″When did you see her?″
″I have decided not to tell you.″
″This is very important.″
″I thought so.″
Lipsey sighed. He would have to be a little rough. In the few minutes he had been in the room, he had detected the smell of cannabis. ″Very well, old man. If you will not tell me, I shall have to inform the police that this room is being used for drug-taking.″
The man laughed with genuine amusement. ″Do you think they do not know that already?″ he said. His papery chuckle ran its course, and he coughed. The twinkle had gone from his eyes when he spoke again. ″To be trickled into giving information to a policeman, that would be foolish. But to be blackmailed into it would be dishonorable. Please get out now.″
Lipsey saw that he had lost. He felt disappointed, and a little ashamed. He went out and closed the door on the old man′s papery cough.
At least there was no trudging to be done, Lipsey thought. He sat in a small restaurant, after a superb 12-franc lunch, smoking his second small cigar of the day. The steak, and the glass of red wine he had drunk with it, had made the world seem a little less depressing. Looking back, he realized that the moming had ruffled him, and he wondered again if he were too old for fieldwork.
He ought to be philosophical about such setbacks now, he told himself. The break always came, if you waited long enough for it. Still, he had run into a dead end. He now had only one line of inquiry, instead of two. His hand was forced.
He had to chase the girl, rather than the picture. He dropped his cigar in the ashtray, paid his bill, and left the restaurant.
A taxi pulled up at the curb outside, and a young man got out. Lipsey grabbed the cab while the man was paying. He looked a second time at the young face, and realized he had seen it before.
He gave the driver the address at which Miss Sleign had been staying since June. As the car pulled away, he puzzled over the familiar face of the young man. Putting names to faces was an obsession with Lipsey. If he could not match them, he felt a distinct professional unease, as if his ability was thrown into doubt.
He racked his brains for a few moments, then came up with a name: Peter Usher. He was a successful young artist, and had some connection with Charles Lampeth. Ah yes, Lampeth′s gallery showed his pictures. It was of no consequence. Feeling easier, Lipsey dismissed the young man from his mind.
The taxi dropped him outside a small apartment block, about ten years old, and not very impressive. Lipsey went in and bent his head to the concierge′s window.
″Is there anyone at home in number nine?″ he asked with a smile.
″They are away,″ the woman said, giving the information begrudgingly.
″Oh, good,″ Lipsey said. ″I am an interior decorator from England, and they asked me to give them an estimate for the place. They said I was to ask you for the key, and look over the place while they were away. I was not sure if they would be gone yet.″
″I cannot give you the key. Besides, they have no right to redecorate without permission.″
″Of course!″ Lipsey gave her his smile again, and turned on a certain middle-aged charm which he knew he was capable of. ″Miss Sleign was most emphatic that I should consult you, to get your advice and opinions.″ As he spoke, he fumbled some notes out of his wallet and into an envelope. ″She asked me to pass this to you, for your trouble.″ He handed the envelope through the window, bending it slightly in his hand to make the money crackle.
She took the bribe. ″You must not take very long, because I will have to stay there with you all the time,″ she said.
″Of course,″ he smiled.
She hobbled out of her cubbyhole and led him up the stairs, with a good deal of puffing and blowing, holding her back, and pausing for breath.
The apartment was not very large, and some of the furniture looked secondhand. Lipsey looked around the living room. ″They were talking about emulsion paint for the walls,″ he said.
The concierge shuddered.
″Yes, I think you′re right ″Lipsey said. ″A pleasant flowered wallpaper, perhaps, and a plain dark green carpet.″ He paused in front of a ghastly sideboard. He rapped it with his knuckles. ″Good quality;″ he said. ″Not like this modem rubbish.″ He took out a notebook and scribbled a few meaningless lines in it.
″They didn′t tell me where they were going,″ he said conversationally. ″The South, I expect.″
″Italy.″ The woman′s face was still stem, but she enjoyed displaying her knowledge.
″Ah. Rome, I expect.″
The woman did not take that bait, and Lipsey assumed she did not know. He looked around the rest of the flat, his sharp eyes taking everything in while he made inane remarks to the concierge.
In the bedroom there was a telephone on a low bedside table. Lipsey looked closely at the scratch pad beside it. A ballpoint pen lay across the blank sheet. The impression of the words which had been scribbled on the sheet above lay deep in the pad. Lipsey put his body between the table and the concierge, and palmed the notebook.
He made a few more empty comments about the decor, then said: ″You have been most kind, madame. I will not keep you from your work any longer.″
She showed him to the door of the block. Outside, he hurried to a stationer′s and bought a very soft pencil. He sat at a sidewalk café, ordered coffee, and got out the stolen pad.
He rubbed the pencil gently over the impression in the paper. When he had finished, the words were clear. It was the address of a hotel in Livorno, Italy.
Lipsey arrived at the hotel in the evening of the following day. It was a small, cheap place of about a dozen bedrooms. It had once been the house of a large middle-class family, Lipsey guessed: now that the area was going down, it had been converted into a guesthouse for commercial travelers.
He waited in the living room of the family′s quarters while the wife went to fetch her husband from the upper regions of the house. He was weary from traveling: his head ached slightly, and he looked forward to dinner and a soft bed. He thought about smoking a cigar, but refrained for the sake of politeness. He glanced at the television from time to time. It was showing a very old English film which he had seen one evening in Chippenham. The sound was turned down.
The woman returned with the proprietor. He had a cigarette in the comer of his mouth. The handle of a hammer stuck out of one pocket, and there was a bag of nails in his hand.
He looked annoyed at having been disturbed at his carpentry. Lipsey gave him a fat bribe and began to speak in stumbling, fractured Italian.
″I am trying to find a young lady who stayed here recently,″ he said. He took out the picture of Dee Sleign, and gave it to the proprietor. ″This is the woman. Do you remember her?″
The man looked briefly at the photograph and nodded assent. ″She was alone,″ he said, the inflection in his voice showing the disapproval of a good Catholic father for young girls who stay in hotels alone.
″Alone?″ said Lipsey, surprised. The concierge in Paris had given the impression the couple had gone away together. He went on: ″I am an English detective, hired by her father to find her and persuade her to come home. She is younger than she looks,″ he added by way of explanation.
The proprietor nodded. ″The man did not stay here,″ he said with righteousness oozing from him. ″He came along, paid her bill, and took her away.″
″Did she tell you what she was doing here?″
″She wanted to look at paintings. I told her that many of our art treasures were lost in the bombings.″ He paused, and frowned in the effort to remember. ″She bought a tourist guide—she wanted to know where was the birthplace of Modigliani.″