Tangier (12 page)

"I'm sure I don't know—we'll have to see about that. Meantime I'll ring up Percy and Vanessa. I guarantee they'll cancel and dine with us."

"It'll ruin her evening."

"Of course, darling. That's the
point
. If she's snubbing us, it'll be just what she deserves. And if she isn't—well, that'll be too bad too."

"She'll find others, I suppose—"

"The Manchesters? Wax?"

Camilla chuckled nastily, though nastiness was not her style. She behaved like a chameleon, altering her moods to blend with his. "You're sure you want to do this Tuesday?" she asked.

"I wouldn't change the date now, not for anything in the world. Come—let's make a list. I'm foggy this morning. You've got to help."

"You could have all the usuals, I suppose. And maybe try out someone new."

"Such as whom, Camilla dear?"

"Maybe Kelly. They say he's a decent chap."

"Kelly! You can't be serious! Face all scarred up, and so underbred. Really, Camilla, whatever goes through your mind?"

"Oh, you're right, Peter. Of course. Now let me think. What about the Lakes?"

"You mean Mr. Null and Mrs. Void?"

A pause then while Camilla collected her thoughts. She meant well, poor thing—he was sure of that—though at times she was awfully dense. She'd make an almost ideal companion, he thought, if she just wasn't so stout and didn't gobble up so many scallions at lunch.

"Hmmm," she said. "There's always Kranker."

"Ugh! Such a toad."

"Sven Lundgren?"

"You mean the dentist? He'll be staring around, looking at all our
teeth
."

"Well, there're the de Hoags, though I find Joop a nasty man."

"He's only got one ball, you know. Claude told me—in confidence, of course."

"One ball! Oh, dear! Can't they fish the other one out?"

"No, darling. Evidently they
can't
." He raised his eyebrows at her naïveté. Sometimes she could be intelligent, but this morning she was not. She'd had a husband once, but she still didn't understand how the male body worked.

"Well," he said, "if Joop is out of town, I could invite Claude and ask her to bring Tassigny. He's Joop's assistant, a terrific-looking boy. He and Claude are having an affair. I watched them playing tennis the other day."

"Hmmm, interesting. But you need some Moroccans too. What about the Governor? You haven't had him in donkeys' years."

"Yes. All right. But that means two tables. His wife doesn't speak any French."

"There's Salah—"

"Good idea! I can put him with Madame Governor and Rachid El Fassi on her right. That way she's covered—she can speak Moroccan, or Hindi if she likes, and I can still use the big table the way I planned. Brilliant, darling. And Salah's such a dear. He gets my things through customs all the time. Now stop—let's take a count. There's you and me, Percy and Vanessa. I'll ask Lester too, plus the Governor, his madame, Rachid, his wife, and Salah make ten. Then there's Claude (if Joop is away), Tassigny, and maybe the Whittles. That's fourteen with six women and eight men. Not bad for Tangier. But we still have to even things up."

They talked on until they'd sketched out the party, balancing the sexes, ending with his maximum, sixteen. It was a wearisome process, and when they finished Peter set down the phone with relief.

He was fifty years old and beginning to feel his age. His hair was iron gray, he walked with a cane. The world was changing too, and he knew his power couldn't last. Nobodies with money had gotten the upper hand every place else, and now he could see the trend beginning in Tangier. It was still the last outpost of a certain style of life, but it was changing, with people like Wax and Henderson Perry, with his millions, challenging the order of aristocratic power.

If only he were
Lord
Barclay—that would indicate his station to all concerned. He considered listing himself that way in the next edition of the Tangier telephone book, but knew someone would tip off the London papers, and then everyone would make a stink. He shrugged. Titles were amusing. As far as Tangier went he might as well be a duke. He had, he thought, as much right as anyone else: Lord Pitt was only a life peer, and Françoise called herself "Countess" though the French monarchy had been dead a hundred years. Anyway, lord or not, he could still make the others jump. He would stop Vanessa Bolton and Percy Bainbridge from going to Françoise de Lauzon's.

Vanessa turned out to be difficult, refused to alter her plans. He was annoyed, put a little X beside her name—it would be a long time before he'd ask
her
again.

"What's kept you?" he demanded when he called up Percy and had to wait for him to be summoned to the phone.

"Matter of fact, Peter, I was in the garage finishing up the prototype of my new papoose."

"Papoose! What will you think of next? Never mind—don't tell me now; we can discuss it at dinner Tuesday night."

A pause then while Percy considered his dilemma: How was he going to extricate himself from his acceptance to dine with Françoise? Peter waited, delighted by the situation—the old inventor was too cowardly to refuse an English peer. Percy's inventiveness, of course, was nothing but a joke. The Australian had written a little book about his discoveries—ways to make soybeans taste like turkey, and lampshades out of old gloves. Poor Percy—he persisted, though his magnetic broom for ironmongers had failed to catch on, and after ten years of development his grapefruit juicer still ran too hot.

"Tuesday would be perfect, Peter. Just had to check my book."

A lie, of course, but touching in a way. Peter, relishing his power, decided to make Percy crawl. "You know, Percy, I've been thinking about you, and I've decided there's something in the house you simply have to change. That ghastly watercolor, the one hanging in the hall—it's time to stash it in the attic for good."

"Hmmm. Do you really think so? I never actually thought of that."

"Well
do
, dear, do. It'll give the hall a cleaner look. Do it this afternoon—you'll see instantly that I'm right."

Percy promised to give it thought, and Peter smiled as he rang off. The watercolor was one of Percy's best things—Peter would be pleased to own it himself. But it was always necessary to make these little tests, check around and see who still obeyed. If Percy did take the picture down, then that meant things hadn't changed: he was still pasha of the Mountain and the peasants still ran to kiss his feet.

"Oh, dear," he said suddenly, looking up at himself in a gilded mirror. "Peter Barclay: you
are
a nasty pouf!"

The phone rang just as he was staring at himself. It was Vicar Wick, calling about the note.

"I've spoken to Consul General Whittle," he said in his nervous voice. "As the police here refuse to help, we're going to send the note up to Scotland Yard. Not for fingerprints, mind you—they're probably all smudged out. Handwriting analysis—that's the thing. We'll catch the culprit yet."

"Yes," said Peter, somewhat dazzled by the thought. "Sounds perfectly reasonable to me."

"We've thought of everything, Whittle and I, and we've come up with a jolly good plan. At the Consulate they've got a file of old Christmas notes and B&Bs. We'll send the whole batch up to London too, so that hopefully they'll match some writings up."

"Good thinking, Vicar, I must say."

"Thank you. I thought so myself. Also, with your permission I want to bring in Colonel Brown. He's an avid reader of detective novels and would make an excellent sleuth. Plan is for him to give a series of luncheons, invite all the suspects, and try to smoke them out. Watch the eyelashes and all that. I think it's worth a try. Meanwhile next Sunday I shall preach a sermon that'll get our man where he hurts. Just look around church for a pair of burning ears—we may trap him right there."

It all sounded excellent, the Vicar's three-pronged plan, and set Peter to pondering the punishment he'd exact. Ostracism was one possibility. Let everyone know the anonymous author's name, then put him in Coventry until he was driven from Tangier. But the more he thought about it, the more he preferred the opposite course: seduce the villain by sweetness, treat him like his closest friend, and then, when he'd done that, confide how much the note had hurt. He'd offer his fair cheek to those sickening underbred lips
, and then
, he thought,
we shall truly see just what the word "two-faced" means.

He laughed at the thought, then dismissed it from his mind. While the Vicar, the Colonel, and Scotland Yard worked to break the case, he'd forget about the note and have some fun. If his days as pasha were numbered, he'd do well to enjoy his power now. Eventually, some way, he'd find his enemy out and crush him like a fly.

He wandered into his garden, along its many paths, stroking his day lilies as he walked. The garden was nearly as he wanted it, after a quarter century of work, but still there were problems with the view. There was something wrong there that disturbed him more and more. And as much as he tried, he didn't know how to set it right.

It was Dradeb that bothered him—that damnable, horrid slum. It lay between the Mountain and the city and ruined the whole effect. It wasn't that Dradeb looked so terrible from the Mountain—from high up it appeared as a white cubistic maze. It was just knowing that it was there, knowing what it was and how it reeked, that spoiled his paradise.

But what to do? It would be splendid if he could just wave a wand and make it all go away. Or if, by some magic in the night, it could become transformed into a valley full of Moroccan shepherds playing flutes. That would be marvelous, and then the filthy Jew's River could become a babbling stream
. Or else
, he thought, curling his lip,
those damn people down there could be taught to devour their young
.

But then, suddenly, there came to him a solution, and he wanted to kick himself for not having thought of it before. All he needed were a few fast-growing eucalyptus. Then, in a couple of years, he could screen the Dradeb out.

He became excited and entered the garden again. He walked to the edge of his property, then sadly shook his head. There wasn't enough room, and his shrubs would be ruined by the eucalyptus' invasive roots. But the property just below his, vacant Moroccan-owned land, would make a perfect place for such a grove. He could plant down there and, when the trees reached the proper height, pollard their tops and create a verdant wall.

The problem was to get hold of that land. He couldn't afford to buy it himself. Perhaps Camilla would help—she had old Weltonwhist's fortune and could certainly spare some pounds. Yes—she might do it; it would be a good investment for her too. She'd probably jump at the chance if he handled her right. Yes, that was it, he'd get Camilla to buy the land, then plant the trees and abolish the excrescence from his sight.

He began to dream of how he'd make the Mountain reach Tangier, of the view he'd have: foliage, the city, and the sea.

W
henever Hamid thought about it, he was amazed by how little he knew about Kalinka. It was his habit to plumb a person's depths—he did this every day in his office, interrogating suspects, probing informants, seeking a conception of their characters beyond the information they had to give. But with Kalinka it was different. He hadn't pressed her, and as a result she'd remained mysterious, the mysterious woman who'd floated into his life.

He wondered whether he feared the ruin of an illusion if he came to understand her well. But he did know her, knew every curve, every crevice in her body, knew the texture of her hair, so long and black and thick, the way morning light could gleam off her ivory skin. And her eyes, large and dark, surrounded by disks of glittering hazel—he knew the wide-open softness of them when she awoke, and the rimless Oriental lids that covered them while she slept. Yes, he knew her, but underneath there was something he did not know. Her history. Her past.

He was thinking about this as he sat in his car parked across the street from Peter Zvegintzov's shop, waiting for the customers to leave so he could go inside and confront the Russian with the fact Kalinka had revealed the night before.

They'd just finished dinner, were sipping tea in silence, when suddenly she'd turned to him and spoke.

"He followed me."

"What? Who followed you, Kalinka?"

"Peter," she said. "At a distance. Discreetly. Perhaps fifty yards behind."

"When? When was this?" She'd told him before that she thought Peter followed her, but always when he'd asked her if she was sure, she'd stared down at the floor.

"After the play," she said, "the British play. Remember—you left early with Aziz. Later, when it was over, I walked back here. And he followed me the entire way."

"
What
?" Suddenly his heart stood still.

"Yes. I'm sure of it. When I was safe up here I went out on the terrace and looked down. There he was, standing on the street. He saw me. Our eyes met. Then I stepped back inside."

"I'll close him up, Kalinka. I'll drive him out. I'll expel him from Tangier."