‘Sure.’ But not, I thought, necessarily about everything. I didn’t like this Treasury approach, largely I suppose because it wasn’t typical form. And I’m a great one for form.
*
I was in Paris by five o’clock. I looked up Monsieur Robert Duchêne in the directory at the airport, but he was not listed with a telephone number. François Paulet was listed at the business address he had given me. I don’t know why, but in the taxi going to 2 bis Rue du Bac to see Monsieur Robert Duchêne I suddenly had a comfortable feeling because in talking to Gloriana, although I had mentioned Duchêne and Leon Pelegrina of Florence, I hadn’t given their addresses to her. Frankly, there seemed something a little fishy to me in the Gloriana-Treasury tie-up. More frankly, I recognized stage two of my usual client relationship—a nagging feeling that I wasn’t being told the truth and nothing but the truth, that somewhere somebody was preparing to take advantage of me.
Two bis Rue du Bac was an open doorway next to a stationer’s shop. Beyond the doorway was a narrow hall with a wooden board on the wall announcing who lived in each of the six flats that made up the building. Duchêne was listed in Number 4. I went up the bare board stairs through an atmosphere thick with the smell of ancient meals and tobacco smoke.
Duchêne had handwritten his name on a piece of paper and slipped it into the card holder on the door. I rang the bell and waited. Nothing happened. I rang again, and while my finger was still on the bell push I noticed that the door was off its catch. I stopped ringing and gave it a gentle push with my toe, It swung back and I went in. There was a little hallway, two doors either side and a door at the far end. A man’s bicycle stood against one wall, a raincoat hung on a peg on the other and there was a small side-table piled with old copies of Elle and Paris-Match. The coloured cover page of the top one was given up to a head and shoulders photograph of Brigitte Bardot, marred somewhat by the fact that someone had added in biro a pair of spectacles, a drooping meerschaum pipe and a fancy-looking medal above her left breast. I didn’t stop to work out whether it was the Croix de Guerre or the Victoria Cross. I was just thinking that this place didn’t seem the kind of pad that went with a wealthy, if unscrupulous, collector of antique coins.
The big door at the end of the hall was also slightly ajar. I pushed it open with my toe and stood waiting. Nothing happened. Inside the room I could see part of a settee and beyond it a bureau. There was a knife-slit along the cover of the settee, the material was pulled loose, and three cushions lay on the floor, with covers ripped off and some loose stuffing material which had come from inside them on the carpet. The bureau drawers were on the floor in front of the piece, and papers and odds and ends were scattered about as though a small whirlwind had hit the place.
I left a nice big interval, listening hard as a safety precaution, heard nothing, and then went in.
Someone politely shut the door behind me and something cold was pressed against the back of my neck. I didn’t try to move or turn round. Facing me from the window was a number who reminded me of a full-size model I’d once seen of a Neanderthal man, only this one wore a leather jacket and blue jeans, openwork sandals, a dirty white shirt, and had in his hand a flower pot which held a red azalea.
In the politest of voices he said, ‘Bon soir, Monsieur Duchêne. Nous sommes tres content de vous voir.’
He got hold of the base stem of the azalea and pulled it out of the pot, bringing the roots and soil with it. He then examined the inside of the flower pot, shrugged his shoulders with disappointment, and let the whole shebang drop to the floor. The pot shattered and the azalea scattered its petals.
In English I said, ‘You’ve got it wrong. My name is Apsley—Richard Apsley—and I’m from Her Majesty’s Treasury Solicitor’s office in London.’ The esses whistled a bit but I managed to sound casual. I added, ‘Also, this thing at the back of my neck is making me feel very cold.’
Neanderthal smiled and from such a grotesque face it came with surprising sympathy. In good English he said, ‘Then in that case, or any case, we won’t concern ourselves with you any longer.’ He reached out an arm about four feet long, plucked a picture from the wall and began to tear off the backing paper.
I said, ‘That’s no way to treat a Picasso, even if it is only a reproduction.’
I never got his reaction to this. The cold steel was suddenly gone from the back of my neck. I was hit hard and expertly above and just to the back of my right ear, and went down and out to join the azalea on the floor.
CHAPTER 4
Girl with a Python on her Arm
Naturally, when I came to they were gone. But they’d left their mark, not only on me, but the whole flat. I knew something about turning a place over, but they knew more. It had been gutted. In the bathroom, where I staggered to get my head under the cold tap, the soap had been cut into small segments in case anything had been hidden in it. In the hall the magazines were all over the place and the tyres of the bicycle had been ripped open.
They only conceded one touch of neatness. Going back into the sitting room, I found that they had taken all the contents of my pockets—nothing was missing—and laid them out
