The Night Manager

NINETEEN

It was evening of the same day, and Jonathan was still alive. the sky was still in its place, no security gorillas fell on him out of the trees as he made his way back through the tunnel to Woody's House. The cicadas ticked and sobbed, the sun disappeared behind Miss Mabel's Mountain, dusk fell. He had played tennis with Daniel and the Langbourne children, he had swum with them and sailed with them, he had listened to Isaac on the subject of the Tottenham Hotspurs and to Esmeralda on evil spirits and to Caroline Langbourne on men, marriage and her husband:

"It isn't the unfaithfulness I mind, Thomas, it's the lying. I don't know why I'm telling you this, except you're straight. I don't care what he says about you, we all of us have our problems, but I know straightness when I see it. If he'd only say to me, 'I'm having an affair with Annabelle' ― or whoever he's having an affair with at the time ― 'and what's more I'm going to go on having an affair with her,' well, I'd say, 'All right. If that's the way we're playing it, so be it. Just don't expect me to be faithful while you're not.' I can live with that, Thomas. We have to if we're women. I just feel so furious I've let him have all my money and practically kept him for years, and let Daddy pay for the children's education, only to find that he's been lavishing money on any little trollop he happens to meet, leaving us, well, not penniless, but certainly not flush."

During the rest of the day, he had spotted Jed twice: once in the summerhouse, wearing a yellow caftan and writing a letter, once walking with Daniel in the surf, her skirts pulled to her waist while she held his hand. And as Jonathan left the house, passing deliberately beneath her bedroom balcony, he heard her talking on the telephone to Roper: "No, darling, he didn't hurt himself at all, it was just fuss, and he got over it very quickly and did me an absolutely super painting of Sarah doing her airs above the ground right on top of the stable roof, you'll absolutely adore it...."

And he thought: Now you tell him, That was the good news, darling. But guess who I found skulking in our bedroom when I got upstairs....

* * *

It was only when he reached Woody's House that time refused to pass. He let himself in cautiously, reasoning that if the protection had been alerted, their most likely course of action would be to go to his house ahead of him. So he entered by the back door and patrolled both floors before he felt able to extract the tiny steel cassette of film from his camera and, with a sharp knife from the kitchen, make a bed for it inside the pages of his paperback copy of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

After that, things happened very much one by one. He had a bath and thought: About now, you'll be having your shower, and nobody will be there to hand you your towel.

He made himself a chicken soup from leftovers that Esmeralda had given him, and he thought: About now, you and Caroline will be sitting on the patio eating Esmeralda's grouper with lemon sauce, and you'll be listening to another chapter of Caroline's life while her children are doing crisps and Coke and ice cream and watching Young Frankenstein in Daniel's playroom, and Daniel lies reading in his bedroom with the door shut, hating the pack of them.

Then he went to bed, because it seemed a good place to think about her. And remained in bed until twelve-thirty, at which time the naked close observer slid soundlessly to the floor and picked up the steel poker that he kept beneath it, because he had heard a furtive footfall on his doorstep. They've come for me. he thought. She's blown the whistle to Roper, and they're going to do a Woody on me.

But another voice in him spoke differently, and it was the voice he had been listening to ever since Jed had discovered him in her bedroom. So that by the time she tapped on his front door, he had put away the poker and knotted a sarong round his waist.

She too had dressed for the part: in a long dark skirt and a dark cape, and it would not have surprised him if she had turned up the Father Christmas hood, but she hadn't; it hung becomingly behind her. She was carrying a flashlight, and while he rechained the door she set it down and drew the cape more tightly round her. Then stood facing him with her hands crossed dramatically at her throat.

"You shouldn't have come," he said, quickly drawing the curtains. "Who saw you? Caroline? Daniel? The night staff?"

"No one."

"Of course they did. What about the boys at the lodge?"

"I tiptoed. No one heard me."

He stared at her in disbelief. Not because he thought she was lying but because of the sheer foolhardiness of her behaviour.

"So what can I get you?" he said in a tone that implied: since you've come.

"Coffee. Coffee, please. Don't make it specially."

Coffee, please. Egyptian, he remembered.

"They were watching television," she said. "The boys in the lodge. I could see them through the window."

"Sure."

He put on a kettle, then lit the pine logs in the grate, and for a while she shivered and frowned at the sputtering logs. Then she looked round the room, getting the idea of the place, and of him, taking in the books he had managed to assemble, and the spruceness of everything ― the flowers, the watercolour of Carnation Bay propped on the chimneypiece beside Daniel's painting of a pterodactyl.

"Dans did a painting of Sarah for me," she said. "To make amends."

"f know. I was passing your room when you were telling Roper. What else did you tell him?"

"Nothing."

"Are you sure?"

She flared. "What do you expect me to tell him? Thomas thinks I'm a cheap little trollop without a thought in my head?"

"I didn't say that."

"You said worse. You said I was a mess and he was a murderer."

"Corky said he bought you at a horse sale."

"I was shacked up in Paris."

"What were you doing in Paris?"

"Fucking these two men. The story of my life. I fuck all the wrong people and miss out the right ones." She took another pull of coffee. "They had a flat on the rue de Rivoli. They scared the hell out of me. Drugs, boys, booze, girls, me, the whole bit. One morning I woke up and there was this flat full of bodies. Everyone had passed out." She nodded to herself as if to say, yes, that was it, that was the crunch. "Okay, Jemima, you don't collect two hundred quid, you just go. I didn't even pack. I stepped over the bodies and went to this bloodstock auction in Maison Lafitte that I'd read about in the Trib. I wanted to see horses. I was still half-stoned, and that was all I could think of: horses. That's all we ever did till my father had to sell up. Ride and pray. We're Shropshire Catholics," she explained gloomily, as if confessing the family curse. "I must have been smiling. Because this dishy middle-aged man said, 'Which one would you like?' And I said, 'That big one in the window.' I was feeling... light. Free. I was in a movie. That feeling. I was being funny. So he bought her. Sarah. The bidding was so quick I didn't really follow it. He had some Pakistani with him and they were sort of bidding together. Then he just turned to me and said, 'She's yours. Where do you want her sent?' I was scared stiff, but it was a dare, so I thought I'd see it through. He took me to a shop in the Elysees, and we were the only people. He'd had the riff-raff cleared out before we got there. We were the only customers. He bought me ten thousand quids' worth of tat and took me to the opera. He took me to dinner and told me about an island called Crystal. Then he took me to his hotel and fucked me. And I thought: With one leap she clears the pit. He's not a bad man, Thomas. He just does bad things. He's like Archie the driver."

"Who's Archie the driver?"

She forgot him for a while, preferring to stare at the fire and sip her coffee. Her shivering had stopped. Once, she winced and drew in her shoulders, but it was her memory, not the cold, that was troubling her. "Jesus," she whispered. "Thomas, what do I do?"

"Who's Archie?"

"In our village. He drove an ambulance for the local hospital. Everyone loved Archie the driver. He came to all the point-to-points and looked after people if they were hurt. He scraped up the bodies at the kids' gymkhanas, everything. Nice Archie. Then there was an ambulance strike, and Archie went and picketed the hospital gates and wouldn't let in the casualties because he said the drivers were all blacklegs. And Mrs. Luxome, who cleaned for the Priors, died because he wouldn't let her in." Another shudder passed over her. "Do you always have a fire? Seems silly, a fire in the tropics."

"You have them at Crystal."

"He really likes you. You know that?"

"Yes."

"You're his son or something. I kept telling him to get rid of you. I felt you coming closer, and I couldn't stop you. You're such a creep. He doesn't seem to see it. Perhaps he doesn't want to. I suppose it's Dan. You saved Dan. Still, that doesn't last forever, does it?" She drank. "Then you think: Okay, fuck it. If he won't see what's happening under his nose, that's his tough luck. Corky's warned him. So's Sandy. He doesn't listen to them."

"Why've you been going through his papers?"

"Caro told me a whole lot of stuff about him. Dreadful things. It wasn't fair. I knew some of it already. I'd tried not to, but you can't help it. Things people say at parties. Things Dan picks up. Those dreadful bankers, boasting. I can't judge people. Not me. I always think I'm in the hot seat, not them. The trouble is, we're so bloody straight. My father is. He'd rather starve than cheat the taxman. Always paid his bills the day they came in. That's why he went bust. Other people didn't pay him, of course, but he never noticed that." She glanced at him. Her glance became a look. "Jesus," she whispered again.

"Did you find anything?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't, could I? I didn't know what to look for. So I thought, fuck it, and I asked him."

"You what?"

"I tackled him with it. One night after dinner. I said, 'Is it true you're a crook? Tell me. A girl's got a right to know.' "

Jonathan took a deep breath. "Well, that was honest at least," he said, with a careful smile. "How did Roper take it? Did he make a full confession, swear never to do wrong again, blame it all on his cruel childhood?"

"He went tight-faced."

"And said?"

"Said I should mind my bloody business."

Echoes of Sophie's account of her conversation with Freddie Hamid at the cemetery in Cairo invaded Jonathan's concentration.

"And you said it was your business?" he suggested.

"He said I wouldn't understand, even if he told me. I should shut up and not talk about things I didn't understand. Then he said, This isn't crime, this is politics. I said, what isn't crime? What's politics? Tell me the worst, I said. Give me the bottom line so that I know what I'm sharing."

"And Roper?" Jonathan asked.

"He says there isn't a bottom line. People like my father just think there is, which is why people like my father are suckers. He says he loves me and that's good enough. So I get angry and say. It may have been good enough for Eva Braun, but it isn't good enough for me. I thought he'd belt me. But he just took note. Nothing surprises him, do you know that? It's facts. One fact more, one fact less. Then you do the logical thing at the end of it."

Which was what he did to Sophie, thought Jonathan. "What about you?" he asked.

"What about me?" She wanted brandy. He hadn't any, so he gave her Scotch. "It's a lie," she said.

"What is?"

"What I'm living. Someone tells me who I am, and I believe them and go with it. That's what I do. I believe people. I can't help it. Now you come along and tell me I'm a mess, but that's not what he tells me. He says I'm his virtue. Me and Daniel, we're what it's all for. He said it straight out one night, in front of Corky." She took a gulp of Scotch. "Caro says he's pushing drugs. Did you know that? Some huge shipment, in exchange for arms and God knows what. We're not talking about sailing close to the wind. Not cutting a few corners or having a quiet joint at a party, she says. We're talking fully fledged, organised megacrime. She says I'm a gangster's moll ― that's another version of me I'm trying to sort through. It's a thrill a minute being me these days."

Her gaze was on him again, straight and unblinking. "I'm in deep shit," she said. "I walked into this with my eyes wide shut. I deserve everything I get. Just don't tell me I'm a mess. I can do the sermons for myself. Anyway, what the fuck are you up to? You're no paragon."

"What does Roper say I'm up to?"

"You got into some heavy trouble. But you're a good chap. He's fixing you up. He's sick of Corky bitching about you. But then he didn't catch you prowling in our bedroom, did he?" she said, flaring again. "Let's hear it from you."

He took a long time to answer. First he thought of Burr, then he thought of himself and all the rules against talking.

"I'm a volunteer," he said.

She pulled a sour face. "For the police?"

"Sort of."

"How much of you is you?"

"I'm waiting to find out."

"What will they do to him?"

"Catch him. Put him on trial. Lock him up."

"How can you volunteer for a job like that? Jesus."

No training covered this contingency. He gave himself time to think, and the silence, like the distance between them, seemed to join rather than divide them.

"It began with a girl," he said. He corrected himself. "A woman. Roper and another man arranged to have her killed. I felt responsible."

Shoulders hunched, the cape still gathered to her neck, she peered round the room, then back to him.

"Did you love her? The girl? The woman?"

"Yes." He smiled. "She was my virtue."

She took this in, uncertain whether to give it her approval.

"When you saved Daniel, at Mama's, was that a lie too?"

"Pretty much."

He watched it all going through her head: the revulsion, the struggling to understand, the mixed moralities of her upbringing.

"Dr. Marti said they nearly killed you," she said.

"I nearly killed them. I lost my temper. It was a play that went wrong."

"What was her name?"

"Sophie."

"I need to hear about her."

She meant here, in this house, now.

* * *

He took her up to the bedroom and lay alongside her without touching her while he told her about Sophie, and eventually she slept while he kept watch. She woke and wanted soda water, so he fetched some from the fridge. Then at five o'clock, before it was light, he put on his jogging gear and led her back along the tunnel to the gatehouse, not letting her use the flashlight but making her walk a pace behind him on his left side, as if she were a raw recruit he was leading into battle. And at the gatehouse he put his head and shoulders right into the window for one of his chats with Marlow the night guard, while Jed flitted by, he hoped unseen.

His anxiety was not eased when he returned to find Amos the Rasta sitting on his doorstep, needing a cup of coffee.

"You have a fine, upliftin' experience with your soul last night, Mist' Thomas, sir?" he enquired, pouring four heaped spoonfuls of sugar into his cup.

"It was an evening like any other, Amos. How about you?"

"Mist' Thomas, sir, I ain't smelt no fresh fire smoke at one a. m. of a Townside morning not since Mist' Woodman liked to entertain his lady friends to music and fine lovin'."

"Mr. Woodman would have done a lot better, by all accounts, to read an improving book."

Amos broke out in a wild chuckle. "There's only one man 'cept you on this island ever reads a book, Mist' Thomas. And he's ganja stupid and stone blind."

* * *

That night, to his horror, she came to him again.

She was not wearing her cape this time but her riding gear, which she had evidently decided gave her some sort of immunity. He was appalled but not particularly surprised, for by then he had recognised Sophie's resolution in her, and he knew he could no more send her away than stop Sophie from going back to Cairo to face Hamid. So a quiet came over him, and it became a quiet shared. She took his hand and led him upstairs. She guided him around his own bedroom, opening drawers and showing a distracted curiosity about his shirts and underclothes. Something was badly folded, so she folded it better. Something was lost, and she found a partner for it. She drew him to her and kissed him very exactly, as if she had decided in advance how much of herself she could afford to give him. and how little. When they had kissed, she went downstairs again and stood him under the overhead light and touched his face with her fingertips, verifying him, photographing him with her eyes, making pictures of him to take away with her. And in the incongruity of the moment he remembered the old émigré couple dancing at Mama Low's on the night of the kidnapping, how they had touched each other's faces in disbelief.

She asked for a glass of wine, and they sat on the sofa drinking it and relishing the quiet they had discovered they could share. She drew him to his feet and kissed him once more, laying all her body along him and spending a lot of time looking at his eyes as if to check them for sincerity. Then she left him because, as she put it, that was the most she could cope with until God pulled another trick.

When she had gone, Jonathan went upstairs to watch her from his window. Then he put his copy of Tess in a brown envelope and addressed it in illiterate capitals to the adult shop, care of a box number in Nassau given him by Rooke in the days of his youth. He dropped the envelope in the mailbox on the seafront for collection and shipment to Nassau by Roper jet next day.

* * *

"Enjoy our aloneness, did we, old love?" Corkoran enquired.

He was back in Jonathan's garden, drinking cold beer out of a can.

"Very much, thank you," said Jonathan politely.

"So one hears. Frisky says you enjoyed it. Tabby says you enjoyed it. Boys on the gate say you enjoyed it. Most of Townside seems to think you enjoyed it."

"Good."

Corkoran drank. He was wearing his Etonian Panama hat and his disgraceful Nassau suit, and he was talking out to sea.

"And the Langbourne brood didn't cramp our style at all?"

"We managed a couple of expeditions. Caroline's a bit down-in-the-mouth, so the kids were rather pleased to get away from her."

"So kind we are," Corkoran reflected. "Such a sport. Such a proper pet. Just like Sammy. And I never even had the little sod." Pulling down the brim of his hat, he crooned Nice work if you can get it as if he were a mournful Ella Fitzgerald.

"Message from the Chief for you, Mr. Pine. H hour is upon us. prepare to kiss Crystal and everybody else goodbye. Firing squad assembles at dawn."

"Where am I going?"

Jumping to his feet, Corkoran marched down the garden steps to the beach as if he couldn't stand Jonathan's company anymore. He picked up a stone and, despite his bulk, skimmed it across the darkening water.

"In my fucking place is where you're going!" he shouted. "Thanks to some very classy footwork by some shitty little queens unfriendly to the cause! Of whom I strongly suspect you to be the creature!"

"Corky, are you talking through your arse?"

Corkoran pondered the question. "Don't know, old love. Wish I did. Could be anal. Could be spot on." Another stone. "Prophet in the wilderness, me. The Chief, though he'd never admit it, is a fully paid-up, unredeemable romantic. Roper believes in the light at the end of the pier. The trouble is, so did the fucking moth." Yet another stone, accompanied by an angry grunt of exertion. "Whereas Corky here is a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic. And my personal and professional view of you is, you're poison." Another stone. And another. "I tell him you're poison, and he won't believe me. He invented you. You plucked his baby from the flames. Whereas Corky here, thanks to persons unnamed ― friends of yours, I suspect ― is used goods." He drained his beer can and tossed it onto the sand while he searched for another pebble, which Jonathan obligingly handed him. "Well, let's face it, heart, one is going a tad to seed, isn't one?"

"I think one is becoming a tad deranged, actually, Corky," said Jonathan.

Corkoran brushed his hands together to get the sand off them. "Jesus, the effort of being criminal," he complained. "The people and the noise. The sleaze. The places one doesn't want to be. Don't you find the same? Of course you don't. You're above it. That's what I keep telling the Chief. Does he listen? Does he, my Khyber Pass."

"I can't help you, Corky."

"Oh, don't worry. I'll sort it out." He lit a cigarette and exhaled gratefully. "And now this," he said, waving a hand at Woody's House behind him. "Two nights running, my spies tell me. I'd like to peach to the Chief, of course. Nothing would please me more. But I can't do it to our lady of Crystal. Can't speak for the others, though. Someone will bubble. Someone always does." Miss Mabel Island became a black stencil against the moon. "Never could do evenings. Hate the fuckers. Never could do mornings either, for that matter. Nothing but bloody deathbells. You get about ten minutes in a good day, if you're Corky. One more for the Queen?"

"No, thanks."

* * *

It was never going to be an easy departure. They assembled on Miss Mabel's airstrip in the early light like so many refugees, Jed wearing dark glasses and deciding to see nobody. On the plane, still with her dark glasses, she sat hunched in a back row, with Corkoran on one side of her and Daniel on the other, while Frisky and Tabby flanked Jonathan up front. When they landed at Nassau, MacArthur was hovering at the barrier. Corkoran handed him the passports, including Jonathan's, and everybody was waved through, no problems.

"Jed's going to be sick," Daniel announced as they climbed into the new Rolls. Corkoran told him to shut up.

The Roper mansion was stucco Tudor and creepery and wore an unexpected air of neglect.

In the afternoon, Corkoran took Jonathan on a grand shopping spree in Freetown. Corkoran was in an erratic mood. Several times he paused to refresh himself at nasty little bars, while Jonathan drank Coke. Everyone seemed to know Corkoran, some people a little too well. Frisky trailed them at a distance. They bought three very expensive Italian business suits ― trousers to be adjusted by yesterday, please, Clive, darling, or the Chief will be furious ― then half a dozen town shirts, socks and ties to match, shoes and belts, a lightweight navy raincoat, underclothes, linen handkerchiefs, pyjamas and a fine leather sponge bag with an electric razor and a pair of handsome hairbrushes with silver T's: "My friend won't accept anything that isn't done to a T ― will you, heart?" And when they got back to the Roper mansion, Corkoran completed his creation by producing a pigskin wallet full of mainline credit cards in the name of Thomas, a black leather attaché case, a gold wristwatch by Piaget and a pair of gold cufflinks engraved with the initials DST.

So that by the time everyone was assembled in the drawing room for Dom, Jed and Roper glowing and relaxed, Jonathan was the very model of a modern young executive.

"What do we think of him, loves?" Corkoran demanded with a creator's pride.

"Bloody good," said Roper, not much caring.

"Super," said Jed.

After Dom, they went to Enzo's restaurant on Paradise Island, which was where Jed ordered lobster salad.

* * *

And that was all it was. One lobster salad. Jed had her arm round Roper's neck while she ordered it. And kept her arm there while Roper passed her order to the proprietor. They were side by side because it was their last night together, and as everybody knew, they were these terrific lovers.

"Darlings," said Corkoran, raising his wine to them. "Perfect pairing. So incredibly beautiful. Let no man put asunder."

And he swallowed a glassful at a gulp, while the proprietor, who was Italian and mortified, regretted there was no more lobster salad.

"Veal, Jeds?" Roper suggested. "Penned good. Polio? Have a polio. No, you won't. Full of garlic. Put you out of bounds. Fish. Bring her a fish. Like a fish, Jeds? Sole? What fish you got?"

"Any fish," said Corkoran, "should appreciate the sacrifice."

Jed had fish instead of lobster.

Jonathan also had fish and pronounced it sublime. Jed said hers was gorgeous. So did the MacDanbies, commandeered at no notice to make up Roper's kind of numbers.

"Doesn't look gorgeous to me," said Corkoran.

"Oh, but Corks, it's far better than lobster. My absolute favourite."

"Lobster on the menu, whole island stiff with lobster, why the hell haven't they got it?" Corkoran insisted.

"They just goofed, Corks. We can't all be geniuses like you."

Roper was preoccupied. Not in a hostile way. He just had things on his mind, and his hand in Jed's lap. But Daniel, soon to go back to England, chose to challenge his father's detachment.

"Roper's got the black monkey on his back," he announced to an unfortunate silence. "He's got this mega-megadeal coming off. It's going to put him beyond reach."

"Dans, put a sock in it," said Jed smartly.

"What's brown and sticky?" Daniel asked. No one knew.

"A stick." he said.

"Dans, old chap, shut up," said Roper.

But Corkoran was their destiny that night, and Corkoran had launched himself on a story about this investment consultant chum of his called Short-war Wilkins, who at the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq thing had advised his clients that it would all be over in six weeks.

"What happened to him?" Daniel demanded.

"Gentleman of leisure, I'm afraid. Dan. Pooped, most of the time. Bums money from his chums. Bit like me in a couple of years' time. Remember me, Thomas, when you drive by in your Roller and chance to see a familiar face sweeping out the gutters. Toss us a sovereign, for old times' sake, will you. heart? Good health, Thomas. Long life, sir. May all your lives be long. Cheers."

"And to you too. Corky," said Jonathan.

A MacDanby tried to tell his story about something or other, but Daniel again interrupted: "How do you save the world?"

"You tell me, old heart," said Corkoran. "Dying to know."

"Kill mankind."

"Dans, shut up." said Jed. "You're being horrid."

"I only said kill mankind! That's a joke! Can't you even understand a joke?" Raising both arms, he fired an imaginary machine gun at everybody round the table. "Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah! There! Now the world's safe. No one in it."

"Thomas, take Dans for a walk," Roper ordered down the table. "Bring him back when he's sorted out his manners."

But while Roper was saying this ― without too much conviction, since Daniel on this evening of departure was deserving of indulgence ― a lobster salad went by. Corkoran saw it. And Corkoran grabbed the wrist of the black waiter who was carrying it and wrenched him to his side.

"Hey, man" the startled waiter cried, then grinned sheepishly round the room in the hope that he was part of some weird happening.

The proprietor was hastening across the room. Frisky and Tabby, seated at the gunmen's table in the corner, had risen to their feet, unbuttoning their blazers. Everybody froze.

Corkoran was standing. And Corkoran with unexpected power was bearing down on the waiter's arm and making the poor man twist against his inclination so that the tray tipped alarmingly. Corkoran's face was brick red, his chin was up and he was shouting at the proprietor.

"Do you speak English, sir?" he demanded, loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear. "I do. Our lady here ordered lobster, sir. You said there was no more lobster. You are a liar, sir. And you have offended our lady and her consort, sir. There was more lobster!"

"Was ordered in advance!" the proprietor protested, with more spirit than Jonathan had credited him with. "Was special order. Ten o'clock this morning. You want be sure of lobster? You order special. Let go this man!"

Nobody at the table had moved. Grand opera has its own authority. Even Roper seemed momentarily unsure whether to intervene.

"What is your name?" Corkoran asked the proprietor.

"Enzo Fabrizzi."

"Leave it out, Corks," Roper ordered, "Don't be a bore. You're being a bore."

"Corks, stop it," said Jed.

"If there is a dish our lady wants, Mr. Fabrizzi, whether it's lobster, or liver, or fish, or something very ordinary like steak, or a piece of veal ― you always give it to our lady. Because if you don't, Mr. Fabrizzi, I shall buy this restaurant. I am vastly rich, sir. And you will sweep the street, sir, while Mr. Thomas here purrs past in his Rolls-Royce."

Jonathan, resplendent in his new suit at the further end of the table, has risen to his feet and is smiling his Meister's smile.

"Time to break the party up, don't you think, Chief?" he says, awfully pleasantly, strolling to Roper's end of the table. "Everyone a bit travel weary. Mr. Fabrizzi, I don't remember when I had a better meal. All we really need now is a bill, if your people could kindly run one up."

Jed stands to go, looking nowhere. Roper lays her wrap over her shoulders. Jonathan pulls back her chair, and she smiles her distant gratitude. A MacDanby pays. There is a muffled cry as Corkoran lunges at Fabrizzi with serious intent ― but Frisky and Tabby are there to restrain him, which is fortunate because by now several of the restaurant staff are spoiling to avenge their comrade. Somehow everybody makes it to the pavement as the Rolls pulls alongside.

I'm not going anywhere, she had said vehemently, as she held Jonathan's face and stared into his solitary eyes. I've faked it before, I can fake it again. I can fake it for as long as it takes.

He'll kill you, Jonathan had said. He'll find out. He's certain to. Everybody's talking about us behind his back.

But, like Sophie, she seemed to think she was immortal.