“My status?”
“Certainly.” Burton set down his cocktail glass. “The French police have a passion for crimes in which there’s a woman involved. This one last night was practically made to order. Tell me, Patricia, would it be possible for anyone to blackmail you?”
Her small clenched hand went to her red mouth. Her eyes were dilated. She half rose to her feet, sank back.
“Blackmail!” she repeated. “But I’ve done nothing to — oh, but I see what you mean! Yes, you’ve guessed right. There were letters. Letters I wrote to Rene Descamps, foolish things and all of them harmless — except one, perhaps. He promised to bring them back to me last night. I wanted them before Rowdy came — not that they were dangerous, but because I know Rowdy, and I’d suddenly begun to wonder about these Latins.” When Burton nodded in his grave way she hurried on: “I’m trying to impress upon you that they weren’t compromising letters, not in any way. No, no! They could all be published and they wouldn’t reflect on me at all. But...”
She hesitated. Burton’s eyes were on her flushed face, and he leaned forward to finish for her:
“But they might reflect on someone else?”
“Y-yes,” she said in a small voice.
“Rowland Kitterley?”
“Yes. If the police got them, they would think Rowdy killed him because of jealousy.” She moistened her lips. “It’s silly, I suppose, the whole thing. That is, it would be if it weren’t so tragic. You see, I know Rowdy’s temper. Perhaps Rowdy wouldn’t object to what you know is more or less of a custom on the Riviera, indeed, all through France, for unchaperoned girls to pay a young man to escort them. In most cases it’s purely a business matter and ends there. But it didn’t happen to in this case.”
“I gather the boy fell in love with you; is that it?”
“I’m afraid so. I hadn’t looked for anything of the sort, of course. But such being the case, as it was, I knew that if Rowdy ever discovered I’d been accepting this boy’s attentions, after he became serious, he’d never understand. And perhaps I don’t blame him. So I tried to persuade Rene that we mustn’t be seen together again. He avoided me; but not because of my wishes. It was — a sulk.”
Vivian stirred. Her eyes pleaded with her husband’s when she protested: “Don’t you see what that means now, Stuart? Patricia at last had to write Rene and warn him, knowing Rowdy Kitterley was due here. He and his temper. She asked him for her letters back. Only innocent notes, in themselves, as she says. Nothing you could pin blackmail on. The boy finally brought them, or promised to. However, they weren’t on his body. And the last letter is warning Descamps of that Kitterley temper, of what will happen if the letters are ever discovered. That last one is the letter that was almost a warning of what Rowdy would do if he discovered, and that was among the ones that disappeared — if it was ever there — from the body!”
Burton smoked slowly. “So it’s not a matter of blackmail,” he said thoughtfully. “I’d been off the track... No. They won’t try to blackmail you. The letters are innocent. But they have meaning. And it boils down to this: Their meaning, in the hands of the right person or persons, points definitely to Rowland Kitterley as the killer, especially since his alibi has been broken!”
“That’s it!” the girl cried. “But I repeat there was only that one letter that would involve Rowdy. However, that would be enough; I can see that I put it to Rene very strongly that he must forget about me before Rowdy came. That Rowdy, if Rene loved his own life, mustn’t ever be allowed to know that he and I were — what we were.”
Vivian’s careful voice came slowly: “If you need it put more bluntly, Stuart, Pat’s letter as much as said that Rowdy would not stop at killing if he became jealous.”
The girl’s eyes were moist. Burton sipped at his glass thoughtfully. “Did I understand this French boy wanted you to marry him?” he asked at last.
“Yes. Oh, he was very respectful, very sweet. Somehow all along I had the impression that he wasn’t liking his role. Resented the whole background.”
Burton raised his eyebrows at that; then he frowned and went to the window, stood looking down into the blue-gray shadows that were stealing down along the Promenade des Anglais. The early lights were soft, kindly blurs through them. “No one has been to you as yet, suggesting that he knows where the letters are?” he murmured over his shoulder.
“Not... yet.”
“Someone will be,” he said grimly. “You must let me know immediately who it is. Though the why of all this is beyond me! If it should turn out to be blackmail I’ll be able to understand it. However, whatever it turns out to be, it wasn’t blackmail in the beginning. I’ll swear to that. I’m not sure why I’m so certain. But one thing is certain — you’ve given me ideas!”
Black Burton was at the Cercle Tabarin that night with his wife, but Patricia Blaine was home at her villa, Les Charmettes, and in bed. Alexandre Lavergne was eagerly welcoming to Burton and Vivian. At eleven o’clock, when Vivian was finishing a run at the roulette table, Lavergne, coming up beside Burton as the gambler played chemin-de-fer, looked up with a low exclamation. Burton turned to see Ouchy making an entrance.
The policeman was not in uniform and created no interest among the other guests. But Ouchy stopped beside Burton’s table, touched his arm and said:
“It is with regret, my good friend Monsieur Burton, that—”
When he stopped Burton picked up his counters and said: “It is with regret that you’ve come to tell me that you’ve arrested Kitterley. Is that it, monsieur?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“You have more evidence, then, since we talked?”
“Not direct evidence. No. But that alibi of the motor car. His actions. Other things. We discovered a worn suit of rough serge in the back of the car, his car; it was torn and stained. Not with blood. No. But such tears as might be caused in breaking through the brush surrounding madamoiselle’s villa. He claims he was in an accident recently, but... And we have tested the earth marks on it, too. They might have come from this part of France. We have checked his speedometer and his petrol tank. We believe he has lied to us. There were tracks of his footprints around the villa.”
“Then you believe you have the man who murdered our friend Descamps?” The new voice was that of Jules Peret, manager of the Cercle Tabarin.
Ouchy spread his hands. “I regret to say that we have adopted the only course,” he said, and turned away.
Burton looked after him. He frowned. He knew why Ouchy had gone out of his way to come here with that information. The French policeman was far from a fool. He had approached Burton because he believed that the gambler knew something, something not yet revealed. This new knowledge might get it out of him.
Shaking his head a little, a half smile on his lips, Burton turned to find himself staring at Lavergne. The operator of Cercle Tabarin was standing there shaking his head, making little muttering noises, half clucks, behind his teeth. Peret, the manager, beside him, looked grave, almost funereal. Lavergne said in a low voice:
“This is a bad thing. That it should come home to one of us here! But men will do strange things for women; hein, m’sieu?” A shrug. “This Monsieur Kitterley — he possesses the temper of the most violent, I have heard. It was that then...”
But Burton had turned away. He found Vivian; they cashed their counters and went out. Vivian had heard and she was quiet.