Paid and Loving Eyes

For Cissie?

I’d probably got time for a walk. Stretch my legs after all this standing about. So I left, walked down among the trees.

Goodnight, Gobbie.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

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Lovejoy!” The last person on earth I wanted to see, Dicko Chave. He was impeccably dressed, tweeds to his eyeballs, handmade leather shoes.

My heart sank. “Dicko! Just in time, mate!”

He stood in the corridor, beaming. “Had difficulty finding you, old chap. Some young lady guided me. Seems like everybody’s talking about you there. Made a killing, what?”

“Er, aye. Look.” I was trying to explain my nakedness, towel wrapped round my middle. I lowered my voice. “The lady—remember my temporary partner, that I want to introduce you to? She’ll arrive in half an hour. I’m trying to get ready. Mind if we meet up in the residents’ lounge?”

He almost fell over with enthusiasm. “Certainly, Lovejoy!” He wrung my hand. “Never forget this, old sport. You’re a brick!”

I went in and shut the door in relief. Katta looked up from the bed. Credit where credit is due, a plump woman is real value. I realized I’d never seen her under the bedclothes. A natural counter-paner.

“Khoo theyet?”

“Eh? Oh, friend.” She flicked the towel from me. She stared. She had a smiley kind of stare, the most erotic I’d ever seen. She reached. She had an erotic kind of reach, the most erotic reach I’d ever felt.

“He naye-iss?”

“Aye. Yes.”

As we started to make smiles, and I groaned in bliss at the ceiling and she grunted with divine relish, a strange possibility came into what was left of my mind. I tried hard to register it for afters, so to speak, but failed.

“Lovejoy, mon ami,”

I’d been summoned before Pascal, the day after the deaths. He had two assistants with him. Lilian Sweet had Gerald and an official of some ministry. Two uniformed police worked transcribers. I’d never heard so much racket before, not even in a cop shop.

“Oui, Monsieur Pascal?”

“Did you know?”

Ponder for a sec. A minefield of a question. If I said no, he’d say, What didn’t you know? And thence et dangerous cetera into some Parisian clink. I could joke: Know? That France intended to demolish the Eiffel Tower in 1909, when it was a mere twenty years old, and build on the site…? but that’d nark him. You counter word tricks with a definition.

“Know? That the explosion was going to happen? No, Monsieur. How could I?”

“Indeed. How could you, Lovejoy?”

More mines, I nodded, grave and sad. “Even delaying so long, I worried lest I missed a couple. That’s why I took your watch, allowed myself only two more minutes. Less, even.”

“Marc was gardener-chauffeur at Mrs. Galloway’s lodge. The place you stayed as her lover when you first came to France, Lovejoy. Had you met him previously?”

Shrug, my own personal ineptly non-Gallic version. “Vaguely saw him about the place.” I straightened, honour bound. “But, I do not make any admission about the relationship between Mrs. Galloway and myself. The lady’s honour forbids me speak —”

“Oui, oui, Lovejoy.” He had a knack of making agreement sound disbelief. “Your firmness does you credit. About the events surrounding the explosions at the Swiss Repository.”

“I was in Zurich when that happened, I believe. But I had nothing to do with it.”

“You observed no similarities between the mansion house of yesterday and the Repository?”

A shrug to dispel surprise. “Similarities? I knew neither place. When I was taken to the garden party, for reasons that even now are unclear, I wasn’t even sure where it was.”

“Lovejoy. There will be criminal charges brought. Their precise nature is yet to be determined. For this week you will remain in Paris. Thank you.”

And I left. They’d booked me into a small hotel near the Pantheon, which pleased me. I was to report three times daily to the bobbies. Each time, Pascal had to be notified in case he wanted me. I realized with a shock that Lilian and Gerald Sweet had an office, a real genuine office, in Pascal’s division. Can you believe it? Their underhandedness took my breath away. What’s happened to fair play?”

Katta was waiting outside Pascal’s office on a bench, a picture of misery. She brightened when she saw me, leapt up and embraced me, cooing. I realized instandy that here was a woman filled with love’s natural warmth. She’d lost Paulie, requiescat in pace, her precious plaything, and wanted another. Just to tide her over, I said I was free and did she have time for a chat. I’m always ready to do friends a good turn. Anybody’ll tell you.

“Listen, Katta, love.” I stopped us just short of the lounge. “One thing. I’m really happy.” Nothing settles a