The Club Dumas

XII. BUCKINGHAM AND MILADY

Corso sat on the bottom step, attempting to light a cigarette. Still too stunned, he hadn't recovered his spatial sense and couldn't get the match in the same plane as the tip of the cigarette. Also, one of the lenses in his glasses was cracked, and he had to squint with one eye to see with the other. When the flame reached his fingers, he dropped the match between his feet and kept the cigarette in his mouth. The girl, who had been collecting the contents of the bag strewn over the ground, came and handed the bag to him.

"Are you all right?"

Her tone was neutral, without concern or worry. She was probably annoyed at the stupid way that Corso had been taken by surprise in spite of her warning on the phone. He nodded, humiliated and confused. But he was comforted when he remembered the look on Rochefort's face just before the kick. The girl had struck precisely and cruelly, but she didn't follow up as Rochefort lay sprawled on his back. He didn't challenge her or try to retaliate, but turned over in pain and dragged himself away, while she, no longer interested in him, went to pick up the bag. Corso, had he been able, would have gone after the man and, without a second thought, throttled him until he'd extracted everything from him. But the girl might not have allowed that, and anyway he was too weak even to stand.

"Why did you let him go?" Corso asked.

They could make Rochefort out in the distance, a staggering figure that was now disappearing into the darkness around a bend of the riverbank, among moored barges that looked like ghost ships in the low mist. Corso pictured the man retreating, humiliated, his face swollen, wondering how on earth a woman could have done so much damage. Corso felt jubilant at this revenge.

"We should have questioned the bastard," he complained.

She'd retrieved her duffel coat and sat next to him, but didn't answer immediately. She seemed tired.

"He'll come after us again," she said. She glanced at Corso before looking out at the river. "Be more careful next time."

He took the damp cigarette from his mouth and started turning it over in his fingers, which made it fall apart.

"I would never have believed..."

"Men don't. Until they get their faces pushed in."

Then he saw that she was bleeding. It wasn't much: a trickle of blood from nose to lip.

"Your nose," he said stupidly.

"I know," she said, touching her face and looking at the blood on her fingers.

"How did he do that to you?"

"It was my fault." She wiped her fingers on her jeans. "When I fell on top of him. We bumped heads."

"Where did you learn to do that kind of thing?"

"What kind of thing?"

"I saw you, by the water." Corso moved his hands in a clumsy imitation of her movement. "Giving him what he deserved."

She smiled gently and stood up, brushing the back of her jeans.

"I once wrestled with an angel. He won, but I learned a few things."

With her bloody nose she looked impossibly young. She put the bag over her shoulder and held out her hand to help him. He was surprised by her firm grip. When he stood up, all his bones ached.

"I thought angels fought with lances and swords."

She was sniffing, holding her head back to stop the blood. She looked at him sideways, annoyed.

"You've looked at too many Dürer engravings, Corso. And see where that's got you."

THEY RETURNED TO THE hotel via the Pont Neuf and the passageway along the Louvre, without any more incidents. By the light of a street lamp he saw that the girl was still bleeding. He took his handkerchief from his pocket, but when he tried to help her, she took it from him and held it to her nose herself. She walked, absorbed in her own thoughts. Corso glanced at her long, bare neck and perfect profile, her matte skin in the hazy light from the lamps of the Louvre. He couldn't tell what she was thinking. She walked with the bag on her shoulder, her head slightly forward, which made her look determined, stubborn.

Occasionally, when they turned a dark corner, her eyes darted, and she put the hand holding the handkerchief down by her side, walking tense and alert. Under the archways of the Rue de Rivoli, where there was more light, she seemed to relax. When her nose stopped bleeding, she returned his handkerchief stained with dry blood. Her mood improved. She didn't seem to find it so reprehensible that he let himself be caught like a fool. She put her hand on his shoulder a couple of times, as if they were two old friends returning from a walk. It was a spontaneous, natural gesture. But maybe she was also tired and needed support. Corso, his head clearing with the walk, found it pleasant at first. Then it began to trouble him. The feel of her hand on his shoulder awakened a strange feeling in him, not entirely disagreeable but unexpected. He felt tender, like the soft center of a candy.

GRUBER WAS ON DUTY that evening. He allowed himself a brief, inquisitive glance at the pair—Corso in his damp, dirty coat, his glasses cracked, the girl with her face stained with blood—but otherwise remained expressionless. He raised an eyebrow courteously and nodded, indicating that he was at Corso's disposal, but Corso gestured that he didn't need anything. Gruber handed him a sealed envelope and both room keys. They stepped into the elevator, and Corso was about to open the envelope when he saw that the girl's nose was bleeding again. He put the message in his pocket and gave her his handkerchief again. The elevator stopped at her floor. Corso said she should call a doctor, but the girl shook her head and got out of the elevator. After a moment of hesitation, he followed her. She had dripped some blood on the carpet. In the room, he made her sit on the bed, then went to the bathroom and soaked a towel in water.

"Hold this against your neck and lean your head back."

She obeyed without a word. All the energy she'd shown down by the river seemed to have evaporated. Maybe because of the nosebleed. He took off her coat and shoes and lay her on the bed, putting the pillow under her back. Like an exhausted little girl, she let him. Before turning off all the lights except for the one in the bathroom, Corso looked around. Other than a toothbrush, toothpaste, and shampoo above the washbasin, the only belongings he could see were her duffel coat, the rucksack open on the sofa, the postcards bought the day before with The Three Musketeers, a gray sweater, a couple of T-shirts, and a pair of white panties drying on the radiator. He looked at the girl, embarrassed. He wasn't sure whether he ought to sit on the edge of the bed or elsewhere. His feeling from the Rue de Rivoli was still there in his stomach. He couldn't leave. Not until she felt better. In the end he decided to remain standing. He had his hands in his coat pockets, and with one of them he could feel the empty flask of gin. He glanced greedily at the liquor cabinet, its hotel seal still unbroken. He was dying for a drink.

"You were great down there by the river," he said. "I haven't thanked you."

She smiled sleepily. But her eyes, with pupils dilated in the darkness, followed Corso's every move. "What's going on?" he asked.

She looked back at him with irony, implying that his question was absurd.

"They obviously want something you have."

"The Dumas manuscript? Or The Nine Doors?"

The girl sighed. None of this is terribly important, she seemed to be saying.

"You're clever, Corso," she said at last. "By now you should have a theory."

"I have too many. What I don't have is any proof."

"A person doesn't always need proof."

"That's only in crime novels. All Sherlock Holmes or Poirot has to do is guess who the murderer is and how he committed the crime. He invents the rest and tells it as if he knew it was a fact. Then Watson or Hastings congratulates him admiringly and says, 'Well done. That's exactly how it happened.' And the murderer confesses. The idiot."

"I'd congratulate you."

This time there was no irony in her voice. She was watching him intently, waiting for him to say or do something.

He shifted uneasily. "I know," he said. The girl still held his gaze, as if she truly had nothing to hide. "But I wonder why."

He was about to add, "This is real life, not a crime novel," but didn't. At this point in the story, the line between fantasy and reality appeared rather tenuous. The flesh-and-blood Corso, having an ID, a known place of residence, and a physical presence, of which his aching bones—after the episode on the stone steps—were proof, was increasingly tempted to see himself as a real character in an imaginary world. But that wasn't good. From there it was only a small step to believing he was an imaginary character who thinks he's real in an imaginary world. Only a small step to going nuts. And he wondered whether someone, some twisted novelist or drunken writer of cheap screenplays at that very moment saw him as an imaginary character in an imaginary world who thought he wasn't real. That really would be too much.

These thoughts made his mouth unbearably dry. He stood in front of the girl, his hands in his pockets, his tongue like sandpaper. If I were imaginary, he thought with relief, my hair would stand on end, I'd exclaim "Woe is me!" and my face would be beaded with sweat. And I wouldn't be this thirsty. I drink, therefore I am. So he went to the liquor cabinet, broke the seal, took a miniature bottle of gin, and drank it in two gulps. He was almost smiling when he stood up and shut the cabinet like someone closing a reliquary. Things gradually assumed their proper proportions.

The room was fairly dark. The dim light from the bathroom slanted across the bed where the girl was still lying. He looked at her bare feet, her legs, the T-shirt spattered with dry blood. Then his gaze lingered over her long, tanned, bare neck. The half-open mouth showing the tips of her white teeth in the gloom. Her eyes still watching him intently. He touched the key to his room inside his coat pocket. He ought to leave.

"Are you feeling better?"

She nodded. Corso looked at his watch, although he didn't really care about the time. He didn't remember having switched on the radio as they came into the room, but there was music playing somewhere. A melancholy song, in French. A waitress in a bar, in a port, in love with a sailor.

"Right. I've got to go."

The woman on the radio went on singing. The sailor, predictably, had gone for good, and the girl in the bar gazed at his empty chair and the wet ring left by his glass on the table. Corso went to the bedside table to get his handkerchief and used the cleanest part to wipe his undamaged lens. Then he saw that the girl's nose was bleeding.

"It's started again."

A trickle of blood was running down to her mouth. She put her hand to her face and smiled stoically, looking at her bloodstained fingers.

"It doesn't matter."

"You ought to see a doctor."

She half closed her eyes and shook her head. She looked helpless in the dim light of the room, dark spots of blood staining the pillow. Still holding his glasses, he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over to hold the handkerchief to her nose. As he did so, his shadow, outlined on the wall by the slanting light from the bathroom, seemed to hesitate a moment between light and darkness before disappearing into the corner.

Then the girl did something strange, unexpected. She ignored the handkerchief he was offering her and stretched out her bloody hand to him. She touched his face and drew four red lines with her fingers, from his forehead to his chin. Instead of moving her hand away after this singular caress, she kept it there, damp and warm, while he felt drops of blood running down the four lines on his face. Her luminous irises reflected the light from the half-open door, and he shuddered, seeing in each the image of his lost shadow.

Another song was playing on the radio, but neither of them was listening. The girl smelled of heat and fever, a gentle pulse throbbing under the skin of her bare neck. The room was light and dark, and things became lost in the deep shadows. She whispered something unintelligible very low, and light glinted in her eyes as she slipped her hand around his neck, spreading the trail of warm blood. With the taste of blood on his tongue, he leaned toward her, toward her soft, half-open mouth. She gave a gentle moan which seemed to come from far away, slow and monotonous, centuries-old. For a brief moment, in the pulse of her flesh all Lucas Corso's previous deaths came to life, as if brought by the current of a dark slow river whose waters were as thick as varnish. He regretted that she didn't have a name that he could carve in his memory with that moment.

It lasted only a second. Then, recovering his clearheadedness, he saw his other self sitting on the edge of the bed, still in his coat, mesmerized as she moved back slightly and undid her jeans, arching her back like a beautiful young animal. He watched her with a kind of internal, benevolent wink, with a familiar indulgence both weary and skeptical. More with curiosity than desire. As she slid her zipper open, the girl uncovered a dark triangle that contrasted with the white cotton panties that came down with her jeans. Her long, tanned legs, stretched out on the bed, took Corso's—both the Corsos'—breath away just as they had kicked in Rochefort's teeth. Then she lifted her arms and took off her T-shirt. She did it naturally neither, flirtatious nor indifferent. She kept her calm, sweet eyes on him until her T-shirt covered her face. Then the contrast was even greater—more white cotton, this time sliding upward over tanned skin, her firm, warm flesh, her slender waist, her heavy, perfect breasts outlined against the light in the darkness, her neck, her half-open mouth, and once again her eyes, with all the light in them stolen from the sky. With Corso's shadow in them, like a soul locked in the bottom of a double crystal ball or emerald.

At that moment, he knew that he wouldn't be able to do it. He sensed it with the lugubrious intuition that precedes certain events and marks them, even before they have taken place, with inevitable disaster. To be prosaic, Corso realized, as he threw the rest of his clothes on top of his coat at the foot of the bed, that his initial erection was now in visible retreat. Cut down in its prime. Or, as his Bonapartist great-great-grandfather would have said, "La Garde recule." Totally. Anxiously he hoped that, as he was standing against the light, his unfortunately flaccid state wouldn't be noticed. Very carefully he lay facedown next to her tanned, warm body waiting in the dark and used what the emperor, out on the muddy fields of Flanders, would have called an indirect-approach tactic—sizing up the terrain from the middle distance and making no contact in the critical zone. From a prudent distance he played for time in case Grouchy arrived with reinforcements; he caressed the girl and kissed her unhurriedly on the mouth and neck. But no luck. Grouchy was nowhere to be seen. The old fool was chasing Prussians miles from the battlefield. Corso's anxiety turned to panic as the girl moved nearer to him and slipped her firm, warm thigh between his thighs. She must have become aware of the extent of the disaster. He saw her smile, a slightly disconcerted smile, but encouraging, as if to say something like, "I know you can do it!" Then she kissed him with extreme tenderness and put out her hand, to help things along. And just when he felt her hand at the very epicenter of the drama, Corso went down completely. Like the Titanic. Straight to the bottom, no half measures. The orchestra playing on deck, women and children first. The next twenty minutes were agony, atonement for all his sins. Heroic attacks meeting the immovable barrier of the Scottish fusiliers. The infantry on the attack glimpsing only the slightest chance of victory. Improvised incursions by the light infantry, in the vain hope of taking the enemy by surprise. Skirmishes of hussars and heavy charges by cuirassiers. But all attempts met with the same results—Wellington was messing around in a remote Belgian village while his pipers were playing the march of the Scots Greys in Corso's face. The Old Guard, or what remained of it, was glancing desperately in all directions, teeth clenched and face against the sheets, twenty minutes by the watch, which, for his sins, he hadn't removed. Drops of sweat the size of fists ran from the roots of his hair down his neck. He looked with wide staring eyes over the girl's shoulder, desperately wishing for a gun to shoot himself.

SHE WAS ASLEEP. HE stretched out an arm, carefully so as not to wake her, and searched for a cigarette inside his coat. When it was lit, he propped himself up on an elbow and stared at her. She was on her back, naked, her head tilted back on the pillow spotted with dry blood, breathing gently through her half-open mouth. She still smelled of fever and warm flesh. In the glow from the bathroom, which traced her outline in light and shadow, Corso admired her perfect body. This, he told himself, is a masterpiece of genetic engineering. He wondered what mixture of blood, or mysteries, saliva, skin, flesh, semen, and chance had commingled to create her. All women, all females produced by the human species were there, summed up in her eighteen- or twenty-year-old body. He saw the pulse at her neck, the almost imperceptible beat of her heart, the gentle curve from her back to her waist, widening at the hips. He put out his hand and stroked the small curly triangle down where the skin was a little lighter, between her thighs where he'd been unable to bivouac in the classic manner. The girl had taken the situation with perfect good humor. She'd made light of it, and they'd drifted into a lighthearted, friendly game once she understood that on Corso's part and in that particular bout, there wasn't going to be any more action. This eased the tension. Lacking a gun—they shoot horses don't they?—in his blind rage he had wanted to dash his head against the corner of the bedside table in an attempt to crack his skull. But he ended up discreetly punching the wall, almost breaking his hand. Surprised by that and the sudden tension of his body, she looked at him. The effort it took not to shout out in pain calmed him. He even managed to smile rather tensely and say that this usually happened to him only the first thirty times or so. She laughed, her arms around him, and kissed his eyes and mouth, amused and tender. You idiot, Corso. I don't mind at all. He did the only thing he could at that point—a meticulous play of fingers in the right place, with results that were, if not glorious, at least satisfactory. As she caught her breath, the girl stared at him for a long time in silence before kissing him slowly, conscientiously, until the pressure of her lips diminished and she fell asleep.

The burning tip of his cigarette lit up his fingers in the darkness. He kept the smoke in his lungs as long as he could, then exhaled, watching the patterns it made in the segment of light above the bed. He felt the girl's breathing falter for a moment, and he looked at her sharply. She was frowning and moaning quietly, like a child having a nightmare. Then, still asleep, she half turned toward him, her arm under her bare breasts and her hand under her face. Who the hell are you, he asked her soundlessly once again, bad-temperedly, although he next leaned over to kiss her. He stroked her short hair, the curve of her waist and hips now sharply silhouetted against the light. There was more beauty in that gentle line than in a melody, a sculpture, a poem, or a painting. He moved closer and smelled her neck, and at that instant his own pulse started to hammer more strongly, awakening his flesh. Keep calm now, he said to himself. Don't panic this time. Let's continue. He didn't know how long he could keep it up, so he hurriedly stubbed out his cigarette and pressed himself against the girl. His body seemed to respond in a satisfactory manner. Then he parted her legs and at last, bewildered, entered a moist, welcoming paradise of warm milk and honey. He felt the girl shift sleepily and put her arms around him, although she wasn't quite awake. He kissed her on the neck, the mouth. She was moaning gently, and he realized that she was moving her hips in time with him. And when he sank right to the root of the flesh and himself, making his way easily to a place lost in his memory, she opened her eyes and looked at him surprised and happy, green reflections through her long damp lashes. I love you, Corso. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou. I love you. Later he had to bite his tongue in order not to say something equally stupid. Amazed and incredulous, he watched from a distance and did not know himself. He was attentive to her, watching her beats, movements, anticipating her desires and discovering her secret springs, the intimate key to the soft yet tense body wound firmly around his own. They went on like that for about an hour. Afterward Corso asked her if there was any risk of pregnancy, and she told him not to worry, she had everything under control. Then he put it all away deep inside him, next to her heart.

HE WOKE AT DAYBREAK. The girl was sleeping pressed against him. For some time he didn't move in order not to wake her. He made himself stop thinking about what had happened or might happen. He closed his eyes and drifted, enjoying the peace of the moment. He could feel her breath on his skin. Irene Adler, 223B Baker Street. The devil in love. The outline in the mist confronting Rochefort. The blue duffel coat falling slowly, unfolding, onto the quayside. And Corso's shadow in her eyes. She slept, relaxed and tranquil, aware of nothing. He couldn't link the images in his mind logically. At that moment, logic had no appeal. He felt lazy and content. He put his hand between her warm thighs and kept it there, very still. Her naked body, at least, was real.

Later, he got out of bed carefully and went to the bathroom. In the mirror he saw that he still had traces of dried blood on his face, and also, as the result of his encounter with Rochefort and the stone steps, a bluish bruise on his left shoulder, and another across a couple of ribs, which hurt when he pressed it. He had a quick wash and went to look for a cigarette. As he was searching in his coat, he found the note Gruber had handed him.

He cursed under his breath for having forgotten it, but there was nothing he could do about that now. So he opened the envelope and went back to the light in the bathroom to read the note. It was brief and its contents—two names, a number, and an address—made him smile malevolently. He glanced at himself again in the mirror. His hair was matted, and he needed a shave. He put on his glasses as if arming himself, a mean wolf off to hunt. He picked up his clothes and canvas bag quietly, and gave the sleeping girl a last glance. Maybe it was going to be a beautiful day after all. Buckingham and Milady were about to choke on their breakfast.

THE HOTEL CRILLON WAS too expensive for Flavio La Ponte. Enrique Taillefer's widow must have been paying the bill. Corso reflected on this as he paid his taxi on the Place Concorde and crossed the marble lobby to the stairs and room 206. There was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and no sound when he rapped loudly three times. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whales barbs were then tempered. The Brotherhood of Nantucket Harpooners was about to be dissolved. Corso didn't know if he was sorry or not. He and La Ponte had once imagined an alternative version of Moby-Dick. Ishmael writes the story, places the manuscript in the caulked coffin, and drowns with the rest of the crew of the Pequod. Queequeg is the only survivor, the wild harpooner with no intellectual pretensions. In time he learns to read. One day he reads his friend's novel and discovers that Ishmael's account and his own memories of what happened are completely different. So he writes his own version of the story. Call me Queequeg the story begins, and he titles it A Whale. From the harpooner's point of view, Ishmael was a pedantic scholar who blew things out of proportion. Moby Dick wasn't to blame, he was a whale like any other. It was all a matter of an incompetent captain wanting to settle a personal score instead of filling barrels with oil. "What does it matter who tore his leg off?" writes Queequeg. Corso could remember the scene around the table in Makarova's bar. Makarova, with her masculine, Nordic reserve, listening carefully as La Ponte explained the use of the caulking on the carpenter's coffin while Zizi looked on jealously from the other side of the bar. In those days, if Corso dialed his own number, Nikon would answer—he always pictured her emerging from the darkroom, her hands wet with fixative. That's what happened the night they rewrote Moby-Dick. They all ended up at Corso's place, emptied more bottles, and watched a John Huston movie on the VCR. They drank a toast to old Melville when the Rachel, searching the seas for her lost sons, at last finds another orphan.

That's how it was. But now, standing outside room 206, Corso couldn't feel the anger of one about to confront another with his treachery. Maybe because, deep down, he believed that in politics, business, and sex, betrayal was only a question of timing. Ruling out politics, he didn't know whether his friend was in Paris for business or sex. Maybe it was both, because even Corso, in his cynicism, couldn't imagine La Ponte getting into trouble for money alone. He remembered Liana Taillefer during their brief skirmish at his apartment, beautiful and sensual, wide hips, smooth pale skin, a wholesome Kim Novak playing the femme fatale. He arched an eyebrow—friendship consisted of that kind of detail—he could well understand La Ponte's motives. Maybe this was why, when La Ponte opened the door, he found no hostility in Corso's expression. He was barefoot and in pajamas. He just had time to open his mouth before Corso gave him a punch that sent him staggering across the room.

In other circumstances Corso might have relished the scene. A luxury suite with a view of the obelisk in the Place Concorde, a thick pile carpet, and a huge bathroom. La Ponte on the floor, rubbing his jaw, trying to focus after the punch. A huge bed, with two breakfast trays. And Liana Taillefer sitting, blond and stunned, holding a half-eaten piece of toast, one voluminous white breast peeping out of the plunging neckline of her silk nightdress. With a nipple two inches wide, Corso noted dispassionately as he shut the door behind him. Better late than never.

"Good morning," he said.

He walked to the bed. Liana Taillefer, motionless, still holding her toast, stared as he sat next to her. Putting the canvas bag on the floor and glancing at the breakfast tray, he poured himself a cup of coffee. For half a minute nobody said a word. At last Corso took a sip and smiled at Liana Taillefer.

"I seem to remember that the last time we met, I was somewhat abrupt...." The stubble on his chin emphasized his features. His smile was as sharp as a razor blade.

She didn't answer. She put the toast on the tray and covered her generous figure with her nightgown. In her stare there was no fear, arrogance, or rancor. She seemed almost indifferent. After the scene at his apartment, Corso would have expected hatred in her eyes. "They'll kill you for this," etc.... And they nearly had. But Liana Taillefer's steely blue eyes had the same expression as a puddle of icy water, and this worried Corso more than an explosion of fury. He pictured her looking impassively at her husband's corpse hanging from the light fixture in his room. He remembered the photograph of the poor bastard in his leather apron holding a plate, about to dismember a roast suckling pig. This was some serial they'd all written for him.

"Bastard," muttered La Ponte from the floor, still dazed but managing to focus on Corso at last. He started to get up, hanging on to the furniture. Corso watched him with interest.

"You don't seem pleased to see me, Flavio."

"Pleased?" La Ponte was rubbing his beard and looking at the palm of his hand from time to time, as if worried that he would find a tooth there. "You've gone nuts. Completely nuts."

"Not yet. But you've been trying to drive me there, you and your henchmen." He pointed at Liana Taillefer. "Including the grieving widow."

La Ponte moved closer, but kept a cautious distance. "Would you mind explaining what on earth you're talking about?"

Corso raised his hand and began counting on fingers.

"I'm talking about the Dumas manuscript and The Nine Doors. About Victor Fargas drowned in Sintra. About Rochefort, who's my shadow. He attacked me a week ago in Toledo, and last night here in Paris." He pointed at Liana Taillefer again. "And about Milady. And about you, whatever your part is in all this."

La Ponte, watching Corso count, blinked five times, once for each finger. He rubbed his beard again, this time not from pain but with confusion. He started to say something but thought better of it. When at last he made up his mind to speak, he addressed Liana Taillefer.

"What have we got to do with all this?"

She shrugged contemptuously. She wasn't interested in explanations, wasn't going to cooperate. Still reclining against the pillows, with the breakfast tray beside her, she was tearing apart one of the pieces of toast with her red polished nails. Her only other movement was her breathing, which made her ample bosom move up and down inside her plunging nightgown. She stared at Corso like a cardplayer waiting for an opponent to show his hand, as unmoved as a sirloin steak.

La Ponte scratched his bald spot. He wasn't too dignified, standing in the middle of the room in crumpled striped pajamas, his cheek swollen from the punch. He looked at Corso, at Liana Taillefer, and back again.

"I'd like an explanation," he said.

"That's a coincidence. An explanation is what I came here to get from you."

With another anxious glance at Liana Taillefer, La Ponte gestured toward the bathroom. "Let's go in there." He was trying to sound dignified, but his swollen cheek made his speech slurred. "You and me."

She remained inscrutable, calm, looking at them with the bored expression of someone watching a quiz show on TV. Corso thought to himself that he'd have to do something about her, but at the moment he couldn't think what. He picked up his canvas bag and went into the bathroom with La Ponte. La Ponte shut the door behind them.

"Can you tell me why you hit me?"

He spoke quietly, so the widow wouldn't hear. Corso put his bag on the bidet, noticed the whiteness of the towels, and rummaged around on the bathroom shelf before turning to La Ponte.

"Because you're a liar and a traitor," he answered. "You didn't tell me you were mixed up in all this. You've let them trick me, follow me, attack me."

"I'm not mixed up in anything. And I'm the only one who's been attacked here." La Ponte was examining his face in the mirror. "God! Look what you've done to me! I'm disfigured."

"I'll disfigure you even more if you don't tell what this is all about."

La Ponte prodded his swollen cheek and looked at Corso sideways. "It's no secret. Liana and I have..." He searched for the appropriate words. "Hm. We've ... Well, you saw yourself."

"You've become intimate."

"That's right."

"When?"

"The day you left for Portugal."

"Who approached whom?"

"I did. In effect."

"What do you mean, in effect?"

"More or less. I went to see her."

"Why?"

"To make an offer for her husband's collection."

"The idea just suddenly popped into your head, did it?"

"Well, no. She phoned me first. I told you about it at the time."

"That's true."

"She wanted the manuscript her late husband sold me."

"Did she give any reason?"

"Sentimental value."

"And you believed her."

"Yes."

"Or rather, you didn't care."

"Really..."

"I know. What you really wanted was to screw her."

"That too."

"And she fell into your arms."

"Like a stone."

"Of course. And you came to Paris on your honeymoon."

"Not exactly. She had things to do here."

"And she asked you to come with her."

"That's right."

"Quite casually? All expenses paid, so you could continue the romance."

"Something like that."

Corso frowned. "Love is a beautiful thing, Flavio. When you really are in love."

"Don't be such a cynic. She's extraordinary. You can't imagine..."

"Yes, I can."

"No, you can't."

"I said I can."

"I'd bet you'd like to. She's quite a woman."

"We're getting off the subject, Flavio. We were here, in Paris."

"Yes."

"What were you two planning to do about me?"

"We weren't planning to do anything. We were thinking of finding you today or tomorrow. To get the manuscript back."

"Just like that."

"Of course. How else?"

"You didn't think I might refuse?"

"Liana had her doubts."

"What about you?"

"I didn't think it would be a problem. We're friends, after all. And 'The Anjou Wine' is mine."

"I see. You were her second choice."

"I don't know what you mean. Liana's wonderful. And she adores me."

"Yes. She seems very much in love."

"Do you think so?"

"You're a fool, Flavio. They've pulled the wool over your eyes as well as mine."

Corso had a sudden intuition, as piercing as a fire alarm. He pushed La Ponte aside and ran into the bedroom to find Liana Taillefer out of bed, half dressed and packing a suitcase. He saw her icy eyes—the eyes of Milady de Winter—and realized that while he was shooting his mouth off like an idiot, she'd been waiting for something, a sound or a signal. Waiting like a spider in its web.

"Good-bye, Mr. Corso."

He heard the words, her deep, husky voice. But he didn't know what she meant, other than that she was about to leave. He took another step toward her, not knowing what he would do when he reached her, before realizing that there was someone else in the room. A shadow behind him, to his left, by the door. He turned to face the danger. He knew he'd made another mistake, but it was too late. He heard Liana Taillefer laughing, like a wicked blond vamp in a movie, and felt the blow—his second in less than twelve hours—in the same spot as before, behind the ear. He just had time to see Rochefort fading, blurring.

He was out cold before he hit the floor.