They chose it because they had followed her, very carefully and discreetly, all the way from Cowes, and they had not the slightest intention of losing her now.
She had settled herself in the hotel’s restaurant and was preparing to order her dinner when the fat man came in and sat down at a neighbouring table.
The fatness made the sitting down into a rather protracted operation. Arabella watched the performance discreetly but with more than normal curiosity. She had a vague feeling that there was something familiar about the fat man; but it was no more than that, and for the moment she dismissed it.
He was large generally, but his midriff was of a vast and pendulous corpulence out of proportion to the rest of him. Arabella noticed with concealed amusement that he had to sit well back from the table to leave room for that great wobbling paunch. His sparse greying hair was matched by a similarly greying but luxuriant moustache that drooped to give him the look of an ageing Mexican bandido.
The impression, however, was contradicted by his clothing, which was so incongruously dapper that Arabella had to control herself sternly to keep from giggling out loud. His trousers were immaculate light-grey flannels, belted at the waist — which in his case meant somewhere on the re-entrant undersurface of that ballooning midriff. At least two of his chins were camouflaged by a startlingly debonair cravat, and the upper part of his pear-shaped torso was gift-wrapped absurdly in the type of blazer in which lean young men at Cambridge once used to look dashing.
Arabella’s attention dwelt only briefly on these details of the fat man. She was too hungry to trouble herself about where, if anywhere, she might have seen him before, or someone who resembled him. She was impatient to catch the eye of the white-jacketed waiter, an apparently world-weary old retainer of a type still found in some French provincial hotels. He had a face like a cross between a pensioned-off clown and a tired bloodhound, and he seemed quietly determined, in the traditional manner of waiters, that his eye should not be caught. He pottered busily at a corner trolley with napkins and cutlery, or straightened a tablecloth here and there, giving the impression that such engrossing exertions could easily fill his entire day.
Arabella toyed with the menu impatiently. She was about to call out when the fat man beat her to it.
“Monsieur!”
The voice was a rich bass, full of authority. He rapped imperiously on the table, snapped his fingers and assumed an expression of fierce chivalry, as the startled waiter came towards him.
“The young lady is waiting to be served,” he told him in French. “S’il vous plait!”
“Mais certainement.” The waiter turned to Arabella. “I am sorry you have been kept waiting.”
“De rien,” Arabella said after nodding her thanks to the fat man. And she continued in rather hesitant French. “I should like to have, first, some hors d’oeuvres, and afterwards the filet mignon, medium, with a green salad.”
The fat man watched with his head cocked slightly on one side.
“Permit me to advise you, Madame,” he put in, in English. “I could not avoid to overhear your order. May I suggest, if you are considering a wine, the Chateau Durfort-Vivens? It is a fine Bordeaux wine, most reasonably priced.” The fat man hesitated. “Indeed, if you will permit a further liberty, I too will be feasting on le filet mignon de Charolais and I will be honoured if you will join me at the table and share with me a bottle of the Chateau Durfort-Vivens.”
“Well, I don’t know...” Arabella looked appraisingly at the fat man. He was what Mrs Cloonan would undoubtedly have called “rather forward”, but he might well make an interesting dinner companion. She wavered. The baggy-featured waiter glanced from one to the other.
Arabella made up her mind.
“Why, yes, I should like that. Thank you.”
The fat man beamed. After he had dispatched the waiter with a barrage of instructions, Arabella sat down at his table.
“Well, well,” he said, as he un-Gallically tucked one corner of a napkin behind his cravat — making himself look like a vast nursery Tweedledum — “a remarkable coincidence, is it not, Madame Tatenor?”
Arabella stared at him startled.
“I beg your pardon. Do I know you?”
The fat Frenchman spread his hands apologetically.
“In truth, it is I who should beg yours. Perhaps I should have pretended not to recognise you, rather than place myself in the necessity for reminding you of what must be most distressing. Perhaps you did not notice? Quite understandable in the circumstances. You see, I was in the courtroom during the inquest on your unfortunate husband. It was a terrible tragedy, but terrible. And you are a widow so young.” He shrugged to convey the hopelessness of trying to put these things into words. “You have my deepest sympathies.”
“Thank you. Now that you mention it, I think I do recall seeing you in court.”
The fat man allowed himself a restrained smile, and twirled his moustache with magnificent resignation.
“Madame — I am difficult to overlook altogether.” He patted his gross midriff affectionately. “A consequence, I am afraid, of gastronomic excess. A lifelong habit which I am now too old, fortunately, to consider breaking... But what am I thinking of? I am shamefully forgetting the manners. I must introduce myself. I am Jacques Descartes. I was making on the island some negotiations in a matter of bulls and cows. Now I am returning to my home in the south, I drive with my assistant until we tire, then we stop at this delightful hotel and — suddenly, there in the restaurant, quelle surprise! Whom do I see but the beautiful — you permit me, Madame? — the beautiful Madame Tatenor. It is a little world, is it not? Such a little world!”
“It certainly is,” Arabella agreed. And then for conversation’s sake she added: “Whereabouts in the south is your home? I suppose you’re some kind of — farmer?”
Descartes winced at the word.
“Not a farmer, Madame. No, no! I am an entrepreneur of the bullfighting in France. I am a breeder and trainer of the picador horses, also a breeder of bulls. You know, perhaps, that not only the Spanish have their bulls and picadors. I have my haras in the village of St Martin-du-Marais, in the Camargue. There I live, and there I own also an hotel. It is true I have also several local farms under my wings, but that is purely a business operation. My horses and bulls, they are my real love. My associates and I are proud, most proud, of our successes.”
“And — if I may ask without seeming too nosey — was your trip to England, to the island, a success, would you say?”
Descartes hesitated.
“Let me put it in this way. I have a... a lead to follow up, which could prove to be most rewarding. Most rewarding. Oh yes, I think you can say that our trip was well worth while.”
“But what happened to the assistant you mentioned?” Arabella enquired. “Isn’t he hungry?”
Descartes smiled broadly, exhibiting some expensive gold dental work.
“Enrico is indisposed. He is not at all a good traveller when a passenger, I am afraid. So he sleeps now. And it is good. Tomorrow he will drive, and when driving he will not feel sick. It is so with some people.”
“How about you? Will you feel queasy when he’s driving?”
“Definitely not. My digestive system has become hardened during all the years of abuse — glorious abuse!” Descartes leaned forward, as far as his midriff would allow, with a confiding and avuncular manner. “I confess, Madame Tatenor, I am an incorrigible gourmand. Food is for me a grand passion, perhaps the grand passion I failed to find with a woman. But life is so, n’est-ce-pas? We find our compensations. For example, I detect, do I not, the arrival of our hors d’oeuvres!”