Mediterranean Nights (39 page)

‘It was,' I said.

He nodded. ‘I thought as much. You see, I am a Belgian, and my knowledge is not expert—I was tempted only to take the role as I knew the young De Sejac to be in Martinique—would it be too much to ask?—'

I smiled. Anne's small hand reposed confidingly upon my arm, and I felt tired but exhilarated by a rare happiness, so I told him.

‘When black grapes are lightly crushed and left to ferment, the “must” takes its colour from the skins, but the juice of all grapes is colourless, and thousands of gallons are made every year by pressing black grapes right out immediately after the picking, when they give a perfectly good
white
wine.'

STORY XXIV

T
HE
‘Parkside Buttery', in which this story opens, was intended to be the ‘Berkeley Buttery'; but the series was written for a newspaper and as a general rule the Press have a not altogether unreasonable bias against giving free advertisement in their fiction columns to any commercial undertaking.

Personally, I find that regrettable; because the name of any well-known London hotel is enough, in one word, to provide a complete and realistic background for quite a considerable number of one's readers.

Yet it is a rather surprising fact that comparatively few authors use the names of real hotels in their books—where they are perfectly free to do so. Instead, they go to some trouble to invent strange, and often unrealistic, appellations for the luxury caravanserais in which their characters dine and dance.

Arnold Bennett's ‘Grand Babylon' and Oppenheim's ‘Milan' were, so one is told, intended to be the Savoy; but for the uninitiated of twenty years ago they might equally well have been the Cecil, since pulled down, or for readers of today the Dorchester, which had not been built, when most of the stories concerned were written.

In my own books I have, from the beginning, followed the practice of calling a Spade a Spade whenever I have had cause to mention a shop, hotel, theatre, or restaurant, either in Britain or abroad; hoping thereby to increase the reality of the setting and, where a reader happens to know the spot concerned, sometimes to provoke a pleasant personal memory of it.

There is, however, a snag to this of which young authors should beware. The places mentioned should be incapable of giving poor service or dissatisfaction of any kind. I have heard tell of a poor fellow who once named an hotel on the south coast as a scene in which one of his characters remarked:
‘This must be the toughest steak in all England!' The result was a libel action which cost him many times the money that he made out of his book.

TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE

T
HE
little group of smart young people had been talking ‘spies' over their cocktails at the Parkside Buttery.

‘But, darlings!' Lady Angela Wren declared in her high-pitched melodramatic voice, ‘the place is positively lousy with them. It's the price we pay for harbouring all these refugees.'

‘That's it. Cherishing snakes in our bosoms.' Christine Marllowe laughed, and added airily: ‘I'm sure that dark woman over there in a mink coat is another Mata Hari.'

‘My sweet, the day will certainly come when you're run in for slander, and I don't think it's far off,' Hookie Fairholme admonished her.

Vivien Pawlett-Browne said nothing for a moment, but under his absurdly long, curling lashes he had caught a glint of malice in Christine's eyes, and he felt certain that he had seen her somewhere with the Staff Officer who was now entertaining the exotic brunette. Young women like Christine were apt to make the most outrageous statements, he knew, and her words had quite probably been inspired by jealous spite; but it was his job—although none of his friends knew it—to inquire into such matters.

‘What possible grounds have you for saying such a thing, Chris?' he asked idly. ‘D'you know her?'

‘Oh, yes: only by sight, of course, but she's always with Army, Navy, or Air Force officers, and the other day I saw her in the Mile End Road. What could a smart foreigner like her be doing down there unless she was up to something fishy, I ask you?'

‘For that matter, what were you doing in the East End yourself, angel?'

‘War work, my pet. I'm simply ruining my hands in a filthy canteen.'

When the party broke up Vivien beckoned a waiter and
asked him if he knew the name of the woman in the mink coat. The waiter smiled: ‘Madame Zacconi, sir. She is often 'ere. She is ‘Ungarian, I think.'

It was not a matter with which to bother his chief, ‘Old Frosty', but back at the office Vivien thought it worth a routine check-up and gave instructions for Madame Zacconi's mail to be tapped.

Two days later a report reached him that in it there had been a letter from a furrier in the Mile End Road, which suggested that Madame Zacconi had an interest in the business.

That afternoon Vivien paid a visit to the fur shop, Having discreetly questioned the shopman he learned that Madame Zacconi was a shareholder and sometimes came down to look over any new stock. Realising that he would discover nothing more of importance there, it occurred to him that while he was in the neighbourhood he might as well have a look at a cigarette shop across the road owned by a Jewish woman who was on his list of suspects as an enemy ‘post office.' It was just possible that she might be acting with the furriers. As he found the little shop crowded he decided to wait outside, and on stepping back from its doorway he collided with a young woman.

‘Vivien, darling!' Christine Marllowe
cried shrilly. ‘What are
you
doing here?'

He grinned sheepishly. ‘Well—er—I can't get into the Army so—er—I thought I'd do a spot of amateur sleuthing.'

‘You'd do what?'

‘Sleuthing! I trailed your dark girl-friend to her home and bribed her maid to tell me where she went in the Mile End Road. The answer was that furrier's over there, so—er—'

‘My God! What next!' Christine giggled. ‘Vivien, the long-lashed, playing at being a secret agent! What
is
the world coming to?' And she continued to chaff him unmercifully as he escorted her back to the canteen.

Vivien laughed too.

The following day he roped in his colleagues, ‘Big Beard' and ‘Little Whiskers'. The department had bestowed their nicknames upon them because they were both so secretive that each always pretended not to know what the other was
up to, and ‘Big Beard' was very tall whilst ‘Little Whiskers' was very short.

Three days later ‘Big Beard' telephoned Vivien.

‘She calls there every day about three o'clock,' he said. ‘We're certain that she's passing on stuff she picks up in the West End. Whiskers was watching through the window yesterday and he saw her hand over a letter.'

Vivien grinned into the receiver. ‘Good work. I'll come down and join you this afternoon. We might be lucky enough to catch her in the act; if so, we can nab the old Jewess as well; I've been wanting to do that for some time.'

At ten to three Vivien was standing in a side street, ‘Big Beard' was on a corner and ‘Little Whiskers' on the other side of the road. Half an hour passed; three-quarters…. They had almost given up hope, when ‘Big Beard' lit a cigarette.

It was the signal. The three of them closed in.

As Vivien walked into the cigarette shop, followed by his two friends, Christine Marllowe was handing a letter across the counter to the old woman.

‘Forgive me,' he said blandly, as he snatched it from her. ‘If I'm wrong you can sue me for attempted robbery and assault.'

Christine's mouth hung open. Before she had time to protest he had ripped open the envelope and glanced over its contents.

He looked up. ‘No, I wasn't wrong. Boys, look after the old lady. I'll attend to Miss Marllowe—or rather, Fräulein von Engelburg. Oh, yes, your father acquired British citizenship and changed his name by deed poll in 1928. Of course, none of your present friends know that, but you can't deny it, can you?'

He was just in time to catch Christine's wrist as her long scarlet nails clawed at his face.

‘Come along,
darling
,' he said silkily. ‘It was a pity,
angel
, that your jealousy tempted you to make that spiteful crack at the Zacconi woman; but we don't shoot female spies in Britain. I expect they'll even let you order your own meals from the Parkside Buttery while you're in Holloway—and how right you were,
my sweet
, about our cherishing snakes in our bosoms!'

STORY XXV

S
INCE
the war I have written very few short stories or articles. Each of my long novels keeps me at my desk for six days a week, most weeks, for seven or eight months every year; and since the total sale of my books now exceeds seventeen million copies, I am in the happy position of being able to take it fairly easy during the other months. None the less, from time to time during those months when I am not working on a book, my love of writing induces me to accede to an editor's request. Such is the genesis of this story. Yet, when I sent it to the editor, to my intense annoyance he excused himself from printing it.

Apparently he had qualms about its morality. In the great national daily of which he was the Literary Editor, reports of convictions for homosexual practices and rape were frequent; yet he boggled at the idea of a middle-aged widower picking up on the front at Brighton a woman past her first youth.

What man worth his salt, I would like to know, has not, at some time or other, scraped acquaintance with a pretty girl who was a stranger to him? Not necessarily with the deliberate intent of seducing her, but, as is the case in this story, in the hope of brightening his day with a few hours of pleasant companionship.

In this tale there is no ‘murder', no triumphant snatching of the ‘secret document' or grim fear of sudden, painful ‘death'. But as an episode of everyday life, with the sort of unforeseen outcome that might quite possibly occur in such circumstances, I rate it high.

It goes into print here for the first time.

THE PICK-UP

C
OLONEL
F
AWCETT
was out of place as he walked slowly along the front at Brighton on that summer day. It was not that he was actually conspicuous, but his clothes had a cut that contrasted with those of the great crowd of holiday-makers, mostly of very moderate means. He was also mentally out of place, as he was over fifty, getting a little plump and for the first time in many years he was out to pick up a girl.

He had been driven to this expedient by acute loneliness; for his wife had died the previous year, they had had no children, and even the concern shown for him by his numerous friends still left many blank hours in his now barren life. Ever since his marriage he had lived in the small manor house at Nattleverge, a pretty village in a fold of the Sussex Downs, and he had become much too fond of the place to leave it. Yet, on five out of seven evenings, he was now reduced to pottering in the garden, then furtively watching the clock until it was time to lock up the silent house and go to bed.

At last the growing craving for some new interest to take him out of himself had become an obsession; so that morning he had driven in to Brighton. He had expected to find scores of attractive young women on holiday and unconventional enough to accept readily the offer of a good lunch from a well-mannered stranger. The lounges of the big hotels were crowded, but he searched them in vain for an unattached girl of even remotely pleasing appearance. On the front there were hundreds of pretty young things, but most of them were wearing paper hats or cheap finery and exchanging raucous badinage with the younger males in the passing crowd; so he knew without a second glance that they could not possibly provide him with the sort of companionship he was seeking.

After strolling up and down for another hour he decided that he must lower the standard of his hopes a little; so he began to give hesitant smiles at the next few solitary girls he saw who looked reasonably presentable; but all of them ignored him.

Realising that bolder methods were necessary, he halted beside a tall blonde, who was leaning on the rail watching the bathers. She turned slowly, favoured him with a stony stare and moved away.

When he had recovered from this rebuff he got as far as saying ‘Nice day, isn't it?' to a slightly older girl wearing quite expensive clothes. She gave him a bright smile and said:

‘Pleased to meet you, dear. But I hope you've got a car. My landlady won't let me take gentlemen visitors up to my room.'

Hastily he got rid of her, but his next venture was no more successful. A pert little redhead admonished him:

‘Come off it, Grandpa. You ought to know better than to be picking up girls at your age.' Then a fourth young woman snubbed him cruelly by replying to his advance in an outrageous imitation of his educated accent.

Hot with mortification, he walked the whole length of the front up to Hove, now grimly aware how great a bar his age and class were to his entering on one of those temporary friendships that younger men were initiating with casual ease all about him.

Although it was well on in the afternoon and he had had no lunch, he continued, with increasing desperation, to scrutinise every likely female face that came in sight; but with every hundred yards he covered he became more tired and pessimistic. Reluctantly he at last decided to abandon his quest. Then, as he turned about, he saw Miranda.

She was alone, sitting in a deck-chair reading a book. Till he turned, the big hat she was wearing had hidden her pale face from him. Her simple linen frock and good shoes had quiet distinction. She was tall, slim, and dark, with a good chin, straight nose, and wide mouth. None of the chairs near her was occupied. Plucking up his courage, he halted beside her and said, raising his Panama: