Читать книгу Death on the Riviera - Ernest Elmore - Страница 21
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“Look here, sir,” protested Sergeant Freddy Strang, “duty’s duty and all the rest of it, but if you force me to down another bottle of this darn Vichy water I’ll be airborne!”
“Sorry, Sergeant,” chuckled Meredith. “You’ve all my sympathy, but it wouldn’t do to hang about in these places without ordering something. And if you think I’m going to let you spend your day knocking back double brandies and shoving ’em down on the expenses sheet, then you’re a bigger optimist than I am.”
“But three days of it, sir! I never want to swallow another mouthful of the poisonous stuff. And it isn’t as if we’ve got anywhere. Not a sniff of the chap we’re looking for. It’s absolutely depressing.”
“Well, that’s how it runs. No good getting impatient. But I promise you this much. If we haven’t pulled a rabbit out of the hat by ten pip-emma this evening, then we’ll call the hunt off.”
“Sounds fair enough to me, sir,” said Freddy, hastily raising a hand to his mouth to cover an indiscretion that had been plaguing him ever since this Monte Carlo roundabout had been set in motion. “Sorry, sir. Can’t help it. Afraid it’s getting a bit out of control.”
Although Meredith had taken good care to conceal it from his subordinate, he too was feeling pretty down in the mouth. For nearly three days now they’d been haunting the more exclusive cocktail bars and cafés frequented by the foreign tourists. Blampignon had drawn up an appropriate list for his English confrères. In particular Meredith had kept a watchful eye on the Manhattan and Mirimar, the bars where this smooth-tongued foreigner had made contact with the two Englishmen. And from all these boring, fruitless hours he’d culled only a capful of further information. Discreet enquiries among the staffs of these various establishments elicited the fact that at six of them, including the Manhattan and Mirimar, this Dutchman or German was known to them by sight. For the most part Meredith and Strang had worked separately, coming together only at mealtimes to compare notes.
But at that moment—about six o’clock on the third day of their vigil—they were seated opposite each other at a little glass-topped table in a far corner of the Bar Mirimar. A few minutes earlier, in conversation with one of the many garçons attached to the place, Meredith had stumbled on a curious bit of evidence. According to this fellow, who luckily spoke English, he’d last seen the moon-faced gentleman come into the bar the previous Thursday. And thinking back, he was prepared to swear that the gentleman never patronized the Mirimar except on a Thursday—adding in explanation of this astonishing claim:
“You see, M’sieur, we are quick to remember faces. It is part of our job to do so. And this particular gentleman... he always order vodka. We do not often serve vodka in the Mirimar, so when he come in I think ‘Ah, here is the gentleman who always drink vodka!’ So I go up quick to him and say ‘Vodka as usual, M’sieur?’ And, naturellement, he is so flattered because I remember that he give me a most handsome tip. Mais oui—always Thursdays, M’sieur. I think you will find I am not wrong about that. And since it is Thursday today... perhaps later... you follow, M’sieur?”
Meredith followed perfectly. Recalling that the statements he’d taken from the two Englishmen were in his wallet, he took them out and hastily scanned them. He smiled to himself. Exactly! They too had met the fellow on a Thursday. So what? Didn’t it suggest that he worked the Monte Carlo bars only on that particular day of the week?
