To Catch a Thief Page 18

  “What are you going to do?”

  He looked down at the terrasse again. Lepic was there now, standing apart with George Sanford, talking earnestly. Oriol was nearby.

  He said, “Tell me the schedule for the weekend. Just the hours after dark.”

  Whatever else he might think about Francie, he was grateful for her quick intelligence. She said, “Tonight, only music and dancing on the terrace. Everyone is too tired from traveling to stay up late. Tomorrow night, the gala, costumes and a pageant, Midsummer on Mount Olympus. Mr. and Mrs. Sanford are to be Jupiter and Juno, the rest anything in character. Nothing special has been planned for Sunday night. Almost all of the guests are leaving Monday. What—”

  “Tomorrow they’ll be up all night, and the jewelry will be on display, so that’s out.” He was thinking aloud. “Tonight or Sunday. I’d do it tonight. They’ll sleep better. The pearls, if nothing else.” He reached for her hand. “Come over here and point out the Princess’s room. Mrs. Sanford’s room is the fourth pair of windows from the opposite wing, on the top floor, not counting gables. Just under the eave.”

  She came over to the window. Her hand felt cold, and she was shivering.

  “The Princess is next on the left, toward this wing.” Her voice sounded thin, strained. “What are you going to do? Please tell me.”

  “Go up on the tower and wait.” It was wholly dark in the room now. He could not see her face. “If he gets by Oriol and Lepic, I’ll be watching for him. If he doesn’t come tonight, I should be able to last until Sunday, unless they tear the place down to find me. If he doesn’t come Sunday, I’ll try to get to Italy before I’m picked up. If I don’t reach Italy, I won’t have to make any further plans.”

  She said nothing. Her shivering increased.

  “Twice you told me I was a fool,” he said. “I may have been, as Mr. Burns. I’m not now. This is what I know how to do best. Will you do one more thing for me?”

  He thought she nodded. He said, “Tell them I—Mr. Burns—told you I had to leave unexpectedly, and had no time to say good-bye. It will keep Paul from talking, and it ought to make them look for me somewhere else. If I get away with this, I’ll owe you more thanks than I have time to give you. If not, I’m still grateful for what you’ve done. Good-bye.”

  He pressed her cold fingers before he released them. She still said nothing, nor moved, except to shiver more violently than before. He was disappointed that she did not wish him good luck, or say good-bye. It would have been only a small gesture for her to make.

  He left her standing by the window, opened the door cautiously, and saw that the corridor was empty.

  Paul had done him one favor in identifying the location of his own room across the hall. He took Mr. Burns’s bag with him and hid it under Paul’s bed, where it might escape detection for a while, then went quickly and quietly to the window.

  It was high and narrow, a slit in the thick outer wall of the castle overlooking the gardened moat. He had to squeeze to get to the ledge outside. He was on the opposite side of the wing from the terrasse. There were no lights in the garden below him. He listened for voices, watched for the gleam of a lighted cigarette in the dark, heard nothing, saw nothing. Stretching to his full height from the ledge, he reached above his head and explored the old wall with his fingers until he found a crevice between the stones. He began to climb, a gray shadow against gray rock.

  7

  He climbed carefully but steadily. There were no windows above him, only blank wall and an overhanging eave. When he found a crevice big enough for his toes, he rested. Otherwise it was a test of strength and grip, harder than climbing a rope because he could not clasp with his palms, but not greatly more difficult than scaling a cliff face. His fingers found holds where the centuries-old mortar between the stones of the wall had weathered. He held his weight on the hard hook of one hand while he groped with the other for a new hold, pulling himself upward as patiently as a snail on stone. He moved like a snail, not thinking, letting his arms and legs and fingers think for him—pull, hold, reach, grip, pull again, hold, grope, find a foothold, rest.

  The overhanging eave was hardest to pass. He had to sidle crabwise on the wall to find both a momentary handhold and toehold in the right positions, then stretch to his limit to reach the gutter at the eave edge. He would not voluntarily have scaled the eave in that way, given any other choice, because he could not properly test the strength of the gutter before trusting his weight to it. But it did not sag during the moment he hung suspended from it. He pulled himself up to the roof.

  His fingers ached from the strain of clinging to small holds, and the climb had made him sweat. He rested.

  A faint afterglow still remained in the sky. He studied the roofs he had still to cross, marking a path that would not take him in front of a dormer window. He had to pass the length of the wing and over the main, higher roof tops to the tower, which rose from the juncture of the opposite wing with the central mass of the castle. The roofs were of slate tile, smooth and steep. Slate was always dangerous to climb, not only because of its smoothness but because each tile was hung on a single nail which pulled loose easily under strain and might let the tile slide with a revealing clatter. And although there were no dormers overlooking the roof in either wing, several broke the top outline of the main building, one or two showing lighted windows.

  He crossed above the dormers, making his way along the gutter to the inner end of the wing, up the angle the roof made with the joining wall, jumping from the peak of the wing to catch the gutter at the eave of the higher roof, then up the rise of the roof corner to the top. Only the tower stood higher. The central roof was a series of disconnected gables and sharply peaked turrets, so that his path along the ridges of the roof top, balanced as delicately as a wire walker to avoid a misstep on the sheer slopes of slate, took him up, down, and at angles until he reached the base of the tower.

  The eaves and the bulk of the castle itself had shielded him until then from the view of anyone who might look up from the terrace. The tower was more exposed. He knew there was a stairway inside, and a door opened at the tower base onto a shallow rampart. But he did not try the door. He made his way around the tower on the narrow rampart walk to the outside, where it was blocked by the thick growth of ivy climbing from the moat below, then up the strong ladder of vine to the crenellated tower top and at last over the parapet.

  From that remote perch he overlooked the entire château: the roofs, the gardened moat, the glowing emerald pool, the lighted terrace. The terrace was a stage in the theater made by the box of the extending wings. He was too far above the foreshortened figures on the stage to hear their words, but the pantomime, the dumb show of gesture and movement, stage crosses, entrances, and exits, told him what was going on.

  He watched the action of the play with the same sense of detachment that always came to him when he looked down from a high place. He did not feel that he was part of the play. It was Mr. Burns they were excited about, not himself.

  The valet coughed at Mimi Sanford’s elbow. She was too engrossed in listening to the couturière describe the changes she meant to introduce in the fall fashions to notice him at first. He coughed again.

  She said, “What is it?”

  “Mr. Burns, madame. He’s wanted on the telephone. An urgent call.”

  She looked around the terrasse. Mr. Burns was not in sight. She had forgotten him, and it made her feel guilty. She was a conscientious hostess.

  She said, “He must be in his room.”

  “I just came from his room, madame. He doesn’t answer.”

  “I haven’t seen him since he arrived. Ask Mr. Sanford.”

  The valet asked Mr. Sanford, who was standing with Lepic and Oriol on the lawn where they could see the rise of the castle walls, explaining why any suggestion of thieves breaking into the Combe d’Or was nonsense. It was his firm opinion that once the castle doors had been closed and bolted for the night, nobody alive could ent
er his home except by dynamiting a way, and not easily even then. He was giving reasons for his faith, in terms of wall thicknesses, when valet came to make his inquiry.

  “Burns?” Sanford said blankly. “Who the devil is Mr. Burns?”

  “The friend of Mrs. Stevens and her daughter, sir.”

  “Oh, him. I didn’t even know he was here. Ask Mrs. Sanford.”

  “I’ve already asked her, sir. She told me to speak to you.”

  “Well, I don’t know. Ask Mrs. Stevens, then.”

  Mrs. Stevens did not know, either. She looked around for Francie, but Francie was nowhere in sight, and the Princess Lila’s description of life with Oriental royalty was too entertaining to be interrupted. It was another ten minutes before the valet could attract attention to the fact that Mr. Burns was either dead or unconscious in his room or had vanished into thin air.

  George Sanford went reluctantly to search for his guest. Lepic, with growing curiosity, accompanied him. When they found Mr. Burns’s room empty and his luggage gone, Sanford was at first relieved not to discover a body, then puzzled, finally indignant. He could not satisfy Lepic’s curiosity. He had met Mr. Burns only once, casually. Mrs. Sanford had invited him to the gala at the request of Mrs. Stevens, or possibly Miss Stevens.

  It was all Sanford knew. He did not remember what Mr. Burns looked like, beyond the fact that he was middle-aged and slightly bald.

  Mrs. Stevens was startled to find Lepic suddenly at her elbow, asking questions about Mr. Burns in a demanding way and with more signs of excitement than he had shown at the loss of her jewelry. She said, “He’s a gentleman staying at my hotel, a friend of my daughter’s. Why? What’s happened to him?”

  “I would like to know myself, madame. Where is your daughter?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. Probably in her room.”

  “Please take me to her room.”

  Mrs. Stevens looked down her plump nose and said, with considerable pleasure, “At the moment, the Princess Lila and I—”

  Lepic cut her off.

  “I demand that you take me to your daughter, madame,” he said harshly. “At once!”

  Mrs. Stevens decided not to argue. He did not show the same patience of manner she remembered. She took him to Francie’s room.

  Francie was lying in the dark. She had a splitting headache, and did not want to talk with anyone. But she told Lepic of the message Mr. Burns had left for his hosts, that he had been called away unexpectedly without time to make his apologies. She did not know when or how he had left the château. She answered Lepic’s questions listlessly, describing Mr. Burns’s appearance, clothes, and mannerisms, what little else she knew about him. When Lepic had rushed off, she asked her mother to turn off the light and leave her alone. She had no desire to talk further about Mr. Burns or anything else. It was a very bad headache.

  Mrs. Stevens, returning to the terrasse, found everyone else more than eager to discuss Mr. Burns’s mysterious disappearance. Who was he, and why would anyone behave in such a peculiar manner? No one had seen him go. It was certainly strange of him not even to say good-bye to his host and hostess.

  Mrs. Stevens apologized to Mimi Sanford.

  “Though I can’t say it surprises me,” she said cheerfully. “There was always something strange about him. He was the luckiest man at roulette I ever met, and he never bet more than a hundred francs on anything. I think he was a little crazy. In a nice way, of course.”

  Lepic did not think that Mr. Burns was crazy. He took Oriol aside and said, “I think we’ve got him! Paul du Pré is missing, too. So is his car. The servants say he drove off in a hurry just about the time we arrived. Didn’t you tell me he and Robie were close friends?”

  “They used to be. Did the servants see anyone else in the car?”

  “They weren’t watching for anyone else. It has to be more than a coincidence that they both disappeared at once.”

  “I’m not so sure. I don’t think Paul would help him beat the law. Besides, the description is all wrong. John had more hair and less belly, and it isn’t his technique to smuggle in as a guest.”

  “Hairlines and bellies are easy to change,” Lepic said impatiently. “So are techniques, if you can’t get in any other way. I tell you, we’ve got him!”

  “We’ve got somebody,” Oriol conceded. “I’m not convinced that it was John Robie.”

  “Who else would have a reason to run?”

  “Any crook could recognize the Citroën and know we weren’t making a social call. But go ahead and set your lines out for him. It won’t be any worse than a waste of time. I’m going to stay here.”

  “Don’t use that tone with me, Commissaire.” Lepic’s voice was sharp. “I’m still your superior. You’ll do what I tell you.”

  Oriol laughed, bitterly, without enjoyment.

  “You’ll be my superior if and when we take Le Chat,” he said. “Right now we’re a pair of betrayed virgins trying to keep the truth from the neighbors. Go set your nets, Commissaire Divisionnaire. I’ll stay here.”

  Lepic’s face flushed. He turned on his heel and hurried away, across the lawn and through the gardens of the moat to the car park beyond. The Citroën roared off in a spray of gravel.

  John saw it go, and knew what Lepic’s departure meant. He could only guess why Oriol remained.

  Paul returned only a few minutes later, while Lepic was still on his way to put the brigade mobile in action. Paul’s shoulders drooped as he came across the lawn. He walked heavily, without his normal spring of step.

  Oriol went to meet him. The pantomime was clear. Oriol asked his question. Paul shook his head. Oriol asked other questions. Paul continued to shake his head. He knew nothing about Mr. Burns, and had an explanation for his own absence from the château. The explanation did not satisfy Oriol, who put out his hand to stop Paul when he turned away. Paul brushed the hand off. Oriol watched him cross the terrace to speak to his hostess, who took his arm and presented him to the princess, the couturière, Mrs. Stevens, and several others. He showed only polite interest in Mr. Burns’s puzzling disappearance, still the main subject of conversation, but it was something he said, some suggestion made in apparent innocence, which sent Mimi Sanford, the princess, and most of the other women hurrying in fright to their rooms to reassure themselves that they had not been robbed.

  Oriol followed them. The women came back in time, laughing at themselves and each other, to chide Paul for a ridiculous suggestion. Oriol did not return.

  John heard him exploring the roof, several hours later. Dinner was over, coffee and liqueurs had been served, and several couples were dancing to the music of a small orchestra that played on the terrace. The flurry caused by Mr. Burns’s disappearance had been forgotten. Francie had still not come to join the other guests. But she had sent her excuses, and no one missed Oriol, the other absent guest, except George Sanford, who was relieved that he did not have to explain Oriol to the princess and the couturière.

  Oriol intended to see for himself if Sanford’s claims about the castle’s impregnability were justified. He still did not believe that Le Chat would come to the Combe d’Or by invitation.

  He worked his way up through the château from the bottom floors, peering through windows and trying doors. Most of the guest-room doors he found securely locked. He hoped the windows he could not try were locked as well, although he knew locked windows would not be a bar. Neither would the apparently unscalable walls under the windows. There were drainpipes. And when, after climbing interminable flights of narrow, winding stairs, he reached the roof tops and found the ladder of ivy ascending to the parapet of the tower, he smiled wryly to himself at Sanford’s boasts. The château might be successfully defended against armed assault, as Sanford claimed. It offered no protection against the entry of a man like John Robie.

  John heard him first when the door at the base of the tower squeaked open on heavy hinges. He did not risk exposing himself by looking over the parapet. He k
new it would be Oriol.

  A flag pole rose from the tower top, and a trap door connected with the stairs inside. He waited, listening to the man below cautiously explore the narrow rampart walk out to the block of the ivy vine, heard him go back into the tower and the bolt of the door slide home, then went over the parapet to burrow into the screen of vine ten feet below. He hung there for a quarter of an hour, breathing through his mouth so the dust in the ivy leaves would not make him sneeze. But Oriol did not try the trap at the tower top. When John was certain that it was safe to move, he went back to his high perch. He was not disturbed again.

  The orchestra stopped playing early, before midnight. The guests were not enthusiastic about dancing. Most of them found that hours of travel to reach the Combe d’Or, combined with George Sanford’s brandy, made them sleepy. They drifted away from the terrace by ones and twos and threes until only Paul and the orchestra remained, finally only Paul.

  He sat alone, smoking one cigarette after another, not moving until George Sanford came back to the terrace and spoke to him. Sanford’s gestures said that he did not like to disturb his guest’s solitude, but it was time to drop the portcullis and lift the metaphorical drawbridge. Paul followed him inside. The huge double doors of the castle swung shut. Bars dropped into place. Moments afterward the lights in the emerald pool winked out, then those on the terrace. The Château Combe d’Or was sealed for the night.

  There were still lights in many of the castle windows, and no need to maintain a watch until they went out. But John had a view of more than the rooftops.

  For what it had been originally, a lookout point, the tower top was magnificent. Only the high irregular line of the Esterel stretching far in the southwest blocked his view of the starlit Mediterranean. There was no moon, and the brilliance of the lights marking the curving coast road was sharper in contrast with the velvet darkness of the night. Against the shadowy backdrop of the Esterel hills there were first isolated bright sparks, then strings of bright sparks together to mark the grand sweep of seashore north and east from Théoule toward La Napoule and the blaze of illumination that was Cannes. The château stood at the upper peak of a chain of hills running down into the sea at the sharp hook of Cap Croisette, and the white, floodlighted bulk of the casino shining at the tip of the point glowed like a pendant on a necklace of light which continued toward the northeast with the coastal road, bending around the crescent of Golfe Juan to Cap d’Antibes, bending again in a wider crescent to melt into a larger, brighter pool of light, Nice in the distance, continuing beyond to the clustered sparkle to Cap Ferrat, beyond that to another, dimmer necklace marking the beginning of the Corniche road which led along the cliffs to Villefranche, Beaulieu, Monte Carlo, Menton, and finally to the Italian border sixty miles away. The whole Côte d’Azur lay under his eyes.