Tourists Are for Trapping Read online

  “More than you’d think,” he said. “Lots of it gets hushed up. The more thoughtful ones manage something that can be passed off as an accident to their parents. Some of them may even contrive to get themselves murdered—going around stirring up trouble, asking for it until they get it—and then the blame is put on someone else. And some of them are so ambiguous that we can never be sure ourselves. You have to grow a tough protective hide about it, if you want to carry on as a teacher. You evolve your own philosophy about it. Me, I’ve figured that there are just people who are survivors, and people who aren’t. Some of them almost seem to be looking for any excuse to finish it. Others come through events that would poleax an elephant—they may not come through smiling, or even fighting, but they come through.

  “Generally, I’ve always put the dividing line at about the age of thirty. Funny, but it’s mainly the young ones who can’t face life—or whatever they think life is going to be. But if they reach thirty, they’re going to go on. They’re the survivors. By that time, life has thrown enough at them to make them give it up, if they’re going to. They’ve had all the excuses they need. And they haven t taken them. They’ve learned to live with their own short-comings, and with other people’s. They’re the survivors.”

  “You’ve given the matter a lot of thought.” He’d have to have done, of course. It must hit them hard, the first couple of kids they lose that way. They have to give up themselves then, or else work out their own way of coping with it. “I think you’re very probably right.”

  “I’d thought I was.” He had finished his coffee without noticing it, and now he stared into the empty cup as though the grainy dregs had a message for him. “I was sure of it. But Carrie was well over thirty—well over forty, in fact. And she committed suicide.”

  So that was the reason for the strange atmosphere surrounding Tour 79. It was the miasma of guilt, doubt, and unease emanating from those left behind. Those wondering, Could I have done something to prevent it? Was it I who failed, and where? How?

  “That’s terrible,” I said, wishing to hell I had more information. Had she hung herself from the shower rail, like her pupil? Taken sleeping tablets? Cut her wrists? Who had discovered the body? I cursed Neil mentally, but he might not have had any answers to give me. He’d seemed quite thoroughly occupied on unsatisfactory telephone lines during most of the past twenty-four hours.

  “Terrible,” the professor agreed, nodding his head. He put down the coffee cup and faced me squarely. “Terrible.”

  We might be agreed, but we weren’t getting very far. It seemed there was nothing for it but a direct question.

  “How did she do it?”

  “She …” He gave a deep sigh and raised his hands to his face again, in that abortive gesture. “She ate a cheese fondue.”

  I could not have heard that correctly. I stared at him, but he seemed unaware that he had suddenly lapsed into gibberish. “I beg your pardon?”

  “She … ate … a … cheese … fondue,” he repeated, slowly and distinctly. It still sounded the same to me. “The very last thing in the world she should have done. I should never have allowed it. But she told me it was all right, and I believed her. Like a fool, I believed her.”

  He looked up then and must have registered the glazed look in my eyes. I smiled weakly. “A cheese fondue?” I threw his own words back at him, hoping he might correct me.

  “That’s right,” he said. “And she’d been warned. She’d been on those tranquilizers since all the upset last year. And the doctor had impressed it upon her particularly—cheese, of any sort, was deadly poison to her while she was taking those tranquilizers.”

  Americans and their goddamned pills! Better living through chemistry! Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned panacea of just getting drunk? You might wake up with a hell of a hangover in the morning—but at least you did wake up.

  One thing, it certainly explained the reaction I got when I carelessly recommended the Stilton. Also the hesitation about going into anything named the Cheshire Cheese.

  “But, a cheese fondue—” It still seemed incredible to me. I’d heard vaguely about a case or two, but one doesn’t necessarily trust all newspaper reports. “Could it really do that?”

  “It could be fatal—it was fatal.” He leaned forward and stared at me earnestly. “I don’t know how much information you have about us in that private file of yours.” His eyes rested greedily on the sheaf of papers attached to the clipboard. (I put my hand over it defensively, in case he might be going to snatch it away to prove some point. I didn’t know how much private information it contained, either. I’d spent most of my time trying to memorize names and match them up with their owners.)

  “I don’t know, for instance”—he gave a faint sigh, perhaps relinquishing, if he had ever held it, the idea of taking the file from me—“whether it tells you that I’m a diabetic. Oh, it’s very well controlled, and I’m very careful—not too noticeably, I hope. And it was the same with Carrie and her tranquilizers. She took them in private, and we had only her word for it that she’d stopped taking them as soon as she got to Europe. I was even pleased about it—I’d encouraged her to come on this tour. I’d hoped it would help her to forget—and it had seemed to be working. I was delighted.

  “But the point I’m trying to make is this: Cheese was deadly to Carrie—and she knew it. For her to sit there and eat that cheese fondue was as much an act of suicide as it would be for me to eat my way through a box of chocolates. She knew what she was doing, and it was deliberate. And she’d lied to all of us, so that we sat there and let her do it. That’s what’s so awful about it. That’s why we couldn’t stay on the Continent another minute. I must say, the police were very kind and understanding about the situation. And your little courier lady was a tower of strength.”

  “Larkin’s Luxury Tours employ only the best, most capable couriers,” I said feebly. It was a line from the brochure, all I could remember, but it seemed to fit the situation.

  He nodded agreement. If he remembered the line at all, he must really think me a company boy. Of course, he had no reason to think otherwise. We’d never been properly introduced or identified. So far as he was concerned, I was just another, supplementary courier.

  “Perhaps we ought to rejoin the tour now,” I suggested, taking up my clipboard. As we left the coffee shop, I made a mental note to check with Neil. If he’d scheduled a trip to Cheddar Gorge, we’d better scrub it.

  I settled myself at the rear of the bus again, and the others all fell into the seats they had been occupying this morning. Evidently, there was no chummy switching around for private chats, or changing places for window seats on this tour. With the cloud hanging over them, perhaps it wasn’t surprising. They probably weren’t even thinking about such niceties. In their places, I doubted that I’d be. It occurred to me that there was an especially antisocial aspect to killing yourself while on holiday with a group of people. It was bad enough in the privacy of your own house, but it was infinitely worse when you managed it more or less in public, ruining the enjoyment of life for as many innocent bystanders as possible.

  As Kathryn Lamb took up her spiel again and the bus wheeled smoothly into the Fleet Street traffic, I picked up the clipboard and began leafing through the papers at the back.

  There was a separate page for each of them. It gave their full names and home addresses, and the name and address of the next of kin to be notified in case of emergency. (That must have been useful in Switzerland, although I doubted that Neil had envisaged such a dire emergency.) Other than that, it simply listed whether or not the subject was a vegetarian, the religious affiliation (if any), and whether or not access to a place of worship must be provided on a particular day.

  There was a blank section, hopefully captioned “Other Comments.” Presumably, this was to have been filled in by their original Continental courier before she passed them on to her English colleague. Things being as they were, however, the Continental
courier had had too many other things on her mind to worry about filling in small details relating to the physical comfort of her erstwhile charges.

  It was interesting—and vaguely sinister—that no mention was made of Professor Tablor’s diabetes. That being so, it was also dubious that there had been any notation on the departed’s information sheet warning that she must be kept away from cheese in any form. I wondered uneasily how many of the others ought to be receiving special attention and had neglected to inform their courier of the fact. I thought of penciling in the notation about Tablor myself, but I shrank from marking the blank page. Perhaps he didn’t want it generally known—a lot of people didn’t. He had it under control and could take care of himself. Perhaps it would be enough if I just quietly picked up the watching brief.

  Villiers Street slid past outside the bus just then, and Trafalgar Square, and I was conscious of a great wave of homesickness. I wanted to be back in the office flat on the top floor of one of the buildings at the lower end, and doing something constructive— like teaching Pandora to hang up the phone; or better still, not to knock it off the hook in the first place.

  And perhaps Gerry had surfaced in the past hour or so. Once I began to think of them, the reasons for an immediate return to the office began to mount up. I’d taken a few photographs during the morning, but the day had darkened now and rain looked imminent. I hadn’t brought any flashbulbs, so that took care of any more pictures.

  Besides, I’d already seen Hampton Court. The mere thought of Tour 79 struggling through the Maze in a soaking downpour made me want to pull the communications cord and cut and run.

  Instead, I made my way to the front of the bus and had a quiet word with Kate and Jim. They agreed that there was nothing of value I could do at Hampton Court. They were off duty themselves at six, when they dropped the tour back at the hotel. The tour had a free evening—presumably they’d gravitate to the theatres of their choice. We would all meet at the hotel again in the morning.

  This being decided, Jim drew the bus in to the kerb and I waved a cheery good-bye to the tour and dismounted. Several people waved back as the bus drove off down King’s Road. I was outside a supermarket, which was fortunate, as I’d been planning a certain amount of necessary shopping. I went inside.

  Pandora was curled up on the desk when I let myself into the office. She rose and stretched, yawning a muffled greeting. The telephone receiver still hung over the side of the desk, buzzing gently. I put the bag of groceries down on the desk top while I retrieved the receiver and replaced it.

  In that split second, Pandora dived into the bag with a happy cry. “There’s nothing in there to interest you.” I hauled her out, protesting vigorously. She didn’t believe me—not for a moment. Everyone knew delicious tidbits were concealed in bags like that.

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll prove it to you.” I began to unpack: a loaf of bread, half pound of butter, half-dozen eggs, two small lunchbox-size tins—

  “Arr-yow-yow!” She fell on them, glaring at me. She’d known I was lying to her.

  “They’re nothing to do with you,” I said. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Yrayrow!” I was lying again. Everyone knew what came in small, interestingly shaped tins. Fish—that was what! Fish! And I was trying to keep it from her. Why? Why? There was another cat! I was two-timing her again!

  Eyes narrowed, tail lashing, she paraded up and down the desk, berating me. She’d met my type before—any little alley cat that flirted her whiskers at me had me chasing after her. I was an unfaithful, weak-willed, simple-minded—. Her language grew wilder and she used a few cries I’d never heard before, but they didn’t sound printable.

  “All right, all right,” I said, “I’ll prove it to you.” I got the tin-opener from the kitchen cupboard.

  Slightly mollified, but still swearing under her breath, she supervised the opening of the tin. I wrenched the lid away and said, “Now, are you satisfied?”

  She sniffed, but the scent conveyed nothing to her. She thrust her nose into the tin, then reared back, shaking her head, and sneezed violently.

  “You see?” I said triumphantly. “I told you orange juice wouldn’t interest you.”

  She came forward once more, still unwilling to believe it. Another sniff, and she sneezed directly into the tin this time.

  “That’s fine,” I said. “That will improve the flavour no end. Thanks a lot.”

  She gave me a haughty look, sat down, and began to wash one paw meticulously. Really, it was nothing to do with her. And why I had insisted on opening that ridiculous tin with its uninteresting contents was beyond her.

  “All right,” I said. “All right, have it your way.” I dug out an old briefcase and put the clipboard and the remaining tin of orange juice into it. On second thought, I added the tin-opener. I didn’t know much about diabetes, but I knew that orange juice was a sort of emergency antidote to a coma. And if we needed that orange juice, we were going to need it in a hurry. There’d be no time for hunting for tin-openers then.

  It was too bad that Perkins & Tate didn’t run to a second tin-opener, but the clients came first. We’d have to rely on self-opening tins and jars for the next week or so. If the situation got sufficiently desperate, perhaps we might even resort to fresh vegetables and meat, as Penny was always telling us we should.

  Meanwhile, I put the opened tin of orange juice into the refrigerator. Gerry would probably drink it later, and what the eye did not see, the heart did not grieve over. Not that Gerry worried particularly about germs, anyway.

  Chapter 5

  Sometime during the night, I heard the front door open and Gerry creep in. At least, I presumed it was Gerry—no self-respecting burglar would lower himself by raiding our premises. Pandora tensed and raised her head, but when no promising sounds came from the pantry cupboard, she muttered crossly, resettled herself, and went back to sleep. So did I.

  The next time I awoke it was to consciousness of a gray, sleeting drizzle outside the window and a temperature several degrees colder than it had any right to be for this time of the year. It was going to be a great day to be stuck in a minibus with a tourful of unhappy Americans.

  Pandora eschewed the day completely. She rolled aside limply as I got up, opened one eye, and burrowed under the bedclothes into the warm hollow I had left. She had the right idea. And her day didn’t promise to be nearly so strenuous as mine.

  There was no sign of Gerry in the office—apart from a heap of parking tickets on the desk. If he was planning to do the gentlemanly thing by paying that bird’s parking fines, Perkins & Tate were going to have to find several high-paying clients. It would be cheaper for him to take up gambling—at least there might be a chance of winning occasionally.

  I decided to breakfast at the hotel. I didn’t feel up to the effort of cooking this morning. With luck, the members of Tour 79 would all have breakfasted already.

  At least I had a peaceful half-hour, during which I finished bacon and eggs and most of the morning paper. Even when the chair opposite me scraped against the floor, I didn’t look up, trusting to luck that, out of all the people staying at the hotel, it would not be someone from the tour. It was the last time I trusted to luck for a long time.

  The table jiggled violently as knees collided with it, and coffee splashed into my saucer.

  “Sorry,” a voice said, “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” The tone told me that was a blatant lie.

  “Quite all right,” I lied myself. I bared my teeth at Young Horace. He showed his own—they looked longer and sharper than mine.

  “Nice morning,” he said. Perhaps he thought it was—for England. Tourists don’t expect better weather. It takes them by surprise if they get it; if they don’t, they simply concentrate on the cultural advantages they’re presumably gaining and remind themselves that the sun is waiting for them back in “God’s country.”

  “You should see one of our bad days,” I told him.

  H
e must have given his order as he came in. The waiter, with barely a tremour, set it down in front of him. He appeared to be breakfasting on a double portion of chocolate gateau and a large Coke.

  Not to be outdone by a waiter, I concealed my own tremour. Besides, I could remember the winter mornings back in Cambridge when I set out for Harvard fortified by a bowl of beef stew and a wedge of apple pie. It’s all in what you get accustomed to.

  “I’m afraid I upset your mother yesterday,” I said, to forestall him in case he had any idea of raising the issue with me. “I’m sorry, I had no idea of the circumstances—”

  “Quite all right,” he threw my own phrase back at me, and seemed to like the sound of it. He tried it again, clipping the accents a bit more. “Quite all right.” If he worked on it, he might acquire the beginnings of what could pass for an English accent by the time he got back to his own territory. I wondered if that was what he had in mind in seeking me out. There were plenty of empty tables in the dining room.

  He had something in mind, that was certain. He kept darting nervous glances at me. As though to reassure himself, he turned and glowered around the nearly deserted room, then leaned across the table.

  “Listen,” he said, “can I talk to you?”

  “You already are,” I pointed out. “I mean, go ahead.” Instinctively, I braced myself.

  “Like”—he edged forward a bit more—“you’ve been around. You’re English. This is England. Tell me. Where’s it at, man, where’s it at?”

  “At?” Even braced for anything, as I was, I reeled at that one. “It? At?” I was conscious that I sounded as though I were squeaking. I took a deep breath and tried to be more coherent. “What it? Where at?” It wasn’t much of an improvement, sounding, as it did, vaguely like Middle English, but he seemed to grasp my meaning.

  “The action, man! Where’s the action?”