Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

For a time I resumed the scribbling, the crumpling and the throwing away and by that time twenty minutes had elapsed. I finished the last of my drink, rose, said goodnight to the barman and went away. I went as far as the wine plush curtains that screened the bar from the foyer and waited, peering cautiously round the edge of the curtain. The girl in green rose to her feet, crossed to the bar, ordered herself another drink and then casually sat down in the chair I had just vacated, her back to me. She looked around, also casually, to make sure that she was unobserved, then just as casually reached down into the waste-basket and picked up the top sheet of crumpled paper. She smoothed it out on the table before her as I moved soundlessly up to her chair. I could see the side of her face now and I could see that it had gone very still. I could even read the message she had smoothed out on the table. It read: ONLY NOSY YOUNG GIRLS LOOK IN WASTEPAPER BASKETS.

‘All the other papers have the same secret message,’ I said. ‘Good evening, Miss Lemay.’

She twisted round and looked up at me. She’d camouflaged herself pretty well to conceal the natural olive blush of her complexion, but all the paint and powder in the world was useless to conceal the blush that spread from her neck all the way up to the forehead.

‘My word,’ I said. ‘What a charming shade of pink.’

‘I am sorry. I do not speak English.’

I very gently touched the bruise and said kindly: ‘Concussive amnesia. It’ll pass. How’s the head, Miss Lemay?’

‘I’m sorry, I–’

‘Do not speak English. You said that. But you understand it well enough, don’t you? Especially the written word. My word, for an ageing character like myself it’s refreshing to see that the young girls of today can blush so prettily. You do blush prettily, you know.’

She rose in confusion, twisting and crushing the papers in her hand. On the side of the ungodly she might be – and who but those on the side of the ungodly would have tried, as no question she had tried, to block my pursuit in the airport – but I couldn’t hold back a twinge of pity. There was something forlorn and defenceless about her. She could have been a consummate actress, but then consummate actresses would have been earning a fortune on the stage or screen. Then, unaccountably, I thought of Belinda. Two in the one day were two too many. I was going soft in the head. I nodded at the papers.

‘You may retain those, if you wish,’ I said nastily.

‘Those.’ She looked at the papers. ‘I don’t want to–’

‘Ha! The amnesia is wearing off.’

‘Please, I–’

‘Your wig’s slipped, Miss Lemay.’

Automatically her hands reached up and touched her hair, then she slowly lowered them to her sides and bit her lip in chagrin. There was something close to desperation in the brown eyes. Again I had the unpleasant sensation of not feeling very proud of myself.

‘Please leave me,’ she said, so I stepped to one side to let her pass. For a moment she looked at me and I could have sworn there was a beseeching look in her eyes and her face was puckering slightly almost as if she were about to cry, then she shook her head and hurried away. I followed more slowly, watched her run down the steps and turn in the direction of the canal. Twenty seconds later Maggie and Belinda passed by in the same direction. Despite the umbrellas they held, they looked very wet indeed and most unhappy. Maybe they’d got there in ten minutes after all.

I went back to the bar which I’d had no intention of leaving in the first place although I’d had to convince the girl that I was. The bar-tender, a friendly soul, beamed, ‘Good evening again, sir. I thought you had gone to bed.’

‘I wanted to go to bed. But my taste-buds said, No, another jonge Genever .’

‘One should always listen to one’s taste-buds, sir,’ the bar-tender said gravely. He handed over the little glass. ‘ Prost , sir!’ I lifted my glass and got back to my thinking. I thought about naïveté and how unpleasant it was to be led up garden paths and whether young girls could blush to order. I thought I’d heard of certain actresses that could but wasn’t sure, so I called for another Genever to jog my memory.

The next glass I lifted in my hand was of a different order altogether, a great deal heavier and containing a great deal darker liquid. It was, in fact, a pint pot of Guinness, which might seem to be a very odd thing to find in a continental tavern, as indeed it was. But not in this one, not in the Old Bell, a horse-brass-behung hostelry more English than most English hostelries could ever hope to be. It specialized in English beers – and, as my glass testified, Irish stout.

The pub was well patronized but I had managed to get a table to myself facing the door, not because I have any Wild West aversion to sitting with my back to the door but because I wanted to spot Maggie or Belinda, whichever it was, when she came in. In the event it was Maggie. She crossed to my table and sat down. She was a very bedraggled Maggie and despite scarf and umbrella her raven hair was plastered to her cheeks.

‘You all right?’ I asked solicitously.

‘If you call all right being soaked to the skin, then yes.’ It wasn’t at all like my Maggie to be as waspish as this: she must be very wet indeed.

‘And Belinda?’

‘She’ll survive too. But I think she worries too much about you.’ She waited pointedly until I’d finished taking a long satisfying swig at the Guinness. ‘She hopes you aren’t overdoing things.’

‘Belinda is a very thoughtful girl.’ Belinda knew damn well what I was doing.

‘Belinda’s young,’ Maggie said.

‘Yes, Maggie.’

‘And vulnerable.’

‘Yes, Maggie.’

‘I don’t want her hurt, Paul.’ This made me sit up, mentally, anyway. She never called me ‘Paul’ unless we were alone, and even then only when she was sufficiently lost in thought or emotion to forget about what she regarded as the proprieties. I didn’t know what to make of her remark and wondered what the hell the two of them might have been talking about. I was beginning to wish I’d left the two of them at home and brought along a couple of Dobermann Pinschers instead. At least a Dobermann would have made short work of our lurking friend in Morgenstern and Muggenthaler’s.

‘I said–’ Maggie began.

‘I heard what you said.’ I drank some more stout. ‘You’re a very dear girl, Maggie.’

She nodded, not to indicate any agreement with what I said, just to show that for some obscure reason she found this a satisfactory answer and sipped some of the sherry I’d got for her. I skated swiftly back on to thick ice.

‘Now. Where is our other lady-friend that you’ve been following?’

‘She’s in church.’

‘What!’ I spluttered into my tankard.

‘Singing hymns.’

‘Good God! And Belinda?’

‘She’s in church, too.’

‘Is she singing hymns?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t go inside.’

‘Maybe Belinda shouldn’t have gone in either.’

‘What safer place than a church?’

‘True. True.’ I tried to relax but felt uneasy.

‘One of us had to stay.’

‘Of course.’

‘Belinda said you might like to know the name of the church.’

‘Why should I–’ I stared at Maggie. ‘The First Reformed Church of the American Huguenot Society?’ Maggie nodded. I pushed back my chair and rose. ‘ Now you tell me. Come on.’

‘What? And leave all that lovely Guinness that is so good for you?’

‘It’s Belinda’s health I’m thinking of, not mine.’

We left, and as we left it suddenly occurred to me that the name of the church had meant nothing to Maggie. It had meant nothing to Maggie because Belinda hadn’t told her when she got back to the hotel and she hadn’t told her because Maggie had been asleep. And I’d wondered what the hell the two of them might have been talking about. They hadn’t been talking about anything. Either this was very curious or I wasn’t very clever. Or both.