‘So much for Dr. Garrett and so much for Dr. Farelli,’ said Daranyi. ‘Next, I have the names of your chemistry laureates, Dr. Claude Marceau and Dr. Denise Marceau, of Paris. What I have learned of them, while not of considerable quantity, has quality, at least the quality I trust you will consider useful.’
‘Permit me to be the judge,’ said Krantz grouchily.
‘Very well.’ He held up his sheaf of papers. ‘This is lurid enough to make one blush. The Marceaus seem to have led spotless lives, entirely dedicated to their investigations and experiments, until recently. Dr. Claude Marceau committed adultery in Paris, and his wife seems to have retaliated by having an illicit affair here in Stockholm.’
‘Decadent frogs,’ muttered Krantz from behind the greenery.
‘I do not have the details, and so I will spare you that,’ said Daranyi, ‘but I do have in my possession certain facts. To begin with, Dr. Marceau’s little amour…’ With a free sense of staging, Daranyi released his facts one by one, each like a gaudy helium balloon floating skyward. He covered Dr. Claude Marceau’s indiscretions with the compliant Mademoiselle Gisèle Jordan from their start in Paris to their forthcoming rendezvous this afternoon at the Hotel Malmen in Stockholm.
‘I do not know for certain if Dr. Denise Marceau is aware of this rendezvous,’ admitted Daranyi, ‘but from the nature of her own behaviour, I would suspect that she knows what is going on. In any case, she-and my source is unimpeachable-has committed two infidelities with one of your countrymen, Dr. Oscar Lindblom, a young chemist in the employ of Ragnar Hammarlund. One infidelity, was performed in Hammarlund’s private scientific laboratory three days ago, and the second was performed last night, on the occasion of Dr. Claude Marceau’s absence from the city, when his wife received young Lindblom in her suite at the Grand.’
‘Disgusting,’ snarled Krantz, his pen busy.
‘If you worry about a scandal,’ said Daranyi, ‘this may be it. I keep thinking Dr. Denise Marceau means for her husband to know of her own violation of the marital bed, and I keep wondering what Dr. Claude Marceau will do when he does find out…’
At 1.02 in the afternoon, Claude Marceau had learned that his loyal spouse of ten years had become an adulteress.
At 1.08 Claude Marceau had extracted from her the name of her vile seducer.
At 1.29 Claude Marceau, linked in step with Hammarlund’s butler, Motta, was striding over the forest path behind Åskslottet to the isolated laboratory, the den of sin in the Animal Park, where he would find the infamous, lustful, treacherous Swede, Oscar Lindblom, and give him the thrashing of his life.
Claude Marceau, protector of home and hearth, was boiling mad. Nor was his rage misdirected. Denise, ever timid and fearful of violence, had tried to protect her lover by protesting his innocence and presenting herself as a femme fatale. The gesture might have been laughable had it not been so transparent and pathetic. Claude had known his wife too long and too well to be fooled. Denise was essentially provincial, bourgeois, naïve, unworldly. There had been no doubt in Claude’s mind where the blame must be put: the Swedish snake had taken vicious and caddish advantage of her distress, her weakness, and through his practised wiles had hounded her into an infidelity.
Striding beside Motta, Claude reviewed the accident that had revealed all. He had returned from Uppsala after midnight, and immediately fallen into an exhausted sleep. He had awakened too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, to find Denise lounging in the sitting-room, taking coffee and leafing through an imported Paris Match, and what had caught his eye was the flimsy pink négligé that he had not seen before and that ill became her, a married woman. She had been unaccountably vivacious, as she had been since the Hammarlund evening, and again he guessed that she had determined to show him her best side in order to woo him back.
Now, remembering: the door buzzer had sounded, and he had gone to see who it might be. The caller had proved to be a hotel servant, some relic fugitive escaped from Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine, who held before him a bottle of something or other, gift-wrapped in red.
‘I am one of the room-service help,’ the servant had announced. ‘I have the champagne Madàme requested for her husband.’
Claude had tried to think if it was his birthday. It was not. ‘I am Madàme’s husband. I will take it.’
The servant had pulled the champagne away from the stranger’s outstretched hand. Madàme had been explicit, the night before, about this. ‘No-it is not for you. I have seen her husband.’
Claude had then realized that this was a mistake. ‘I am sorry, but you have the wrong room.’
‘This is the right room,’ insisted the witless servant. ‘I spoke to Madàme here last night.’
Claude had become impatient with this tomfoolery. ‘What makes you think I am not her husband?’
‘I saw him in there last night.’ He peered past Claude just as Denise rose from the sofa, and he recognized her. ‘Madàme, here is the gift you ordered for your-’
Something had begun to penetrate Claude’s head, and he wheeled about in time to see his wife desperately waving off the room-service relic.
‘I-I-yes, it is the wrong room.’ The servant had begun to retreat when Claude was galvanized into action. He had gone after the man in the corridor and roughly collared him.
‘You saw a man in the room with my wife last night?’
The servant had been struck speechless, but a severe shaking had rattled the truth out of him, quickly, stumblingly, even to the admission that the tall young man glimpsed with Denise had been in pyjamas.
Claude had returned to the suite, slamming the door behind him, and advanced on Denise like the procureur général on a quaking defendant. The skirmish had been brief, and the defence had collapsed entirely. Foolishly, Denise had tried to take the whole burden of guilt upon herself, had even tried to transfer some of it to him. If she had not been so widowed and hurt by his affair, if she had not been so needful of love and reassurance, she would not have succumbed so easily to Oscar Lindblom’s blandishments. There, the name was out-Lindblom! The betrayer, the traducer, the Nordic Casanova! For now, to absolve herself, the truer truths poured out-Lindblom’s silken persuasion, his ardent whisperings and practised hands, his strong and urgent body, his overwhelming and irresistible passion-Lindblom!
‘There is the laboratory, Dr. Marceau,’ the butler was saying.
‘Thank you,’ snapped Claude. ‘That will be all.’
He left Motta behind, and strode vengefully to the door, gripping the knob with a strong hand that would, in seconds, bash in the face of the rapist. Since Count Axel von Fersen had played his little game with Marie Antoinette, every young Swede had fancied himself a Fersen. Au revoir, Lindblom, you will be the last of the line, Claude promised himself, and he burst into the large laboratory work-room.
At first, to his stinging disappointment, he thought the place vacant, and then, from behind the far row of beakers, he heard a voice.
‘Who is it?’
Claude rushed around the counter, and then pulled up short.
Not Lindblom, but Ragnar Hammarlund, ridiculous in a onepiece suit of overalls such as Winston Churchill had once affected, confronted him.
‘Dr. Marceau-what a delightful surprise!’
‘Where’s this chemist-this Oscar Lindblom of yours?’
‘Lindblom? Out. I sent him out on an errand. He should return shortly. May I be of service, Dr. Marceau?’
‘No, it is this Lindblom I want,’ said Claude belligerently.
Hammarlund pretended not to notice his visitor’s vexation. ‘Does he expect you?’
‘I think not.’
‘He will be honoured by your appearance, as am I. His admiration for you and your wife exceeds worship.’