Amazing Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  Mrs. Pollifax laughed softly. “But I knew you would explain if you chose to!”

  Magda nodded. “Hugh has a hunting lodge there. If I succeed in getting to London I will send one cable to Washington from the airport and then I shall disappear again. You understand I shall be very stubborn until Dmitri is allowed to join me.”

  Mrs. Pollifax considered this and nodded. She supposed that one small boy could very easily be overlooked or ignored by governments once they were satisfied, and that even Carstairs could be rendered impotent by a government. “A little friendly persuasion,” she said, nodding. “Yes, I understand. I won’t ask for the address.”

  “Thank you.”

  The wagons jolted and bounced and creaked, it was very like their journey the night before, the cold following a day of heat, the same stars overhead, same sounds of muffled voices. But the radiance of the hidden moon gave an almost Biblical quality to the procession of primitive wagons moving across the austere, harsh countryside. The earth here was called tuff, Colin said, composed of ashes and mud and rock; there were no trees, its only fruit was the rocks, and there were so many of these that at times it became necessary to climb down from the wagons and lift them over boulders.

  Sometime around two o’clock the line stopped and rough bread and jugs of water were distributed while Goru walked up and down the line checking wheels and axles on the carts. No one spoke above a whisper and the line moved on again soon. It was incredible country: the moonlight picked out whole forests of needle-shaped rock, a valley of rock chimneys arising white under the moon, a cluster of cone-shaped hovels like beehives.

  It was four o’clock in the morning when word swept up and down the procession that they were being followed by a man on horseback. For the first time Mrs. Pollifax realized that Goru had scouts ahead and behind them but this realization came late to reassure her. The news of a pursuer struck her as inexplicable and ominous.

  “It could be Sebastien,” Colin said hopefully.

  “Sebastien,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax, remembering Yozgat. “Yes, it could be Sebastien,” she said politely.

  “One person on horseback is scarcely a threat to some thirty gypsies,” Colin pointed out. “Why doesn’t Goru stop and find out who it is?” He jumped down. “I’ll walk ahead and ask.”

  He was back several minutes later wearing a frown. “Whoever it is he stays behind us at some distance. It was thought a coincidence at first—someone’s trail crossing ours—but the rider takes the same turns, the same trails. Goru says there isn’t time to stop, it’s half-past four and the important thing is getting Magda to the aerodrome before eight.”

  “Quite so,” Mrs. Pollifax said with feeling.

  But uneasiness permeated the caravan. The line moved faster, and when a wagon needed help over the rocks there were sharp words exchanged. Yet whoever followed showed no sign of moving closer to them. Nothing changed except the sky, which was whitening with dawn, and the terrain which grew flatter as the rocks thinned. They were leaving the volcanic country behind them and returning to the flat and dusty Anatolian plateau. Somewhere on this plateau, between them and the foothills of the high mountains in the distance, lay Kayseri and the airport.

  “How far now?” asked Mrs. Pollifax of Colin.

  “I don’t know,” he said shortly.

  “Then what time is it?”

  “A few minutes after five.”

  As he said this Goru lifted his hand and called out a sharp command from the front, the sound of his voice startling after so many hours of caution. In the east the sky had turned into mother-of-pearl and the tip of an orange sun was lifting itself over the peak of the mountains. Goru was waving them to a halt because two men on horseback were approaching them from the north.

  “They’re in uniform,” Mrs. Pollifax said as they drew closer, not hurrying but keeping their horses to a steady walk.

  “The constabulary,” Colin said shortly. “Rural police.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

  The two men rode up to Goru, their faces not unfriendly. They looked pleasant, relaxed, two men on normal patrol. For a few minutes they exchanged words with Goru and then, while one man continued idly conversing, the other rode slowly up and down the wagon line looking into the faces of the gypsies and glancing over and into the wagons. He rode back and the three-way conversation continued endlessly. Goru nodded and stood up, calling out to the gypsies.

  Casually Sandor strolled back to them from Anyeta’s wagon in which he was riding. He said, “They wish to see all identity cards.”

  “But this is going to take a long time!” said Mrs. Pollifax despairingly.

  “Yes.”

  “Why the devil can’t we just tie them up and take them along?” asked Colin irritably. “I still have Stefan’s pistol!”

  Sandor grinned. “What a lion you are! You wish them to know we have something to hide? When a police sees gypsies he either spits and rides on, or stops to see what they have stolen today. Please, a sense of dimension!”

  “I think he means perspective,” Magda said with a wry smile as she handed Sandor the card of Nimet Aziz. Mrs. Pollifax parted with Yurgadil and Colin with Nazmi, and Sandor carried them back to the police.

  There followed an interminable wait, tense with anxiety lest the police ask to question each gypsy personally and discover that three of them were frauds. The police talked on and on while one of them shuffled through the pile of thirty cards, speaking sometimes to Goru or to Anyeta, sometimes to each other. Once they laughed—“Are they telling jokes?” whispered Colin indignantly—and then at last the papers were handed back to Goru and the wagons were waved ahead.

  But they had been stopped for more than forty-five minutes, and it was now nearly six. Mrs. Pollifax was beginning to wonder if Magda could possibly reach the aerodrome in the two hours remaining to them. Her doubts were silent but she sensed that it was a question that hung suspended over the whole caravan as it moved forward. As for the two policemen, they had ridden off at a gallop and nothing could be seen of them but a cloud of dust.

  “Now they hurry,” said Colin bitterly. “Do you think we passed inspection?”

  Mrs. Pollifax said tartly, “It depends on what they were looking for. If they were looking specifically for gypsies then they found them—and also did a brilliant job of slowing us down.”

  They were tired, hungry and dusty now, but they were apparently nearing a more civilized area: half an hour later they skirted a small village of a dozen buildings steaming in the early morning sun and threaded their way between vineyards into bare fields again. Sandor walked back to them with a new message from Anyeta.

  “Goru wishes the wagons to go two-by-two now, one beside the other. This wagon will move next to his.” He translated this to Yule, and their wagon bypassed the others and drew abreast of Anyeta and Goru.

  Leaning over between wagons Anyeta said, “You must stay close to Magda now.” There was a mute warning in her eyes for Mrs. Pollifax. “Very close, you understand?”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. What did Anyeta see? Of what was she afraid? But it was not only Anyeta: Goru stood up, bracing himself, and tossed a club to Yule across the wagons and followed this with a string bag that contained—of all things—perfectly round, small rocks.

  And then Mrs. Pollifax understood: she too heard the helicopter. As she looked up it came darting over the swelling hill ahead of them, delicate, small, yet monstrous, like a blown-up metallic dragonfly.

  “So we are to meet the good doctor again,” said Colin grimly. “But he’s a fool this time! What can he do against so many of us?”

  Mrs. Pollifax did not reply. Dr. Belleaux might be many things but he was not a fool. She looked around her thoughtfully. Behind them lay the vineyards. Ahead, to their right, a village graveyard populated a gently sloping, treeless hill. She could see nothing, but her skin prickled uneasily.

  Into this the helicopter descended, sending clouds of dust into their eyes.
Mrs. Pollifax coughed and ducked her head, drawing her shawl over her nose and eyes. When she peered through a slit of the shawl she saw the helicopter resting lightly on the ground some forty yards away, its blades still whirring, its dust almost blanketing them all. “Why the devil doesn’t he turn that blasted machine off!” cried Colin, jumping down. “Get under the wagon or behind it or you’ll be blinded by the dust!” he shouted, and held out a hand to Magda and Mrs. Pollifax.

  Goru was shouting orders. Everyone seemed to be shouting to someone else. The door of the helicopter opened and Dr. Belleaux and Stefan jumped down with pistols. From somewhere on the right a gun was fired—it came from the graveyard on the hill, realized Mrs. Pollifax—and now she understood Dr. Belleaux’s confidence: he had not come alone, he had at last joined forces with the Turkish police.

  “Mon dieu!” cried Magda as the graveyard came to life and the police began pouring down the hill.

  But they were still some distance away, and Mrs. Pollifax realized why Dr. Belleaux had left the engine alive on the helicopter: he had arrived but he was facing the gypsies for these few minutes with only his gun and Stefan’s. She saw his uneasiness, his uncertainty, his determination to remain just beside the door of the helicopter lest a quick retreat prove necessary. Goru too, saw this and suddenly appeared from behind the plane. With a club he knocked the gun from Dr. Belleaux’s hand.

  Stefan whirled on him but at once other gypsies swept forward to surround them. Yule was knocked flat—Stefan was not an incompetent bodyguard—and a club flew into the air.

  “To the vineyard! Hide in the vineyard!” shouted Anyeta from her wagon. “Quickly!”

  “She’s right—hurry!” cried Colin, tugging at her arm.

  But Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. There was no future for them hiding in a vineyard, and the police had broken into a run as they crossed the fields. They would be here in a minute or two—three at the most—and it would be the finish for them. Magda would never reach the aerodrome, or her eight o’clock plane to freedom. Instead she was staring at the helicopter, momentarily abandoned and unguarded. It was a small miracle: how often did miracles such as this occur? She said, “Colin, can you fly a helicopter?”

  He gaped at her. “God no!”

  Magda threw back her head and laughed. “Mrs. Pollifax, you are irrepressible! Do you really think—”

  “There’s no other way,” Mrs. Pollifax said firmly, and began to run, dragging Magda with her.

  Colin hesitated, looked helplessly around him, then at the two fleeing women, and followed. Together they ran at break-neck speed around and through the melee of fist-fighters to reach the door of the helicopter. Mrs. Pollifax boosted Magda inside, pulled herself up and turned to give Colin a hand. At the same moment they were seen by the approaching police. A shot was fired and Colin fell back.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Go!”

  “Of course not!” cried Mrs. Pollifax, still clinging to his hand, and dragged him bodily over the threshold. “Bolt the doors!” she told Magda. “Keep everybody out!”

  “But can you drive a helicopter?” asked Magda, leaning across Colin and bolting the doors.

  Mrs. Pollifax snapped, “Of course not!” and sat down and looked at the levers. There were two of them, one jutting straight up from the floor, the other running parallel to her leg from behind the seat. She grasped the latter, closed her eyes, said a prayer, and pulled. The helicopter gave a little jump—they were still alive. Heartened, she grasped the second lever and thrust it forward and they hovered several feet from the ground, going nowhere but considerably frightening the people around the plane, who began to scatter. Mrs. Pollifax tackled the levers more sternly, and with a leap they began moving sideways, threatening to level gypsies as well as police. “Courage, Emily,” she told herself, and returned to the first lever—and suddenly they were sailing over the heads of the gypsies and the police. “Well!” she gasped, and drew a breath of satisfaction. “Well!” she said, and only wished she could remember what she had done.

  “Good God we’re up,” said Colin weakly.

  “Be still, it’s bloody but only a flesh wound,” Magda told him. “Lie down!”

  “Lie down?” Colin said. “Lie down when I’ve survived being shot only to be abducted in a helicopter flown by a madwoman? Mrs. Pollifax—”

  “Ssh,” she told him sternly. “Ssh—I’m driving this thing. Now where’s the airport?” They were flying at low-level—in jumps, rather like a kangaroo—while Mrs. Pollifax tested levers, trying to find out which took them up, and which forward and sideways.

  “Look out!” screamed Magda as they narrowly averted a tree.

  The helicopter leaped, dropped, skimmed across a field almost on its side, turned, lifted and settled at a more conservative altitude. “I wish you would speak more quietly,” Mrs. Pollifax said reprovingly. “When you shout in my ear I jump and so does my hand and so does the plane.”

  “Look—there’s a highway!” Magda gasped, kneeling behind Mrs. Pollifax.

  “Good—we’ll follow it,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “Colin, what time is it?”

  He braced an arm, lifted it and scowled at his watch. “Seven-fifteen.”

  Magda said, “You’re too low, Mrs. Pollifax, we’re going to hit the cars.” Forgetting to be quiet she screamed, “Look out!”

  The plane jumped. Cars scattered to left and to right. Mrs. Pollifax tugged at the first lever that met her hand and they zoomed heavenward. Shakily she said, “We badly need an airport.”

  “I’m looking, believe me,” said Magda.

  They flew over Kayseri—it had to be Kayseri—and barely missed the top of a minaret that rose like a needle in their path. “Up!” screamed Magda.

  “They build them too high!” shouted Mrs. Pollifax peevishly, pulled the wrong lever and sent them moving crab-like back to the minaret. Furiously she tugged at another lever and they went skyward again.

  “I see the airport!” cried Magda triumphantly, and there it was, a gloriously clear space a mile or two away decorated with runways and a control tower. “Watch those buildings!” Magda cried despairingly. “We’re hovering!”

  “I know we’re hovering,” cried Mrs. Pollifax, “but I can’t seem to—” They shot abruptly forward, dropped low, then suddenly lower, the motor died and they came to rest on the ground. “I think we just ran out of gas,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “Where are we?”

  Magda said calmly, “We’ve just landed in the middle of Kayseri’s public square, and barely missed a policeman directing traffic.”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded and opened her eyes. “Yes, I see him,” she said with a sigh. “A great many people seem to be looking at us, too.”

  From the floor of the helicopter Colin said, “Then get moving! Run! Grab a taxi! Leave the rest to me!”

  He was quite right, of course. Mrs. Pollifax opened the door next to her, which was happily furthest from the policeman, slid out, extended a hand to Magda and they jumped down. For just a moment they stood hand in hand, blinking a little at the gathering crowd, then with pleasant nods and smiles they made their way to the sidewalk, allowed the crowd to stream past them, and casually slipped down a side street to look for a taxi.

  “Head for the ladies room,” Mrs. Pollifax told Magda. “Don’t wait for me—two of us might draw attention. Go in, peel off your Turkish clothes and bundle them into a wastebasket.”

  It was precisely 7:35 as they entered the air terminal, and as she saw Magda escape into the ladies room Mrs. Pollifax looked around her and became aware of how they must look to the civilized world following their trip across Turkey by bus, car, wagon and helicopter. She moved humbly into a corner and waited.

  Ten minutes later there emerged from the ladies room a thin, erect and distinguished-looking woman with head high, eyes alert and navy knit suit only slightly askew. Mrs. Pollifax smiled approvingly. Magda walked to the flight desk and with exquisite aplomb drew out bills from the shawl she carried over one arm. Se
veral minutes later she reached Passport Control and held out her passport with confidence. The official took it, looked deeply into Magda’s face, showed it to his companion officer, stamped it and with a nod returned it.

  Not until she reached the door did Magda turn, her glance sweeping the lobby. When she saw Mrs. Pollifax in her dusty baggy pants and shawl her mouth curved slightly. They exchanged a long expressionless glance and then almost imperceptibly Magda lifted one hand in a gesture that could have been a wave or a salute.

  It was now 7:55. Mrs. Pollifax moved to the window and watched Magda board the plane, watched the hands of the clock tick away five minutes, saw the stairs removed, the door closed, watched the plane begin to taxi down the runway. It stopped at the beginning of the long runway. “Go, go, go,” whispered Mrs. Pollifax. The plane hesitated and then began to move again. As its wheels lifted Mrs. Pollifax slowly expelled her breath, and there were tears in her eyes.

  Magda was airborne.

  She turned and walked the length of the terminal to the front door. She did not falter when she saw the crowds gathering there, nor flinch at sight of police hurrying inside and barking out orders to the crowd of porters and tourists. As she drew nearer one of the police looked up and saw her and stepped forward.

  “Mrs. Pollifax?” he said.

  She sighed and nodded. Behind him she saw Dr. Belleaux stepping out of a car. He wore a strip of adhesive across one cheek but aside from this he looked his usual cool, authoritative self.

  “You are wanted for questioning in the murder of Henry Miles,” he said. “Come with us, please.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Her cell was small, made of stone and very old but not at all picturesque or pleasant. In fact it smelled. It had been cold and damp when she entered it at half-past eight, and then as the day progressed it became damp and hot with a sticky jungle humidity. There was a jug of water in one corner of the cell but no one brought food; no one came near her at all, for any purpose whatever, and this alarmed her because she had expected to tell her story to the police at once. Now she had no idea of what was happening, or of how much damage Dr. Belleaux might be doing while she was imprisoned here. She knew that Magda’s plane had safely left—she had seen this for herself—but Magda could have been intercepted at Ankara or Istanbul, and might very easily be sitting in a cell now, too. The thought of such a defeat appalled her.