I pulled oh a dressing gown and went into the sitting room.
From the kitchen Mrs Meld said, 'He's in the Mini, parked by the letter box.'
From the window I couldn't see much of him, just his bulk behind the wheel and a pair of brown hands spread over the wheel rim. The bulk of his body looked too big to be my friend Jimbo. But I had no doubt that they were connected. While Jimbo Alakwe tried to negotiate new terms for me, they were keeping an eye on me.
At half past nine I dropped my travelling case out of the bathroom window at the back of the flat. Mrs Meld caught it for me from below in her garden, and then I followed, moving into her kitchen, pausing to admire the new washing-up machine that she'd finally persuaded Meld to buy for her, and then through the house and out of her side door which opened into the next street. It was a route that I'd used many times before, so many times in fact that I'd probably established a permanent right of way by now.
I took a taxi to Miggs's place and got him to send a boy up to the office to collect my air tickets and passport. If they were watching the flat they could well be watching the office. I phoned Wilkins and told her what was happening, and then asked her to have someone check at Somerset House and get all they could on Athena Holdings Ltd. Wilkins was in a better mood, and made me run over all I'd packed for my trip to make sure that I hadn't forgotten anything.
She finished, 'You're not taking a firearm?'
'No,' I said, 'I'm not taking a firearm.' Mrs Meld would call a spade a spade, but not Wilkins. 'Why? Do you think I should have a gun?'
'No, I do not. You're much too bad a shot for it to be any use.'
Well, maybe she had something there. But, now and then, they were comforting things to have to hand.
I then phoned Guffy and told him about Mr Jimbo Alakwe, Esquire. At the moment I considered this a frank, open approach which might be useful.
'If there's anything about him or his employers which you Know, which could be helpful to me, I would appreciate it. Let Wilkins know.'
He said he would consider it.
At two o'clock I was in Geneva, and there was a red Mercedes 250SL waiting for me. What it is to work for a millionaire and be able to use his name and credit rating.
I went south like a red streak on the wings of fantasy. I had fishing loughs, grouse moors, town and country houses and reserved hotel suites where I was not to be disturbed after eight. I had a yacht and a handful of cars of which this was my favourite. I daydreamed my way down to Annecy and Aix-les-Bains along a road I knew well. My hands had a millionaire's firm grip on the steering wheel with its large, padded safety boss, and — thanks to the single joint, low-pivot swing axle, the separation of wheel mounting and wheel suspension — the car held the road like a high-speed leech, gentling down the moment I put a foot on the two-circuit servo-assisted disc brakes. Oh, I knew all the jargon. I'd done a year as a car salesman before I had moved into business on my own, chasing other people's troubles and generally ending up with a bag full of them for myself.
Below Aix-les-Bains, at the end of the lake, I swung across country and then up to the west side of the lake. The Ombre-mont Hotel sat on the hillside above the lake, looking across to Aix. I had a large, bright, chintzy room overlooking the water and when I phoned down for whisky and Perrier water I got it within five minutes, which was something near a record. For records, it was going to be my lucky day. Within the next two hours I had found out something about Zelia which went a long way to convincing me that she had no more lost her memory than I had lost mine — not that there weren't a lot of things in my past that I would have liked to have forgotten. But there it is, things happen to you and things are done by you which are forever on the record.
Just before dinner I went down to the reception desk and cashed a traveller's cheque with the girl who was on duty. I didn't need the money because I had picked up cash at Geneva, but it was a way of opening a conversation and letting her get a few minutes of my warm, affable, engaging nature before I started on the small deceits and oblique questions which were part of my other, second, nature.
She was a girl of about twenty-plus with a little mole at the right corner of her mouth, a pair of dark, wise eyes that had an occasional flash of humour, and she had time on her hands, for all the evening transients had booked in. Her English was streets ahead of my French. I complimented her on it and asked where she had learnt it. It worked, of course. It always does. There's nothing people like more than to have it acknowledged how well they speak a foreign language. In no time we'd got to the point where she asked me whether I was in France on holiday or business. I said that I was on business, that I was the private secretary of one Mr Cavan O'Dowda, and I didn't have to tell her who he was. She knew. If you're in the hotel business you probably know all the millionaires and, anyway, the French have this natural reverence for money which makes the names of the world's millionaires as familiar to them as football players are to the differently oriented Anglo-Saxons.
Confidentially, shuffling my franc notes slowly into my wallet, I said that I was making some inquiries about his stepdaughter Mademoiselle Zelia Yunge-Brown who was at this moment suffering from loss of memory which had come on at the moment she had left this hotel some weeks ago. For a moment her dark eyes were sad, at the thought of a millionaire's daughter being so afflicted — every memory must be golden, what unhappiness to lose even one.
I agreed and asked if I could see a copy of Zelia's hotel bill. I didn't think it would give me anything openly to prove a theory which I was nursing, knowing human nature, and that Zelia had been off the direct route down to Cannes. But there was no harm in checking. The girl produced a carbon copy from a file. It was for Room 15 and she had paid for the apartment and breakfast. No dinner charge. Well, she might have eaten out somewhere. I was about to hand it back when I noticed that there was no charge for an item which should have been there.
'While Mademoiselle Zelia was here she put in a call to her father in England, at about nine o'clock in the evening. There's no charge for it.'
The girl agreed that there wasn't a charge.
I said, 'Do you keep a record of phone calls?'
'From the rooms, when they are to be charged, yes.'
'Can you check the long-distance calls that evening? From all the rooms.'
'That would mean checking the copies of the accounts of all the guests who were here that night.' There was no sadness in her dark eyes now, just wisdom. A millionaire was fussing about his daughter and, while anyone in their right mind would be anxious to help, it would mean extra work.
I said, 'If it will take you a little time, then naturally Monsieur O'Dowda would wish me to acknowledge that.' I pulled out my wallet and handed her a hundred-franc note.
She took it with a quick, sensible nod of her head; no one in the French hotel business is anything but sensible about money. She said that if Monsieur would look back after dinner, no?
Monsieur went to dinner. There was no omble.
I made do with a terrine de canard aux truffes, and a poulet aux morilles with a bottle of Château-Rayas.
And, after dinner, the information was waiting for me. The only phone call to England made from the hotel that night — and it was just before nine — had come from Room 16 which had been occupied by a Monsieur Max Ansermoz who had booked in the same evening and left the following morning.
Not bothering with niceties, I asked, 'Is there a communicating door between Rooms 15 and 16.'