Corinna interrupted: “But what might she say?”
Ranklin shrugged and looked at Berenice. “I don’t know. Perhaps you’d care to think about that. And who might have wanted to blame Grover Langhorn for the fire and who forced Guillet to go to the police and offer false testimony against him. However, what happened in Paris isn’t a matter for the British police. If you just tell the Superintendent about the kidnapping, we can get rid of him and then think about Paris.”
Berenice frowned over this, then looked to Corinna, who nodded and said gravely: “I think that is best.” She jerked her head at Ranklin. “I trust this man. He may not look much, but he’s good at these things. And of course his intentions are as honourable as hell.”
A compliment is where you find it. Ranklin went along to the kitchen and told Mockford: “She’s all yours.”
12
A couple of men from the Ritz turned up with trays and baskets of, among other things, a mousse de foie gras, ham in aspic and a chicken mayonnaise. Ranklin and O’Gilroy filled plates and backed off to the drawing-room, leaving the other five (now including the police sergeant-chauffeur as note-taker) seated around the kitchen table. Berenice seemed more at ease there, and probably Corinna was happy to confine the smell of absinthe to one room.
There was apparently no question of anybody using Reynard Sherring’s rooms, so no absinthe bottles under Reynard’s bed.
For a fair while, Ranklin concentrated on simply eating. Then he put his plate aside, found a cupful of warmish coffee still left in the pot, and lit a cigarette.
“What are we doing now, then?” O’Gilroy asked.
“I just don’t know.” There seemed no obvious step he could take. “Do you know anyone in the consulate in Paris?”
“Coupla fellers.”
“Do they know who you are?”
“They’ve mebbe got an idea; I’ve told ’em one or two things, jest so’s they owe me something. I reckoned-”
Ranklin waved aside explanations: it was the sensible thing to have do n e. “Then when we get back to the office, I want you to try and raise one of them on the telephone. You know about the Palace advertising for Mrs Langhorn? I’d like to know if there’s been any response.”
“She’d never turn up for that. Aren’t ye thinking same as me? - that someone’s organising this whole thing and’s got her pretty much locked up?”
“Nevertheless, I think it’s worth asking.”
In the kitchen, the police sergeant-chauffeur was stacking dirty plates half-heartedly, and Corinna was, as he had obviously hoped, telling him not to bother. Quinton was feeding papers back into his briefcase, and Berenice was slumped in a chair, sucking on a cigarette and not even bothering to seem interested in the buzz of English going on round her.
And Mockford was saying: “We may make a charge of kidnapping work out. I’ve no doubt she was kidnapped but – thanks to you – things may get very delicate when the question of how she was rescued comes up. So I’d prefer to concentrate on the murder of Guillet: at least that was over and done with before you decided to lend a hand. But it all depends on what evidence we find in the motor.”
Ranklin asked: “Are you satisfied that Berenice Collomb is innocent?”
Corinna began: “ ‘Innocent’ is not a word I’d apply to that young . . .” then had to smile hastily at Berenice, who had looked half-interested at the sound of her own name. “Not guilty of a particular act, perhaps.”
Despite himself, Mockford smiled. “I do see what you mean, madam. I think you and Mr Quinton may take it that she is no longer under suspicion. But we’d obviously need her as a witness at any trial on the kidnapping charge.”
There was a thoughtful silence before Mockford added: “Yes, that’s another reason why we’d prefer to stick to the murder charge.” He picked up his overcoat and wriggled ponderously into it, took his bowler hat, and went out into the hall. All except Quinton and Berenice followed.
“Does this mean,” Corinna asked in a low but clear voice, “that I’m no longer responsible for Berenice? And if so, may I say ‘Yippee’?”
“You can certainly regard her as no longer on bail,” Mockford said, straightfaced.
“But what about tonight?” Ranklin asked. “She can hardly go back to Bloomsbury Gardens, and I don’t fancy hawking her round the hotels until I find one that’ll take her in. I suppose I might put her up at the flat-”
“Ye could not!” O’Gilroy said, his propriety outraged.
Corinna looked dubious about that, too. She turned inquiringly to Mockford.
He shrugged his big shoulders. “We might get her taken in for a night by one of the Protection Societies or the Young Women’s Christian Association . . .”
“And I suppose,” Corinna said bitterly, “you’ll explain the absinthe as a sentimental childhood toy. All right, she can spend one more night here. But only one. Tomorrow she’s on a boat or on the street and I don’t mind which.”
And Mockford went his way. The rest of them drifted back into the kitchen.
“Well,” Corinna said, “it seems like you’ve got your international conspiracy after all. Certainly it sounds as if you’ve shed your inhibitions about the use of firearms.”
“They’d murdered one man and were planning to do the same to Berenice: we stopped them. It’s only the Super who’d rather we’d had a grand siege with more dead and damage because that’s what the law allows for.”
“And quite right, too,” Quinton suddenly burst out.
Startled, Corinna instinctively switched her stance to defend Ranklin. “And what else should they have done? – they saved Berenice’s life, didn’t they?”
“And me own, like enough,” O’Gilroy said mildly. “The bastard was popping off at me with one of them damn great ten-shot Mausers.”
“You being illegally on enclosed premises at the time,” Quinton pointed out. “As indeed you all were. I wouldn’t say this in front of Superintendent Mockford, but I’ll say it now: I’ve stood by and watched you over the past few days – and been dragged into your deliberations, too, just to flatter me – and your whole attitude that you and your Bureau are above the law is far more destructive of the law than any burglar or murderer who commits his offence and runs away. And mark you, I’m not talking about justice, about crusades and big earthshaking decisions: that’s for eminent judges and KCs to babble about in after-dinner speeches. Probably I get involved in justice for a tenth of my time, if that much. No. I’ve given my life to the law. Simply a code of behaviour that lets men sleep soundly in their beds and eat breakfasts that don’t poison them and go to work without being run down in the street and know they’ll be paid for the day’s work. And shall I tell you why? Because people are obeying the law without even thinking about it. That’s civilisation, far more than motor-cars and telephones and aeroplanes and rubbish like that and I hate – yes, I hate – to see it trampled underfoot by you and your kind.”
Ranklin dragged himself up towards the surface of his tiredness. “Your law isn’t God-given. It’s created by the same government that set up our Bureau, so-”
“Next you’ll be telling me you’re just doing your job, and you’re not employed to think,” Quinton said contemptuously. “I expect to hear that argument from the gun, not from the man wielding it.”
The accusation cut through Ranklin’s fog of weariness like a sword. This was a new Quinton – no, it was the real Quinton that Ranklin had been too careless to see. All he’d noticed had been the humble origins and nouveau riche knick-knacks, missing that the man had never been simply sailing with the tide of his profession, believing what it believed and saying what it said. He must have thought about every step of his life, because for most of the time the tide had been trying to strand him somewhere out of the way.