‘Dusty’s wrong,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t angry. She had some trouble with... er... a visitor in her box. She explained to me after... and invited me to Eaton Square, which is where I am now.’
‘Oh,’ he said, mollified. ‘All right, then. Kinley’s race is televised tomorrow,’ he said, ‘so I’ll be watching.’
‘Great.’
‘Well then... Goodnight, Paul.’
‘Goodnight, Wykeham,’ I said.
Wryly I telephoned to the answering machine in my own house, but there was nothing much in the way of messages, and presently Dawson returned with a supper of chicken soup, cold ham and a banana (my choice).
Later together, we made another tour of the house, meeting John Grundy, a sixty-year-old widower, on his way to his own room. Both men said they would be undisturbed to see me wandering around now and then in the small hours, but although I did prowl up and down once or twice, the big house was silent all night, its clocks ticking in whispers. I slept on and off between linen sheets under a silk coverlet in pyjamas thoughtfully supplied by Dawson, and in the morning was ushered in to see Roland de Brescou.
He was alone in his sitting room, freshly dressed in a city suit with a white shirt and foulard tie. Black shoes, brilliantly polished. White hair, neatly brushed. No concessions to his condition, no concession to weekends.
His wheelchair was unusual in having a high back — and I’d often wondered why more weren’t designed that way — so that he could rest his head if he felt like dozing. That morning, although he was awake, he was resting his head anyway.
‘Please sit down,’ he said civilly, and watched me take the same place as the evening before, in the dark red leather armchair. He looked if possible even frailer, with grey shadows in his skin, and the long hands which lay quiet on the padded armrests had a quality of transparency, the flesh thin as paper over the bones.
I felt almost indecently strong and healthy in contrast, and asked if there were anything I could fetch and carry for him.
He said no with a twitch of eye muscle that might have been interpreted as an understanding smile, as if he were accustomed to such guilt reactions in visitors.
‘I wish to thank you,’ he said, ‘for coming to our defence. For helping Princess Casilia.’
He had never in my presence called her ‘my wife’, nor would I ever have referred to her in that way to him. His formal patterns of speech were curiously catching.
‘Also,’ he said, as I opened my mouth to demur, ‘for giving me time to consider what to do about Henri Nanterre.’ He moistened his dry lips with the tip of an apparently desiccated tongue. ‘I have been unable to sleep... I cannot risk harm to Princess Casilia or anyone around us. It is time for me to relinquish control. To find a successor... but I have no children, and there are few de Brescous left. It isn’t going to be easy to find any family member to take my place.’
Even the thought of the discussions and decisions such a course would lead to seemed to exhaust him.
‘I miss Louis,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘I cannot continue without him. It is time for me to retire. I should have seen... when Louis died... it was time.’ He seemed to be talking to himself as much as me, clarifying his thoughts, his eyes wandering.
I made a nondescript noise of nothing much more than interest. I would have agreed that the time to retire was long past, though, and it almost seemed he caught something of that thought, because he said calmly, ‘My grandfather was in total command at ninety. I expected to die also at the head of the company, as I am the Chairman.’
‘Yes, I see.’
His gaze steadied on my face. ‘Princess Casilia will go to the races today. She hopes you will go with her in her car.’ He paused. ‘May I ask you... to defend her from harm?’
‘Yes,’ I said matter-of-factly, ‘with my life.’
It didn’t even sound melodramatic after the past evening’s events, and he seemed to take it as a normal remark. He merely nodded a fraction and I thought that, in retrospect, I would be hotly embarrassed at myself. But then, I probably meant it, and the truth pops out.
It seemed anyway what he wanted to hear. He nodded again a couple of times slowly as if to seal the pact, and I stood up to take my leave. There was a briefcase, I saw, lying half under one of the chairs between me and the door, and I picked it up to ask him where he would like it put.
‘It isn’t mine,’ he said, without much interest. ‘It must be Gerald Greening’s. He’s returning this morning.’
I had a sudden picture, however, of the pathetic Valery producing the handgun application form from that case, and of scuttling away empty-handed at the end. When I explained to Roland de Brescou, he suggested I took the case downstairs to the hall, so that when its owner called back to collect it, he wouldn’t need to come up.
I took the case away with me but, lacking de Brescou’s incurious honesty, went up to the bamboo room, not down.
The case, black leather, serviceable, unostentatious, proved to be unlocked and unexciting, containing merely what looked like a duplicate of the form which Roland de Brescou hadn’t signed.
On undistinguished buff paper, mostly in small badly printed italics, and of course in French, it hardly looked worth the upheaval it was causing. As far as I could make out, it wasn’t specifically to do with armaments, but had many dotted-line spaces needing to be filled in. No one had filled in anything on the duplicate, although presumably the one Valery had taken away with him had been ready for signing.
I put the form in a drawer of a bedside table and took the briefcase downstairs, meeting Gerald Greening as he arrived. We said good mornings with the memory of last night’s violence hovering, and he said he had not only rewritten the sandbags but had had the document properly typed and provided with seals. Would I be so good as to repeat my services as witness?
We returned to Roland de Brescou and wrote our names, and I mentioned again about telling Danielle and Prince Litsi. I couldn’t help thinking of them. They would be starting about now on ‘The Masterworks of Leonardo...’ dammit, dammit.
‘Yes, yes,’ Greening was saying, ‘I understand they return tomorrow evening. Perhaps you could inform them yourself.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And now,’ Greening said, ‘to update the police.’
He busied himself on the telephone, reaching yesterday’s man and higher, obtaining the promise of a CID officer’s attentions, admitting he didn’t know where Nanterre could be found. ‘Immediately he surfaces again, we will inform you,’ he was saying, and I wondered how immediately would be immediately, should Nanterre turn up with bullets.
Roland de Brescou however showed approval, not dismay, and I left them beginning to discuss how best to find a de Brescou successor. I made various preparations for the day, and I was waiting in the hall when the princess came down to go to the races, with Dawson hovering and Thomas, alerted by telephone, drawing smoothly to a halt outside. She was wearing a cream-coloured coat, not the sables, with heavy gold earrings and no hat, and although she seemed perfectly calm she couldn’t disguise apprehensive glances up and down the street as she was seen across the pavement by her three assorted minders.
‘It is important,’ she said conversationally as soon as she was settled and Thomas had centrally locked all the doors, ‘not to let peril deter one from one’s pleasures.’
‘Mm,’ I said noncommittally.
She smiled sweetly. ‘You, Kit, do not.’
‘Those pleasures earn me my living.’
‘Peril should not, then, deter one from one’s duty.’ She sighed. ‘So stuffy, don’t you think, put that way? Duty and pleasure so often coincide, deep down, don’t you think?’