Vintage Stuff (11 page)

'La Comtesse, you oaf,' he shouted as the car screeched to a halt.

'Oh, her,' said Peregrine. 'In that case, why did they say your wife was dead?'

To vent his fury and avoid actual violence, Glodstone sounded the horn. Ahead of them, the
cows mooched on their way unperturbed. 'Because,' said Glodstone, with barely controlled
patience, 'not even the most brazen swine would walk up to a booking clerk and say "Tell Mr
Glodstone that if he comes any further La Comtesse will die." The last thing they want to do is
bring the police in.'

'No, I suppose they don't. Still '

'And another thing,' continued Glodstone before Peregrine could send his blood pressure up any
further by his obtuseness, 'the fellow enquired which ferry I was taking, which tells me this:
they don't know I was crossing via Ostend. At least they didn't last night and it will take them
time to find out and by then we must have reached the Château. It's surprise that counts, so
we'll press on.'

'When those cows get out of the way,' said Peregrine. 'You don't suppose they're blocking the
road on purpose?'

For a few seconds Glodstone eyed him incredulously. 'No,' he said, 'I don't.'

Presently they were able to drive on. As they drove, Glodstone's mind wrestled with the
problem of hotels. La Comtesse had arranged the bookings to enable her to communicate with him en
route and if he avoided them and pushed on there was the danger that he might miss a vital
message. Against that there was the need for speed. In the end, Glodstone compromised and when
they reached Gisors, where he had been scheduled to spend the first night, he sent Peregrine in
to cancel the room.

'Explain that I've been taken ill and won't be coming,' he said, 'and if there are any
messages for me, collect them.' He parked the Bentley out of sight round the corner and Peregrine
went into the hotel. He was back in five minutes. 'The manager spoke English,' he said.

'So the blighter should. After all we've saved them from the Hun in two World Wars and a fat
lot of thanks we've had for it. Bloody butter mountains and wine lakes and the confounded Common
Market,' said Glodstone, who had been looking forward to a short nap. 'And no message or letter
for me?'

Peregrine shook his head and Glodstone started the Bentley again. All day, the great car ate
the miles and a vast quantity of petrol, but Glodstone pushed along the side roads of Slymne's
tortuous route. It was afternoon by the time they came to Ivry-La-Bataille and Glodstone was able
to totter into the hotel and remove his goggles. 'I believe you have a room reserved for me. The
name is Glodstone,' he said in French that was a shade less excruciating than Slymne's and
infinitely more comprehensible than Peregrine's.

'But yes, monsieur. Number Four.'

Glodstone took the key and then paused. 'Has any message come for me?'

The clerk looked through a stash of envelopes until he came to the familiar crest. 'This was
delivered this afternoon, monsieur.'

Glodstone took the letter and tore it open. Five minutes later the key to his room was back on
the board and Glodstone had left. 'You can stop bringing the baggage in,' he told Peregrine, 'La
Comtesse has sent a message.'

'A message?' said Peregrine eagerly.

'Shut up and get in,' said Glodstone casting a suspicious eye round the street, 'I'll explain
while we go.'

'Well?' said Peregrine when they were clear of the little town.

'Take a good look at that,' said Glodstone and handed him the letter.

'It's from the Countess asking you on pain of her death not to come,' he said when he had read
it through.

'In that case why was it delivered by a man with an English accent who refused to speak
English? In short, our friend who left the warning at Calais. And another thing, you've only to
compare her handwriting with that of the earlier letters to see that the devils have tortured her
into writing it.'

'Good Lord, you mean ' began Peregrine. But Glodstone's mind has already fabricated a number
of new conclusions. 'Just this, that they know the route we're following and where we're going to
stay the night, which may be to their liking but doesn't suit my book.'

'Which book?' asked Peregrine, browsing through a mental library from The Thirty-Nine Steps to
The Day of the Jackal with more insight into the workings of Glodstone's mind than he knew.

Glodstone ignored the remark. He was too busy planning a new strategy. 'The thing is to put
yourself in the other fellow's shoes,' he said, 'I'm sure we're being watched or waited for. And
they know we've had that message yet we're going on. And that will give them pause for thought.
You see, we've been warned off twice now. I think it's time we played their game. We'll turn back
at Anet and head for Mantes and there we'll spend the night. Tomorrow we'll rest up and tour the
sights and then tomorrow night we'll take the road again as soon as it is dark and drive for
Carmagnac'

'I say, that will confuse them,' said Peregrine as the Bentley turned left across the Eure and
headed north again.

But Slymne was already confused. Having driven all night to reach Ivry-La-Bataille, he hadn't
dared stay there but had gone on to Dreux. There in a hotel he had penned the letter from La
Comtesse and had slept briefly before returning with the ominous message for Glodstone to pick
up. After that, he had watched the road from a track and had seen the Bentley go by. With a
muttered curse he started his Ford Cortina and followed at a discreet distance in time to see the
Bentley cross the bridge and turn a little later onto the Mantes road. For a few minutes Slymne
was delighted before it dawned on him that, if Glodstone had intended to give up the expedition,
there would have been no need for him to have left the hotel or to have taken the road south in
the first place. The natural thing to do would have been to spend the night in Ivry-La-Bataille
and head back towards Calais next morning. But Glodstone hadn't done the natural thing and
moreover, to complicate matters, he wasn't alone. There had been another passenger in the
Bentley. Slymne hadn't been able to glimpse his face but evidently Glodstone had persuaded some
other damned romantic to join him on his adventure. Another bloody complication. With a fresh
sense of exasperation, he followed the Bentley and wondered what to do next. At least the great
car wasn't difficult to spot and was in fact extremely conspicuous while his own Cortina was
relatively anonymous and could easily match the Bentley for speed.

As they reached the outskirts of Mantes, Slymne made another plan. If Glodstone left the town
travelling north, well and good, but if he turned south, Slymne would drive for the Château and
be ready to take action before Glodstone could get to see the Countess.

What action he would take he had no idea, but he would have to think of something. In the
event, he was forced to think of other things. Instead of leaving Mantes, the Bentley pulled up
outside a hotel. Slymne turned into a side street. Five minutes later, the Bentley had been
unloaded and then driven into the hotel garage.

Slymne shuddered. Obviously Glodstone was spending the night but there was no telling when he
would leave next morning and the idea of staying awake in case the blasted man decided to make a
dawn start was not in the least appealing. Slymne wasn't remaining where he was in a sidestreet.
Glodstone might, and, by all the laws of nature, must be exhausted but he was still capable of
taking a stroll round the neighbourhood before going to bed and would, if he saw it, immediately
recognize the Cortina. Slymne started the car and drove back the way he had come before stopping
and wondering what the hell to do the next. He couldn't send yet another message from the
Countess. Unless the old cow possessed second sight she couldn't know where Glodstone had got to,
and anyway letters didn't travel several hundred miles in a couple of hours.

Slymne consulted the map and found no comfort in it. All roads might lead to Rome, but Mantes
was a contender when it came to roads leading from it. There was even a motorway running into
Paris which they had driven under on the way into town. Slymne dismissed it. Glodstone loathed
motorways and if he did turn south again his inclination would be to stick to minor roads. By
watching the intersection on the outskirts of the town he would be in a position to follow if
Glodstone took one. But the 'if' was too uncertain for Slymne's liking and in any case following
was insufficient. He had to stop the idiot from reaching the Château with those damning
letters.

Slymne drove on until he found a café and spent the next hour gloomily having supper and
cursing the day he had ever gone to Groxbourne and even more vehemently the day he had set up
this absurd plan. 'Must have been mad,' he muttered to himself over a second brandy and then,
having paid the bill, went back to his car and consulted the map again. This time his attention
was centred on the district round the Château. If Glodstone continued on his infernal mission he
would have to pass through Limoges and Brive or find some tortuous byroads round them. Again
Slymne considered Glodstone's peculiar psychology and decided that the latter course would be
more likely. So that put paid to any attempt to stay ahead of the brute. He would have to devise
some means of following him.

But for the moment he needed sleep. He found it eventually in a dingy room above the café
where he was kept awake by the sound of a jukebox and by obsessive thoughts that Glodstone might
already have left his hotel and be driving frantically through the night towards Carmagnac. But
when he got up groggily at six and after drinking several black coffees, walked back into town he
was reassured by the sight of the Bentley being washed down by a young man with black hair who
looked strangely familiar.

Slymne, passing on the other side of the street, did not linger but went into the first
clothing shop he could find and emerged wearing a beret and the blue jacket he supposed would
make him look like a typical French peasant. For the rest of the day Slymne lurked round corners,
in cafés that commanded a view of the hotel, in shop doorways even further down the street, but
Glodstone put in no appearance.

He was in fact faced with almost the same dilemma as Slymne. Having driven for twenty-four
hours without sleep, he was exhausted and his digestion had taken a pounding from rather too many
champignons with his steak the night before. In short, he was in no condition to do any
sightseeing and was having second thoughts about La Comtesse's letter. 'Clearly the swine forced
her to write it,' he told Peregrine,' and yet how did they know we would be staying at
Ivry-La-Bataille?'

'Probably tortured her until she told them,' said Peregrine. 'I mean, they're capable of
anything.'

'But she is not,' said Glodstone, refusing to believe that even a helpless heroine, and a
Comtesse at that, would give in to the most fiendish torture. 'There's a message for us here if
we could read it.'

Peregrine looked at the letter again. 'But we've already read it. It says...'

'I know what it seems to say,' snapped Glodstone, 'What I want to know is what it's trying to
tell us.'

'To go back to England and if we don't she'll be '

'Bill, old chap,' interrupted Glodstone through clenched teeth, 'what you don't seem to be
able to get into that thick head of yours is that things are seldom what they appear to be. For
instance, look at her handwriting.'

'Doesn't look bad to me,' said Peregrine, 'it's a bit shaky but if you've just been tortured
it would be, wouldn't it? I mean if they used thumbscrews or red-hot pokers '

'Dear God,' said Glodstone, 'what I'm trying to tell you is that La Comtesse may have written
in a trembling hand with the intention of telling us she is still in trouble.'

'Yes,' said Peregrine, 'and she is, isn't she? They're going to kill her if we don't go back
to Dover. She says that.'

'But does she mean it? And don't say...Yes...Well, never mind. She wrote that letter under
duress. I'm sure of it. More, if they could murder her with impunity, why haven't they done so
already. Something else is different. In all her previous messages, La Comtesse has told me to
burn the letter but here she doesn't. And there's our cue. She means us to go on. We're going to
draw their fire. We'll leave as soon as it's dark and take the road we would have gone if we'd
never read this letter.'

Glodstone got up and went down the corridor to the bathroom with a box of matches. He returned
to the room with a fresh wave of euphoria seething up inside him to find Peregrine staring out of
the window.

'I say, Patton,' he whispered, 'I'm sure we're being watched. There's a Frenchie on the corner
and I swear I've seen him before somewhere.'

'Where?' asked Glodstone peering down into the street.

'I don't know. He just looks like someone I know.'

'I don't mean that,' said Glodstone, 'I mean where is he now?'

'He's gone,' said Peregrine, 'but he's been hanging about all day.'

'Good,' said Glodstone with a nasty smile. 'Two can play that game. Tonight we'll be followed
and so we'll go armed. I'd like to hear what our watcher has to tell us. And let me know if you
spot him again.'

But Slymne did not put in another appearance. He had had an appalling day and his feeling
about thriller-writers was particularly violent. The sods ought to try their hands at skulking
about French towns pretending to be peasants and attempting to keep a watch on a hotel before
they wrote so glibly about such things. His feet were sore, the pavements hard, the weather was
foully hot and he had drunk more cups of black coffee than were good for his nervous system. He
had also been moved on by several shopkeepers who objected to being stared at for half an hour at
a time by a shifty man wearing dark glasses and a beret. He'd also had the problem of avoiding
the street outside the hotel and this meant that he had to walk down a back-alley, along another
street and up a third to vary the corners from which he watched. All in all Slymne made a rough
calculation that he must have trudged fifteen miles during the course of the day. And for all his
pains he had learnt nothing except that Glodstone hadn't left the hotel, or if he had, he hadn't
used the Bentley.