The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  “Glad you told me,” said Earnshaw. “Save me making any conversational blunders. Well, now”—he had turned back to Brennan—“anyway, I’m invited, and I understand our President is, too, and also the Secretary of State. The first opportunity I have, Matt, I’m going to take one of them aside and discuss Rostov and you.”

  “I’m grateful,” said Brennan.

  “You thank me when I come back with good news,” said Earnshaw. “I have a hunch I’ll get somebody to bring you and that Russian together.”

  From the sofa, Doyle was again grunting impatiently. “Emmett, I want to remind you we’ve both got a column to get out, and we’ll both have to be dressing for dinner fairly soon. You’ve got the Hotel de Lauzun. And I’ve got the Société des Gastronomes affair at Lasserre.”

  “Jay,” said Brennan, as kindly as possible, conscious of the shock that his friend had endured that morning and of the depression he must be suffering. “Jay, there’s just one more matter I must discuss with Mr. Earnshaw—with Emmett. It’s really quite pressing and the reason I came up to see him. It’ll interest Hazel and you as well. I promise you, I’ll make it as quick as possible, and then beat it and leave you to your work. Do you mind?”

  Doyle fell back into the sofa cushion with sulky indifference. “Okay. Go ahead.”

  Brennan swung back to Earnshaw. “I’ll tell you why I came up here. It’s to request a special favor that may help a friend of ours who’s, well, in a desperate situation right now. I’m speaking of the English girl, Medora Hart, the—”

  “Medora,” said Earnshaw. “Sure, of course. She’s the youngster who brought Willi up, and came out to the hospital with us.”

  “That’s right,” said Brennan. “I feel we all owe her something, and even if we didn’t—anyway, she tried to commit suicide today—”

  Brennan saw that not only Earnshaw but Doyle, as well, was surprised and disturbed.

  “—but luckily, she was saved.”

  Earnshaw tapped his goblet. “So that’s it. I thought something was going on. Carol, my niece, got a call this morning, and she was as upset as I’ve ever seen her. She told me that girl, Medora, was sick over at some hotel near here and needed someone to take care of her, at least until tomorrow.” He paused. “But it was actually a suicide try, was it?”

  “Did Carol tell you why?” asked Brennan.

  “Why? Let me—” With difficulty, he seemed to ransack his memory, and thoughtfully, he tapped his glass again. “I remember. Carol told me the whole sordid business—well, that was some days ago—about poor Medora Hart and the Ormsbys, and I must say, knowing Sir Austin as long as I have, I refused to believe it. But yes, before leaving this morning, Carol did tell me the rest, about the Nardeau painting of Fleur and what it meant to that young kid, and how it was stolen—and yes, that it was destroyed, found burned last night—and when our Medora heard, she just collapsed.” He stared at Brennan. “But she actually tried to kill herself? That was it?”

  “Yes,” said Brennan. “And she’ll likely try again, and succeed, unless somebody does something for her. She hasn’t a chance against Sir Austin and Fleur by herself.”

  Earnshaw frowned, and kept shaking his head. “I finally had to believe all Carol told me about Sir Austin. It was hard to swallow. He was such a gentleman, fine young fellow, when I first came to know him. Of course, that was years ago. I haven’t kept up much with him lately. I always disliked Sydney—that’s his younger brother, a black sheep, in and out of trouble all the time. But Sir Austin—still, thinking back, I can remember certain qualities he had that were unattractive. I mean, he was always decent to me—but maybe that’s because I was somebody—but he could be abrupt, even cutting, and especially ruthless with—with servants or people under him. I guess that’s the way some people get to the top. And once at the top, well, it’s not only power that corrupts, it’s also vanity. Sir Austin has plenty of that, not only for himself but for his family name. It has even occurred to me, it’s conceivable, that his urging that I quash that chapter in the Goerlitz memoirs was as much motivated by the fact of his name being in it as my own being smeared. I don’t know.” Earnshaw shook his head unhappily. “I guess it could be true, all that about destroying the painting to preserve himself.”

  “It’s true,” said Brennan.

  “All right, Matt. Now, Medora Hart, I want to do what I can for her. You said there was something I could do.”

  “A little thing… Some days ago, when I first heard of Medora’s predicament, I was struck by a farfetched idea, a means of helping her. I’ve thought about it since. It’s somewhat theatrical and sinister, my notion, but after all—and I’m convinced of this—in the Ormsbys we are dealing with theatrical and sinister people. What I’d like to undertake is actually a plan that might be put in the form of a two-act playlet. The first act would be in your hands. The last act would be in mine.”

  “I’m listening,” said Earnshaw.

  “I’ll tell you what inspired my plan. Something I heard about Sydney Ormsby, who is here in Paris on publishing business. And then, something about Jay’s book, a book he is writing—”

  Doyle stirred. “A book he was writing,” he interrupted bitterly.

  “I’m sorry, Jay,” said Brennan. He looked at Earnshaw once more. “At any rate, by crossing Jay’s book, dealing with Communist conspiracy, with my knowledge of Sydney Ormsby’s proximity, I evolved my plan. If we can pull it off, we can save Medora, make Sir Austin wave a white flag and permit her to return to England. If we can’t make it work, well—I’m afraid there’s nothing else we can do for the girl. Now, the springboard for my Medora plan is not Sydney but rather Sir Austin Ormsby himself. You’re still on good terms with him, aren’t you, Emmett?”

  “Yes, I am, although I’m not sure I want to be any longer.”

  “Nevertheless, you are on good terms. Do you expect Sir Austin to be attending the Hotel de Lauzun dinner party tonight?”

  “I should think he’d be there. I’m sure the Prime Minister and all the topflight British delegates have been invited. Yes, I’m almost certain Sir Austin will be on hand.”

  Brennan left his chair for a place on the sofa beside Doyle and across from Earnshaw. “Okay,” he said, “then tonight at the Hotel de Lauzun is when and where the plan to save Medora gets underway. Now, here is what I have in mind for your role in the opening act. The first chance you have, I want you to engage Sir Austin in conversation. Then this is what I’d like you to say to him—”

  As he rapidly went on, it did not surprise Brennan that not only Earnshaw, but Doyle, too, was hanging on his every word.

  BECAUSE HIS SPIRITS were so low, it had taken Jay Thomas Doyle longer than ever before to complete his writing of Earnshaw’s daily column. And because, from the moment that Hazel had shattered his world with her Rostov bombshell at Le Drug Store, he had eaten compulsively, gluttonously, self-destructively through the entire day, it had taken Doyle longer than he had anticipated to cover the short walk from the Avenue George-V to the restaurant Lasserre in the Avenue Franklin-D.-Roosevelt. As a result, Doyle was the last of the members of the Société des Gastronomes to arrive at the reserved table in the upstairs dining room.

  The founder and self-elected lifetime presiding officer of the Société, seventy-year-old Claude Goupil, whose face looked like that of a grouchy Egyptian mummy and whose general aspect closely resembled Cruikshank’s drawings of Ebenezer Scrooge, greeted Doyle as he always greeted tardy guests, with a dyspeptic snarl and a line plagiarized from Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. “So, at last, Monsieur Doyle, and alas, for you seem to have forgotten that the most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality, and the same must be said of guests.”

  “I was too weak to dress,” retorted Doyle lightly, “because I’ve been starving myself all day for tonight.”

  Offering a vague wave of his plump hand to the other members, all of whom he had met in Paris at one time or another, Doyle waddled to the one empt
y place at the table and moored himself to the cut-velvet chair.

  Since the guests on either side of him were deep in conversation, Doyle had a respite, an interval in which to determine his mood and take his bearings. Despite his genial demeanor upon entering, his mood was one of unrelieved irritation, irritation with Hazel for accepting Rostov’s version of the Vienna conspiracy over his own, irritation with Earnshaw for forcing him to write the inane column every day, irritation with his publishers for having bound him to a contract to write the hack cookbook for his personal survival, and now irritation with that supercilious and blithering imbecile Goupil.

  Doyle surveyed the dining room of Lasserre, one of his favorites, seeking relief from his dark mood. Briefly, all that galled him was alleviated. The crystal chandeliers sparkled. The fashionable diners appeared handsome and well-bred. The waiters were impeccable and their stately progress across deep-piled carpets was silent. The canard a l’orange, decorated with an orange from which stemmed a flickering candle, was mouth-watering and attractive as it was served at an adjacent table. The melody from a piano nearby was soothing. Before him, the vermeil-handled knives and forks, the gold-rimmed plates, were exquisite.

  Attracted by a sound from above, Doyle raised his eyes in time to see Lasserre’s famous ceiling slide apart, opening wide, revealing to the diners a starry cloudless sky above for their roof.

  An earthly honking brought Doyle’s head down from the heavens and disclosed to him Claude Goupil, blowing his nose in his handkerchief before he resumed his instructions to the proprietor. Again, Doyle’s mood darkened, as he considered his repulsive host.

  He had been introduced to Claude Goupil many years ago, in the better days, the best, when he was the king of columnists and Goupil only the prince of gourmets. Goupil had already founded his private club of epicures and was eager to include a renowned journalist as a member. Doyle had become aware, early, of the dues. There existed a tacit understanding that if Goupil knighted you, the price of admission to the round table was only to speak well (and often) of the founder. Word of mouth would do, but newsprint was better. Doyle had understood, and a month later, had devoted the first of what were to be many columns to Claude Goupil. For the founder had ambitions. In that time, the king of French gourmets, which meant all gourmets, was Maurice Curnonsky, who was known to partake of a considerable lunch daily, allowing only a boiled egg for his dinner, but who, in his later years, skipped lunch altogether and devoted himself to only one meal a day, and that dinner rarely without its foie gras truffé. That was Curnonsky, the king; and all other gourmets, Goupil among them, were merely princes, although one day one must become the heir. It was this throne to which Goupil aspired, and it was this throne, after Curnonsky’s passing, that Goupil achieved. And his throne, as he had known from the start, was built of paper.

  In the beginning Doyle had been proud to be a member of Goupil’s court, no matter how he was being used, but later, he had come to tire of Goupil’s dictatorial tactics concerning meals and his overindulged and unchallenged egocentricity. And lately, as tonight, Doyle had come to detest Goupil because the Frenchman was phony, parasitical, and boring. Yet, still, as tonight, Doyle had been unable to decline an invitation to a gathering of the Société des Gastronomes. Helplessly, he obeyed Goupil’s call, not because he was a gourmet writing about gastronomy but because he was, at last, a defenseless glutton.

  Tonight, he saw, would not differ from the Society’s other nights. Four times annually, Goupil notified twelve out of the membership to attend a dinner he personally supervised in a Paris restaurant that had been crowned by two stars or three in the pages of the Guide Michelin. The restaurants were always receptive to having Goupil in their kitchens and at their tables, because of the resultant publicity. Goupil, it appeared, had caught up with his legend. Two-thirds of the diners were regular members, residents of Paris, and the other third was composed of floating members, international travelers who came through Paris once or twice a year, industrialists, playboys, journalists, professional men, but all of them wealthy or celebrated (or once-celebrated) self-styled epicures, and all of them prepared to tolerate Goupil’s eccentricities and ego in order to partake of a memorable feast and share an occasion that not only gave them a conversation piece but made them feel like social arbiters.

  Glaring at Goupil with mounting distaste, Doyle had a sudden insight into his detestation of the celebrated gourmet. He hated Goupil, he suspected, because he had come to hate himself. For Doyle, in these enlightening moments, Goupil represented a specter of what he himself would inevitably become in the years immediately ahead. A parasite. A tiresome raconteur. A rootless, scrounging old man without a raison d’être, reliving diminishing glories of the past.

  He continued to glare at Goupil: the skeleton head, the mean eyes jealously searching for attention, the dry masticating of food not yet served, the dribbling Don Quixote with only pepper mills to joust against. There he sat at the head of the table, hunched like one of Shakespeare’s spider kings, cranky and imperious, attired in one of his renowned vulgar neckties and purple shirts, readying to release his dogma on wines and viands, to revive thrice-told anecdotes whose punch lines he garbled or had forgotten, to dispense a largess of Brillat-Savarin’s wisdom and pretend (perhaps even believe) that each aphorism was his own.

  Chrissakes, Doyle thought, it’s going to be one hell of a night, after one rotten hell of a day.

  Doyle felt a ponderous hand on his shoulder, a hand that shook him from his musings. He turned quickly to find that the partner at his right was none other than his longtime acquaintance, Igor Novik, the political feature writer for Moscow’s Pravda.

  Novik rubbed his own corpulent stomach, and between his matted toupee and wisp of goatee his inflated face beamed down at Doyle’s swollen belly.

  “Aha, hallo again, Mr. Henry VIII,” croaked Novik.

  Despite his mood, Doyle joined in on their old game. “Hello, yourself, Mr. Honoré de Balzac.”

  “I have not seen you since the first day at the Palais Rose,” said Igor Novik. “What have you been doing, comrade?”

  “Eating,” said Doyle glumly. But he felt somewhat better, for at least Novik, a mixture of buffoon and astute political analyst, was a glutton like himself and would make the tedious evening more companionable.

  “Why do we not eat now?” the Russian muttered under his breath.

  With a pang, Doyle realized that despite his own constant gorging the entire day, he was starved, absolutely ravenously hungry. “Because we have to await our monarch’s pleasure,” Doyle whispered back. “I think he’s going to start his damn ceremony now. What an hors d’oeuvre to start with.”

  Indeed, the king of gourmets had wobbled to his feet, making grating little nasal and guttural sounds to attract the attention of the members of the Société. Annoyed that all conversations had not ended, that all eyes were not yet upon him, Claude Goupil rapped his glass with a knife several times, disregarding the startled looks of other diners in the restaurant Lasserre.

  “Ah, bon. So. Fellow gastronomes,” Goupil announced in his shrill piercing voice, “welcome to the forty-seventh gathering of our exclusive Société. As ever, through the delicious years, we begin with our credo.”

  Covertly, Doyle grimaced at Novik. Doyle hated Goupil’s ritual, especially tonight, when he was so famished.

  “Let the number of guests not exceed twelve,” Goupil intoned to the twelve. “Let the guests be so chosen that their occupations are varied, their tastes similar. Let the dining room be brilliantly lighted, the cloth pure white, the temperature between eighteen and twenty degrees centigrade. Let the men be witty and not pedantic. Let the dishes be exquisite but few, the wines vintage. Let the eating be unhurried, this dinner being the final business of the day.”

  Goupil inclined his head to the light patter of applause.

  Once more, irritated, Doyle leaned back and whispered to Novik, “Well, he left out only one thing—the name
of the author of those words.”

  Novik grinned. “Brillat-Savarin?”

  “Who else? Except that was the King’s own digested—or rather, indigested—account for the Constant Eater.”

  Goupil was holding up Lasserre’s large menu. “Tonight,” he continued, “I have commanded the chef to serve us the following.” He dribbled, wiped his chin, and read aloud. “Casserolettes de filets de sole, Caille confite sur foie gras, and for the piéce de résistance, Gourmandise Brillat-Savarin—to be followed by les salades de Goupil and pêche meringuée. For the wines, I have selected from the bourgognes blancs a Beaune Clos des Mouches ‘61, and from the bourgognes rouges a magnificent Grands Échezéaux ’55.”

  He looked up, not for approval but for humble gratitude, and received a louder round of handclapping. With a satisfied nasal snort, he sat down, lifted a hand, and gestured imperiously.

  The waiters descended upon them, and the elegant serving carts—carrying the patty shells filled with filets of sole, and truffles and numerous other ingredients—came rolling up, and the forty-seventh indulgence of Goupil’s Société des Gastronomes was underway.

  Doyle wolfed his food down, hastening to bribe and glut his tyrannical stomach. Once, Goupil admonished him to savor each morsel, reminding him, “Animals feed; man eats. Only the man of intellect and judgment knows how to eat.” But even though this was criticism, and Goupil again did not give credit to Brillat-Savarin for it, Doyle was too drunk and sated with food to resent chastisement.

  Midway through the main course, silently and steadily shoveling the veal-filled pancake into his mouth, Doyle began to feel at ease and expansive, even somewhat sanguine about the possibilities of his immediate future.

  Throughout the endless afternoon of mourning, left to himself, Doyle had become more and more discouraged—not over his deep belief that an international conspiracy had been responsible for President Kennedy’s death, but because of the hopelessness of finding support of his belief through Hazel’s Russian “friend.” He had slowly realized that Hazel had done her best to help him, and fail—and that she could probably not learn anything different from the same source. If the proof was to be found, it would require fresh sources. But Doyle had no fresh sources. His dream had dissolved, and he had been thoroughly disheartened.