"Well do, dear, do. It'll give the hall a cleaner look. Do it this afternoon-you'll see instantly that I'm right."
Percy promised to give it thought, and Peter smiled as he rang off. The watercolor was one of Percy's best things-Peter would be pleased to own it himself. But it was always necessary to make these little tests, check around and see who still obeyed. If Percy did take the picture down, then that meant things hadn't changed: he was still pasha of the Mountain and the peasants still ran to kiss his feet.
"Oh, dear," he said suddenly, looking up at himself in a gilded mirror. "Peter Barclay: you are a nasty pouf!"
The phone rang just as he was staring at himself. It was Vicar Wick, calling about the note.
"I've spoken to Consul General Whittle," he said in his nervous voice. "As the police here refuse to help, we're going to send the note up to Scotland Yard. Not for fingerprints, mind you-they're probably all smudged out. Handwriting analysis-that's the thing. We'll catch the culprit yet."
"Yes," said Peter, somewhat dazzled by the thought. "Sounds perfectly reasonable to me."
"We've thought of everything, Whittle and I, and we've come up with a jolly good plan. At the Consulate they've got a file of old Christmas notes and B amp;Bs. We'll send the whole batch up to London too, so that hopefully they'll match some writings up."
"Good thinking, Vicar, I must say."
"Thank you. I thought so myself. Also, with your permission I want to bring in Colonel Brown. He's an avid reader of detective novels and would make an excellent sleuth. Plan is for him to give a series of luncheons, invite all the suspects, and try to smoke them out. Watch the eyelashes and all that. I think it's worth a try. Meanwhile next Sunday I shall preach a sermon that'll get our man where he hurts. Just look around church for a pair of burning ears-we may trap him right there."
It all sounded excellent, the Vicar's three-pronged plan, and set Peter to pondering the punishment he'd exact. Ostracism was one possibility. Let everyone know the anonymous author's name, then put him in Coventry until he was driven from Tangier. But the more he thought about it, the more he preferred the opposite course: seduce the villain by sweetness, treat him like his closest friend, and then, when he'd done that, confide how much the note had hurt. He'd offer his fair cheek to those sickening underbred lips, and then, he thought, we shall truly see just what the word "two-faced" means.
He laughed at the thought, then dismissed it from his mind. While the Vicar, the Colonel, and Scotland Yard worked to break the case, he'd forget about the note and have some fun. If his days as pasha were numbered, he'd do well to enjoy his power now. Eventually, some way, he'd find his enemy out and crush him like a fly.
He wandered into his garden, along its many paths, stroking his day lilies as he walked. The garden was nearly as he wanted it, after a quarter century of work, but still there were problems with the view. There was something wrong there that disturbed him more and more. And as much as he tried, he didn't know how to set it right.
It was Dradeb that bothered him-that damnable, horrid slum. It lay between the Mountain and the city and ruined the whole effect. It wasn't that Dradeb looked so terrible from the Mountain-from high up it appeared as a white cubistic maze. It was just knowing that it was there, knowing what it was and how it reeked, that spoiled his paradise.
But what to do? It would be splendid if he could just wave a wand and make it all go away. Or if, by some magic in the night, it could become transformed into a valley full of Moroccan shepherds playing flutes. That would be marvelous, and then the filthy Jew's River could become a babbling stream. Or else, he thought, curling his lip, those damn people down there could be taught to devour their young.
But then, suddenly, there came to him a solution, and he wanted to kick himself for not having thought of it before. All he needed were a few fast-growing eucalyptus. Then, in a couple of years, he could screen the Dradeb out.
He became excited and entered the garden again. He walked to the edge of his property, then sadly shook his head. There wasn't enough room, and his shrubs would be ruined by the eucalyptus' invasive roots. But the property just below his, vacant Moroccan-owned land, would make a perfect place for such a grove. He could plant down there and, when the trees reached the proper height, pollard their tops and create a verdant wall.
The problem was to get hold of that land. He couldn't afford to buy it himself. Perhaps Camilla would help-she had old Weltonwhist's fortune and could certainly spare some pounds. Yes-she might do it; it would be a good investment for her too. She'd probably jump at the chance if he handled her right. Yes, that was it, he'd get Camilla to buy the land, then plant the trees and abolish the excrescence from his sight.
He began to dream of how he'd make the Mountain reach Tangier, of the view he'd have: foliage, the city, and the sea.
Kalinka
Whenever Hamid thought about it, he was amazed by how little he knew about Kalinka. It was his habit to plumb a person's depths-he did this every day in his office, interrogating suspects, probing informants, seeking a conception of their characters beyond the information they had to give. But with Kalinka it was different. He hadn't pressed her, and as a result she'd remained mysterious, the mysterious woman who'd floated into his life.
He wondered whether he feared the ruin of an illusion if he came to understand her well. But he did know her, knew every curve, every crevice in her body, knew the texture of her hair, so long and black and thick, the way morning light could gleam off her ivory skin. And her eyes, large and dark, surrounded by disks of glittering hazel-he knew the wide-open softness of them when she awoke, and the rimless Oriental lids that covered them while she slept. Yes, he knew her, but underneath there was something he did not know. Her history. Her past.
He was thinking about this as he sat in his car parked across the street from Peter Zvegintzov's shop, waiting for the customers to leave so he could go inside and confront the Russian with the fact Kalinka had revealed the night before.
They'd just finished dinner, were sipping tea in silence, when suddenly she'd turned to him and spoke.
"He followed me."
"What? Who followed you, Kalinka?"
"Peter," she said. "At a distance. Discreetly. Perhaps fifty yards behind."
"When? When was this?" She'd told him before that she thought Peter followed her, but always when he'd asked her if she was sure, she'd stared down at the floor.
"After the play," she said, "the British play. Remember-you left early with Aziz. Later, when it was over, I walked back here. And he followed me the entire way."
"What?" Suddenly his heart stood still.
"Yes. I'm sure of it. When I was safe up here I went out on the terrace and looked down. There he was, standing on the street. He saw me. Our eyes met. Then I stepped back inside."
"I'll close him up, Kalinka. I'll drive him out. I'll expel him from Tangier."
"Oh, no! He's harmless. Please, Hamid. It doesn't mean anything. You mustn't hurt him. Please."
"But it's not right. He can't follow you-"
"He loves me, Hamid. There's no crime-I don't see any crime in that."
No crime. Why couldn't she understand, why couldn't she see that it was intolerable for him that the man people thought was her husband now openly followed her on the street?
Love! he thought-he has no right to love her anymore. But then he stopped himself, contained his fury. He would not burden her. He would settle this himself.
So now he was waiting outside the shop for the second time in ten days-the second time in all the months since he and Kalinka had fallen in love and he had brought her here and waited for her to fetch her clothes-and he wondered: What can I say to him except to warn him that he must never follow her again? What can I say beyond that, since I know nothing of what went on between them all those years?