, has lost its magic.
The chauffeur opened the door and he got out and walked towards the door of the house. As he did so it was opened by a stout, cheerful-looking woman who looked as though she might be the housekeeper. He went in.
He found himself in a small lobby no more than six feet wide. On one wall was a row of clothes pegs draped carelessly with hats and coats, a woman’s and a man’s, a climbing rope and an odd ski-stick. Against the opposite wall were stacked three pairs of well-greased skis.
The housekeeper took his coat and hat and he walked through the lobby into a large room.
It was built rather like an inn with stairs leading to a gallery which ran along two sides of the room, and a vast cowled fireplace. A wood fire roared in the grate and the pinewood floor was covered with thick rugs. It was very warm and clean.
With a smiling assurance that Herr Grodek would be down immediately, the housekeeper withdrew. There were armchairs in front of the fire and Latimer walked towards them. As he did so there was a quick rustle and a Siamese cat leaped on to the back of the nearest chair and stared at him with hostile blue eyes. It was joined by another. Latimer moved towards them and they drew back arching their backs. Giving them a wide berth, Latimer made his way to the fire. The cats watched him narrowly. The logs shifted restlessly in the grate. There was a moment’s silence; then Herr Grodek came down the stairs.
The first thing that drew Latimer’s attention to the fact was that the cats lifted their heads suddenly, stared over his shoulder and then jumped lightly to the floor. He looked round. The man had reached the foot of the stairs. Now he turned and walked towards Latimer with his hand outstretched and words of apology on his lips.
He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about sixty with thinning grey hair still tinged with the original straw colour which had matched the fair, clean-shaven cheeks and blue-grey eyes. His face was pear-shaped, tapering from a broad forehead, past a small tight mouth to a chin which receded almost into the neck. You might have put him down as an Englishman or a Dane of more than average intelligence; a retired consulting engineer, perhaps. In his slippers and his thick baggy tweeds and with his vigorous, decisive movements he looked like a man enjoying the well-earned fruits of a blameless and worthy career.
He said: ‘Excuse me, please, Monsieur. I did not hear the car arrive.’
His French, though curiously accented, was very ready, and Latimer found the fact incongruous. The small mouth would have been more at home with English.
‘It is very kind of you to receive me so hospitably, Monsieur Grodek. I don’t know what Peters said in his letter, because…’
‘Because,’ interrupted the tall man heartily, ‘you very wisely have never troubled to learn Polish. I can sympathize with you. It is a horrible tongue. You have introduced yourself to Anton and Simone here.’ He indicated the cats. ‘I am convinced that they resent the fact that I do not speak Siamese. Do you like cats? Anton and Simone have critical intelligence, I am sure of it. They are not like ordinary cats, are you, mes enfants?’ He seized one of them and held it up for Latimer’s inspection. ‘Ah, Simone cherie, comme tu es mignonne! Comme tu es bête!’ He released it so that it stood on the palms of his hands. ‘Allez vite! Va promener avec ton vrai amant, ton cher Anton!’ The cat jumped to the floor and stalked indignantly away. Grodek dusted his hands lightly together. ‘Beautiful, aren’t they! And so human. They become ill-tempered when the weather is bad. I wish so much that we could have had a fine day for your visit, Monsieur. When the sun is shining the view from here is very pretty.’
Latimer said that he had guessed from what he had seen that it would be. He was puzzled. Both his host and his reception were totally unlike those he had expected. Grodek might look like a retired consulting engineer, but he had a quality which seemed to render the simile absurd. It was a quality that derived somehow from the contrast between his appearance and his quick, neat gestures, the urgency of his small lips. You could picture him without effort in the role of lover; which was a thing, Latimer reflected, that you could say of few men of sixty and few of under sixty. He wondered about the woman whose belongings he had seen in the entrance lobby. He added lamely: ‘It must be agreeable here in the summer.’
Grodek nodded. He had opened a cupboard by the fireplace. ‘Agreeable enough. What will you drink? English whisky?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Good. I, too, prefer it as an aperitif.’
He began to splash whisky into two tumblers. ‘In the summer I work outside. That is very good for me but not good for my work, I think. Do you find that you can work out of doors?’
‘No, I don’t. The flies…’
‘Exactly! The flies. I am writing a book, you know.’
‘Indeed. Your memoirs?’
Grodek looked up from the bottle of soda water he was opening and Latimer saw a glint of amusement in his eyes as he shook his head. ‘No, Monsieur. A life of St Francis. I confidently expect to be dead before it is finished.’
‘It must be a very exhaustive study.’
‘Oh yes.’ He handed Latimer a drink. ‘You see, the advantage of St Francis from my point of view is that he has been written about so extensively that I need not go to sources for my material. There is no original research for me to do. The work therefore serves its purpose in permitting me to live here in almost absolute idleness with an easy conscience. At the first signs of boredom, of spiritual malaise, I dip into my library of standard works about St Francis and compose another thousand words of my book. When I have convinced myself of the usefulness of the work I am doing, I stop. I may say that I quote extensively from Sabatier. His books are quite the most long-winded on the subject and help to fill the pages very nicely. For pleasure, I read the German monthly magazines.’ He raised his glass. ‘A votre santé.’
‘A la votre.’ Latimer was beginning to wonder if his host were, after all, no more than an affected ass. He drank a little of his whisky. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if Peters mentioned the purpose of my visit to you in the letter I brought with me from Sofia.’
‘No, Monsieur, he did not. But I received a letter from him yesterday which did mention it.’ He was putting down his glass and he gave Latimer a sidelong look as he added: ‘It interested me very much.’ And then: ‘Have you known Peters long?’
There was an unmistakable hesitation at the name. Latimer guessed that the other’s lips had been framing a word of a different shape.
‘I have met him once or twice. Once in a train, once in my hotel. And you, Monsieur? You must know him very well.’
Grodek raised his eyebrows. ‘And what makes you so sure of that, Monsieur?’
Latimer smiled easily because he felt uneasy. He had, he felt, committed some sort of indiscretion. ‘If he had not known you very well he would surely not have given me an introduction to you or asked you to give me information of so confidential a character.’ He felt pleased with that speech.
Grodek regarded him thoughtfully and Latimer found himself wondering how on earth he could have been as foolish as to liken the man to a retired consulting engineer. For no reason that he could fathom, he wished suddenly that he had Mr Peters’ Lüger in his hand. It was not that there was anything menacing in the other’s attitude. It was just that…
‘Monsieur,’ said Herr Grodek, ‘I wonder what your attitude would be if I were to ask an impertinent question; if I were, for instance, to ask you to tell me seriously if a literary interest in human frailty were your only reason for approaching me.’
Latimer felt himself redden. ‘I can assure you…’ he began.
‘I am quite certain that you can,’ Grodek interrupted smoothly. ‘But – forgive me – what are your assurances worth?’
‘I can only give you my word, Monsieur, to treat any information you may give me as confidential,’ retorted Latimer stiffly.
The other sighed. ‘I don’t think I have made myself quite clear,’ he said carefully. ‘The information itself is nothing. What happened in Belgrade in 1926 is of little importance now. It is my own position of which I am thinking. To be frank, our friend Peters has been a little indiscreet in sending you to me. He admits it, but craves my indulgence and asks me as a favour – he recalls that I am under a slight obligation to him – to give you the information you need about Dimitrios Talat. He explains that you are a writer and that your interest is merely that of a writer. Very well! There is one thing, however, which I find inexplicable.’ He paused, picked up his glass and drained it. ‘As a student of human behaviour, Monsieur,’ he went on, ‘you must have noticed that most persons have behind their actions one stimulus which tends to dominate all others. With some of us it is vanity, with others the gratification of the senses, with still others the desire for money, and so on. Er – Peters happens to be one of those with the money stimulus very highly developed. Without being unkind to him, I think I may tell you that he has the miser’s love of money for its own sake. Do not misunderstand me, please. I do not say that he will act only under that money stimulus. What I mean is that I cannot from my knowledge of Peters imagine him going to the trouble of sending you here to me and writing to me in the way he has written, in the interests of the English detective story. You see my point? I am a little suspicious, Monsieur. I still have enemies in this world. Supposing, therefore, that you will tell me just what your relations with our friend Peters are. Would you like to do that?’
‘I should be delighted to do so. Unfortunately I cannot do so. And for a very simple reason. I don’t know what those relations are myself.’
Grodek’s eyes hardened. ‘I was not joking, Monsieur.’
‘Nor was I. I have been investigating the history of this man Dimitrios. While doing so I have met Peters. For some reason that I do not know of, he, too, is interested in Dimitrios. He overheard me making inquiries in the relief commission archives in Athens. He then followed me to Sofia and approached me there – behind a pistol, I may add – for an explanation of my interest in this man, who, by the way, was murdered some weeks ago before I ever heard of him. He followed this up with an offer. He said that if I would meet him in Paris and collaborate with him in some scheme he had in mind we should each profit to the extent of half a million francs. He said that I possessed a piece of information which, though valueless by itself, would, when used in conjunction with information in his possession, be of great value. I did not believe him and refused to have anything to do with his scheme. Accordingly, as an inducement to me and as evidence of his goodwill, he gave me the note to you. I had told him, you see, that my interest was that of a writer and admitted that I was about to go to Belgrade to collect more information there if I could. He told me that you were the only person who could supply it.’
Grodek’s eyebrows went up. ‘I don’t want to seem too inquisitive, Monsieur, but I should like to know how you knew that Dimitrios Talat was in Belgrade in 1926.’
‘I was told by a Turkish official with whom I became friendly in Istanbul. He described the man’s history to me; his history, that is, as far as it was known in Istanbul.’
‘I see. And what, may I ask, is this so valuable piece of information in your possession?’
‘I don’t know.’
Grodek frowned. ‘Come now, Monsieur. You ask for my confidences. The least you can do is to give me yours.’
‘I am telling you the truth. I don’t know. I talked fairly freely to Peters. Then, at one point in the conversation, he became excited.’
‘At what point?’
‘I was explaining, I think, how I knew that Dimitrios had no money when he died. It was after that he started talking about this half a million francs.’
‘And how did you know?’
‘Because when I saw the body everything taken from it was on the mortuary table. Everything, that is, except his carte d’identité which had been removed from the lining of his coat and forwarded to the French authorities. There was no money. Not a penny.’
For several seconds Grodek stared at him. Then he walked over to the cupboard where the drinks were kept. ‘Another drink, Monsieur?’
He poured the drinks out in silence, handed Latimer his and raised his glass solemnly. ‘A toast, Monsieur. To the English detective story!’
Amused, Latimer raised his glass to his lips. His host had done the same. Suddenly, however, he choked and, dragging a handkerchief from his pocket, set his glass down again. To his surprise, Latimer saw that the man was laughing.
‘Forgive me, Monsieur,’ he gasped. ‘A thought crossed my mind that made me laugh. It was –’ he hesitated a fraction of a second ‘– it was the thought of our friend Peters confronting you with a pistol. He is quite terrified of firearms.’
‘He seemed to keep his fears to himself quite successfully.’ Latimer spoke a trifle irritably. He had a suspicion that there was another joke somewhere, the point of which he had missed.
‘A clever man, Peters.’ Grodek chuckled and patted Latimer on the shoulder. He seemed suddenly in excellent spirits. ‘My dear chap, please don’t say that I have offended you. Look, we will have luncheon now. I hope you will like it. Are you hungry? Greta is really a splendid cook and there is nothing Swiss about my wines. Afterwards, I will tell you about Dimitrios and the trouble he caused me, and Belgrade and 1926. Does that please you?’
‘It’s very good of you to put yourself out like this.’
He thought that Grodek was about to laugh again, but the Pole seemed to change his mind. He became instead very solemn. ‘It is a pleasure, Monsieur. Peters is a very good friend of mine. Besides, I like you personally, and we have so few visitors here.’ He hesitated. ‘May I be permitted as a friend to give you a word of advice, Monsieur?’
‘Please do.’
‘Then, if I were in your place, Monsieur, I should be inclined to take our friend Peters at his word and go to Paris.’
Latimer was perplexed. ‘I don’t know…’ he began slowly.
But the housekeeper, Greta, had come into the room.
‘Luncheon!’ exclaimed Grodek with satisfaction.
Later, when he had an opportunity of asking Grodek to explain his ‘word of advice’, Latimer forgot to do so. By that time he had other things to think about.