The Black Baroness (53 page)

While those thoughts were racing through his brain she had been saying: ‘
Mon cher Pére Arberson
, how very nice to see you. I am desolated beyond words that you should have been in Rome for five days while I was in the north and that now I have to go again so soon I cannot entertain you properly, but I have heard so much about you from our mutual friends that even the opportunity of a brief meeting gives me the greatest pleasure. Come and sit down and tell me about the wonderful work which I hear you have been doing for us in that most difficult of all countries—England.’

Gregory felt his face crease into a smile and it was almost in surprise that he found himself saying in an unctuous voice well-suited to the part he was playing: ‘It’s most kind of you to receive me at all when you’re here for only a few hours. I’ve been wanting to meet you simply for ages on account of the admiration I feel for one who has done so much for the cause that we all hold so dear.’

As he sat down he heard the manservant say: ‘Shall I bring tea,
Madame la Baronne
, or would you prefer to wait until your usual hour?’

She glanced at her diamond wrist-watch and replied quickly: ‘It is earty yet—only half-past three. But wait….’ She suddenly broke oil and smiled at Gregory. ‘You will forgive me, I know, it I say that I did not expect that you would get out here quite so soon, although it is a compliment which I appreciate. I have one telephone-call that I must make before we settle down to enjoy a really interesting talk. Since it is a trunk-call it may take a little time, because the lines are so congested now that the crisis has reached its height, but I will be as quick as I possibly can. In the meantime, I am sure you would like to sit out in the garden, and as there is almost an hour to go until teatime you will have a glass of iced wine to refresh you after your journey.’

As she stood up, Gregory rose too, murmuring that he perfectly understood but inwardly cursing at the thought of this most inopportune telephone-call; which meant that for minutes that would seem hours he would have to sit contemplating in advance this ghastly thing that he had to do when she rejoined him.

The Baroness moved towards the door, a small, neat figure, and as Gregory stared at her back, through which he meant to put a bullet at the first suitable opportunity, it seemed impossible to believe that she was over fifty. When she reached the door she said to the manservant: ‘Take
Pére
Arberson down to the lower terrace and bring him some of the Lacrima Christi or any other refreshment that he may prefer.’

The man bowed her out and, turning to Gregory, murmured: ‘Would you please to follow me, sir.’

With the feeling that he was acting in a play, or was the subject of some nightmare dream, Gregory followed the man ihrough
the
french windows out on to the balustraded terrace, down some ancient stone steps at either side of which a fountain was playing, and along the sloping paths of the formal Italian garden until they reached a second terrace about fifty feet below the level of the house. They turned left along it until at its end they passed through an archway in a tall yew hedge and came out on a circular extension of the terrace which was shaded from the sun by tall cypresses and had a table and garden-chairs arranged upon it.

Gregory sat down and stared out over the placid blue waters of the lake below. It was very quiet there and cut off by the trees from the sight of any other house along the lake-shore. Not; a thing was moving and the only evidence of the handiwork of man in the whole panorama was the lemon-yellow villas just discernible in the distance upon the further shore and the ancient moss-covered, stone balustrade immediately in front of him. It occurred to him that the scene must have been just the same nearly 2,000 years before when some Roman patrician had perhaps entertained his Caesar there.

The black-clad manservant had disappeared as Gregory sat down, but he returned with a large, flagon-shaped decanter which had a narrow spout rising out of one side of it like that of a teapot, and on the other a sausage-shaped hole which went right down into the centre of the flagon and was packed full of crushed ice so that the wine was cooled without the ice getting into and diluting it.

The man poured the golden wine into a cone-shaped crystal goblet and handed it on a salver to Gregory. With a nod of thanks he took the glass and drank. It was a light, dry Italian wine, deliciously cool and refreshing after his hot journey, but with a slight taste of sulphur about it which has prevented such Italian wines ever becoming popular in England.

He set the glass down and began to think again of the grim work before him. When the Baroness joined him where would she sit? Probably in that chair there, as it was beside his own and faced the view. How would he then be able to get behind her? How utterly revolting the whole business was, but it must be done—it
must
be done. The lives of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen, the happiness or misery of literally millions of families, the fate of two great nations perhaps hung upon it.

He drank some more of the refreshing wine and with a momentary flash of his old cynicism thought how fate had played into his hands in the matter of the Baroness’s trunk-call. In this secluded spot which could not be seen from the house or observed from the roadway it would be infinitely easier for him to do the thing he had to do, without any risk of being caught in the act. No doubt there was a path leading round the house which would make it unnecessary for him to go back through it. With luck he would be able to slip away unobserved and the Baroness’s body might not be discovered until he was well on his way back to Rome or perhaps hours later when
with Collimard and Desaix he was in the plane head nig for Paris once more.

He suddenly realised that he was feeling very tired; the strain of the last two months, and particularly of the past four weeks, had been appalling. It was not only his own work which had taken it out of him so much, but the frightful mental stress of watching the world-tragedy unfold, with victory after victory going to Hitler. Norway seized, Holland overrun, Belgium smashed to her knees and now France in dire peril—yet there had seemed so little that one could do to halt the onward sweep of the mighty German war-machine.

He was sitting in the shadow, but the strong sunshine on the waters of the lake tired his eyes and he closed them for a moment. It was very pleasant there—so utterly peaceful and far removed from all the turmoil and the killing that was going on under the same sun far away to the north. For a little he remained between sleeping and waking; he did not hear her come, but when he opened his eyes again the Baroness was standing in front of him.

She was now dressed for travelling, in a light tweed coat-and-skirt. Her old-young face expressed none of the easy social charm with which she had greeted him on his arrival. Her dead-black eyes were staring down at him with an expression of mixed amusement and contempt.

‘Well, Englishman?’ A harsh note had crept into her soft voice as she addressed him. ‘Are you the best thing that the British Government could find to send against me? Did you think for one moment that stupid clerical collar would deceive such eyes as mine?’

Gregory sat staring at her, his mouth a little open, as she went on mockingly: ‘Your name is Sallust, isn’t it? I think that was what Grauber said when I described you to him after that night when you tried to dissuade Leopold from surrendering and I had to shoot your little girl friend who turned out to be the traitoress Erika von Epp.’

The moment Gregory had opened his eyes he had attempted to spring to his feet, but although his brain was still working perfectly clearly it seemed that it no longer controlled his body. All that happened was that after a slight jerk forward his feet slithered a little on the stones; but even by exerting all his willpower he could not lever himself up out of the chair. The
awful truth came home to him with blinding suddenness—the wine had been drugged.

The Baroness lit a cigarette and went on calmly: ‘I only caught a glimpse of you when we were with Leopold and the things someone has done to your face are very effective; but Grauber told me, too, that it was you who was the masked man that broke into my suite at the Hotel Weimar, and we stood within a few feet of each other for the best, part of ten minutes then. It is useless to cover or alter your face unless you also do something about your hands—and you have very nice hands, Mr. Sallust; the moment you came into the room this afternoon I knew you by them for the man of Rotterdam.’

In vain Gregory wriggled, making superhuman efforts to get up, but it needed every ounce of concentration he had to move one limb at a time. He could raise either his hands or feet a few inches, but then it flopped back again and he was as fast in his chair as though he had been bound to it.

‘Stop squirming!’ she admonished him suddenly. ‘It will do you no good. What you came here to do I don’t know, but you have been caught by quicker wits than your own. Into the wine you drank I put an old and subtle Italian poison which is almost tasteless and leaves no trace. Its first symptoms you already know, the later ones you will learn in due course; I should think, judging by the amount you have drunk, in about two hours. No one will disturb you here; I sent a message out to your chauffeur that you had changed your plans and would not require him until ten o’clock, so he has gone back to Rome. My work in Italy is done and I am leaving now to hear Mussolini speak, before flying home. Count Ciano is already on his way to inform the French and British Ambassadors that Italy will enter the war on the side of Germany at midnight. Good-bye, Mr. Sallust; you will die quite peacefully and in no great pain.’

Having picked up the goblet and tossed its remaining contents into the bushes the Baroness had collected the decanter and gone; removing with her the only evidence as to the manner in
which he might have met his death.

The partial paralysis which had Gregory in its grip had prevented his uttering a single word. He could move his lips and his tongue but only enough to mutter incoherently and, strive as he would, it was utterly impossible for him to emit a shout for help; yet he now knew that every moment that he remained there the poison would be working through his body, making less his chance of life.

If only he had not been so eager to make a quick get-away and had left the car out on the road a few hundred yards away from the Villa, Collimard would have become suspicious at his non-appearance after he had been in the house for over an hour, and when another hour had passed he would probably have made up his mind to come in and investigate; but by driving up to the front door in the car Gregory realised that he had made his own line of retreat extremely vulnerable.

Even had the Baroness sent out to tell Collimard that she was, herself, motoring her guest back to Rome, he would have smelt a rat; but on being told to return at ten o’clock he would assume that for some good reason, after having seen the layout for himself, Gregory had decided not to make his attempt upon her life until after dark. By squinting sideways Gregory could just see his watch. It was twelve minutes past four; the Baroness had given him two hours; by ten o’clock he would have been dead for over three hours.

He felt that if only he could have stood up there would have been some chance for him to counteract the toxin; because a subtle type that does not work quickly can nearly always be countered by an emetic if it is taken before the poison has had time to get right down into the system. Concentrating all his will-power, he first brought his head forward a few inches then raised his right hand to his mouth in an endeavour to put his finger down his throat to make himself sick, but, strive as he would, he could not make his finger do more than fumble at his lower lip. After what seemed an interminable time of agonising strain his arm suddenly relaxed and his hand dropped back into his lap.

He was sweating profusely and although his eyes were wide open and staring they no longer took in the placid scene before him. Every faculty he had remaining to him was concentrated in one awful struggle to think of some way in which he might save his life; yet each fresh thought seemed only to lead back to
a nightmare circle. The poison was working in him, time was now his deadly enemy and with every second that ticked away his state of helplessness would increase.

After an interval of minutes that seemed like hours the sight of a little green lizard darting from side to side along the sun-warmed stone of the balustrade caused him to remember that when animals were ill or poisoned a natural instinct led them to a herb the eating of which provided an antidote to their complaint; yet, there again, he was stuck. As he could not get up he could not reach anything to eat even had he known of a plant in the garden which would have served as a remedy.

The golden-green lizard sat there now, basking in the sunshine and watching him with cautious curiosity from its little dark, beady eyes. Suddenly a small, crested bird dropped out of the sky. Fearing attack, the lizard instantly dived for cover, but as it shot along the stone its foreleg caught in a crevice, flinging it right over on its back so that for a second its pale-green tummy was exposed. In a single wriggle it was up again and had streaked away out of sight. Its tumble gave Gregory the germ of another idea. He could not stand up but he might be able to fall out of his chair.

Once more concentrating all his mental strength he got one foot up until it rested on the leg of the table in front of him; then, after pausing for a moment, he flung every ounce of willpower that he had into a sideways thrust. The chair tipped, hovered for an instant and crashed sideways, sending him rolling along the ground.

When he recovered from the fall he found that he was within a few inches of the yew hedge and, lifting his head, he began a titanic struggle to eat some of the sprigs of yew. He had no idea if they would serve his purpose but he felt that if he could get a few mouthfuls of the prickly herbage down they might upset him or irritate his throat to the point of causing him to vomit.