The Venetian Affair (30 page)

“I thought she was a filing clerk in Inspector Bernard’s office, yesterday morning. At least, she brought photographs for me to study. I didn’t know she was studying me.”

“Well, that’s co-operation.” Fenner was impressed.

“Must be quite an emergency,” she said thoughtfully. “Rosie really has pushed the panic button. What do you—?”

“Look out for boarders,” Fenner warned her as two men and a woman came to join them on the raft. And then, swimming up to hoist himself on board, too, was a dark-haired man who had been floating peacefully nearby. He apologised pleasantly to Fenner as he stepped, dripping, over his legs to reach a vacant space. Close up, the face was handsome, with bold blue eyes and strong white teeth displayed in a friendly smile. His shoulders were massive, his torso firmly muscled, his neck strong and thick.

“That’s all right,” Fenner said not too enthusiastically, and went on talking to Claire. She had not recognised Jan Aarvan at all: the photograph in Inspector Bernard’s file could not have been either clear or recent. The man’s hair was darker than it had been on the Simplon Express. But the eyes were the same hard blue, the nose and cheekbones were of the same blunt cut, and the same speculative expression was still there to remind Fenner of the face glancing up at Vaugiroud’s window. Stop thinking about him, Fenner’s instincts warned him: go on talking to Claire, or listen to the discussion behind you about the cost of water-skiing, but don’t think about Kalganov’s man stretched out so peacefully just three feet away. “This was
certainly not the time to warn Claire; just let her talk on, he thought. She wouldn’t stay long here anyhow. Their use for the raft was over.

“I’m hungry,” she said suddenly. “What about lunch?”

They dived, and swam until they grounded. As they waded ashore hand in hand, he said very quietly, “I wanted to talk about your shoulders on the raft, but I didn’t want to see them stiffen.”

She got the allusion. She pulled off her cap and shook her hair loose. “He will know us again, all right,” she said worriedly. “He’s very confident, isn’t he? You could feel that, even as he lay there. I thought he was one of those lone superwolves.” She paused. “I’m glad you didn’t talk about my shoulders. He’s the animal who can sense—” She didn’t finish. She tried to smile. “What would you have said about my shoulders?”

“Oh, something conventional—the prettiest shoulders I’ve seen today, even when slightly broiled. But I like them rare, with mustard.”

“They can’t be!”

“We’ll know tonight, just around dinnertime. I hope you weren’t thinking of wearing an orange dress, Mrs. Langley?”

She was laughing, which was a good way to walk up the beach, past the rows of private tents where darkly tanned people lay and looked all day.

As she picked up her towel, she was back to worrying again. “He stared straight at you, Bill—” She bit her lip.

“And I stared right back at the gobs of water he was sloshing around. Okay?”

“Good,” she admitted. She rubbed the back of her head where her hair was wet. “I suppose a man would do that.”

“Completely authentic,” he assured her, “when ladies are
present. Alone, I’d have said, ‘Hey you, watch where you’re putting your so-and-so feet, you such-and-such!’ Stop worrying, my pet. You’re just a hungry girl. How do
scampi
and some chilled Soave Verona sound?”

She was smiling again. “Find them for me,” she said, and went to dress.

He did find them, by asking the advice of the bathhouse couple, whose cousins—it just so happened, Italian-style—ran a small garden restaurant behind the beach. Half of its little tables were empty by this time, allowing them privacy, at least. Underfoot was hard-packed earth floor; overhead, a trellis of vine leaves with coloured lights waiting (mercifully, thought Fenner) for evening gaiety. The checked tablecloths were clean, and the fish—straight from the Adriatic on to the charcoal grill—excellent. Greatest triumph of all was Claire, who thought he was a magician to have pulled this place out of his hat, and Fenner, bronzed by the sun and strong sea air, incredibly refreshed by a warm-water swim, felt relaxed and even-tempered for the first time in twenty-four hours.

As they drank the bitter black coffee, he settled back to watch the sunlight spilling through the leaves over Claire’s golden hair. “There is only one thing for you to do,” he said quietly. “Get out of all this business. Marry Neill and take him out, too.”

The grey eyes under their long dark lashes looked up in astonishment. “I’ll get out when I finish this job. But Neill?” She was half-puzzled, half-embarrassed.

“He was a country newspaper editor before he was a soldier.”

“Go back to that?” She shook her head. “He would develop ulcers wondering what really lay behind the headlines.” There
was a long pause. “And marry him? Why did you say that?” Her eyes dropped to the twist of lemon peel she had picked up.

“Well—you’re his girl. Aren’t you?”

Again she fell silent. Under the sun-kissed skin, a soft glow spread over the beautifully moulded cheekbones. She said, “Neill didn’t tell you that.”

“No.”

She looked up again, in relief. “So it was—” She halted out of caution, although their nearest neighbour was four tables away.

“Our deep-freeze expert,” Fenner conceded.

“He would.” The embarrassment had cleared from her face. She smiled, treating it as a joke.

And was it only a joke, Rosie’s little invention to keep Fenner’s mind from wandering off into romance when hard business had to be dealt with? “It isn’t true?”

Claire hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “At least—” He was looking at her, unbelieving. “Why do you ask?”

It was he who hesitated now. He had known this girl, apart from seeing her twice in the distance and one brief meeting on Friday evening, exactly twenty-one hours and fifty minutes. A very concentrated twenty-one hours and fifty minutes, it was true. He was thirty-seven, practically touching thirty-eight; a veteran of several wars, declared and undeclared; a man who thought he knew, at last, the direction his life was taking. Not the kind of man, his friends would have sworn, who would be tripped up by a pair of sparkling eyes. But these had him sprawling. He told her the truth, however impolitic it might be. “Because your answer is important.”

She didn’t ask why. She was neither amused nor flustered nor embarrassed. She simply repeated, “I don’t know.” She noticed
the expression on his face. “You can scarcely believe that, can you?”

“Not in you. You’re a woman who has a mind, and uses it.”

“My mind tells me that—I’m bad for Neill.”

“Bad for him?” He shook his head. “How?”

“I’ve known him for about six weeks. I saw him a lot. He could relax with me, trust me... But now he talks of getting out of the army, of giving up his work in Intelligence, of returning to Iowa.” She was worried, unhappy. “Because of me, Bill.”

He agreed with Carlson: it would be a hard life for any woman to be married to a man in his profession. “Nonsense,” he said very gently. “Carlson wants to get back to Iowa.”

“To that apple tree?” She shook her head. “We all talk that way, now and again. We mean it for a month. And then?” She sighed. “No. Men like Neill are needed—here, in Europe. He knows that. He would begin to feel like a deserter. That’s no good. No good at all. Some men could argue themselves into believing that life owes them their own pleasure. Not Neill.”

“You have told him all this?”

“Yes. We had a small fight over it yesterday.”

“Who won?”

“Who wins in a quarrel with someone he likes? We both lost something.” Her head drooped. “The truth is that he is one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. And I can’t bear to hurt him.” And the truth is, she told herself painfully, you can’t really be in love with Neill Carlson or else you’d have married him right away, whatever his job, wherever he worked. And the truth is you might have drifted from affection and trust into love, into marriage, if you hadn’t met Bill Fenner on Friday evening. How could one short meeting with a stranger have had any
meaning at all? It had none. Except that it made you uncertain. And if you are really in love, there is no uncertainty: there must not be, or else your marriage would always be vulnerable, a gamble... She looked up at Bill Fenner. I should hate this man, she thought, for having destroyed my pleasant drifting dream. Yet I don’t.

“But you don’t marry anyone out of a sense of obligation,” Fenner said worriedly. “Do you?”

“I don’t know—I don’t even know that, any more.”

“Claire—”

“What time is it?” she asked quickly.

“Quarter of four. If we leave here by four-fifteen, we should have plenty of leeway.”

“Ample,” she agreed. She stared at her fingers. They had shredded the sliver of lemon peel into a yellow pulp.

“More coffee?” he asked. He took her hands and wiped their finger tips with his handkerchief. “And this time, we’ll ask for several twists of lemon.” He signalled to the waiter.

She had to smile. She was relieved, too, to retreat away from her painful moment of truth. “How is our theme song?”

“The lady in blue is still with us. Far behind you, trying to make a plate of spaghetti last a full hour. No more interest in our conversation, apparently. I don’t think she even expects us, now, to meet anyone. We have wasted her day.”

“How nice!”

“But of course if we concentrate on her, we might not notice anyone else. That could be the idea, couldn’t it? It’s pretty silly the way she has kept haunting us—too obvious.”

“You catch on very quickly.”

“Slowly,” he corrected. “I only just thought of it.”

“You are doing beautifully,” she told him gently, “for a man who lost his raincoat only two days ago.”

“You know about that?”

“You look startled. Too startled,” she reminded him. No one could hear them. But they were certainly in clear view of at least fifteen people.

He put his hand over hers as it lay beside her coffee cup. “As startled as if you had just promised to go back to America with me?”

She tried to draw her hand away, then—as his tightened—she let it lie under his. “You
are
doing beautifully,” she told him again. “This looks perfect.”

“You aren’t blushing enough.”

“I’m a hard case.”

“Are you?”

“Not with you, it seems. I shouldn’t have let that slip—about your coat.”

“How did you learn?”

“I wanted to find out how you got mixed up in all this.”

“Why?”

She tried to evade that, and didn’t succeed. “Because, oh—just because I was interested.” She fell silent, thankfully, as the waiter brought another pot of
espresso
and left.

“I told you I wasn’t good for Neill,” she reminded him. And in quick defence of Carlson, she added, “He didn’t say too much. Just a phrase about meeting you in search of a coat. But there was a report in one of the Paris newspapers yesterday that the French had tracked down a currency smuggler at Orly—at least, they were in possession of his coat, and an arrest was imminent. Didn’t you read about it?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t get around to reading many newspapers yesterday. And I wish you hadn’t.”

“Why?”

“The less you know, the safer you’ll be.”

“And what about you? Or is it all right for men to know and be placed in danger?”

“Yes.”

“You are looking much too serious,” she said, her eyes glancing at the rest of the garden.

“I am serious.” He uncovered her hand, held it, looked at it, at last released it. “You worry the hell out of me.”

“I wouldn’t have been sent here if I had to be worried over.” She tested the drip coffeepot, and poured carefully.

“How did you get mixed up in all this?” he asked her.

“Two reasons. I knew Sandra Fane long ago in New York. And Frank Rosenfeld knew me in Indochina. Two separate little points in my life which travelled a long way until their lines crossed, here in Venice.”

“You knew Sandra—” He broke off. Their young waiter was returning with some strips of lemon peel.

“We both had small parts in a Broadway play. I was the little maid who brought in the breakfast tray to a glamorous screen star and opened her bedroom curtains each morning. I looked out at a blank backstage wall and the tired face of a stagehand, and spoke my immortal line: ‘It’s going to be a lovely day, Miss Julie.’” The waiter was clearing away the dishes. He’d be back for the glasses and wine bottle. “She was the disapproving secretary who found Miss Julie on the terrace in Act Three. Suicide. Oh, it was a very pregnant play, filled with deep inner meanings about the empty shell of success.”
Here came the waiter for the glasses and last crumbs. “It ran for two months—that was in 1951, when you were in Korea, weren’t you?—and by the time it ended, I decided my brain was being turned into cream cheese. So I thought I’d try art school instead. And then I met Jim Langley” (and fell in love, really in love, she thought) “and we got married and went out to Indochina. That was in 1953.”

The waiter had left. But Fenner still remained silent. He concentrated on melting a lump of sugar in his coffee cup.

“I didn’t know Sandra well. She was older, mixed with a different crowd.” She paused, wondering if he was even listening.

“I guess she did,” he said. The white sugar turned brown and crumpled slowly. “So—when Rosie heard you were going to one of her parties in Paris, he asked you to talk to her, find out whether she had changed politics.” Insistent boy, old Rosie.

“How did you guess?”

“He asked me to do the same thing. What did you find?”

“I thought she was putting on the best act of her life. I was wrong—obviously.”

“I wonder.”

“You mean you don’t think she is honestly defecting?”

“I think she’s quitting the party because she has no other choice left.” He shook his head. “That was the last small hope I had. That one day she’d make a clean and honest break—something she needn’t be ashamed of.” He looked up and saw Claire’s expression. “For her own sake,” he said. “Her life is hers to arrange. Her conscience is her job, not mine. And thank God for that.” He drank the coffee, a bitter brew.