‘Where is Sammy?’ I said.
Sammy, Dawson said with faint disapproval, was walking about, and was never in any place longer than a minute. I went upstairs to fetch the new telephone and found Sammy coming down the stairs from the top floor.
‘Did you know there’s another kitchen up there?’ he said.
‘Yes, I looked.’
‘And there’s a skylight or two. I rigged a nice little pair of booby traps under those. If you hear a lot of old brass firearms crashing around up there, you get the force here pronto.’
I assured him I would, and took him downstairs with me to show him, as well as Dawson and Litsi, how the recording telephone worked.
The normal telephone arrangements in that house were both simple and complicated: there was only one line, but about a dozen scattered instruments.
Incoming calls rang in only three of those: the one in the sitting room, one in the office where Mrs Jenkins worked by day, and one in the basement. Whoever was near one of those instruments when a call came in would answer, and if it were for someone else, reach that person via the intercom, as Dawson had reached me when Wykeham rang the previous Sunday. This arrangement was to save six or more people answering whenever the telephone rang.
From each guest bedroom outgoing calls could be directly made, as from the princess’s rooms, and her husband’s. The house was rarely as full as at present, Dawson said, and the telephone was seldom busy. The system normally worked smoothly.
I explained that to work the new telephone, one had simply to unplug the ordinary instrument and plug in the new one.
‘If you press that button,’ I said, pointing, ‘the whole conversation will be recorded. If you press that one, everyone in the room can hear what’s being said.’
I plugged the simple box of tricks into the sitting room socket. ‘It had better be in here while we are all around. During the day, if everyone’s out, like today, it can go to Mrs Jenkins’ office, and at night, if Dawson wouldn’t mind, in the basement. It doesn’t matter how many calls are unnecessarily recorded, we can scrub them out, but every time... if one could develop the habit?’
They all nodded.
‘Such an uncouth man,’ Dawson commented. ‘I would know that loud voice anywhere.’
‘It’s a pity,’ Litsi said, when Dawson and Sammy had gone, ‘that we can’t somehow tap Beatrice’s phone and record what she says.’
‘Anytime she’s upstairs, like now, we can just lift the receiver and listen.’
We lifted the receiver, but no one in the house was talking. We could wait and listen for hours, but meanwhile no outside calls could come in. Regretfully Litsi put the receiver back again, saying we might be lucky, he would try every few minutes; but by the time Beatrice reappeared for dinner the intermittent vigil had produced no results.
I had meanwhile talked to Wykeham and collected the messages off my answering machine, neither a lengthy event, and if anyone had inadvertently broken in on the calls, I’d heard no clicks on the line.
Beatrice came down demanding her ‘bloody’ in a flattering white dress covered in sunflowers, Litsi fussing over her with amiable solicitude, and refusing to be disconcerted by ungraciousness.
‘I know you don’t want me here,’ she said bluntly, ‘but until Roland signs on the dotted line, I’m staying.’
The princess came down to dinner, but not Roland, and on our return to the sitting room afterwards Litsi, without seeming to, manoeuvred everyone around so that it was I who ended up sitting by the telephone. He smiled over his coffee cup, and everyone waited.
When the bell finally rang, Beatrice jumped.
I picked up the receiver, pressing both the recorder and conference buttons; and a voice spoke French loudly into our expectations.
Eleven
Litsi rose immediately to his feet, came over to me and made gestures for me to give him the phone.
‘It isn’t Nanterre,’ he said.
He took the receiver, disengaged the conference button and spoke privately in French. ‘Oui... Non... Certainement... Ce soir... Oui... Merci.’
He put down the receiver and almost immediately the bell rang again. Litsi picked up the receiver again, briefly listened, grimaced, pressed the record and conference buttons again, and passed the buck to me.
‘It’s him,’ he said succinctly, and indeed everyone could hear the familiar domineering voice saying words that meant nothing to me at all.
‘Speak English, please,’ I said.
‘I said,’ Nanterre said in English, ‘I wish to speak to Prince Litsi and he is to be brought to the telephone immediately.’
‘He isn’t available,’ I said. ‘I can give him a message.’
‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘I know who you are. You are the jockey.’
‘Yes.’
‘I left instructions for you to leave the house.’
‘I don’t obey your instructions.’
‘You’ll regret it.’
‘In what way?’ I asked, but he wouldn’t be drawn into a specific threat; quite likely, I supposed, because he hadn’t yet thought up a particular mayhem.
‘My notary will arrive at the house tomorrow morning at ten o’clock,’ he said. ‘He will be shown to the library, as before. He will wait there. Roland de Brescou and Princess Casilia will go down there when he arrives. Also Prince Litsi and Danielle de Brescou will go down. All will sign the form which is in the notary’s briefcase. The notary will witness each signature, and carry the document away in his briefcase. Is this understood?’
‘It is understood,’ I said calmly, ‘but it’s not going to happen.’
‘It must happen.’
‘There’s no document in the briefcase.’
It stopped him barely a second. ‘My notary will bring a paper bearing the same form of words. Everyone will sign the notary’s document.’
‘No, they aren’t ready to,’ I said.
‘I have warned what will happen if the document is not signed.’
‘What will happen?’ I asked. ‘You can’t make people behave against their consciences.’
‘Every conscience has its price,’ he said furiously, and instantly disconnected. The telephone clicked a few times and came forth with the dialling tone, and I put the receiver back in its cradle to shut it off.
Litsi shook his head regretfully. ‘He’s being cautious. Nothing he said can be presented to the police as a threat requiring action on their part.’
‘You should all sign his document,’ Beatrice said aggrievedly, ‘and be done with all this obstruction to expanding his business.’
No one bothered to argue with her: the ground had already been covered too often. Litsi then asked the princess if she would mind if he and I went out for a little while. Sammy was still in the house to look after things until John Grundy came, and I would be back in good time to fetch Danielle.
The princess acquiesced with this arrangement while looking anything but ecstatic over further time alone with Beatrice, and it was with twinges of guilt that I happily followed Litsi out of the room.
‘We’ll go in a taxi,’ he said, ‘to the Marylebone Plaza hotel.’
‘That’s not your sort of place,’ I observed mildly.
‘We’re going to meet someone. It’s his sort of place.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone to tell you about the arms trade.’
‘Really?’ I said, interested. ‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t precisely know. We are to go to room eleven twelve and talk to a Mr Mohammed. That isn’t his real name, which he would prefer we didn’t know. He will be helpful, I’m told.’