The man in the white jacket returned and said in what sounded to me a rather insolent tone, ‘Doctor Fischer has a bit of fever, ma’am, and he regrets that he can’t receive you.’
‘Ask him if there’s anything he needs - I’ll go and get it at once. Some nice Muscat grapes? ‘
‘Doctor Fischer has Muscat grapes.’
‘I only meant it as an example. Ask him if there is anything I can do for him, anything at all.’
The front door bell rang and the servant, disdaining a reply, went to answer it. He came back up the steps to the lounge followed by a thin old man in a dark suit bowed almost double. He projected his head forward and looked, I thought, rather like the numeral seven. He held his left arm bent at his side, so that he resembled the continental way of writing that number.
‘He has a cold,’ Mrs Montgomery said, ‘he won’t see us.’
‘Mr Kips has an appointment,’ the manservant said, and taking no more notice of us, he led Mr Kips up the marble staircase. I called after him, ‘Tell Doctor Fischer that I have a message from his daughter.’
‘A bit of fever!’ Mrs Montgomery exclaimed. ‘Don’t you believe it. That’s not the way to his bedroom. That’s the way to his study. But of course, you know the house.’
‘It’s the first time I’ve been here.’
‘Oh, I see. That explains it - you’re not one of us.’
‘I’m living with his daughter.’
‘Really,’ she said. ‘How interesting and how forthright. A pretty girl, I’ve been told. But I’ve never seen her. As I said, she doesn’t like parties.’ She put her hand up to her hair, jangling a gold bracelet. ‘I have all the responsibilities, you see,’ she said. ‘I have to act as hostess whenever Doctor Fischer gives a party. I am the only woman he invites nowadays. It’s a great honour, of course - but all the same… General Krueger generally chooses the wine… If there is wine,’ she added mysteriously. ‘The General’s a great connoisseur. ‘
‘Isn’t there always wine at his parties?’ I asked.
She looked at me in silence as though my question was an impertinent one. Then she relented a little. ‘Doctor Fischer,’ she said, ‘has a great sense of humour. I wonder he hasn’t invited you to one of his parties, but perhaps under the circumstances it wouldn’t do. We are a very small group,’ she added. ‘We all know each other well, and we are all so fond, so very, very fond, of Doctor Fischer. But surely you at least know Monsieur Belmont - Monsieur Henri Belmont? He’ll solve any tax problem.’
‘I have no tax problems,’ I admitted.
As I sat on the second sofa under the great crystal chandelier I realized it was almost as though I had told her that I dropped my h’s. Mrs Montgomery had looked away from me in obvious embarrassment.
In spite of my father’s small title which had procured him a niche for a time in Who’s Who I felt myself an outcast in Mrs Montgomery’s company and now, to add to my shame, the manservant tripped down the stairs and without giving me a glance announced, ‘Doctor Fischer will see Mr Jones at five o’clock on Thursday,’ and moved away into the unknown regions of the great house which it seemed strange to think had been so recently Anna-Luise’s home.
‘Well, Mr Jones, was that the name? It has been pleasant meeting you. I shall stay on a while to hear from Mr Kips how our friend fares. We have to look after the dear man.’ lt was only later that I realized I had encountered the first two Toads.
4
‘Give it up,’ Anna-Luise advised me. ‘You don’t owe him anything. You are not one of the Toads. He knows quite well where I am now.’
‘He knows you are with someone called Jones - that’s all.’
‘If he wants to he can find out your name, profession, place of business, everything. You are a resident foreigner. The police have your name on the files. He’s only got to ask.’
‘The files are secret.’
‘Don’t believe anything is secret as far as my father is concerned. There’s probably a Toad even among the police.’
‘You make him sound like Our Father in Heaven - his will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.’
‘That about describes him,’ she said.
‘You make me curious. ‘
‘Oh, keep the appointment if you must,’ she said.
‘But be careful. Please be careful. And be more than ever careful if he smiles.’
‘A Dentophil smile,’ I mocked her, for indeed both of us used this toothpaste. It had been recommended by my dentist. Perhaps he was a Toad too.
‘Don’t ever mention Dentophil to him,’ she said.
‘He doesn’t like to be reminded of how his fortune was made.’
‘Doesn’t he use it himself?’
‘No. He uses a thing called a water-pik. Keep off the subject of teeth altogether or he’ll think you are getting at him. He mocks others, but no one mocks him. He has a monopoly in mockery.’
When I cried off work at four o’clock on Thursday I felt none of the courage which I had felt with Anna-Luise. I was just a man called Alfred Jones, earning three thousand francs a month, a man in his fifties, who worked for a chocolate firm. I had left my Fiat with Anna-Luise; I took the train to Geneva and walked from the station to a taxi rank. There was what the Swiss call a Pub Anglais not far from the rank, named, as you would expect, the Winston Churchill, with an unrecognisable sign and wooden panelling and stained-glass windows (for some reason the white and red roses of York and Lancaster) and an English bar with china beer handles, perhaps the only authentic antiques, for that adjective could hardly be applied to the carved wooden settees and the bogus barrels which served as tables and the pressurized Whitbread. The hours of opening I am glad to say were not authentically English and I planned to drink up a little courage before I took a taxi.
As the draught beer was almost as expensive as whisky I ordered a whisky. I wanted to talk in order to keep my mind off things, so I stood at the bar and tried to engage the landlord in conversation.
‘Get many English customers?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Why? I would have thought…’
‘They have no money.’ He was a Swiss and not forthcoming.
I drank a second whisky and went out. I asked the taxi-man, ‘Do you know Doctor Fischer’s house at Versoix? ‘ He was a French Swiss and more forthcoming than the barman.
‘Are you going to see the doctor? ‘ he asked. ‘Yes.’
‘You had better be careful.’
‘Why? He isn’t dangerous, is he?’
‘Un peu farfelu’, he said.
‘In what way?’
‘You have not heard of his parties?’
‘Only rumours. Nobody’s ever given me any details.’
‘Ah, they are sworn to secrecy,’ he said. ‘Who?’.
‘The people he invites.’
‘Then how does anybody know about them?’
‘Nobody does know,’ he said.
The same insolent manservant opened the door to me. ‘Have you an appointment?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What name?’
‘Jones.’
‘I don’t know that he can see you.’
‘I told you, I have an appointment.’
‘Oh, appointments,’ he said in a tone of disdain.
‘Everyone says he has an appointment.’
‘Run along and tell him I’m here.’
He scowled at me and went, leaving me this time on the doorstep. He was quite a long time gone and I nearly walked away. I suspected him of lingering. When at last he returned he said, ‘He’ll see you,’ and led me through the lounge and up the marble stairs. On the stairs was a painting of a woman in flowing robes holding, with an expression of great tenderness, a skulclass="underline" I am no expert, but it looked like a genuine seventeenth-century painting and not a copy.
‘Mr Jones,’ the man announced me.
I looked across a table at Doctor Fischer and was surprised to see a man much like other men ( there had been so many hints and warnings), a man more or less of my own age with a red moustache and hair that was beginning to lose its fire - perhaps he tinted the moustache. He had pouches under his eyes and very heavy lids. He looked like a man who didn’t sleep well at night. He was seated behind a big desk in the only comfortable chair.