Folly Du Jour (5 page)

‘Lucky Lindy!’ said the captain. ‘Well, well! Never thought he’d do it! I can see a space now. Sir – would you mind returning to your seat? I think I can get through to the hangar.’

Joe made his way back to his place, passing on the news to the passengers as he moved down the aisle. Heather Watkins was thrilled to hear it and at once called forward to her brother: ‘Jim! I want to stay to see Charles Lindbergh! Take care of my luggage, will you? If we get separated I’ll meet you back at the hotel!’

Joe was amused to hear the decisive and energetic girl emerge from the heap of anxiety he had sat next to for three hours but felt he ought to offer advice: ‘Do hang on to someone’s arm, Miss Watkins. It’s a menacing scene out there. Stay close to your group!’

The plane taxied on to an apron by the Imperial Airways hangar and, with no exterior staff in evidence, the stewards opened the door themselves and released the passengers on to the tarmac. They stood, paralysed, unable to negotiate the crowds, wondering which way to turn. Joe’s eyes were searching for the familiar form of a police car when he felt his arm seized by a strong hand.

‘Joe! I had no idea you were so popular!’ said Inspector Bonnefoye. ‘Welcome to Paris! The car’s over there. Let me take your bags.’ He gestured to a police car parked, lights on, engine running and pointing in the direction of the city with the driver at the wheel. They pushed their way over to it and threw the bags into the back seat.

‘Bonnefoye! Never more pleased to see you, old man!’

‘But you didn’t tell me you were to be accompanied?’ Bonnefoye was eyeing Miss Watkins with interest.

‘A fellow passenger separated from her group. Miss Watkins,’ said Joe, surprised to find that she’d followed him but relieved to see she’d abandoned her notion of staying to see Lindbergh touch down. ‘I say, would you have room for her? She’s bound for the city centre also. Her taxi doesn’t seem to have made it through.’

‘I’m sure I can squeeze Miss Watkins in the back,’ said Bonnefoye easily, and Joe was amused to hear the automatic gallantry in his voice.

Before they could get in they were startled by the whining and coughing sound of an engine low over their heads, making for the runway. The crowd screamed and pushed its way to the sides as the monoplane, gleaming briefly silver as it passed between the searchlights, throttled back noisily and set down on the runway, continuing onwards towards a dark part of the airfield. In evident confusion, the pilot stopped and turned the plane around, nose pointing back to the hangars. But before he had gone far in this direction, he cut the engine abruptly, no doubt in regard for the crowd as people surged back again, risking loss of limbs, unaware of the danger of the scything propeller blades. For a moment the Spirit of St Louis stood in the middle of the track way, small, battered, oil- and salt-caked and unimpressive once out of its element of air. And then, as the engine spluttered its last, souvenir-hunters moved in and began to pull strips of canvas from the wings, tugging anything that yielded from the framework of the plane. Press camera bulbs flashed and popped, trained on the door.

‘For God’s sake!’ Joe shouted, horrified. ‘Do something, Bonnefoye! Those maniacs will tear the poor bugger apart! He’s been flying solo in an open cockpit for a day and a half over the Atlantic – he won’t be in any fit state to face up to a reception like this!’

As he spoke, the pair of them were already shouldering their way back through the crowd, using their height and aggressive energy to forge their way through to the door. Flourishing their warrant cards in a valiant attempt to keep the masses at bay, they stood together, arms extended, holding an uncomfortably small space free in front of the plane. After a moment, a window slid open and a voice called uncertainly: ‘Does anyone here speak English?’

‘We do!’ Joe shouted back. ‘Captain Lindbergh! Welcome and congratulations! I think it might be a good idea if you were to get out, sir, and we’ll escort you to the hangar.’

The door opened and the tall figure of Charles Lindbergh appeared, blinking in the spotlights and the flash of the cameras. With a cry of concern, Bonnefoye put an arm under his shoulders and helped him to the ground, murmuring words of welcome. The pilot was pale and weary and looked much less than his twenty-five years. He stared in dismay at the jostling mass between him and safety and Joe remembered that, by all accounts, the young man was terrified of crowds. Taking his other arm, Joe felt his panic and the stiffness of his limbs and came to a decision.

‘Captain, this is an impossible situation you’ve flown into. Idiotic, unplanned and damned dangerous! If only we could get you over to the hangar . . . Look – why don’t you give me your flying helmet and take my hat instead?’

Lindbergh’s eyes brightened with instant understanding. ‘A decoy? That what you have it in mind to be, sir?’

‘Might work. I’m tall. I can keep my hair covered, shout cheerful platitudes in English. That’s all they want. In any case, I don’t suppose they’ve any idea what you look like. Anyone in a flying helmet and talking English is going to get the attention of this crowd. Let’s give them a run for their money, shall we?’

The American grinned and nodded. ‘Well, I’d call that a very sporting offer . . . and good luck to you, sir . . .’

They ducked down and, crouching under cover of the wing, swapped headgear.

‘They’ll never think of chasing after a couple,’ said a confident English voice and Heather Watkins pushed forward. She stood on tiptoe and adjusted the black fedora firmly over the aviator’s golden hair. Companionably, she tucked an arm through his. ‘Right, er, Charles, the hangar’s that way. And just by it there’s a police car with its engine running and a driver who knows where he’s going. How about it?’

They strolled off, unimpeded, and Joe heard with amusement her cheerful voice: ‘Now – tell me – how was your flight?’

And the laconic response: ‘Why, just fine – and yours?’

Joe had no time to hear more. He straightened and moved to arrange himself with a tentative wave in the searchlight now trained on the cockpit door, helmet strap dangling provocatively. ‘Well, hi there, folks! I guess this must be Paris . . .’

He got no further. In a second he was swept up with a howl of triumph on to the shoulders of two men in the crowd and carried off in parade down the runway towards the terminal building. The throng on the viewing gallery cheered. Joe turned this way and that, nodding and waving to his admirers, shouting the occasional greeting or navigational direction in English. Worse than riding an elephant. His back was slapped repeatedly, his hands wrung, he was lowered and hoisted on to fresh shoulders several times. A painful experience and not one to be endured for long.

Eventually, after spending what he considered an overgenerous amount of his time on this performance, he bent and informed his bearers that after more than thirty hours in the air he needed to have a pee. Urgently. He reckoned they had ten seconds to set him down. It seemed to work. Once his feet were on the ground, he made off at speed towards the hangar, tearing off the helmet as he ran. The front door of Bonnefoye’s car opened at his approach and he flung himself inside. Bonnefoye and Miss Watkins were sitting together on the back seat.

‘What have you done with our hero?’ panted Joe.

‘Dropped him off at Reception in the hangar. He’ll be all right. The American Ambassador’s taken cover in there with him, offering medical aid, engineering assistance and a bed and breakfast at the Embassy when they can make a break for it. And now, Sandilands, if you’ve quite finished horsing around and showing off, perhaps we can extricate ourselves from this mêlée and get ahead of the crowd before they all block the road back into Paris.’ Bonnefoye looked anxiously at his watch. ‘If you’d taken many more curtain calls we’d have missed the best of the entertainment at Zelli’s, which is where I’m planning we’ll make a start.’

Chapter Five

Act followed act and George settled to enjoy himself. Music Hall. This was something he could respond to. And the quality of the turns was high – the best the world had to offer, he would have thought, and lavishly staged. He admired especially a slender woman in a tight black sheath, and was moved to wiping a sentimental tear from his eye as she sang of the fickleness of men. He wasn’t quite sure about the androgynous creature who swung out over the audience on a Watteau-like, flower-bedecked swing and, at the end of the act, peeled off a blonde wig to reveal a man’s hairless scalp. Not entertaining. But he enjoyed the lines of chorus girls, performing complex manoeuvres to the split second. Some backstage drill sergeant deserved a commendation, George reckoned.

To huge enthusiasm, Josephine Baker made a second appearance just before the interval but this time she sang. Coming forward and involving the audience with a touching directness she warbled in a thin, little-girl’s voice, strange but, once heard, unforgettable, of her two loves:
J’ai deux amours, Mon pays et Paris . . .

Everyone including George was enchanted. Except, apparently, for Alice. She leaned over and whispered: ‘
Two
loves? Is that all she’s declaring? Ha! And the other thousand!’ Miss Baker bowed and laughed and made her way offstage, the curtain was lowered and the lights began to come on again in the auditorium. Alice started to fidget. Under the pretence of stretching her legs, she moved her chair stealthily back a foot or so and lifted the hood of her cape to cover her head again. Odd behaviour. George wondered whether he should remark on it and decided to give no indication he’d noticed anything strange. If she wanted to tell him, she would tell him in her own good time of whom she was so afraid. But he rather thought it was not her intention to confide in him at all. Do you whisper your terrors to the trunk of a sheltering oak tree when the lightning is flashing all around? No, you stay under its branches looking out, with just the anxious eyes Alice was trying to hide from him, until the storm was over. But perhaps there was some revealing reaction he could provoke?

‘Ah, the interval already,’ he exclaimed jovially. ‘I say, Alice, I was rather expecting my cousin Jack would be with me tonight. I’ve ordered up a tray of whisky . . . not at all suitable for a lady. I’ll just speed off and change that to champagne, shall I? Or is there something else you’d prefer? Now what was that pink drink you used to like?’ He started to get up. ‘Though – we could go and show our faces in the bar?’

Her reaction was instant. She seized him by the arm, trying to hold him in his place. ‘No! You’re quite wrong, George. I’ll drink whisky with great pleasure. Don’t go off into those crowds, you’ll never find your way back and we’ll lose minutes of precious time. It’s been five years – you must have such lots to tell me. Let’s just stay quietly here, shall we? And talk about old times.’ And then, with relief: ‘Ah – here are our drinks.’

So – he hadn’t imagined her nervousness, her undeclared need to stay close to him. She decidedly didn’t want to be left alone up here, ogled by the crowd.

Even the waiter came in for a searching look from Alice and she fell silent, watching his every move until he left with his tip. George poured out two glasses, offering her one of them.

‘Let’s drink to absent friends,’ he said, still probing.

She smiled. ‘So many of them! But I’m thinking of one in particular. Of Joe. Joe Sandilands. My handsome Nemesis. Do you remember? Do you know what became of him?’

‘Indeed. A dear friend. Joe’s doing well. I follow his career with interest. We’ve arranged to see each other in London when I move on there. I understand he’s gone on dodging bullets and breaking hearts – you know the sort of thing.’

Alice gurgled with laughter. ‘I rather think he broke my bullet and dodged my heart,’ she said. ‘But I’m glad to hear he’s being a success.’

George noticed that she sipped delicately at her whisky, controlling her features to hide her dislike. He decided to torment her. ‘Not too fond of the hooch, I see? I’d have expected you to down it in one with a resounding belch – seasoned gun-slinger that you are.’

He settled back into his seat, pleased to have evoked – and, he was sure, accurately interpreted – an instinctive reaction. The slightest twitch of her right hand towards her right side told him all he wanted to know.

‘Don’t worry – it doesn’t show,’ he confided. ‘The bulge, I mean. That cape covers a multitude of sins.’

In India, for many good reasons, she’d always gone about armed. He’d met her just after the war when she’d first come out from England. The unexpected inheritor of an old-fashioned family trading company of international importance, young Alice had set about reorganizing the business with dash and inspiration. Her hands on the reins had been firm and capable and she found many to applaud her performance. For her admirers – and George counted himself one of the foremost of these – Alice was beautiful, talented and enchanting. But the ruthlessness she had inevitably needed to exercise had made her enemies. Enemies who would not shrink from removing her permanently from her post at the head of the company. Her own husband, George remembered, had led this faction.

And, it seemed that for Alice Conyers, though thousands of miles separated her from the scenes of her alleged crimes, there were still people she needed to defend herself against, even here in civilized Paris. She smiled and raised an eyebrow in affected incomprehension at his remark and launched into a bright inconsequential chatter which she maintained with some skill throughout the interval. A surprisingly easy conversation. She gave every sign of enjoying the gossip he had to lay out and added a few insights and reflections of her own which took him by surprise. ‘But I had no idea, Alice!’ he heard himself exclaiming. ‘I say – can you be certain of that? Well, I never! Deceitful old baggage! And her daughter was . . .? You don’t say!’

Any third party joining them would have heard a friendly couple talking with enthusiasm and good humour of mutual acquaintances, of experiences they had shared. They were professionals in their own separate ways, the pair of them, George reflected. They could play this game till the cows came home. And often had. But they both greeted the removal of the tray announcing the start of the second half with relief.

At least he would now be able with some confidence to hand her over to the authorities with a warning: ‘Disarm her and don’t listen to a word she says.’ Something on those lines. He doubted that the flics would know what he was on about if he talked of Circe and her spells, the ensnaring silver sounds of the Sirens. No, better just to say the woman’s got a pistol under her cloak and she’s wanted on two continents.

A considerable feat of engineering, he judged, was what they were witnessing. To more preparatory blasts of jazz music, a huge egg of highly decorated Fabergé fantasy, its shell trimmed all about with golden flowers, began to descend slowly from the great height of the theatre roof and slowed to hover low over the orchestra pit. After a moment, the device burst open like a flower, the petals thrust apart by the person crouching inside. The floor of the golden oval gleamed and shimmered in the carefully placed spotlights, a mirror reflecting the figure of the occupant. Josephine Baker stood, slender, motionless, arms slightly extended towards her audience with all the naked dignity, George thought, of the wondrous Tanagra figurines he’d seen in the Alexandria museum. The same rich earthenware colour, the same grave attitude and finely modelled features. A goddess.

But then the deity grinned – a very ungodlike smile – wide and flashing with good humour. Her elbows went out to her side, akimbo, her legs, apparently disjointed, echoed the movement, and, twitching frenetically in rhythm with the band which now belted out a Charleston, she danced. Shocking, mad but compelling, her movements caused the only piece of costume she wore – a string of silvery bananas around her waist – to jiggle and bounce, catching and reflecting the light.

The dance was soon over. The petals of the flower closed over her and she was hoisted slowly back up into the shadows of the roof, to deafening applause.

More acts followed, thick and fast and with little continuity, but all were first rate of their kind. The audience remained appreciative, knowing they were to see one more appearance by the star who always, according to Alice, returned to join the dancing troupe and the other performers for a huge and lavishly dressed finale – the ‘Golden Fountain’.

But this evening they were treated to an extra, unscheduled appearance by Miss Baker. In the hour or so between her acts when she might have been expected to be relaxing in her dressing room, she suddenly, between two turns, dashed on to the stage and came forward to speak into the microphone. The spotlight operator had just followed offstage a handsome young crooner and was taken aback, as was everyone, but recovered to track back and highlight the star. Her stagecraft overcame her excitement and she waited until she was illuminated to claim the full attention of the audience. She looked around the auditorium, her hands extended in the peremptory gesture artistes use to indicate that applause would not be welcome at this moment. Her head flicked from side to side, involving the occupants of both boxes, and she was ready. George listened, breathless with anticipation. He had the impression she was speaking directly to him.

‘
Bonnes nouvelles!
Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said in her warm American voice, ‘Charles Lindbergh has arrived! The Spirit of St Louis has landed in France!’

The outburst that greeted this simple statement was extraordinary. George put his hands over his ears then took them down again to join in the clapping. Shouts, whistles and cheers rang out. Most of the male members of the audience, and some of the women, climbed on to their seats, the better to express their enthusiasm. The din went on in many languages as people translated for each other. Americans in the auditorium were singled out for especially warm congratulations.

George’s trained observer’s eye delighted in identifying the different nationalities’ reactions amongst the audience. The unrestrained whooping of the American contingent was unmistakable, the clapping and murmuring of the English a counterpoint and, underpinning all, the squealing, fluttering expressiveness of the French. He wouldn’t have expected such warmth from them, he thought, saddened as the nation was by the news that its own French entrant in the race to make the crossing had been lost at sea only a week ago. He wondered cynically whether they rightly understood that the St Louis whose spirit was now amongst them was a southern American town – and, coincidentally, the home town of Miss Baker – and not, as they might be forgiven for understanding, a reference to their own saintly king of France.

He leaned to share this thought with Alice, to find that he was once again alone in his box.

Wretched girl! His first feeling of self-recrimination for his careless lapse in attention was followed very quickly by one of intense relief. There was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He luxuriated in the feeling for a moment. She was no problem of his. He pictured her scuttling away to hide herself in a city she’d made her own. He could never find her now. Useless even to think of pursuit. He struggled with a reckless and bubbling joy, acknowledging for the first time the nature of his concern for the woman. Against all his fears, she was alive and had taken the time to show herself to him. The irrepressible thought that came to mind was: ‘Good luck, Alice, wherever you’re going. I hope you get away with it at the last! Whatever you’re up to . . .’

He acknowledged that the glamour had faded from his evening but sat on and admired the last flourish – the ensemble gathering staged amidst miles of golden satin, tulle, sequins and bobbing ostrich feathers – and clapped heartily as the curtains swung closed for the last time. As the house lights came on, he glanced across to the opposite box to check on the rogue Somerton.

‘Ah! So your girl’s cut loose too!’ he muttered to himself, surprised to see that his acquaintance was alone. Surprised also to find that Somerton was sitting slumped over the rim of the box, fast asleep. ‘Through all that din?’ George was instantly alert. The man’s posture was unnatural. No man, however elderly, could have snoozed his way through that performance. Alice’s warning words concerning heart attacks among the susceptible flashed into his mind. Good Lord! The poor old bugger had had a seizure! No more than he deserved but – all the same – what bad luck. And the girl must have gone off to seek assistance.

George gathered himself together, preparing to battle his way to the exit through the still over-excited crowds. He fought against his sense of duty but it won. Suppose the girl didn’t speak English? That she didn’t know the identity of her escort? That she had just abandoned him to be swept up with the discarded chocolate boxes? His diplomat’s antennae for international scandal were sending him signals he could not ignore. The villain was, after all, a baronet, now possibly a dead baronet, and if the gutter press were to get hold of the circumstances, he could imagine the headlines. But the other news of the evening, luckily, George argued with himself, would squeeze the plight of an English aristocrat off the front pages. Nevertheless, and cursing his compulsion always to take charge of any delicate or dangerous situation, George hesitated and then, mind made up, turned resolutely to shoulder his way against the tide flowing towards the bar and the exits and headed for Somerton’s box.

He gave a perfunctory tap and walked straight in. Somerton was indeed by himself and, to all appearances, fast asleep, head comfortably cushioned on the padded upholstery. George cleared his throat noisily and followed this with a sharp exclamation: ‘Somerton! Come on, wake up! Show’s over!’

The absolute stillness and lack of response confirmed all George’s fears. He moved over to the man and knelt by his chair placing a finger behind his right ear where he might expect the absence of a pulse to tell him all. He snatched his finger away at once. He looked at his hand in horror. Black and sticky in the discreetly dim light of the box, there was no mistaking it. With a surge of revulsion, George seized hold of the chair-back to hoist himself to his feet. He had not thought to calculate the effect of his considerable weight being applied in a desperate manoeuvre to the elegant but insubstantial modern chair. It tilted and the body of Somerton heeled over, threatening to land in his lap. The expressionless face was inches from his own, eyes staring open but focused on a presence beyond George. George’s hand shot out in an instinctive attempt to support the back of the lolling head which seemed about to roll away. A wide slash across the throat had almost severed the head from the rest of the body and quantities of blood had gushed all the way down his shirt and evening dress.