Tour de Force by Christianna Brand

Author:Christianna Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

Chapter Ten

LEO RODD received a summons next morning. He was to go up to the Palace of the Hereditary Grand Duke; the Grand Duke wished to see him. No, the Grand Duke did not wish to see Detective Inspector Cockrill, he did not wish to see Fernando Gomez, he wished to see nobody but the Senor Rodd. A carriage would be sent for Senor Rodd at midday, the Gerente would conduct him to the pallatio. Nothing was said about who would bring him back.

The palace on the hill was a fairy-tale thing, a cobweb of fretted white marble, glittering in the sunshine on its topmost tip of the pinnacle of the rock; but Leo Rodd remembered what happens to flies who venture upon cobwebs and his heart was sick within him as, abandoned at the gateway by the Gerente, he followed the cloaked and sabred guard alone – through the great archway and the lovely cloistered courtyards, up the wide stairways, past the pools and the fountains and many-flowered patios, over the great, broad pebbled pavements, intricately laid. There had been long and anxious discussion as to whether or not he should come: he knew and they all knew that there was very little that could be done about it, if he did not return. Oh, well, he thought, I’m here now so I’d better Be British and put a decent face on it, stiff upper lip and all.… But what in God’s name could the spider want with this particular fly? He saw him in his mind’s eye, El Exaltida, Gran Ducca del San Juan el Pirata – old and obese, crouching, a fat, hairy spider at the far-away end of some great, echoing, gilt and marble room, across which the poor fly must drag itself with that wrenching, shoulder-forward gait, under the scrutiny of cold eyes, greedy and malign. Oh, well – I’m here, and that’s the end of it.…

There were sharp orders, the posse of guards reeled back against the wall on either side of a small, arched doorway, as though they had been flung there, their captain lifted aside the curtain with the point of his sword. The fly crept in.

It was a room about the size of a suburban bathroom, with just enough space to squeeze past the bath to the wash-basin at the far end. In the centre was a small, cheap wooden office desk and on a wooden chair, squeezed in between the desk and the wall, sat the most enormous young man Leo Rodd had ever seen. He wore a faultlessly-tailored dark-blue suit and an Old Wykehamist tie. His hands, ablaze with jewelled rings, were folded across the ends of the tie, his chin sunk on his breast; and under the hyacinthine, heavily-curling hair, the brooding face was so magnificently handsome as to be beautiful. He lifted his head for a moment and looked Leo Rodd up and down, and sunk his chin again upon his chest. A small grey man sitting at his left hand (where the wash-basin would have been) got up and placed a chair.

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