Folly Du Jour (22 page)

‘Oh, yes, of course. Good luck to them! How did he say they met? Stage-door Johnny, didn’t he say? Just turned up on the off-chance?’

‘Yes. But not empty-handed,’ said Joe thoughtfully. ‘Said he brought her a bunch of roses. Roses . . . lilies . . .’ He looked about him. ‘We’re a long way from a florist’s shop here. But there must surely be some enterprising merchant out there catering for star-struck young men on their way to the theatre?’

‘Place de l’Alma,’ said Bonnefoye, turning to the right and walking towards the river.

‘Lilies? Two dozen? Yes, of course. Not every day I shift two dozen in one go! Lucky to get rid . . . they were just on the turn. I told him: “Put them straight away in water up to their necks.” Must be nearly two hours ago. That’s right – the bell on the Madeleine had already rung two. But not the half past . . .

‘What did he look like? Oh, a handsome young chap!’ The
fleuriste
turned a toothless smile on Joe and cackled. ‘To my old gypsy eyes at least. Rather like you, monsieur. Your age. Young but not too young. Tall, well set up. Dark skin. Southern perhaps? North African even? Mixed probably. Sharp nose and chin. Well dressed. Nice hat. Lots of money.

‘You’d need lots of money to buy all those lilies! His wallet when he took it out to pay for them was stuffed! Wished I’d asked double! He didn’t really seem interested in the price. Some of them haggle, you know. This one didn’t. Paid up, good as gold.

‘Scar? Can’t say I noticed one . . . I did notice the bristles though. He’s growing a beard. It’ll be a fine black one in a few weeks’ time.

‘Where? Oh, he walked back up the avenue towards the theatre.’ The old woman grinned. ‘Probably spotted some young dancer on the front row. He’ll certainly impress her with those flowers anyway!’

Sensing they were about to close up the interview, she recalled their attention: ‘Do you want to know what he was doing before he came to my stall?’

A further five francs changed hands.

‘He was wandering about on the bridge. Looking at the statues,’ she said. ‘Now, gentlemen, I’ve got some lovely red roses fresh in from Nice this morning if you’re interested . . .’

‘Heard enough?’ said Bonnefoye using English, in a voice suddenly chilled. ‘She’s scraping the barrel now.’ And then: ‘He’s not exactly hiding himself, is he? He must have known we’d trace him here to this stall.’

‘He’s watching us at this moment,’ said Joe, managing by a superhuman effort not to look around. ‘Down one of those alleys, at one of those windows. Under the bridge even.’

Bonnefoye carefully held his gaze and Joe added: ‘So, let’s assume that, just for once, it’s we who have the audience, shall we? And give him something to look at.’

He turned to the flower seller. ‘Thank you, madame. I’ll take two dozen of those red roses from Provence.’

The old woman stood and moved a few yards to watch them as they went down to the river. When she saw what they were about, she shook her head in exasperation. Idiots! Mad foreigners! Had they nothing better to waste their money on? They’d taken up their position halfway along, leaning over the parapet, and, taking a dozen blooms each, were throwing the roses, one at a time, downstream into the current.

She pulled her shawl tighter about her shoulders and crossed herself. She watched on as the swirls of blood red eddied and sank. How would those fools know? That what they were doing brought bad luck? Flowers in the water spelled death.

Chapter Twenty-One

Bonnefoye had returned to the Quai des Orfèvres to pass on instructions for the fingerprint section and to check whether they’d made any progress with the Bertillon records of scarred villains. He’d been reluctant to let Joe turn up unaccompanied at the jazz club on the boulevard du Montparnasse, offering, as well as his own company, the presence of a team of undercover policemen in reserve.

Joe had reassured him. ‘Don’t be concerned . . . Just think of it as a visit between two old friends . . . Yes, I think I can get in. I’m prepared.’ He patted his pocket. ‘A bird has led me to the magical golden branch in the forest. I only have to brandish it and the gates to Avernus will swing open. As they did for Aeneas.’

Bonnefoye had rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘The gates can swing shut as well. With you inside. And I’m not too certain that Aeneas had a very jolly time. Full of wailing ghosts, Avernus, if I remember rightly. If you’re not out by eight, I’m storming the place. I mean it! Now here’s what I’m offering . . .’

Joe waited until six o’clock when the crowds hurrying in through the door made him less conspicuous. He went to the bar and ordered a cocktail. He asked for a Manhattan and threw away the cherry. A Manhattan seemed the right choice. The combination of French vermouth and American bourbon, spiked with a dash of bitters, was in perfect harmony with this atmosphere. Throaty, fast Parisian arpeggios studded a base of slow-drawing transatlantic tones and the band also seemed to be an element in the blend. Setting the scene, in fact, Joe thought, as he listened eagerly. Excellent, as Bonnefoye had reported.

A black clarinettist doubling on tenor saxophone was playing the audience as cleverly as his instruments this evening and there was a jazz pianist of almost equal skill. A banjo player and a guitarist added a punchy stringed rhythm. Not an accordion within a mile, Joe thought happily. Generously, the instrumentalists were allowing each other to shine, turn and turn about, beating out a supporting and inspired accompaniment while one of the others starred. To everyone’s delight, the pianist suddenly grabbed the spotlight, soaring into flight with a section from George Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue
and Joe almost forgot why he was there.

Damn George! If it hadn’t been for his officious nosiness, Joe could have been here, plying Heather Watkins with pink champagne, relaxing after a boring day at the Interpol conference, just a couple of tourists. She’d have been laughing at the new cap he’d bought and flattened on to his head, wearing it indoors like half the men in the room. Instead, he was crouching awkwardly, sitting slightly sideways on his bar stool to disguise the bulge of the Browning on his hip and hoping that no friendly American would fling an arm around him, encountering the handcuffs looped through his belt at the small of his back.

He glanced around at the crowd. Not many single men but enough to lend him cover. The one or two who appeared to be by themselves had probably chosen their solitary state, he reckoned. He saw two men line up at the bar, released from the company of their wives whom they had cheerfully waved off on to the dance floor in the arms of a couple of dark-haired, sinuous male dancers. What had Bonnefoye called them? Tangoing, tea-dance gigolos. Everyone seemed pleased with the arrangement, not least the husbands. On the whole, a typical Left Bank crowd, self-aware, pleasure-seeking, rather louche. But then, this wasn’t Basingstoke.

He enjoyed the clarinettist’s version of ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ and decided that when he spiralled to a climax, it would be time to move on.

He ducked into the gentlemen’s room and checked that, as Bonnefoye had said, it was no more than it appeared and waited for a moment by the door he held open a finger’s breadth. No one followed him. A second later he was walking up the carpeted stairs towards the three doors he’d been promised at the top on the landing. And there they were. The middle one, he remembered, was the one behind which the doorkeeper lurked.

The building itself was a stout-hearted stone and rather lovely example of Third Empire architecture seen from the exterior. But it had been drastically remodelled inside. The original heavy wooden features had been stripped away and replaced with lighter modern carpentry and fresh bright paint. Entirely in character with the new owner, Joe suspected.

He fished in his pocket for his ticket to the underworld, thinking it might not be wise to be observed digging about as for a concealed weapon at the moment when the doorkeeper turned up. And the mirrors? Just in case, he offered his face to the fanlight, grinned disarmingly, and waited for Bonnefoye’s promised monster.

A moment later the door opened and he was peremptorily asked his business by a very large man wearing the evening outfit of a maître d’hôtel. Bonnefoye, for once, had not exaggerated. The attempt to pass off this bull terrier as a manservant could have been comical had he not seemed so completely at ease in his role. He was not unwelcom-ing, he merely wanted to know, like any good butler, who had fetched up, uninvited, on the doorstep.

Joe held out the book he’d bought that morning.

‘This is for madame. Tell her, would you, that Mr Charles Lutwidge Dodgson . . .’ He repeated the name. ‘. . . is here and would like to speak to her.’

It’s very difficult to avoid taking a book that someone is pressing on you with utter confidence. The man took it, looked at Joe uneasily, asked him to wait, and retreated, closing the door behind him.

A minute later, the door was opened again. He saw a slim blonde woman, giggling with delight and holding out her arms in greeting.

‘Mr Dodgson, indeed!’ She kissed him on each cheek. Twice.

‘We can all make use of a pseudonym at times,’ he said, smiling affably and returning her kisses. ‘Good to see you again, Alice.’

The giant appeared behind her, a lowering presence. She turned to him and spoke in French. ‘Flavius, my guest will hand you his revolver. House rules,’ she confided. ‘I see you still carry one on your right hip, Mr Dodgson.’

Joe traded steely gazes with Flavius as he handed over his Browning. The man’s head was the size of a watermelon and covered, not in skin, but in hide. Cracked and seamed hide, stretched over a substructure of bone which had shifted slightly at some time in his forty years. Wiry grey-black hair sprouted thickly about his skull but had been discouraged from rampant growth by a scything haircut. It was parted into two sections along the side of his head by an old shrapnel wound. Or a bayonet cut. His hands resembled nothing so much as bunches of overripe bananas. Joe wondered what pistol had a large enough guard to accommodate his trigger finger.

‘Thank you, that will be all, Flavius,’ said Alice daintily. ‘I’ll call you if we need to replenish the champagne.’

‘Or adjust the doilies,’ said Joe.

‘May I just call you, as ever – Joe?’ she said, switching back to English when her guard dog had stalked off on surprisingly light feet. She held up the copy of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, with a peacock’s feather poking out from the pages as he remembered it on her shelf in Simla. The hat maker in the rue Mouffetard had been puzzled and amused by his request that morning and had refused payment for such a small piece of nonsense but it seemed to have worked. Alice was still laughing. ‘Do you know, I never did get further than the page marker! I got quite bogged down in the middle of a mad tea party.’

‘The reason most of us leave India,’ Joe suggested.

‘Yes indeed! But, as you know, it wasn’t boredom that drove me away! I was having a happy time. It was Nemesis in the shape of a granite-jawed, flinty-eyed police commander who chose to delve too deeply into my business affairs.’

Joe decided to bite back a dozen objections to her light summary of a catalogue of murder, theft and fraud. ‘Not sure I recognize
him
. Shall we just say something came up and you had to leave India in a hurry?’

‘
You
came up, you toad! And here you are again, doing what toads do! Now the question is – shall I step on you and squash you or invite you inside and give you a kiss?’

‘I think it’s
frogs
that are the usual recipients of oscula-tory salutations,’ he said cheerfully.

Alice groaned. ‘Still arsing about, Sandilands? Can’t say I’ve missed it! But come in anyway.’

He followed her trim figure along the corridor. Dark red cocktail dress, short and showing a good deal of her excellent legs. Her shining fair hair, which had been the colour of a golden guinea he remembered, was now paler, with the honey and lemon glow of a
vin de paille
. It was brushed back from her forehead and secured by a black velvet band studded with a large ruby over her left ear. Had her eyes always had that depth of brilliant blue? Of course, but in the strait-laced society of Simla, she had not dared to risk the fringe of mascara-darkened lashes. She still had the power to overawe him. He found himself looking shiftily to left or right of her or down at her feet as he had ever done and was angry with his reaction.

‘Joe, will you come this way?’ She turned and, stretching out her right hand, invited him to enter a salon. Distantly, sounds of the jazz band rose through the heavily carpeted floor and he realized they must be directly over the jazz café. She closed the door and they were alone together.

‘Champagne? I was just about to have a glass of Ruinart. Will you join me?’

‘Gladly.’

She went to a buffet bearing a tray of ice bucket and glasses and began to fill two of the flutes, chattering the while.

‘Cigarette? I’m told these are good Virginian . . . No?’ She screwed one into the end of an ebony holder and waited for him to pick up a table-lighter and hold the flame steady while she half-closed her eyes, pursed her scarlet mouth and drew in the smoke inexpertly. Joe read the message: English vicar’s daughter, fallen amongst rogues and thieves and ruined beyond repair, yet gallantly hanging on to some shreds of propriety. He was meant to recall that, for someone of her background, smoking was a cardinal sin. He smiled. He remembered her puffing away like a trooper at an unfiltered Afghan cigarette in Simla.

‘Five years?’ she asked, her thoughts following his, back into the past. ‘Can it really be five years since we said goodbye to each other on the steamer? You’re doing well, I hear. And I hear it from George of all people. We met at the theatre the other day. Did you know he was in Paris?’

‘Yes, I did. But tell me how
you
knew he was going to be here, Alice.’

‘No secret! You know my ways! In India I was always aware of who exactly was coming and going. It’s just as easy to keep track of people over here if you know the right man to ask. And the French are very systematic and thorough in their record keeping. A few francs pushed regularly in the right direction and I have all the information I need at my fingertips or rather in my shell-like ear . . .’ She glanced at a telephone standing on a table by the window. ‘Bribes and blackmail in the right proportions, Joe. Never fails. Tell me now – how did you find George? Is he all right? I heard a certain piece of nastiness was perpetrated after I left the theatre. I’m guessing that’s why you’re here?’

Alice shuddered. ‘I blame myself. If I hadn’t shot off like that, he would never have gone over and got himself involved with all that nonsense. Look, Joe, I’d rather not break surface and I’m sure you can understand why but if he’s desperately in need of help, then – oh, discretion can go to the winds – the man’s a friend of mine. I do believe that. I always admired him. If I can say anything, sign anything to get him out of that dreadful prison, then I will. That
is
why you’re here, Joe?’

‘No, it’s not. And don’t concern yourself about George. No action required – I’m sure I can manage.’

‘I’m assuming he is still over there on the island?’ she asked less certainly. ‘Or have you managed to get him out?’

‘He’s in police custody,’ said Joe, looking her straight in the eye. Alice had, he remembered, an uncanny way of knowing when she was being told a lie. And she was likely to have developed such a skill leading the dubious life she’d led. He wouldn’t have trusted himself to tell her anything but the truth. ‘Still in the hands of the French police,’ he said again. ‘He’s not enjoying the downy comfort of the Bristol which is where he ought to be but I’m pleased for him to be where he is. For the moment. I don’t believe Paris to be an entirely safe place for him. I’ve persuaded Commissaire Fourier, in charge of the case, to go more easily on him – the Chief Inspector seems to think he ought still to have the use of medieval methods of extracting a confession as well as the medieval premises.’

‘Poor, dear George! You must do what you can, Joe!’

‘Of course. I visit every day. I’m happy to report the bruises are healing. He enquired after you when I saw him this morning. Wanted to know that you are well and happy.’

‘Ah? You will reassure him then?’

‘Can I do that? Tell me – what should I report of little Alice in Wonderland? Business good, is it?’

For a moment she was taken aback. ‘My businesses always do well. You know that, Joe. Until some heavy-footed man comes along and stamps them into the mud.’

He decided to go for the frontal attack. ‘So – how do you get on with the management of the Sphinx? Your competitors can’t have been too enchanted when you came along and set up here in their rabbit patch. Have you come to some amicable agreement? Equable share of the lettuces? They have a Paris bank underpinning them financially, I understand. I wonder how you manage, Alice? A single, foreign woman?’ He shook his head. ‘No. Wouldn’t work, would it?’ And, abruptly: ‘Who’s your partner?’

He saw the moment when she made up her mind. Alice hadn’t changed. She was behaving as she had done years ago. Why not? It had deceived him then. Wide-eyed, she was about to plunge into a confession to a sin she knew would revolt him, a sin in his eyes so reprehensible it would distract him from and blind him to the deeper evil she must keep hidden at all cost.

‘Very well. I see you’ve worked it out. I run a brothel. The very best!’ She made the announcement as though she’d just made a fortune on the stock exchange and wanted him to share in celebrating her good luck. ‘Even you, old puritan that you are, Joe, could hardly object. My clients are the cream of society. The richest, at any rate . . . They demand and I supply the loveliest girls, dressed by Chanel, jewels by Cartier, conversation topics from the
New Yorker
.’