A Night on the Orient Express (4 page)

It was the victor. The spoils were under his arm. The painting was wrapped in brown paper but she knew that was what it was. He pulled out the chair opposite her without asking and sat down. His face was impassive as he looked at her.

‘You bid for the only painting worth buying in that room.’

Adele stopped writing her list and put down her pen. She raised one eyebrow to accompany her smile. She might have seemed the picture of cool, but inside she felt as if she were melting, bubbling, fizzing, like a pan of sugar as it caramelises.

‘I know,’ she replied. She wasn’t going to give anything away. Largely because there was nothing for her to give away. She had no idea what the game was, what the rules were, or what she should do next.

He put the painting down on the table in front of her.

‘I’d like you to have it,’ he told her.

Her cool wavered. She hadn’t anticipated this. She’d expected some sort of inquisition as to what she knew about the painting’s provenance. A rather nervous laugh escaped her, and she hated the sound it made. It betrayed her discomfort.

‘Why?’ was all she managed in reply, trying to keep her voice low and steady.

He shrugged. Then grinned. ‘You deserve it more than I do. I should have let you have it right from the start.’ He leaned forwards suddenly and she got a hint of his cologne. It was exactly as she had imagined.

‘What will you do with it? he asked, his expression fierce.

She tried to look composed, to belie the caramel that was sliding around inside her, sweet and dark.

‘I’ve a place in my morning room. I should like to look at it while I write my letters. To my boys. I have two boys. Twins . . .’

It seemed important to tell him that. But then she realised she’d gone from mysteriously monosyllabic to blithering, and so was probably in no danger. He just nodded, then looked at her again.

‘Do you mind if I join you for lunch?’

‘It rather looks as if you already have.’ At last. A game riposte. She smiled her consent as the waitress came over. He didn’t miss a beat.

‘I’ll have the same as my companion and a bottle of champagne. And two glasses.’

She looked at him. ‘Champagne? On a Tuesday?’ Her heart was tripping over itself. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had champagne.

He smiled, and when he smiled his features seemed less forbidding. There was warmth in his eyes.

‘Always on a Tuesday. Tuesdays are so dreadfully dull otherwise.’ He tapped his fingers on the brown paper. ‘Paul Maze. They’re calling him the Lost Impressionist. It’s a very fine painting and you have an excellent eye.’

She considered him for a moment. ‘Am I being patronised? For all you know, I’m the world’s leading expert on . . . Lost Impressionists. Sent by a top dealer to procure that very painting.’

He sat back, hooking his arm over the chair. He was one of those men who fill a room with their presence, who seem to own it.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘If you were, you’d have bid until you’d won.’

He was smug, confident, infuriating. A combination of characteristics that should have been repellent, yet Adele found herself transfixed. He was as far from William as it was possible for a man to be, she realised. There was something rather louche about him – the way he threw aside his coat, ran his fingers through his slightly-too-long hair, leant his elbows on the table, threw back his champagne and drained his glass until it was empty, then filled it again.

He was staring at her.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Has anyone told you that you look like Liz Taylor?’

She sighed. ‘Yes. Only I am far older and my eyes are green, not violet.’

‘From a distance, you could be her.’

She tried not to feel flattered. She was surprised, in her current state, that he had made the comparison.

‘Tell me about yourself,’ he ordered, as their veal fricassee arrived.

She looked down at her food. She had been hungry when she ordered it, but she couldn’t imagine eating it now.

‘I’m married,’ she began.

‘Well, yes. That’s obvious.’ He looked pointedly at the rings on her left hand, then tucked into his food with relish.

‘To a doctor. I’ve two boys, as I said.’

He held his fork in his right hand, American style. He waved it at her. ‘And?’

She paused, thinking about what to say next.

‘That’s it.’ Never had she felt so dull. What else could she say? She was a housewife and mother – and not even that anymore, not really.

‘Well,’ he carried on. ‘You really ought to do something about that.’

She realised she didn’t know so much as his name. And she felt angry. What right did he have to judge her like that?

‘You’ve got a nerve, barging in on my lunch and passing judgement on me. Who are you, anyway?’

He grinned. Put his fork down. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. Jack Molloy.’

He held out his hand.

She took it. ‘Adele. Adele Russell.’

Her heart was doing overtime. She extracted her fingers, because touching his had sent a charge through her she had never felt before.

She hadn’t felt like this when she met William. At the time, she had thought their courtship passionate. She’d woken up with that fizzing feeling, unable to wait until the next time she saw him. She’d felt overwhelmed with happiness on their wedding day. She had always gazed at him when they made love, and felt as if it was right.

William had never made her feel like this, though. She sensed danger, real danger.

Jack topped up their glasses, pouring with abandon, like a reckless king at a banquet.

‘You’re American,’ she said to him. ‘Aren’t you?’

She couldn’t be sure, but he spoke with a definite twang.

‘I sure am,’ he said. ‘But I’ve married into a very English family. The Dulvertons. Do you know them? The “family seat” is in Ox-ford-shire.’

He deliberately pronounced it with an exaggerated accent.

‘I don’t,’ she said.

‘My wife is very wealthy. Lucky for me.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘Why?’

‘To marry someone for their money.’

‘I never said I did that. I married Rosamund because she was ravishingly beautiful. And far cleverer than I am.’

Adele suddenly felt insufficient. She felt sure she would pale in comparison to Rosamund.

‘So what do you bring to the party?’ she riposted.

He laughed. ‘My sparkling wit. And a touch of glamour. I’m an art dealer. I bring starving artists home for dinner and six months later they are fetching more money for their paintings than they could ever have dreamed of. Rosamund gets a kick out of being part of that.’

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘I was driving back from Cornwall. I had to go and give one of my protégés a pep talk. And I can never pass a sale without looking in, just in case.’ He picked up his glass and looked at her. ‘What were you doing there?’

She didn’t know what to say. ‘It was something to do.’

She looked down at her plate. She wanted to tell him how empty she felt, how useless, but she thought he already knew.

When she looked up, he was surveying her critically.

‘I think what you need, Mrs Russell,’ he told her, ‘is either a job or a lover. Or both.’

She put down her knife and fork. This was too close to the bone. She stood up. ‘I have to go.’

He feigned disappointment. ‘Oh, now, don’t be offended.’

‘You’re very rude.’ She was scrabbling in her purse for a pound note, to pay her share of the lunch. She pulled one out, her hand shaking.

‘Why is it people think you’re being rude, when you’re just speaking the truth?’ He looked up at her. His eyes were laughing.

She put the pound note on the table. ‘Goodbye, Mr Molloy.’

He bent down to pick up the painting, which he’d propped against the table leg. ‘Don’t forget this.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘I bought it for you.’

‘You can sell it.’

‘I can indeed.’ He pushed it towards her. ‘I can sell it for ten times what I paid for it.’

Adele tried hard not to look surprised. ‘Then do so.’

‘But I want you to have it.’ He frowned. ‘I tell you what. Give me your final bid – the amount you went up to. That would make it an honest transaction. You can take it away with impunity then.’

Adele hesitated. ‘I can’t.’

‘Come on. You can’t say fairer than that.’ He was puzzled.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t. I don’t have the money.’

He looked at her in awe. ‘You bid for it without having the money?’

She shrugged. ‘Yes.’

He threw back his head and laughed. The other diners in the restaurant looked round, alarmed.

‘That’s fantastic. I admire your spirit. Please. Take the painting. I can’t think of a better home for it.’

Adele stood for a moment. Actually, she thought, why shouldn’t she take it? If he was so keen for her to have it? It was a beautiful painting. And she felt that taking it from him would prove something. What, she wasn’t quite sure, but maybe that she wasn’t the dull provincial housewife he obviously thought her to be. So she picked up it.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And goodbye.’

As soon as she got home, she threw off her coat, dropped her handbag and ran up the stairs to change. She put on a full-skirted dress with tight sleeves, in a coral that she knew suited her colouring. She added the string of pearls William had given her for her thirtieth birthday. She admired their lustre as she applied her make-up, making herself perfect. She dabbed Shalimar at her neck – the Yardley from her handbag had long since faded.

Then she went downstairs to put on the supper, pour two whisky and sodas, and wait for her husband to come back so she could tell him the day’s curious events.

Only William was late. Six o’clock came and went, then seven, then eight . . . by which time she had drunk both whiskies and hung the painting in the place where she had envisaged it.

And when William finally strolled in at twenty past eight, with only the merest flicker of apology, she told him nothing about her day at all.

On Friday, she found a letter on her breakfast plate. A white vellum envelope with turquoise ink. She didn’t recognise the writing and there was no return address on the back, only a London postmark. She took the paper-knife and slit open the envelope. It was a brief letter riddled with dashes and underlining and exclamation marks.

Darling darling Adele

Can you believe? Thank goodness – after all this time we are back in London at long last! Nairobi had its good points but heavens it’s wonderful to feel chilly again!! Anyway, I am longing to hear all your news and tell you mine. Do say you’ll come and have lunch with me. What about next Wednesday at the Savoy? The dear Savoy! How I’ve missed London!! And you. I will see you there at 1 p.m. unless I hear otherwise.

Mad dash – Brenda xxxx

‘Goodness,’ Adele said. ‘Look at this.’

She passed it over to William, who was reading the paper.

He read the letter in the same way he read everything these days: scanning the page from top to bottom in record time, picking out the information he needed, disregarding the rest. He smiled and handed it back, balancing it between his first and second finger as he turned back to the news.

‘You’ll enjoy yourself,’ he told her. Then frowned. ‘Brenda – do I know her?’

‘We were at school together. She was at our wedding. Ill-chosen hat that made her look as if she had a chicken sitting on her head. I think we might have laughed at her, poor thing. But she’s a darling.’

William shook his head. He didn’t remember.

Which was hardly surprising.

Adele didn’t have – and never had had – a friend called Brenda.

The letter lay on her writing desk for three days, underneath her unconventionally acquired painting.

She went about her daily life. She told herself that Jack Molloy was presumptuous, provocative, and toying with her for his own amusement. Of course she wasn’t going to go to lunch at the Savoy. The whole idea was absurd.

On Sunday night, she crumpled up the letter and threw it in the bin.

Yet somehow it had got under her skin. The words came back to her at all hours of the day and night, worming their way into her brain no matter how hard she tried to resist them. And she couldn’t deny that the letter was ingenious. Jack Molloy had summed her up so well – he had told her that he knew exactly who she was, and the sort of friends she would have. His construct, Brenda, was the perfect alibi.

Adele could picture Brenda quite clearly, waiting at the table in the Savoy, in her good coat and hat and her brown shoes and gloves, all slightly out of date after years abroad, but eager to dispense gossip and trivia . . .

In short, a reflection of Adele herself: provincial, slightly dull, conventional. In which case, what on earth did he see in her? Why was he enticing her up to lunch, if she was such a dreary, laughable creature? So . . . unsophisticated.

Because he saw something in her, a little voice told her. Jack Molloy had seen her potential. He could unlock something in her that would make her blossom and flourish. She thought back to the thrill she had felt when he spoke to her, the feeling she had desperately tried to hide, so much so that she had fled the table.

The feeling that she wanted to have again.

She suppressed it. Apart from being mischievous and capricious, she could tell he was dangerous. Yet she had to do something with her life. The episode had highlighted to her just how empty she felt.