We took a train down to Rome that afternoon and we booked into the Hotel Eden together. Paulet was a bit fussed about staying in a four-star job, but I told him to relax and try and get in touch with Monsieur Duchêne. He went off to do this, while I had a large Negroni in the bar and sat considering the information which Mrs Burtenshaw had phoned me at the Excelsior just after lunch. My Lloyds friend had said that the only maritime interest Pelegrina had at that moment seemed to be a steam yacht of some vintage called La Sunata—though the name had been changed a few times over the years—which was Greek registered at Piraeus, and which he let out on charter.
*
Monsieur Robert Duchêne arrived at the hotel at eleven the next morning. Paulet had said that he would not want to carry on a discussion in the bar or any of the hotel lounges so we held a conference in my room.
He was a tall lean man, wearing big horn-rimmed glasses, and he was in a bad temper. I put him at about fifty; his skin was like stained vellum and he smoked long Swiss cigars, each one having its own mouthpiece attached to it. He seldom took the cigar out of his mouth, talking expertly around each side of it, which gave a curious sideways waggle to his lips. It put them out of phase with his words as though his speech was being badly dubbed. However, he made himself clear in about ten minutes flat.
Talking exclusively to me, while Paulet sat humbly in the background, he said, ‘I will be perfectly frank with you, Monsieur Carver. I understand from Paulet that following your interview with Leon Pelegrina an attempt was made on your life. Also my flat in Paris was ransacked. All this is in some way connected with Freeman, yes?’
‘Yes.’ His English was good, but I was trying to place the accent behind it. It didn’t sound like French to me.
‘Then let me make this clear—but at the same time stress its confidential nature. I am in the art and antique world. And by that I do not mean I put in any appearances at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. I buy and sell in a twilight world.’
‘Nice way to put it.’
He frowned. ‘There is always a nice way to put even the most unpleasant things. Freeman stole certain coins from me and I thought their recovery would be a simple matter. With simple matters like theft and recovery without aid of the police I am at home. Let the matter become complicated and I want no more to do with it. Frankly, the coins were illegally acquired by me in the first place. Equally frankly I do not wish to pursue their recovery if it is to lead into deep and unfamiliar waters. In other words I do not like my flat being searched and I do not like being involved in an affair which has room for attempts on people’s lives. I am dropping the whole matter. Monsieur Paulet will be paid off, and whether you find Mr Freeman is now a matter of indifference to me. Am I understood?’
I looked at Paulet. This had obviously come as a surprise to him. He looked like a small boy who has had a Christmas present taken from him because he had got it by a mistake in the first place. He didn’t at that moment look like the man Thérèse loved and described as pleasant, clever and capable of being dangerous. He was just crestfallen.
I said, ‘Since you’ve never been a client of mine, Monsieur Duchêne, it is a matter of indifference to me what you decide about Freeman. I still have my own client to satisfy. Would I be right in thinking you’re not in the mood to answer any questions about Freeman?’
‘On the contrary, Mr Carver, I will tell you what little I do know. I met him almost a year ago in the Georges Cinq bar in Paris, and he subsequently sold me a Rajput painting of the late eighteenth century. It was of the Kangra school and was called “The Hour of Cowdust”. It showed Krsna returning with the herds to Brndaban at sundown.’
He paused for me to register how impressed I was and I did register—but something quite different. I was prepared to lay fifty to one in fivers that this long streak of snap and bite had me figured for an ignoramous when it came to art and antiques. And maybe I was. But what he hadn’t figured—though Thérèse could have given him a pointer of two—was that what I didn’t know about I checked against the best references. And I was damn well going to check this Rajput load of cowdust which he was throwing in my eyes. I could do it at the British Council library in Rome. He’d slipped up over ancient coins once, he could be doing the same over old Indian paintings.
He went on, ‘I met him once in Rome after that, and then not long ago he came to my flat in Paris and tried to sell me an antique Indian python bracelet. We could not agree on a price and he left. After he had gone I discovered that he had taken a collection of ancient coins I was holding for sale to a client.’
‘And you sent Paulet off to try and find him at his cottage in Kent, a cottage which, apparently, very few people knew about. How did you know about it?’
Duchêne rolled the cigar to one corner of his mouth and the movement produced a fair imitation of a smile. ‘He got drunk