Gavin Lyall - Honourable Intentions

“Damn. Was the little bitch reporting to him what we’d been up to?”

“Don’t know. Like I said, mebbe she didn’t see him.”

“And the concierge let her in dressed like that?”

“One of these places that only has a concierge night and mornings. Afternoons, ye jest walk in and knock on the door.”

“Damn,” Ranklin muttered again, thinking. Maybe he should cut and run now, concentrate on getting Mrs Langhorn back to England. But he’d be leaving a loose end: if Berenice had been blabbing to Gorkin, he had to try and find out what she’d told him. Which meant either trying to dig her out, down in La Villette – which he didn’t fancy – or seeing what Gorkin might say. And of the two, Gorkin was the talker; Messiahs are.

He sighed. “I’ll go up and see. You hang on here.”

The building was quiet, except for someone practising on a violin somewhere; perhaps that itself told how empty it was at that time. Gorkin’s apartment was at the front on the first floor, and the door was slightly open. Ranklin pushed, then knocked and called softly, but got no reply. The open door surprised him and made him wary of a trap, but he still wasn’t going to pass up the chance of a look around.

He was in a small living-room, the walls lined with books and stacks of small periodicals and manuscripts. A large typewriting machine stood on a solid table by the window, a large comfortable office chair behind it. Ranklin tiptoed across to see if there was anything half-written in the machine, but there wasn’t. And there was too much paper everywhere to make a hasty look worthwhile. He went over to the inside door, listened at it, then pushed that open. It was the bedroom -

– and Berenice hadn’t been telling Gorkin anything. Or if she had, it didn’t matter now.

When he had fetched O’Gilroy, they stared down at the sprawled, half-clad figure at the foot of the bed. Gorkin looked pallid, wide-eyed – and bloody. You have to be very adept with a knife to avoid bloodiness, and Berenice hadn’t been. But she’d certainly been thorough.

“I told her if anything happened to Gorkin it would only make him a martyr!”

O’Gilroy shrugged. “Gave her a good reason, didn’t ye? Feller’s let down the Cause with his plotting and suchlike, but at least he can be a martyr.” He smiled lopsidedly. “She’s a dedicated kind of girl, that one.”

Ranklin said grimly: “He’s only a martyr if his death’s tied to the King – and us. She might have thought of that .”

“Mebbe she did.”

“Hm. But if he was just killed by a casual whore . . . that could happen to anyone.”

“Yer not going to give her to the flics?”

“Of course not: she’s tied to us, damn it, if anybody starts looking. All right, we’ll re-write his ending for him. Just stand there and look around. What can you deduce?”

“I’m no flic.” Offended.

“Just pretend you are, man.”

Somewhat mollified, O’Gilroy gazed around. “She waited until he was taking off his trousers. Feller with his trousers round his ankles can’t fight back. Then wham with a knife . . . Where is it?”

“The silly bitch must’ve taken it with her. I’ll see . . .” He went into the kitchen, found a selection of worn cooking knives, and called: “How long a blade?”

“Short, she’d be carrying it in her purse . . . Not too short, though. Got to be as deep as the wounds and nobody’ll know how much ’til they cut him open.”

Ranklin momentarily shut his eyes in exasperation, then brought two knives out. “Which, then?”

O’Gilroy judiciously chose one. Then he wiped it in Gorkin’s blood and tossed it to the floor. “Probly won’t bother too much: ye got knife wounds, ye got a knife, why make tests?” He resumed his gazing. “They had a drink first.”

There was a bottle of wine and one of absinthe on a little table, along with two used glasses. Ranklin asked: “Does the Prefecture use fingerprints yet?”

“Surely.”

“And was she wearing gloves?”

O’Gilroy thought, then shook his head. “Damned if I can remember. Likely worn through at the fingers anyhow.”

So Ranklin sniffed the two glasses, took the absinthe one to the kitchen and washed it out – a rather messy business if one is, quite properly, wearing warm-weather dogskin gloves. Then he tipped a little wine into it, tasted it to leave a blur on the rim, and put it back on the table. He wiped the absinthe bottle clean of fingerprints and put it back in a cupboard. Could she have touched the wine bottle as well? Best to be safe: he wiped that, then shut his mind to what he was doing and clenched Gorkin’s dead hand around it to replace his own prints.

O’Gilroy watched, then re-enacted her entrance – wiping the front door-knob and around it; then the bedroom door; sitting down – wiping off the wooden parts of the chair; then-“Would she go to the toilette ?”

“Could have done.”

O’Gilroy found the bathroom, looked at it and said: “Jayzus!” because any cleaning was going to show up there. But he wiped delicately at just the most likely places, then came out holding a crumpled, stained length of toilet paper. “She wiped off the knife in there. Didn’t want blood insider her purse.” But the stains gave a good impression of the shape and length of the knife, and prompted him to choose a more suitable one from the kitchen and bloody that instead. Then he flushed the blood-stained paper away.

Ranklin had been exploring. A wardrobe held several of Gorkin’s suits including a set of evening dress tails, so the anarchist hadn’t been averse to a little capitalism. Or once hadn’t been: the suit was pretty old. Surprisingly, there was also a small clutch of women’s skirts, blouses and shawls. Relics of a semi-permanent mistress? Then he found a woman’s hat, heavily veiled, and remembered from Constantinople the stories of women going to clandestine affairs under cover of the veil. Perhaps there were some Parisian women who wanted to step out with Gorkin but not be recognised.

He turned to the paperwork in the living-room: he might just be lucky, but at the same time he was very cautious, because any sign of disturbance would lead to a far more thorough search by the police. He had had some idea of taking any notes about the King, but soon gave it up.

Nevertheless . . . “We still haven’t given them a motive. If they look for one, they’re bound to think of his involvement in the plot against the King.”

“Robbery? Whores do.”

Ranklin nodded, but left that to O’Gilroy who went through the rooms quickly and quietly, leaving an extraordinary mess for a haul of just the money from Gorkin’s pockets, his cufflinks, a few bits of cheap jewellery and a diamond pin that alone looked worth anything. It wasn’t much, but any detective would long since have stopped being amazed at how cheap life could be. O’Gilroy did it all very professionally, and Ranklin asked no questions. He just pocketed a bunch of letters and Gorkin’s passport and papers for the Bureau to study.

“We’d best be going,” O’Gilroy proposed.

But Ranklin hesitated. “You really don’t want any suspicion to fall on Berenice?”

O’Gilroy squinted at him curiously. “ ’Course not. The feller deserved the killing, and never mind her reasons. Why’re ye asking?”

“She’s short and dumpy. Suppose a tall, thin woman was seen going out of here?”

“Yer never going to get Mrs Finn down here to-”

“Good God, no. But there’s some woman’s clothes in the wardrobe, including a hat with a thick veil . . . and I’m short and dumpy.”

O’Gilroy was so appalled that his profanity deserted him. At last he croaked hoarsely: “Ye can’t ask me to do that.”