A Pigeon Among the Cats (19 page)

The two figures at the side of the cockpit had been joined by a third. Gwen, that must be Gwen.

“Gwen!” she shouted. “They've murdered me, Gwen!”

The launch's engines that had been idling, revved into loud noise, the vessel began to move. Rose continued with her feeble attempts to swim away. She remembered she had shown she could manage a few yards out of her depth when the thugs hi-jacked her. She must not do less than that now. Besides they would hang about until Jake decided she was dead.

Indeed they did. They had a searchlight, too. They came swinging back, looking for her, so she sank herself, except for her head, arms and shoulders and as the light reached her, flung up her hands, gave a choking cry and sank below the surface.

“That's fixed her,” Jake said with satisfaction.

“That's fixed her good and proper, boss,” Abe agreed as the searchlight' was switched off, the launch turned and began to move towards the lighted pier where Gwen had disembarked the day before.

Mrs. Lawler had been too far away to hear these conelusions, but in any case she would not have done so, for she was swimming under water as fast as she could until her breath gave out and she had to surface. It was not a record underwater swim, but not a bad one either, she decided. At any rate the launch was some distance off, showing only its port navigation light, the green one. That meant it would land Gwen at the pier, probably. So the girl would reach the hotel first, she told herself and settled down to the long swim before her.

A couple of miles, she thought, which should be well within her powers, provided she took it quietly, provided her breathing settled, provided her ageing heart, already disturbed by the terrors of the evening, did not let her down. Provided her calculation of the distance, difficult to measure at sea level, at night, a moonless night, thank God, or those murderous devils would have seen her surface …

She swam on, keeping her course fixed by the pattern of the shore lights, until with thankfulness and relief the pattern was interrupted by a dark object that appeared among them, gradually increasing in height and width and presently beginning to move away to the left.

The post! The tall upright post marking the limit for non-swimmers. At last! At last!

In her joy she put on a little spurt, then, terrified by the mess she made of it, turned on her back to rest, before again starting to move soberly towards the shore. It was a token of her growing weakness and her knowledge of it that she was well inside the safety limit before she dared to test the depth of the water.

As she stood up at last with the sea breast high only, she staggered, everything swam about her. Another sign of age. She had experienced this before in earlier times after a really long swim, say for two hours or more. A matter of balance; the middle ear. Only now, after perhaps a mere half hour …

Her progress to the beach, first mostly swimming, then plodding wearily, took almost as long, she was ready to believe, as the perilous swim before it When she finally left the water and crept rather than walked up the long slope to the huts, she found the darkness increased, since the tall road lights were now hidden by the boundary hedge. She could only peer at the doors of the huts as she reached them, feel for the handles and push. Not that it made any difference, for her towel, her clothes, were still denied her. Every hut was locked, the chairs and tables all cleared away.

Rose sat down on the sand and burst into loud, indignant, childish sobs.

The night watchman heard the sobbing. He was at the time making his second tour of the huts, walking along between the front row that lined the beach itself and the second row behind it. His first thought was that the sound came from a trespassing child, lost in the dark, unable to find again the hole through which he had crawled in. Very unlikely that. He knew them, the cunning little devils. Then could it be some outraged girl, deserted by her seducer, or even an abandoned tart, cheated of her earnings?

He traced the sounds to their source to find he was wrong in all his guesses. It was none other than the mad Englishwoman, who stopped her abandoned grief at the sound of his approaching footsteps and was scrambling to her feet as he appeared.

The gate keeper had told him about the mad Englishwoman when he came on duty before she left.

“She is very tall and thin,” the gate keeper said. “Also quite old, but extremely active. She is fond of swimming and indeed swims very well. But reckless, like so many of her race. And self-willed. Married, but a widow. No control for many years, one would suppose. She has not yet come up from the beach.”

“So what?” he had asked.

“So you work as usual. You lock the huts as usual.”

“And if I find this Englishwoman's clothes and her towel?”

“She is sure to be in by dark. But if not, you bring her things here and lock that hut as well.”

“And notify the police?

The gate keeper had considered.

“Not immediately. She may be mad, but not stupid, I feel sure. But she could over-estimate her strength, perhaps.”

“Being old, as you say.”

“Being less strong than she feels she is. After midnight, if she has not come in, you may notify her hotel. Let them notify the police.”

The night watchman thought this was the right way to go about things. At nightfall he collected Mrs. Lawler's clothes, securing at the same time the metal tag with the number of her locker at the gate house. At half-past eleven he set out on his second round of the huts. It was then that he discovered Mrs. Lawler, guided by her sounds of distress.

When she saw the dark figure of a man behind the torch he directed at her, Rose was uncertain whether to scream or run away. But the voice she heard was reassuring.

“Do not be alarmed, signora,” the voice, an elderly one, told her in slowly spoken Italian. “I see you have been bathing. Am I right in believing you are an English signora, with a tourist party from England?”

Rose did not understand the whole of these remarks, but she did realise that the man was some sort of official and that he thought he knew who she was or at any rate knew her nationality.

“You are right,” she answered in Italian and continued partly in that language but chiefly in English to tell him she had been for a long swim and was upset when she found the hut locked and so could not change back into her clothes.

“I have them safe at the lodge,” the night watchman told her, pointing his torch in the direction of the gate house. “Come with me.”

He shone the torch on the ground and walked beside the dripping mad woman, who stumbled a little when they left the soft sand for the gravel paths above the beach, but otherwise gave no trouble. He took her inside where her clothes and towel lay on a chair. Her metal number was in his own pocket.

“Have you the number of your locker?” he asked.

Mrs. Lawler did not understand. He took out the disc, holding it upside down.

“My number?” She thought hard. “Yes, I left it with my clothes.”

She gave him the number she remembered. He turned the disc over. It corresponded. For the first time the night watchman smiled. This was indeed the right mad Englishwoman. She had not drowned. The gate keeper was right. But so tall, so thin, so lacking in all a woman should be.

“I must change,” Mrs. Lawler said, stooping forward to pick up her towel and beginning to dry herself.

“I wait outside,” the night watchman said hastily, stepping to the door. Mrs. Lawler laughed.

There was no difficulty about securing the rest of her possessions. The night watchman had access to Rose's small locker where she found her watch, her handbag with her wallet, passport, make-up things and handkerchief inside, together with a cardigan she had provided in case the late afternoon grew cold.

This last she greeted with a little cry of joy that made the night watchman knock at the door to ask if she had need of help. She told him to enter, which he did with misgivings, wondering what he would see. But it was simply the mad lady fully dressed, even to the ubiquitous woollen garment now worn world-wide by women on the upper halves of their bodies. On Mrs. Lawler, together with her equally regrettable but usual trousers, they took away all trace of the fantastic, the disturbing, effect of an elderly female, just out of the sea, prostrate on the sand, crying her heart out.

Besides, his problem was now solved. The last of the bathers was disposed of. Very often it had been a couple, enjoying a moonlight bathe or a love-making, full of apology for their late departure and a tip for his tolerance. He had never yet found occasion to notify the police or the hotels, for was it not the holiday season, a time for indulgence?

The night watchman escorted Mrs. Lawler to the gate, which he unlocked for her with a flourish. She presented him with a generous tip and an expression, in her halting Italian, of thanks for his kindness. He watched her walk away with a steady gait not fast but perfectly firm.

It was not until the next evening, when he described the whole occurrence to the gate keeper, that he heard its possible explanation.

“I was warning a party not to stay on too long or swim out too far,” she said, “when a gentleman told me ‘We saw an odd thing yesterday. A woman tourist was picked up by a launch just outside the bathing limit. It went out to sea with her and never came back as long as we were down on the beach.' That could have been your lady.”

“I suppose so. But why not land her at the pier?”

“In her swimming costume?”

“But so late. Nearly midnight. I was about to ring up her hotel when I found her.”

They both shrugged. It was inexplicable.

Rose got back to the hotel at half-past twelve. The front door was open, there was one young man at Reception, reading a newspaper by the light of one lamp on the desk. He handed her the key of her room without comment, returning immediately to his paper.

“Thank you,” Rose said. “Can you tell me if Mrs. Chilton has come in?”

The young man lifted his eyes, polite but totally uninterested.

“You know the number of her room?”

Rose gave it. She felt foolish. There were very few gaps in the rows of keys. At this hour of the night — morning, now, of course — gaps due to absent guests were probably very few. Night life on the Lido could not be so very extensive. Or not for ‘Roseanna's' tourist patrons, anyhow.

So Gwen was back. Rose took the lift to her own room first. She was by now desperately tired. Her arms and legs ached with growing stiffness; her head ached from exhaustion and an unaccustomed twelve-hour fast. But she could not rest. Those wicked men and their weak, silly accomplice had meant to kill her and had failed. She must escape at once, from any further possible contact with them. Myra and Flo would be in bed and asleep two hours or more. In any case, much as she liked their company, they were not real friends. She shrank from confiding in them the wider implications of her present predicament.

For it was true she had tried to find out more about Gwen Chilton than she had ever imagined she would try or even want to do. And she knew she had done this simply on Owen Strong's account, because she pitied him for his wartime injuries, because Charles had suffered in like manner, because of the lasting guilt for Charles's death she could not surmount even now, twenty-seven years later.

So what should she do? Go to bed, get up in a few hours' time, appear at breakfast with a joking story of late bathing, watch Gwen's shock at her reappearance, see the girl go quickly to the telephone and then what? Wait for Jake to strike again, in Verona, in Cremona, their final one night stop, even at Genoa Airport. Even on the plane going home!

But Gwen was weak, obedient to her evil master, but not always totally complaisant. So the best plan, the only plan, was to intimidate Gwen. Frighten her off telling Jake his intended victim had tricked him. Jake would blame her for knowing so little about Mrs. Lawler after travelling with her for nearly two weeks. She would impress this upon Gwen. And keep her away from a telephone for the rest of the trip? It couldn't be done, she told herself.

But still she could not rest. To be in bed would only mean to lie awake while the aches and pains grew. Impossible. Pulling on the white summer coat in which she had left England but never worn since then, she went along to Gwen's room which was on the same floor and knocked at the door.

She had to knock three times before she heard a reluctant hand unloosing a bolt and then turning a lock. The door opened, Gwen fell back with a low cry, instantly suppressed, and Rose stepped forward. Owen, holding the collapsing girl with a hand over her mouth, pushed her into Mrs. Lawler's arms while he re-locked the door, bolted it and put the key in his own pocket.

They were both very scantily clothed, Rose noted, if clothed at all but only wrapped, one in a flimsy dressing gown and the other in a towelling beach coat. She pushed Gwen into a chair, turned and said briskly. “
You
here! Well, I
am
glad!” So she was, for she saw a possible real escape from her fear and danger.

“Yes, it's me,” he answered. “And may I express an equal pleasure in seeing you. Gwen has just led me to suppose …”

“Gwen is a very silly girl,” Mrs. Lawler said, as severely as she could. “She exaggerates.”

“She's a compulsive liar,” Owen said. “But I think this time she was trying to tell me the truth.”

“You two …” Gwen struggled to speak. “Bloody liars yourselves! She said she couldn't swim, not far, she said. She acted like … like …”

Gwen began to cry. Neither of the others took any further notice of her.

“Seriously,” Rose said. “There was an attempt on my life. It failed because they were so intent on faking a natural bathing accident.”

She went on to tell him what had happened from the moment she was kidnapped and forced on board the launch. She explained how she had recovered her clothes and valuables. The old watchman had taken no steps about her absence. She was asked no questions at the reception desk when she reached the hotel. She saw from the key board that Gwen had got back before her.