Нэнси Пикард - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006

The sudden slapping of rubber interrupted Ganelon’s gloomy musing. He had a flat. An impatient frown crossed his battered, street fighter’s face as he pulled off the road beside some ancient apple trees. In a clearing behind them stood an orchard of younger trees in full blossom, their trunks wrapped in white cloth like the legs of racehorses. He got out his jack and spare and changed the tire. Then he leaned against the car and lit a cigarette.

Suddenly a cloud crossed the sun and a voice close-by said, “Some say it was this time of the year when Adam and Eve were created.”

Ganelon swung around. An old man was leaning against one of the dotard apple trees. Brown and gnarled, he might have been carved from its wood. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he apologized. Then, glancing back at the apple blossoms, he continued. “Let’s hope Paradise lasted longer than just the time between the flower and the fruit.”

“You said it,” agreed Ganelon.

The old man smiled. “Came to help you with your tire. Can’t move as quickly as I once did. Are you going far?” When Ganelon said Willow-Walk-Behind, the smile vanished. “Be careful in those woods, brother,” said the old man. “Something has gotten into the trees.”

With a smart beep-beep, a low-slung bright blue roadster with an attractive young woman behind the wheel rushed past them. Ganelon watched the driver disappear around a corner. “Maybe it’s only the wind,” he answered absently, his mind still with the pretty lady.

“Something strange, I mean,” insisted the old man.

The retreat house was an ancient stone mill to which substantial additions had been made. The parking area in front was crowded. Ganelon noted the bright blue roadster whose registration number said it was from northwestern France.

Father Boniface, the portly, red-faced retreat master, came out to welcome Ganelon, who was a frequent visitor because his friend and teacher Father Sylvanus lived in a nearby hermitage. “Looks like business is booming,” said the detective.

“Not the religious retreat end of things,” the priest told him. “No, but Prentiss-Jenkins Aviation draws a lot of people who need a place to stay.”

Ganelon recalled that a large area of woods in the neighborhood had recently been cut down to provide a runway and a storage area for the British company, which was buying up surplus fighters and bombers from the War, flying them here, and storing them under canvas for resale.

“Yes, it’s all ‘Come Josephine in My Flying Machine’ around here,” said Father Boniface, who’d been a song plugger and a ballroom dancer — some said he was the original “Willie” in “Waltz Me Around Again, Willie” — until the carnality of the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear drove him to a late religious vocation.

“As if things aren’t hectic enough,” continued the retreat master, “one of our guests wandered off after dinner last night. Probably got himself lost in the woods. We only discovered him missing at breakfast. We’ve had people out looking for him all morning. I’ve called the police. All this on the feast of Saint Magnus, our founder. And a very special Saint Magnus Day, at that.”

Before Ganelon could ask what was special about it, Father Boniface winked and held out his hand. “I’d better put it in our safe,” he said, cocking his head apologetically.

Ganelon had forgotten to leave his Hrosco automatic at home. Now he unstrapped holster and weapon and handed them over. As they disappeared inside Father Boniface’s habit, one corner of the monk’s mouth turned downward and the other up in a perfect replica of Ganelon’s trademark cockeyed smile.

Picking up Ganelon’s suitcase to take it to the detective’s usual room, the priest turned back to say, “When you see Father Sylvanus, ask yourself if perhaps he’s been alone in the woods too long.”

As Father Boniface entered the retreat house, Ganelon’s old friend Captain Alain Jerome came out the same door. Jerome possessed an aviator’s confident air and a dashing moustache. During the War he commanded San Sebastiano’s tiny air force with its cabbage-rose roundel, operating from an airfield just behind the lines where Ganelon’s regiment saw action. Jerome’s unit had taken “Love in the Clouds” as their theme song, a melody dating back to the giraffe craze of the 1840s when Anatole and Natalie were the most popular animals in the San Sebastiano zoo. His pilots even painted giraffe markings on their sturdy little Prentiss-Jenkins Hedgehog IIIs as a kind of ur-camouflage.

The last time Ganelon saw Jerome was three years ago as the man set out on a surveying job for something called the Cairo to Cathay Railroad.

“Your march through Syria, Arabia, Persia, and beyond, you said it sounded like fun. Was it?” asked the detective.

Jerome laughed. “As far as it went. When I reached Teheran I found a telegraph telling me I was let go. My employers had run out of money.

“As luck would have it, Riza Khan, who had been Persia’s Minister of War and had just become the Shah, heard of my arrival and invited me to dinner to discuss the railroad project. I found him a down-to-earth and ambitious leader.

“When he told me he meant to bind his unruly country together by increasing the army three-fold, I recalled the words of the British staff officer in Constantinople when I described my surveying trip. The Brit said they couldn’t guarantee my safety. But if the Bedouins did capture me, he promised to send out planes and bomb the beggars until they let me go.

“I heard myself suggesting that the Shah might do the same job with an air force and at a fraction of the cost. How better to put down tribal revolts and maintain order in remote corners of the country? With warplanes a glut on the market he could buy all he needed for next to nothing. And there were plenty of aviators who’d jump at the chance to fly them.

“The Shah said he’d study the idea,” said Jerome. “But I could tell he liked it. Now for the long and short of it. A month ago I received his letter authorizing me to put together a Persian air force. Needless to say, there’ll be a tidy commission for yours truly when I do. So here I am, looking over what the Prentiss-Jenkins people have in the way of aircraft and interviewing pilots. My old friend Wing Commander Timmons is here representing a British team. Not to mention our old nemesis Baron Waldteufel on behalf of his German flyers. Even the Soviets are interested.” Jerome looked at his wrist watch. “An hour ago the Shah’s man General Massoudi arrived in San Sebastiano by British flying boat from Alexandria to see what I’ve put together.”

As he spoke, an old open touring car turned in at the retreat-house gate. It made a complete circle of the parking lot as though Father Carlus, the driver, who was done up in motorcycle goggles and a white duster, was reluctant to end the journey. Three visitors and their baggage sat behind him fresh from San Sebastiano’s old port where Imperial Airways had a quay-side hangar for their giant amphibious aircraft.

“That’s Massoudi, the one in the military uniform,” said Jerome. “The other two are my old Cairo to Cathay employers, Major Ibrahim and Mr. Wang.” He indicated the tall man in a white suit, with a long jaw and a red tarboosh, carrying a horsehair fly whisk, and an Oriental gentleman who seemed uncomfortable pent up in western dress. “They’re here to discuss fresh financing for their railroad with Miss Khalila Assad.” With a nod toward the blue car, Jerome went to greet the passengers.

Waving to Father Carlus, who had stopped to admire the Terrapin, Ganelon continued on his way to the back of the retreat house where a flagstone walk and a dozen sturdy willow trees circled a good-sized pond. Centuries before, a stream on the property had been dammed up, creating the pond and a millrace to drive the mill’s waterwheel, long since fallen to ruin. The unharnessed overflow still found its way down to the sea, where its brown water vanished like chimney smoke into the sky-blue Mediterranean.