A Pigeon Among the Cats Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/josephinebell

  Contents

  Josephine Bell

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Josephine Bell

  A Pigeon Among the Cats

  Josephine Bell

  Josephine Bell was born Doris Bell Collier in Manchester, England. Between 1910 and 1916 she studied at Godolphin School, then trained at Newnham College, Cambridge until 1919. At the University College Hospital in London she was granted M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. in 1922, and a M.B.B. S. in 1924.

  Bell was a prolific author, writing forty-three novels and numerous uncollected short stories during a forty-five year period.

  Many of her short stories appeared in the London Evening Standard. Using her pen name she wrote numerous detective novels beginning in 1936, and she was well-known for her medical mysteries. Her early books featured the fictional character Dr. David Wintringham who worked at Research Hospital in London as a junior assistant physician. She helped found the Crime Writers’ Association in 1953 and served as chair during 1959–60.

  Chapter One

  Mrs. Lawler stepped out of the plane at Genoa Airport to breathe deeply the bright warm air of Italy. This was what she had come for; to lose the cold grey blanket settled so firmly over her for more than a month. She had thought she would never get rid of it or be able to wear the summer clothes that had been scarcely touched for the whole of that so-called summer in England. Friends had warned her it would be far too hot in Italy in August: not a bit of it, she told herself half an hour later as she left the airport buildings again, directed by a pleasant fresh-faced young woman, who ticked her name off on a card she held while she explained that the coach was waiting to take them on the first stage of their tour.

  Mrs. Lawler moved out into the sunshine again and looked about her. Half a dozen coaches were waiting: the tourist trade at full stretch evidently. Carefully remembering what she had been told, she moved towards one of the monsters of the correct colour and name. ‘Roseanna’ was scrawled sideways across the wide stern. The name of her tour company was written below and to the side. ‘Roseanna’ was a name Mrs. Lawler was always to remember.

  As she moved unhurriedly towards the coach, for she had little hand luggage and knew just enough Italian to help her past the initial difficulties, she found someone at her elbow, panting a little, asking in a very hesitant voice, “Are you for the Queensway tour by any chance?”

  “I believe there are two or even three,” Mrs. Lawler said, looking round. “I was told mine is called ‘Roseanna’, but there is one for Naples after Rome. The brochure gave one for the Lakes as well.”

  As the young woman beside her swung away again, as if to find a less complicated answer, Mrs. Lawler went on, “I am going to Rome and then Florence and Venice. That is by this coach here, ‘Roseanna’.”

  But the impatient young woman had gone, so Mrs. Lawler presented her ticket to the coach driver who did not want to see it, but flashed a fine row of teeth at her and waved his hand over the interior of the coach, inviting her to choose a seat.

  This she did, directly behind him, which gave her an excellent view through the windscreen as well as out of the side window. How pleasant, she thought, to have all the luggage problems settled for you. As long as it works, she reminded herself. But as the driver jumped down at that moment to receive a load of suitcases for the party among which she saw her own, she abandoned the last shred of responsibility for the time being.

  The rest of her fellow travellers arrived in a solid mass directly afterwards. Why so much later than herself, Mrs. Lawler wondered? The loo, too scared to manage on the plane? Not all of them, surely? There had been a queue, which she had herself joined. No, but several with various Italian foods, already nibbling. No children, thank God, in our lot. There had been one or two shouters and winners during the flight.

  “May I sit beside you?”

  Mrs. Lawler found it was the scatty young woman again, looking at her from the central aisle with a pleading expression.

  “Of course. Would you like to be by the window?”

  The young woman looked startled.

  “No, no, of course not. Don’t move. I’ll put my coat on the rack. I suppose our luggage has come over?”

  “I saw it arrive. I wondered too. I’m not used to having everything done for me. Quite the reverse.”

  “Really?”

  Mrs. Lawler did not explain further. She foresaw many speeding miles during which life stories would be exchanged. Worse than on board a ship, she thought. There you could at least get up after a short interval and walk about. Here you were committed for several hours at a time.

  Before the end of that day Mrs. Lawler found that the seats her partners in travel had chosen that morning were by common, unspoken agreement considered fixed. She was landed with this young woman and would have to make the best of it. While moving, at any rate.

  Not that much conversation was needed to begin with, for the road out of Genoa was exciting, spectacular, winding its ingenious, level, breathtaking way through tunnels, across bridges, round corners where the sea flashed blue for a few seconds or the next door dual-carriageway poured out its own quota of cars just before theirs was swallowed up by the same tunnel’s mouth.

  Mrs. Lawler glanced at the figure beside her. The girl, she had appeared no more at the airport, looked rather older now, but perhaps no more than thirty, was staring straight in front of her, both hands clutching the little rail the driver had put up between his sprung seat and the passengers. She seemed to notice Mrs. Lawler’s eye upon her, for she turned slowly and gave her a shy smile.

  “Isn’t it a wonderful road?” she said.

  “The Italians have always been good engineers,” Mrs. Lawler answered. It was insufferably smug and condescending to say such a thing, she knew. Also far less than she felt. The girl turned her face back to the road. She did not speak again.

  At Pisa the coach put them off to see the sights: three white masses glittering in the sunshine, milled about by tourists in bright clothes and faced by a long row of incredibly vulgar stalls, displaying towers that leaned on every possible material, from heavy dishes to wooden soup bowls, to artificial silk scarves to toy animals, to flags, to combs, to pipes, to guitars, to hats, to shirts, to leather purses.

  Walking off rapidly by herself, with her camera dangling, but without much intention of using it Mrs. Lawler made for the private burial ground and its cloister, avoiding the church, the baptistry and the tower, that she had no wish to climb. In the “campo” she did find all and more than she expected and spent a happy half-hour br
owsing among the inscriptions ancient and modern upon the tombs she found there.

  She was recalled to the coach by the courier who gave her name as Billie. They would stay in Pisa for the night and it was time to go to their hotel to sort themselves out Billie said.

  Mrs. Lawler made no objection to this. The day had meant a very early start in England and had been tiring, though she felt she had done nothing. Still, that had been the object of the exercise, her friends had told her.

  At dinner that evening Mrs. Lawler sat at a table for four. The others were a father, mother and young daughter all called Banks. They came from the Midlands and had travelled to Gatwick the night before. They were properly whacked, Mrs. Banks said and she for one dreaded the early start they were to make the next day. Mr. Banks said that didn’t apply to him, he was used to long hours travelling. Miss Banks did not say anything. She did not eat much, either. She pushed the food about her plate, swung her long straight hair out of her eyes, fiddled with the fringe on a leather shawl she wore half on and half off one shoulder, but apart from these movements seemed to have very little contact with the world about her. Certainly not with Mrs. Lawler, who ate heartily and found herself abandoned while she was still occupied with a large bunch of succulent grapes.

  On her way from the dining room she passed her coach companion carrying a cup of coffee from the bar where she had collected it towards a sofa chair in the lounge, where a youngish couple were beckoning to her.

  “We shall be sorting ourselves out tomorrow,” Mrs. Lawler told herself, hopefully.

  But she was wrong. Though at breakfast she found herself beside a stout elderly woman and her niece, when she climbed into the coach she found the front seat again empty, passed by, avoided, until the thin girl slipped into it again just before Billie took her courier’s place, greeted them all and began to explain the plan for the day.

  “I hope you had time for breakfast,” Mrs. Lawler said to her companion. “I didn’t see you come down.”

  “I never have breakfast,” the girl said. She wore her worried look again.

  Mrs. Lawler was vaguely alarmed, but she told herself firmly it was none of her business and found nothing much better to say than, “I still don’t know your name, I’m afraid. I am Rose Lawler, retired schoolmistress,” she added, in a half joking voice to suggest she no longer wielded authority.

  The girl turned to stare at her.

  “But you’re married,” she protested.

  “I was.” Mrs. Lawler was used to this response, not always expressed so immediately nor so openly. “A long time ago,” she explained with patient forbearance. “In the war — he was killed not long afterwards. I had taught before the war, so I taught again. I retired last year. And you?”

  “Me?”

  “You are married, I see.”

  “Oh! Oh, yes. Of course! Gwen, that’s my name. Gwen Chilton.”

  To Mrs. Lawler’s horror her companion fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed at tears. Or dust, perhaps. Mario, the driver, had wound down the window beside him to cool one large hand, which he hung out of it from time to time. Personally Mrs. Lawler, enjoyed the warm draught, but perhaps …

  “No, it’s all right,” Mrs. Chilton assured her. She put away the handkerchief, smiled once or twice and said, “You see it was hearing you were a widow and had — well — managed so well. You see —” she began to fumble again.

  “You aren’t going to tell me you’ve lost your husband, too?”

  Mrs. Lawler was aghast. She could not stop what was coming. It was already dropping into Mrs. Chilton’s lap, so to speak, but it was not, most surely not what she had expected. Get over the boredom of idleness with a lot of silly people on their annual holiday. She had doubted the travel agent’s word. She had been right. There was nothing she could say now that would not make matters worse. So she turned her head away from the weeping girl beside her and tried to enjoy the countryside that flowed past the coach and spread itself in front of them, while Mrs. Chilton jerked out her misery in small parcels of words.

  “I haven’t lost him … I mean he’s alive all right … but we don’t get on … he has other girls at the office and that. I stood it a long time … fool I was, I think. They don’t alter if they’re made that way, do they? … So I made up my mind to end it … There weren’t any children … It was more than flesh and blood could stand.”

  In one of the longer pauses in this dreary recital Mrs. Lawler thought with sickening disgust it might be a radio play. She’s got every last cliché and trite complaint, poor bitch! And then felt ashamed of herself, but still lacking in true feeling.

  “So I’ve run out on him,” Mrs. Chilton was saying. “I couldn’t stand it. I took every penny I could find in the house and my summer things and booked at the last minute.”

  “But didn’t leave word where you had gone?”

  “No. I didn’t leave word of any kind.”

  “But someone knows where you are? I mean you have telephoned once or twice, haven’t you?”

  Mrs. Chilton did not seem to have heard this question but when Mrs. Lawler repeated it she said grudgingly, “Well yes, I did phone my best friend. But no one in my family — or his.”

  Confusion had improved Mrs. Chilton. When the coach stopped for morning coffee at a wayside cafeteria near a petrol station Mrs. Lawler saw to it that her companion had a large cappuccino and a packet of biscuits, which she ate steadily and completely.

  Thereafter the conversation took a brighter turn. Mrs. Lawler explained why she was a retired school mistress. She had begun to teach just before the start of the Second World War, then had been called up and went into the W.A.A.F. She married into the Air Force, her husband was brought down over the Channel, badly wounded, he died later, she went back into teaching when she was demobilised.

  “You never married again?” Mrs. Chilton asked in an astonished voice.

  “No, I never married again.”

  “And no children, either?”

  “One son, born after his father’s death. He went to Canada six years ago.”

  Mrs. Chilton glanced sideways at her companion, but finding a closed expression there, did not ask any more questions.

  The coach stopped for that day at an hotel in Siena. It was by then a little after four o’clock with the shops coming to life again after the universal siesta break. When the rooms at the hotel had been allocated and the luggage delivered to them most of the tourists hurried out to look at the shops, buy postcards, cigarettes and stamps in the last available minutes of the commercial day. Or to see the sights.

  Mrs. Lawler stood at the foot of the hotel steps, an open map in her hand, trying to orientate herself. Various other fellow travellers hovered near her, murmuring their ignorance and pleading indirectly for enlightenment.

  “I’m trying to locate the duomo, the cathedral,” said Mrs. Lawler firmly, aloud. “The Donatello statue of John the Baptist is there. And the big square, the Campo, at any rate.”

  A polite voice just behind her said, “I can help you if I may.”

  She looked over her shoulder. A man stood on the pavement. His face was on a level with hers, until she stepped down to the pavement when he proved to be a little taller. He was smiling, which made his crooked face look comic, rather than grotesque. He seemed to have been walking past the hotel and must have heard her complaint just as he reached her.

  “Can you really?” Mrs. Lawler said, smiling back. “I’d be very grateful.”

  “Come on, then,” the man said, still smiling. “I’m going in that direction, myself.”

  They moved away together. Before long Mrs. Lawler realised that she had Mrs. Chilton on her other side and behind them a young couple whose name she had gathered was Woodruff. But her guide was explaining some of the history of Siena and pointing out various buildings, so she bent her mind towards understanding him, deciding she had no obligation towards the others. It just crossed her mind that the kind man with his scarred fac
e — was it old war-time burns — and his cultured English accent and his extensive local knowledge might presently demand a guide’s fee, but she put the unworthy thought from her and continued to concentrate on her sightseeing.

  No bill was presented, no fee was remotely suggested. With the cathedral in sight the man halted, took leave, accepted verbal gratitude and then turned to go back the way they had come.

  “Oh dear,” said Mrs. Lawler, “you have come right out of your way.”

  “Not really.” The smile was in place, broader, more comical than ever. “I’m just wandering over well-remembered tracks.”

  They said goodbye; Mrs Lawler walked on into the church, where Mrs. Chilton drew level and the Woodruffs passed with a nod of recognition as if they had only just noticed who she was.

  “That was a pretty cool customer, I must say,” Mrs. Chilton remarked. “Or did you know him?”

  “Never seen him from Adam,” Mrs. Lawler answered. “He very kindly directed me here. He knows Siena and was just strolling round the place.”

  She was aware that her companion became rather more than rather less curious as a result of this speech and also that all her own vague misgivings had entered Mrs. Chilton’s mind already. But she had no intention of sharing them with the girl. With her own friends at home she would have enjoyed inventing scurrilous tales to account for her brief acquaintance with a fellow countryman, but not with Gwen Chilton, whose mind ran on rather different lines, apparently.

  However, they left the cathedral together and when they came to a broad flight of steps that led down into the wide square and Mrs. Lawler stopped to take a photograph of it, she heard a familiar voice say to Gwen, “A wonderful square, isn’t it? They still have the old mediaeval horse race here every summer. We’ve missed it, I’m afraid. Last month.”

  Gwen answered, “Oh, really!” and Mrs. Lawler swung round, fastening up her camera in time to see the stranger’s back as he moved away again. Gwen said, sourly, “Worse than a guide book, isn’t he?”