Palm for Mrs. Pollifax (12 page)

“It’s very kind of you,” she said, surprised.

“Not at all.” He paused with one hand on the knob of the door to the balcony. “It’s certainly been interesting
seeing how the other half lives—the respectable half,” he added with irony. “Sleep well, milady.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, and by the way,” he added, “I’d advise your taking a close look at that robe of yours before you wear it again. There’s rather a lot of blood on it in the back, as if you’d knelt in a puddle of the stuff.”

She stared at him in astonishment.

“I didn’t notice it when you first popped into my room but when I saw it I had a fair idea of what frightened you tonight, and frankly it scares the hell out of me. See you at eight.” He went out, carefully closing the door to the balcony behind him.

Considerably jolted Mrs. Pollifax stared after him and then she moved to the door and locked it behind him. His remark explained the reason behind his sudden protectiveness—he
knew
. She took off the offending robe, eyed it wearily and dropped it to the floor. There was suddenly a great deal to do, and a great deal to think about, but she was exhausted. Setting her alarm clock for seven she fell across her bed and sank into a sleep interrupted only spasmodically by small Unterwasser nightmares.

The next morning, Mrs. Pollifax breakfasted
in the dining room and discovered that at 7:15 she was the only patient to do so. She found no unusual activity on the Reception floor, and the waiter who served her gave no indication that one of his colleagues had met with
violent death during the night. When she had finished her coffee she left and descended to the ground floor, ostensibly for a stroll in the garden but actually to see what had been happening in the Unterwasser Massage room.

She discovered to her surprise that nothing appeared to be happening at all. The halls were deserted and the door to the massage room stood open. She moved toward it cautiously and stopped on the threshold. Inside, the pale green tub gleamed spotlessly. Sunlight poured through the frosted windows, striking the faucets and dials with silver and illuminating an immaculate and freshly polished floor. There was not so much as a hint that only hours ago a murder had taken place here, and for just a moment Mrs. Pollifax wondered if she might be losing her mind and had dreamed the murder.

Odd, she thought, frowning, and found it strange that no police were on duty here. Very odd, she mused and went upstairs to see if any police could have taken refuge in the offices behind the switchboard. But the offices were shuttered and locked and although she leaned against the door and listened she could hear no voices. Certainly the discovery of a body in the Unterwasser Massage room was an embarrassment but at the moment the Clinic’s discretion seemed excessive and inhuman.

“Madame?” said the porter, peering around the corner at her.

She opened her mouth to speak, closed it and shook her head. It was nearly eight o’clock; she went out to find Robin in the turnaround.

Nothing was said as Robin backed his car and drove it up the narrow entrance to the Clinic and along the ravine. Emerging from the woods into bright sunlight he maneuvered his dark blue Mercedes through the streets of the village and headed it down the mountain toward Villeneuve.

“This is extremely kind of you,” Mrs. Pollifax said at last.

As if a few hours had never intervened he said harshly, “All right, whose blood was it?”

She had been expecting the question; it had stood like a wall between them ever since she had stepped into the car. “The waiter, Marcel’s,” she told him quietly.

Looking appalled, Robin braked the car and drew it to a stop by the side of the road. “Hurt or dead?”

“Dead.”

“Good God, do you mean murdered?”

She studied his face and nodded. “Yes, in the Unterwasser Massage room, in the tub. Did you know him, Robin?”

“Damned right I knew Marcel, he waited on my table and we had a bet on today’s French bicycle race.” He sat staring at her incredulously. “You found him there dead and— Was that all, or was there really someone else down there?”

Remembering, she shivered. “As I went into the Unterwasser Massage room by one door someone was just leaving by the opposite door. I almost called out, but then I saw Marcel lying there in the tub, all bloody and—” Her voice broke and she steadied it. “Yes, there was someone else down there, and someone very curious about me.”

“His murderer?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Good God, were you seen?”

She shook her head. “I’m quite sure I wasn’t.” She added wryly, “You see, I’d been reconnoitering the basement just as you’ve been reconnoitering the roofs. I knew where the fuseboxes were and that, I suppose, is what saved me.”

He slowly shook his head. “That was cutting it a bit thin. Good God! But look here, why on earth Marcel? Why would anyone go after a perfectly innocent waiter—”
A thought struck him and his eyes narrowed. “Or wasn’t he a perfectly innocent waiter?”

“Actually he wasn’t,” she admitted. “He was an Interpol man looking for the same thing I am. Oddly enough you seemed to be his chief suspect.”

Robin whistled through his teeth. “Good Lord, I hope you told him—no, I hope you didn’t.”

“I was going to tell him last night except—except—”

“Yes,
except,”
he filled in grimly. “Well, at least they didn’t send you here alone, which lifts my respect for your superiors a notch. Look here, I told you before if there’s anything I can do to help—”

“You’re helping now, Robin, and I appreciate it.”

“You mean by taking you to the telegraph office.” He nodded and eased the car out into traffic again. “This cable you’re sending is for Hafez’s grandmother, of course?”

She smiled. “How wasted you are on petty crime, Robin. Yes, it’s for Madame Parviz. Would it be against your scruples to help me do some balcony spying on room 150 when it’s dark tonight?”

“Against my scruples!” He laughed. “Bless you for being so delicate about it, my dear Mrs. P., I’d be delighted to do some spying with you. What exactly did you find in room 150 last night?”

“On the surface, nothing,” she said soberly.

“Ah, but under the surface?”

“A great many undercurrents.” She was silent, staring ahead of her as they entered Montreux and Robin threaded the car through quiet streets. “Madame Parviz looked very ill and she was still quite weak. She asked me to send a cable for her announcing their safe arrival, to a man with the same name in Zabya. A General Parviz.”

“That sounds normal enough.”

She nodded. “Yes, until one remembers that Hafez and his grandmother have been at the Clinic for a week, and
that she insisted the cable
not
be sent from the Clinic. There were only the three of us in the room but someone was asleep in the adjoining one—again very normal considering the hour—but when the sound of a snore was heard through the walls both Madame Parviz and Hafez looked alarmed. There was a kind of—of hushed urgency about our meeting.”

“You mean you had the impression no one must know you were there?”

“Exactly. I’m trying to be very clear in my thinking.” she told him earnestly. “Hafez has been frightened ever since I first met him, and I’ve not wanted to exaggerate or be melodramatic but I’ve felt he was trying to tell me something. Not consciously, you understand, but with every gesture and every expression. He’s an unusually intelligent child, and I think he’s been trying desperately to—”

When she faltered Robin gave her a quick glance. “To what?”

“To cope,” she said softly. “Cope with something quite beyond him. I’ve been getting little messages consistently, without a word spoken. It’s what I’ve felt from the beginning.” She hesitated, feeling for words. “Everything matters terribly to children, you know, they’re fresh and unformed, but of course they can exaggerate, too, so I had to be sure. Now I’m finally beginning to understand.”

He stopped the car and backed it into a parking space and Mrs. Pollifax saw that across the street a large building bore the sign PTT. “Understand what?” asked Robin, turning off the ignition.

“I think I’d better send the cable first,” she said. “It’s half-past eight?”

“Just.”

Mrs. Pollifax nodded and climbed out of the car and crossed the street. Entering the echoing, cavernous room she went to the telegraph window and copied out Madame Parviz’s message, hesitating only when she reached the
space for the sender’s name. Since privacy seemed to matter very much to Madame Parviz she stood a moment, reflecting, pencil in hand. Inspiration arrived at last and feeling quite resourceful at keeping the Clinic out of it she wrote the name of William Carstairs, The Legal Building, Baltimore, Maryland. With that accomplished she paid for it and left.

“You were beginning to understand something,” said Robin when she rejoined him, “and I hope you’re not going to leave me hanging in midair.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “Yes, I’m beginning to understand why it’s been impossible for Hafez to tell me anything. He
can’t
. I’m also beginning to understand to what lengths he went to arrange my visit last night with his grandmother. It wasn’t easy.”

Robin looked startled. “You’re implying a great deal wrong indeed.”

“Yes, I am. Can we go back now? I want to sit in the garden and think, preferably over a pot of very hot coffee.”

He started up the car. “I’ve nothing against thinking. I don’t suppose I should ask about what in particular?”

“About thirteen tablets of aspirin, and what I report at ten o’clock tonight when I make my rather primitive contact with Interpol, about Marcel’s death and what I tell the police when they make their inquiries.”

“Which explains everything and nothing but I’ve already learned enough to scare the hell out of me. I wish it would scare the hell out of you,” he said with a sidelong glance at her face. “I think I’m going to keep a very close eye on you today if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” said Mrs. Pollifax imperturbably.

As they drove into the entrance road of the Clinic and past the greenhouse Mrs. Pollifax saw a man in a green apron sweeping the steps, and Hafez seated on the top stair with his chin in his hand, the very same scene that
had met her glance when she arrived on Friday. Now it was Sunday and Marcel was dead. She thought it would have been very convenient on Friday to have been clairvoyant and to have seen the seeds of destruction waiting here for catalyzation. The workings of fate always struck her with awe, for on these small assignments she inevitably arrived just in time to meet the effect of causes sown recklessly long ago. Marcel had been sent here, and had died, and his death in turn was setting new influences in motion. Where it would lead she couldn’t guess but she knew that at some point influences and coincidences would converge. Nothing, she felt, happened purely by accident; it was an unraveling process.

As she walked toward the door Hafez stood up, eyes anxious and inquiring. “It’s been taken care of,” she told him in a low voice.

“Oh, thank you, madame,” he gasped. His hand reached out to touch her arm, trembled there a moment, and then he turned and ran off up the stairs.

“Where are you going now?” Robin demanded.

Amused, she said, “To my room first, to order some coffee for the garden and to put away my sweater, and then—”

“Okay,” he said hastily, “I’ll see you later.”

He too went up the stairs but Mrs. Pollifax lingered, her glance moving over the head of the concierge to the office behind him. It was still empty. There were no secretaries, no directors, no police in plainclothes in consultation and she found herself uneasy.

“Madam is looking for someone?” asked the head concierge.

She shook her head.

“Perhaps madam would like a copy of yesterday’s
Herald Tribune
,” he suggested. “We were sent an extra paper.”

She thanked him, tucked it under her arm and went upstairs. As she changed into a cooler dress she briefly
scanned the front page of the
Tribune
. The Common Market had agreed upon new farm tariffs. The price of silver had hit an all-time high. A minor official had been assassinated in Syria. She turned a page and found a photograph of King Jarroud of Zabya, and because this was Hafez’s king she ran her eyes down the column quickly while she zipped up her dress. On Tuesday the King was celebrating his fortieth birthday and his tenth year in power … A parade, lunch in the palace beside the beautiful Arabian Nights pool, America’s vice-president among the long list of luminaries invited to the daylong festivity … Jarroud an extremely popular monarch with the people but not without his enemies, mainly among those of the upper class who distrusted his sweeping reforms … Had already done much to narrow the huge gap between rich and poor … Illiteracy rate reduced from 89 percent to 21 percent after ten years of compulsory schooling, 80 percent of the people now owned some land … the country 60 percent desert.

“Mmm,” she murmured, postponing details until later, and moved to the telephone to order coffee sent to the garden. Really, this life of luxury was infectious and she wondered how she would ever adjust again to washing dishes.

Fifteen minutes later she descended to the ground floor and again strolled past the Unterwasser Massage room, hesitating only a moment when she found it still deserted. She understood very clearly that a murder could empty the rooms of any establishment in a matter of hours but it was unbelievable to her that no traces remained of an event that must have shaken the Clinic to its foundations. Did a man’s life count for so little these days?

She pulled a chaise longue into the sun and lay down, recalling Marcel’s dancing blue eyes and his mock, comic gestures. When death came to the general, she thought, it would be a completion, it would be the closing of a circle on a fulfilled life but there were the other deaths, the ones that did violence to meaning by their abrupt and senseless
interruption of life, and it was these deaths she mourned in particular. Why had it been necessary to sentence Marcel to death? What had he done? Most vital of all,
what had he known?