Paris Match(111)

            “He must have designed that uniform himself,” Holly said. “Shades of General Custer!” Everybody laughed but Stone.

            “I didn’t think he’d have the gall to show up,” he said. “Perhaps I should go and greet him properly.” He started to move.

            “Don’t,” Holly said, taking his arm and tugging to stop him.

            “He’s probably in better shape than you are,” Dino said.

            Marcel spoke up. “Perhaps pistols at dawn!” That relieved the tension, and they turned their attention to meeting and greeting the other guests.

            Lance and the ambassador wandered over, and Stone took shelter behind Holly. “What’s the news from the States?” Lance asked Stone.

            “I’ve heard that the reporter didn’t file his story, because of a lack of corroboration. There is much relief in the Kate campaign.”

            Lance leaned in. “I let it be known to Henry Carson that if the story did emerge, there would be consequences,” he said quietly, “in the form of a story tracing the leak to his campaign.”

            “Very good,” Stone said.

            Then chimes were rung, and the crowd filed into the grand ballroom and found their tables and seats, while a jazz trio played the American Songbook.

            “Take a look at that,” Dino said, holding up a beautiful steak knife from his place setting.

            “They were especially made for our hotels by an American custom knife maker,” Marcel said. “A set of them will be party favors for each of the gentlemen guests, while the ladies will receive a specially created perfume called ‘Arrington.’”

            Dino chuckled. “After all that security at the door, the guests have been armed, and these things are razor sharp. I hope no fights break out.”

            Soup and fish courses were served, then thick slices of boeuf à la Wellington, for which the knives were intended, came next, and the accompanying wines were superb.

            After dessert, Peter Duchin, who had been flown in from New York, led a big band for dancing.

            Jacques Chance and his sister swept around the floor, and people made room for them. No one was smiling, Stone noticed.

            He noticed something else, too: at the edges of the room uniformed French gendarmes were appearing in twos and threes.

            Jacques Chance noticed, too, and he maneuvered Mirabelle toward the bandstand, where an American singer was performing.

            From his angle of view, Stone noticed something else: cradled in Jacques’s hand was the haft of one of the hotel’s steak knives, its blade concealed in his sleeve.

            Stone began to move quickly toward the couple, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it in time.





                     61


            Stone felt as if he were moving in treacle, dodging waiters carrying cheese and glasses of port. He struggled on.

            Jacques Chance, clutching his sister’s wrist, dragged her toward the bandstand, where he shoved the singer out of the way and stood before the microphone. “Attention!” he shouted. The orchestra and the crowd began to fall silent.

            Stone grabbed a cane from the back of the chair of an elderly gentleman and continued moving toward Jacques, knowing that he was about to witness a murder/suicide.

            Then a tall, rigidly erect, white-haired man in a police uniform appeared at the edge of the dance floor and shouted, “Jacques Chance!”

            Jacques had raised the knife in his hand but was momentarily transfixed by the sight of his father in this unlikely setting, and he hesitated, giving Stone his chance. He hooked Jacques’s hand with the cane and jerked him off the bandstand. The knife skittered a few feet away, and Jacques fell to one knee, still clutching Mirabelle’s wrist and taking her with him.