Midnight Plus One

I shook my head. 'You were right first time, Ginette.

With me – I'd have been off playing games with people like Maganhard or-'

'Pardon me, but you would bloody well not.' I looked at her quickly; she seemed very calm, very certain. Maybe a bit too much so.

'It was fifteen years ago,' I said.

'You believe you have changed so much in that time?'

I scowled. 'All right, maybe I haven't changed enough: I'm still Caneton. But it's too late to change that now. I'm too old to go back and start learning to be a lawyer and how to do legal things like getting film stars out of drunk-driving charges.'

'You would not have to go back. There is work here: Clos Pinel needs a manager.'

Just like that.

The garden was quiet around us, as quiet as it ever gets in the south, with just the dull chirping of cicadas that you can't believe even cicadas listen to. The sun was a flare of white light drifting towards the blue hills, and leaving just a hint of the faint burnt smell of summer. And all I had to say was Yes.

But there were other hills: the green, misty damp slopes of Switzerland. And I'd said Yes to them three days ago.

I said: 'I've got a job, Ginette. One that I'm good at.'

'I am not offering you charity, Louis. You would work very damn hard in this business.'

'Would I have to learn to love Pinel?'

'It would not be much more illegal than your work now.'

I shook my head slowly. 'I've still got a job.'

'You would be good at it,' she said rapidly. 'We want your contacts, your experience of business and the law. We export everywhere now, to London, to-'

'Ginette!' Her voice had had a hard brittle edge that in anyone else I'd have called fear.

She held herself very still, her head up, her eyes tight shut.

I took a step and put my arms round her and her body reached against me, hard and trembling. Her face lifted to mine.

A pistol cracked in the Château.

EIGHTEEN

I was saying: 'Nobody fires just one shot to kill a man; always two. And if he'd killed Harvey, there'd be Maganhard, or Maganhard if he'd killed Harvey. Tell me I'm right – quick.'

She was crouched, too, down beside the laurels at the edge of the lawn. Old reactions die hard.

'It's your drunken friend Harvey shooting up the bottles in the Wild West saloon.'

I'd guessed that, too, but it didn't make me feel any better. Why should he stop at bottles? And I still wasn't carrying the Mauser.

I stood up reluctantly and walked across the gravel towards the front door. It felt as wide as the desert.

Inside the front hall three people were standing as stiff as a waxworks tableau. Harvey was leaning against the wall on my right, with the gun pointing vaguely down towards his own feet but not looking any less dangerous because of that. Maurice was backed up against the opposite wall, staring at Harvey with a look about as friendly as a hungry vulture. Miss Jarman was just standing. The phone was off its hook and lying on the floor.

The gun twitched my way as I came in. I said: 'Put that damn thing away. What's happened here?'

Harvey said: 'I just kind of don't like men attacking women – you know?' His voice was carefully languid, but a bit thick, as if he was having to pick each word one at a time. Probably he was, by now.

'Well, it's over now. Get back to your bottle.' I turned to Maurice.'Pourquoi-'

Harvey said carefully: 'I heard her yell so I came out and there was this guy fighting with her.'

Miss Jarman said: 'I was just trying to use the telephone, when-'

'Who to?'

She stared innocently at me, eyes wide. 'To… a friend. I thought-'

I took a couple of quick steps and picked up the phone.

'Qui et-' But the line was dead by now. I slammed it back.

'I put a security blackout on the use of this phone,' I said. 'Maurice was just interpreting that for me. Call it a misunderstanding. All right -who were you ringing?'

'A friend. ' Her chin was up and she had the girls' boarding-school expression on her face. She wasn't telling who put frogs in the Latin mistress's bed.

'All right,' I said again. 'But if you're selling us out, remember the methods they've used so far: you stand as good a chance of stopping a bullet as anybody. Maybe better, If they don't get me with the first shot.'

Harvey had straightened up off the wall. 'And kind of what the hell are you talking about?'

I swung round. I'd had just about enough of him and his thirst and his tendency to pull his gun on the wrong people. Maybe he wouldn't get his gun up level before I'd broken his wrist for him…

Ginette said: 'Give Louis the gun or I will kill you.'

We both looked. She was standing in the shadows at the back of the hall, leaning stiffly against the wall, with the Mauser held in both hands out in front of her.

'It is on automatic, Mr Lovell,' she added.

'You wouldn't fire that thing in here,' he said slowly. He studied her carefully: the way she was holding it meant she knew what she was holding – and he could see that.

She said contemptuously: 'Bet your life on it, then.'

He took a long breath. A gunman believes he can never be beaten – but he knows damn well when he has been. She had the Mauser aimed low, to allow for the kick. Whatever he did now, he'd get filleted like a fish if she pulled that trigger.

He tossed me his gun.

Ginette said: 'Thank you. Please remember I have the exclusive shooting rights in my own house. Where did that bullet go, Maurice?'

He indicated a hole in the wall near the telephone.

Ginette came up to us and offered me the Mauser. I shook my head. 'It's over now. I'll get him to bed.' I stuck his gun in my pocket.

Harvey was watching me with a faraway look and a twist of cynical amusement at the edge of his mouth. 'I could take you even without a gun,' he offered.

I shrugged. 'Maybe. We've both been through unarmed-combat school. It wouldn't prove anything.'

He nodded and started towards the stairs. I said to Miss Jarman: 'Get whatever bottle he was using.'

'Don't you think he's had enough?' She was still back in the fifth-form dormitory.

I shook my head wearily. 'It doesn't matter what you or I think. Just get the bottle.'

I followed Harvey upstairs. At the top we met Maganhard; Harvey pushed straight past without seeming to notice him. Maganhard gave him a steely look that turned immediately into a suspicious glare. He turned to me and seemed about to say something – but I pushed past as well.

In his bedroom, Harvey yanked the silk cover straight off the bed and dropped face down on to it, all in one movement. After a moment or two he rolled on his back. It took an effort.

'Maybe I'm tired.' He sounded faintly surprised.

Behind me, Miss Jarman came in with a bottle of Queen Anne whisky and a glass. I took the bottle; from the weight, he'd been working on it hard.

She asked: 'What are you going to do? '

'Get him ready for tomorrow.' I poured a small dose into a glass.

'With that?'

'It's what he usually gets ready for tomorrow on.' I gave him the glass. She stared at him, then me. 'You don't really care, do you?'

'Who were you ringing?'

She glared. 'Perhaps one day you'll know.' She slammed the door as she went out.

Harvey raised his glass to me, and sipped. 'You honestly think she's selling us out?'

'Somebody is.'

'I kind of hope not,' he said thoughtfully. 'She's a nice kid.'

'It's mutual. She wants to cure you.'

'I noticed.' He sipped again. 'And you don't care?' He watched me with his little cynical smile.

'Not my business. After tomorrow, you and I daren't meet. You know that.'