William Bankier: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 110, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 673 & 674, September/October 1997

“I–I don’t know, monsieur,” she replied nervously. “It all sounds — so very frightening—”

“Do you live alone, Georgette?” he asked straightforwardly.

“Well, I — sometimes. That is, I have a boyfriend who is a seaman. He stays with me when he is in port. But he is at sea right now, due back in two days.”

“Will you let me stay with you tonight?”

Georgette looked down at the carpet, as if embarrassed.

“Please, Georgette. I have nowhere else to turn.”

She nodded. “Yes, all right.”

“I’m very grateful,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Where do you live?”

“Forty-four la Belle Aurore. In the La Condamine district.”

“Call your landlady. Tell her I’m your cousin from the U. S. and to let me in.” He glanced around. “Now, walk away from me and return to your desk. If anyone asks, say that you were giving me some messages and that I was going up to my room.”

Georgette walked away and Harvard strode toward the nearest elevator bank. A burly man in sports clothes rose from a chair across the lobby and walked the same way. Noticing him, Harvard walked faster and managed to get on an elevator and close the door just before the man got there.

On three, Harvard exited the elevator, walked to the end of the hall to a stairwell, and hurried down to a side exit of the hotel.

In a small department store in the La Condamine district, Harvard purchased a pair of jeans, a turtleneck pullover, deck shoes, and a windbreaker. He also took time to shop for wine, cheese, sausage, peppers, and bread for his and Georgette’s dinner. At the address she gave him, he found a neat six-flat building. Georgette’s flat was on the third floor in the rear, and the landlady not only let him in without a problem but flirted openly with him as well.

Georgette’s flat, Harvard found, was clean but outrageously untidy. There was lacy underwear in the kitchen, uneaten food in the sitting room, the bed was unmade, drawers left open, magazines, shoes, soft-drink bottles strewn about. Harvard, fastidiously neat himself, spent an hour straightening up the place, even folding Georgette’s panties and putting them away. Then he showered and changed into the new clothes he had bought, after which he cooked up the sausages and peppers, sliced the cheese and bread, and opened the wine to let it breathe before pouring. When Georgette arrived home, she found her apartment tidier than it had ever been, and her dinner ready.

“My, aren’t you the little homemaker,” she said. “Perhaps I should forget Marcel and just keep you.”

“Marcel?”

“My boyfriend who is at sea.”

“I think,” Harvard told her wryly, “you are better off with Marcel.”

Georgette showered and donned slacks and a blouse for the evening, and they dined at a little table next to high, open windows that overlooked a smaller building across the alley, on the lighted rooftop of which a young boy and girl alternated between feeding pigeons and kissing passionately. Harvard tried to make conversation around an awkwardness that seemed to hang between them. He told her a bit about himself, while inquiring of her own life and past. Her background was ordinary: She was one of six children of a farming family in LaMotte in Provence. Three sons had remained to become farmers, while three sisters left to find lives elsewhere. One of her sisters was a maritime expediter in Marseilles, the other a banking clerk in Toulon. Georgette herself had begun as a hotel maid and moved through the ranks as a café waitress, café cashier, hotel reservations clerk, desk clerk, and finally apprentice concierge. She had met her boyfriend Marcel at a dance across the Italian border in San Remo, where his Mediterranean cargo ship was docked. Their affair had been ongoing for three years. Both wanted to get married — but they never wanted it at the same time.

Even though Georgette answered his questions about her family and her life, Harvard sensed that as the meal progressed she seemed to grow somewhat cool and distant. He thought perhaps it was because she was developing concerns about him being there.

“Georgette,” he said, “if this arrangement has become uncomfortable for you, I can try to find someplace else to stay—”

“Certainly not,” she said emphatically. “I agreed to let you stay, and stay you will.” She looked out the window. “I suppose I feel a little ill at ease because there is such a great difference between us. You come from wealth, prosperity, a life of advantages. Next to that, I am so very common and uncultured, not refined or—”

“Georgette,” he interrupted, taking her hand across the table, “let’s remember who is helping whom in this situation. You are those things only in your mind. To me, you are a flawless person that I have been very fortunate to meet.”

“You are just being kind,” she said. “Were it not for the fact that you are in trouble, I would not get a second glance from you. We both know that.” She stood up abruptly. “Excuse me, please. I have an errand to run.”

Almost before Harvard knew it, she had got her purse and a beret, and was out the door.

Depressed, Harvard finished eating alone, then cleaned up after the meal, and finally sat next to the window looking up at the stars as he drank the last of the wine.

Georgette came back two hours later, obviously having had more to drink after leaving. Although slightly tipsy, she was nevertheless politely reserved.

“Please forgive my earlier behavior,” she said rather formally, bringing him a quilt and pillow to sleep on the couch. She retired to her bedroom and Harvard heard a loud metallic click as she locked the door.

Feeling guilty about involving her, he undressed down to his underwear and stretched out on the couch. He had a bad tension headache, and a shoulder ache from the jarring crash of the taxi, which seemed like so long ago but was actually less than twelve hours earlier. Wishing he had asked Georgette for some aspirin, but not wanting to disturb her now, he settled down with his eyes closed and tried to go to sleep. But each time he began to drift off, he heard a loud crash in his mind and remembered again the impact of the taxi smashing into the culvert.

Finally, well after midnight, when Harvard at last was slipping into a restful sleep, he heard another sharp metallic click like the one that had sounded when Georgette locked her bedroom door. He lay very still in the dark, drawing bare, soundless breath, wondering if someone was trying to get into the apartment. Then he felt Georgette’s smooth, warm arms slide down his torso as she bent over him from the end of the couch where his head lay. She spoke in a whisper, her face mere inches above his in the blackness.

“I am sorry for the way I acted tonight,” she said. “I was not angry with you, but with myself because I am so attracted to you. I have been trying to resist the temptation I feel so strongly to make love with you. I wanted to be faithful to my boyfriend, who is the only man I have ever made love with. I wanted to be able to say that in all my life, only one man had me. Now you have ruined all that—”

He felt the quilt being dragged off him, felt her fingers searching. “Georgette, I don’t want to be the reason for you being angry with yourself,” he said. He took hold of her hands and stopped their movement. “Let me find someplace else to stay—”

“No!” she snapped, jerking her hands from his. He tried to push himself up as he heard a drawer being opened in a table against the back of the couch. That was followed by the unmistakable sound of a switchblade stiletto being opened, and Harvard immediately felt the point of a blade touch his throat. “If you try to leave, I will cut you,” Georgette threatened. “You’re going to do everything I tell you to.”