I didn’t touch either of the two lower wires because I guessed that somewhere up in the villa a bell would ring. In their time they must have had quite a few heart-thumping false alarms from wandering goats and sheep.
I followed the fence along until I came to a spot where it was screened from the road by a clump of hibiscus bushes, covered with brilliant flame-coloured blooms that would have made my sister in Honiton itch with envy.
I squatted down and began to scoop away at the loose sandy soil. A green lizard watched me from the top of a fence post and remained frozen until I had made a depression deep enough to allow me to crawl underneath without touching the wire. As I stood up on the other side, the lizard flirted its tail and was away down the post. I went forward through the pines. A squirrel chattered briefly at me, not enquiring but damning my business there. A yellow-and-blue bee-eater swooped from a tree and took a butterfly on the wing just for a change of diet. I took off my tie and stuffed it in my trouser pocket and put on my jacket to have my hands free. The day, I thought, that Carver won himself a decoration. I could hear the booming voice of the toast-master at the Savoy at the next annual dinner of the Association of Enquiry Agents and Private Detectives, announcing, ‘Pray silence for Mr Rex Carver, O.B.E.’ And I could see the seedy company in their rented tails, nudging one another and the whispers, ‘You know why he got it. That business of the Prime Minister’s son. Actually, I’m told he made a complete balls of it.’ Well, there are always the envious few who try to dim your glory. I went forward in a quiet and cautious state of euphoria, which isn’t easy because some kinds of euphoria have the kick of four large whiskies.
The villa was stone-built with a wooden roof. It was all over the place in little turrets and outside balconies, and the main windows on the ground floor were a curious kind of triple-pointed African Gothic with stained glass in their upper sections. From the cover of a reed-thatched gardener’s shed I saw a dust-covered Humber station wagon standing below the front steps. In the cover of the encroaching trees I went in a half-circle round the place. At the back was a modern, flat-roofed addition with a wide run of french windows facing down through the trees to the lake. Green curtains had been drawn across most of the run of the windows to keep out the blazing morning sun. A door in the window entrance was half open.
I stood there watching the door and then, in a momentary lull in the cicada chorus, I caught the sound of a man’s voice. It sounded like Pelegrina’s. I pulled the gun from my pocket. It was the.380 Model F, MAB breveté, which I had taken from Pelegrina’s thug in Florence.
I went across the soft, pine-needle-strewn sand to the window, then moved along it, crouching low so that the sun would not throw my shadow against the green curtains. I reached the door on my hunkers and got a look at part of the room through the small gap the open door made above its lower hinge.
They looked as comfortable as all get-out. Freeman was lying in a cane chair which had a hole in its right arm in which rested a glass of beer. His feet were up on a small stool. I recognized him at once from his photograph. Opposite him, across a small table, was Leon Pelegrina in the same kind of cane chair, a glass of beer in his arm-hole and his feet up on the table. He was gazing at the ceiling through his monocle, his face, red and weather-tanned, screwed up as though he were searching for the answer to some quiz question. They both wore white linen suits, Freeman’s neat and well pressed, Pelegrina’s rumpled and a little too small for him. It was hard to believe that these two between them had done something which, if it were known, would have set the press of the world immediately rearranging its front-page spread, had radio and T.V. announcers breaking in on ‘Housewives’ Choice’ and the morning schools programme for a special announcement, and made No. 10 Downing Street the genuine focus of world attention for the first time since Churchill left it.
There they were, potential news dynamite, men of destiny—though perhaps not the kind they thought—relaxing before the next stage of the operation, cool beer to hand, pine-bowered sanctuary for quiet, meticulous planning—and they were talking about sardines.
At least Freeman was.
‘The real difference between the French and the Portuguese sardine,’ he was saying, ‘is in the preparation before canning. The French always oven-grill theirs in olive oil before canning. The Portuguese just steam-cook theirs and then pack ’em in oil. There’s no doubt about the superiority of the French. They use a lighter type of olive oil too. This old boy I knew in Fleet Street had a vintage sardine cellar. Laid ’em down in cases. Turned the cases over every six months to get an even spread of oil. The great vintage year was 1959. And of ’em all, the French Rodel sardine is the king. Cost you something like eight bob for a tin. Marie Elisabeth, that’s Portuguese, cost less than two bob. Main thing is, there isn’t a sardine fit to eat unless it’s been in the can for at least twelve months.’
‘You think,’ asked
