Murder in Paris

Catherine did not at first know what to make of Geoffrey Macadam. Did his stiffness betoken mere British reserve, or was he trying to hide a natural annoyance at having a stranger thrust upon him, threatening the peace of his journey to Paris?

If the latter, she longed to tell him how hotly she shared his resentment, how for eight days across the Atlantic she had been fleeing from the officious patronage of the lady now needlessly effecting the introduction.

“It’s no fault of mine,” her eyes strove to convey. “I promise not to take advantage of it!”

The very next instant she caught that curious, almost startled look on his face which set her wondering, asking herself if he were really as wooden as she had imagined.

That look one may take as the starting point of the story…

Mrs. Hugh Tyler Pope--the Hugh rendered as Huge by some of their fellow-travellers--was no more to be denied than the forces of nature. She overcame by sheer weight of fatuity, and having constituted herself Catherine’s protectress on the voyage was determined to see matters through. Useless for the girl to protest that she wanted no assistance in finding her seat. Overborne by the pressure of a mighty bust she was propelled the full length of the train, while a voice richly-oiled with kind intentions shouted for the benefit of all and sundry:

“Now, if only we’d met you sooner, dear, we could have had your place reserved along with ours. Such a pity! It’s just too dreadful to think of you travelling all this way by your little lonesome! Still it can’t be helped now, the train’s so jammed. Is this your seat? So it is. At any rate it’s a corner one. Porter! Mettay le grand sac de Mademerselle ploos au coin, il y a un carton aussi. These foreigners don’t give a hoot for your convenience, you have to show ’em everything.”

It was at this precise moment that, clogging the aisle with her immense mink coat and treading on one pair of toes after another, she had spied the retiring male in the opposite corner and shrilled with recognition.

“Why, if it isn’t Mr. Macadam! Now, what do you know about that? Been up to Havre on business? Well, well! Catherine, my dear--I want you to meet the very nicest man in all Paris, Englishman. Mr. Macadam, let me present a little friend of mine I’ve met on the boat, Miss West, from Boston. She’s on her way to visit a relative in the Avenoo Henri Martin--you know, Mrs. Harry Belmont Bender, whose husband was killed last year in that awful motor accident in Massachoosetts. So sad!”

Extremely painful, nor was this the end. Not content with entrusting her young friend to the Englishman’s care (“As though I were a congenital idiot,” thought Catherine bitterly), she had dragged her victim back into the corridor and confided a parting message at the top of her lungs.

“Now wasn’t that luck? Such a nice man for you to know. Macadam and Langtree. Lawyers. Everybody knows them. This one’s the son, quiet, you understand, but such perfect manners. Be nice to him… Well, au revoir, dear! Don’t forget to ring me up, and come to my very next At Home.”

So saying Mrs. Hugh Tyler Pope careened up the swaying corridor and out of Catherine’s life. Her part was played, nor did Catherine, inwardly cursing her, suspect what an important part it was.

Self-consciously, now, she sank into her seat. To her relief the Englishman had retired behind his magazine, so that she was able to settle herself calmly and collect her scattered thoughts.

To tell the truth, they needed collecting. Various uneasy qualms, hitherto stifled at birth, rose anew to trouble her, growing more insistent with each repetition.

Had she done right to come?