Tour de Force Read online

  ‘We’ll just have to sit and read the labels,’ said Louli. She rose abruptly to her feet. ‘Mr Fernando, could I sit at the back please?’ She waited for no answer but hitched down the tablecloth from the rack, dumped hat and coat upon their owner and marched up the aisle where, in the privacy of the rear seats, she and Mr Cecil collapsed into a communion of effervescent giggling. The coach driver, suddenly getting fed up with the lot of them, started the engine, engaged his gears with a jerk that threw them all backwards, and, considering them now to be seated, triumphantly drove off. Fernando produced a hand microphone and, unconscious that his voice was being distorted to a meaningless bellow, described the passing scene. Inspector Cockrill stared glassily out at it, and longed for home.

  One of the Simply Impossibles was Miss Trapp. She shared a luncheon-table in the restaurant in the broad arcades of Milan with a quiet young woman called Miss Lane. They were both on their own. ‘I prefer to travel by myself,’ said Miss Trapp, snapping her tight, prim mouth. She wore the expensive, if somewhat out-of-date, hat with the red brussels-sprouts and a depressing brown silk dress, and clutched tight up under her chin in one thin hand a large brown leather bag. She looked like somebody’s housekeeper, spending the savings of five years of slavery on a so-far not very successful Holiday Abroad; but the bag was of real leather and bore a monogram which, if indecipherable, was at least of gold. Miss Lane looked round at the Jollies and the Vulgars, at the Experienced Travellers (loudly demanding Bitter Campari and Risotto Milanese) and the Inexperienced Travellers, nervously eyeing their plates and hoping there wouldn’t be all that nasty garlic, and asked if one could really describe this as travelling alone …?

  Miss Trapp folded her lips, hugging the big brown bag. She changed the subject abruptly. ‘Do you live in London?’

  Something secret drew down over Vanda Lane’s face. She replied, however, that yes, she lived in London. She had a flat.

  ‘Oh, a flat,’ said Miss Trapp.

  ‘In St John’s Wood.’

  Miss Trapp seemed not to have heard of St John’s Wood. She herself lived in Park Lane – quite a small house. ‘I think the air is better there …’

  Vanda Lane did not care two hoots about the air of Park Lane. She sat toying with her spaghetti and covertly watching the man with only one arm. She was in love. He was ugly and angry-looking and in a million years he would never so much as glance her way; but she was in love. ‘I’m the slave type,’ she thought, ‘and he’s the master type; and he’s the only person in the world that I would want to be my master.’ After all the years of existing upon vicarious romanticism, barren of personal relationship, suddenly, totally unexpectedly, out of the blue had come fulfilment – to worship like a dog at the feet of a man with a bitter face and sullen, contemptuous eyes. She dropped her own eyes before his casual glance: a secret creature with a closed secret face – with leaf-brown hair kept secret under a tight-fitting hat, with a good figure kept secret in a repression of corset and brassière, with clothes whose excellence was so discreet that none but Mr Cecil would trouble to look at them twice: with far more good looks than ever the flamboyant Louli Barker could boast, kept secret beneath an apparently almost deliberate under-emphasis – devoid of make-up, tight lipped, unsmiling, chill. She lifted her eyes again and again dropped them before his glance; and Leo Rodd said to his wife that dear God, now there were two of them longing to sympathize with him over his arm; and added that there was one thing about all this pasta and stuff, he didn’t have to have it cut up for him publicly.

  Mr Fernando jollied them all out and into the bus again. ‘Come along, come along, off now in a jiffy to lovely Rapallo on the glorious Mediterranean coast …’ He knew that they would hate the glorious Mediterranean coast with its horrid dark grey sand carefully boarded off from its flashy little towns, and would compare it unfavourably with Tenby and Frinton and Southend-on-Sea, the cruder spirits even murmuring among themselves that they could have gone far more cheaply to any or all of those places – but to Mr Fernando nothing connected with Odyssey Tours could be less than perfect and he could not forbear from extolling the joys to come, while there was yet a chance of doing so uncontradicted. ‘Hurry up, hurry up, where now are all our ladies?’ Their ladies were queueing up before the door of the single lavatory where indeed the gentlemen had recently been in a queue of their own, embarrassingly close. They arrived, breathless and blushing, in ones and twos, Miss Trapp last of all, hurriedly adjusting the khaki silk dress and the brussels-sprouts hat. The driver looked round impatiently, saw only one passenger still standing, and drove off with his customary jerk and she sat down with unexpected abruptness in her place; but not before Mr Cecil, rising from his seat in the rear had cried out, high and gay: ‘Why goodness, Miss Trapp – I do believe you’re wearing a Christophe hat!’

  Now whatever was there in that, thought Inspector Cockrill, to have made the poor lady turn so pale?

  Chapter Two

  THAT very first night in their terraced hotel at Rapallo, already you could see the party sorting itself out, forming into groups: the Vulgars and the Jollies getting together over Americanos, the Timids being taken over by the Seasoned Travellers, the Neurotics turning pale together at the sight of heaped dishes of death-dealing green figs and peaches, the Hearties calling loudly for lo nachurelle and assuring each other that a smattering of French would take you all over the world.… There was a spinster aunt standing treat to a handsome niece who she was obscurely determined should remain as desolately maiden as herself – Grim and Gruff, Mr Cecil and Louli called them; and already a member of the party had been christened, for obvious reasons, Mrs Sick.…

  Inspector Cockrill remained aloof from it all. He left the hotel and went inland in search of a pub; there were no pubs but he found a small square with chairs outside a café and sat down and asked for a bitter. The waiter brought him a Bitter Campari and, disillusioned, he stumped back angrily to the hotel. Louli Barker was sitting alone on the balcony. ‘Hallo, Mr Cockrill. Where are all the chaps?’

  ‘I met Mr Cecil going along the front.’

  ‘He’s in hot pursuit of Fernando; but I’m afraid it’s no dice, poor pet, because Fernando is after La Trapp.’

  ‘Well, I’m going up to bed. If you can call it a bed,’ said Cockie, gloomily.

  Their hotel was not only first, but luxury class. ‘What’s wrong with your bed?’ asked Louli, surprised.

  ‘I don’t know yet. I shall very soon find out.’ But he lingered a little. He could not help liking her: there was about her something as friendly and well disposed as about a nice child. Under all this silly, false exterior, he thought – she’s real. Not like that other closed-in, secret creature with her unhappy mouth and hooded, downcast blue eyes. Louli’s eyes were blue too, but by no means downcast, or if they were it was from the weight of her new eyelashes. You stuck them on with white of egg, she confided to him, and he could have no idea how hard it was to ask a chambermaid for white of egg in Italian! The trouble was that, what with the egg and all, they were as heavy as hell and she simply couldn’t keep awake. From his balcony above, he later observed that she had, indeed, fallen into a little cat nap, sitting bolt upright on a white metal chair.

  Most of the others had come in and gone up to bed by the time Louli awoke; nor had the cat nap been so profound that she had not been able now and again to open a wary eye and mark their departure. Only the man with the one arm remained, standing looking out across the dark bay. She got up and stretched and went over and stood beside him and said, ‘Hallo.’

  He started. He said, irritably, ‘I thought everyone had gone to bed?’

  ‘Not me, yet. So I thought I’d come over and say hallo to you.’

  ‘Well, hallo,’ he said, getting it over, as to a tiresome small child.

  ‘I thought we might as well meet one another, as I suppose we shall be travelling together …’

  ‘Why should you suppose that?’

  She ignored th
e obvious reply that they were in fact travelling together. She said, refusing to be snubbed: ‘Well, let’s say then that I hope we’ll be travelling together.’

  ‘When you get to know me better,’ he said, ‘you will not regard that as a matter for optimism.’

  ‘As long as I do get to know you better,’ said Louli, ‘I’ll take a chance.’

  She said it with the little friendly, half teasing, half indulgent air that had already conquered its corner in the arid old heart of Detective Inspector Cockrill. Leo Rodd accepted defeat. ‘We’d better have a drink on it.’ They were the only people left up and about, but the bar-tender remained with Italian enthusiasm, glued to his post. Leo signalled to him to come out and take an order. ‘Meanwhile my name is Rodd: Leo Rodd. And yours?’

  ‘Well, I’m Louvaine Barker,’ said Louli, with the little blush.

  ‘What an odd name,’ said Leo. ‘It sounds like a woman novelist. Here’s the chap. What’ll you drink?’

  She said she was hungry and would have a Pimms No. 1. ‘It’s divine here, masses of fruit and veg., a sort of an alcoholic minestrone.’ She glanced up at him from beneath the egg-white eyelashes, naïvely inviting admiration for her wit; but he had heard her swapping the same joke earlier in the evening with Mr Cecil and refused to be impressed. He took out his wallet and, laying it flat on the edge of the balcony before him, struggled to take out a note. She put out a casual finger and held down one side of it, but otherwise offered no assistance. He paid the waiter, picked up the wallet and, clumsily refolding it, replaced it in his pocket. ‘Thank you, You are the first woman I have encountered in the past sixteen months who would not have taken out the money, paid the waiter for me, folded the thing up and put it back in my pocket with a kind little pat.’

  ‘I know,’ said Louli. ‘I was watching you at dinner.’ At dinner, Vanda Lane and one or two persons unknown had shared a table with the Rodds. He gave a bitter smile at the memory of it. ‘Miss Lane or whatever her name is could hardly keep her hands off me; and as for my wife, my wife is a dear, sweet thing, but my God! – if she could predigest my food for me because I’ve only got one arm, I do believe she would.’

  ‘It must be horrid,’ said Louli, ‘always having to choose the things on the menu that don’t have to be cut up.’

  ‘Horrid,’ he agreed, sarcastically moderate. He added: ‘I will forestall your next question by informing you that I did not lose it in the war.’

  ‘No, I know,’ said Louli. ‘You fell off your bike and got gas gangrene into it. I saw it in the paper and your photograph, “Concert Pianist Loses Arm” and things. It was on a page where I had a review,’ she added candidly, ‘or I don’t suppose I’d have noticed it.’

  His eyes clouded over with the old, dark memories, never far behind: the absurd, the ludicrous tumble off the bicycle, the first stab of doubt, the uneasy fears, the mounting terror, the ultimate long despair. Concert Pianist Loses Right Arm. But she wouldn’t have noticed except that – something about a review. ‘You thought it was not of any great importance?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Louli. ‘I cried.’ And she turned away her head and bit her lip and mumbled that she was nearly crying now, she had been nearly crying all the evening, only she was certain that egg white would melt.

  ‘Egg white?’

  ‘My eyelashes,’ said Louli, turning her face into the moonlight so that he could see.

  They were terrible, they were like bent hairpins; but it was true – the blue eyes were brimming with tears. Many women had wept for him, many had uttered words of tender pity; but here were words blessedly unspoken, here were tears that struggled not to be shed. Such as had been shed, had been shed in private, over a stranger, over a headline and a scowling photograph. ‘You cried? For me?’

  ‘Well, not actually howled,’ she admitted, again with that odd little air of candour that, coming from so much determined sophistication was somehow so absurdly endearing. ‘Just sort of mizzled. But it seemed so awful for you – never being able to play the piano again.…’

  ‘I see,’ he said. He turned away from her and stood again, staring out across the bay, black and silent now under the brilliant moon. ‘You looked at a photograph of my ugly mug and you cried – because a stranger couldn’t play the piano any more.’ He thought about it. ‘Are you so fond of music?’

  ‘Music?’ said Louli. ‘Oh, no – it bores me stiff.’

  He burst out laughing. He stretched out his one arm and pulled her to him, suddenly, and kissed her lightly upon her painted mouth; and let her go. ‘Well, you’re going to hear some now,’ he said. There was a piano in a sheltered corner of the balcony; two nights a week a stout Genoese lady played it for dancing there. He went over and sat down and twiddled on the stool a couple of times to adjust it to his height; and then, first with one finger, then with two, then with his whole, poor depleted complement of fingers, he began to play a little tune.

  Standing in his striped pyjamas on his bedroom balcony above them, Inspector Cockrill looked down and listened and recognized the tune. Well, well, well, he thought; so this is a conducted tour! They don’t waste much time.

  He was by no means the only person in the hotel that night who heard and reflected upon that gay, that triumphant little tune.

  And next morning there was a dip in the glorious, mud-coloured Mediterranean, sweetened by the sewers of Rapallo. Louli Barker bobbed and screamed, Mr Cecil bobbed and screamed, Miss Trapp in knee-length stockinette, dabbled her toes and squealed: Mr Fernando rolled like a porpoise, glistening with sun-tanned muscle, the Rodds swam out away from the rest of them side by side, she with the quiet elegance with which she did everything, he with a steady, overarm stroke which he had presumably evolved for himself since the loss of his arm. But Vanda Lane – Vanda Lane came suddenly into her own and, blue-black as a swallow in her tight black satiny bathing dress and cap, walked quietly out and executed three high dives as swift and graceful and exquisitely perfect as the swallow’s own flight; and quietly retired again. They piled once more into the coach, en route for Siena. Miss Trapp, a little heady from the attentions last night of that rather earthy Mr Fernando, sat in her place of honour just behind him; further back, Leo Rodd and his wife dozed fitfully, he hot and cross, she elegant and cool, looking out indifferently upon the route through glasses as large and round and yellow as Mr Fernando’s own. Behind them again, Vanda Lane sat in a dream of happiness to come, because Leo Rodd had congratulated her upon her performance and asked her to help him evolve some method of diving which might compensate for the loss of his arm. In the back row, Mr Cockrill irritably drowsed while Cecil and Louli Barker giggled over their collaboration in a travel book, to be entitled Incontinent on the Continent, and dedicated to The Queues. In his seat beside the driver, Mr Fernando reached forth for his microphone. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, a brief stop now at Pisa, out for a jiffy to look at the Leaning Tower, and then to lovely Siena – three nights, ladies and gentlemen in Siena, expeditions through the country all about Siena; and after Siena, to the wonderful island of San Juan el Pirata which has been called The Cathedral in the Sea. En route, then, ladies and gentlemen, for Pisa. En route for Siena. En route for San Juan el Pirata …’

  En route, ladies and gentlemen for – Murder.

  Chapter Three

  MR FERNANDO’S choice of ‘first-class hotels’ was by no means that laid down by the agency and appeared to vary startlingly between millionaire standard and a new low in third-rate pensions. The hotel at Rapallo had been in the very top grade, their three nights in Siena were to be spent in a dreary albergo that hit the very bottom. The angular widow felt it worst and became known to all members of Il Grouppa as Mrs Moan, a pair of timid schoolteachers travelling together and already regretting it, tried to pluck up courage to ask for their money back and abandon the tour, but without success, and Mrs Sick, gobbling her way through the curious evening meals, would then take possession of the one and only ritirata, to the discomfort of ladi
es and gentlemen alike, for the rest of the night. But Siena itself was breath-takingly lovely, seen for the first time in the light of an Italian summer evening and, as the dreamy days went by, even the handsome niece began to question her aunt’s sagacity in matters of Romance; and Miss Trapp trembled on Mr Fernando’s arm as he squired her on their conducted excursions or dawdled after the rest through the narrow streets of the town. They went on their last night for a farewell visit to the Duomo. ‘You do not come often abroad, Miss Trapp?’

  No, indeed, said Miss Trapp, she had not been abroad for – for ages. Not since the war, really. The currency restrictions had made it hardly worth while. And then … ‘At my age, one does not care for travelling about on one’s own.’

  ‘People may take advantage of your youth and inexperience,’ said Fernando gallantly; but she was no fool, he had found that out over the past few days and he said it with a smile, with a little teasing bow.

  She longed to be easy and gracious, to accept the silly compliment at its face value, to handle the whole affair like a woman of the world. Instead, she felt a red stain spread over her pale face, and she said brusquely that she hadn’t meant that at all: all she meant was that she didn’t like going about alone.

  ‘But you have many friends!’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Miss Trapp gruffly.

  ‘Ah – it is true. The rich cannot really have friends. I think, Miss Trapp, it is difficult for rich people to know who are their real friends?’

  Miss Trapp’s thin mouth took on a bitter line, a hurt and bitter line. ‘Yes, I think it is. Very difficult. There is always uncertainty; and then – suspicion, and once that’s there, nothing can ever be the same again.’ He squinted at her uneasily but it was not meant for him, her mind was far away. ‘There’s no happiness in having money, none. You can’t be happy unless you have friends, unless you can trust people; but such a lot of them you can’t trust, you get hurt and deceived so often that at last you come to believe that nobody cares about you at all, just for yourself alone.’