Elusive Mrs. Pollifax (8 page)

On this pleasant note Mrs. Pollifax fell asleep.

She awoke suddenly, with a rapidly beating heart. But this is growing tiresome, she thought, staring up at a man silhouetted beside her bed. He had half turned away from her and was holding an object up to the dim light from the window. He held it with one hand and with the other hand he stroked it. Eyes wide open now, Mrs. Pollifax
saw that it was a knife he held. He was touching it, testing it, with a concentration that turned her cold.

He moved with infinite grace. His speed was incredible. Mrs. Pollifax barely had time to roll to the edge of the bed. As she dropped to the floor she heard the ugly ripping sound of the knife slicing the pillow where only a second before her head had lain. Then with a second swift movement he turned toward Debby’s bed.

Mrs. Pollifax screamed.

It was a small scream, but it was effective. In the other bed Debby sat upright and turned on the bedside light in one fluid, competent motion that amazed Mrs. Pollifax. The light showed her assailant half-crouched between the beds, his eyes blinking at the sudden light.

Debby didn’t scream. To Mrs. Pollifax’s astonishment she stood up in bed and with a wild shout threw herself at the man and carried him to the floor with her. It was the most surprising tackle that Mrs. Pollifax had ever seen. The young, she thought, must feel so very un-used.

She stumbled to her feet to help. As Debby and the man rolled out into the middle of the room she saw the knife flash in the man’s hand and abruptly he jumped to his feet. Debby clung to his legs. He viciously kicked away her grasp, brushed past Mrs. Pollifax, opened the door and fled.

Mrs. Pollifax had never seen him before. Since she was unlikely to see him again tonight she turned to Debby, who sat on the floor rocking back and forth in pain, her left hand cradled between her knees and blood streaming down her face from a scalp wound.

“Oh, my dear,” gasped Mrs. Pollifax after one glance at the bone pushing its way through the skin of Debby’s thumb and she hurried to the telephone. There she stopped, remembering that no one would understand her cry for help and that she’d already had a burglar the night before. She turned back. “Debby, we’re going to have to get you downstairs to the lobby,” she said fiercely.
“Can you walk? Your scalp wound needs stitches, and your thumb needs a splint.”

“I’ll be okay,” Debby said in a dazed voice.

“Lean on me. And tell them you fell into a mirror, do you understand?”

“But he tried to kill me!” cried Debby.

Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Yes,” she said, and for just a moment allowed herself to remember what it had felt like to be inches away from his knife. But what troubled her most of all in remembering was that the man had known Debby was in the room with her. There’d been no hesitation at all–and no light shown–before he’d turned from Mrs. Pollifax to the next bed.

He had planned to murder them both.

“I don’t think we can afford the police,” she explained. “Trust me, will you?” Releasing Debby she hurried into the bathroom. The mirror lining the sink was impossible to fall into, but there was a full-length mirror attached to the back of the door. Mrs. Pollifax grabbed Debby’s hairbrush and after several attacks succeeded in shattering the glass. “Let’s go,” she told Debby and they moved slowly out into the hall, a trail of blood taking shape behind them. The self-service elevator bore them down to the lobby, the doors slid open and Mrs. Pollifax carried her bloody companion into the lobby.

The picture they made abolished any need for translations. The desk clerk shouted, rang bells, pressed buzzers; a potential hotel scandal provoked the same reaction in any language and any country. Debby was delivered into the hands of a doctor who arrived breathless and belt-less and still in bedroom slippers. The manager of the hotel followed, and then at last a representative of Balkantourist–but not Nevena, for which Mrs. Pollifax could be grateful.

It was daylight before it was all over: the setting and bandaging of Debby’s thumb, the stitching of the scalp wound and the questions. It no longer mattered to Mrs.
Pollifax how it had all happened. What began to matter very much was her departure for Tarnovo in several hours; this was, after all, the whole point of her being in Bulgaria. “I want to speak,” she told the Balkantourist representative firmly.

“Yes?”

“I am due to leave Sofia this morning in my car.”

“Yes, yes, they have your passport ready to give you,” he said.

“And the girl is to leave Sofia by plane this morning–”

“No,” said the Balkantourist representative flatly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The doctor says
no
. The doctor is firm. The girl cannot take flight alone. She must be looked after twenty-four hours. She is tired–spent, you know? There is some shock. To wander alone”–he shook his head disapprovingly–“she would cry, maybe faint, go unconscious. She needs the comfort of a presence, you understand?”

Mrs. Pollifax considered this; he was only too right, of course, but she couldn’t possibly delay her own departure. Yet if she couldn’t leave Debby here alone then there was only one alternative, and this dismayed her because she had no idea what lay ahead of her in Tarnovo. “Is she well enough to do a little driving in a car? In my
presence?
”

This was queried of the doctor, who smiled warmly, nodding. Mr. Eastlake wouldn’t like this, she thought, but then Mr. Eastlake could be prevented from knowing about it. Tsanko wouldn’t like it either–if they ever made contact–and she was sure that Carstairs would be appalled.

But she could scarcely abandon the child to a lonely hotel room for several days, and she could certainly not insist that Debby fly off to another lonely hotel room in another strange country. Her limitations as a ruthless agent had never been so pressing. Mrs. Pollifax sighed over them even as she said, “Good. She’ll go with me then.”

Everyone looked extremely relieved, and Mrs. Pollifax realized that the hotel would be delighted to be rid of her. Just to be sure of this she asked that a basket of fruit be packed for their drive, and two breakfasts be sent to her room.

It was exactly half-past nine when they drove away from the hotel, and considering the obstacles they’d encountered, Mrs. Pollifax congratulated herself on their leaving at all. Debby was curled up in the rear seat with orders to read road signs, remain quiet and stay warm. In any case Mrs. Pollifax had to concentrate for the first half an hour on getting them out of Sofia, with its maze-like streets leading into broad boulevards whose names all seemed to end in
ev
or
iski
. It was made more difficult by the fact that she wanted to go east on Route One toward Tarnovo, but she had been given detailed directions south, into artery number five, which would take her to Borovets. She was aware by this time of how few people spoke English in Bulgaria–and the perils of getting lost under such conditions–and so she simply followed her printed directions out of Sofia and then detoured north to Route One through a town called–incongruously–Elin Pelin. But all of this added miles to their excursion.

“There–we have reached Route One at last,” she announced as they bounced onto a paved road. “Thank heaven that route numbers look the same in any language.”

“Route One doesn’t
feel
any better,” Debby said, sitting up and looking around her. “What are these roads built of?”

Poplars lined the road, and beyond them stretched fields that carried the eye to the mountains on either side, still clouded by morning haze. The valley was green and rolling, punctuated by tidy haystacks at symmetrical intervals, and here and there low-lying walls of intricately
worked stone. They passed a hay wagon and a farm truck and then no one.

“Of stone,” said Mrs. Pollifax in reply. “Rather like those farm walls. You can see it here and there where the macadam’s missing–a parquet affect.” Waving a hand toward the mountains on their left, she added, “We cross that range further along, at Shipka Pass, where something like twenty-eight thousand Bulgarians died fighting the Turks.”

“Twenty-eight
thousand?
” repeated Debby disbelievingly.

“You’ll find it on the back of the map, translated into French, German and English. It says there’s a monument and a restaurant there. They fought in the dead of winter and when they ran out of ammunition they threw rocks and boulders down the slopes at the Turks. There were eighteen survivors.”

Debby whistled. “That beats Custer’s last stand. Twenty-eight thousand and they didn’t even
win?
”

“I don’t think they’re on the winning side very often in Bulgaria,” said Mrs. Pollifax tartly.

Debby said, “That’s dramatic, you know? I never thought about the places I hiked through this summer.”

“Rather a waste. What
did
you think about?”

“Finding other kids. Looking for a piece of the action. That sort of thing.”

“Do your parents know you just wander about picking up rides and people?”

Debby emitted a sound like
“Ech.”

“Do they even know you’re in
Bulgaria?
” she asked in a startled voice.

This time Debby’s comment sounded like
“Aaaah.”

Mrs. Pollifax sighed. “Debby, if we’re going to be traveling together I really think you’ll have to enlarge your vocabulary. I’m sure you’d much prefer to be with people your own age, but for a few days we’ll have to accept this situation and lay down some ground rules. Later you
can explain what ‘
aaaah
’ means, but what on earth is ‘
ech
’?”

Debby looked resentful. “Dr. Kidd doesn’t ask things like that. He’s my psychiatrist and he wants me to be spontaneous.”

“Well, I’ve nothing against psychiatrists or spontaneity,” retorted Mrs. Pollifax, “but I do think clear communication simplifies life a great deal. Now. What does
ech
mean?”

Debby laughed. “It sounds so funny when you say it.”

“It sounds funny when you say it, too. What took you to a psychiatrist, by the way?”

“I run away a lot,” Debby said vaguely. “And I get attached to too many boys. It upsets my parents. Dr. Kidd says I get devoted to people because
they’re
not. Dr. Kidd says they are, but I don’t believe it. How
can
they be when they never say no and are scared of me?”

Mrs. Pollifax deftly supplied her own translation. “You mean you haven’t written your parents at all since you left America?”

“That’s right,” said Debby. “I’m giving them a restful summer.”

“But don’t they mind not hearing? Don’t they worry?”

“You know,” she said a little wistfully, “I wish they did sometimes. Just once in a while. They really don’t know what to do with me and they always want me to be
happy
. I’m too old for summer camps now so they said I could go to Europe on my own. Dr. Kidd said maybe I’ll find myself by doing it.”

Mrs. Pollifax was silent and then she said lightly, dryly, “I see. Rather like a lost-and-found department.”

But Debby had grown tired of the subject. “I wonder how Phil is today. What’s at this Borovets place we’re going to visit, or are you going to say I’ll find out soon enough?”

“You would if we were going there,” Mrs. Pollifax told her. “But we’re not, we’re going to Tarnovo.”

“For Pete’s sake why?”

“Because I’ve never had any intention of going anywhere else,” said Mrs. Pollifax reasonably. “Debby, look at the map and see if there’s a gas station at Zlatica, will you? You’ll find tiny red automobiles printed on the map wherever one can buy gas.”

Debby rustled the map. “Yes, there’s one at Zlatica. Isn’t it weird? There aren’t many in the whole country. Or cars either.”

Mrs. Pollifax said without expression, “There’s been a black Renault behind us on the road for some time. I think we’ll have the gas tank filled and let it pass us.” She’d first noted the car as far back as Elin Pelin, because of the clouds of dust it had raised behind them on that particular stretch of dusty countryside. Now, some miles later, it was still there and the coincidence made her uneasy.

Near Zlatica she pulled into the neat cement and grass compound decorated with flower beds and Nempon signs, and two husky women in blue overalls emerged.

“Oh, wow,” said Debby, collapsing into giggles.

“Sssh,” said Mrs. Pollifax, sternly, and after a clumsy exchange of sign language and a great number of titters and smiles, the gas tank was filled, the oil checked and bills counted. More important, the black Renault passed them and disappeared ahead.

The road carried them along the floor of the valley, the mountains on either side growing sharper as the haze cleared. They passed tiny thatch-roofed farmhouses, each with its yard neatly enclosed by fences made of woven twigs. Sometimes an old woman sat on a bench by the door, a spindle in one hand, a bundle of flax in the other. Once they saw a shepherd standing at a distance on a hill, his watchtower behind him, a marvelous leather cape across his shoulders. “He actually carries a
crook
,” Debby said in awe.

And then the fields turned into acre after acre of roses, entire hillsides dotted with extravagant pinks and yellows and scarlets. “This must be the Valley of Roses,” Debby announced after a look at the map.

“Debby, I’m thinking about that horrid man with the knife last night,” said Mrs. Pollifax abruptly. “Where did you learn to tackle like that, by the way? You were marvelous.”

“Oh that was nothing,” Debby said eagerly. “You should see me on the parallel bars and the ropes. I adore phys. ed., it’s the only subject I pass in school. What about that man? Do you think he had anything to do with Phil’s arrest?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Pollifax honestly. “Debby, have you any idea at all why it should have been Philip who was arrested?”

“Of course not,” said Debby. “I wish we could stop at one of those rose places. Want a grape from the basket?”

“No, and you answered my question much too quickly,” she said. “Of course the answer wouldn’t be obvious. Tell me what you know about him.”