Folly Du Jour(81)

Joe waited until six o’clock when the crowds hurrying in through the door made him less conspicuous. He went to the bar and ordered a cocktail. He asked for a Manhattan and threw away the cherry. A Manhattan seemed the right choice. The combination of French vermouth and American bourbon, spiked with a dash of bitters, was in perfect harmony with this atmosphere. Throaty, fast Parisian arpeggios studded a base of slow-drawing transatlantic tones and the band also seemed to be an element in the blend. Setting the scene, in fact, Joe thought, as he listened eagerly. Excellent, as Bonnefoye had reported.

A black clarinettist doubling on tenor saxophone was playing the audience as cleverly as his instruments this evening and there was a jazz pianist of almost equal skill. A banjo player and a guitarist added a punchy stringed rhythm. Not an accordion within a mile, Joe thought happily. Generously, the instrumentalists were allowing each other to shine, turn and turn about, beating out a supporting and inspired accompaniment while one of the others starred. To everyone’s delight, the pianist suddenly grabbed the spotlight, soaring into flight with a section from George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Joe almost forgot why he was there.

Damn George! If it hadn’t been for his officious nosiness, Joe could have been here, plying Heather Watkins with pink champagne, relaxing after a boring day at the Interpol conference, just a couple of tourists. She’d have been laughing at the new cap he’d bought and flattened on to his head, wearing it indoors like half the men in the room. Instead, he was crouching awkwardly, sitting slightly sideways on his bar stool to disguise the bulge of the Browning on his hip and hoping that no friendly American would fling an arm around him, encountering the handcuffs looped through his belt at the small of his back.

He glanced around at the crowd. Not many single men but enough to lend him cover. The one or two who appeared to be by themselves had probably chosen their solitary state, he reckoned. He saw two men line up at the bar, released from the company of their wives whom they had cheerfully waved off on to the dance floor in the arms of a couple of dark-haired, sinuous male dancers. What had Bonnefoye called them? Tangoing, tea-dance gigolos. Everyone seemed pleased with the arrangement, not least the husbands. On the whole, a typical Left Bank crowd, self-aware, pleasure-seeking, rather louche. But then, this wasn’t Basingstoke.

He enjoyed the clarinettist’s version of ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ and decided that when he spiralled to a climax, it would be time to move on.

He ducked into the gentlemen’s room and checked that, as Bonnefoye had said, it was no more than it appeared and waited for a moment by the door he held open a finger’s breadth. No one followed him. A second later he was walking up the carpeted stairs towards the three doors he’d been promised at the top on the landing. And there they were. The middle one, he remembered, was the one behind which the doorkeeper lurked.

The building itself was a stout-hearted stone and rather lovely example of Third Empire architecture seen from the exterior. But it had been drastically remodelled inside. The original heavy wooden features had been stripped away and replaced with lighter modern carpentry and fresh bright paint. Entirely in character with the new owner, Joe suspected.

He fished in his pocket for his ticket to the underworld, thinking it might not be wise to be observed digging about as for a concealed weapon at the moment when the doorkeeper turned up. And the mirrors? Just in case, he offered his face to the fanlight, grinned disarmingly, and waited for Bonnefoye’s promised monster.

A moment later the door opened and he was peremptorily asked his business by a very large man wearing the evening outfit of a maître d’hôtel. Bonnefoye, for once, had not exaggerated. The attempt to pass off this bull terrier as a manservant could have been comical had he not seemed so completely at ease in his role. He was not unwelcom-ing, he merely wanted to know, like any good butler, who had fetched up, uninvited, on the doorstep.

Joe held out the book he’d bought that morning.

‘This is for madame. Tell her, would you, that Mr Charles Lutwidge Dodgson . . .’ He repeated the name. ‘. . . is here and would like to speak to her.’

It’s very difficult to avoid taking a book that someone is pressing on you with utter confidence. The man took it, looked at Joe uneasily, asked him to wait, and retreated, closing the door behind him.

A minute later, the door was opened again. He saw a slim blonde woman, giggling with delight and holding out her arms in greeting.

‘Mr Dodgson, indeed!’ She kissed him on each cheek. Twice.

‘We can all make use of a pseudonym at times,’ he said, smiling affably and returning her kisses. ‘Good to see you again, Alice.’