Dorothy Eden (7 page)

But this she could not quite bring herself to do. She left it lying on the dressing-table, and picked up the telephone to ask for a bath. Her exhaustion still clung to her, and it made her feel strangely sad and gloomy. She had made such a mess of her mission to Rome, and the thought of Francesca, an innocent seven-year-old, caught up in quarrels that were not hers, depressed her. The child should be having the normal fun and security one associated with childhood.

However, a bath and fresh clothes, and then a quick excursion around Paris would take away her morbid feelings. The hotel was old-fashioned, and she was escorted, with ceremony, by an elderly porter with a towel draped over his arm, to the top floor where the bath was filled almost to overflowing with very hot water.

In this she lingered longer than she had meant to. When she returned to her room she wondered if Lucian had been trying to get her on the telephone. But it was foolish to stay in on the chance of a call from a virtual stranger who by now was probably too busy with his own affairs to worry about her. She would go out for a brief sight-seeing tour while the daylight lasted.

But it was a pity… His face remained persistently in her mind. That sketch—where was it? She thought she had left it on her dressing-table. She was positive she had. But it was not there.

Neither did it seem to be anywhere else, not even in the wastepaper basket. Someone must have come in to tidy up the room.

But nothing else had been touched. The bed was left rumpled from her long sleep. Her things were flung carelessly about. With a small stirring of uneasiness she remembered the real or fancied opening of her door as she awoke from sleep. Had someone wanted to come in then, but finding her there, gone away? It would be difficult to know whether or not anyone had searched her suitcase, for its contents were already untidy enough. Her handbag she had prudently taken up to the bathroom with her, so her money and passport were safe. Only the menu card, quite valueless, was missing…

In the Luxembourg Gardens a little girl was trying to catch a kitten, but it had escaped and somehow climbed the statue of the Cyclops hanging over the Fountain of the Medicis. The dark, still water, sprinkled with amber leaves and flashing with the amber shine of darting goldfish, separated the child from the kitten. Her face had a lost, longing look. She instantly made Kate think of Francesca, and the look that would be on her face now that she had lost her doll and her party. Surely something could be done, even by an outsider, to make that child happy. She must talk with Mrs. Dix when she returned to London.

Meantime… the lovely slender queens with their flowing stone draperies stood in their calm circle round the plots of red geraniums, the grouped nannies and babies, the autumn-leaved chestnuts and the fountains. Some of the little girls playing on the grass wore starched white frocks. Kate found herself walking closer to them to look into their faces. How foolish she was not to be able to get it out of her mind that somewhere, somehow, Francesca really was in Paris. Perhaps having her promised ascent of the Eiffel Tower…

Of course. That’s where she should go before the light faded. She took a taxi, and was whisked across the city at an alarming speed. In spite of it being late afternoon there was still a crowd of tourists lingering about the preposterous erection, and the lifts creaking up and down were packed.

But as soon as she had arrived Kate realized what a forlorn and useless thing she was doing. Francesca was not here. Even if she were mysteriously in Paris whoever had seized her would not be the kind of person who would indulge her desire to ascend the Eiffel Tower.

A lift had just opened to disgorge its occupants. An official was saying beguilingly to Kate, “Ticket, m’selle. The view is marvellous. Such a clear afternoon.”

Still in her dreamy and slightly haunted daze Kate went to the ticket office and bought a ticket. After all, the man was right. One might as well see the view. She filed into the lift with the waiting queue of people, and the doors shut. Slowly the creaking mechanism worked, and the city began to fall away. Kate edged to the side to look down. Suddenly she saw a flash of white in the crowd below.

“Kate! Kate!”

The lift creaked louder and around her people chattered excitedly in various languages. Kate wanted to shout frantically, “Be quiet! Be quiet! Someone’s calling me!” She was gripping the side of the lift which dragged her inexorably away from the glimpse she had caught of a white frock.

Oh, if only they would stop it!
Had
someone called her? Now, as the crowds on the ground grew smaller it was impossible to know. Certainly a child had called. But had the name been Kate? Or was that her own wishful thinking? And thousands of little girls in Paris wore white dresses.

“Crazy structure,” said a friendly American voice beside her.

Kate smiled vaguely at him, and began to push her way towards the doors.

“You had enough already?” his voice followed her.

The lift shuddered to a stop at the first floor. Kate pushed her way out. “Excuse me. I have to hurry. Excuse me.” They would think she was ill, or had no head for heights. It didn’t matter. Now she could run down the steps and be on the ground in a few minutes.

But would that be soon enough to know whether, indeed, a little girl had called excitedly to her?

She hurried out into the leisurely gaping and chattering crowd. She called “Francesca!” in a voice as high and shrill as any Italian’s. But apart from people looking curiously at her, and another American, a woman, saying sympathetically, “Have you lost someone, dear?” nothing happened. The cry to her had been an illusion.

Or if it had not, Francesca had been taken swiftly away…

Now, all at once, Paris was beautiful and hostile, and for the first time she had to fight against tears. She felt as if she were in the middle of some strange, fascinating, lovely but treacherous nightmare. The Seine, dark and smooth beneath its high banks and bending trees, the gladioli glowing in the street-sellers’ stall, the wandering tourists, priests, soldiers, and thin girls with long hair and secret faces were all part of it. She must get back to her hotel with its shabby, warm, red carpets and glowing brass, where Lucian might be waiting for her, and she could disperse the nightmare.

It was not Lucian who was waiting for her. A completely strange man stood up as she came into the foyer. He eyed her tentatively until the clerk at the counter nodded to him. Then he went over to her.

“Miss Tempest?”

“Yes.” Kate was surprised. Why should this stranger approach her? He was certainly English. Apart from his voice, everything about him from his tweed jacket to his clipped moustache, rather plump ruddy face, and air of confidence, proclaimed the fact.

“I’m Johnnie Lambert,” he said. “I got into Paris this afternoon, and Mrs. Dix suggested I look you up. She said something about a spot of bother.”

“I don’t follow—”

“Of course you don’t.” He took her arm in a friendly way. His voice was slightly hearty. But he looked pleasant enough, and he was not part of the nightmare. That was the important thing. “Come and have a drink and I’ll explain.”

He took her into the bar, and asked her what she would drink, then before she could answer said, “We’re in Paris, so let’s have something typically French, eh? How about a Chambery?”

He was undoubtedly the masterful type. But kind. And she needed someone like that just now to despatch the nightmare.

“I’m beginning to follow,” she said, as he sat down with the drinks. “You work for Mrs. Dix, too.”

“That’s right. I’ve just had a spell of tutoring two young Arab princes. Glubb Pasha stuff in an academic way. But I’ll be glad to get back to London, I’m telling you!”

“In the Arabian desert?” Kate asked, thinking that of course this was exactly his sort of thing. Schoolmastering with a difference, the tweedy-sporty type, full of good humour, fond of a dash of adventure, not quite middle-aged, and never allowing himself to admit the approach of that time.

“No, Beirut. Fair enough, but it palls. I just got in this afternoon, and when I rang Mrs. Dix to report she told me about you. We’re flying home on the same plane in the morning, so she thought I might cheer you up. Said you were worried. Something went wrong with your trip. What was it? A disappearing child or something?”

“Sounds like a magician’s trick,” Kate said ruefully. “I don’t see how I could have prevented it, even if I’d held her hand all the time. If her father insisted on her going back to Rome, who was I to refuse to let her go?”

“Quite. Quite. Matrimonial squabbles are the devil. But it was hardly fair on you, playing a trick like that. Is the father an Italian opera singer or something? Sounds like a love of melodrama. Did the child just disappear without leaving any trace?”

“She left her doll, which is another thing that worries me. She was very attached to it. I’ve been carrying it around in my bag.”

“Her doll, eh? Well, that’s proof, isn’t it. Too bad. Poor little devil. Well, not to worry, Mrs. Dix says.”

“Yes, I try not to, but I keep thinking of it from the child’s point of view. So bewildering for her. And she wanted to go on the Eiffel Tower, too. A little while ago when I went to the Eiffel Tower I thought I heard her calling me. A voice just like, ‘Kate! Kate!’ I suppose I’m tired and I’ve let the thing haunt me. It couldn’t have been Francesca, and yet I’m sure it was.”

“You’ve had a tough time,” said Johnnie Lambert sympathetically. “Have another drink.”

“No, thank you very much.”

“Then let’s go out to dinner. I know we don’t know each other, but we both belong to the same firm. We’re both alone in Paris and we’re both browned off with kids at the moment. Three good reasons. What do you say?”

“I’d like to, but I’m expecting a telephone call. I ought to wait in.”

“When is this call likely to come?”

“Oh, any time.”

“Give him until eight o’clock and if he hasn’t phoned by then, come out with me. Fair enough?”

“Him?”

The blue, glinting eyes of Johnnie Lambert watched her humorously.

“Kate, you’re much too attractive to be sitting in a Parisian hotel waiting for a girl-friend, or an elderly relative. We only have this evening, and I can show you a most intriguing little place on the Left Bank. Home by midnight. How’s that?”

He was a little too hearty and masterful, but he meant to be kind. And it was quite true, an evening alone would be unendurable. How could she be sure Lucian would telephone? The answer clearly was that if he did not do so by eight o’clock he was tied up with other business or that he did not particularly want to see her again.

“All right,” she said slowly.

“Fine.” Johnnie’s voice was full of enthusiasm. “I’ll meet you here at eight, but if you absolutely can’t make it, I’ll see you on the plane in the morning.”

The intriguing little place that Johnnie knew was startling enough to make her temporarily forget her strange worry about Francesca, and her illogically deep disappointment that after all Lucian had not telephoned.

Johnnie Lambert had not Lucian’s distinction of feature or interesting sombreness, but he was pleasant, kind and a little overpoweringly jolly. It amused him to see her reactions to the night club which flourished in the remains of a medieval dungeon. It was entered by way of a steep, winding staircase, the worn stones of which had carried feet in less happy circumstances, and the age-blackened arched ceiling of the dungeon itself was low and a little claustrophobic. Once, Johnnie told her in his hearty, untroubled voice, people had been flung in here to die. Either starvation, sickness, or the rising water of the undrained cellar carried them off. No one but the persons who occasionally flung them food, or pushed in another victim, would have heard their cries. But if their ghosts lingered, it was in a very different atmosphere of dim lights, smoke and the sound of a piano played by a middle-aged woman, with very blonde hair and very long teeth. Now and then a singer would appear to croon some low song. Once it was a man with a curious smooth face, like wax, untouched by the lines of age, yet with cold, disillusioned eyes, and later Madame herself, magnificent in black velvet, with even blacker hair, who came to roll her large, liquid eyes at her male customers.

“Do you like it?” Johnnie asked Kate.

“I’m not sure.” She looked at the low ceiling, and the protruding hooks which once must have been grasped by desperate fingers. “I think of the past.”

“Bless your kind heart. That’s all over long ago. Water under the bridge. Dead men rise up never. That sort of thing. What shall we eat and drink? Shall I order?”

“Please do. And it is fun. But such an odd place.”

Later the singers sang old French songs, “Sur le pont d’Avignon” and “Frère Jacques.” Kate hummed the melody, relaxing at last, and Johnnie, who really was very kind, leaned towards her and said, “That’s better. Now you look happy. Have you stopped worrying about that kid?”

“Yes, I think so, I expect she’s all right. I’ll send her back her doll when we get to London.”

“Tell me exactly how all this happened.”

Her glass, she noticed, had been filled again. The wine and the music and the smoke and the flickering colours of the dancers’ skirts were all combining to make her pleasantly fuzzy in her head. But she still had an obscure longing to be sitting in her bedroom at the hotel waiting for the telephone to ring. At this very moment, she thought, Lucian was standing somewhere, impatiently dialling the number and waiting for her to answer.

She tried, with exactitude, to recount to Johnnie the events of the journey from Rome, but her story strayed a little, and he had to keep bringing her back to the point.

“You say no one believed you had a child with you. Not even this man who helped you?”

“Lucian? But he had never seen Francesca and I hadn’t talked about her. One doesn’t relate all one’s affairs to a stranger over dinner.”

Johnnie’s hand, square and soft, rested momentarily on hers.

“I wish you’d break that rule, Kate.”

She looked at his face which was now very close to hers. It was too large and too red, and all its expression seemed to be in its lips. She couldn’t take her eyes off those waiting lips.