The King of Fools

by Frédéric Dard

  Whose dark or troubled mind will you step into next? Detective or assassin, victim or accomplice? How can you tell reality from delusion when you’re spinning in the whirl of a thriller, or trapped in the grip of an unsolvable mystery? When you can’t trust your senses, or anyone you meet; that’s when you know you’re in the hands of the undisputed masters of crime fiction.

  Writers of the greatest thrillers and mysteries on earth, who inspired those that followed. Their books are found on shelves all across their home countries—from Asia to Europe, and everywhere in between. Timeless tales that have been devoured, adored and handed down through the decades. Iconic books that have inspired films, and demand to be read and read again. And now we’ve introduced Pushkin Vertigo Originals—the greatest contemporary crime writing from across the globe, by some of today’s best authors.

  So step inside a dizzying world of criminal masterminds with Pushkin Vertigo. The only trouble you might have is leaving them behind.

  Contents

  Title Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  Also Available from Pushkin Vertigo

  Copyright

  1

  When I saw her climb into my car, I thought she was planning to steal it, and hurried out of the restaurant, still clutching my napkin. Outside, in the harsh midday sun, I found her settled in the passenger seat, leafing through a tourist guide. She was small, with a ruddy complexion and colourless hair matted with seawater. She wore a green towelling beach robe, and the water trickled down her neck, losing itself in the opening of her bathing suit. The sudden cast of my shadow across the pages of her book caught her attention. She raised her eyes and gazed thoughtfully at me, trying to discover what this fellow in swimming shorts, idiotically twisting his red-and-white chequered napkin, could possibly want from her. Curiously, it was I who felt awkward. We stared at one another in this way for some time. She seemed perfectly at ease, like a person with right on their side.

  “I’m so sorry,” I stammered, at length. “You’re… you’re in my car.”

  She had thick eyebrows which she obviously never plucked; they gave a depth to her pale eyes. The eyebrows were frowning in surprise now.

  “I don’t understand – your car?” she said quietly.

  She was English, and spoke French with an almost comically English accent. Her small, girlish voice didn’t suit her at all. It put me in mind of the shrill, silly tones of the sheriff’s daughter in a badly dubbed Western. It irritated me.

  “You’re sitting in my car,” I ventured, glumly. “Not that I have a particularly acute sense of private property, but I should like to know why.”

  She listened attentively, her lips silently forming one or two words whose meaning was unclear. The effect was rather like an operatic diva singing her partner’s words in her head during a grand duet. She shut her book and stared around her in astonishment, then promptly burst out laughing and pointed to a white MG parked in front of my vehicle, and identical to mine in all points. It bore a British number plate.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry!” she breathed, opening the passenger door.

  It was my turn to laugh, at her embarrassment. This was just the sort of mistake a person was likely to make in the bustle of Juan-les-Pins in August, coming up from the beach with sand, salt and sun in their eyes.

  “It’s the same, isn’t it?” she said, pointing to the other MG.

  “They might be twins,” I agreed.

  “Yours has red upholstery too.”

  “Yes. But your steering wheel’s on the right!”

  Her expression darkened, as if my remark had annoyed her.

  “How stupid. I don’t understand…”

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “How I could have made such a mistake.”

  And then, suddenly, she was very British once again. She realized she was talking to a man to whom she hadn’t been introduced, and left me standing outside the restaurant, with its wooden deck that smelt like a floating lido. I returned to my meal, trying hard not to glance outside. When I emerged, the Englishwoman’s MG had disappeared.

  I settled myself behind the wheel of my car and drove to my hotel, a short distance out of town. Each day after lunch I took a siesta in my room, since it was impossible to sleep at night: an open-air nightclub raged just twenty metres away. Jumping out of my open-topped car, I spotted her beach bag lying forgotten under the dashboard, unnoticed by me until now because it was black, like the carpet covering the floor of the MG. It contained an English novel, a bottle of suntan oil, sunglasses, a towel and a tiny soft toy – a lion. The gold plastic glasses case contained a thousand francs. The forgotten bag worried me. I had no desire to go looking for the ruddy-faced girl to give it back. I took the bag and tossed it into the empty half of my wardrobe.

  The air in my room was mild, even cool. The closed shutters kept the room dark and filtered the sluggish afternoon sounds, though they were useless at night against the din from the “Makao”. I stretched out naked on my bed. I crossed my arms behind my head and drifted into a daydream. At this time of day I was clear-headed and at peace. It was the mornings that depressed me more than anything, after a few hours of poor sleep. Then, life seemed empty and I hated this holiday.

  I should have been with Denise, but we had broken off just two days before leaving, on some petty pretext. For a moment, I had considered cancelling my trip, but then decided the Côte d’Azur would be a timely distraction, and left anyway. I regretted it now. Holiday resorts are best approached in a happy frame of mind, or they can seem more depressing than all the rest. Truth be told, my sorrow was not acute. Rather, I experienced a feeling of intense disenchantment that left me weak and vulnerable.

  I felt the nagging torment of physical regret too. With Denise, the act of love had been easy, and reassuring. At length I fell asleep, as I had every other day. And like every other day, I woke again around four o’clock in the afternoon. I closed the shutter slats tightly against the relentless sun. The sounds from outside took on a different quality now. The gravelly voice of the sea rose above the racket of Juan-les-Pins.

  I forgot all about the Englishwoman of that morning.

  In the evening, when not tempted by a show, I would spend an hour or two at the casino. I’m not a gambler, but I enjoy the atmosphere in the gaming halls. I find their tense, solemn mood exhilarating; I’m touched by the pale, serious faces under the light of the table lamps, clinging hard to their mask of composure. If Hell is staffed with attendants, they are surely recruited from the deceased croupiers of this world. Their unruffled insouciance is in such contrast to the punters’ veneer of fake calm that they seem truly demonic. I never sat at the card tables, because I played little, and with none of the systems and strategies that most players insist on following. I preferred roulette, placing a straight-up bet two or three times in a row. Each time, I would concentrate like an athlete before attempting some feat of prowess. I would think hard about a number until it came to seem so obvious, so utterly natural, that a moment later I was astonished to see the ball drop into a different pocket. I felt that Luck herself had made a mistake, or humiliated me quite deliberately.

  That evening, I remember playing the 5, then the 14, and then the 5 once again. Within minutes, I was fifteen thousand francs down. Par for the course. And so I pla
yed one last time, but differently: I placed fifteen thousand francs on red. If the ball dropped into a black pocket, I would be thirty thousand francs down. But if the number was red, I would recoup my losses and leave. A true player would smile at my low-roller methods; and indeed, I caught a few ironic glances from one or two regulars who had been following my stakes. I didn’t care. I’m the son of provincial shopkeepers, and my parents taught me one thing above all: the value of money.

  Slightly shame-faced, I placed three five-thousand-franc chips on red.

  As I withdrew my hand, I saw a ravishing young woman smiling at me from across the table. She held a small pile of chips in her left hand. She counted fifteen thousand francs and placed them on black, her eyes fixed upon mine all the while. I was astonished; her gesture was clearly a challenge. I wondered where I had seen her before. The croupier spun the wheel and tossed the ball with a small, practised flick of the wrist.

  I kept my eyes fixed on the young woman, wondering where and how we had met. A long time ago, it seemed to me. I searched her features for a different face, like someone determined to rediscover the child’s visage in that of an adult.

  The ball landed on red. The girl pursed her lips in disappointment, and in that small expression of frustration I recognized her. My Englishwoman of that morning. I was spellbound. How could the ruddy-faced girl in the MG have transformed into this elegant, attractive young creature? I rounded the table.

  “What a delightful surprise!”

  “You’ve forgotten your winnings,” she whispered, indicating the expanse of green baize.

  I shrugged carelessly.

  “Play again,” I said quietly, struggling to affect the light tones of a man for whom a fifteen-thousand-franc stake is a mere trifle.

  “I was wrong to try and play against you!”

  She wore her hair in a swept-up style that enhanced its warm chestnut colour and reddish tints, held in place on top of her head by a narrow gold clip decorated with closely spaced links like the scales of a fish. Her complexion had looked ruddy that morning, but in reality it was just a touch of sunburn – a natural foundation that offset her understated make-up to astonishing effect. She wore a green dress, not too low-cut, with a black lace rose pinned to her chest. Not exactly the last word in Parisian chic, but it suited her well.

  I heard the clicking of the ball on the mahogany track. This time, the number was black, swallowing my thirty thousand francs. I seized the moment to escort my companion to the bar.

  “Champagne?”

  She laughed.

  “Of course! We impoverished English never miss the chance of a glass of bubbly.”

  “You know you forgot your beach bag in my car?”

  “Yes. I was annoyed about the sunglasses, but I hoped I would see you again…”

  She hoped she’d see me again, to retrieve her sunglasses. But the way she said it did me the power of good. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was charming, graceful, with a gentle beauty I had never seen in a woman before.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked, eventually. “Is something the matter?”

  “Yes. You’re very beautiful.”

  She glanced away, then after a brief pause, she spoke again.

  “The first time I came to France was on an organized tour, when I was a little girl. Before we left, the guide gave us heaps of advice. Among other things, he said that the first thing a Frenchman will do once he’s alone with a woman is to tell her she’s beautiful.”

  “So glad I didn’t disappoint, Mademoiselle.”

  “Madame!”

  “Oh! I’m so sorry. And I still haven’t introduced myself: Jean-Marie Valaise.”

  “My name is Faulks. Marjorie Faulks.”

  The waiter brought our champagne and prepared to pour. But I told him to let the bottle chill. I wanted to prolong our tête-à-tête.

  “I said you were beautiful precisely because this morning you seemed quite the opposite,” I declared, coldly.

  She nodded.

  “This morning you took me for a thief, and worse still, I had just come up from the beach, red as a lobster. But I think you’re mistaken now. I’m not pretty.”

  I stared at her, unabashed, as if contemplating a portrait. Was she pretty? Perhaps not, indeed. She had an Englishwoman’s mouth, with a receding lower jaw. She traced her upper lip with her fingernail. She must have been reading my thoughts.

  “And then there are my freckles,” she sighed.

  “Des bulles de champagne!”

  “Des… what?”

  “Champagne bubbles – perhaps you don’t know the word?”

  “No.”

  I showed her the bottle of Pommery.

  “Look, there.”

  Her face took on a delighted expression, and she repeated the word bulles wonderingly, several times over, watching the champagne sparkle. Except she pronounced it “bool”, and my best efforts to teach the proper elocution produced nothing but a comical “bee-yool”. I noticed with surprise that her voice was fuller and deeper than this morning.

  We drank a first glass of champagne. Marjorie savoured her drink with eyes closed. Suddenly, it occurred to me that she had not come to the Côte d’Azur alone. She had climbed into the passenger seat of my car, and seemed to be waiting for someone. The thought was vaguely annoying.

  “Are you staying at a hotel?”

  “No, I’m with some friends from home. They’ve rented a villa in Cap d’Antibes.”

  “Are you here for long?”

  “I’m flying back tomorrow evening.”

  I felt an almost physical pang of disappointment. I was the boyish flirt, rubbing his neighbour’s foot at dinner, delighted to discover she wasn’t moving it away, only to find it was the table leg all along.

  “What a shame.”

  The champagne tasted warm, and too young.

  “Yes, it is a shame. I love it here on the Côte d’Azur. English people always… Well, it was we who discovered it, after all!”

  “Indeed. It was a British colony for years. Are you travelling with your husband?”

  “No, he hasn’t been able to take any holiday yet, this year. Too much work. He’s an architect. He’s building a big school on the outskirts of London at the moment. And what do you do?”

  “A great deal of travelling!” I replied. “I sell office adding machines for an American firm.”

  “And how many do you sell?”

  “I couldn’t say exactly, I’d need an adding machine…”

  We chatted for almost an hour, against the murmur of the casino. Pale plumes of smoke curled around the lamps, and our eyes drooped. Marjorie pulled herself up so suddenly that it took me a moment to realize she was leaving.

  “I’m meeting my friends, and I’m terribly late. Thank you for the champagne…”

  “Your beach bag!” I stammered, startled by her sudden departure.

  “Which is your hotel?”

  “The Palmier Bleu. It’s—”

  “I’ll send someone for it! Goodbye!”

  She disappeared into the crowd. I would have chased after her, but I had to pay for the champagne, and the barman was busy.

  2

  That evening, I drank a little in hopes of knocking myself out. But all I got was a vile headache.

  I went back to my hotel. I had a raging thirst. I drank stale water from the tap, but was unable to quench it. Like the water, my life bore the taint of rust in the pipe work. The Makao’s neon sign flashed through the slats in the shutters. Watched for too long, it could make a man want to scream. I fell asleep around 4 a.m., as every night. When I woke, my headache was no better. Miserably, I dragged myself under the shower. I felt better for the thousand needles gushing from the rose. I switched between hot and cold, hunching my back and offering my stiff neck to the fierce downpour.

  A decent coffee and an aspirin restored my spirits. I would go and laze on the beach, and life would start up again, like the do
ugh hook on a kitchen mixer. I would be swept into the daily round. What else could I hope for? Holidays, the sun, the casino, the fish soup suppers? And then Paris, and Denise’s telephone call! And my clients, to whom I would demonstrate the wonders of the ACT adding machine. I wasn’t a family man, but I had my routine. I shivered in my robe, my teeth chattering, and decided to go back to bed for five minutes, to warm up. When I stepped back into my room, Marjorie was there, sitting demurely with both hands clasped over one knee. She wore white shorts and a striped sailor shirt. Her face was scrubbed and her hair was tied back with a ribbon. She looked delighted at my horrified expression.

  “I know it’s not the done thing, but the Côte d’Azur is the sort of place where a person feels like doing something they shouldn’t.”

  I felt awkward and clumsy in my robe, with water trickling down my hair and legs. I could find nothing to say. I couldn’t offer her a seat because she was already sitting down.

  “I came to fetch the bag myself. I rushed off rather too suddenly last night… I did knock. But with the noise from the shower… Don’t you lock your door?”

  “Not in a hotel.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “So that people like you can walk in, I expect.”

  In place of a smile, her face darkened, as if she were deeply offended. She seemed about to leave. But she stayed. Her pale eyes wandered to the open window. The view was unexpected for such a sought-after resort: electricity pylons, apartment blocks, a garage.

  A mechanic in blue overalls was washing an old car that was hardly worth the effort. The jet whistled against the bodywork. I walked over to the wardrobe, opened it and took out the beach bag.

  “Here are your things.”

  She sat the bag on her knees. For reasons unknown, she looked sulky and frightened all at once. Like a little girl who has been ticked off in public and is trying not to cry.

  “It’s very kind of you to come, Mrs Faulks.”

  “Call me Marjorie.”

  “Thank you, I’ve been dying to. It’s such a pretty name. To me, Marjorie is like Ma Jolie in French.”