A fatal encounter in tus.., p.1
A Fatal Encounter in Tuscany, page 1
A FATAL ENCOUNTER IN TUSCANY
Miss Ashford Investigates
VIVIAN CONROY
One More Chapter
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London SE1 9GF
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2023
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Copyright © Vivian Conroy 2023
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Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023
Cover illustration © Gary Redford / Meiklejohn
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Vivian Conroy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
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Source ISBN: 9780008549329
Ebook Edition © April 2023 ISBN: 9780008549312
Version: 2022-02-22
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Acknowledgments
Thank you for reading…
About the Author
Also by Vivian Conroy
One More Chapter...
About the Publisher
Chapter One
SEPTEMBER 1930
Miss Atalanta Ashford sat at a table in the tearoom of the Grand Metropolitan Hotel in Paris, watching with a smile as the immaculately clad waiter transferred silver trays with sweet treats from his cart onto her table. Macarons in pink, yellow and green, bonbons with elegant gold decorations, paper-thin rolled butter biscuits and madeleines.
She really deserved this feast, having just concluded the rather delicate case of the Marquis of Merion’s letters. When his secretary had appeared on her doorstep to engage her, she had believed it would be about some indiscreet love letters the marquis had sent to someone he had been enamoured with in his younger years, physical proof of a youthful folly that now threatened his upcoming marriage to a German princess. But it had turned out to be something completely different. The marquis, a fervent horse lover and breeder of excellent jumpers, had written a letter to a friend expressing doubts about a horse he was training that he considered too headstrong to ever make a successful showjumper. The letter had fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous young woman who was after the friend’s fortune but had seen a chance to get into the marquis’s pocket instead. She had threatened him that she would make his letter public, by handing it to the press for instance, and would ruin his reputation as a breeder for ever, unless he paid her a ludicrous sum for her silence. Aware that blackmail never ends, the marquis had been quite desperate, and his devoted secretary had hired Atalanta to negotiate a deal for the return of the letter with assurances this payment would be a final one and no contact would be made later for more money. Atalanta had hesitated to take the case because she really had seen no way to persuade a woman of dubious morals to be honest in returning the letter, but Renard, who had overheard part of the conversation while pouring coffee, gave her a signal to accept. He had later, after the secretary’s departure, told her that he had contacts that could help to convince the young lady it was in her best interest to come to a deal. “We must simply make her an offer she cannot refuse,” he had said with a smile.
“Merci,” Atalanta thanked the waiter, who stepped back with a slight bow and wheeled his cart back to the double doors leading out of the room. It was quiet on this Wednesday afternoon and with a sigh of satisfaction she picked up her teacup and savoured the delicate aroma of the jasmine in her green tea. She was just about to pick a first macaron off the silver tray when the doors through which the waiter had vanished were flung open dramatically and the hotel’s manager rushed in.
He had seen her arrive fifteen minutes earlier and escorted her to her table personally, enquiring how she liked it in Paris and if she had recently travelled anywhere interesting. She had told him she had visited Santorini, conveniently omitting that she had been there posing as an old lady’s companion to investigate an accidental death that might have been murder. Not only had it turned out to have been murder but there had been another death and Atalanta had worked hard, and risked life and limb, to bring the killer to justice. The hotel manager’s enthusiastic response to her mention of the Greek island had probably been provoked by images of her exploring the whitewashed village dotted with pink blossoming bougainvillea, olive and fig trees, trying delicious seafood, and admiring the views across the azure water from atop the famous red rocks. But she knew she had come back from the trip hardly rested and new cases had immediately engaged her attention. She was incredibly grateful to her grandfather, Clarence Ashford, who had left her his entire fortune, along with his vocation to sleuth discreetly for the higher circles, but at times that very vocation left her little room to enjoy the freedom that had come with the wealth.
The manager halted at her table, clasped his hands together in front of his chest with typical French dramatic flair, and whispered in a low voice, “Oh, Mademoiselle Ashford, I must be the luckiest man alive because you are here on this very afternoon when I could become the unluckiest man alive.”
Atalanta raised an eyebrow at this rather cryptic statement. “Has something happened?”
“Yes …” He looked around him, lowering his voice even further. “A crime.”
“Here in the hotel?”
“Oui. C’est un drame.” He pulled his hands apart and gestured wildly. “Une catastrophe. Madame Versaint is one of my best clients. She stays here for months on end. She—”
“Calm down, monsieur, and tell me in an orderly fashion what happened and how I may help.”
“You will help? Oh, I knew I could count on you. Come with me.” He reached out as if to pull her off her chair. Atalanta cast a regretful look at the table full of delicacies.
The manager said, “I’ll of course ensure you can enjoy your tea later. And at the expense of the hotel. But right now I need your assistance. That fool Doriot is making a mess of it.”
“Inspector Doriot?” Atalanta asked with a rush of apprehension inside. She had come across him before, and he had made it very clear that he had never liked her grandfather interfering with what he considered official police business, and that he didn’t want her to follow in his footsteps. “I’m certain he is very capable and will do anything in his power …”
“Oh, he is doing anything, yes; anything to upset Madame Versaint, her maid, the sculptor and the staff.” The manager gesticulated again as he walked beside her, leading her up the elegant stairs to the first floor. “He has had the audacity to have a female member of his police force search the persons of everyone who was in the room at the time of the theft. One maid already told me she is taking her leave after this affront.”
“What theft?” Atalanta asked, to cut her way through his indignation over the police’s way of handling the case to what had happened to the honoured guest.
“Madame Versaint has a ring she always wears. A gold ring with a large diamond in it. It was a gift from her husband. Years ago he acquired an African mine and the best stone found there he had made into a ring for her when they married. He is currently on a business trip in Spain and she is staying here at the hotel, where she can have the best meals and entertainment at night.”
“Yes, and something happened to this ring?” Atalanta tried to focus on the essentials while the manager led her through a corridor with a dark blue carpet decorated with the golden entwined Gs and Ms of the hotel logo. Potted palms stood along the walls and oil paintings depicted elaborate scenes from the court of Louis the Sun King.
“It vanished,” the hotel manager said with a dramatic sweep of his hand in the air. “Madame has lost some weight recently and the ring is a little loose on her finger. She stood up from the sofa and the ring fell and bounced away across the floor. Everyone helped to look for it, but it was not found. Madame rang for me and I contained all present in the suite until the police arrived.”
He stopped in front of a door of white-painted wood embellished with gold detailing of fruits and leaves. He knocked. After a few moments the door was opened by a u niformed policeman. Past him Atalanta saw a sofa carrying an elegant woman in her forties with blond hair and a peach dress that hugged her slender figure. She had been crying and was still dabbing her blotched face. A maid in dark blue stood half behind the sofa, handing her a new lace handkerchief. By the marble fireplace in which no fire was burning, two hotel maids stood with their heads bowed. They both had their hair down and, in their hands, held the white head adornment that was part of their uniform. A few feet away from them stood the policewoman who had apparently been called in to search the persons present for the missing ring.
A voice with the sharpness of a foghorn rang out from the adjacent room. “How can the wretched thing be gone? Are there cracks in the floorboards? Did it slip into a dusty corner?”
The manager flushed and cried, “We have no cracks in our floorboards here and there is no dust in our corners.”
A tall man marched out of the other room, pulling back his shoulders and gearing up to retort. But then he saw Atalanta and his expression fell. “What is she doing here?” he barked.
The manager said, “I asked her to come and help us. She will know what happened to the ring without tearing the entire room apart.”
Doriot huffed in disbelief. “How? By some trick? For it isn’t humanly possible to find this missing ring without actually looking in places. And we have looked everywhere. My people have felt the curtains and checked the vases and—”
“Monsieur Doriot here,” the manager said to Atalanta with a grim expression, “thinks that one of the people who helped to look for the ring after it had fallen slipped it into some hiding place to retrieve later. But so far he has been unable to point out what hiding place that was.”
Doriot was scarlet now and seemed ready to yell at the manager.
Atalanta raised a hand to stop both men from saying any more. “That’s a very good thought,” she said quietly.
“If it worked,” the hotel manager scoffed. “But he has searched my staff, even forcing the maids to undo their hair as if they could have hidden the ring in there.”
“I’m just being thorough,” Doriot snarled. “We know for certain that no one left the room. The ring must be in here.”
Atalanta let her gaze wander the room. There were two tall windows, but they were closed. No one could have tossed the ring out, and indeed that made little sense as it would have fallen on the pavement below and be picked up by any passer-by with an interest in the glittering stone. The windowsills were full of potted plants. She walked over to see if the ring had been hidden in the earth.
“I already looked there,” Doriot said. “Not in the earth, or under the plants in the pots.”
Atalanta ignored him and continued her survey of the room. Because it was full of ornaments there were many potential hiding places, but Doriot constantly reminded her that they had already been checked. She felt his hostility as a live presence in the room, threatening to dim her reasoning. But she forced herself to pretend she was all alone here and merely exercising her mind. What was logical?
Would the maid of the guest have tried to steal the ring? But why on this occasion? Surely there would be other, better ones?
The maids in service at the hotel? They both looked like frightened young girls who would not have the wit to use such a chance the second it occurred.
Her gaze came to rest on the man in the room, an artistic type of about thirty with a goatee, and metal-rimmed spectacles resting on the tip of his nose. He blinked at her as if he wasn’t quite sure who she was and what she was doing here. Beside him stood a high wooden stool with a bust resting upon it. Made of clay, it was modelled in the likeness of Madame Versaint. Atalanta’s gaze descended to the man’s hands, which were dirtied with clay. He had been working on the model when the ring had fallen and the frantic search had commenced.
She eyed him and smiled. “That is a very good likeness.”
“It is just a model for a marble bust,” Madame Versaint declared. She still dabbed at her eyes. “My husband insisted on me having my very own bust to put on the piano in our winter residence. I had to sit for this clay model so the artist has an example to work from when he starts work on the marble. I have no patience to sit for that. It would take me days.” She shuddered.
Atalanta looked at the bust again. “Inspector Doriot, have you checked the bust?”
“Pardon me?” The inspector glared at her without understanding.
“You say you have checked everything in the room. Does that include the bust?”
Doriot blinked in confusion. “What is there to check about it?”
Atalanta walked over. The artist said sharply, “Don’t touch it or you will ruin the likeness.”
“I’m interested in the bottom of it.” Atalanta stopped in front of the stool and looked at the artist with a friendly smile. “I’ll touch it very gently to turn it over.”
“It is easily ruined. The clay is still soft.”
“Yes.” Atalanta’s smile deepened. “That is the point, isn’t it?” She held the artist’s gaze. “When the ring fell and bounced away, you helped to look for it. You picked it up and pushed it into the soft clay. In an instant it was swallowed and couldn’t be seen any more. All you had to do was wait until the police gave up their search for it and you could carry off your bust to your studio. Your now very valuable bust.”
“Is that true, Antoine?” Madame Versaint asked. “I thought you were such a wonderful artist, so talented. Why ruin a good career with a reckless theft?”
Antoine sighed. “Spur of the moment. Just too good to let pass by.” He reached out and overturned the bust gently. With an expert movement of his index finger and thumb he pushed something out of the clay.
The policewoman gasped as the ring surfaced.
Doriot swore under his breath. He stared at Atalanta. “How did you know that?”
“You should read more books, Inspector.” Atalanta smiled. “All the great crimes have been done before. By making a catalogue in your mind you will have a very valuable encyclopaedia to draw upon.”
The hotel manager beamed. “I knew I could count on you, Mademoiselle Ashford. Merci.”
Atalanta waved it off. “I was here at the right time.”
“For you, that is,” Doriot muttered with a sour expression.
Madame Versaint said, “I think my husband will have to acquire the bust elsewhere. I don’t want to do business with a criminal.”
The policeman and woman led the artist away. Doriot moved as if to say goodbye to Madame Versaint but she turned her head away from him and ordered her maid to make her tea as she had a terrible headache.
Doriot glowered at Atalanta before disappearing after his people and the caught criminal.
Atalanta smiled at the two hotel maids, who looked as if they couldn’t believe what had happened. “You can now resume your duties. All is well.”
“But first make yourselves presentable again,” the hotel manager said. “Vite, vite.” He ushered them out of the room with a hand gesture.
Madame Versaint said, “Really, I never believed it was one of them. I’ve never had any trouble staying at this hotel. I could have known it was the sculptor. He did have shifty eyes.”
Atalanta suppressed a smile at Madame Versaint’s sudden insight into human nature. “I’m glad that the ring has been recovered. It must be very precious to you given that it was a gift from your husband.”
“I rarely see him.” Madame Versaint waved her hand languidly. “Our marriage works best when we are far apart from each other. I live here and enjoy myself and he goes on business, wherever he believes he can find another fortune. I must admit, he has a nose for opportunities.” She studied Atalanta through her eyelashes. “Do we know each other? Have we met? You look vaguely familiar. Why don’t you take tea with me and we can chat?”
