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

Byrd nodded. ‘Can’t stand it. Sorry and all that, but can’t stand it.’

The woman with green eye-shadow waved across a sea of shoulders, then cupped her mouth and yelled to me. ‘They have broken one of the gold chairs,’ she said. ‘Does it matter?’

I couldn’t stand her being so worried. ‘Don’t worry,’ I called. She nodded and smiled in relief.

‘What’s going on?’ said Jean-Paul. ‘Do you own this gallery?’

‘Give me time,’ I said, ‘and maybe I’ll give you a one-man show.’

Jean-Paul smiled to show that he knew it was a joke, but Byrd looked up suddenly. ‘Look here, Jean-Paul,’ he said severely, ‘a one-man show would be fatal for you right now. You are in no way prepared. You need time, my boy, time. Walk before you run.’ Byrd turned to me. ‘Walk before you run, that’s right, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Any mother will tell you that most kids can run before they can walk; it’s walking that’s difficult.’

Jean-Paul winked at me and said, ‘I must decline, but thank you anyway.’

Byrd said, ‘He’s not ready. You gallery chappies will just have to wait. Don’t rush these young artists. It’s not fair. Not fair to them.’

I was just going to straighten things out when a short thickset Frenchman with a Légion d’Honneur in his buttonhole came up and began to talk to Byrd.

‘Let me introduce you,’ said Byrd. He wouldn’t tolerate informality. ‘This is Chief Inspector Loiseau. Policeman. I went through a lot of the war with his brother.’

We shook hands, and then Loiseau shook hands with Jean-Paul, although neither of them showed a great deal of enthusiasm for the ritual.

The French, more particularly the men, have developed a characteristic mouth that enables them to deal with their language. The English use their pointed and dexterous tongues, and their mouths become pinched and close. The French use their lips and a Frenchman’s mouth becomes loose and his lips jut forward. The cheeks sink a little to help this and a French face takes on a lean look, back-sloping like an old-fashioned coal-scuttle. Loiseau had just such a face.

‘What’s a policeman doing at an art show?’ asked Byrd.

‘We policemen are not uncultured oafs,’ said Loiseau with a smile. ‘In our off-duty hours we have even been known to drink alcohol.’

‘You are never off duty,’ said Byrd. ‘What is it? Expecting someone to make off with the champagne buckets?’ Loiseau smiled slyly. A waiter nearly passed us with a tray of champagne.

‘One might ask what you are doing here?’ said Loiseau to Byrd. ‘I wouldn’t think this was your sort of art.’ He tapped one of the large panels. It was a highly finished nude, contorted in pose, the skin shiny as though made from polished plastic. In the background there were strange pieces of surrealism, most of them with obvious Freudian connotations.

‘The snake and the egg are well drawn,’ said Byrd. ‘The girl’s a damn poor show though.’

‘The foot is out of drawing,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It’s not well observed.’

‘A girl that could do that would have to be a cripple,’ said Byrd.

Still more people crowded into the room and we were being pushed closer and closer to the wall.

Loiseau smiled. ‘But a poule that could get into that position would earn a fortune on the rue Godot de Mauroy,’ said the Chief Inspector.

Loiseau spoke just like any police officer. You can easily recognize them by their speech, to which a lifetime of giving evidence imparts a special clarity. The facts are arranged before the conclusions just like a written report, and certain important words – bus route numbers and road names – are given emphasis so that even young constables can remember them.

Byrd turned back to Jean-Paul: he was anxious to discuss the painting. ‘You’ve got to hand it to him though, the trompe l’œil technique is superb, the tiny brushwork. Look at the way the Coca-Cola bottle is done.’

‘He’s copied that from a photo,’ said Jean-Paul. Byrd bent down for a close look.

‘Damn me! The rotten little swine!’ said Byrd. ‘It is a bloody photo. It’s stuck on. Look at that!’ He picked at the corner of the bottle and then appealed to the people around him. ‘Look at that, it’s been cut from a coloured advert.’ He applied himself to other parts of the painting. ‘The typewriter too, and the girl …’

‘Stop picking at that nipple,’ said the woman with green eye-shadow. ‘If you touch the paintings once more you’ll be asked to leave.’ She turned to me. ‘How can you stand there and let them do it? If the artist saw them he’d go mad.’

‘Gone mad already,’ said Byrd curtly. ‘Thinking chaps are going to pay money for bits cut out of picture books.’

‘It’s quite legitimate,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It’s an objet trouvé …’

‘Rot,’ said Byrd. ‘An objet trouvé is a piece of driftwood or a fine stone – it’s something in which an artist has found and seen otherwise unnoticed beauty. How can an advert be found? How can you find an advert – the damned things are pushed under your noses every way you look, more’s the pity.’

‘But the artist must have freedom to …’

‘Artist?’ snorted Byrd. ‘Damned fraud. Damned rotten little swine.’

A man in evening dress with three ballpoint pens in his breast pocket turned round. ‘I haven’t noticed you decline any champagne,’ he said to Byrd. He used the intimate tu. Although it was a common form of address among the young arty set, his use of it to Byrd was offensive.

‘What I had,’ interrupted Jean-Paul – he paused before delivering the insult – ‘was Sauternes with Alka Seltzer.’

The man in the dinner suit leaned across to grab at him, but Chief Inspector Loiseau interposed himself and got a slight blow on the arm.

‘A thousand apologies, Chief Inspector,’ said the man in the dinner suit.

‘Nothing,’ said Loiseau. ‘I should have looked where I was going.’

Jean-Paul was pushing Byrd towards the door, but they were moving very slowly. The man in the dinner suit leaned across to the woman with the green eye-shadow and said loudly, ‘They mean no harm, they are drunk, but make sure they leave immediately.’ He looked back towards Loiseau to see if his profound understanding of human nature was registering. ‘He’s with them,’ the woman said, nodding at me. ‘I thought he was from the insurance company when he first came.’ I heard Byrd say, ‘I will not take it back; he’s a rotten little swine.’

‘Perhaps,’ said dinner-jacket tactfully, ‘you would be kind enough to make sure that your friends come to no harm in the street.’

I said, ‘If they get out of here in one piece they can take their own chances in the street.’

‘Since you can’t take a hint,’ said dinner-jacket, ‘let me make it clear …’

‘He’s with me,’ said Loiseau.

The man shied. ‘Chief Inspector,’ said dinner-jacket, ‘I am desolated.’

‘We are leaving anyway,’ said Loiseau, nodding to me. Dinner-jacket smiled and turned back to the woman with green eye-shadow.

‘You go where you like,’ I said. ‘I’m staying right here.’

Dinner-jacket swivelled back like a glove puppet.

Loiseau put a hand on my arm. ‘I thought you wanted to talk about getting your carte de séjour from the Prefecture.’

‘I’m having no trouble getting my carte de séjour,’ I said.

‘Exactly,’ said Loiseau and moved through the crowd towards the door. I followed.

Near the entrance there was a table containing a book of newspaper clippings and catalogues. The woman with green eye-shadow called to us. She offered Loiseau her hand and then reached out to me. She held the wrist limp as women do when they half expect a man to kiss the back of their hand. ‘Please sign the visitors’ book,’ she said.