You Find Him – I'll Fix Him

  All the time we had been driving down to the harbour and all the time we had been in the boat, heading towards the place where Helen had died, I knew he had been secretly worrying about the trouble Chalmers might make for him.

  "If she hadn't called herself Mrs. Douglas Sherrard," he said, taking the camera from me, "this would be a very straightforward affair. We will go to the villa now. I want to talk to the village woman."

  We returned to the harbour of Sorrento, leaving two of the policemen to continue the search for clues. They seemed pretty depressed at being marooned on the rocks. I didn't blame them. It was very hot out there, and there was no shade.

  When we reached the harbour, we took the police car and drove out to the villa.

The trip back from the bay and the drive up to the villa took a little over an hour and a half.

  We left the police car at the gates and walked up the drive. The Lincoln convertible still stood on the tarmac before the villa.

  Carlotti said, "Did this car belong to her?"

  I said I didn't know.

  Grandi broke in impatiently to say that he had already checked the registration plates. Helen had bought the car ten weeks ago: soon after she had arrived in Rome.

  I wondered where the money had come from. It puzzled me. I told myself that it was possible that she had cabled to her father, and he had sent her the money but, remembering what he had said about her keeping within her allowance, it didn't seem likely the money had come from him.

  We trooped into the lounge. Carlotti asked me politely if I would sit down and wait while he examined the villa.

  I sat down and waited.

  They spent some time in the bedroom. After a while, Carlotri came out carrying a small leather box: the kind of box you buy in Florence when you're hard put to give a friend at home a present.

  "You had better take charge of these," he said, putting the box on the table. "They must be given to il Signor Chalmers. Perhaps you will give me a receipt?"

  He lifted the lid. In the box were some pieces of jewellery. There were two rings: one of them had a large sapphire stone; the other had three diamonds. There was a collar of diamonds and a pair of diamond ear-rings. I don't know much about the value of jewellery, but even I could see that these would be worth quite a lot.

  "They are very nice," Carlotti said. He sounded a little wistful as if he coveted the jewels. "It is fortunate no one broke in here while the place was unguarded."

  I remembered the tall, broad-shouldered intruder.

  "Where did you find them?" I asked.

"They were on her dressing-table for anyone to steal."

"They're genuine? I mean, they're not paste?"

  "Of course they are genuine." He frowned at me. "I should say at a rough guess they are worth three million lire"

  While he was scribbling out a receipt for me to sign, I stared at the box and its contents. On her dressing-table for anyone to steal! I felt a little chill of uneasiness crawl up my spine. It didn't seem then that the intruder I had seen had been a sneak thief. Then who had he been? The sound of the telephone bell startled me.

  Carlotti answered it.

  He said, "Si ... si. … si." Listened for a long moment, then grunted something and hung up.

  Grandi came into the room. His face wore an expectant expression.

  Carlotti lit a cigarette before saying to me, "They have just had the autopsy report."

  I could see something had upset him. His eyes were uneasy again.

  "Well, you know how she died," I said in an attempt to bridge ever the long pause that followed.

  "Yes, there is no doubt about that."

  He moved away from the telephone. I could feel his uneasiness the way you feel the touch of a hand in the dark.

  "Is there anything else?"

  I was aware that my voice had sharpened. I saw Grandi turn to look at me.

  "Yes, there is something else," Carlotti said and grimaced. "She was pregnant."

II

  It was close on three-thirty by the time Carlotti had completed his examination of the villa and his interrogation of the woman from the village.

I didn't see her.

  I could hear the faint sound of their voices as he talked with her in the kitchen. I remained in the lounge, smoking cigarette after cigarette, my mind a squirrel cage of panic.

  So Helen had been pregnant.

  That would be the final nail in my coffin if they ever found out who Douglas Sherrard was. I knew I was not only innocent of her death, but also of her pregnancy, but if ever the facts came out, no one would believe it.

  What a mad, crass stupid fool I had been to have ever got tangled with the girl!

  Who had been her lover?

  I thought again of the broad-shouldered, mysterious intruder I had seen the previous night. Was he the man? It was possible. It was obvious now that he hadn't been a thief. No thief would have left three million lire's worth of jewellery on the dressing-table.

  I went on turning this situation over in my mind, watching the clock on the overmantel, knowing in another half-hour I would have to give Chalmers the details of her death.