云中命案 13

Chapter 13

At Antoine’s

Jane presented herself at Antoine’s on the morning after the inquest with some trepidation¹ ofspirit.

The person who was usually regarded as M. Antoine himself, and whose real name was AndrewLeech and whose claims to foreign nationality consisted of having had a Jewish mother, greetedher with an ominous² frown.

It was by now second nature to him to speak in broken English once within the portals ofBruton Street.

He upbraided³ Jane as a complete imbécile. Why did she wish to travel by air, anyway? What anidea! Her escapade would do his establishment infinite harm. Having vented⁴ his spleen to the full,Jane was permitted to escape, receiving as she did so a large-sized wink⁵ from her friend Gladys.

Gladys was an ethereal blonde with a haughty⁶ demeanour and a faint, faraway professionalvoice. In private her voice was hoarse⁷ and jocular.

‘Don’t you worry, dear,’ she said to Jane. ‘The old brute’s sitting on the fence watching whichway the cat will jump. And it’s my belief it isn’t going to jump the way he thinks it is. Ta ta,dearie, here’s my old devil coming in, damn her eyes. I suppose she’ll be in seventeen tantrums asusual. I hope she hasn’t brought that damned lap-dog with her.’

A moment later Gladys’s voice could be heard with its faint, faraway notes…‘Good morning, Madam, not brought your sweet little Pekingese with you? Shall we get on withthe shampoo, and then we’ll be all ready for M. Henri.’

Jane had just entered the adjoining cubicle⁸ where a henna-haired woman was sitting waiting,examining her face in the glass and saying to a friend:

‘Darling, my face is really too frightful⁹ this morning, it really is…’

The friend, who in a bored manner was turning over the pages of a three-weeks-old Sketch¹⁰,replied uninterestedly:

‘Do you think so, my sweet? It seems to me much the same as usual.’

On the entrance of Jane the bored friend stopped her languid survey of the Sketch and subjectedJane to a piercing stare instead.

Then she said, ‘It is, darling. I’m sure of it.’

‘Good morning, Madam,’ said Jane with that airy brightness expected of her and which shecould now produce quite mechanically and without any effort whatsoever¹¹. ‘It’s quite a long timesince we’ve seen you here. I expect you’ve been abroad.’

‘Antibes,’ said the henna-haired woman, who in her turn was staring at Jane with the frankestinterest.

‘How lovely,’ said Jane with false enthusiasm. ‘Let me see, is it a shampoo and set, or are youhaving a tint¹² today?’

Momentarily diverted from her scrutiny¹³, the henna-haired woman leaned forward and examinedher hair attentively¹⁴.

‘I think I could go another week. Heavens, what a fright I look!’

The friend said, ‘Well, darling, what can you expect at this time of the morning?’

Jane said, ‘Ah! wait until M. Georges has finished with you.’

‘Tell me,’ the woman resumed her stare, ‘are you the girl who gave evidence at the inquestyesterday—the girl who was in the aeroplane?’

‘Yes, Madam.’

‘How too terribly thrilling! Tell me about it.’

Jane did her best to please.

‘Well, Madam, it was all rather dreadful, really —’ She plunged¹⁵ into narration¹⁶, answeringquestions as they came. What had the old woman looked like? Was it true that there were twoFrench detectives aboard and that the whole thing was mixed up with the French Governmentscandals? Was Lady Horbury on board? Was she really as good-looking as everyone said? Whodid she, Jane, think had actually done the murder? They said the whole thing was being hushed upfor Government reasons, and so on and so on…This first ordeal¹⁷ was only a forerunner¹⁸ of many others all on the same lines. Everyone wanted tobe done by ‘the girl who was on the plane’. Everyone was able to say to their friends, ‘My dear,positively too marvellous. The girl at my hairdresser’s is the girl…Yes, I should go there if I wereyou—they do your hair very well…Jeanne, her name is…rather a little thing, big eyes. She’ll tellyou all about it if you ask her nicely…’

By the end of the week Jane felt her nerves giving way under the strain. Sometimes she felt thatif she had to go through the recital¹⁹ once again she would scream or attack her questioner with thedryer.

However, in the end she hit upon a better way of relieving her feelings. She approached M.

Antoine and boldly demanded a rise of salary.

‘You ask that? You have the impudence²⁰, when it is only out of kindness of heart that I keep youhere, after you have been mixed up in a murder case? Many men, less kindhearted than I, wouldhave dismissed you immediately.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ said Jane coolly. ‘I’m a draw in this place and you know it. If you want meto go, I’ll go. I’ll easily get what I want from Henri’s or the Maison Richet.’

‘And who is to know you have gone there? Of what importance are you anyway?’

‘I met one or two reporters at that inquest,’ said Jane. ‘One of them would give my change ofestablishment any publicity²¹ needed.’

Because he feared that this was indeed so, grumblingly²² M. Antoine agreed to Jane’s demands.

Gladys applauded her friend heartily²³.

‘Good for you, dear,’ she said. ‘Ikey Andrew was no match for you that time. If a girl couldn’tfend for herself a bit I don’t know where we’d all be. Grit²⁴, dear, that’s what you’ve got, and Iadmire you for it.’

‘I can fight for my own hand all right,’ said Jane, her small chin lifting itself pugnaciously²⁵. ‘I’vehad to all my life.’

‘Hard lines, dear,’ said Gladys. ‘But keep your end up with Ikey Andrew. He likes you all thebetter for it, really. Meekness²⁶ doesn’t pay in this life—but I don’t think we’re either of us troubledby too much of that.’

Thereafter Jane’s narrative²⁷, repeated daily with little variation, sank into the equivalent of a partplayed on the stage.

The promised dinner and theatre with Norman Gale²⁸ had duly come off. It was one of thoseenchanting evenings when every word and confidence exchanged seemed to reveal a bond ofsympathy and shared tastes.

They liked dogs and disliked cats. They both hated oysters²⁹ and loved smoked salmon³⁰. Theyliked Greta Garbo and disliked Katharine Hepburn. They didn’t like fat women and admired reallyjet- black hair. They disliked very red nails. They disliked loud voices, noisy restaurants andnegroes. They preferred buses to tubes.

It seemed almost miraculous³¹ that two people should have so many points of agreement.

One day at Antoine’s, opening her bag, Jane let a letter from Norman fall out. As she picked itup with a slightly heightened colour, Gladys pounced³² upon her.

‘Who’s your boy friend, dear?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ retorted Jane, her colour rising.

‘Don’t tell me! I know that letter isn’t from your mother’s great-uncle. I wasn’t born yesterday.

Who is he, Jane?’

‘It’s someone—a man—that I met at Le Pinet. He’s a dentist.’

‘A dentist,’ said Gladys with lively distaste. ‘I suppose he’s got very white teeth and a smile.’

Jane was forced to admit that this was indeed the case.

‘He’s got a very brown face and very blue eyes.’

‘Anyone can have a brown face,’ said Gladys. ‘It may be the seaside or it may come out of abottle, 2s. 11d. at the chemist’s. Handsome Men are Slightly Bronzed. The eyes sound all right.

But a dentist! Why, if he was going to kiss you you’d feel he was going to say, “Open a littlewider, please”.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Gladys.’

‘You needn’t be so touchy³³, my dear. I see you’ve got it badly. Yes, Mr Henry, I’m justcoming…Drat Henry! Thinks he’s God Almighty³⁴, the way he orders us girls about!’

The letter had been to suggest dinner on Saturday evening. At lunch-time on Saturday whenJane received her augmented³⁵ pay she felt full of high spirits.

‘And to think,’ said Jane to herself, ‘that I was worrying so, that day coming over in theaeroplane. Everything’s turned out beautifully…Life is really too marvellous.’

So full of exuberance³⁶ did she feel that she decided³⁷ to be extravagant³⁸ and lunch at the CornerHouse and enjoy the accompaniment of music to her food.

She seated herself at a table for four, where there were already a middle-aged³⁹ woman and ayoung man sitting. The middle-aged woman was just finishing her lunch. Presently she called forher bill, picked up a large collection of parcels and departed.

Jane, as was her custom, read a book as she ate. Looking up as she turned a page, she noticedthe young man opposite her staring at her very intently, and at the same moment realized that hisface was vaguely⁴⁰ familiar to her.

Just as she made these discoveries the young man caught her eye and bowed.

‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you do not recognize me?’

Jane looked at him more attentively. He had a fair boyish-looking face, attractive more byreason of its extreme mobility⁴¹ than because of any actual claim to good looks.

‘We have not been introduced, it is true,’ went on the young man, ‘unless you call murder anintroduction and the fact that we both gave evidence in the coroner’s court.’

‘Of course,’ said Jane. ‘How stupid of me! I thought I knew your face. You are—?’

‘Jean Dupont,’ said the man and gave a funny, rather engaging little bow.

A remembrance flashed into Jane’s mind of a dictum of Gladys’s, expressed perhaps withoutundue delicacy⁴².

‘If there’s one fellow after you, there’s sure to be another. Seems to be a law of Nature.

Sometimes it’s three or four.’

Now Jane had always led an austere⁴³, hard-working life (rather like the description after the actof girls who were missing—‘She was a bright, cheerful girl with no men friends, etc.’). Jane hadbeen ‘a bright, cheerful girl with no men friends’. Now it seemed that men friends were rolling upall round. There was no doubt about it, Jean Dupont’s face as he leaned across the table held morethan mere⁴⁴ interested politeness. He was pleased to be sitting opposite Jane. He was more thanpleased—he was delighted.

Jane thought to herself with a touch of misgiving⁴⁵:

‘He’s French, though. You’ve got to look out with the French, they always say so.’

‘You’re still in England, then,’ said Jane, and silently cursed herself for the extreme inanity⁴⁶ ofher remark.

‘Yes. My father has been to Edinburgh to give a lecture there, and we have stayed with friendsalso. But now—tomorrow—we return to France.’

‘I see.’

‘The police, they have not made an arrest yet?’ said Jean Dupont.

‘No, there’s not even been anything about it in the papers lately. Perhaps they’ve given it up.’

Jean Dupont shook his head. ‘No, no, they will not have given it up. They work silently’—hemade an expressive⁴⁷ gesture—‘in the dark.’

‘Don’t,’ said Jane uneasily. ‘You give me the creeps.’

‘Yes, it is not a very nice feeling, to have been so close when a murder was committed…’ Headded, ‘And I was closer than you were. I was very close indeed. Sometimes I do not like to thinkof that…’

‘Who do you think did it?’ asked Jane. ‘I’ve wondered and wondered.’

Jean Dupont shrugged⁴⁸ his shoulders.

‘It was not I. She was far too ugly!’

‘Well,’ said Jane, ‘I suppose you would rather kill an ugly woman than a good-looking one?’

‘Not at all. If a woman is good-looking you are fond of her—she treats you badly—she makesyou jealous, mad with jealousy⁴⁹. “Good,” you say, “I will kill her. It will be a satisfaction”.’

‘And is it a satisfaction?’

‘That, Mademoiselle, I do not know, because I have not yet tried.’ He laughed, then shook hishead. ‘But an ugly old woman like Giselle—who would want to bother to kill her?’

‘Well, that’s one way of looking at it,’ said Jane. She frowned. ‘It seems rather terrible,somehow, to think that perhaps she was young and pretty once.’

‘I know, I know.’ He became suddenly grave. ‘It is the great tragedy of life, that women growold.’

‘You seem to think a lot about women and their looks,’ said Jane.

‘Naturally. It is the most interesting subject possible. That seems strange to you because you areEnglish. An Englishman thinks first of his work—his job, he calls it—and then of his sport, andlast—a good way last—of his wife. Yes, yes, it is really so. Why, imagine, in a little hotel in Syriawas an Englishman whose wife had been taken ill. He himself had to be somewhere in Iraq by acertain date. Eh bien, would you believe it, he left his wife and went on so as to be “on duty” intime. And both he and his wife thought that quite natural; they thought him noble, unselfish. Butthe doctor, who was not English, thought him a barbarian⁵⁰. A wife, a human being—that shouldcome first; to do one’s job—that is something much less important.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jane. ‘One’s work has to come first, I suppose.’

‘But why? You see, you too have the same point of view. By doing one’s work one obtainsmoney—by indulging and looking after a woman one spends it—so the last is much more noblean ideal than the first.’

Jane laughed.

‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘I think I’d rather be regarded as a mere luxury and self-indulgence, thanregarded sternly as a First Duty. I’d rather a man felt that he was enjoying himself looking afterme than that he should feel I was a duty to be attended to.’

‘No one, Mademoiselle, would be likely to feel that with you.’

Jane blushed slightly at the earnestness of the young man’s tone. He went on talking quickly:

‘I have only been in England once before. It was very interesting to me the other day at the—inquest, you call it? — to study three young and charming women, all so different from oneanother.’

‘What did you think of us all?’ asked Jane, amused.

‘That Lady Horbury—bah, I know her type well. It is very exotic—very, very expensive. Yousee it sitting round the baccarat table—the soft face—the hard expression—and you know—youknow so well what it will be like in, say fifteen years. She lives for sensation, that one. For highplay, perhaps for drugs…Au fond, she is uninteresting!’

‘And Miss Kerr?’

‘Ah, she is very, very English. She is the kind that any shopkeeper on the Riviera will givecredit to; they are very discerning, our shopkeepers. Her clothes are very well cut, but rather like aman’s. She walks about as though she owns the earth. She is not conceited⁵¹ about it—she is just anEnglishwoman. She knows which department of England different people come from. It is true. Ihave heard ones like her in Egypt. “What? The Etceteras are here? The Yorkshire Etceteras? Oh,the Shropshire Etceteras”.’

His mimicry⁵² was good. Jane laughed at the drawling, well-bred tones.

‘And then—me,’ she said.

‘And then you. And I say to myself, “How nice, how very nice it would be if I were to see heragain one day.” And here I am sitting opposite you. The gods arrange things very wellsometimes.’

Jane said, ‘You’re an archaeologist, aren’t you? You dig up things?’

And she listened with keen attention while Jean Dupont talked of his work.

Jane gave a little sigh at last.

‘You’ve been in so many countries. You’ve seen so much. It all sounds so fascinating. And Ishall never go anywhere or see anything.’

‘You would like that—to go abroad—to see wild parts of the earth? You would not be able toget your hair waved, remember.’

‘It waves by itself,’ said Jane, laughing.

She looked up at the clock and hastily summoned the waitress for her bill.

Jean Dupont said with a little embarrassment⁵³, ‘Mademoiselle, I wonder if you would permit—as I have told you, I return to France tomorrow—if you would dine with me tonight.’

‘I’m so sorry, I can’t. I’m dining with someone.’

‘Ah! I’m sorry, very sorry. You will come again to Paris, soon?’

‘I don’t expect so.’

‘And me, I do not know when I shall be in London again! It is sad!’

He stood a moment, holding Jane’s hand in his.

‘I shall hope to see you again, very much,’ he said, and sounded as though he meant it.

 

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