A Pigeon Among the Cats (20 page)

“So you came along to take the mickey …”

“Far more than that. Owen, they mean to kill me. If they know they've failed, they'll try again. I don't know why, but I'm sure of it.”

“Gwen knows why. Tell her, darling.”

Gwen had stopped crying when she saw no one was interested. She sat up straight and said sulkily, “I've got to finish the bleeding tour, then Jake will pick me up at Gatwick and we'll go to Geneva to pick up the bag from my safe deposit. Now the heat's off.”

“You understand?” Owen asked politely.

“I understand she's more than just the little hotel thief I took her for,” Mrs. Lawler answered.

“How dare you …”

“Belt up!” Owen told her savagely and once more the tears flowed, disregarded. He went on, “I agree you are in danger, Mrs. Lawler, Rose, if I may. Gwen, too, is now in danger. Since these thugs have never seen me, I am not in danger. Nor can they trace me.”

“I had to tell Jake you'd booked into this hotel,” Gwen interrupted.

“I am due to leave it in a few hours' time,” he went on, making no answer to this. “I have a hired car in the ferry car park. I intended to drive to Geneva in any case. Now I propose to take you both with me. Gwen has already agreed to come with me, haven't you, love?”

She did not answer, but nodded, wiping her eyes.

“So if you care to come with us, Rose, you can get a plane from Geneva back to England. Jake's lot could never sort all that out. Once safely there you can set the dicks on him if you want to. Interpol would help them to pick him up, but I think he'd be back in the U. S. by then.”

“And Gwen?”

“Well, we'll probably make a go of it, won't we, honey?”

Again Gwen was silent. Poor Owen, Mrs. Lawler thought, these compassionate efforts seldom come off. The girl's no good, basically corrupt, unreformable. In her continued indulgence towards Owen, Rose was ready to ignore his obviously criminal intention to secure whatever it was Gwen held at Geneva; not to mention his already established relationship with her, a breach of the moral code Mrs. Lawler had been reared in. How could she blame him, when he had just shown her the way to safety?

“Tell me how all this can be done?” she said.

Owen explained. He repeated that he had a car at the ferry car park on the Lido. He would bring it to the hotel, or better perhaps send it with a chauffeur to pick up both the women and their suitcases in time to catch the first ferry out that morning. He was not sure of the time but it would be about four or half-past. He himself would take over from the chauffeur at the ferry.

“I must let Billie, our courier, know we are going,” Rose said. “I should like to leave a note for one of my friends, too.”

Owen thought, then said, “Why not put a note for the courier into your letter to the friend and leave the letter at Reception for her to get when she goes down at the usual breakfast time. We don't want anyone to know earlier than that.”

He jerked his head towards Gwen as he spoke.

“Gwen and I will stay together all the time, won't we, Gwen?” Rose said. “No second thoughts yet again. Promise.”

“I promise. After what Jake did … Tried to do …”

“Forget all that, love,” Owen told her. “You follow Rose from now on.” He made for the door, Rose at his heels.

“Are you actually
staying
in this hotel?” she asked, as he unfastened the door, this time leaving the key in the lock. He surely could not have come in and gone to Gwen's room clad only in a beach robe?

“Two nights paid in advance,” he answered with a wide grin. “But not under the name you know me by.”

It was a curious way of putting it; a warning really, though she failed to understand this.

He added, in a whisper, “Stick with her. Don't at any price, let her use the phone.”

“I won't,” she answered, but could add nothing for he was already gone, with the speed and silence she had observed in Rome, in Florence.

She turned back into the room, this time the one to secure the key. Gwen had not moved.

“Well, you heard the plan,” she said, trying to keep the desperate weariness from her voice. “Pack your things, Gwen, then you can bring your case to my room and watch me while I do my own packing. We must get a move on if we're to be ready in time.”

They were ready in very good time. While Gwen packed her bag Rose wrote a brief note to Myra to explain that she had found it necessary to leave the ‘Roseanna' tour in Venice, but hoped she would see something of her and of Flo when they were all back in England. She gave her home address. She asked Myra to give the enclosed note to Billie.

To the courier she wrote that owing to unforeseen circumstances she and Mrs. Chilton were obliged to leave Venice in advance of the tour and return to England. She apologised for giving no notice of their intention. She would write to the travel firm and the travel agency who had arranged her personal trip. Her action had nothing whatever to do with the tour, which she had enjoyed very much and regretted leaving.

As she wrote these notes she kept Gwen in sight but the latter made no attempt either to attack her or to get at the telephone, which was at Mrs. Lawler's elbow on the table. When Gwen had finished they moved to Rose's room and the action was reversed.

But Gwen had no letter to write and Rose was now moving to and fro filling her two suitcases, one large, one smaller. Again Gwen remained quiet. She even offered to carry Mrs. Lawler's larger case as well as her own single one. The lift was working, however, and the distance to it was short. Rose kept control of her own baggage.

The same night clerk was at Reception when they gave up their keys and settled their outstanding petty accounts, such things as the use of the beach hut, for which Rose paid with a sense of irony. After that they sat down at a little distance from the desk and waited.

The car was punctual. The chauffeur walked in, small, dark, Italian, wearing a creased suit and a chauffeur's cap, which he took off when he saw the ladies.

“For the ferry, signora?” he asked, looking at Mrs. Lawler.

“You come from Signor Strong?” she asked.

“Si, signora,” he answered, with a little smile she did not understand.

He took up all the bags and walked out of the hotel. The clerk at Reception eased himself into the doze that had been interrupted by the mad Englishwoman and her friend.

At the ferry park Owen took over. He paid Tito for his services and dismissed him. As soon as it was allowed he drove on to the waiting vessel. He would be one of the last to get off, but he preferred to have the shelter of the ferry's deck as early as possible. The vessel filled up with lorries and three other private cars. No coaches. They left punctually on time.

There were already lights in the upper enclosed deck. Mrs. Lawler remembered the coach's voyage over to the Lido. There had been coffee and small things to eat up there. Perhaps now.

“I'm literally starving,” she said to Owen. “I want to go and see if the ferry restaurant is open.”

“You do that,” he said. “I'll stop with Gwen in the car. That is if we don't both come up too, now we've got going.”

“I don't want anything,” Gwen said sulkily. “Only to leave this bloody place.”

“You're an effing bore,” Owen told her, with careful moderation of his language.

There was coffee, French breakfast coffee at that. Also biscuits and with the advent of a body of workmen from the deck below, some hot dogs, copying the American basic dish. Rose ate two of these and drank two large coffees and bought two packets of biscuits, praising heaven for the spread of international foods in foreign lands. Then she went down to the car.

The dawn was breaking and the ferry terminal only a few minutes away.

“I nearly sent Gwen up to find you,” Owen said reproachfully.

“Sorry. But I couldn't have gone on otherwise. I'll be all right now for another twelve hours if necessary.”

“You had dinner on the launch,” Gwen broke in suddenly.

“You did. I daren't eat. Never did before a long swim.”

“As a matter of interest,” Owen asked. “What would you call a really long swim?”

“The Channel at Dover-Gris Nez is about twenty-six miles. But the tides setting across it make it longer.”

Owen laughed, stopped to say, “Poor old Jake!” and laughed again. “You didn't brief him right, love, did you?” he said at last, giving Gwen a firm hug as the ferry bumped to rest at the terminal.

In twenty minutes they were clear of Venice and driving across the causeway. In half an hour they were on the autostrada route to Milan.

Mrs. Lawler had insisted upon sitting in the back of the car, leaving Gwen to Owen's supervision from now on. She knew she could stay awake no longer. In fact as the car settled into a steady seventy miles an hour on the great dual-carriageway road she curled herself up on the wide seat and was instantly asleep.

She did not wake up until Owen stopped the car in Verona. Time for breakfast, he announced, shaking her shoulder gently. She responded at once, still tired but alert enough to take charge of Gwen while Owen found a parking place.

From Verona, much refreshed, they travelled on along the Po valley, past Brescia, past Bergamo until, north of Milan, they turned towards the western group of the great lakes and stopped for the third time that day at Lugano, where the dual carriageway came to an end and the mountains rose .before them, tier upon tier into the far distance.

They had crossed the frontier without trouble of any kind, Rose reflected, as she stretched her legs and drew in deep breaths of the already cooler air. She looked about her. Owen had gone into the small hotel to order lunch. Gwen . . well, where was Gwen? With Owen? She had not seen her move, so enthralled had she been by this first real view of Switzerland. For she had not left the car when they stopped at the frontier as they crossed from Italy, so anxious had she been that Gwen's papers and perhaps Owen's, might not be in order.

With no excuse for lingering she hurried into the hotel. Owen was at the reception desk, Gwen approaching him from a door labelled to show it was a double cloakroom. “Dames”, “Messieurs”. Rose felt safer already. French was a long familiar tongue. Italian fascinating, but far more alien.

“Where do we go from here?” she asked Owen, as they settled to their meal.

“Geneva,” he answered, briefly.

“Yes. But how?”

“Wait and see.”

Gwen looked up at him with something like scorn. Since the meal began she had seemed to recover from her persistent withdrawal. This surprised Mrs. Lawler and also Owen, who had found a totally silent unresponsive companion in the front seat a growing bore.

“We have to go across the Gotthard Pass, of course,” Gwen stated firmly. “Or through it on a train.”

The others were surprised.

“Have you done this before?” Mrs. Lawler asked.

“Who told you?” Owen said sharply.

Gwen lowered her eyes and returned to her food. Mrs. Lawler watched Owen consult a rather tattered map he took from his pocket. After the meal she searched the hall of the little hotel and found, as she hoped, a small stand with an up to date AA continental handbook for sale. It was bent at the edges and very dusty. Probably tourists had consulted it without paying for the privilege. Ashamed of all English-speaking frauds she bought the book and took it back to the others.

“The through railway is marked,” she said when she had established this.

“So it is,” Owen agreed. “With room in the back for cars, too.”

“You knew that?”

“Oh yes, I knew.” He glanced at Gwen who was sipping her coffee and did not appear to be interested. But he saw the saucer shake in her hand and the coffee spill. She jumped up and made for the door.

“After her!” Owen ordered.

Mrs. Lawler found Gwen beginning to put through a telephone call to a number in Bergamo. She was able to stop the call going through. Gwen took it quietly.

“Who were you trying to get in Bergamo?” Owen demanded as they rejoined him.

“Billie,” she answered without hesitation.

“Nonsense,” Rose told her. “They were having lunch in Verona and going on to Cremona for tonight.”

“Nowhere near Bergamo,” Owen added. He looked at his watch and jumped up.

“On we go, girls,” he said cheerfully, making for the waiting car.

This time he put Mrs. Lawler in the front, to see the view, he told her, and Gwen in the back, to watch the road behind.

“Why?” she asked, sulkily.

“Don't you know?”

Her answering flush told him his guess was probably right and that he had better keep a more than usually careful eye on his rear window.

“You can navigate too, if you will, Rose,” he said as he got into the driver's seat. “Your map's a bit small scale but it's more recent than mine. We start up the valley then climb leftish to the Gotthard at Airolo, where we find the train … God willing …” he added, under his breath.

The valley was in shadow, but shafts of sun began to slant across the road as they climbed. At Airolo they joined a line of cars waiting to go through the railway tunnel, avoiding the open pass. Owen stopped the engine and got out, to stand looking back down the road, his hand on the rear door handle. Mrs. Lawler did the same on the other side. She knew or guessed what Owen feared. Gwen knew too, but she sat stiffly on the back seat, staring forward, silent as ever.

They had to wait nearly an hour before the queue moved. It was now just after one in the afternoon. To Mrs. Lawler, for whom yesterday had passed and merged into the present, the continued brightness of the day was astonishing. True they had breakfasted at seven, and lunched at half-past eleven. But now to find it only just after one …