The High Commissioner

by Jon Cleary

  “But he’s insulting you and every other Aussie girl I know!” He grinned at her. “Including me old Irish mum.”

  “You’re quite old-fashioned in lots of ways. Are you always so chivalrous towards women?”

  “Not always,” he said, and across the room caught a glimpse of Sheila Quentin.

  Lisa took his arm and they began to move on through the crowd. Her taking of his arm had a natural intimacy about it, was more than the gesture of a girl identifying herself with her escort for the night. Their relationship was easy and warm now, but Malone was still uncertain how much further to take it. It might all end to-morrow.

  “I’m going to miss you,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get back this way again. You’ll have to come home.”

  “I might, if—”

  “If your boss doesn’t come back here?” He won’t, he said silently; but he couldn’t tell her that just yet.

  She nodded and looked around the crowded room for Quentin. They were in the Great Gallery of Lancaster House and the long high-ceilinged room was burning with colour. Voices and glasses clinked with the same light inconsequential sound; diamonds and eyes sparkled in competition. Mirrors on opposite walls reflected the scene in each other: gaiety spread away into infinity. It was impossible to imagine that the conference had failed; the solthers in the paddy-fields of Viet Nam still had their hopes. Lisa looked back at Malone.

  “I can’t see him or Mrs. Quentin.”

  “He’s over there. Sergeant Coburn is keeping an eye on him. I’m having a breather.”

  “You still don’t expect—?” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “No.” He shifted his arm, conscious of the holster; guns had never been meant to be worn beneath tight-fitting tailcoats. “But just in case—”

  Then he looked over her shoulder straight at Madame Cholon, in a green ao dais, looking as beautiful and unpredictable as some jungle bird that had strayed into a city aviary. She came out of the crowd on the arm of the portly African ambassador whose father had dined on missionaries. Lisa saw the surprise on Malone’s face and she turned as the ambassador spoke to him.

  “Just on our way to supper.” He smiled and winked broadly; but Malone knew he would not be entirely unsubtle. “This one is put on by the Foreign Office. Theirs are always so much better than Commonwealth Relations’. They serve such bottled jokes as Tanzanian champagne. The worst of the lot is Economic Affairs. They put on some sort of budget supper.”

  “May we join you?” Malone said, and took Lisa’s arm as he introduced her to the ambassador and Madame Cholon. “I remember you set me a fine example the other night, sir, on what to choose at the table.”

  The ambassador laughed, shaking hugely. “What he means is I showed him how to overload a plate without spilling any. Gluttony is only a sin where theting is a religion. That was one of my father’s aphorisms. He ate the last thetician who came to my country.”

  He led them through into the Music Room, still laughing like a whole chorus of merriment. Lisa, holding Malone’s arm tightly, whispered, “What is she doing here?”

  As if she had heard the question Madame Cholon turned to them as they reached the supper tables. “His Excellency’s wife is back, home in his country—”

  “Always goes home for the English summer,” said the ambassador, supervising a waiter as the latter heaped two plates. “She can’t stand it.”

  “I happened to mention to His Excellency how much I’d enjoyed his reception—”

  “So here we are.” The ambassador turned back with two loaded plates. Madame Cholon took hers without protest, but had to hold it with two hands. “Cementing Afro-Asian relations, eh, madame?”

  Madame Cholon smiled in agreement, and Malone wondered what had happened to her colour bar: the ambassador was much darker than Jamaica had been. “Have you seen Mr. Jamaica to-night?” he said.

  The smile froze on her face, but only for a moment. “Mr. Jamaica? Oh, the American gentleman. No.”

  “Nice fellow,” said the ambassador, eating heartily. “Told me his great-great-grandfather came from my country. Must have been my great-great-grandfather who sold him.” He laughed again, almost choking on his food.

  Malone handed Lisa a plate and began to eat from his own. Other guests had come into the room, had taken up plates. Lisa looked around and said, “This reminds me of British television. The screen always seems to be full of people eating. People and dogs.”

  “You’re so right, my dear girl,” said the ambassador., “I’m a TV addict, sit in front of the set for hours. I’ve become an expert on the gullets and teeth of British people and dogs. Oh, and cats, too.”

  Oh, Christ, thought Malone, listening to the talk. Doesn’t anyone have a thought for the poor bastards who had hopes for this conference? He looked about the Music Room. The big conference table had been taken out, replaced by smaller tables; order papers had been replaced by plates of smoked salmon. Brittle silly conversation was the echo of the hard serious debate that had taken place here only a few hours ago. Malone looked about him and once more, as on his first night in London, had the feeling of being an outsider. Smug hypocritical bastards in their tails and ribbons. . . .

  “Something bothering you, Mr. Malone?”

  The Quentins stood beside him. “No,” he said, glad of their arrival just at this moment. He did not enjoy being bitter and cynical; he wanted to put his faith in men. And, whatever Quentin might have done on his personal level, he could be trusted as a statesman. Malone knew that he, at least, was sick with despair at the wreck of the conference.

  The ambassador greeted Quentin; then, despite his bulk, bowed with grace to Sheila. “May I present Madame Cholon?”

  The polite smiles on the faces of both Quentins did not alter; they were locked in behind their diplomatic façade to-night They exchanged greetings with Madame Cholon, whose own smile was as polite and unrevealing as theirs.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Your Excellency.”

  “Oh?” Quentin seemed to be watching with dry amusement this woman who had been trying to kill him. She had failed in her aim and now he seemed able to look at her with cool detachment. “All good, I hope.”

  She nodded, then said, “Has the conference been a Success?”

  Quentin looked at the ambassador and the latter said, “There is one more session to go, my dear. We still have hopes, eh, Quentin?”

  Malone looked at the ambassador with new respect. He was not the buffoon he played; that was his façade. The conference was dead, but the delegates were keeping their bad news to themselves till they had agreed on the communiqué. Something might still be salvaged, something to keep alive, no matter how faintly, the hopes of the men who had to fight the war. Malone glanced around the room again, silently retracting his opinion of at least some of the guests.

  “You are quiet to-night, Mr. Malone.” Madame Cholon had put down her plate untouched.

  Out of the corner of his eye Malone saw Sheila Quentin watching Madame Cholon with a sort of horrified fascination: her eyes never left the Vietnamese woman’s face. If Madame Cholon was aware of Sheila’s stare, she gave no sign of the fact. After the first greeting with both Sheila and Lisa she had ignored them. Malone recognised her type: she was the sort of woman not interested in other women, the true professional harlot. Yet somehow he could not see her in a brothel, not the brothels he had raided in Sydney.

  “Just tired,” he said. “London is an exhausting city.”

  “How true. I’ll be glad to return home.”

  “When are you going?” Sheila asked.

  Madame Cholon turned her head, seemed to look at Sheila for the first time. Sheila’s dress was almost the same colour as Madame Cholon’s ao dais, but the antagonism between these two women went far beyond mere resentment over a fashion note. But her voice was as cool as Sheila’s had been. “To-morrow afternoon.”

  Sheila glanced at Malone,
then said, “Not on the Qantas plane through Singapore?” Madame Cholon nodded, a slight crease of puzzlement spoiling the smoothness of her brow. “Then you’ll have Mr. Malone as a travelling companion.”

  Madame Cholon looked at Malone, turning away from Sheila, dismissing her. “How pleasant! And how coincidental. Ah, good evening, Mr. Chen. And Mr. Pai, too.”

  The two Chinese, in hired dress suits that did not fit them, had come to the table. “Caviare, sir?” said a waiter.

  “Is it Russian?” asked Mr. Pai.

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “No, thank you,” said Mr. Pai, bringing politics to the table. “What is that?”

  “Clam chowder, sir,” said the waiter, no diplomat. “A very tasty American soup.”

  “No, thank you. What is that?”

  “Onion soup, sir. French.”

  “Yes, please.”

  Chen, meanwhile, was talking to Madame Cholon and the others. Malone was aware of a certain tension on Madame Cholon’s part towards the two Chinese, but Chen did not seem to reciprocate it He was completely at ease, except for the inconvenience of his dress coat, which was at least a size too big for him. He kept shooting his arms down, as if trying to prove that he had hands; but then the coat sleeves would creep down again to cover everything but his short stubby fingers. Pai, for his part, stood nervously in the background, staring steadily at Madame Cholon through his glasses that kept misting up from the heat of the bowl of soup he held.

  Sheila drew Malone aside. “Do you think she plans—?”

  Malone shook his head. “Not here. She’s shot her bolt, I think. Otherwise she wouldn’t have come out into the open like this.”

  “Isn’t there something you can do?”

  “What? Arrest her? On what grounds? Suspicion isn’t enough. I’ve had a little lecture from Sergeant Coburn on that.” He saw Coburn standing in the doorway and nodded to him. “Here he comes now. Maybe he is going to arrest her, after all.”

  Coburn came up to them. “There is a phone call for you, Mrs. Quentin.”

  Sheila was puzzled. “For me? Here?”

  “One of the waiters brought the message. He’s over there.” Sheila, still looking puzzled, excused herself and went over to the waiter standing in the doorway. When she had gone Coburn turned to Malone, jerking his head discreetly towards Madame Cholon. “She’s quite a dish, isn’t she? I fancy the Oriental stuff.”

  “I wouldn’t let your girl hear that. Is Pallain here to-night?”

  “He’s around somewhere.”

  “Do you think one of us had better stick with Mrs. Quentin, just in case?”

  “You mean the phone call? He wasn’t the one who called her – I saw him just before I came in here. But I’ll go down and keep close to her. What about Quentin?”

  “I’ll look after him. I think we’re okay now, but you never know. Denzil would chop our heads off if something did happen this late in the piece. Where is he to-night?”

  “At the Yard. He never comes to these sort of do’s. I’m always the mug for this sort of game. Actually, I don’t mind.” Coburn looked around appreciatively, at the huge chandelier, the carved wooden pelmets, the richly decorated ceiling. “It’s a bit different from the Hammersmith Palais. I must bring my bird one night”

  He moved towards the door and was stopped by Pallain as the latter came into the room. Pallain said something to him and the two men stood talking for a couple of minutes, Coburn looking as if he were impatient to break away. At last he nodded abruptly to Pallain and went out of the door, pushing his way through the tide of guests now flowing in for supper. Pallain saw Malone across the room, gave an exaggerated bow of his head, and moved across to another supper table. He knew of Madame Cholon’s plan of the bomb in the Quentin alarm clock and thought it ingenious and bound not to fail. The one weakness was that someone else, the butler, had had to be recruited to implement the plan. He knew from experience that the most successful assassinations were those in which there were as few participants as possible. Just in case the butler should be caught and should talk, he had already bought his air ticket and would be leaving London to-night. But he had not mentioned that precaution to Madame Cholon.

  Malone watched him for a moment or two, then turned back to Quentin and the others.

  “Where is my wife?” Quentin asked.

  “She’s gone downstairs. There was a phone call for her. Sergeant Cob urn has gone down to keep an eye on her.”

  Madame Cholon and the ambassador had been caught up in the whirlpool of guests and swept away; Chen and Pai were trapped in another current and they, too, were gone. Quentin, Lisa and Malone, sticking close together, fought their way out of the room on to one of the balconies. They looked down into the Staircase Hall and saw Coburn moving aimlessly about. He crossed from one side of the wide hall to the other, then disappeared into one of the side galleries.

  “I don’t think I’ll stay long,” Quentin said. “I’m tired.”

  “What time is the session in the morning?” Lisa asked.

  “Ten-thirty. I think I’ll sleep late, forget about setting my alarm. Would you wake me at nine, Lisa?”

  They saw Coburn reappear from the side gallery, looking worried and puzzled. He stood for a moment, then looked up and saw the three of them standing on the balcony. He ran up the stairs to them, his concern apparent even at a distance.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but your wife seems to have disappeared!”

  11

  Quentin stood stock-still, his hands gripping the balustrade. Guests went by, throwing greetings like confetti, but he did not hear them. His face had turned grey again; Malone thought he was going to faint. Then he drew a deep breath, collected himself. “Perhaps she is in the lathes’ room?”

  “I’ll go and see,” said Lisa, and went quickly down the stairs, her long blue gown held up in front of her.

  “We’ll look around, too,” said Malone. “Will you be all right, sir?”

  Quentin nodded, his face still ashen. I’ll stay here. “Find her, Scobie.” It was a cry for help.

  Malone and Coburn moved away from him along the balcony. “Try everywhere downstairs,” Malone said. “And check with Ferguson. He’s outside with the car. I’ll scout around up here.”

  “I just hope she is in the toilet,” Coburn said, and went down the stairs at a run.

  Malone went round the balcony and back into the Great Gallery. He pushed his way through the throng, snatches of conversation catching at his ears, irritating him again:

  “Sexwise, she’s just foolish—”

  “It was rather a nice pasteurised orgy – very American—”

  “Darling, I’m talking about my horse, not my husband—”

  People looked at him curiously as he went past them; he was not a conference delegate, so he was not expected to look so worried. He saw Pallain, who moved towards him to say something; but he shook his head and moved quickly on. He saw other faces he knew: Larter, Edgar, the Americans who had been at the house this morning. And he passed close by Madame Cholon and the ambassador.

  “You look worried, Mr. Malone,” said Madame Cholon.

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Quentin. You haven’t seen her?”

  Her expression was almost too innocent. “Should I have seen her?”

  Then she turned away from him, excused herself from the ambassador and slid away like a green bird into the thicket of the crowd. The ambassador looked after her, then at Malone. “Never trust the Orient, my father used to say.” He was not laughing now; Africa was not as simple as so many thought “I wonder how right he was? What do you know about that woman, Mr. Malone?”

  “Enough not to have any trust in her at all, sir.”

  “Care to tell me about her?”

  “Could I see you later, sir? I must find Mrs. Quentin.”

  But he didn’t find her. When he got back outside to the balcony Lisa and Coburn were already there with Quentin. Lisa had drawn a blank in the lathes’ room
.

  “She’s nowhere downstairs,” Coburn said. “And the car has gone. There’s no sign of Ferguson.”

  “Well, if he’s with her, that’s some comfort.” But Quentin hadn’t convinced himself. He bit his lip, thumped his fist on the balustrade. “But why did she go off without a word?”

  “Perhaps she’s gone home,” Lisa said. “She might have felt ill – she didn’t look well—”

  “But who phoned her?” Malone said.

  “Call the house.” Quentin moved down the stairs and the others followed him. “Joseph should be there.”

  Lisa went away to telephone the house. Coburn went out through the vestibule towards the front doors again, and Malone and Quentin were left alone. Quentin was looking about him, peering at women as they passed, as if he expected them to take off the mask-like faces they wore and turn into Sheila. Behind them the marble smile of the Duke of York had now turned sardonic: he had lived in a time of cruel jokes. Quentin said, “What I can’t understand is why she just disappeared without a word. If anything has happened to her – no good-bye, nothing—”

  “Don’t sound so–so final,” Malone said, distressed for the other man. “Like Lisa said, she may just have felt ill. She’s had enough happen to her, Christ knows—”

  Quentin nodded, but he was still unconvinced; his despair had reached a momentum where nothing could stop him now from expecting the worst. today was a day of disasters: first the conference, and now this, the worst that could possibly happen. “If they’ve harmed her—” he said, but even his rage was helpless.

  “They are still here,” Malone said. “Cholon and Pallain – if he’s connected with her. I checked on them both before we came downstairs.”

  “They could have someone else—”

  “If they have, we’ve also got Cholon. But don’t start thinking like that. You’re being too pessimistic—”

  “Do you blame me? Christ, Scobie—” It was the first time Malone had heard him swear. “What grounds have I got for being optimistic about anything?”

  Malone’s apology was interrupted by the return of both Lisa and Coburn. Lisa said, “The phone’s engaged.”