Read the seventh installment.

CHAPTER XXII

Within her silence, it was the lack of drink Fleuri Brunet initially found most discomfiting. However, her discomfiture was much relieved by the simple fact that she could still see; she could neither hear nor speak, and her limbs were so leaden that she could neither raise her feet to walk nor her hands to eat. Fleuri had no memory of how she had come to be here. She had no idea who this woman was who looked after her. And she only very dimly knew who she was: every hour or so some familiar image would pass frustratingly through her mind, stopping only long enough to thumb its nose at her.

The place in which she sat was pleasant enough and somehow familiar; the colours and shapes of things pleased her, although she didn't know why. The view from the balcony, where she was situated for long stretches during the cooler hours of the day, was so dazzling that it startled and confused her. At such moments she found herself silently weeping, her tears tasting of the sea as she licked their humiliating confluence from her upper lip. The woman, when she wasn't totally absorbed in her work, which appeared to be clerical, was usually kind enough to wipe the mucous bubbling from her trembling nostrils. And here she was again, Fleuri now realised, come out of the cool darkness of the house and into the light to sit beside her.

"My colleague should be arriving soon with the results of our research," Duckie painstakingly explained, undaunted by Fleuri's wide-eyed incomprehension. "Then I can get on with the next movement of my work. All of my principal players have been introduced with the exception of little Raphaela and, although I've sketched in what I know of her through a writer's God-given intuition, I can't really detail the quirkiness I imagine for the child until she's--well, sitting right here in front of me. As you are, Fleuri."

But the Count didn't come because he hadn't the foggiest idea where Duckie had gone after leaving the hotel. Germain Joncs had gladly taken Lady Duckworth's letter from the taxi driver who had dashed into the bar, read it with mild interest, and thrown it in the rubbish. And so, at that moment, the Count was busy on the telephone trying to ascertain exactly where in Juan-les-Pins Hugo de Hauteville was, so he could ask him if he had heard from her.

When Jacques at the Negresco finally came on the line, the surly prick, whom the Count had always suspected of over-charging him, said, "Well, Sergei, who does he know down there? It must be someone of substance, mustn't it? With all due respect, you're his partner, aren't you? Surely you should know where he is at any given moment of the day or night, unless of course that isn't any of your business. By the by, Bishop Feydeau is looking for him too."

The Count could think of only one person of substance in Juan-les-Pins, although there were plenty, and that was Harry Gluckman. But the Count didn't call Gluckman straightaway because he couldn't see de Hauteville consorting with Jews, unless, that is, he wanted their money. As far as the Count was concerned, all Jews, no matter how rich, were potentially communists. The Count also dreaded de Hauteville's outraged and castigating tone when he confessed that he had let Duckie slip away. But Duckie was meant to be the responsible one, and so the Count reassured himself with the thought that Duckie would necessarily have called de Hauteville to plot out her new course. During their conversation, she would naturally have said something denigrating about him. It didn't matter. He would have to telephone Gluckman and see if de Hauteville were rummaging around the wealthy American's jazzy palazzo.

The first thing de Hauteville said was, "Yes, but where's the little girl?"

"Duckie's fallen in love with the father. They bolted in the middle of night," the Count replied without hesitation.

"What? Where were you?"

"Out on the game."

"You were out chasing tarts, is that what you're saying?"

"Like we used to. Prostitutes. Little girls and the like."

"You left Duckie alone with them at that dreadful hotel?"

"I know about you, you're jealous. You don't want me to have this very beautiful woman, who is an English rose of the first order."

"Don't be so infantile. We're friends, we're all old friends."

"Chums …"

"That's better. Sergei, what happened?"

"Well...she's temperamental, isn't she?"

De Hauteville quickly accepted that this was probably the only logical explanation, and so gave up chastising the Count. "Obviously, you need help. And I can't be there to sort this out."

"Hugo, I'm at a loss."

"I understand."

"And I haven't any time left to tarry." The contents of the golf bag, upon which the Count was leaning, had begun to smell.

"You sound very tired. Duckie can be exhausting."

"That too."

"I'll tell you what…" After a long sick-making moment of quiet, de Hauteville chirped, "It's a marvellous day here on the Juan Golfe! When you've found them, why not bring them down here for the evening? I'm sure Harry wouldn't mind--it's all so very interesting!"

The Count groaned.

"No, wait, wait. I haven't finished--Fontana's lover is there, in Marseilles. Furthermore, Dudu should be there by now too. Although he could have anchored just about anywhere, if I know him. No, it's probably going to be easier to find Fleuri Brunet, at least she'll be more or less stationary."

Now the Count brightened.

"Go to Bernard Brunet's address. It'll be in the directory. Not the telephone directory, the municipal directory. I believe Fontana said it was on the Quai de Rive Neuve--two minutes from your hotel. If you go out into the street, you can probably see it. It'll be to your left. Enlist Madame Brunet's resources. Ask her to call around to the better hotels and so forth. Tell her who you and Duckie are. You know, use your titles."

"Brunet is dead. He hanged himself. And Madame Brunet is being sought by the police for questioning concerning the murder of the barman at our hotel. At any event, I'm not there."

"Not where?"

"Not at the hotel."

"So?"

"I can find it--where Madame Brunet usually resides. She wouldn't have been involved in such a sordid matter anyway. She's a person of fine character."

"Listen to me, Sergei...tell Madame Brunet we'll look after her. Tell her she has nothing to worry about, just as long as she's with us. Bring them all along, to Harry's..."

"Where?"

"Sergei--on the Juan Golfe. The beach everyone talks about. Hundreds of beautiful nude bodies. I can see the tops of the umbrellas from where I'm standing. Ask anyone, they'll tell you instantly where Gluckman lives--the rich American, say."

"I telephoned you there!" erupted the Count. "Well? Didn't I?!"

The Count, golf bag in tow, took yet another taxi, and landed in front of the Hotel Beauvau. As instructed, he gazed across the old harbour to his left. He saw only a woman in a wheelchair on one of the balconies. Then Duckie, glass in hand, appeared beside her, and the Count was overcome with relief. In that instant, he knew what he must do to make up for the loss of Raphaela Gambetta. Rather than deliver the child's body to Duckie, which would only upset her, the Count would make amends with a small gift. A token of his undying affection, the gift would be a bittersweet reminder of those idyllic days they had shared together at Greysteads as children.

De Hauteville was not about to give up Violette's company so easily that glorious afternoon, and so after lunch had urged her onto Harry Gluckman's yacht, which lay anchored in the Juan Golfe, to sunbathe with him. Jerome had gone directly to Violette's cabin to look in on Joey.

Violette was very drunk. When de Hauteville insisted she reveal her breasts to him, she did so without hesitation and with an unusual sense of pride. De Hauteville, being unfamiliar with the swelling of the breasts that attends pregnancy, marvelled aloud at his actress's God-given succulence. Violette wisely kept her secret to herself and, as usual, played the demurring strumpet for her pay-master. However when Mrs. Frankel ventured onto the yacht to enjoy a swim before the evening's festivities and saw Violette's breasts staring shamelessly up at the sun, she flippantly inquired, "So who's the father?"

Seething, de Hauteville seized on the most horrific prospect of all: Violette lolling sullenly before the camera, her enormous belly bared for the gawking crew. But now he was confronted with another crew, there on the sandy shore. This was the crew of La Bonne Santé, all prancing about stark naked, their heretofore unseen members bouncing bravely upon the breeze, with a tattooed heathen in their midst, his shaven head bearing the sinister insignia of a huge squatting black widow spider.

The first thing Jerome noticed upon entering Violette's cabin was the untidiness of her departure. She had left her travelling clothes strewn about, her valise wagging open neither on nor off the bed, and her toiletries cluttering the top of the bureau. The scene reminded him of his arrival at the clinic in Basel, when he had been led mistakenly to the room of another patient, a wealthy madwoman who had swallowed every ounce of perfume, astringent, douching solution, etc. in her possession earlier in the day and had been taken off to the infirmary to die. It saddened Jerome to recognise in Violette, in the exigency of the scene before him, a capacity for a similar form of incoherence and despair.

If Jerome himself struggled with a form of madness, and he knew he did, his sort wasn't manifest in incoherence but in an acuity of emotion that was absolutely exhausting. It was a protracted and plodding state of self-immolation--another humiliating trick of the brain. For Jerome knew himself to be without sufficient spiritual substance to either conjure up, or sustain, such metaphysical drama. In reality, all he knew was imitation.

Now, with a callousness Jerome found abhorrent, happenstance had very likely lodged his peculiar deformity in Violette's belly. How was he ever to tell her she was nurturing that part of himself that he most wanted to be rid of? He saw it lurking there, like a malevolent tadpole. His lethargy would dictate the terms and conditions of their child's limitations. Like Jerome, he or she would dwell within this confine without inspiration, only watching and waiting. Their child would never pass through life's doldrums to points unknown. Jerome felt himself retreating into the murky shallows of his psyche. Eventually, realising his own absence, he realised Joey's.

"Dudu here?!" exclaimed de Hauteville. "He's meant to be in Marseilles!"

"That's Dudu," said Violette, directing his attention to the tattooed heathen oiling himself for the umpteenth time while reclining regally upon the shore of the Juan Golfe.

"My Dudu? I had no idea," stammered de Hauteville, awed and breathless.

Although having assumed the aloof attitude of many a mother-to-be, Violette still felt her essential self stir at the sight of the naked sailors massed on the beach. "What a pretty invasion," she remarked.

"More cocoa butter for your titties?" Mrs. Frankel piped up, her own reptilian shanks gleaming.

Violette's aureoles, usually pale as marzipan, had deepened to a dangerous shade of purple. "I'd best cover them now," she responded. "You know, because of Hugo's motion picture."

Jerome came bounding along the long cedar dock and onto the yacht--odd for a man whose inertia was legend.

"Joey's gone," he declared, his pulse throbbing at the bridge of his nose. "Someone's kicked in the door."

De Hauteville glared at him. "I wish you'd stop calling him by that name! You blaspheme."

"Oh, have you heard? The miracle monkey's brides have all vanished," Mrs. Frankel informed those sprawled about her on the deck.

"Surely not Raphaela Gambetta," said Violette.

"It was in the paper," Mrs. Frankel assured her.

"No, you haven't read very carefully," insisted Violette.

Mrs. Frankel shifted her attention to the woman lying to her left. "The names weren't listed, but it did say all. I may be a kidder, but not where the Church is concerned."

"She's absolutely right, it's the Church's doing!" Hugo de Hauteville gave out a loud burst of laughter, clambered over the cabin, and pushed his way impatiently between two Moorish-looking chaps in white who were boarding the yacht, their arms piled high with terry cloth robes for Gluckman's guests. "The Bishop's done this!" he shouted at the two servants, who stared blankly back at him.

The woman Mrs. Frankel had just spoken to poked her gently in the ribs. "Mademoiselle Desroches is right, you know. We heard on the radio that the Gambetta child was visiting with her aunt when the kidnappings occurred. Even the police didn't know where to find her."

"The newspapers," said Mrs. Frankel, "they just make things up, don't they?"

It was Bishop Feydeau who brought word of the Gambetta murders and the disappearance of Raphaela Gambetta to Ernst Balbec, detective. The two men had met accidentally on the Quai Papacino, both awaiting their respective vessels, the Bishop's to Juan-les-Pins and Balbec's to Fontana's watery grave. Having spoken hastily, the Bishop, always the picture of papal insouciance, leant casually upon the coffin in which the journalist's body lay. But when the Bishop learned of Reynolds Fontana's drowning, he fell into an uncommonly pensive and taciturn mood, which made it extremely difficult for Balbec to ascertain the possible similarities between the murders of Lucia and Alberto Gambetta and that of Gerard Joncs.

As Bishop Feydeau stared at the coffin with the solemnity reserved for the truly wicked, Balbec's questions hung, strung like withering balloons, in the briny air.

Finally the Bishop spoke, his tone insistent and unnecessarily harsh. "I'll deliver the eulogy," he said. "But don't ask why. No, Balbec, detestable as you are, I'll tell you why."

"But I too was the brunt of this bothersome--"

"Monkey joke? Refer to it again and damnation shall haunt you all your miserable days."

"But I'm a family man. A good father and a good husband." Balbec was unused to being vilified quite so vigorously by his betters.

"You're also a whore-monger," reported the Bishop, loudly enough for those travellers who were offended by such language to look away.

"I'm reformed," pleaded Balbec. "I've stepped into at least three churches since I've been on duty here, and I've only been here--"

"I know how long you've been in Nice. And I know with whom you've been consorting and why."

Balbec quieted himself. "Your Holiness, I'm not altogether certain myself."

"Yes, but you do know that the constabulary in Marseilles has put out a bulletin for the detention of this man's acknowledged paramour, the deceased Ex-High Commissioner of Corsica's widow."

"This is true."

"After we've put Monsieur Fontana to rest, I'll explain. You do know, this is the sort of martyr we can ill afford, especially in Marseilles. He had sinful relations with a Jewess and--"

"But so did Bernard Brunet."

"Bernard Brunet was the woman's husband, and also a Jew."

"Of course, but why didn't..." Balbec was lost. "Your Holiness, are you saying you have knowledge of the Englishman taking the life of Gerard Joncs?"

Bishop Feydeau eyed Balbec as though he were the simpleton he had always imagined him to be. "Shall I draw you a diagram?"

The detective nodded in the affirmative and offered the Bishop one of his fine Turkish cigarettes.

"Bless you, my son," said the Bishop.

Once having boarded the trawler, Balbec urged the Bishop to sit with him in the shade of one of the lifeboats where it hung over the glaring deck.

"Now, here's the configuration as best as I've come to understand it…" the Bishop began.

While the evening sun lingered on the horizon, as if keening its great rosy ears to hear every word that came slipping from the Bishop's smoky lips, they pressed on south-eastward.

The hand resting in the Count's was so small it appeared birdlike.

"Is it bronze, or tarnished silver?" asked Duckie, wanting very much to pick it up and hold it but resisting the temptation; it was essential, to spite the fool, that she not appear too interested.

"Look more closely," urged the Count.

The little bird's foot didn't have talons, it had fingernails, and one finger wore a tiny gold ring with a garland of minuscule roses embossed in its delicate matter.

"It's lovely," Duckie agreed. But she still wouldn't allow herself to touch it.

Staring coldly up at the Count, she reminded him of what he had set out to do and asked why he hadn't done it, beginning with "You left me twelve hours ago" and ending with "and, furthermore, where is the child?"

The Count had begun to ease awkwardly away from her toward the balcony, where Fleuri Brunet had been left facing a potted begonia, when Duckie asked, "Is there a pin? Doesn't it have a pin to fasten it to something, to one's bodice or lapel?"

"It's only a little girl's hand," confessed the Count.

Duckie felt the softness of Raphaela Gambetta's fingers graze her cheek.

On the balcony, the Count allowed himself to weep with shame. Fleuri watched as his hot tears gathered in the folds of his jowls. Inside, Duckie, with a certain incongruous fondness, accepted that she hadn't really given him the chance to explain himself. Feeling herself becoming aroused, she admired the massiveness of the Count's quivering shoulders, oblivious to his anguish, and longed for him to turn and smile, and tickle Raphaela's tiny palm with his moustache.

Out the porthole drifted the last golden dust of the day. Once having bound Joey's hands to his feet with a length of dried cat gut, the Turk ladled the helpless goldfish into Joey's mouth. Joey knew he would rather perish than take such cruel nourishment, and so spat the little fish into the Turk's face. His disfigurement swiftly followed. Later that evening, when the Turk cast Joey's hand jubilantly down upon the deck, instead of the customary desiccated bones, Dudu fell upon him and cursed him, exhorting him for profaning man's God-given dominion over all creatures. Sobbing inconsolably and clutching Joey to his breast, he took the Turk below. There at the centre of Hugo de Hauteville's state-room, as the eyes of the black widow spider tattooed on his brow beamed heavenward, Dudu butchered the Turk, drenching himself and Joey in the warm stuff of his mate's entrails. The relentless ferocity with which he disembowelled the Turk sickened him. When had this hatred begun? Surely not when Jerome Lombardi had come to lunch and spoken so diffidently, so narcissistically about playing Jesus Christ? No, Dudu had been fattening this rage with a voracious appetite for a very long time. Again he began to weep, and he wept more deeply than ever before. The kids on the next farm had taken his kitten, tied a rock around her neck, and thrown her in the stream at the bottom of the pasture. Now as he spun wildly round the state-room, tearing at the white curtains with their gold monograms, his naked feet skidding over the bloody varnished boards, Dudu held Joey's arm aloft, like a broken standard, while Joey's other limbs, one hand and two feet intact, fastened themselves evermore tightly about his slippery torso.

CHAPTER XXIII

"You see? Simple," said Bishop Feydeau, and exhaled contentedly. He watched as Balbec distractedly peeled the skin from his damp cigarette and flicked the sticky strands of tobacco at their feet. The gulls that had been hovering overhead whirled off toward land. Dusk washed over the deck of the trawler.

"When you make the little marks on your palm, I can follow you all right. But when I think about it, I can't see how one thing leads to the next," Balbec confessed. He felt his colour deepening with embarrassment. "I think I've got the gist, your Holiness, and I'm deeply honoured that you'd entrust me with such knowledge, but if you'd be kind enough to go over just the names of the perpetrators again, just the names, your Holiness, again from top to bottom, I'm almost certain I'll be that much closer to fully grasping the truth…in the fullness of its meaning…if you see what I mean."

The Bishop left the bench and went to stand against the railing that circumscribed the captain's perch. "My good man," he shouted up to the cabin, "where are we?"

"Just even with Grimaldi Castle, your Holiness!" came the answer.

"We're putting in at Port Gallice?" the Bishop asked of Balbec.

"Yes, your Holiness," muttered the detective.

Balbec now had the impression that the crimes with which he was immediately concerned--the murders of Gerard Joncs and Lucia and Alberto Gambetta--were not fully within his jurisdiction, but had somehow, apparently unbeknownst to the whole of the Marseilles police, become the provenance of the Church of Rome. If the Bishop was asking him to carry on with his investigation but report directly to him--if that's what his Holiness was actually saying--Balbec figured, somewhat dejectedly, this would be fine too. Perhaps working for the Church was more important than working for the Municipality. However, Balbec hoped the Bishop would reinforce his predisposition to work for the city first and then, if necessary, for God.

"He knows all of our thoughts," said the Bishop, "but only very few of us may confer directly with Him."

This was not what Balbec needed.

"You are so gifted as to hear the malevolent thoughts of the criminal. When you impart these secret thoughts to me, I can act upon them. I have been divined, most blessed of wonders, to deliver them to the mind of God. And, as I've already explained, only He can dictate what punishment shall be brought to bear upon these abject sinners."

"So then what's left for us to do?" Balbec moaned. "There's no advancement in that..."

"Please, be patient, I'm getting to that. Now, I shall give you the names once again in their order of significance."

"What about the various organisations?" brooded Balbec.

"Rest easy, dear Ernst, they have names too." Bishop Feydeau always had a ready answer. "Firstly, we have the Brunet's."

"Jews."

"Absolutely. And Communists. Then we have Fontana."

"Not a Jew."

"No, not a Jew, but also a Communist."

"And Joncs was assassinated by Fontana because Joncs intended to foil their--"

"Not a plot as such," the Bishop interposed, "more correctly, a conspiracy."

"Yes, your Holiness, a conspiracy."

"As you may recall, Fontana was seen fornicating with Madame Brunet."

"In a public place."

"On the beach at La Brague in broad daylight. Then of course we have Hugo de Hauteville."

"A Jew who no one knows is a Jew."

"That's it."

"And Lucia and Alberto Gambetta were murdered by de Hauteville's hireling--"

"And Madame Brunet's."

"Madame Brunet's hireling as well."

"Yes."

"An enormous man in a vulgar suit and tie, a necrophiliac," ventured Balbec.

"That's close, but not exactly it. A necrophilic: one who has a morbid erotic attraction to dead bodies," replied Bishop Feydeau, with his customary aplomb.

"And they were murdered--she raped afterwards and he cast over the rampart and into the cove--because they chose to deny the doctor's diagnoses."

"If one chooses to identify such a pregnancy as a disease or, more precisely, a diseasonal organism. You see, as I was fooled, so too were they."

"Your Holiness, I'm terribly confused. Did Gambetta and his sister believe the child was pregnant or not?"

"They did not. They only believed, in the end, that I was being made to look ridiculous."

"But why?"

"So that Madame Brunet could assume power. Imagine this intolerable woman standing before the Assembly with her nose in the air denying the viability of any Catholic man in Marseilles to govern. Just think about it."

It was much worse than Balbec had thought. "And we, the police, have our description of Madame Brunet's hireling from several taxi drivers."

"Three," repeated the Bishop, "three only."

The Count had come in from the balcony, passed by Duckie, and left Bernard Brunet's flat without another word. With mixed feelings of satisfaction and regret, Duckie had watched him go. She most regretted he hadn't left Raphaela Gambetta's hand with her, which might well have acted as a medium through which to divine what exactly had transpired between the Count and his victim. But she also regretted she hadn't had her way with him, which would certainly have renewed her sense of her own powers. She alone, without the interference of Hugo de Hauteville, had created for Golden Lamb an emissary of death, but the Count, so miserably weak and unformed, was a danger even to herself. Her screenplay was about to go off the rails, and all because Sergei was now stoking the engine entirely on his own. How to guide him, she wondered, without relying on the light that emanated from her sex? This was indeed the question. She shuddered to think what he might do next, and wrote that out in her notebook:

I shudder to think what he might do next. (This should be narrated by the character based on me.)

What Duckie would never know was that the Count, having glanced down at Fleuri Brunet on the balcony and seen the sympathy in her eyes, had placed Raphaela Gambetta's little hand in hers. Still dangling from her wrist had been the name-tag fastened to her upon entering the military hospital on the Rue Perrin Solliers where she had been treated by Dr. Oliphant, whose name was inscribed just below hers. Neither did Duckie know that Fleuri, her white shift damp with spittle and tears, had managed against all odds to find the strength to raise her hands and tuck the little hand down between her warm bosoms.

As the Count wandered back along the quay in the direction of the Hotel Beauvau, the name Oliphant pestered him. He knew the name, but couldn't recollect where he had heard or read it. Then it came to him. The doctor who had overseen the examination of the infants violated by Fontana's monkey was named Oliphant; the Count had read this name in the Journalier Nice. It was doubtful that there was more than one Dr. Oliphant practising medicine in Marseilles. It was very likely too late to find Dr. Oliphant at the hospital. Nevertheless, the Count hastened to the basement of the Hotel Beauvau to collect his golf bag and determine where to deposit it--hopefully Raphaela Gambetta's final destination--before attempting to engage Dr. Oliphant in a last effort to save face.

Feeling a little better, Duckie went out onto the balcony where she had left Fleuri with a volume of Alice Alworth's verse open on a music-stand before her. She found her new friend asleep. It seemed pointless to disturb her, so Duckie left the flat and walked on, pensively, toward the Jardin du Pharo with its magnificent view of the sea.

Hidden behind the trunk of a large pine, Hugo de Hauteville stood on the bluff above the darkening inlet observing the exotic behaviour of his newly Nubian crew. Dudu was no longer among them. Neither was the Turk, whom de Hauteville knew his secretary fancied. For nearly forty minutes, de Hauteville had been standing thusly, staring down at his men in a trance, when Jerome happened upon him.

"They've gone off together," said de Hauteville wistfully, and held Jerome's gaze. "I imagine they've gone onto my boat to make love."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"I thought everyone did, secretly. Being a bit like our Violette, I like my men wild."

What Jerome had come to say was difficult.

"I know about the baby," said de Hauteville, just as Jerome was about to begin, "and I don't blame you, if it's yours. Only now Violette won't be able to play the angelic daughter of Raphaela and Fontana's monkey, unless of course we can gather all our resources together in the next month or so."

"It wouldn't do for her to be pregnant in Mr. Didot either," offered Jerome, the shyness of his childhood returning unaccountably.

To Jerome's complete surprise, de Hauteville put his arms around him, embraced him warmly, and said, "You're like a son to me, and I wish you every happiness."

Jerome despaired. "Do I need to thank you?"

"Not at all," answered de Hauteville, apparently unaware of the ridiculousness of the situation. "Now, tell me, what am I to do about my own dilemma--with Dudu. I'm finding no comfort in this curious admiration I'm feeling for him."

"He'll return," said Jerome, without conviction.

De Hauteville sighed mournfully, took Jerome's hand, and led him down the bluff to stand idly amongst the crew of La Bonne Santé. The crew's nakedness became more intimidating as the fire they had built in the sand burned higher. A cold wind blew in off the gulf. De Hauteville, ignoring the whimpering of his flesh, valiantly set about removing his clothes. He urged Jerome to do the same. When they were both naked, the crew gave up a chorus of exalted yelps.

Again there was quiet as the crew's erstwhile captain took up the spyglass and peered out across the water. "He's piloting the ship himself--round toward Cap d'Antibes--and there's no sign of the Turk on deck," de Hauteville informed them.

With that his men moved as one into the Juan Golfe and swam out in pursuit of his ship. As they swam, they sang the name they had given their vessel, Le Vagin Violette. And, as they sang, they swam harder. The two men remaining on the shore listened with astonishment. But it was Violette Desroches who was most astonished, her feet held fast to the path on which she had been treading over the bluff.

"Yes, Dr. Oliphant is here. But he can't be disturbed at present," said Crapelet, who had come down from the lab. "He's with a patient."

"Who?" asked the Count, forsaking his good manners.

"You really want to know?" Crapelet winked at the Count, much to his annoyance. "It's an African gentleman who recently converted to Judaism and was circumcised rather badly. No antiseptic cream." Crapelet began giggling, obviously keeping some naughty detail from the stranger. "He's already got a face full of scars--who'd think he'd want one for a cock?!"

"I'll wait," said the Count, and remained standing at the desk until Oliphant appeared.

"I haven't any control over the situation," said Oliphant, "and furthermore, I don't see what Madame Brunet has to do with all this. And further to that, I'm finding it very hard to accept the veracity of your account."

"She made the request today. We were in the presence of Lady Duckworth. I repeat, I am Lady Duckworth's oldest and most trusted friend. I have served as the Duckworth family's religious counsel for two generations. We buried Sir Dickie in St. Petersburg before the revolution, the ruination of my country and my church. I repeat myself again, begging your pardon, but Madame Brunet has spoken with the Bishop. The atonement is upon her head. She took Monsieur Fontana into sin, and Monsieur Fontana's monkey defiled the infants. This grave matter is now my responsibility. God speaks through His church. And God's church is here in Marseilles, is it not? The Bishop has instructed me, in his absence, to bring full atonement to Madame Brunet, who has only today sworn her allegiance to Our Lady. By doing this, she has offered up her sinful life for redemption. She has taken Our Lady into her heart, and there Our Lady shall dwell forever, as she does in mine and, I wish to presume, in yours."

Oliphant thought on what the Count had said. "And this, as you say, is why these children should be entrusted to you?"

"The Bishop insisted. They shall be cared for with the utmost love and kindness, which Madame Brunet certainly has to give. Think of it, the finest Catholic schools. Everything."

Oliphant remained unconvinced by this Russian priest in his vulgar English suit. "I'd best ring Mother Ignatius. She knows about these things."

"What things?"

"Whatever things the Bishop is about."

"Do it then, ring her."

And Oliphant did.

They then went in a taxi to the children's hospice of La Petite St. Marie Noire, in that part of Marseilles known as Le Redon, where the eight remaining impregnated infants were supposedly being held, as requested by Bishop Feydeau, with the kind permission of their parents. It was there at the hospice that the Count imposed upon the magnanimity of Mother Ignatius and again stated his case.

"It is known to be the hand of St. Jeanne d'Arc, cruelly taken from her before that terrible conflagration took her from us," said the Count, his mission now inspiring an unprecedented eloquence. "The hand of an adolescent, her sovereign soul unsullied by the rites of spring. It remains warm with the unspilt milk of Our Lady's most recent and most important convert, Madame Brunet, herself with child, as Dr. Oliphant will confirm."

"Well put," commented Oliphant, as Mother Ignatius looked to him for any subliminal sign of deceit.

"The hand of St. Jeanne d'Arc accompanied me all the way from Belarussa, where it has been enshrined since the death of Brother Massieu."

"We never knew of this," confessed Mother Ignatius.

"Rightfully, it should be here in France."

"Where the dear girl perished," said Mother Ignatius.

"Where the dear girl was martyred," the Count gently corrected.

"Bring it to me, and I will consider your offer, enjoined of course by the Bishop, if I can reach him--he's meant to be on his way to Juan-les-Pins, for God only knows what reason."

Mother Ignatius had clearly been stirred by the Count's unselfish offer, and Madame Brunet's.

Sick-making despair possessed Joey as he reached out his arm and waited hopelessly for his missing hand to appear. He could feel it wanting to pick up the grapes from the table before him. He could feel the grapes popping open between his missing fingers and the tickling juice upon his missing palm. Joey wondered if the tattooed heathen who had laid him on the cushion of the captain's chair had hidden his hand, or if the grinning sailor who had hacked it off, and who now resembled the meat most men eat, had eaten it himself.

Rage rushed into Joey's head, as the alcohol had once done as he had sat drinking and smoking and chattering uncontrollably to the delight of Fontana's seedier friends. But any sense of familiarity had gone, only the indignity remained. He slammed his blunted wrist down on the table, smashed the grapes, shattered the bowl in which they lay. He smeared his blood over his face, as he had seen the tattooed heathen do, before finally favouring his wound gently with his tongue. Glancing up, wanting only to lose his cries in the cacophony of a jungle night, Joey apprehended the naked men standing around him. They were indeed naked and wet and, Joey knew, saddened by what they saw.

CHAPTER XXIV

The night would be clear and cold. It would be a night without event, Jerome hoped. He watched as Hugo de Hauteville, naked, knelt by the fire. He came closer, in his own nakedness, and held his hands out before the heat. He then went to de Hauteville and rested his warm palms on the maestro's slackened shoulders. Consumed by the strange empathy he felt for the older man in his desolation, he stared vacantly at the moon rising over the sea. Unaware of the tide sweeping in to soak the sand beneath his feet, Jerome was also unaware of the soft curve of his penis resting in the hollow where de Hauteville's neck met the slope of his shoulder. De Hauteville shifted gently on his knees to return his embrace, but Jerome was unable to respond and turned away, filled with the same self-loathing he had felt so often before. Again, he found himself separated from the moment in which he lived. When de Hauteville realised Jerome was absent, he let him be. He took up his clothing and wandered over the bluff, hoping Jerome would follow, but he didn't.

Duckie could see the tops of the distant orange trees hovering invitingly above the sea, each crown of glossy leaves impossibly luxuriant against a dome of radiantly darkening sky. The Jardin du Pharo awaited her, soon to be dappled in magical moonlight. But she dawdled along her way, hearing the muted voices of women unlike herself, stale women jealous of her exquisite turmoil. With each step, the path whispered with them, and she wondered: What irrelevant distractions are these? Her life had taken on the character of a myth, the sort of thing such women only read about in magazines.

But more importantly, she had a new friend, a very special friend, who she knew more about, due to her investigative genius, than anyone could possibly imagine. For instance, in addition to the fact that Fleuri Brunet was Madame Brunet, Duckie knew that her husband, the Ex-High Commissioner of Corsica, had recently committed suicide, and that Fleuri had been carrying on with Hugo's old chum, the society reporter Reynolds Fontana. She had known Fontana in London and had especially liked him. He was handsome, very handsome indeed, and he had a reputation as somewhat of a rakehell, although he wasn't fat, not like Rowlandson's caricatures of such indulgent men. No, Fontana was more like a rugby player who had been absorbed into the silken world of Beardsley, with just a touch of the angularity of a Percy Wyndham Lewis cubist doodle; both artists Duckie found terribly contrived--not original. She intended that The Madman and the Monkey be altogether original, a result of her fine blending of fact and fiction. And so, she was shocked but also delighted when she stopped at a news-stand for a packet of cigarettes and glanced over the evening papers to see that Reynolds Fontana had drowned in the Baie des Anges. It was just too perfect.

Granted, she did feel sorry for Fleuri, but Fleuri's dalliance with Fontana had been just that. Fleuri deserved better, and she would have better. Fortuitously, it occurred to Duckie, Fleuri might be just what Hugo had been looking for all his life. It was all, quite suddenly, just too exciting. Her impulsiveness got the better of her and Duckie dashed off to telephone Hugo--the Count had said he was with that two-faced American-styled Communist Harry Gluckman at Juan-les-Pins--to tell him the tragic news of his old pub-crawling mate's untimely death.

By the time Duckie had found a café with a functioning telephone it was dark along the quayway, but this only heightened the jangly atmosphere she required for the dialogue-oriented scene to follow.

The distant streetlamps along the beach west of Port Gallice provided Ernst Balbec with only the dimmest light by which to work as he reproduced in the sand, employing crafty symbols and signs, the hierarchy the Bishop had delineated, from the tip of his index finger to the heel of his palm, on the trawler. Balbec had a hunch that Bishop Feydeau was insane, but he hadn't any way to confirm or disprove it. Initially, the Bishop had not defined a criminal or subversive hierarchy as such, he had only attempted to explain to Balbec how business and art often, in Jewish circles, get bound up with the cabala and other inscrutably esoteric and scientific propositions. But the Bishop's use of the words order of significance had played havoc with Balbec's capacity to reason objectively, especially as he knew from experience that political motivation is often a manifestation of criminal instinct, and political supremacy means significance. Perhaps this was where the Communist angle applied, although the Bishop resisted going into that, preferring instead to simply identify the players as Jew, Communist, English degenerate, etc. Then the Bishop's explication had turned sinister.

Certainly Balbec had no proof that Hugo de Hauteville & Co. were performing at the behest of Madame Brunet and the Jewish bankers of the Côte d'Azur. He had, however, sensed from the very start that de Hauteville and nearly everyone he consorted with were infected with a compulsion to commit forms of idolatry and blasphemy with which Balbec was largely unfamiliar. This wasn't merely a private club for people who enjoyed staring at each other's genitals while murmuring indecently. This was a network of plotters determined to tear down the Church through the corruption of nature itself. Tampering with the perfection of God's finest creation--man--by disseminating amongst the public the impression that a dirty little monkey was capable of polluting the human pool of life was, without question, criminally degenerate and, as the Bishop obviously knew what he was talking about with regard to the dread matter of perdition, indeed damnable. Such a crime in a Biblical world would be punishable, most assuredly, by death. Balbec recalled from his schooling under Sister Beatrix that there was a time when witches like Madame Brunet were either tortured until they recapitulated and gave up the demons possessing them, or were burnt alive--filthy prevaricators--while their protestations of innocence flowed thickly upon their tongues with the devil's saliva, mucous, semen, or whatever.

Balbec was now convinced that it had been Madame Brunet who had paid the doctors, mostly Jews no doubt, to pronounce the nine infants pregnant, according to plan. None of the immature females, the Bishop had assured Balbec, was in fact with child, bestial or human. As Balbec saw it, the hoax, at the glad-handed expense of the Covenant of Jewish Bankers, would reach its pinnacle of deceit as Hugo de Hauteville, through the jiggery-pokery of moving pictures, elevated the monkey Joey to the status of Christ reconstituted. The miracle monkey's offspring would be animal angels, and man--Reynolds Fontana as portrayed most probably by Jerome Lebowitz--would be returned to the innocence he had known in the Garden of Eden. Thusly, the epidemic faddishness of the new mythology spreading as easily as light upon any surface, Jehovah would enslave all of Christendom, just as He had the Israelites. It made sense. Balbec watched as the foaming tide smoothed over the various abbreviations he had incised in the sand.

Bishop Feydeau telephoned Mother Ignatius at the children's hospice in Le Redon to ask if the hand of St. Jeanne d'Arc was now safely with her. It was during this conversation that the Bishop collapsed. He was later cloistered at the Sanctuaire de la Garoupe, where he was heard to rave deliriously throughout the night and into the morning. The subject of the hallucination that had possessed him, he said, was the Miracle of the Virgin Birth, its sublimity made monstrous by the superimposition of a howling monkey's face on the face of the anonymous Joseph.

But the Bishop's mind had actually gone reeling into the abyss because Mother Ignatius had told him two extremely disconcerting things. Firstly, that Dr. Oliphant had decided that it was imperative that the eight female infants in his care be induced to give birth, even though the procedure was grossly pre-mature. (This was of course code between Oliphant and the Bishop.) Secondly, the body of Raphaela Gambetta had been found in a golf bag caught on the root of an orange tree extending from the cliffside below the Jardin du Pharo, very near the place where her father's body had been found. Her right hand had been amputated just above the wrist, and she was without child.

Fleuri Brunet awakened to the beating of her heart in her ears. It was a reassuring sound, like rain dripping on a sodden roof. There was the black water glimmering far below. There were the bobbing boats, all drenched in shadow, all somehow ridiculous. I can hear only myself, she said, without any sound coming from her, and again began to weep. Her chest rose and fell and her chin grew wet and her pulse hammered in her throat. Eventually, even her guts were invaded by the pain. Kindly hands lifted her from her wheelchair and allowed her to stand. Her wild red hair--what was left of it--floated on the wind. In her mind's eye, she was the Irish girl Fontana had assumed her to be, the tussock-headed lass with the rosebud mouth and the excited eyes who would wait every night on the bridge, watching for him to come home. She had loved the Englishman. As she tasted the cool evening on her lips, and the Count led her to edge of the balcony, the little hand dropped between her ankles. To the Count's astonishment, Madame Brunet fell without ever acknowledging him. Her stillness baffled him too. Now she slept in the darkness on the street below. The Count looked out over the harbour one last time, wondering where Duckie had gone, then plucked up Raphaela's hand where it lay by Bernard Brunet's old music-stand.