[The Girl From UNCLE 04] - The Cornish Pixie Affair - Leslie Peter (электронная книга .txt) 📗

"Of course. Thought to have come originally from Phoenician stock, with a dash of throwback to the parent root when the Armada was wrecked off the western coasts of Britain in 1588," April said.

Waverly stared at her for a moment. "Yes," he said. "Well. They still regard the rest of England, let alone Scotland and Wales, as foreign, you know. And they are, as a whole, a fairly brooding, suspicious lot of people — insofar as one can ever generalise on a whole race. The saying goes that the Cornish spend the winter indoors, counting the money they've wrested from the summer tourists and only venturing out when there's a ship wrecked on their coast whose cargo they can plunder."

"All the same, I agree that this kind of generalised myth —"

"Yes, Miss Dancer. Yes, yes. I was only jesting," Waverly said crossly. "It's not only in Section Two that a sense of humour is permitted."

"I beg your pardon, sir."

"Now where was I? — Oh yes. In such an unpromising atmosphere, then, Mr. Slate considered that he would not get far, as a 'foreigner', simply by asking questions of the locals. They clam up at once in front of strangers. So he managed to ingratiate himself with the local police superintendent."

"Bully for Mark!"

"Er — quite. He has discovered that the girl was selling ashtrays and such tourist trivia in her booth as cover; and that these were cut and turned from local stone by her fiance, the son of the circus proprietor. The youth, it seems, is insanely jealous of another, older, richer, more sophisticated suitor, who, besides being married, is some kind of local squire –– and it is the squire who was the last to see the young woman alive. The boy, on the other hand, was heard to quarrel violently with the girl (presumably over the squire) not long before this. In other words, whichever way you look at it, it may turn out to be simply a crime passionelle. There are however certain aspects…"

Waverly picked the cablegram from the desk again and studied it. He sighed. "Mr. Slate's second message," he said, "affords some interesting reflections. Firstly, the older man's wife apparently knew about the friendship with Miss Duncan and did not object to it — which would seem to restrict him somewhat as a suspect; secondly, the dead girl's booth has now been burgled three times since the murder, although nothing, it seems, is missing; and thirdly, there have been two attempts on Mr. Slate's own life..."

The girl gave an unladylike whistle. "If that's what goes on in the villager there," she said, "I'd hardly fancy visiting the towns!"

"Precisely. The matter is complicated. That is why I wish you to go tonight to take over the investigation from Mr. Slate. He will remain and collaborate with you as long as may be necessary... You are quite satisfied with him as a colleague, I take it?"

"Perfectly. There is nobody I would rather have — on this or any assignment, Mr. Waverly."

"Splendid. It looks as though he may be on to something, anyway, if attempts are being made on his life. Perhaps by the people who keep burgling the sideshow booth. That suggests to me an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to locate some object, presumably incriminating, and remove it before it is found either by Mr. Slate or the police... Anyway, you had better go now to Operations and draw the necessary equipment, documents, money and so on. They will furnish you with papers detailing your cover and some further background on the assignment. Please keep in constant touch with HQ London by radio. They will service me."

"Very good, sir. How do I go, by the way?"

Alexander Waverly gave her something very like a grin. "I have found it increasingly difficult to maintain our 'disengaged' image," he said, "when I am constantly borrowing aircraft from the Navy Department in this country. It looks to outsiders as though we are an American-sponsored organisation — although in fact I would cheerfully borrow Soviet or Chinese planes if they were geographically as convenient. But it does look bad, one has to admit… so I have at last persuaded our Appropriations Committee to advance me a sum sufficient to purchase for the Command a Trident — a quiet and comfortable jet ship that is very fast. Our standby helicopter will take you from the rooftop here to La Guardia. The new Trident will ferry you to London. And local Headquarters there will get you to the small airfield at Land's End in a Cessna."

He rose and held out his hand. "Good luck, my dear," he said.

There was something strangely forlorn, unnatural even, about him standing there, April thought, patting the pockets of his baggy tweed suit. He looked quite lost for a moment. And then suddenly it clicked... His pipes! There wasn't a pipe in the place — and usually they filled the mantel, sprawled across the desk, overflowed the coffee table and littered every surface in the huge room...

"Your pipes!" she was startled into exclaiming aloud. "Where are they? There's not one to be seen!"

Waverly looked guilty. "Er — I've given up smoking," he said sheepishly. "Doctor insisted. Bad for the health, you know. Not used to it yet."

April smiled fondly. Throughout the Command, Waverly and his multitude of pipes were perennial in-jokes — for although he was eternally filling them, one after another, he had never been seen actually to light one, nor had anyone in the organisation ever seen him take a single puff of tobacco!

"I think your courage is beyond praise," she said gravely. She picked up the big crocodile handbag, smiled at him again, and walked gracefully to the door.

CHAPTER FIVE: IN THE STEPS OF THE DEPARTED

MARK SLATE took the Matra-Bonnet over the moorland road from Land's End airfield, near Sennen Cove, towards Penzance. Reclining beside him in the black leather passenger seat, April Dancer listened with half-closed eyes as stage by stage, he recounted the events of the past forty-eight hours. After the monotonous drones of aircraft, the whine of the sports car's gears, the variable crackle and snarl of its exhaust, seemed to her to be paradoxically soothing and restful.

They had just negotiated a saddle in the high ground from which they could glimpse the Atlantic behind them, with the English Channel only a few miles ahead, when the girl suddenly opened her eyes wide and leaned forward. "But this is fabulous," she breathed. "Why did nobody tell me the place was beautiful too?"

Before them, the moor undulated down in a series of dun ridges streaked with ochre and burnt sienna and gamboge. Beyond this, where the ribbon of road stitched together a patchwork of woods and small fields to cover the outcrops of granite, the swell of country was dramatically gashed by a steep valley at whose father end a wedge of blue sea appeared. For the moment, the bad weather had withdrawn eastwards, and the pale sunshine flooding from the sky bared every detail of the winter landscape, from the moss on the nearest boulder to the white horses decorating the vee of water framed by leafless trees at Porthcurne.

Slate flicked a glance at the enraptured girl, grinned, and pushed the gear lever into third for the steep descent. "Out of season's the time to come," he said. "That's what the Cornish themselves tell you. I always imagine this is rather like the coast of Maine — you come from New England, April, don't you? — or even Massachusetts around Cape Cod. Am I right?"

"Oh, no," the girl laughed. "Cape Cod's quite wild sometimes, weather-wise, but Maine's much quieter than this — and anyway both of them are far more... well, kind of cosy, than this. Nearer to the stockbroker belt, too. This is so empty and so big!" She flicked aside her hair with an imperious jerk of the head and settled back in the seat. "You'd better fill me in (I think that's what Waverly said) on the rest of the details. What was this bit about your local squire's wife being a complaisant one, by the way?"