Feeling sick, I bent over her and tried to untie the hair from around her throat with fingers that were numb. It was then that I caught the strong whiff of garlic coming from her half-parted lips. Squeamishly, I bent until my nose was almost touching those, cold, dead lips. There could be no mistaking it. Garlic, without a doubt. Grimly, I remembered Luigi complaining to me back in Pamplona that his new partner was a man who always smelled of garlic.
It added up, all right. The Mafia had won again. Three strikes and I was out.
While getting the tickets before, I had wired to Dombey of Dover to have someone meet Barbara and me when we arrived at the airport. Well, there was nothing to keep me in Lisbon now. I decided to take the plane myself and explain to the Dombey representative that I had failed.
I couldn’t get the smell of garlic out of my nostrils during the flight. I couldn’t forget Barbara‘s dead, staring eyes. I couldn’t forget the two innocent girls killed in Switzerland. The Mafia had a lot to answer for. But who was there to bring them to account?
There was a surprise awaiting me when I debarked in London. The Dombey representative sent to meet me turned out to be none other than Albert Smythe Tarleton, the one who’d gotten me involved in this whole thing in the first place. Outside of a slight limp, he didn’t seem too much the worse for his brush with the Mafia lorry in Paris.
Tersely, I explained to him what had happened to Barbara Thomas. “So it looks like the Mafia uncle gets the pot of gold,” I finished, my voice giving away how beaten I felt.
“No, Mr. Victor. Fortunately for us, there has been a new development. At least I hope there has. You'll have to confirm it. Do you know a small boy named Pierre from Paris?”
“Lucky Pierre? Sure I do. What about him?”
“He is waiting for you at your hotel. He claims that Françoise Laval had a change of heart. He says that he has her here in London, but he won’t tell us where. Refuses to deal with anyone but you. Evidently he expects some sort of reward. Perhaps a considerable one.”
I grinned. “If I know Lucky Pierre, I'm sure he does. Still, if he managed to change Françoise’s mind, he’s probably earned it.”
“He certainly does seem an enterprising lad. But I must confess I found it embarrassing walking through the streets of London with him before. With a foul-smelling black cigar sticking out of that baby face, he looked like anything but a typically English schoolboy.”
“He isn’t even a typically French schoolboy," I told Tarleton. “What he is, is a sort of cross between Horatio Alger and Lucky Luciano. Come on, let’s get over there and hear what he has to say.”
Big Ben bonged us to a halt in front of the hotel some twenty minutes later, and we climbed out into the fog. Tarleton took a deep, appreciative breath. I copied him and ended up in a coughing fit.
“You really should cut down on your smoking, old chap,” he advised, pounding me on the back.
“You mean I should cut down on my breathing,” I gasped. “What do they do, hire sprayers to wet down the London air every night?”
“Careful, old bean, you don’t want to upset the Chamber of Commerce.”
“I didn’t think I could. From the air around here, I figured tuberculosis was the major industry in London.” I hacked my way into the hotel then, and followed Tarleton to the elevators.
A few moments later we were in the room and Lucky Pierre was greeting me. But he wasn’t one to waste too much time on reunion chatter. He got right down to cases.
“I have Françoise Laval here in London,” he told me. “She has changed her mind and will accept her share of the inheritance.”
“How did you manage that?” I asked him. “What happened to her anti-materialistic artist-lover?”
“I took care of him.” Lucky Pierre grinned nastily.
“You mean you killed him?” I asked, alarmed.
“Oh, no, M’sieur,” the child pimp replied. “I destroyed him, but I did not kill him. I found the most esteemed art critic in all Paris, and in exchange for one year’s free credit with whichever of my stable of girls he fancied, he agreed to come and evaluate the paintings of Françoise’s artist.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that nut would have any respect for critical opinion.”
“Generally. that is true. But this man he respects greatly. I determined that in advance.”
“And what did this critic tell him about his work?”
By way of answer, Lucky Pierre held his nose. “And his faith in himself was destroyed,” he added. “All the fight was taken out of him. After that it was simple for Françoise to persuade him that she should claim her inheritance.”
“You say she’s in London. Where?” I wanted to know.
“First we agree about my fee, M’sieur Victor.”
“You see,” Tarleton said. “That’s the way he's been acting with me right along."
“Yeah,” I agreed. “What’s the world coming to when youth doesn‘t have any ideals any more?”
“I never had any,” Lucky Pierre said.
“Okay. Blow your nose and let’s get down to cases,” I told him. “How much do you want?”
He named a figure.
“Outrageous!” Tarleton exploded. “Why, he’s only a child!”
“He’s the Aristotle Onassis of children,” I told him. “But it’s coming out of my share, anyway. Okay.” I nodded to Pierre. “It’s agreed. Now where are you stashing Françoise?”
“Come. I will show you.” He led the way from the room, and we followed him down to the line of cabs waiting outside the hotel. He muttered an address to the cab driver in a low tone that we couldn’t hear, and we piled into the taxi.
When we reached our destination, somewhere in the murk of Soho, Tarleton exploded. “I know this place!" he said indignantly. “It’s the one Brigitte Kelly used to run. It’s a bordello!”
“Is that right, Pierre?” I asked him.
"Oui, M‘sieur Victor.”
“What's she doing in a place like this?” I asked.
“Well, we had to support ourselves somehow until you returned to London, M’sieur Victor.”
“But I saw to it that you had money to live on!” Tarleton reminded him indignantly.
“That was for me, M’sieur. And it was never agreed that you had exclusive rights to either my services, or Françoise’s. Besides,” he drew himself up to his full child’s height, “a man must keep on with his work. Without work, there is no dignity.”
“Just what is his work?” Tarleton asked me.
“He's a pimp,” I told him. “He’s one of the most ambitious pimps in all Paris. And I do believe he’s branching out. This may well be the beginning of an important London operation for him. How about it, Pierre? Is that what you’re planning?”
“Perhaps, M’sieur.” He was unperturbed. “And why not? After all, every business has to expand. Else how can a man better himself?”
“Let’s go,” Tarleton said, his proper British outlook obviously ruffled at this example of French enterprise. “If we’re going to see this girl, let’s get on with it.”
Lucky Pierre rang the bell, murmured a few words to whoever answered it, and then led us inside. We went down a long corridor and through a kitchen to a flight of stairs. With true Gallic consideration, Pierre was taking us up the back way so that the girls in the parlor wouldn’t feel rejected. “It would be very bad for their morale,” was the way he explained it.