Paulet and I stood up and turned at the same moment.
A woman appeared in the doorway of the room. She wore a loose, very short-sleeved white coat over a green silk dress that showed her knees and a nice run of legs. She held a small white pigskin case in one hand and a big white handbag in the other. Full under the light she was a treat to look at and would have passed A1 at Lloyds or any other place. Her skin had a dusky, velvety suggestion about it, and her eyes were wide and dark. Her hair fell just short of her shoulders and had a gloss on it like fine old mahogany.
Putting in all the charm I could, I said, ‘Good evening, Miss Pelegrina.’
She said, ‘How the bloody hell did you get in here?’ It was a beautiful voice, low, vibrant, full of dark tones that really sent a chill down my spine without making me stop to think whether I needed my head examined. She hadn’t said ‘bloody’ either. It was something Anglo-Saxon and straight from the barrack room. I was charmed, bewitched by her.
‘The door was open and—forgive us—we walked in. We had an appointment with your father.’
‘Is that so? Well, the bloody door is still bloody open—so just walk straight out. I don’t want any friends or business acquaintances of my father’s in my flat.’
She stood back to give us room to pass. I didn’t move, though Paulet shuffled a few paces.
‘I understood this was his flat. It’s listed in the telephone directory as—’
‘If it suited him he’d list it under the name of President bloody Johnson. But it’s my flat, and I want a good night’s sleep, so get the hell out of here.’
She dropped her case and made a gesture with her right arm towards the hall. I was going to argue, but her right arm made me change my mind. Around her wrist and encroaching on the end of her dress sleeve was a python gold bracelet which I would have known anywhere.
I glanced at Paulet. I knew at once that he had seen it.
‘Come on, Paulet,’ I said. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow when Miss Pelegrina has had a good night’s sleep and is in a better mood.’
‘Just get out and stay out. And when you next see my father tell him also not to come back. Tell him I’m having the lock changed.’
Her right arm waved again, imperiously, and we shuffled by. I’m good at scents, but I couldn’t get hers. It was delicious, heady with all the magic and fascination of the East. I winked at her and she gave me a basilisk stare that would have put any of Wilkins’s efforts in the kindergarten class.
Standing in the square outside was a white Ford Thunderbird that hadn’t been there when we came in. It had a Rome number plate and thrown across the back seat was a mink coat. Before moving on I checked that the doors were locked against theft. They were.
CHAPTER 5
The Hour of Cowdust
From my room the next morning I telephoned Mrs Burtenshaw at the office. She was to contact my friend at Lloyds and get a list of Leon Pelegrina’s shipping interests if he still had any. I said I wanted a reply by the afternoon.
After that I called Gloriana and told her that I had met Leon Pelegrina but he had been unable to help me about Freeman. This was true enough and I did not bother her with the incidental details. In fact, enjoying myself as I was beginning to, feeling the old elan vital coming back and not wanting to lose it, I had decided that I was not handing over any incidental details to anyone. I would stick to bald and, as far as possible, true facts. At the moment I didn’t think that Gloriana was letting me in on the whole truth or, more charitably, didn’t know it all herself. The Treasury angle seemed unnatural. So did the attitude of my friend the Chief Superintendent in ‘C’ Department of New Scotland Yard. Usually if I came up on the inside of any horse they were running I could expect to be bumped into the rails. Here they’d hauled off and let me through. Monsieur Robert Duchêne for my money was a phoney. Just at the moment I wasn’t prepared to lump Paulet in the same category, but if I got a chance I was going to carry out an analysis for purity.
I phoned him too. He was staying in a cheap hotel near the Stazione Centrale. I told him to get round to Piazza Santo Spirito and keep an eye on things. Also, later, he was to try and contact Monsieur Duchêne. He said yes, yes, yes, full of eagerness. Too much eagerness, perhaps.
I gave him twenty minutes, and then I walked around to his hotel. On the way I thought about La Piroletta, and the python bracelet. Freeman was married to Jane Judd, and Jane Judd had been instructed that no matter what she heard she was to wait for the call from him to take off for pastures new. Pelegrina, I felt, could have been the man who had spoken to her and Gloriana on the phone, reassuring them about Freeman. As for Freeman . . . well, maybe he was the kind that kept one woman on a string while he played around with others, a game that usually ends up with a man getting the string snarled up around his feet and tripping over. In my book I was prepared to lay odds that the python bracelet was no love gift, but had been sold for hard cash.
At Paulet’s hotel the reception desk was empty. The number of his room was 17. I took a look at the key rack.
