‘Bloody Frogs, no sense of sportsmanship,’ said James. ‘Come on, let’s go and see Guy in his moment of glory.’
That evening James led his party to a hostelry close to the Bois which was celebrated for its discretion rather than its cuisine. It was an ugly Belle Epoque mansion with a large, ill-kempt garden. Kitchen aromas percolated into the high-ceilinged dining room, which echoed with the clatter of plates and cutlery, while upstairs the bedrooms were furnished with massive four-poster beds whose once opulent hangings never lost their odour of damp, moth and stale cigar smoke. James’s custom was to finish the Longchamp weekend with a dinner in the private salon, a room with french doors to the garden and a high vaulted ceiling.
His guests would be joined around the oval table by a dozen of Madame Bernard’s girls; after supper the waiters would withdraw leaving them alone; there would be more drinking, teasing, shrieks of laughter, perhaps a little performance if one of the girls had a speciality, and then the party would disperse according to their individual tastes. The only rule James imposed was that no one should lapse so far from decency as to try to take one of the hookers back to the Ritz; James liked to be known at the Ritz, and did not care to risk his standing by inviting a scandal.
The girls arrived in four low-riding black Citroens. They had been taking benzedrine and were raucously gay, swooping on the men with cries of delight, winding their slender arms around their necks and demanding their names while they nibbled earlobes and loosened ties. Madame Bernard’s people knew James’s tastes and the last one out of the cars was a tall lissom girl in a gold-lamé sheath dress, carrying a white leather bandbox. She had a matt brown skin and aquiline features which proclaimed her North African origin as clearly as the harsh intonations of her accent. She had evidently been told to pay him particular attention, and took no interest in the other men.
‘Nadine is superb at the danse du ventre,’ the brunette hanging on Shrewton’s arm whispered through scarlet lips. ‘It’s something you should not miss. I’m sure she has brought her costume.’
‘No doubt she has.’ James smiled into Nadine’s sloe eyes and gave her slim waist a squeeze, but he felt boredom steal upon him like the autumn mist he could see rising from the cold dew-pearled lawn outside. The evening would be entirely predictable and he found that he had little appetite for any of it.
The truth was that James had aged since his encounter with the Princess; it was as if a decade or more had caught up with him all at once. The change was barely visible in his springy black hair or his dark eyes which sparkled in their network of deepening wrinkles. The force of his charm was undimmed. Inside, however, his spirit was faltering. The sustained mental effort of cancelling the aggressively renewed memory of Khatijah was draining him. His voluptuous enthusiasm had waned; sexual gratification seemed barely worth the effort and he could be turned off by the merest unpleasant detail of an encounter – cheap scent, the impression that he was being watched, or a woman’s offhand manner.
For the past eighteen months James had been keeping a West Indian prostitute in Bayswater, for comfort as much as for sex. She was a cheerful woman who amused him with her down-to-earth manner and was so plump she made him think of a dark-brown Michelin man. His mistrust of women was increasing with age; more and more he preferred the familiar, if coarse, pleasure of the whore he knew to the more refined delights which might be only promised by a stranger.
He had drunk champagne all day and had a strong thirst. Instead of wine he drank brandy and soda with the meal, finally emptying the siphon. He handed the empty container in its wire-mesh covering to a waiter and demanded another, but it was slow to arrive and he continued to drink the cognac neat, telling himself it was fine vintage spirit and not as injurious to his constitution as cheap brandy would have been. Before long he had an ugly headache.
He noticed Eddie Shrewton at the far end of the expanse of white damask that was now stained with claret and littered with cigar ash. He was as withdrawn and disinterested as ever and would no doubt shortly slip away back to the hotel. James pursed his lips with contempt for the thin-blooded creature whose favour he was required to court.
Nadine emerged through the service door, and was greeted with whoops of enthusiasm from the diners. She had exchanged her gold sheath for her dance costume, a lurid wrapping of chiffon veils over a green sequinned girdle, and her wrists and ankles clashed with heavy brass bracelets. Two waiters swiftly removed the tablecloth, and she climbed on to the scarred oak surface beneath and began to undulate slowly from one man to another, twisting her wrists and twitching her pelvis rhythmically. Whining Arab music sounded from the walnut gramophone cabinet. James leaned back in his chair, an uncomfortable carved Gothic affair upholstered in red plush, and gazed vacantly towards the gyrating body through the dense pall of blue smoke that hung above the table. He realized that he was very drunk. He closed his eyes and had the sensation that the room was swinging to and fro, so he snapped his eyes open again.
Two or three of the men were on their feet now, tucking hundred-franc notes beneath the slight overhang of taut brown flesh at the rim of the sequinned girdle. Not to be outdone, James flourished a thousand francs and she advanced upon him. He crushed the money against her shimmering belly and the girl sank to her knees on the table in front of him, her supple brown body shuddering lasciviously as she leaned backwards. Her small high breasts shivered in the confines of their sequinned harness.
The tempo of the music increased and another whisper of transparent fabric dropped from the girl’s coral-tipped fingers. Now there were only three left, two tied in loose knots over her hip bones to accentuate their movement, and one draped between them. The dance was probably as old as lust itself, and James had seen it too many times to be moved, even by this accomplished and nubile artist. He closed his eyes once more and let boredom and brandy submerge his consciousness.
He came round to feel the cool, damp night air in his face and his feet dragging awkwardly across the gravel of the driveway. Concerned not to scratch his black patent shoes he coordinated his legs sufficiently to stumble between the two men who, with his arms around their shoulders, were half-carrying him. A car door was opened and he fell into the rear seat of the vehicle. His legs were inert again, but someone lifted them inside the car and shut the door. There were voices, then two men got into the front of the car. He heard the staccato voice of Eddie Shrewton telling the driver to take them to the Ritz, then lost consciousness once more.
The distinctive sound of the Paris traffic can be heard even in the hushed depths of the Ritz, and James knew where he was before he opened his eyes. He decided to keep his eyes closed for a while. He could tell, by the rosy glow of blood through his eyelids, that it was daytime. He felt as if his skull were being crushed in a red-hot vice. That was the brandy. He had been a fool to drink so much of it. He was getting too old to drink as he used to do.
He became aware of two other sources of discomfort: his mouth was hideously dry so that his desiccated lips stuck to his teeth, and his bladder was full. James lay still as long as he could, trying to summon some saliva to moisten his lips. At last he decided he must move, and rolled off the bed on to his hands and knees on the thick carpet. He gained his feet shakily and walked to the bathroom. When he had urinated and drunk some water, he decided to clean his teeth. That done he felt better and walked back to the bedroom, where the girl on his bed lay spreadeagled on her stomach in a pose of abandoned relaxation, her arms flung out above her head. Her naked body was completely uncovered except for her face which was smothered in a tumult of black curls. With automatic thoughtfulness, he tucked the gold satin quilt around her; the girl was quite chilled. She must have kicked the cover off hours ago.
He sat for a long time on the chaise-longue at the foot of the bed, sipping water and collecting his devastated wits. At length he checked his watch. It was 1.15 in the afternoon. There was no particular need to hurry, he had chartered a private plane for his party, but
they would need to be on their way by the end of the afternoon.
There was a knock at the door, an imperious double-rap which commanded James to rise to his feet and cross the small, oval sitting room of his suite to answer it.
‘Ah – you’re up and about at last.’ Eddie Shrewton, in a dark blue suit, which fitted no better than his morning dress, swayed awkwardly from one foot to another outside the door. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Bloody awful.’ James smiled broadly. ‘Feels like a pneumatic drill in my head. Come in, come in. I was just going to order some coffee.’
‘I’ll do it.’ The older man called room service with an air of authority, then turned to the pitiful creature he had brought home unconscious the previous night. Lord Shrewton had no more admiration for James than James had for him, but expended less energy on such emotional considerations. Bourton was an amusing fellow, he could see that, but he made an ass of himself so often over women, drink or money that Shrewton’s sense of humour was unequal to the task of appreciating him. Worse, there was something unsound about him. The older man’s instinct was that James was not to be trusted but, since he had no facts to support the hunch, he kept it strictly to himself.
‘If you tell me what the orders of the day are, I’ll start getting things moving,’ Shrewton said, seeing that James was unshaven and still in his evening clothes. ‘The other fellas are downstairs having a spot of lunch.’
‘Not to worry, old man. We’ve all the time in the world.’ Now that his senses were returning to normal, James felt nauseous. He was aware that his hands were shaking. Eddie Shrewton was ill. Bourton was certainly in no state to cope with the travel arrangements and although he clearly had no work of any consequence to be doing in London, that was not the case with most of his guests.
James felt that he was being discourteous and collected what strength remained. ‘I’ll get the cars laid on for two hours’time.’ He stood up and looked distractedly round the room for his itinerary. ‘Damn. I know I put it down somewhere.’
Briskly, Shrewton began to lift cushions and open drawers. They moved into the bedroom, and James again saw the sleeping girl. Bewilderment halted him in his search for the travel documents: he had no recollection of taking the girl back to the hotel, indeed he could remember very little about the previous night, but one of the iron rules of his life was that he never took girls back to the Ritz. He did not care to court Eddie Shrewton’s disapproval by asking him if the girl had ridden back with them in the car. However she had got there, getting her out of the hotel unseen was an important priority. She had slept enough.
James sat heavily on the bed and shook the girl’s shoulder. ‘Nadine. Nadine, my dear. Wake up, Nadine. Time to go home now.’
She did not stir.
‘Nadine. Come along, dear. Wake up, now. Nadine.’
Eddie Shrewton overcame his distaste and embarrassment and crossed the room to stand over James and the sleeping woman. ‘Didn’t you give us some sermon about not taking girls back to the hotel?’ he asked, trying not to phrase the question as an accusation.
‘Damn right. It’s just not done, in my book.’
‘Well she wasn’t with us when I brought you back, you know. She was still shimmying all over the table and the fellas were howling for her to take the last of those veils off.’ The older man’s pale hand reached out and pulled the tangle of hair off the girl’s face. He touched her cheek with his fingertips, then her neck.
‘You fool, Bourton. You bloody fool. She’s dead – can’t you see?’
James jumped off the bed and stared in horror at the body. ‘But I didn’t … But I was … Oh God, I never … I couldn’t … Eddie, I hope you don’t think …’
‘No. I don’t. You were blind drunk. I put you to bed myself. You couldn’t lift a finger. You couldn’t have screwed a rat in that condition, much less done this.’ With a gesture that was so careful it was almost tender, he swept the girl’s waterfall of dark hair to one side and tried to turn her over, but her left arm, which was hanging over the edge of the bed, would not move. When he investigated, Shrewton found that it was fixed to the iron frame of the bed by a pair of steel handcuffs. Around her neck, tightly embedded in the horribly contused flesh, was James’s black satin tie, which he removed and put in his pocket.
There was a discreet tap at the door of the suite and Shrewton sprinted to it immediately, closing the bedroom door deftly as he went. He took the tray with coffee from the waiter. He glanced at the bill, then said in English, raising his voice to impress his meaning upon the foreigner, ‘This is charged to the wrong room. I asked you to charge it to my room – change the number on the bill, will you? Here,’ he gave the number, and watched while the man altered the figure on the top righthand corner of the slip of paper, gave him a tip of exactly 15 per cent and shut the door without undue haste.
‘Where did those girls come from? D’you call someone, know someone?’
James was standing against the wall by the bedroom door, as if trying to get as far away as possible from the dead girl. ‘What?’ He screwed up his eyes as if looking into bright light.
‘Don’t you see what this is?’ James looked at him with a dull expression, and Shrewton realized that between his hangover and the shock he was completely stupefied. With firm gentleness, he led the younger man out of the bedroom, shut the door, and made him sit on the grey sofa in the little salon.
‘You didn’t touch that woman, but we’ll have a devil of a job proving it. This is a set-up. Someone wants to blackmail you, or maybe me, or maybe all of us. They killed the girl and put her in bed with you. Now – where did she come from?’
‘That’s it – Madame Bernard.’ James’s slumped body straightened. ‘I’ll call her number, they’ll know what to do, they must have got out of this kind of jam before, or worse, I shouldn’t wonder.’
He tried to stand up and reached towards the telephone on a side table, but Shrewton pushed him firmly back into the depths of the sofa. ‘Don’t be a complete ass, Bourton. That Madame, whoever she is, must be involved in this, don’t you see? Her or someone she’s working with. Have you – ah – have you had dealings with her in the past?’
James nodded.
‘Any trouble? A grudge, a vendetta, some kind of deal that didn’t work out …?’ His voice tailed off. Eddie Shrewton could not imagine what kind of transaction with a call-girl agency could have gone so sour that the guilty party would be framed for murder. He could imagine that there was no degree of stupidity of which James would be incapable.
James shook his head. ‘Nothing. Always a very amicable association. Absolutely confidential, never a whisper. Not cheap of course …’ The other man made a gesture of impatience. Shrewton knew there was only one thing he could do, and it must be done quickly before the hotel staff became aware of the situation. He left James with instructions not to open the door to anyone except him, ran down the corridor to his own suite and made one telephone call, to the ambassador’s private line at the British Embassy. The ambassador, his contemporary at Eton, understood instantly the implications of the call. ‘I’d better get round there now,’ he said, as calmly as if agreeing to an impromptu game of tennis.
‘Is there an embassy physician – trustworthy sort?’
‘Certainly. I’ll hunt him out and be over within the hour.’
The two men were announced forty minutes later, and Shrewton took them to James’s suite. The ambassador was small, plump and neatly made; the doctor, who was French, was older than Shrewton had expected, white-haired, slow-moving and hesitant.
With difficulty because the corpse was stiffening, they turned the girl on to her back and the four men instantly averted their eyes as her torn, bloody stomach was revealed. The smooth-skinned belly that had rippled sensuously twelve hours earlier was a mass of thin, precise cuts.
‘Ritual murder,’ the doctor explained as he carefully patted the shredded flesh with febrile fingers. ‘Very common among the Algerian
s, Tunisians, a lot of the Africans. But it wasn’t done here, there isn’t enough blood. There’s an artery nicked, she’d have poured blood when it was done. But you see the sheets?’ He spread the crumpled linen flat, showing them the extent of the bloodstains. ‘They’d be soaked if that had been done here.’
‘She died from being strangled?’ enquired Shrewton, his voice hushed.
‘Hard to say definitely without a post-mortem, but I should imagine so. And she was moved quickly. I can tell that because the body fat changes after a certain time and retains the traces of pressure from the way the body was lying at the time of death. She was killed somewhere else, then brought here. A very clever job, but it won’t stand up in a court.’
‘Whose name is the suite booked in?’ The ambassador stood up and walked to the windows to draw the curtain, then dropped his short arms to his sides, realizing that there was no point.
‘Bourton here. He was with me all night.’
‘In your suite?’
‘Eventually. We were out drinking until late. He keeled over in the corridor and I put him to bed on the couch in my room.’ James, still stunned by the shock, stared dumbly at his feet to cover his amazement. He had expected Eddie Shrewton to be pedantically, faithfully and maliciously truthful about the entire affair.
‘So he was with you the whole time?’
‘Until we came here this morning and found her.’
‘All night?’
‘I couldn’t sleep so I was pretty much awake all the time. I give you my word, he was under my eyes the entire period.’
The ambassador nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘I’ll call the Minister, see what we can do. Don’t touch anything and stay where I can get you on the telephone at once.’
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