Amazing Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  Magda sighed. “Stefan and Otto, I grow tired with you. For what do you want to follow an old woman like me, hmm?”

  Stefan grinned; it was a joke he appeared to appreciate and in such a stolid Slavic face his mirth was almost indecent. “We do not follow you—it is this one leads us here.” He pointed at Mrs. Pollifax, who stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Who would have guessed the plump American partridge would know the wily Russian fox?” As he spoke his eyes continued to roam over the garage, mercilessly assessing the possibilities of the situation. Now he moved to Colin. “You will give the key to the jeep, please,” he said, and extended his left hand, palm up, to Colin. Behind him his friend Otto also pulled out a gun.

  “I say—it’s not your jeep,” Colin said indignantly. “It’s not even mine, and you’ve absolutely no right—”

  “The key,” said Stefan, pressing the gun into Colin’s stomach. “Otto, open the garage doors, and quickly.”

  Reluctantly, glaringly, Colin fumbled in his pocket and brought out a key that he placed in the palm of the man’s hand. “You are wise,” said Stefan. “Stay wise and you will live.” Carefully he backed up until he reached the jeep, where Madame Ferenci-Sabo had begun making feeble attempts to climb out. With one arm he shoved her down. “Sit! Did you really think we wanted only a jeep?” he said mockingly. He opened the door and slid into the front seat, his head still turned to watch them. Only when the garage doors stood wide open did he insert the key into the ignition. Over his shoulder he called, “Don’t forget our little souvenir, Otto!” To Mrs. Pollifax he said with a smile, “We do not wish to leave you emptyhanded. That would be quite unfair. We are like your pack rat, preferring always to leave something behind.”

  Mrs. Pollifax turned in alarm and looked toward the courtyard. From the shadow of the bougainvillea along the left wall Otto was dragging an inert and heavy bundle. She heard Colin, near the door, say, “Good God!” and she guessed by his whitened face that the burden Otto wrestled with was human. She watched in horror as Otto dragged a man into the garage; he placed the man at Mrs. Pollifax’s feet and turned him over, and Mrs. Pollifax found herself staring into the vacant, unseeing eyes of Henry Miles. Dimly she heard Colin say, “You brutes,” but his voice sounded miles away. She stared stupidly down at Henry, tears filling her eyes as she saw the small round bullet hole in his shirt. Henry had winked at her in the London air terminal, Henry had valiantly followed her since her arrival and now he was dead at her feet.

  She looked up as the engine of the jeep roared into life; Stefan thrust the gears into reverse and she jumped back as the car virtually catapulted from the garage carrying a Magda who sat with eyes closed, her face unbelievably white. The jeep neatly turned around in the courtyard, Otto leaped in beside Magda, and the car shot up the driveway and disappeared.

  “At least the petrol tank’s almost empty,” Colin said in a choked voice.

  Mrs. Pollifax sank down beside Henry and looked into his face. “He’s dead,” she said in a trembling voice, and placed her hand over his heart but she could not change him. She felt a million years old and deeply shocked. It had all happened so quickly. Four minutes earlier there had been only the three of them here, talking about Yozgat. Now the jeep was gone, Henry lay dead at her feet and Magda Ferenci-Sabo had vanished a second time. Mrs. Pollifax looked across the empty garage at Colin. He was standing in the same spot, his mouth a little open in astonishment, his hand still extended to give the man the key. He closed his mouth now with a snap. “Do you know him?” he asked.

  “It’s Henry.”

  He nodded dumbly. “It was like a raid,” he said, and then, blinking, “They’ve taken your friend.”

  “Yes. And killed Henry.” Neither of them were sensibly communicating yet.

  “And stolen my uncle’s jeep.” His lips thinned and he said peevishly, “Damn it, I absolutely loathe being pushed around.” He walked to her side and leaned over Henry. “He’s really dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  It was an interesting question, delivered with the detachment born of shock, but it served to bring Mrs. Pollifax to her senses, which had been badly jarred. “Why—I don’t know,” she said in astonishment, and at once understood that Henry dead could prove an almost insurmountable embarrassment, which was undoubtedly why Stefan had presented him to them. “Good heavens!” she gasped, and stood up.

  “We ought to have followed them,” Colin said. “There’s still the van in the other garage but now it’s too late. If they go far they’re bound to empty the tank, there was less than five miles’ worth left. We ought to have followed them. We can’t keep Henry here,” he added.

  “No, we can’t,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

  “Because you don’t have a passport,” he said, as if this explained everything.

  She nodded. “I realize that. But I believe I know what to do with Henry. It’s just struck me. I can take him to Dr. Belleaux.”

  “Who?”

  “I was given the name of a man—a retired professor—to contact in an emergency.”

  “But with a body?”

  Mrs. Pollifax thought about this. “I daresay it’s unorthodox,” she admitted, “but if he’s equipped to handle emergencies can you think of any graver emergency than being presented with the body of a man who’s been murdered? We have to consider your uncle, too; this is his garage.”

  “Yes,” Colin said, nodding solemnly.

  “Also,” continued Mrs. Pollifax feverishly, “what else can we do with Henry? Stefan need only make one anonymous phone call to the police and I shall never get my passport back. And I have Dr. Belleaux’s address right here in my purse. He’s highly respected by the Turkish government—”

  “Do you mean Dr. Guillaume Belleaux?” said Colin in surprise.

  “Yes, do you know him?”

  “I’ve heard of him. Everyone has.”

  “Well, I hadn’t. But don’t you see, he can vouch for me to the Turkish police! Of course we can’t tell the police about Magda, but this time there’s your jeep, with a registration number and a traceable license, and I can certainly describe to the police the two men who stole it. With this information the police may very well find both the jeep and the men by morning, and I shall have a clue as to where Magda may be!”

  “Let’s go then,” Colin said, nodding. “The van’s in the other garage. I’ll back it up and we can put—uh—Henry inside.” He disappeared through the door to the office and she heard an engine starting, garage doors open, and then a cumbersome van backed into the courtyard and Colin leaped out. “I think I’ll turn the lights out for this,” he said nervously and pulled the switch, leaving moonlight their only illumination. “You take his feet, will you? I’ll take his shoulders.”

  Clumsily, slowly, they carried Henry to the van and inserted him into it. This proved extremely difficult because the van’s rear doors had been welded closed—to gain more space inside, Colin explained breathlessly—and Henry had to be lifted up to the high cab of the van. Then it proved impossible to lift him between the two seats and they were forced to let him remain sprawled between the seats in a rather abandoned, drunken pose.

  “I hope Henry doesn’t mind,” Mrs. Pollifax said breathlessly. “I mean his spirit, or whatever lingers behind.”

  “I suppose he’s a spy, too,” Colin said.

  “Probably,” said Mrs. Pollifax with a sigh, “although he was here only to keep an eye on me, to look after me, so to speak. Oh, if only I could have warned him!”

  The van was moving ponderously up the driveway and now turned down Zikzak alley. “You said you have Dr. Belleaux’s address?” asked Colin.

  She disentangled it from the other papers in her purse and handed it to him. “The bottom one is the home address,” she pointed out.

  He glanced at it, memorized it and handed it back to her. “That’s in the Taksim area. At this hour it won’t take long. I know that street�
�very posh.” He glanced down at Henry briefly. “Did you know him well?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “I was introduced to him in Washington just before I boarded the plane. But in London he winked at me, and he was one of the men who kept staring in fascination at my seat companion—why that was your sister,” she recalled in surprise.

  “He liked Mia,” Colin said soberly, and Mrs. Pollifax realized that they were giving Henry the nearest thing to a wake possible.

  They lapsed into silence, each of them involved in their own thoughts as the van negotiated the dark streets. Doubtless Colin was thinking of his uncle’s jeep—another disaster for him, she mused—while she tried not to think of what might be happening to Magda, or what had already happened to Henry. It must have been his murder that she had interrupted when she entered his room at the Oteli Itep to warn him. She recalled the curtains fluttering at the balcony window and shivered: his body must have lain behind those curtains. It was rather obvious now that Stefan had also hidden behind those curtains, and heard her call to Henry—and then she had led the murderers straight to Magda. I should never have gone to Henry’s room, she thought sadly. Mr. Carstairs warned me—no, ordered me—to have no contact with him at all. How could I have forgotten? One softhearted moment and I betray Magda.

  And Magda, she remembered, had been her assignment. Not Henry. In retrospect all kinds of ingenious little ideas came to her: she could have sent the manager’s son to room 214 carrying the guide book as well as a note for Henry, whom she had believed to be alive then. Or she could have slipped an anonymous warning under his door and fled. But no, she had gone instead to his room and entered, calling out his name, and now his enemies knew that Emily Pollifax, too, was not what she appeared to be.

  They were passing over the Galata Bridge now, and the lights of moving tugs and boats slashed the glistening inky water with long ribbons of gold. Even at midnight the bridge was filled with traffic: mules, trucks and donkeys bearing fruits and vegetables to the markets and merchandise to the bazaars. Pale moonlight etched out the silhouette of the mosque at the foot of the bridge and touched each passerby with a high light of silver. Mrs. Pollifax sighed and forced herself back to the moment, and to arranging explanations for the Dr. Belleaux whom she would presently meet. “How is it that you’ve heard of Dr. Belleaux?” she asked Colin. “Is he really that well-known?”

  “To live in Istanbul is to hear of him,” he said. “The police consult him on murders—he writes and lectures about criminology, you know—and the archaeologists consult him on bones, that sort of thing. He’s quite lionized as an author and scholar. Goes to all the ‘in’ parties.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “My impression is that he’s fiftyish, or early sixtyish, with a pointed white goatee. Rather thin, talkative, elegant.”

  “I do hope he’s of a practical nature.”

  “You mean practical enough to dispose of a body?” commented Colin dryly. “Ah, here’s the street, I told you it was an impressive one.”

  “Indeed yes,” she said, looking out upon well-spaced villas surrounded by charming gardens. The homes on the street were dark except for one in the center of the block that blazed with light. It was at this house that Colin applied the brakes. “You’re in luck,” he said. “Dr. Belleaux is not only up but from the look of all the cars parked here he’s giving a party as well—and they’ve not left much space to get through, damn it.” He leaned out and swore, maneuvered the van through the line of cars, turned around and came back, cutting the ignition and the lights. “Here we are,” he said. “What do you plan to do?”

  “I’d not expected a party,” she said. “I shall have to ask to speak privately to Dr. Belleaux. I think I shall tell them at the door I’m from the American embassy—is there one?”

  “They’re all consulates here.”

  “All right, then I’m from the American consulate. That will do until I can get Dr. Belleaux aside and explain myself and try to explain Henry.”

  “Would you rather I pull into the drive?” he asked. “A bit awkward unloading in the front.”

  “Later—I want to be able to find you again,” Mrs. Pollifax confessed. “This may take a little time. Would you care to come too?” She was growing rather attached to Colin, she realized.

  “I don’t feel I should leave Henry, do you? If anyone walked past and happened to glance in—”

  His voice trailed off as a car rattled up the avenue, sputtering and backfiring, to turn into Dr. Belleaux’s driveway a few feet away from them. At the crest of the drive the car shuddered to a halt, a man jumped from the rear seat and gave it a push—it was a jeep—and then leaped in as the car coasted down the driveway to the rear.

  Mrs. Pollifax drew in her breath sharply. “Colin,” she said incredulously. “Colin—”

  “I saw it,” he said in a stunned voice.

  “I’m not losing my mind?”

  “No,” he said, and then, quickly and incoherently, “Damn it, no. Even the petrol—I told you the tank was almost empty and you saw him pushing it. Damn it, that was my jeep!”

  “But here?” whispered Mrs. Pollifax. “Here?”

  “It was Otto—I swear it—who jumped out and gave it a push,” he said. “And that must have been your friend slumped in the back. Are you coming?” he demanded. He opened the door and jumped to the pavement.

  “I certainly am,” she said fervently. She could not imagine what kind of mix-up she had stumbled into. There had to be some reasonable explanation, but it would have to be delivered to her at a more appropriate moment. Stefan and Otto simply couldn’t be working for Carstairs, too; not when Magda had virtually identified the two of them as her abductors. And they had killed Henry. But why were they here?

  “Just a minute,” said Colin, and reached into the compartment of the van to extract two lethal-looking guns. “Don’t expect them to fire, they’re made of wood,” he whispered. “They’re props Uncle Hu made for a short subject on Ataturk.”

  “But I’m delighted he did,” she told him.

  Props in hand they hurried down the driveway, moving from shadow to shadow until they came to the corner of the house. But already it was too late. Mrs. Pollifax had hoped they might arrive in the rear to find the jeep’s motor still running, Stefan and Otto off guard and Magda still accessible but the jeep had been abandoned. The back door to the house stood wide open, the screen door still swinging gently, but although a great deal of light and noise came from the building there were no humans to be seen.

  “Damn,” said Colin. He looked intently at Mrs. Pollifax. “You’re not going to knock and ask for Dr. Belleaux.” He might have intended it as a question but it came out as a flat statement.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to call the police?”

  She said gently, “From what you’ve told me of Dr. Belleaux a number of the police are probably inside at his party. And I don’t have a passport. No—I’m going to risk a look inside.”

  He looked shaken. “I say, that’s rather dangerous.”

  She said steadily, “Perhaps it will be but I really don’t know what else to do. As you may have guessed, I came to Istanbul only to meet and help Magda—and she’s in there, and I’m responsible.”

  He nodded. “Then I’m going in with you.”

  She looked at him. “Colin, I can’t let you become any more involved, I really can’t. I have to remind you that all I did was deliver a message from your sister this afternoon—”

  “Yesterday afternoon by now—”

  “—and you’d never seen me before in your life. This is going to be very illicit, I may get caught, and you’ve said yourself that you’re a physical coward.”

  He said fiercely, “Of course I’m a coward but I absolutely loathe being pushed around—I told you that—and these men stole my uncle’s jeep, dumped a dead man in our garage and kidnapped your friend. Now do let’s stop talking—of course I’m going with you!” />
  Mrs. Pollifax smiled faintly. “All right,” and returned her glance to the house. It was a two-storied rectangle of pale stucco with blue shutters. She wondered if Stefan and Otto had gone upstairs or down to the basement but there were no clues. She tiptoed to the screen door and peered inside; directly opposite, scarcely five feet away, a back staircase rose steeply toward the top of the house. Her decision had been made for her: they would try the upstairs first. “Look,” she whispered, pointing.

  To the right lay a long kitchen, brightly lit but empty of people although she could hear the sound of running water from a distant corner. Mrs. Pollifax slowly opened the screen door, testing for squeaks. Nothing happened and she slipped inside and across to the staircase with Colin directly behind her. She did not pause until she was halfway up the stairs. Here the rising sounds of the party proved an irritant: it was a very large party and the murmur of voices rose and fell in waves, but if they concealed any sounds that she and Colin made they had the disadvantage of concealing approaching footsteps as well. She felt trapped in noises, all of them confusing; still, she could not remain exposed on this stairway for any length of time and so she rallied, brought out her absurd wooden pistol and moved to the top of the stairs.

  Here she met a wide carpeted hallway containing six doors, all of them closed. On her right, at the far end, the hall terminated in a stairwell and the carpet overflowed the stairs like a waterfall of gold; it was from this end of the house that music and conversation rose almost deafeningly. Mrs. Pollifax headed in the opposite direction, on the supposition that these rooms were farthest removed from people, and people would be what Stefan and Otto must avoid if they were here, and the thought of their being here—of all places!—still baffled and shocked Mrs. Pollifax.

  The first door they opened was a bedroom but except for ornate hangings and baroque furniture it was empty. The second door proved to be a linen closet. With some impatience Mrs. Pollifax threw open the door to the third room, only to be reminded that impatience bred carelessness, for this time she had opened the door to a bedroom containing three people—the impact took her breath away—and in unison, also stunned, three people turned to stare at her.