Starr and I have been together for one year now and this is the first time that we have been apart for so long. I miss her so badly that I have sprayed her unused pillow with Chanel No. 5 so that I can fall asleep each evening with her scent. She calls me every day and talks to me enthusiastically about the Deborah Kerr retrospective that she is visiting with Grandpa Mortenson at the Stockholm Film Museum. She says she misses me too. Tomorrow she will return. On the phone she sounded overjoyed when I suggested she should come and join me in Koksijde to enjoy the last tepid rays of this Indian summer together.
When Cox arrived at the hotel the previous Saturday, only a few other rooms were occupied. At this time of year the restaurant was closed in the evening, but for loyal guests like the professor, a fresh prawn sandwich was always available in the Bogart Bar, said Monsieur François, the concierge whom Victor had known for more than fifteen years.
“I think I would rather eat in my room,” replied Cox, as he filled in the registration form.
“That’s also possible, Professor.”
He had his laptop and two bags – one with clothes, and another much heavier one with books – brought up to the room, and stretched out in a hot bath. As he was getting dried, he absent-mindedly watched the trailer for Moulin Rouge on television, then rang down to room service at about half past eight for scrambled eggs, some ham and cheese, and a bottle of Chablis.
When he had left the hotel the previous evening to have a snack at the Pearl of Peking, the Chinese restaurant just along the promenade, Monsieur François had reminded him that he had been there for a whole week without eating once in the bar. Nick the barman had even asked whether he had done anything wrong. Cox would have preferred to wait until Starr was there before having dinner in the bar, but, so as not to offend his old chum Nick, he decided to go in and say hello.
Cox had to adjust to the semidarkness. All the lights in the bar had been switched off, apart from a copper lamp with a red shade at a rectangular table where two aged, deaf and dumb couples were playing cards together. A couple of candles were burning on the bar counter, their flickering light reflected in a silver ice bucket full of champagne corks. A cassette of the broken voice of Billie Holiday set the mood. Cox went to the bar and sat down on one of the velvet stools.
“The usual, Professor?”
“Yes please, Nick.”
“The usual” meant a dry Martini with a green olive in a tapering glass. He never drank anything else in the bar of the Astoria. Not because he liked this cocktail more than any other, but because the drink went with the decor. Since taking early retirement, Cox felt increasingly at home in a fantasy world that evoked the bygone charms of the Twenties and Thirties.
“I was beginning to wonder,” said Nick. “The Professor’s been staying a whole week in the hotel and I still haven’t seen him. That’s not typical of him, I thought.”
“Absolutely inexcusable of me.”
Cox was just about to order a prawn sandwich when a woman of indeterminate age placed her mink stole on the stool next to him and sat down a little farther along the bar. He had never seen her before in the hotel. Her wavy dark-brown hair tumbled down over her bare shoulders. She was wearing a tight bodice in wine-red silk, pushing up pneumatic CinemaScope breasts, and a long evening dress in black organza, slashed high, so that he thought he glimpsed the curve of a thigh in the half-light. She removed an ivory cigarette case from her handbag, flicked it open, took out a Winston and turned enquiringly to Cox. She was holding her cigarette just like Gloria Grahame, he thought. He could not imagine a more delightful introduction. Suddenly he was sitting in a chiaroscuro decor by Thomas Little opposite a femme fatale who seemed to have stepped out of a thriller by Henry Hathaway like a living cliché. A film noir icon who asks an unknown, mysterious stranger for a light in order to make his acquaintance. The sort of woman you could only imagine lit from behind and wreathed in plumes of smoke. He slipped off his stool, as lithe as Rick in Casablanca, and lit her cigarette.
“Thanks.”
Her voice was deep and seductive. She inhaled with her eyes closed, threw back her head, pursed her shining lips and blew the smoke out in perfect rings towards the ceiling.
“You smoke just like Gloria Grahame,” he said. “May I introduce myself? Victor Cox.”
“Debbie. Debbie Marchal.”
“Mr Cox knows everyone in Hollywood,” said Nick.
“Really?” asked Debbie.
“I would be telling a lie if I maintained the opposite,” replied Cox. “May I offer you a drink? Unless you are waiting for someone?”
“A whisky sour, please.”
The prawns were forgotten.
“And I’ll have another dry Martini. But as dry as you can. The way Buñuel liked them. So, Miss Marchal…”
“Debbie.”
“Well… Debbie, what brings you to the Astoria Hotel in Koksijde out of season, all alone like this?”
“Which version would you prefer, the long or the short one?”
“We have all night.”
She sipped her whisky and hesitantly, as if she had difficulty remembering the details, began an incoherent account of her failed career as a singer. She insisted it was because of her choice of repertoire, as she had a beautiful voice and undoubtedly had some kind of stage presence. Her problem was that her songs were too sad. Even sadder than Billie Holiday’s. In Spa, where she had performed for a time, they called her La Chanteuse Cafardeuse – the singer with the blues. What really put an end to her career occurred after she brought out her single ‘Que c’est triste l’amour’. The disc was withdrawn from sale on the advice of the Ministry of Health because both men and women had been committing suicide after listening to the song.
“That doesn’t explain why you are here this evening.”
“I don’t know… Perhaps, attracted by strangers who listen when I pour my heart out, I am unconsciously seeking out the most depressing places on earth. I’m probably trying to heal the wounds of the past…”
“Who knows, maybe the Professor with all his connections can do something for you,” Nick blurted out, as he put a dish of peanuts on the counter.
“How come you know so many people in show business?”
“Oh… as an author, scriptwriter, and occasionally even actor you come across almost everyone in those circles.”
“How strange to bump into a man like you in Koksijde.”
“I often retreat to this hotel to write or think about new projects.”
“That’s why we call Mr Cox ‘Professor’, right Professor?” says Nick.
“What films have you been in?”
“They were just small roles, you know, to please friends.”
“Go on.”
“In Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo for example I open the door of Richard Gere’s Mercedes. In Mark Rydell’s The Rose I play one of Bette Midler’s roadies, and in Elvis, The Movie by John Carpenter I’m there in the band.”
“Did you really play with Elvis?”
“Pretended to, of course… It wasn’t the real Elvis. But that was in 1980, when you were still in kindergarten.”
“Flatterer.”
“Will you have something on the house?” asked Nick.
“What about a bottle of champagne?” Debbie suggests.
“Then it’s on me,” insisted Cox.
Debbie put her cool hand on Cox’s. She was wearing loud, fake jewellery. Her long nails were varnished. Dark red like her bodice.
“You have warm hands.”
“I always do.”
“Perhaps they’ll bring me luck. Stroking a hand that has touched so many famous hands. If I had met you before I would now be at the top,” she sighed. “I assume you’re living with a film star or something.”
“Yes. Distantly related to Marilyn. I’m expecting her tomorrow.”
“Does she look like her?”
“No, she looks like Louise Brooks.”
“I don’t know he
r.”
As Nick was pouring the champagne, he waved with his free hand at the deaf and dumb card players who were leaving the bar.
“I don’t expect we’ll have anyone else in this evening,” he said. “But if you prefer me to stay, no problem.”
“No need on my account,” said Debbie. “The Professor will look after me, won’t you, Victor?”
“You are in safe hands, Debbie. Are you staying in the hotel?”
She takes another cigarette from the ivory case.
“I don’t know yet.”
Sunday, 14th October 2001
Last night I dreamt that I had landed in a film by Hathaway or John Sturges. I was sitting in a dark bar that resembled the bar of the hotel and met a mysterious woman in an evening dress posing as a singer. She claimed to know the saddest song in the world. I asked if she could sing it for me but she refused. Too dangerous, she said. A number of people had committed suicide after listening to it. After sharing a bottle of Veuve Cliquot with her I could not resist the impulse to hear the fatal song and asked her again if she would sing it for me. It was late and the bar was empty. The barman and the last customers – four dwarves playing cards in the corner – had disappeared. She let her fur slip to the floor from her shoulders and stepped on her high stilettos over to the white piano. I sank back into one of the Chesterfields and lit a cigarette, perhaps my last.
As soon as the intro began I felt a lump in my throat. It sounded like the first ‘Gymnopédie’ by Satie, but more wistful. And then she started to sing with an incredibly deep voice. I can remember the first verse: “Much of what my heart yearns for today belongs to bygone days…” My eyes started to water. It was the most beautiful song I had ever heard. Through my tears I could see her mistily, rocking on the piano stool. I heard my heart beating loudly in time to the music. I had never felt so powerless, empty and miserable. Then the room began to tilt. I clung convulsively to my armchair, which seemed to be sinking away in quicksand. I felt nauseous and gasped for breath. It was as if I had ended up in a viscous whirlpool and was slowly drowning. I begged for forgiveness and mercy. But she sang on as if no one could hold her back now. After all, she had warned me. I had asked for it and now it was too late. I heard myself cry that I would rather die than listen to any more. Then I felt a sudden cold and woke up shivering.
It is half past nine. If Cox still wants to make breakfast he must hurry downstairs. Later he wants to reserve a table in Ostend at Mario’s, an Italian restaurant on the promenade. Because tonight Starr will arrive, and life will begin anew.
In the lobby the atmosphere is charged. The entire hotel staff is present and despite the fuss it’s really quiet. Chambermaids and waiters are standing around in little groups, talking softly to each other. Like in a museum or at a funeral. Gendarmes have been posted at the door. On the promenade several station wagons are parked with blue flashing lights. When Cox steps out of the lift everyone looks at him. The general manager of the hotel, in conversation with the concierge, gestures at him politely.
“What’s going on?” asks Cox. “Are you expecting Sharon Stone?”
“If only,” sighs the general manager. “Have you had breakfast?”
“I was just planning to.”
“That’s good. This way, please.”
Cox does not understand. The GM takes him on to the veranda, where two men are chatting to the barman at a table.
“May I introduce Professor Cox,” he says, “one of our oldest and most loyal guests.”
“Superintendent Lejeune, Ostend Criminal Investigation Department. My colleague, Inspector Fontyn. Sit down, Mr Cox.”
The superintendent remains on his chair like a beached whale as Cox shakes his hand. A cold, clammy hand.
“What can we serve you, tea or coffee?” asks the GM.
“Coffee please. Milk and sugar.”
The GM walks over to the buffet, pours a cup of coffee, fills a tray nervously with croissants and boterkoek shortbread, which he sets down in front of Cox, and then takes his place at the round table.
“Thank you,” murmurs Cox. “May I ask what all this is about?”
“We ask the questions, Mr Cox,” says Lejeune in a tone of icy calm, chewing on a cigar that has gone out. “I know that we are not in Antwerp, but that does not matter. Even on the coast the questions are asked by the police and not the other way round.”
With his twenty-two stone, designer stubble beard, hippopotamus eyes and stains on his tie, he resembles Inspector Quinlan in Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil and seems to belong more in Marlene Dietrich’s dubious brothel than in the decorous breakfast room of the Astoria in Koksijde, thinks Cox.
“I never asserted the contrary,” he says.
“Good. Nicolaas Vermeir, the barman here who is better known to you as Nick, told me that you spent yesterday evening in the hotel bar. Is that right?”
“I did indeed drink a couple of dry Martinis in the bar last night. I had planned to eat there too, but changed my mind.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone. There was another guest sitting at the bar with whom I exchanged a few pleasantries, but I was alone.”
“A beautiful middle-aged woman?” asks Lejeune, wiping the sweat from his forehead and neck with a dazzling starched napkin.
“She claimed to be a singer. Nick probably knows more about her. He talked to her for longer.”
Cox holds Nick’s eye as if to make him understand that he should keep quiet.
“She hadn’t made it as a singer,” says the barman hesitantly. “And because the Professor knows everyone in Hollywood, I thought he might be able to help her. But I saw that he wanted to be left in peace so I didn’t insist.”
Beautiful. Nick was the perfect barman. Discreet, an accomplice, deaf and blind.
“So you know many people in the film world?” asks Inspector Fontyn in an unexpectedly high voice.
“What on earth is this all about?” Cox asks the general manager.
“May I?” the GM asks Lejeune.
“Do as you please,” mumbles Lejeune, trying to relight the stump of his cigar with a match and nearly burning his fingers in the process.
“Well… at about half past six this morning, before the dustmen came to empty the bins in the area behind the hotel, a certain…”
“Stan Larsky,” says Fontyn.
“A tramp who regularly comes and looks for food in our dustbins smelt something in one of the containers. At first he thought it was a dead animal in a smouldering bin bag. To cut a long story short it was a dead woman wearing nothing but an expensive fur coat. Strangled. Half of her face had been burnt, as if the murderer had tried to set the contents of the container on fire, probably with the aim of making the body disappear and removing all the evidence.”
“How awful,” says Cox. “Was she one of the Astoria’s guests?”
“No. But she was not unknown here. She worked as a high-class prostitute in the big hotels in the Ostend area. And last night she was sitting with you in the bar.”
“Deborah Marchal, thirty-two years old. You are the last person to have seen her alive, Mr Cox. You’re in deep doo-doo.”
“She was sitting at the other end of the bar! Nick, tell them that I exchanged at most a couple of words with the lady.”
“You’re not going to pretend to me that she didn’t try and pick you up, Professor,” says Lejeune, scratching his unshaven cheek with long, yellow fingernails.
Cox starts to feel dizzy. It is as if he were being pursued by fate. For the third time in four years he is being interrogated by the police in connection with the murder of a young woman.
“Did you leave the bar together?”
“No! She was still sitting there when I went up to my room!”
“Is that right, Mr Vermeir?”
Nick hesitates and ponders. Now he must carry on with his lies. Anyway it was just to help his old chum Cox out of trouble – Cox, who wouldn’t hurt a fly and whose girlfriend w
as arriving today.
“Well, I had just gone into the storeroom when the Professor was leaving and… When I got back to the bar again… he was gone.”
“What about her?”
“Her too. That’s normal. There weren’t any more guests so no more tricks. Why would she stay?”
“Who paid for her drinks?”
“She did. There was a two-hundred-franc note on the counter.”
“May we see your room, Professor?” asks Lejeune.
While Lejeune and Fontyn carefully search the bed, cupboards and even his bags, Cox sits in a wicker chair on the balcony and watches a mailboat in the distance approach Ostend harbour over a sea of quicksilver. He shuts his eyes and imagines Starr, leaning over the railings on the top deck, looking towards Koksijde at the Astoria Hotel, at the balcony of room no. 22.
“Professor?”
Cox recognizes Fontyn’s icy girlish tone.
“We’re done. At least for now.”
“For now? But you were able to ascertain that I slept here alone last night.”
“It smells of a woman’s perfume.”
“Chanel No. 5, yes. That’s my girlfriend’s perfume. I spray it on her pillow when she is not there beside me. To feel less alone.”
“How romantic.”
“It was also Marilyn Monroe’s perfume.”
“Another one of your glamorous girlfriends I suppose? For the time being you may not leave the hotel.”
“How long for?”
“Until I have the results of the autopsy,” says Lejeune, “and found out what perfume Deborah Marchal used to wear.”
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