The Spy Quartet: An Expensive Place to Die, Spy Story, Yesterday’s Spy, Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy

Monique returned to me. ‘How am I expected to keep clean when the water is cold? Always cold.’

‘Did Annie complain about the water?’

‘Ceaselessly, but she didn’t have the manner that brings results. I get angry. If she doesn’t give me hot water I shall drive her into her grave, the dried-up old bitch. I’m leaving here anyway,’ she said.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘I’m moving in with my regular. Montmartre. It’s an awful district, but it’s larger than this, and anyway he wants me.’

‘What’s he do for a living?’

‘He does the clubs, he’s – don’t laugh – he’s a conjurer. It’s a clever trick he does: he takes a singing canary in a large cage and makes it disappear. It looks fantastic. Do you know how he does it?’

‘No.’

‘The cage folds up. That’s easy, it’s a trick cage. But the bird gets crushed. Then when he makes it reappear it’s just another canary that looks the same. It’s an easy trick really, it’s just that no one in the audience suspects that he would kill the bird each time in order to do the trick.’

‘But you guessed.’

‘Yes. I guessed the first time I saw it done. He thought I was clever to guess but as I said, “How much does a canary cost? Three francs, four at the very most.” It’s clever though, isn’t it, you’ve got to admit it’s clever.’

‘It’s clever,’ I said, ‘but I like canaries better than I like conjurers.’

‘Silly.’ Monique laughed disbelievingly. ‘“The incredible Count Szell” he calls himself.’

‘So you’ll be a countess?’

‘It’s his stage name, silly.’ She picked up a pot of face cream. ‘I’ll just be another stupid woman who lives with a married man.’

She rubbed cream into her face.

‘Where is he?’ I finally asked. ‘Where’s this fellow that you said was sitting here?’ I was prepared to hear that she’d invented the whole thing.

‘In the café on the corner. He’ll be all right there. He’s reading his American newspapers. He’s all right.’

‘I’ll go and talk to him.’

‘Wait for me.’ She wiped the cream away with a tissue and turned and smiled. ‘Am I all right?’

‘You’re all right,’ I told her.

25

The café was on the Boul. Mich., the very heart of the left bank. Outside in the bright sun sat the students; hirsute and earnest, they have come from Munich and Los Angeles sure that Hemingway and Lautrec are still alive and that some day in some left bank café they will find them. But all they ever find are other young men who look exactly like themselves, and it’s with this sad discovery that they finally return to Bavaria or California and become salesmen or executives. Meanwhile here they sat in the hot seat of culture, where businessmen became poets, poets became alcoholics, alcoholics became philosophers and philosophers realized how much better it was to be businessmen.

Hudson. I’ve got a good memory for faces. I saw Hudson as soon as we turned the corner. He was sitting alone at a café table holding his paper in front of his face while studying the patrons with interest. I called to him.

‘Jack Percival,’ I called. ‘What a great surprise.’

The American hydrogen research man looked surprised, but he played along very well for an amateur. We sat down with him. My back hurt from the rough-house in the discothèque. It took a long time to get served because the rear of the café was full of men with tightly wadded newspapers trying to pick themselves a winner instead of eating. Finally I got the waiter’s attention. ‘Three grands crèmes,’ I said. Hudson said nothing else until the coffees arrived.

‘What about this young lady?’ Hudson asked. He dropped sugar cubes into his coffee as though he was suffering from shock. ‘Can I talk?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘There are no secrets between Monique and me.’ I leaned across to her and lowered my voice. ‘This is very confidential, Monique,’ I said. She nodded and looked pleased. ‘There is a small plastic bead company with its offices in Grenoble. Some of the holders of ordinary shares have sold their holdings out to a company that this gentleman and I more or less control. Now at the next shareholders’ meeting we shall …’

‘Give over,’ said Monique. ‘I can’t stand business talk.’

‘Well run along then,’ I said, granting her her freedom with an understanding smile.

‘Could you buy me some cigarettes?’ she asked.

I got two packets from the waiter and wrapped a hundred-franc note round them. She trotted off down the street with them like a dog with a nice juicy bone.

‘It’s not about your bead factory,’ he said.

‘There is no bead factory,’ I explained.

‘Oh!’ He laughed nervously. ‘I was supposed to have contacted Annie Couzins,’ he said.

‘She’s dead.’

‘I found that out for myself.’

‘From Monique?’

‘You are T. Davis?’ he asked suddenly.

‘With bells on,’ I said and passed my resident’s card to him.

An untidy man with a constantly smiling face walked from table to table winding up toys and putting them on the tables. He put them down everywhere until each table had its twitching mechanical figures bouncing through the knives, table mats and ashtrays. Hudson picked up the convulsive little violin player. ‘What’s this for?’

‘It’s on sale,’ I said.

He nodded and put it down. ‘Everything is,’ he said.

He returned my resident’s card to me.

‘It looks all right,’ he agreed. ‘Anyway I can’t go back to the Embassy, they told me that most expressly, so I’ll have to put myself in your hands. I’m out of my depth to tell you the truth.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘I’m an authority on hydrogen bombs and I know quite a bit about all the work on the nuclear programme. My instructions are to put certain information about fall-out dangers at the disposal of a Monsieur Datt. I understand he is connected with the Red Chinese Government.’

‘And why are you to do this?’

‘I thought you’d know. It’s such a mess. That poor girl being dead. Such a tragedy. I did meet her once. So young, such a tragic business. I thought they would have told you all about it. You were the only other name they gave me, apart from her I mean. I’m acting on US Government orders, of course.’

‘Why would the US Government want you to give away fall-out data?’ I asked him. He sat back in the cane chair till it creaked like elderly arthritic joints. He pulled an ashtray near him.