He opened the darkened glass door of a cupboard against the wall and took out his Polaroid camera. It was loaded. He fitted the flash attachment quickly, and checked that there were bulbs. He set the focusing mechanism and the aperture.
The voices from the bedroom turned into shouts as he jumped up the stairs. He waited outside the bedroom, out of sight, for a moment. Sarah made a noise deep in her throat which gradually rose in pitch and loudness, a long, almost childlike cry. Julian knew that noise from the days when he had been able to make her do it.
As Sarah′s cry turned into a scream Julian stepped into the room and raised the camera to his eye. Through the viewfinder he could see the three bodies moving in unison, their faces screwed up with exertion or ecstasy, their hands wildly grabbing fistfuls of flesh. Julian pressed the shutter, and there was a momentary, bright flash. The lovers did not seem to be aware of it.
He moved two steps closer, winding the film on as he went. He lifted the camera again and took a second shot. Then he moved sideways and took a third.
He went quickly out of the bedroom into the living room. He scrabbled in a drawer and found an envelope. There was a book of stamps beside it. He tore out twenty or thirty pence worth of stamps and stuck them on the envelope. He took a pen from his jacket pocket.
Where could he send it to? A piece of paper fluttered down to the ground, having been dragged out of his pocket with the pen. He recognized it as the scrap on which he had written Samantha′s address. He picked it up.
He wrote his own name on the envelope, then addressed it care of Samantha at the address on the scrap. He ripped the exposed film in its paper wrapping out of the camera. He had bought the camera to photograph paintings. The film produced negatives as well as instant prints, but the negatives had to be immersed in water within eight minutes of the exposure. Julian took the film to the kitchen and filled a plastic bowl with water. He drummed his fingers on the draining-board in an agony of impatience while the image took form on the celluloid.
Finally he returned to the living room, the wet film in his hand. The dark man appeared at the bedroom door.
There was no time to put the pictures in the envelope. Julian dashed for the front door, and opened it just as the dark man caught up with him. He smashed the camera viciously into the man′s face and leaped out of the door.
He raced up the street. The dark man was naked and could not follow. Julian stuffed the negatives in the envelope, sealed it, and posted it in the mailbox on the sidewalk.
He looked at the prints. They were very clear. All three faces could be seen, and there was no doubt about what they were doing.
Slowly, thoughtfully, Julian walked back to the house and let himself in. The voices from the bedroom were now raised in quarrelsome tones. Julian slammed the front door to make sure they knew he was there. He walked into the living room and sat down, looking at the photographs.
The dark man came out of the bedroom again, still naked. Sarah followed in a robe, and the spotty one came last, dressed only in a pair of obscenely small briefs.
The dark man wiped blood from his nose with the back of his hand. He looked at the red smear on his knuckles, and said: ″I could kill you.″
Julian proffered the photographs. ″You′re very photogenic,″ he mocked. Hatred blazed in the man′s dark brown eyes. He looked at the pictures.
″You filthy little pervert,″ he said.
Julian burst out laughing.
The man said: ″What do you want?″
Julian stopped laughing, and set his face in a hard sneer. He shouted: ″Get some fucking clothes on in my house!″
The man hesitated, his fists bunching and relaxing spasmodically. Then he turned on his heel and went back to the bedroom.
The other man sat on a chair and curled his legs up underneath him. Sarah took a long cigarette from a box and lit it with a heavy table-lighter. She picked up the photographs where the dark man had dropped them. She looked at them briefly, then tore them into small pieces and dropped them in a waste-paper basket.
Julian said: ″The negatives are in a safe place.″
There was a silence. The blond man seemed to be enjoying the excitement. Finally the dark man came back, dressed in a fawn safari jacket and a white polo-necked sweater.
Julian addressed the two men. ″I′ve nothing against you,″ he said. ″I don′t know who you are, and I don′t want to. You′ve nothing to fear from these pictures. Never come into this house again, thatʹs all. Now get out.″
The dark man went immediately. Julian waited while the other went into the bedroom, and came out a minute later, dressed in elegant Oxford bags and a short blouson jacket.
When he had gone Sarah lit another cigarette. Eventually she said: ″I suppose you want money.″
Julian shook his head in negation. ″I′ve taken it,″ he said. Sarah looked at him in surprise.
″Before all ... this?″ she said.
″I sold your car,″ he told her.
She showed no anger. There was a faintly strange light in her eyes which Julian could not interpret, and the trace of a smile at the comers of her mouth.
″You stole my car,″ she said flatly.
″I suppose so. Technically, I′m not sure a man can steal from his wife.″
″And if I do something about it?″
″Such as?″
″I could ask my father.″
″And I could show him our happy family snapshots.″
She nodded, slowly, her face still unreadable. ″I thought it would come down to that.″ She got up. ″I shall get dressed.″
At the staircase she turned around and looked at him. ″Your note ... You said you would be out all day. Did you plan all this? Did you know what you would find when you came back early?″
″No,″ he replied casually. ″It was what you might call a lucky break.″
She nodded again, and went into the bedroom. After a moment Julian followed her.
″I′m going to Italy for a few days,″ he told her.
″What for?″ She slipped out of her robe, and sat in front of her mirror. She picked up a brush and began to run it through her hair.
″Business.″ Julian looked at the large, proud globes of her breasts. The image of her lying on the bed with the two men came unbidden into his mind: her neck arched, her eyes shut, her grunts of passion. His eyes wandered to her broad shoulders, her back narrowing sharply to her waist, the cleft at the base of her spine, the flesh of her buttocks flattened on the stool. He felt his body stir in response to her nakedness.
He walked over and stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, looking in the mirror at her breasts. The areolae of her nipples were dark and distended still, as they had been on the bed. He let his hands slide down from her shoulders until they touched her breasts.
He pressed his body into her back, letting her feel the hardness of his penis, a vulgar signal that he wanted her. She stood up and turned around.
He took her arm roughly and led her over to sit on the bed. He pushed her shoulders.
Wordlessly, submissively, she lay back on the sheet and closed her eyes.
IV
DUNSFORD LIPSEY WAS ALREADY awake when the stout black telephone beside his bed rang. He picked it up, listened to the night porter′s hasty good morning, and put it down again. Then he got up and opened the window.
It looked out onto a yard, a few lockup garages, and a brick wall. Lipsey turned away and looked around his hotel room. The carpet was slightly worn, the furniture a little shabby; but the place was clean. The hotel was inexpensive. Charles Lampeth, who was paying for the investigation, would not have quibbled if Lipsey had stayed at the best hotel in Paris: but that was not Lipsey′s style.