Folly Du Jour - Barbara Cleverly [118]
‘I’m sorry to disrupt your evening, Pollock . . .’ Joe began.
‘So you should be!’ he replied with an easy grin. ‘I’m just off to hear René Maison singing in Der Rosenkavalier. A first for me – do you know it?’
‘Yes, indeed. Charming entertainment. Full of disguises, deceit and skulduggery of one sort or another. The police dash in and solve all the problems in the end, I recall. I think you’ll like it.’
George threw him a withering glance and took up the reins. ‘We have a problem, Jackie. Or rather, these two Keystone Cops have a problem. Which you can solve. I want you to tell them you’re not a degenerate and a multiple murderer.’
‘I beg your pardon? I say, George, old man . . . what is going on? I really do have to rush off, you know. Look – can you all come back and play tomorrow?’ He looked uneasily over his shoulder, hearing a party forming up in the foyer.
‘I’m afraid it’s no joke, Pollock,’ said Joe. ‘A certain accusation has been made . . .’ He abandoned the police phrasing. ‘Alice Conyers has shopped you. She’s told us everything. Her – your – organization has been shot to pieces, literally, while you’ve been sipping sherry and humming arias in Her Excellency’s ear. It’s over. The crew in the boulevard du Montparnasse are stretched out either in the morgue or on a hospital bed.’
Pollock tugged at his starched collar and sank on to a chair. ‘Alice?’ he murmured. ‘Is she all right?’
‘Right as rain. Not much looking forward to seeing you again. But she’s gone off into the night – armed.’
‘You know Alice, Jackie?’ George was unbelieving.
‘Yes. ’Fraid I do! Oh, my Lord, I knew all this would catch up with me! Never thought it would be you, old man, who brought the blade down on me, though. I say – is there any way of keeping this under our hats?’ He looked anxiously at the door again. ‘I wouldn’t like His Excellency to find out his aide is a bit of a bounder.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘I’d have to kiss goodbye to my evenings at the opera and the ballet and the gallery openings. And I enjoy all that sort of thing enormously. I’m sure he’d understand if I explained it all in my own words and in my own time . . . I mean – we’re not Puritans here – we’re men of the world, don’t you know! The gossip would soon burn itself out . . . in fact, my image might even be burnished in some people’s eyes . . .’
Bonnefoye could keep silent no longer. ‘Bloody English! Is this the understatement you are so proud of, Sandilands? Six deaths in three days, your own life in danger, Sir George a candidate for the guillotine and the perpetrator confesses he’s a bit of a bounder! Well – rap him over the knuckles and let’s be off, shall we?’
He got to his feet in disgust.
Joe joined him, shoulder to shoulder.
‘No joke, Pollock,’ he said stiffly. ‘Alice has told us how you took over her business and turned it sour. Used it as a base for a very hideous assassination bureau. I don’t think you were involved in any way in the Louvre murder – except as a man casually caught up by circumstances – but I do believe that you learned from that episode . . . were inspired by it . . . recognized there a service that was not supplied by anyone else. You could name your fee. No client could complain about the outcome without condemning himself. Absolute security. You became Set.’
Pollock slumped in his seat, lost in thought. Finally he waved them back to their chairs. ‘I think you’d better hear this,’ he said, heavily.
‘I fetched up here in . . . what was it, George? . . . 1923. I liked my employment. I’m good at what I do. Round peg in round hole. Ask anyone. Only two things I missed, really.’ He looked shiftily at Joe. ‘Yes, you’ve guessed – the cricket. But apart from that – female companionship. I had a mistress . . . or two . . . in Egypt, my last posting, and I was lonely here in Paris. Yes – lonely. They do things differently here.’ He smiled. ‘Oh, lots of commercial opportunities, street girls, chorus girls available. Not my style. I like women, Sandilands. I mean, I really like them. I like to