Текст книги "Ragtime in Simla"

Автор книги: Barbara Cleverly

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Fifteen

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The room when he returned just before eight on Friday evening projected a very different mood. The dark red curtains were drawn and a log fire burned brightly in the hearth. The lighting was discreet but adequate and supplied by two or three Tiffany lamps about the room and a row of tall white candles down the centre of the table.

The cat had been banished from the scene and Minerva Freemantle was alone in the room when he arrived. She was wearing a simple dark green velvet gown, low-cut and sleeveless, he noticed, a clear indication that no trickery was contemplated. Joe allowed his eyes to run appreciatively for a moment over the voluptuous and highly unfashionable curves of her figure, admiring the strong white arms, the waist improbably narrow between swelling bosom and lavish hips. Minerva – as he was beginning to think of her – had chosen her name well. As imposing as any Roman statue that had ever graced the temple of the Goddess of Wisdom, he thought fancifully; and guaranteed to distract the attention of any man lucky enough to be granted a seat at her table. She was still a show girl, he reckoned, and a clever one.

Unusually for India there were no drinks or sweetmeats of any kind on offer. A serious business, a seance, and not to be confused with a social occasion. All had been rehearsed and they moved easily into their routine when the other guests began to arrive. Introductions were made and brief descriptions given but they were not followed up with the usual social chit-chat. The other guests were friendly and greeted him without suspicion but with that automatic reserve which prevents people from starting up a conversation in the waiting room of a doctor’s surgery. They had their own preoccupations and were not disposed to take much interest in his.

Alice Conyers-Sharpe was the last to arrive, surprised but pleased to see him.

‘Well, now we’re all here… Most of us know each other well but we welcome two newcomers to our little band this evening – Miss Trollope who has very recently lost her dear companion, Snowdrop, and who is hoping for a sign that he has safely passed over and will be there to welcome her when it is her turn to make the transition…’

Miss Trollope was a small, fair woman with the wide-eyed and earnest expression of a porcelain doll. She smiled nervously and received sympathetic and encouraging smiles in return. They all had animals they were fond of themselves and would hope to meet up with again in the hereafter.

‘… and a new gentleman.’ (Was there the slightest emphasis on the word ‘gentleman’?) ‘Commander Joseph Sandilands from London. I will let him tell you in his own words what his motivation is in joining our circle.’

She turned to him with a sweet smile. This was not rehearsed. He inferred that he was not forgiven.

‘Minerva and I are old friends,’ he said with engaging sincerity. ‘Our paths crossed many years ago in London Town when she was already quite a star in her own field. I have long appreciated her remarkable talents. I’m here to explore the paths of truth, honesty and love. I open my mind and my heart to an approach from anyone who has passed through ahead of us to the Happy Fields and is prepared to give of his or her precious time to speak words of guidance or comfort to me.’

Everyone nodded fervently in understanding except for Minerva Freemantle whose lips appeared to twitch with suppressed emotion at this speech.

She gestured to the table. ‘If we can all take our seats then? Joe, no penance, I think, if I ask you to sit between two pretty ladies? If Mrs Sharpe sits on your left and Miss Trollope on your right? There we are. Now, hold hands everyone and place your joined hands on the table where we can all see them.’

She doused the electric lamps but left the candles burning. If he had not been anxiously waiting for the performance of his own trick, Joe thought he would have begun to enjoy himself.

The atmosphere was not at all what he had expected. Seated holding the hands of a pair of pretty girls at the walnut table, surrounded by kindly faces, he was more in the mood of cheerful expectancy that came over him at the beginning of a dinner party with friends and not in the dark mood of guarded superstition he had associated with seances.

‘We’ll begin with our usual prayer,’ said Mrs Freemantle without emotion.

Everyone except Joe and Miss Trollope knew the words and began to recite them together.

‘Lord of the Universe, Spirit of Love, we ask you to look with kindness on our gathering and keep all here assembled safe from evil, from despair and from doubt.’

A silence fell but it was a comfortable silence, the silence of an audience who know the curtain is about to go up on a performance they very much want to see. Joe found that he was thinking deeply as he did in those few minutes of private prayer before a church service. The hands holding his were not the source of embarrassment or even arousal that he had anticipated but a comforting touch linking him to the rest of the group. He narrowed his eyes and focused on the candle flame in front of him. He was not sure how many minutes had slipped by when Minerva Freemantle began to speak.

‘David? Is that David? Mrs Tilly, your son is with us!’

Mr and Mrs Tilly looked at her eagerly but stayed silent. Joe felt a tingle in his arms and hands and stirred his elbows and shoulders discreetly to keep the circulation flowing.

A voice, shockingly deep to the inexperienced Joe, came from Mrs Freemantle’s throat. A young man’s voice full of life and humour and excitement.

‘Mother! Father! I’ve found them! Both of them! Bill and Henry are with me and quite safe now. If you can believe it they were both still in their bunker on the Somme. Didn’t know which way to turn. Didn’t want to desert their post even though they were supposed to have passed over! They say thank you for the last parcel you sent. Bill had the blue socks and Henry had the green ones. They send their love and we’ll all be waiting for you when you come through.’

The voice faded and Joe was quite certain that he could hear chatter and laughter in the background. Mr and Mrs Tilly sat rigidly still, tears pouring down their faces but beaming with happiness.

‘God, she’s good!’ Joe thought. ‘She’s bloody good! I wonder who we’ll have next? And how on earth will she manage to do Snowdrop?’

Silence fell on the group once more and again Joe found himself hypnotized by the candle flame in front of his eyes. He was startled from his trance by a voice which boomed from Minerva Freemantle.

‘Joe! Joe Sandilands, you old so-and-so! Ladies present so I’ll watch my language. Well, there you are, old boy, and here I am! Now do you believe me?’

A soldier’s clipped, jocular tones.

‘Seb? Sebastian?’ Joe managed to gasp. He was conscious of Alice Sharpe squeezing his hand tightly to help him through his astonishment.

‘Of course it’s Sebastian! We have unfinished business! I’d have won our last game, you know, if that shell hadn’t wiped it off the board and me with it. I was going to move my bishop to KB3. Checkmate in three moves. Take care, old man! And watch your left flank!’

Joe couldn’t speak. His throat seemed to be choked, his tongue paralysed. This wasn’t in the script. His mind raced back to the summer of 1915, to the shell burst that robbed him of his dearest friend, tore open his own face and stopped a game of chess he had just realized he could not possibly win. He looked desperately at Minerva. She read his thoughts and shook her head sadly. She could not call Sebastian back again.

Excited and congratulatory looks were being directed at him from those around the table. With a final squeeze of encouragement, Alice Sharpe’s hand relaxed its grip once more and Joe wondered if she thought it at all unfair that he should have made a contact on his first visit when she had tried often to communicate with her mother. He also thought about Seb’s last crisp warning. ‘Watch your left flank!’ He looked briefly to his left flank and encountered Alice’s smiling blue eyes.

‘It’s all right, Seb!’ he said silently to himself like a prayer. ‘Your message received!’

The candles guttered as a chill rush of air swept through the room. A log fell and the glow of the fire dimmed. The grandfather clock behind Mrs Freemantle abruptly stopped ticking. Somewhere in the corridor outside a cat screeched in terror and was abruptly silenced. Mrs Freemantle began hurriedly to mutter a prayer. Joe caught the words, ‘… keep us from evil… let no bodeful presence come nigh…’

Tension spread around the group. Feet shuffled, throats were cleared but the circle of hands remained intact and firm. Ears straining for the slightest sound heard it at the same moment. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. The sound of a stick in the corridor outside. It paused then tapped again. Exploring. Searching out the way. Soft footsteps shuffled after the stick. They grew louder, more confident, and came to a halt by the small door behind Minerva.

In her own voice from which she could not totally eradicate a tremble of fear, she said, ‘Friends, this is very exceptional. We must not be afraid. Stay firm. We are being visited by a very strong spirit – a spirit so strong it has the power to materialize before our eyes. It wants to show itself to us. It insists on showing itself! But beware! It takes its power from negative emotions – from resentment, from hatred and desire for revenge!’

A barely audible whimper came from the throat of Miss Trollope and she squeezed Joe’s hand tightly.

‘This spirit is searching for someone who is close at hand. For one of us.’

The door creaked open.

‘Someone whose initials are…’ She frowned, concentrating on an inner voice. ‘… are… I. N. Is there anyone here who is aware of an I.N. in their life?’

Alice’s hand had become icy cold and she was unconsciously moving her whole body closer to his.

No one spoke.

‘There is no one here with those initials,’ said Minerva. The relief was evident in her voice. ‘Will you not admit your error, spirit, and leave us in peace? She whom you seek is not among us.’

‘You lie! She is here!’

The voice burst from the doorway and a dimly perceived figure took on hideous shape before their eyes.

Darkly clad, the only parts of the apparition which revealed a human identity were the pale hands and the pale face. A face of such horror that Miss Trollope gurgled, released Joe’s hand and slumped under the table. The deathly white features glowed with the marble colouring of a fresh corpse. A trail of blood trickled down from the forehead to the chin and as they watched in frozen fascination, dripped on to his front. Where the eyes should have been there was a black and gaping void. The apparition moved its head from side to side, slowly sweeping the table with its blind gaze. Searching. It raised a white stick threateningly.

‘She’s here! Isobel, you are here! Isobel Newton! You could have saved me! Why did you leave me dying?’

Alice Conyers-Sharpe made a sound half-way between a scream and a gasp, jumped to her feet and hurled herself towards the door and to the head of the stairs. Leaving a shattered audience behind him, Joe set off in pursuit. He saw her face upturned in terror as she heard him coming after her and then she lost her footing on the narrow stairs and fell with a scream.

Chapter Sixteen

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Scrambling to her feet, she blundered on and fled with a bewildered cry into the street. She started to run at speed through the crowds, dodging neatly between the strolling couples, never looking back. To Joe’s surprise she seemed to be making her way past the Ridge, past Christ Church and on south towards the wooded hills in which lay Sir George’s Residence but at the last she turned aside and ran, still at speed, sandalled feet pattering, down a narrow lane between the backs of two rows of houses. Joe followed her into the lane and saw her disappear at last through a small arched gateway.

He went in pursuit and found himself in a walled courtyard. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom he became aware that a narrow flight of steps led upward from this to a higher level, a higher level from which flowering creepers and trailing roses cascaded down across the face of a pale wall. Tentatively he set his foot on the steps and began to mount.

The silence was broken by a sharp click.

Someone above him had slipped the safety catch from a pistol.

‘Not a step nearer! Whoever you are, you stay right there or I fire!’

The voice was breathless and quavering with terror.

She was leaning on a parapet wall and Joe caught a glint of moonlight on the barrel of a revolver. She repeated, ‘Not a step nearer!’

‘This is a bit unfriendly, Alice! It’s me – Joe Sandilands. I wish you no harm.’

There was a pause. ‘Joe? Oh, Joe! Thank God! Are you alone?’ And then, ‘That creature… it hasn’t followed you?’

‘There’s only me here, Alice. Let me come up, will you? Why don’t we take a seat? Why don’t we share a cigarette? Why don’t we enjoy a moment of tranquillity together? Tranquillity! A commodity always in short supply in Simla as far as I can see.’

As he spoke, step by step he climbed the stair until at last he joined Alice on a small terrace platform shaded and scented by jasmine. Alice was just discernible in the fretted moonlight but the pistol in her hand was clear to see.

‘Spare me!’ he said. ‘I am unarmed! At least, not entirely unarmed. Not quite sure how the evening was going to turn out, I took the precaution of filling a flask with the Governor’s excellent Courvoisier! Whatever else, you’ve had a taxing evening! Won’t you join me?’

With a sob Alice threw herself into Joe’s arms and clung to him. Gently he disengaged himself and led her to sit on the low parapet wall. He sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders, waiting while she gained a fragile measure of control.

‘Before we do or say anything,’ she said, ‘please tell me who or what on earth – or in hell – that was? Was he real? Did he exist? Did you see him too? Did everybody see him? Did you see him, Joe?’

Joe hesitated. Perhaps the truth might be most serviceable. ‘He was real all right,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t a figment of your imagination. He wasn’t a revenant. He was, though, someone you know. Someone you have known. Any ideas?’

Alice looked at him with huge, uncomprehending eyes. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never met such a… a… creature. And anyway, you heard him – we all heard him – he was looking for someone with the initials… oh, what was it?… I.M.? Yes, I.M. Isobel something or other…’ She shivered. ‘I shall never ever go to a seance again! It was horrid and very frightening. I had to get away! And that wretched woman, Miss Trollope! Did you see her? Fainted away completely! I really think Mrs Freemantle has overstepped herself. It’s perhaps time that she moved on from Simla. I’m quite sure that when Her Excellency hears of tonight’s fiasco she will insist. Don’t you agree, Joe?’

Alice had recovered her self-possession; only a tremor in the voice and a trembling hand remained of the storm she had passed through.

Joe held her firmly by the shoulders and turned her face to his. ‘Isobel,’ he said gently, ‘Isobel Newton. It’s no use. You can’t fool me. And before you think of shooting me to get rid of a witness, let me tell you that Carter knows and, of course, the man you met again tonight at the seance…’

To Joe’s surprise she stopped sniffling, sat up, favoured him with a broad smile and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, well! It was worth a last shot, I suppose!’ She gave him a level glance. ‘You should have waited a little longer, Joe, I was going to make it worth your while to forget about all this. But tell me – who was that – the thing that appeared in the doorway? The only man I have ever met with whom that creature had the slightest resemblance is long dead.’

‘I can promise you he isn’t dead. Nor yet was he undead. His name is Simpson. Captain Colin Simpson and, by a miracle, he is as alive as you or I. It was a trick. It was a put-up job. It was a trick on you.’

‘Simpson?’ said Alice slowly. ‘Simpson!’

‘Yes. And a member of a select band. A very select band. A band of those who survived the Beaune rail crash. Now are you getting it?’

‘Christ, yes!’ said Alice. ‘The man in the railway carriage! He still lives? Can it be? And what the hell was he doing here?’

‘I’ll exchange information for information,’ said Joe. ‘But, in the meantime…’ He lit two cigarettes and handed one to Isobel. He unscrewed the cap of his flask and passed it across to her. ‘If ever a girl needed a swig of aqua vitae, I suspect it is you so help yourself. And why don’t you begin at the beginning?’

‘The beginning?’ said Isobel bitterly. ‘The beginning is a long time ago and a long way away from here!’

‘It’ll do,’ said Joe. ‘The night is young.’

‘We could begin in an impoverished Surrey vicarage if you like,’ said Isobel. ‘With a cold and ambitious father, a mother who died when I was eleven. Or we could begin in a bleak girls’ school in the Home Counties. Or would you like to start in the south of France when our heroine is seventeen? We’d be talking about the same person. We’d be talking about me. It was a very long journey, ending – though ending is not the word – here in a private and concealed Simla garden.’

‘Good God,’ said Joe, looking round in astonishment. ‘Garden? Private garden? Whose? Where?’

‘Old Simla’s full of gardens, big and small. The house this belonged to is gone but the garden remains. It belongs to Rheza Khan’s family. They are a very well-to-do family – you might almost say tribe – with extensive lands north towards the Nepalese border but they’ve always kept what you might call a town house here in Simla.They keep the garden in order – as a sort of gesture of family piety. I come here sometimes. It’s a peaceful place. Away from everybody. If I want to see someone privately it’s always here and here we are – private.’

She took the proffered flask from Joe’s hand and drank. She coughed and spluttered and drank again.

‘Well, the beginning? Born of poor but honest parents… I won’t deceive you, Joe. They weren’t particularly poor. Thinking of my detestable father not particularly honest either but he’s done pretty well for himself.’

Joe’s mind was racing. ‘Newton?’ he said, the picture of an austere and influential bishop of the Church of England coming to mind. ‘Not… ? Are we by any chance talking about “Retribution Newton”? And he’s your father?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that Bishop Newton. The scourge of sinners. Just a rector the last time I saw him. Difficult to live with, I think you’ll agree. But that’s jumping ahead and I said I’d begin at the beginning. It was a detestable childhood and it got worse after my mother died. I couldn’t wait to get away! But I had a stroke of luck. My father had an old friend, very rich, very much of the Church, very corseted and a great subscriber to my father’s good causes. Fallen altar pieces one day, fallen women the next! You know the sort of thing. She spent every winter in the south of France and she had a pathetic, quenched companion. Her name, almost inevitably, was Mildred but Mildred got measles and lo! Horror! Tragedy! Crisis! Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe had no one to accompany her on her winter trip to Nice and after more debate, discussion (praying if you can believe!), it was decided that I should fill the vacant slot and set off for the south of France. So, suitably admonished as to how to conduct myself and much to my father’s relief, off I went to carry Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe’s knitting about for her.’

‘And you went for it?’ said Joe.

‘Did I ever go for it! And, in the fullness of time, I ended up in an attic bedroom in a large Nice hotel only three flights of stairs away from Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe’s first-floor suite overlooking the sea and – no telephones in those days – a voice tube from her to me so that if she felt she needed a little glass of water in the night she could blow down it. A whistle would go off in my ear and I would come padding down three fights of stairs in my school dressing gown and see what was what. Not much of a life for a girl but anything was to be preferred to the Gothick splendours of St Simeon-under-Wychcroft, Surrey’

‘Yes,’ said Joe, considering. ‘I can imagine that it would be. And there you found yourself, enjoying the winter sunshine?’

‘Yes,’ said Isobel, ‘anything would have been better and one thing was – my employer was fabulously rich and there was throughout that winter and on into the spring an endless procession of her nieces, nephews, cousins, sisters, brothers-in-law, all eager to wind her wool, carry her parasol, escort her on gentle little walks down the Promenade des Anglais and all with but one idea.’

‘To inherit the berries?’

‘Exactly that! Amongst this mob of threadbare fortune hunters there was one who stood apart. I suppose he was a nephew – or he may have been a great-nephew. He was all right. I’d never met anyone like him before. He was a naval officer. He thought (and he taught me) that having a good time could be an end in itself. Hard to believe but such a thought had never entered my head! He was stationed in Malta. If you’ve got access to a navy pinnace whenever you want one, Malta’s not far from Nice and it occurred to me that he had a certain advantage over the other players. He had a certain advantage over me too.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Joe, ‘let me guess. He proved himself to be a honey-tongued seducer? Am I right?’

‘My, Commander! No wonder you occupy so prominent a place in the detective force! Nothing escapes you! And you’re right. I was undone. And before I gain your undeserved sympathy for the horrors of my lot – I’ll tell you – I had never until then enjoyed anything so much as being undone! He was very good fun. He was extremely amusing. He had lots and lots of rackety friends. He knew his way up and down the Côte d’Azur. His career was not very committing – I wouldn’t be at all surprised in those days if you explained to your commanding officer that you were playing a rich relative you wouldn’t get leave to do so! The navy was very like that in those pre-war days. So it went on but Nemesis stalked!’

‘Nemesis in the form of Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe?’

‘Yes,’ said Isobel with a laugh. ‘Came a night when the bloody voice tube didn’t work or I’d forgotten to put the whistle back in it – you can imagine the tableau! The door opens, and framed in the doorway, dressing-gowned and awful, my employer, his great-aunt, amazed and aghast to have imperially caught us in the act! In a trice – lost! Lost to him any chance he might have had of inheriting, lost to me, my job. I had, you see, taken my first step on the road to ruin. My employer made clear her intention of writing immediately to my father to apprise him of the fact that his daughter was a harlot! (I’d love to see that letter!) But I was damned if I’d hang about waiting for his reply. I must say Edwin – his name was Edwin – was very decent about it. I had my clothes and about thirty pounds, not much else. He gave me twenty-five pounds. All he had, I think. “Don’t want you to go short, old girl,” he said.

‘Well, I did go short. Fifty-five pounds didn’t go far even in those days on the Riviera. I had no means of making a living and when I was reduced to my last few francs I decided to do what I had seen others doing. No, not what you’re thinking! Not yet at any rate… I started singing. There were lots of performers of different nationalities just singing in the streets. I hadn’t got a wonderful voice – well, you’ve heard me – but I was very pretty and fresh and I seemed to appeal to rich old gentlemen. I was making enough to survive by singing in front of the cafés for a couple of hours each evening. One evening I came upon a very jolly crowd who seemed to have taken over a café in the old town. They were foreign. I listened and identified their language as Russian. Well, I knew a Russian song or two – ’

‘That story about your singing master?’ Joe interrupted. ‘It was true then?’

‘Of course! I was brought up to tell the truth and I almost always do. So I thought, I’ll show you! I’ll get your attention! Russians are very romantic, you know, so I started to sing the most heart-rending song I knew. It worked! They wept! They joined in the chorus! They turned out their pockets for me – not that it did me much good – they were as destitute as I was, I think! But they took me into their group, they made much of me, they gave me supper. But more than that…’

Her voice trailed away and Joe knew that she was thousands of miles and many years away from him.

‘One of them was a singer. A real singer. Feodor Korsovsky. He took me home with him that night and for the next year we were never apart. I loved him. He said he loved me.’

‘What separated you?’ Joe asked. His satisfaction at having guessed that Alice Conyers had been hiding a relationship with the Russian took second place to his curiosity as the story unfolded.

Alice remained silent for a long time. ‘The Atlantic Ocean,’ she said finally. ‘Is that big enough or should I also mention the wife I was not aware he had in New York? And perhaps the Great War which kept him away from Europe for four years? Will that do?’ Her voice had taken on a sharp edge.

‘He kept the programme you scribbled on…’

‘Yes. That was quite a surprise… do you mind if I keep it? It means a lot to me.’

‘No,’ said Joe. ‘I suppose that’s all right. I’ll ask for it if I need it.’

‘So there I was alone again. Feodor had been offered a wonderful engagement in New York. He couldn’t afford to take me with him so he gave me what he had and I prepared to wait until he came back. He never did. I was hurt, of course, but more than that I was angry. But I knew exactly what to do. Amongst the friends that Edwin had introduced me to there was a commander RN. Almost a caricature – red face, roving eye, probably the most entirely amoral man I’ve ever met but friendly and rather attractive. Finding me as it were vacant, he was very ready to take me on and, indeed, according to a good Edwardian tradition, install me in a little sea-front flat in St Raphael.

‘The flat became a tremendous rendezvous for naval officers. I don’t suppose for a moment that Bertie was particularly faithful to me. I don’t recall that I was particularly faithful to him! I was having a really good time. But as the saying goes, All good things come to an end. This was 1914 and suddenly the coast was full of French army officers as mobilization gained ground. Some of them were very dashing – Zouaves, Spahis, even a contingent of the Légion Etrangère, all with money to spend, all glad of a welcome. But none so glad as Colonel Chasteley-Riancourt. Cavalry soldier, very grand. A perfide aristo if ever I saw one! He moved me out of the St Raphael flat into a little house he owned in the hills behind Monaco.’

She paused. ‘Let me look at you, Joe. What do I see? Icy disapproval?’

‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Joe. ‘If you see anything at all you see fascination! Please don’t stop!’

‘Well, as I say, there we were living in Monaco. And, if Chas had a fault – what do I mean, if Chas had a fault? Chas had thousands of faults not the least of which was an inability to take his eyes off the roulette wheel and this was rather agony. I had to sit and watch thousands, millions of francs pouring through his fingers. Francs that would have been better bestowed on my little soft, scented hands! Have you ever met a compulsive gambler?’

‘Yes, I have,’ said Joe. ‘I shared a billet with one in France. They’re a race apart.’

‘Chas was very much of that race. He was very Old France, you know. Conventional in many ways and what in that exalted world do you do when you find yourself short of a few francs – you peel a picture off the wall and sell it. A Fragonard, a Lancret, perhaps even a Chardin. But of course, there he was in a flat in Monaco, not much to sell so what did he do…?’

Joe thought he knew but, ‘Go on, then,’ he said, ‘what did he do?’

For a moment the jaunty tone wavered. ‘Well, very practical man, Chas. Not perhaps romantic but certainly practical. He sold that for which he could get the best price. He sold me. I’ve often wondered for how much. My purchaser was a Belgian, Aristide Mézière, an arms manufacturer, rich as only sin can make you. His idea was to export me to Paris where he had a house on the Place Vendôme, recently acquired and needing a little exotic furniture. Good God! If that had lasted I might be the Baronne Mézière now!’

‘How old were you, Isobel?’ Joe asked quietly.

‘This was 1915 so I was eighteen or maybe nineteen.’

‘But you never made it to the Place Vendôme?’

‘No, I didn’t. Fate took a hand. In those days Fate was always taking a hand! Perhaps it still is.’

She shivered slightly and looked up at Joe speculatively then snuggled closer, passing an arm under his jacket, seeking his warmth and closeness. He was conscious that she was wearing only a light silk dress and after the heat of the chase she must be cooling off rapidly. He enjoyed her touch and for a moment, perhaps more than a moment, his senses began to spin. He took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders, putting his arm once again around her and effectively pinioning her arms to her sides. He had not forgotten that the woman in his arms was a crack shot and she was still holding a revolver in her right hand.

‘Suddenly there were no men left on the Côte d’Azur. No gaiety. Everything closed down. I decided to play my own game. I sold the little jewellery I had, took my maid and left for Paris. I put on a wedding ring and became a widow. I had decided to choose and not be chosen any longer. I set up in a smart apartment in the Avenue de l’Opéra and I chose the lovers I entertained. There were plenty of officers on leave constantly from the front. By this time I spoke French as one born there and very aristocratic French. I was decidedly a poule de luxe, Commander!’