Read the fourth installment.

CHAPTER XIII

Reynolds Fontana was good at drinking gin in the middle of the afternoon, but Fleuri Brunet was not.

"Not Corsica, St. Elba," she insisted to the barman, Luc. "The only person ever exiled to Corsica was me, fucking me…"

"You were saying, darling?" coaxed Fontana.

"I said retribution, Lombardi fears retribution--either from God or some pimp or something he says is following him. He told me."

"I didn't know you were friends."

"We're not, we're acquaintances."

"He frequents the same bars that I do, when I can manage to get over here."

"Another?"

Knowing an excess of ardour often wasn't particularly appealing, Fleuri worried that the next drink might make her want Fontana even more than the last.

"Poor fellow," said Fontana, thoughtfully pressing down on the slice of lemon at the bottom of his glass. "I mean, about the fear. I hope it doesn't affect his performance."

"My impression is there may not be any performance."

Fontana couldn't work out why Lombardi would confess such misgivings to a virtual stranger, to someone he occasionally encountered when carousing in Nice's bars. But then, quite suddenly, it didn't matter. He was overcome by a vision, a vision so real that he nearly cried out: on one of the tables, amidst the crystal and silver glittering in the sunlight, sat Joey, wearing a miniature sailor's cap and smoking a pipe.

"Lombardi," said de Hauteville, "our world is being transformed as I speak. We are entering a new age of miracles. At last, the lion shall lie down with the lamb."

What Jerome wanted most at that moment was to dive into the blue, blue Mediterranean and swim away, to some exotic island like Madagascar, where no one would ever think to look for him. He glanced down at de Hauteville. The wiry little man stood in an athletic pose, one hand gripping the brass rail that glinted round La Bonne Santé's stern. From this angle, in the unkind raking light of the late afternoon, his employer had a distinctly elderly and infirm look about him. De Hauteville strained to lift the bottle of champagne, conveniently positioned between them, from its sweating bucket. Two black chasms formed vertically in his brow, running from the sunbleached-yellow peak of his hairline down to the withered bridge of his nose. But he managed. He poured and he spoke. And as he spoke, his eyes gleamed feverishly, often staring beyond Jerome out over the Mediterranean, as if upon the water stood a mirror in which his reflection shone, resplendent. But the dim light of his cubicle at the post office lay ominously behind that reflection. All those anonymous addresses and tiny uneventful stamps were still there, flickering irritatingly within his skull.

De Hauteville's naked chest, Jerome now observed, was hairless, the skin coppery and fine. Occasionally, when a rare moment of lassitude would overcome him, he was like an old snake sunning itself on a warm stone. Eyes fixed on de Hauteville's smiling mouth, Jerome distantly heard the name Billingsley, and pictured the obese solicitor standing next to de Hauteville on that very deck, both men naked to the waist. He pictured de Hauteville turning on Billingsley and sinking his fangs into Billingsley's huge pink belly, like the belly of a pig, and Billingsley squealing and clamping his hands around de Hauteville's scrawny neck.

"Billingsley needed a distraction," de Hauteville was saying, pouring more champagne. "That's what Violette's there for--to distract. Of course, I adore her. And you would too, if only you'd choose to fully appreciate her--"

"Oh, I do," Jerome interjected.

"--her true vulnerability. That's what makes her perfect for my purposes. As she is disarmingly tantalising--like an exquisitely sensual child, her lips and breasts demanding to be sucked--so too is she without the hardened guile that comes with maturity. It reads so clearly on the screen: she is an animal, an untamed human animal. Violette would have been better off left to commune with nature rather than subjected to the tethers of guilt imposed upon her by the Church of Rome. Imagine what the nuns must have done with her."

He's gone completely mad, was Jerome's first thought. But then he thought on, imagining Tati as hybrid, being equal parts of the two Mary's, the one innocent and subservient, the other wanton and anguished, resolving themselves through the blessed act of procreation. Thinking on further still, he wondered, What if Joey were the vehicle and Tati, our Violette, the vessel? Now that would be truly brilliant!

"Perhaps motherhood could change all that," he offered, sedately. Glancing once again at de Hauteville, Jerome saw that he was stunned. Had the maestro never before considered the actual inner workings of the female psyche?

"You care for Violette that much?"

"For mankind itself," answered Jerome. "We have ceased to evolve. What I'm saying is, I think perhaps we have to make more of this motion picture than what's in Duckie's script."

"But that's just what I'm saying. I've seen a second dawning and--"

"I am sorry, I interrupted you." What power is left to me, Jerome concluded, other than the power to interrupt?

As he gave one of his long slow humiliating sighs, de Hauteville's eyes ranged over Jerome's face. The sun was growing ever larger before them on the horizon, its glow deepening to scarlet as it prepared to sink into the sea. The actor closed his eyes, drawn in by the quiet, and for an instant appeared as pleasingly gaunt as Victor Didot would upon the slab. But then, as if struck by the fact of his own mortality, de Hauteville recalled that Victor had, for him, died the evening before. He must now learn to idealise Jerome Lombardi in the unlikely incarnation of Reynolds Fontana, a very tall order.

"Would you say that I confide in you because I need to or because I want to?" asked de Hauteville. "The former being compulsive and the later being comradely."

"Paterfamilias," Jerome replied.

"Precisely. Like a father with a vast family and only one son, I naturally confide in you. You may think that Duckie and the Count confide in you, but they don't. They truly confide only in me. I confide in you. Not them, me. Now, within this very moment of this very day, I shall reveal to you the…" de Hauteville glanced down at the champagne flute in his hand, the vortex, as it were, of tiny bubbles suspended in the briny air trembling with the weightlessness of a hummingbird "…the failure of my conception. Mr. Didot is a melange of archaic images and ideas. It is a sentimentalist's interpretation of a myth visited upon humankind centuries before we had the ability to actually think."

Jerome wanted to sing with joy. His intuition told him he would soon be free of the dreadful responsibility of playing Victor Didot, enchanter of the prurient and weak-minded.

"When an intelligent woman buys a new dress," de Hauteville was saying, "she tries it on. She sees if its colour might flatter her own. She turns this way and that, watching how the cut of the dress responds to her figure. She takes great pains to see that the dress suits her in every possible way, she doesn't simply say, 'Yes, that's pretty and looks to be about my size--I'll have it!'"

"No, she doesn't," agreed Jerome. "Mind if we go below? The make-up artist won't be very pleased if I take too much sun…"

"You are following me?" demanded de Hauteville.

"Indeed I am. Quite happily," answered Jerome, as he followed him down into the ship's lounge.

"She's growing into a very beautiful young lady," said Bishop Feydeau.

Gambetta watched his daughter, Raphaela, walk over to the Bishop and wrap her comely little arms around his beskirted knees. The Bishop bent down and caressed the soft auburn curls that fell luxuriantly to her shoulders.

"Let's stand very still," whispered the Bishop to Raphaela. Although she hadn't as yet begun to speak, Raphaela understood, and calmed her happy limbs.

"What is it, your Holiness?" inquired Dr. Oliphant, his voice hushed and expectant. Oliphant always accompanied the Bishop on such visits.

Bishop Feydeau smiled down at the child, while concentrating his powers of perception on the curve of her belly where it pressed against his silken calf.

"It's quite extraordinary," the Bishop again whispered. "There's a kind of rhythm to the unborn's movements…"

Still smiling down at Raphaela, Bishop Feydeau motioned for Gambetta to come to them. Gambetta the janitor, weary from sweeping and scrubbing until dawn, understood: he was meant to crouch by his daughter and lay his own hand upon her belly, to feel the marvellous awakening of life.

"Extraordinary, no?" said the Bishop, after a long resolute moment of quiet.

Gambetta frowned at Raphaela, her sweet face glowing as she continued to peer up, fascinated, at the Bishop.

"What is it?" asked Dr. Oliphant, perplexed by the seemingly sour concentration furrowing the widower's brow.

"Drumming, very gentle drumming," said Gambetta.

Enraptured, the Bishop embraced Raphaela more firmly, his bejewelled fingers lying heavily upon her. He waited for Gambetta to go on, oblivious to the worriment growing in the child's eyes.

"It may not be anything, your Holiness," said Gambetta.

"Surely, it is. Mightn't it be some form of communication?" the Bishop implored Dr. Oliphant.

Raphaela began to squirm.

"Be still, my child," ordered the Bishop. Again Bishop Feydeau waited.

But Gambetta sensed he mustn't say anything more. If he did, he was certain the Bishop would find an unarguable reason to possess his child, whom Gambetta loved with a boundless love, a love he would always share with Raphaela's mother, who resided with God. He worried that one day Raphaela might no longer be cherished as the bearer of a miracle but denounced and, in all probability, destroyed, along with the demon harbouring inside her.

"Blessed be the weak…yes, blessed be the weak," said Gambetta and plucked up Raphaela and whisked her into the kitchen.

While Gambetta made small-talk with the Bishop and Dr. Oliphant beyond the closed kitchen door, Raphaela sat quietly observing the goldfish in their bowl by the window.

The ship's lounge smelled of chemicals, like an embalming facility in a musty basement. Even though Jerome couldn't quite make out what it was that was pestering his sinuses, he did know that de Hauteville retained a residue of this substance on his fingers. What was it? Whatever it was, it made it exceedingly difficult to concentrate on what the maestro was saying, and even more difficult to respond.

"It is a peculiar expression, but it is a proper legal term," Jerome managed.

"To libel--it is peculiar, but then law, as a rule, tends to be peculiar," agreed de Hauteville.

"Probably, the easiest solution is just to pay Mr. Fontana for the use of his personage. I shouldn't think you'd have to pay him for his story because it is public domain--a news story, nothing more, nothing less."

De Hauteville eased back in the large orange leather chair he had chosen for himself, his skinny brown legs now sprung wide over the seat, toes gently kneading the luxurious Chinese carpet that covered most of the gleaming floor.

"Fontana's on a retainer, I imagine--or several. I know he still writes for the Daily Telegraph out of the Caribbean. But he's a gentleman's gentleman--a boot-lick, if you will--and consequently never has enough to get himself around with the requisite style," de Hauteville droned on. "He is accustomed to living in a style he can ill afford."

"Sounds as if I'd be perfect for the role," joked Jerome.

"Don't be ridiculous. You're a man of conscience. Reynolds Fontana couldn't care less what circles he patronises, as long as he gets invited back. Communists, criminals, kings, it makes no difference."

Jerome was very, very pleased with de Hauteville's decision to abandon Mr. Didot. He wasn't at all certain any living dramatist, especially Duckie Duckworth, could make sense of the miracle of Fontana's monkey, but he was more than willing, indeed with a profound sense of relief, to portray Reynolds Fontana. He doubted anyone was so thoroughly the opportunist as de Hauteville painted Fontana. In fact, from what he had read of him in the newspapers, Fontana was himself a man of conscience, and that was how Jerome would interpret the role, no matter who wrote it. It would however be helpful, he realised, to meet Fontana to determine with some immediacy whether his character was as sympathetic as Jerome imagined.

"And you're determined to have Joey play himself…" Jerome repeated for perhaps the fourth time in thirty minutes.

"And why not? I'm not about to risk all for some monkey borrowed from the zoo. Imagine, if you can, the intelligence, the illuminating intelligence that must beam from that creature's eyes. I know, it's nearly unimaginable."

"And, from what I understand," Jerome enthused, "all of Joey's wives have been blessed with serenity."

"Yes, and failing the intrusion of Bishop Feydeau and his braying sycophants, they shall all deliver their precious burdens with equal serenity."

Jerome shifted uneasily in his chair, away from whatever was emanating from de Hauteville's fingers.

"It is this very serenity," de Hauteville continued, "communicated during the usually torturous rigors of contraction, that we must capture in our camera. Without a birth, we have nowhere to begin with Violette's portrayal of Joey's first little angel--as she struggles to make sense of this world of paradoxes!"

De Hauteville's pitch was instantly flattened by the thudding of feet upon the deck outside. Dudu burst into the ship's lounge, dripping perspiration and still panting with the effort of rowing himself out to La Bonne Santé. Without uttering a word, he flung the evening edition of the Journalier Nice down on the table before them. De Hauteville glanced at Dudu, puckered his lips, and read, as did Jerome:

Eyes glassy, de Hauteville sniffed his thumb, then his fingers. "It could very likely be that salve I got from Dr. Salette. Dreadful, isn't it? You know, I don't know how we could ever have kept this from happening. Did we allow this to happen? Tell me, did we?"

"So, was he?" snorted Dudu. "Was he pouring out his heart to you too, Lombardi?"

Oh, I doubt he even knows the man," de Hauteville maundered on apologetically. "Do you?"

"Everyone on the picture knows Billingsley." Jerome should simply have said no, but his thoughts were fixed on the scruffy character who had strewn his newspaper about the square before the chapel. Hadn't he then materialised into Dudu, who had followed after Violette in search of a taxi? So why was Dudu, who seemed to be everywhere at once while his boss was sailing off to Marseilles, pressing him so ruthlessly?

"You'd better get your story straight," said Dudu.

De Hauteville gave Jerome a pained look, beseeching him to explain.

"He hadn't been visiting me," said Jerome. "He was only there--in the alleyway below my bedroom window. His shouts awakened me. They must have been very loud. I don't know why no one came."

"But who was with him?" demanded Dudu, sneering.

"Not Violette…" De Hauteville cringed and sank down in his chair.

"She had been, but then she'd gone off...in a fury. At least, that's the impression I had," said Jerome, wanting to reassure him.

Dudu glared at Jerome, arms crossed over his bantam-weight chest. As he ranted on, his voice unnaturally thick with satisfaction, he dug his fingernails--with pleasure, it seemed to Jerome--into his biceps. "She'd been with you--the Count took her to that hole Les Puces in a taxi to meet you!"

"La Puce," Jerome replied. "At least get the name of the café right."

"She ended the evening at your flat!"

"Are you saying you've been spying on Violette, following her all over Nice? Somehow the need for this escapes me."

Eventually, disdainfully, Dudu responded, "She's precious to us," then nonchalantly perched himself, legs drawn up, on the empty chair across from them. He held Jerome's gaze, rested his chin on his knee, and smiled.

Jerome was not about to be provoked by such childish behaviour and returned his attention to de Hauteville. "There you have it--she'd been with me, and after that she was with Billingsley--in the alleyway below my window."

"There was an altercation?" asked de Hauteville.

"Yes, but it hadn't to do with anything so very dire--not from what I could make out." Jerome hesitated to go on. He tried to imagine Violette plunging the knife into the plushy mounds of Billingsley's chest. It was a fruitless exercise. Conversely, he couldn't imagine Billingsley plunging his penis into her feathery cleft.

"I probably shouldn't have gone off to Marseilles," said de Hauteville, "but then we wouldn't be embarked upon the journey that will eventually spirit us all away…"

Dudu stared at his boss, uncomprehending.

"…to Eden," explained de Hauteville, and leaned forward to lay his hand fondly on Dudu's clenched fist.

But Dudu's fist refused to open, and he shifted his glaring eyes from de Hauteville's again to Jerome's, then down at the newspaper on the table. His eyes narrowed to black slits and he ran his tongue over his parched lips.

"Be forewarned," he said.

CHAPTER XIV

Violette Desroches lay napping in a secluded spot behind the hull of a fishing skiff embedded in the beach at La Brague. The skiff was not very large and, in her utter nakedness, Violette appeared to be imitating the dainty lizard who thinks if she remains absolutely still, she can hide behind a leaf half her size. This occurred to Joey as he perched on the bow of the skiff. His shadow, which fell just above Violette's head, resembled a gargoyle very like the gargoyles that so reminded him of his master's urinating penis. Several metres away behind a promontory of basalt and bougainvillaea his master was picnicking with Fleuri Brunet. Fontana was not aware of the presence of his little simian friend, nor of the nude starlet. Joey still begrudged Fontana his romance with the unduly hygienic Fleuri and so had chosen to ride from Nice to La Brague clinging to the boot of their taxi. But Joey did like the smell of Violette, so like a musky fruit.

Fontana sat gazing out to sea. Fleuri lay beside him, her swimming costume of the unfashionable dresslike variety. They were both nearly as pale as the fine white sand. Fontana however was already reddening on the shoulders, having eschewed the coconut oil Fleuri considered essential to any seaside outing.

"From this angle, my legs look positively atrophied, like a cripple's. Pathetic," observed Fontana.

"You have lovely legs," said Fleuri, neither moving nor opening her eyes.

"I still find it hard to believe that a cad like Lombardi should be so riddled with conscience."

"I never said he was a cad," argued Fleuri. "A cad wouldn't go about standing a perfect stranger drinks."

"Don't kid yourself. Even I've been known to buy the most obnoxious bores drinks when on the razzle."

"It was the way he did it, as if it were simply another ongoing responsibility in life."

"Very nice." Fontana was unable to fathom the charm of any theatrical person, knowing how prone they all were to such calculated displays of magnanimity.

Shading her eyes by draping her arm across her brow, Fleuri admired Fontana's large, finely sculpted ear and Apollonian profile as he continued to watch the horizon. She found his tortoise-shell sunglasses positively elegant. One day, Fleuri promised herself, she would live in London, wear smart tweed suits and walk through the fog to meet her friends for tea. Eventually she said, "He said he knows what it is to die."

"And I know what it is to kill," responded Fontana, equally without urgency.

"Nothing noble in that, is there?"

"Perhaps not, but it is the kind of knowledge that only a very few have."

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

"What's that?"

"The War."

"So I'm not very remarkable after all."

"Oh, you're remarkable all right." Fleuri never had been very good at teasing.

"I would've thought that a peaceable man who kills out of conscience--no matter what the circumstances--is a man to be reckoned with."

"Reckoned with how?" Fleuri was baffled.

Pained by her incredulity, Fontana decided that any further explanation would be undignified. But now needing her friendship more than he could ever have imagined, he added, "I should have known this day would come."

Fleuri reached out, found his hand, and pressed it to her hip.

As much to himself as to her, Fontana made a small confession, "At long last, I've had my way."

"With yourself, you mean?" laughed Fleuri.

"No, with the world. Now I'm the outcast."

"All very fanciful, but no one need ever know what you've done. In polite society, we go on about our business without making a fuss about such things."

Fontana found her detachment breathtaking. "But I write for the newspapers--I'm not polite society."

"Well then, we'd better keep you on a very short leash, hadn't we?"

After pondering this exchange for a long blissful moment, his hand resting submissively on her naked thigh, Fontana said, "I want to make a baby. You know, a fucking English Jew degenerate baby."

When the girlish feverishness with which she was instantly enflamed had abated, Fleuri asked, "What, with me?"

"You bet."

"A real little bastard," murmured Fleuri, rising up to press her ample bosom lovingly to his noble bony back.

Shifting his attention from the sea, Fontana turned with the grace of a Massine or a Serge Lifar and, in one continuous motion, stripped her unfashionable suit from her, parted her legs and made his dedication to the idea felt. Joey, watching from his post on the skiff, had never seen his master behave in such an authoritative manner with any female, and wondered at the unusual exactitude of his movements: it would seem that his master had observed his own techniques and noted their effectiveness with great care.

Blindly, Violette searched by her side for the translucent green visor she wore to shade her eyes from the scarifying afternoon sun. She slipped the visor's strap over her head and lay back. Eyes now closed and untroubled, her internal field of vision swelled to become a kind of infrared dome. Her thoughts puddled up pleasantly before her like smatterings of mercury. Her father, Anton, occupied one small silvery pool, while Hugo and Sergei each occupied two others, and Jerome occupied a third. Billingsley wasn't there because he was dead, and she hadn't any idea what he looked like dead, and it just wouldn't do to have him hovering there before her eyes with the others alive. Letting Billingsley have his way with her had been Hugo's idea. She certainly hadn't enjoyed having his big belly ride her buttocks as he had rutted at her. He had made her kneel on the ottoman in his hotel room, and not even to take her from behind, only to spank her. He had called her silly names, like titty-boop and cunty-wanty. She had consented to entertain him only as a favour to Hugo, even though Dudu had asked her not to, saying it was sacrilege. Dudu occupied the largest silvery pool because, as her friend, he hadn't insisted upon penetrating her, not even with his finger. That was how it had begun with her father, it had begun with his finger. Only Dudu knew of this violation--shameful, malingering infection that it was--and he had promised never to tell anyone, not even de Hauteville.

The green visor bringing relief like a cold compress, the silvery pools--Anton, Hugo, Sergei, and Jerome--were finally absorbed by darkness. Even Dudu's radiant presence retreated into the cool depths. Out of this darkness now rose, immaculately clear, the image of Violette's mother. It was the sea itself that had conjured up her memory, as if the waves sweeping over the shore at La Brague that afternoon were bringing in Renata Desroches's ashes from the depths of her eternal sleep. Renata is such a beautiful name, thought Violette, so strong and without frivolous connotations like my own. No man, bottle or purse or penis in hand, would ever hold sway over Violette as Anton had held sway over Renata. Wishing she were still in her mother's belly, before the tyranny had begun, Violette rolled over onto her side, hugged her knees to her breasts, and waited for the mists of the sea to alight upon the lips of her sex. The mists gathered there and seeped into her, and her tears eventually subsided as she dozed, and Joey came down from the cascading mounds of bougainvillaea, knowing himself to be equal to any man in his kindness, and made love to her, and Violette was none the wiser. But Joey, in his despair, had only circumstantially come to know her, longing all the while for little Raphaela.

This was Inspector Ernst Balbec's chance to redeem himself. A plague of murders had occurred in Marseilles on the weekend. Of the seven homicides recorded, only the Gerard Joncs slaying at the Café Beauvau was apparently without motive. Joncs had no wife and no children, only a sister and two elderly parents, and so there was no pressure on the police to make a collar immediately. Balbec was to work in plain-clothes, undercover, and try his best not to be seen philandering with the prostitutes of the Vieux-Port. As he did have a wife and children to keep and feed, Balbec was much pleased with the decision not to suspend him.

"No more fucking monkey meat for me," said Balbec to his fellow officers Patrice and Pierre, who looked uncomfortable in their stiff little caps in the heat. As he unbuttoned his shirt to the waist, Balbec chuckled, "From now on, I'll be concentrating on eating something else, and it won't be the kind of thing you can pay for."

The two watched as Balbec got on his bike--his own red bike--and rode off laughing, his shirttails flying.

"The joke's on him," said Patrice. "Madame Brunet was with an Englishman. I've seen the report on the contents of Madame Brunet's purse. All very uneventful except for two items." He glanced around, saw that they were alone in the street, and lit a cigarette. "The one is a paper serviette from the yacht of Hugo de Hauteville, with the name of the motion picture he's making in Nice printed on it, and the other is a baby's rattle, inscribed with the name 'Raphaela.' The rattle had filaments of animal fur adhered to its ribbon." Having delivered these delectable morsels, he paused to savour Pierre's vaulting appetite for more.

"It only makes sense that Fleuri Brunet would know carnival people like de Hauteville," said Pierre, and shrugged. "As far as the animal fur goes, it also only makes sense that she would own an expensive stole or some such, and they all shed eventually regardless of their cost. Or, for that matter, she may have a pet of some kind, a cat for instance,"

"I wouldn't be telling you this if we were talking about cat hair," Patrice huffed. "I would only be telling you this if the fur was something special--like toupee of chimp for instance!"

"Toupee of chimp?" Pierre was stunned. "What, an acting chimp?"

"No, a Romeo chimp. Furthermore the filaments of hair were glued to the ribbon of the rattle with jissom. What's jissom doing on a baby's rattle?!"

"Perhaps Madame Brunet was employing the rattle for her own pleasure?"

"I wondered about that myself."

They both took time to clearly picture the implementation of the baby's rattle by Madame Brunet.

"So you reckon the Englishman with Madame Brunet was Reynolds Fontana?" ventured Pierre.

"Balbec's investigation can only be of further embarrassment to the prefecture," Patrice replied.

But Balbec was smarter than his colleagues imagined. He already knew that Fontana had been to visit de Hauteville on La Bonne Santé on Saturday evening, and that Fontana and Madame Brunet had departed Marseilles by ferry for Ile de Porquerolles late on Sunday. He also knew that there would be no record of them boarding another ferry on Porquerolles, however he was nearly certain that they had gone on to Nice, where de Hauteville would have the means to hide them, or have them spirited away, possibly on La Bonne Santé. All of this seemed clear enough, and still Balbec didn't have a motive. But no one had a motive for Fontana allowing his monkey to impregnate nine infants either. One thing was nearly certain: Reynolds Fontana was a psychopath.

"Duckie, you're not suggesting that I, of all people, would want to harm poor old Billingsley?"

De Hauteville decided unwisely to pour them each another glass of champagne, then sighed and gestured for Dudu to quit eavesdropping and go back to sunning himself on the balcony.

"I didn't say that," insisted Duckie. "I only said that Lord Billingsley would have felt obliged, as any gentleman would, to reveal such a complete rethinking of our story to Maxwell and his cronies at ABC." She was still reeling with the magnitude--and madness--of the task he had set for her. "Surely one can't promote this new subject with the same trappings as Mr. Didot…"

"Oh, so now it's 'Lord Billingsley' is it?"

"He was lordly, unlike most of those drunken sods. And he provided you, unselfishly, with what you needed."

"Duckie, you're so naive. Even Sergei wouldn't make such an utterly irrelevant remark."

De Hauteville left his position by her on the settee and began pacing the suite, going from one room to the next, muttering.

"You disdained Billingsley's goodness," came hissing from Duckie.

"Rubbish! Billingsley was one of our closest allies. He would never have been so foolish as to go swanning off to London to confuse our stupid distributors. And furthermore, I wouldn't have let him--he would only have embarrassed himself!"

"And you certainly didn't let him, did you?" she snapped.

"Would you please stop insinuating that I was somehow involved in this terrible thing!"

Hugging herself, the powder she dusted over her arms imprinting itself on her ruby red bodice, Duckie shivered with excitement.

"Now, let's go right back to square one, shall we? You and the Count are the ones he had dangling. Who had the title to Graysteads in his top drawer? Now you have only me to protect you. Don't misunderstand me, I'm grateful to you both. I don't have to tell you. But why, oh why, should you think for a second that I would want to do that poor inadequate man harm? Why don't you apply your imagination to the new script instead of summoning up scenes of me stalking your bloody Lord Billingsley!"

"I've never seen you like this," said Duckie, rather pleased with herself.

"I have a mission now, my dear. I no longer have the time to frolic about nonsensically with the likes of you and Sergei. Speak to Jerome, if you can't work it out for yourself. At least there's one person who can grasp what I'm about."

"You'll regret you said that," Duckie barely managed, her voice cracking. "I'll be penning this draft under the name Alice Alworth."

"Is that intended to be a threat of some kind? Why take a writing credit at all?"

"Because I'm the writer."

Sunlight shimmering off the sea to bathe his face, de Hauteville posed, grinning, on the threshold to the balcony. "Yes, but Duckie," he whispered, "it's a true story…"

CHAPTER XV

Duckie retreated to Le Laboratoire Hugo when word came that the Count had arrived for his evening meeting with de Hauteville. It was obvious to de Hauteville when the Count entered that he was suffering considerable consternation over the death of Billingsley. What struck de Hauteville first was the Count's shambolic gait, as if he were trudging wildly through a swamp. He had seen this before when the Count was in a state. Unseemly behaviour for any man, especially a Russian. De Hauteville was not about to risk another irrational outburst like the one he had just had from Duckie and so instantly went to the Count and embraced him.

"Sergei, we have lost a friend. Come, sit, have a drink… Dudu!"

His torso and limbs shining with oil, Dudu came in off the balcony and stood, nonchalantly towelling away his perspiration, in the middle of the room. He glanced at the Count, saw that he was already quite inebriated, and smiled with amusement.

"Vodka," ordered de Hauteville.

"Wring him out into a saucer," Dudu responded.

The Count gazed uncertainly at Dudu. It was obvious by the rigidity of de Hauteville's posture that he was extremely displeased by some rudeness on the part of his secretary.

"On crushed ice, please," requested the Count.

"See to it," de Hauteville again ordered Dudu.

Dudu brushed by de Hauteville, making certain his tanning oil left its mark on his boss. De Hauteville examined his shirtsleeve but chose to ignore the stain, not wanting, with the Count in such a dire mood, to risk further petulance on the part of his servant. When Dudu had gone into the foyer to summon room service, de Hauteville led the Count to one of the sofas. As the Count threw himself down with a groan, de Hauteville positioned himself across the room, his profile visible through the open door of Le Laboratoire Hugo.

"One must remain aloof at such times," he said, patting his hair.

The Count nodded solemnly, then noticed Duckie's satchel and papers on the low marble table before them.

"She's gone to lie down," said de Hauteville.

"She hasn't been very well," agreed the Count.

"So febrile and yet so fragile," offered de Hauteville.

"Horseshit," said the Count.

More rude behaviour. De Hauteville proceeded on. "Now, about Gambetta and his lovely little daughter Raphaela…"

But de Hauteville had got a trifle ahead of himself, forgetting that the Count knew nothing of his plans to transform Mr. Didot. Fortunately, a flurry of gestures glimpsed through the partially open door of Le Laboratoire Hugo distracted him. Focusing on Duckie as she leaned forward, de Hauteville realised that her signalling was a warning not to inform the Count of their true plans. Trusting Duckie's instincts implicitly where the Count was concerned, de Hauteville imperceptibly, he hoped, rejigged his speech:

"We very much need the Church's blessing, and this poor man and his daughter are precious to Bishop Feydeau of Marseilles, a far more powerful figure than any we have in the general vicinity of La Victoirine. By casting them in bit parts and paying them more than adequately, we help to fulfil, without the slightest humiliation, the Bishop's wish that they be looked after until the miraculous event. Gambetta, being a widower, hasn't a wife to look after the child, Raphaela, and we can certainly provide him with a nurse. Further to that, there's no busybody wife to get in our way. If you and Duckie were to go on this errand of mercy together, I'm certain we would succeed in saving these humble people from any more hardship. My impression is they've suffered enough."

The Count nodded one last time and looked anxiously around the room.

"Where's Dudu gone with my vodka?" he asked.

With that, there was a knock at the door. Dudu sauntered back in from the balcony. The porter's eyes gleamed as he stared at Dudu's hard oily flesh. Dudu puckered his lips and kissed the air between them as he assumed control of the drinks trolley and wheeled it in. The porter was left at the open door ogling Dudu's bottom, buttock-meat pinching wetly above skimpy satin briefs. Without glancing back, Dudu waved the porter away with a flip of his hand, then concentrated on serving the Count. The Count didn't much appreciate de Hauteville's secretary standing only inches away with his genitalia so immodestly restrained and squirmed sideways on the sofa.

"Wait until you see the size of the member on that monkey," said Dudu. Smirking, he took the Count's hand and placed it round the iced tumbler of vodka on the marble table. "I'm not saying it's bigger than yours…"

"It's really a matter of scale," insisted the Count, trying as best he could to be clever under the circumstances.

"Not always," Dudu replied. "I once saw a Pekinese with a penis so long he could rest his chin on it."

"But that's only length," commented the Count, sipping his vodka with ever greater relish.

"Yes, I reckon girth does count for something," said Dudu. He lay the newspaper with Billingsley's murder featured on the front page on the sofa next to the Count and sat down beside him.

"Drink?" said the Count.

Dudu lifted the frosty bottle of vodka from its silver bucket and set it briefly on his stomach before pouring.

"Firmer than Violette's even," he said.

"She hasn't any tummy at all," cooed the Count, then remembered Duckie lying only paces away, and added, "if one were to judge by the costumes she wears when swimming."

"Costumes? What costumes?!" Dudu chortled, and watched the Count blush.

Unfortunately for de Hauteville, who had gone in to see if Duckie was now prepared to join them, he didn't hear Dudu bantering so carelessly with the Count. Had he heard, he would have had to ask himself if Dudu was still inclined to honour the oath of discretion he had sworn to upon being hired so many summers ago. Had he then had the inclination to confront Dudu with such doubt, Dudu would certainly have lashed out as never before, evoking the name of Jesus Christ in defence of all decent men in their weakness.

The scrubby landscape along the coast road between La Bague and Nice was shrouded in mist as Violette returned by taxi to meet Jerome at La Puce for an early evening drink. Gazing out the open window, the cool air like the breath of God on her sunburnt cheeks, she pictured the set now being built at La Victoirine Studios against the fogbound sea. All day she had tried in vain to summon up the meagrest surge of excitement for her role in de Hauteville's extravaganza. Now, miraculously, there stood the city street in which Tati would meet Victor. The fog slowly eddied in around its angles, while, baffles and scrims all positioned perfectly, a softly glowing ceiling of light lowered over the scene. Superimposed upon this subtly modulated tableau was a huge close-up of Violette, the camera tracking with her as she made her way along the street. Her mouth, set in a self-amused smile, and her eyes, filled with an almost childlike introspection, communicated the essential paradox that was her character. But this combination of images, correct and clever though they were, did not completely satisfy Violette. She wanted something more. She wanted some crisis to possess Tati, there in the empty street, and bring her to tears--before speaking a single word, and most assuredly before encountering Victor Didot. This new entrance might cause trouble, but it had to be.

It appeared that flea eggs, or perhaps very young lice, were clinging to Violette's raven hair, now stiffened with the sea air. Eventually, Joey realised that the tiny creatures were only grains of sand. Again he pictured himself sitting on a bar in Nice, smoking and drinking with his new mistress, for that was what he knew Violette was destined to be. Wanting to touch her limber hairless limbs once more, and taste her pungently lubricated pistil and carpels (or however humans referred to their females' lacha-lacha), Joey had chosen to brave the chilly wet winds on the back of Violette's taxi rather than offer himself up to Fontana.

His master was wild with mating, wilder than Joey had ever seen him. Joey feared Fontana might never be himself again, which often happened to human males when they became too fixed upon a pleasurable routine. Reynolds Fontana was in grave danger of becoming boring.

When Violette's taxi slowed to take a narrow curve, Joey leapt onto the roof and swung through the open window to land in Violette's lap. With astonishment, Violette stared silently into his eyes. Naturally, Joey instantly won her over with his smile.

"I've always wanted someone like you," murmured Violette. Moments later, mindless of the taxi driver's gaze in the rear-view mirror, she opened her frock and offered Joey her breast, which he eagerly began to suck.

It was dusk as Ernst Balbec approached Nice. He stood at the bow of the ferry, his red bicycle at his side, waiting for the vessel to dock. Fog lay heavily in the Baie des Anges, and the buildings along the promenade appeared a sickly yellow, as if jaundiced. Balbec sensed Hugo de Hauteville's malignant energy coursing like effluvium through the sewers, out into the sea, polluting the very water upon which he drifted.

In 350 BC, Balbec recalled, Greeks from Marseilles had secured the harbour and named it Nikea after their goddess of victory. Two hundred years later, the Romans had subdued the most obstinate Greeks and, once having decided upon a vantage in the hills, renamed the place Cimiez. Of particular interest to Balbec were the baths the Romans built, which featured exclusive facilities for top officials--like himself. Rightfully, Balbec thought, Nice should be a province of Marseilles, or at least under the jurisdiction of the Marseilles police. If it had remained under the control of the Marseilles Prefecture, perhaps the Italian barbarians would have thought twice about invading the quaint villages and laying them to waste. Although Balbec was not intent upon being of Greek descent, he did very much like the idea of the Marseilles police taking back Nikea from the Romans. And he especially liked the idea, once they had done so, of himself overseeing the events held at the arena.

Balbec understood himself to be a gladiator of sorts, a modern version, but he would have preferred to be the one who chooses who is to fight, and with whom, and who is to remain in chains. Were he to choose two such modern foes and pit them against each other for the delectation of Nikea, he would choose Hugo de Hauteville and Reynolds Fontana, the one a Gaul and the other a Norman, both obviously of degenerate strains.

He would first call on Hugo de Hauteville at the Hotel Negresco. His intuition was that de Hauteville was the true carnivore of the two and therefore most apt to be drawn to the scent of a wounded ally, namely the similarly sophisticated Reynolds Fontana.

"The Chateau Grimaldi," said the weathered and shrunken stevedore at Balbec's elbow. Trembling near the black crevices at the corner of the stevedore's good eye, his finger pointed up into the fog at the fortress hovering over the point before them.

"Surely you mean Garibaldi," said Balbec, refusing to fault the old Italian for his ignorance; after all the Romans had possessed Nikea for only a fleeting moment.

"Garibaldi, Grimaldi," hoarsely shouted the man, his leathery fist punching the air, "Napoleon should have taken the goddamned stinking dago dogs and driven them into the sea!"

At the mention of the Emperor's name, Balbec knew his anticipation had got the better of him: they were now approaching Antibes, not Nice. Napoleon had indeed been imprisoned there. A trifling error. Balbec did know the streets of Nikea, fog or no fog. And as far as these warring, wandering tribes were concerned, it was often difficult to tell a Frenchman from an Italian or, for that matter, an Italian from a Greek, especially when the specimen was so disfigured by age. Balbec contented himself with this thought, left the deck and went into the dry cabin to smoke a cigarette or two while they docked at Antibes. Eventually the ferry would push on to its ultimate destination and his.

There were just four cigarettes left in the packet. Balbec reckoned it was at least another forty minutes to Nice, and who knew how long the crew might tarry at Antibes if there were parcels to unload. He surveyed the cabin for someone to chat with, hopefully someone who was aware of the Joncs murder and familiar with the Joey shenanigans. But then he realised that if he spoke with any of the dozen or so individuals situated about the cabin about Joncs or Joey he would risk jeopardising his anonymity once on the case in Nice. It was essential, he knew, to assume a new identity in order to penetrate Hugo de Hauteville's inner circle.

Balbec found the prospect of rubbing shoulders with such people both repellent and strangely exciting. Ernst Balbec, the eight-year-old, had kept a diary as he had nursed a seagull with one foot and a broken wing back to health and now he wished he had that same little green book in which to write of his anticipated exploits in the company of such interesting and evil men as de Hauteville and Fontana. Thinking he might stumble upon the terminology he needed to concoct a new vocation for himself in the motion picture business, Balbec took up the Journalier Nice which had been left on the bench beside him by an earlier passenger. He went to the advertisements at the back, having first scanned the sports news on the very last page, and worked his way forward to the front page. On the front page, his pulse quickening, he read of Lord Billingsley's murder the night before. For Balbec, the most exhilarating details were the proximity of the crime to Jerome Lombardi's rented flat and the actor's unavailability for comment. It seemed he was being drawn instinctually to the source of this carnage. The two murders, Balbec boldly surmised, had to be related.

When he did finally enter the Baie des Anges, Balbec had smoked his last four cigarettes and half of a second packet he had bought from the vendor on the ferry. His first stop, even before finding a room for the night, would be the alleyway known as St. Rita's Way near the Chapel of St. Giaume, where Billingsley had met his end.

The room was growing darker. The drapes, stained violet with the dusk, occasionally whispered over the floor, driven in by the chilly breezes off the balcony. Covered in goose flesh, Dudu perched nearly naked on the gilded settee by the door to the hallway like a pet satyr. He stared into space, his chin resting on his knee. De Hauteville lay on one of the sofas in his white terry cloth robe, sipping tea and feeling quite exhausted. He was now aware of Dudu plucking distractedly at his crotch.

"Won't you please stop fiddling with yourself for a moment and concentrate on what I'm saying?"

"It's these briefs. I sweat in them and everything gets stuck together."

"Well, either change into something more comfortable, or just leave it, would you, please?"

"Maybe I'll change for dinner."

"Oh, not now. That'll take forever..."

"It won't. Unless you want it to."

"Please be serious, or shall I entrust this task to someone else, someone capable of a moment's seriousness?"

"Then where's the secrecy?" Dudu screwed his face up into a very unpleasant smile, and de Hauteville stared back at him with dismay. "Yes, it's true, too true, true, true--I'm the only one you can trust with such an important matter."

"Experts usually do this sort of thing," said de Hauteville, hoping to stir the lout by flattering him.

"I am an expert, but not at subduing monkeys."

"A worthy aside. But we're not talking about street urchins in Moroque."

Dudu's voice went sulky with hurt. "I was referring, if you will, to sailors and gangsters and the like, not children."

"Fine. I know. Dudu, this monkey Joey is, by all accounts, a very clever little fellow. Dextrous beyond reason, and wily enough to have evaded the Marseilles Prefecture and the Bishop's legions both."

"I was an acrobat before I was a boxer--er, aspiring boxer--and after that, as you well know, I sorted out some very rough customers at The Gloves."

"Indeed, I do know."

Dudu had already accepted that he must play along. He had to, otherwise his means of escape would elude him. He had had to rely on de Hauteville for everything. Now he would ruin everything, strip de Hauteville of the trappings of his empire in one devastating gesture. He would leave the maestro gasping. De Hauteville was staring at him, aware of his steadfast gaze.

"I don't trust the Count," said Dudu, "not with fetching back that pregnant baby and her dada all the way from Marseilles."

"That's why I've asked Lady Duckworth to accompany him," de Hauteville replied. "She's a woman with a strong sense of responsibility, and conscience. The Count will be there only as a--" He suddenly felt ill.

"You don't need the Count, do you? Fact is, if you'd sent just her along, she could've acted as the widower's wife. Who'd be the wiser? There's no borders to cross between Marseilles and here. If she goes out by sea and comes back by car and avoids the train...?"

"Dudu?"

"You don't get what I'm saying?"

"No. Yes, I do. But there's no need for all that. Gambetta will come willingly. He's a man of very modest means. Gambetta won't want to make a fuss."

"You don't look so well," said Dudu. Dread had, in an instant, reduced his boss to a wizened husk. "How old are you anyway?"

"What irrelevance." De Hauteville sat up, sidled his feet together under his chair, wrapped and unwrapped his hands. Within the privacy of his thoughts, he spelled the names of the great fanatical visionaries of the cinema Zecca and Nonquet each twice, Christ's black tears dropping with each letter. Now he was altogether quiet and still. No, he hadn't anyone else he could truly rely on, only Dudu. "Did I ever tell you about the visit I made to Verdun with Lady Duckworth and Count Lazovsky just near the end of the war?"

Dudu gestured for de Hauteville to follow him into La Laboratoire Hugo, where it was warmer.

The ants ran in a single line across the entire width of St. Rita's Way, circumventing the pool of carbolic acid festering in the harsh light of the streetlamp, and up the wall across the alleyway to the height of the lowest splatters of Billingsley's blood. On the wall, in what appeared to be guttering tar, over the entire area of splatterings, was scrawled: Beware the connivance of fools.

Having pondered this ominous message long enough without hitting upon any rational motive for the elimination of Charles Billingsley, Jerome removed himself to the windows in the living-room. He positioned himself in his most comfortable chair before the window with the best view of the little square before the chapel. He was not nearly as disappointed as he was alarmed that Violette had not kept their date for drinks at La Puce. However, not for a second did he feel the impulse to speculate on the possibility that she had murdered Billingsley, or had anything to do with his death whatsoever; he knew only that she had brought Billingsley bad luck. His intuition was that Violette would cross St. Rita's Apron and join him before the night was spent.

The monkey, whom Violette had named Joey after the notorious monkey of Marseilles, wailed plaintively every time she closed the door to her suite and began down the stairs--she had already returned twice to comfort him. The sound was heart-wrenching. Remembering Jerome's fascination, she decided that, although Joey might be a distraction, Jerome probably wouldn't mind her bringing him along. From her dresser, she extracted a long silver chain ending in a choker and fastened it around Joey's neck. It seemed the little fellow was more interested in examining the earrings she was wearing than in the noose now threatening his versatility. Joey rode on her hip down the stairs, through the cramped lobby of the Hotel Rosetti, and out to the waiting taxi.

The miracle of Fontana's monkey presented itself anew to Jerome in the form of an apparition: the darkest fold in St. Rita's Apron was at the centre where the streetlamps about the square failed to reach and it was along this swath of shadow that his lover came with Joey pressed to her breast.

Later, as they made love, Joey jealously watching chained to the handle of the drawer in which he lay, Jerome felt Violette open up, miraculously, and smelled the heavenly nectar rising from her. In that moment, he glimpsed the goodness of all living creatures that live solely through their senses, without the need to impose their will upon the earth. Joey, disarmed by the intensity of Jerome's revelation, saw this too, and promised himself never to--

Joey tumbled from the highest drawer of Jerome's dresser and found himself hanging by his neck, the two humans on the bed aware only of their pleasure.