11
I went about the business of concocting the evidence with bitter thoroughness.
I got out my suitcase and locked it. Then I looked round for something with which to force the latches open. I made the first attempt with a pair of nail scissors. The locks were flimsy enough, but it was difficult to get any leverage on the scissors. After five minutes’ unsuccessful labor, I snapped one of the blades. I wasted several more minutes searching idly for a stronger tool. In desperation I took the key from the bedroom door and used the flat steel loop on it as a jimmy. The locks eventually yielded to this treatment, but I bent the key and had to spend more time straightening it. Then I opened the lid, stirred up the contents and, contorting my features into an expression of outraged innocence, hurried downstairs to find Koche.
He was not in his office. By the time I had traced him to the beach where he was lounging about in a bathing suit, my outraged innocence had relaxed into a sort of cringing anxiety. The Skeltons, the French couple, and Monsieur Duclos were down there with him. I played with the idea of awaiting a more opportune moment; but rejected it. I must remember that a robbery had been committed. Objects of value had been stolen from my room. I must behave as any normal person would behave under such circumstances; I must report to the manager even if he was clad only in a pair of bathing trunks. A sleek, black-coated manager would have been more appropriate to the occasion, but I must do the best I could with Koche.
I ran down the steps to the beach and started across the sand towards him. At this point, however, there was a disconcerting interruption. Skelton, hearing my footsteps on the stairs, had looked round the edge of his sunshade and seen me.
“Hey!” he called over. “Haven’t seen you all morning. Are you coming in the water before lunch?”
I hesitated; then, realizing that there was nothing else for it, I went over. Mary Skelton, who was lying face downwards on the sand, turned her head and cocked an eye at me.
“We thought you’d deserted us, Mr. Vadassy. You’ve no right to trifle with the kiddies’ affections like that. Get into your bathing suit and come and give us the dirt on the affair Clandon-Hartley. We saw you talking to him through the writing-room window after breakfast.”
“No finesse!” complained her brother. “I was going to introduce the subject gradually. What about it, Mr. Vadassy?”
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said hurriedly, “I must have a word with Koche. See you later.”
“That’s a deal!” he called over to me.
Koche was talking to Roux and Duclos. Evidently the quarrel of the previous night had been forgotten. I interrupted him in the middle of a disquisition on the virtues of Grenoble. I was tight-lipped and grave.
“Excuse me, Monsieur, but I should like to speak with you privately. It is rather urgent.”
He raised his eyebrows and excused himself to the others. We moved a little away.
“What can I do for you, Monsieur?”
“I regret to disturb you, but I am afraid I must ask you to step up to my room. While I was in the village just now, my suitcase has been broken open and several valuable objects stolen from it.”
The eyebrows went up again. He whistled softly between his teeth and glanced at me quickly. Then with a muttered “excuse me” he walked across the sand, picked up his bathing wrap and sandals, put them on, and rejoined me.
“I will come with you immediately.”
Under the curious eyes of the others we left the beach.
On the way up to my room he asked me what was missing. I gave him Beghin’s grotesque selection and added the tidbit about the films. He nodded and was silent. I began to feel apprehensive. True, there was no possible way of his discovering the whole business was a put-up job; yet, now that I had started the thing moving, I was uneasy. For all his lazy, indolent manner, Koche was no fool and I could not quite forget the fact that it was not impossible for Koche himself to have taken the films and also stunned me in the garden the night before. In that case he would know that I was lying. The consequences might be distinctly unpleasant for me. I cursed Beghin with renewed fervor.
Koche inspected my work on the suitcase locks with gloomy interest. Then he straightened his back and his eyes met mine.
“You say that you left your room at about nine o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“Was the suitcase all right, then?”
“Yes. The last thing I did before I went down was to lock the case and push it under the bed.”
He looked at his watch. “It is now eleven twenty. How long ago did you return?”
“About fifteen minutes ago. But I did not go to the suitcase straight away. As soon as I saw what had happened, I came straight to you. It is disgraceful,” I added lamely.
He nodded and eyed me speculatively. “Do you mind coming down to my office, Monsieur? I should like a detailed description of the missing objects.”
“Certainly. But I must warn you, Monsieur,” I mumbled, “that I shall hold you responsible and that I shall expect the immediate return of the valuables and the punishment of the thief.”
“Naturally,” he said politely. “I have no doubt that I shall be able to return your property to you within a very short time. There is no cause for you to worry.”
Feeling rather like an amateur actor who has forgotten his lines, I followed Koche down to his office. He closed the door carefully, drew up a chair for me and picked up a pen.
“Now, Monsieur. The cigarette-case first, if you please. It is, I think you said, a gold one.”
I looked at him quickly. He was writing something on the paper. I panicked. Had I said that it was a gold one when we were coming up from the beach? For the life of me I could not remember. Or was he trying to trap me? But I had an inspiration.
“No, a silver case, gold lined. It has,” I said, warming to my work, “my initials, ‘J. V.’, engraved in one corner and is machined on the outside. It holds ten cigarettes and the elastic is missing.”
“Thank you, and the chain?”
I remembered a second-hand chain I had seen displayed in a jeweler’s window near the Gare Montparnasse.
“Eighteen-carat gold, thick, old-fashioned links, heavy. It has a small gold medallion on it commemorating the Brussels Exhibition of 1901.”
He wrote it all down carefully.
“And now the pin, Monsieur.”
This was not so easy. “Just a pin, Monsieur. A tie-pin about six centimeters long with a small diamond about three millimeters in diameter in the head.” I gave way to a weak impulse. “The diamond,” I said, with a self- conscious laugh, “is paste.”
“But the pin itself is gold?”
“Rolled gold.”
“And the box in which these objects were left?”
“A tin box. A cigarette box. A German cigarette box. I cannot remember the brand. There was also in it two rolls of film, Contax film. They had been exposed.”
“You have a Contax camera?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me again. “I assume that you made sure that the camera was safe, Monsieur. A thief would get a good price for a camera.”
My heart missed about two beats. I had blundered badly.
“The camera?” I said stupidly. “I did not look. I left it in the drawer.”
He stood up. “Then I suggest, Monsieur, that we go and look immediately.”
“Yes, of course.” I was, I felt, very red in the face.
We went upstairs again and along to my room. I prepared myself carefully for the emission of the suitable cries of dismay and anger that would be necessary.
I rushed anxiously to the chest of drawers, pulled open the top drawer and rummaged feverishly inside it. Then I turned round slowly and dramatically.
