Murder on French Leave Page 2

  ‘And is she going on the stage?’

  ‘It’s odd you should say that,’ I replied, ‘because that is exactly her intention.’

  ‘With those looks, it was an easy guess.’

  ‘Unfortunately, her father does not see it in quite the same light. That is partly why she is coming to Paris with us.’

  ‘Aha! So you are abducting her, I take it?’

  ‘It might be truer to say that she is abducting us,’ Robin remarked.

  ‘Here you are, Tessa!’ the abductress said, joining us at this point. ‘See how you care for that.’

  ‘Delicious,’ I said, tasting it. It was, too, and I particularly liked the lacing of rum which she had been thoughtful enough to provide. ‘I don’t think I’ll need the seasick pills, after all.’

  ‘You’re a bad traveller, Mrs Price?’

  ‘It’s not so much the travelling I mind. It’s the bits in between.’

  ‘Like this rotten delay. I do so agree. The maddening thing is that my wife’s meeting me at Orly, and she’s not going to be very pleased.’

  ‘Can’t you put a call through to warn her?’

  ‘Unfortunately, it’s too late for that. She’s quite capable of driving at a hundred and fifty kilometres and she certainly knows all the short cuts and back doubles, but even so it will take her more than an hour to get to Orly from our side of Paris and she will have left already.’

  ‘We have a car meeting us, too,’ Robin said, ‘but it’s to be hoped that the driver is hardened to this kind of thing.’ Privately I considered that Mrs Carlsen would have done better to stay over on her side of Paris, warming the slippers, but this prejudice probably arose mainly from the vaguely liverish kind of ill-humour which often accompanies long waits at airports and, luckily, I had not drunk enough Coca-Cola to give expression to it.

  ‘And is yours a purely pleasure trip, Mrs Price? How long will you stay?’

  ‘Robin is only coming for a few days. I have to spend six weeks, at least. Ellen’s future is still in the balance.’

  ‘Six weeks? That’s quite a long holiday.’

  ‘No holiday, I assure you. On Wednesday I start work.’

  ‘Really? May I be terribly impertinent and ask what kind of work? Something to do with the haute couture, one would hazard a guess.’

  Hazard was the word and I stared at him, momentarily speechless. It was not that I expected to be recognised by strangers. I was accustomed to passing unnoticed in the thinnest of crowds, or, at best, receiving the stony stare which indicates that someone knows the face but can’t put a name to it. Nevertheless, by some process which now seemed shamefully conceited, I had arrived at the belief that Mr Carlsen had recognised me from the start and had known exactly how I earned my living.

  ‘Tessa’s an actress,’ Robin explained. ‘She is going to France to make a film.’

  Rather more puzzlement must have shown on my face than I could have wished, for Mr Carlsen leant forward and said in his eager way:

  ‘Oh, I say, what an appalling boob! Do forgive me for being such a clot. Of course I know now . . .’

  ‘There’s nothing whatever to forgive,’ I said irritably. ‘It’s simply that I feel scared to death by the whole set-up and if no one in France is even going to believe I’m an actress it will be worse than ever.’

  ‘Oh, but they will, I promise you. I felt certain I’d seen your face before and I remember perfectly now. Marvellous film about two years ago . . . what was it called . . . ? You were terrific, I do remember that. I say, if it wouldn’t sound like fearful cheek, do tell me the name of your studios. As it happens, I have one or two chums in that world, and if it would help to oil the wheels for you I should be only too delighted . . .’

  One way and another, he was piling it on far too thickly and it was mainly impatience with these clumsy attempts to make amends which drove me to the direct lie.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t remember. It’s all written down somewhere in my luggage, but my mind’s a complete blank at the moment.’

  ‘Still, if you could tell me the name of your hotel?’

  ‘We haven’t got one. They’ve rented a flat for us. Unfortunately I can’t remember the address of that, either.’

  I flashed a warning look at Robin, but for once he was out of step and fished for his diary. I tried to kick him under the table, but Ellen was between us and it was she who let out the startled yelp. Miraculously, the female on the public address system intervened in the nick of time. She lifted her microphone and ordered us to proceed to gate number ten for immediate embarkation.

  She gave this command in the peremptory tones of one who had had her eye on the Eight Two Nine passengers throughout the class and was in no mood to brook any more of their sloppy behaviour. I sprang up and laid feverish hands on the luggage.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ I said, doling out packages and coats. ‘Not a moment to lose. Let’s go before she changes her mind.’

  ‘What was all that hysteria about?’ Robin asked, as we shuffled docilely through gate number ten, ‘It’s not like you to get tetchy because someone doesn’t rush up and plead for your autograph.’

  ‘Not tetchy at all,’ I muttered, ‘what a fantastic suggestion! I just got the feeling he was trying to edge in a bit too fast. After all, we don’t necessarily want him round our necks the whole time we’re in Paris, do we?’

  ‘No, and I shouldn’t think there’s the slightest danger of it. I imagine he was only trying to be helpful, and our paths are not likely to cross again.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t exactly fall for him, but nobody is at their best in a situation like that, and as you say we’ve probably seen the last of him.’

  As I spoke, someone in the queue behind us lurched forward and caught me a stinging blow on the leg with his brief-case. I stumbled sideways and one of the extra coats, which I had draped over my shoulders, slithered to the ground. Ellen and I dived for it simultaneously, I got another buffeting with the brief-case, and its owner, bending down to retrieve the coat, knocked heads with Ellen, who promptly clasped her forehead and allowed the duty-free packages to tumble out on the ground. Robin, who already held a share of the small luggage in each hand, wisely kept aloof from the maelstrom, but, tearing up from behind like some intrepid outside left, Mr Carlsen joined in with a flying tackle.

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you. How kind! Thank you so much,’ I repeated about fifty times, as he nimbly gathered up our possessions and placed them in our hands.

  ‘Not at all, not at all, not at awl,’ he countered, ‘absolutely no trouble. Are you sure you can manage all these?’

  ‘Yes, thanks awfully. We haven’t far to go now.’

  ‘Well, do have a marvellous and successful time in Paris, won’t you?’ he begged me earnestly. ‘And I can’t tell you how much I shall look forward to seeing the film. Any Theresa Crichton movie is an absolute “must” in our family.’

  ‘There you are!’ Robin said, as we stumbled through the last little tunnel of purgatory and on to the aircraft. ‘He remembered your name, after all; and it only took him ten minutes. I expect you feel kindlier towards him now?’

  But, oddly enough, I didn’t.

  (ii)

  Mr Carlsen was travelling in what is genteelly called Economy Class, and the only reason for our not being in that category too was that the Company, on my agent’s insistence, had issued me with a first-class ticket. I had been all for trading it in for a cheaper one and setting the profit against Robin’s, but he would not hear of it. It was useless to point out that the Company had no interest whatever in the means by which I travelled to Paris, and provided I turned up at the studios at eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning I could crawl there on my hands and knees, for all they cared. He has a very strict moral code and the idea of getting something for nothing, or even part of something for nothing, was not to be entertained.

  The last-minute inclusion of Ellen in the entourage had pr
esented no financial problems, because her father and sole guardian, who is my cousin Toby Crichton, was passing through one of his affluent periods. I use the word ‘passing’ advisedly, because none of us expected much of the affluence to stick and Ellen and I, who do not have quite such a high moral code as Robin, had decided that some of it might just as well be dissipated on a jaunt to Paris as any other extravagance.

  The reason for this aforementioned affluence, and also in a roundabout way for Ellen’s presence, was that Toby was in New York, supervising rehearsals of his latest play, which was about to open on Broadway after a moderately successful London run. He had not wanted to go, pretending to loathe America and certainly loathing all forms of travel with no pretence at all, but the flattery of being invited to do so, plus some rather frigid correspondence with the Department of Inland Revenue, had temporarily got through his defences. Accustomed as he was to being ground into the dust by London producers, whose only concern with an author, once he has handed over the script, is that he should disappear and write another one, or, better still, drop dead, there had been something too heady to be resisted in the prospect of being paid to sit in on rehearsals and have some say in the style in which the actors should deliver his immortal lines.

  Inevitably, the reaction had set in, even before American know-how went into action, and he found himself being bombarded by incomprehensible cables and awakened at four in the morning to engage in even less comprehensible telephone conversations; but by then his agent, who is also mine, had tied him up to the point of no return.

  He had tried every dodge in his repertoire to loosen the chains which bound him, but, ironically enough, it was not until after he had been spooned on to the transatlantic liner that a valid excuse for staying at home had turned up, and Ellen had been the one to provide it.

  She had used the occasion of her sixteenth birthday, some months previously, to declare her intention of abandoning the unequal struggle for O-levels in favour of going on the stage. There was nothing specially noteworthy about this, for I am reliably informed that approximately half a million sixteen-year-old girls all over the country were saying exactly the same thing at that very minute. The authorities, however, were ready for them. With masterly teamwork, they decreed that no one who had not already worked in the theatre for a minimum of forty weeks could obtain a union ticket, and no one under the age of eighteen could enrol at a reputable drama school. Even without benefit of O-levels Ellen could measure the cleft in this particular stick, and she had reluctantly settled for spending the first two years of her theatrical career resting, which Toby agreed was not a bad apprenticeship, in its way.

  However, we had no sooner reached this tolerably satisfactory conclusion than some officious female acquaintance had to stick her oar in, by extolling the advantages of a domestic science course. The gleam which this lighted in Toby’s eye was not to be extinguished by any arguments on our side, and it was easy to see why. If his only child were bent on entering a profession which offered little more than the prospect of perpetual unemployment, what more practical than to acquire a gracious, well-run home for himself while she was engaged in it?

  In a spirit of deepest gloom, the wretched girl had been fitted out with overalls and secateurs and wooden spoons and, one week before Toby sailed for New York, had been turned loose on the Margaret Hacker Domestic Science College, two miles from Newbury. One week after he landed she had hitch-hiked the two miles to Newbury, boarded the London train and turned up on our doorstep.

  It was my inevitable fate to be cast in the role of buffer state between Ellen and her father, for, standing midway between them in age, I provided a built-in, made-to-measure bridge for the generation gap. However, this particular crisis called for rather more delicate buffing than I had hitherto been called upon to supply, and the situation was aggravated by my own imminent departure for France. Possessing neither the inclination to return Ellen to Margaret Hacker, nor the right to do otherwise, I had pondered the matter for an hour or two and then despatched a chatty telegram to Toby, ending with the news that Ellen had run away.

  ‘Where to love Toby,’ he replied.

  ‘Here of course love Tessa,’ I cabled back; and heard no more.

  No light had ever shone greener, as even Robin had to concede, and from a selfish point of view nothing could have fallen out better. Ellen was not only very gorgeous to look at, but apart from a slight mental block on the subject of O-levels and domestic science was amenable in all things and a constant pleasure to have around.

  At this point in my remembrance of things past, she interrupted by saying:

  ‘You forgot to unfasten your seat belt and now it’s too late.’

  ‘And you forgot to drink your free champagne, or don’t you want it?’

  ‘Not really. I’ll swop it for your free sample of eau de toilette, if you like.’

  We effected this small exchange and Robin handed over his free sample of after-shave lotion, which she said would come in handy for Toby’s Christmas stocking. The wheels bumped on to the runway, reminding the air hostess to tell us what a pleasure it had all been and to mention in passing that the temperature outside was twenty-five degrees centigrade.

  This was no sort of centigrade for trundling four extra coats and fourteen pieces of hand luggage along several miles of Orly airport, and we were the last bedraggled little flock to be herded into the immigration pen. Most of the passengers had already gone on their way by the time we reached the Customs Hall, and it was simple to pick out our luggage as it bumped lazily around on the moving bench. Ellen dived in to collect each piece as it came alongside and Robin coerced a porter into taking charge of it.

  ‘C’est tout?’ he demanded angrily, swinging his trolley towards the exit as each case was loaded on.

  ‘Non, non,’ Ellen cried, returning once more to the fray.

  ‘I think that really is tout, isn’t it?’ Robin asked, after an unaccountable lull.

  ‘Just one more to come.’

  ‘Count them again,’ he commanded a minute or two later. ‘There can’t be any more, they’ve battened down the hatches.’

  ‘Then they must batten them up again. The red case hasn’t come out yet and it’s got my jewellery in it.’

  ‘Sure you didn’t leave it in the taxi?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Was it locked?’

  ‘It was when we left the house, but then I had to open it up again at Heathrow, to put those scripts in. I can’t remember if I . . . Oh dear,’ I said, clutching my head, ‘perhaps champagne on top of Coca-Cola was a mistake, after all. I simply can’t remember if I locked it again.’

  ‘Well, you two had better wait here and I’ll go and make some enquiries. There’s probably a correct procedure for this kind of thing. I might even track down that chauffeur they’ve laid on for you. At least, I could prevent his giving a Gallic shrug and driving off without us.’

  He spoke a few words to the customs official at the barrier and vanished into the free world.

  ‘C’est tout?’ the porter asked. ‘On s’en va?’

  I explained that we still awaited one valise the more, and proffered a ten-franc note towards compensation for his valuable time. He waved it away, muttering something whose full meaning escaped me and I had the uncomfortable feeling that it had not been nearly enough.

  The three of us stared gloomily into space, alone on our desolate island in a sea of happy, carefree passengers cheerfully loading up their luggage from the neighbouring benches and making for the exit. One such group drove slap into Mr Carlsen, who came bursting through, overcoat flying and eyes frantically searching the hall.

  ‘Good grief, what’s this I hear?’ he yelped, galloping towards us. ‘I ran into the old man outside and he told me the ghastly news. Has the case turned up yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘How desperately maddening for you! Now, look, if you wouldn’t think it an unpardonable nerve, do give me an exact descript
ion, so that I can hand the problem over to a rather powerful chum of mine, who’s more or less in charge here. That is, if you wouldn’t think it the most beastly cheek?’

  ‘No, it’s very kind of you. I’m only surprised you’re still around. We seem to have been languishing here for ages.’

  ‘It was the sheerest fluke. Poor Adela was only allowed to park in the yard outside for half an hour, and when the plane was so late she had to move on. Now she has to walk about a mile to pick up the car again. She had just gone for it when your husband turned up. Really, this has been a most ill-fated journey, in many ways.’

  ‘Yes, hasn’t it? But, for goodness sake, don’t be missing when your wife comes back. That would be the last straw.’

  ‘Not to worry, your husband’s standing guard over my shabby old luggage till she returns. She’ll recognise it like a shot. Now, can you give me a description of the missing case, so that I can set some influential wheels in motion?’

  ‘I’ll write it down for you. And perhaps while I’m doing that you could pacify the porter? I’m afraid he’s not pleased, but we intend to make it up to him.’

  ‘Never fear, I’ll soon sort him out. And don’t forget to write down your address, will you? They can deliver the case to your flat, the minute it turns up.’

  It was reasonable enough and he had spoken quite casually, and yet in the act of taking a pen from my bag the thought flashed through my head that the missing suitcase betokened something more sinister than just carelessness. I glanced up for another look at Mr Carlsen, but he had his back to me and was engaged in passionate conversation with the porter.

  ‘Come over and help me, Ellen,’ I called. ‘You’re much cleverer at this sort of thing than I am. What do you make of it?’ I went on, dropping my voice. ‘So many friends in so many high places, and it always ends with his asking for our address. One should guard against this Anglo-Saxon tendency to distrust all foreigners on principle, but I confess I’m finding it uphill work at the moment.’

  ‘You think he might be a thief? Well, there’s nothing much you can do about it,’ she pointed out. ‘If you play a trick of your own, like giving him a false address, you’ll never get your case back.’