Dombreux knelt beside him. ‘Can you follow my movements, Max?’ he asked, pulling open one of the desk drawers. Max watched as he reached inside and took out a gun. ‘Good. You’re conscious and the muscles of your eyes are still working. Most of your other muscles are paralysed. Nadia is a good chemist, isn’t she? Now, the paralysis will not last very long, so I regret I cannot delay.’
Dombreux sat back on his heels, stretched out his free hand and pulled the dust-sheet off what Max had thought was a telescope. He saw now that it was a camera on a tripod.
‘I am sorry, Max. I have personally nothing against you. But I am tired of running and hiding. Lemmer will give me a new identity and a new, wealthy life a long way from here in return for what I am going to do. Your death has to be arranged so that it cannot be traced to him or Tomura, you see. There can be nothing that would make your family – particularly your mother – think you were murdered. It must have an explanation that is . . . complete. And it will. Under one of the dust-sheets in the drawing-room the police will find the body of William MacGregor, shot through the head with a bullet from the gun I am holding. This villa is rented in your name. The name you used in Orkney, that is: Hutton. MacGregor tracked you here and accused you of the murder of Selwyn Henty. You killed him. But you realized you would not get away with it. And you were distraught because Corinne had rejected you. There are unframed canvases from Raffaele Spataro’s studio here as well. Nude drawings of Corinne. It does not matter whether he drew them from life or his imagination. They will make you seem . . . dérangé, as we say. Good, no? Thorough, I think. Altogether . . . convincing.’
Dombreux leant closer. ‘No one will believe Corinne if she says I am still alive. They will think she is mad. They will think you were mad too. Your suicide will confirm it. Lemmer needs proof you are dead, though. Proof he can show Tomura before they sail today. That is what the camera is for. I will take photographs of you after you have shot yourself through the head. Now . . .’
Dombreux folded Max’s limp right hand round the gun and lifted it, carefully bending Max’s elbow. ‘You see how easy this is, Max? It will be fast. And with the drug inside you, it will be nearly painless. The letter from Jack Farngold is genuine. But you will never read it.’
Max felt the barrel of the gun pressing into his temple and his index finger being folded round the trigger.
He had always feared dying in a flying accident, as too many RFC pilots had, rather than in combat. It would have been both stupid and futile, a waste of his life as well as a good aeroplane. What was about to happen to him was similar in its unfittingness – and in the shame he felt on account of it. He had failed. He had fallen short. He had made a fatal mistake.
It could not be helped. At least, as when things went disastrously wrong in the air, it would end quickly. There was that to be said for it at any rate.
‘We are ready, yes?’ Dombreux nodded in evident satisfaction with his handiwork, then drew back and grimaced as he began to squeeze Max’s finger against the trigger. ‘Adieu,’ he murmured.
A click sounded in Max’s ear. Then . . .
TO BE CONTINUED
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As in the first volume in this trilogy, The Ways of the World, I have altered none of the recorded history of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Real people, places and events have been depicted as accurately as possible. In the writing of The Corners of the Globe, I have benefited greatly from the researches of Geoffrey Stell into Orkney’s military past, published as Orkney at War: Defending Scapa Flow, and from the material held at the Orkney Library & Archive in Kirkwall. I have also been greatly aided in imagining Marseilles as it was in 1919 by the many wonderful photographs taken of the city around that time by Fernand and Albert Detaille.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Goddard was born in Hampshire and read History at Cambridge. His first novel, Past Caring, was an instant bestseller. Since then his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and their labyrinthine plotting. The first Harry Barnett novel, Into the Blue, was winner of the first WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award and was dramatized for TV, starring John Thaw. His thriller, Long Time Coming, won an Edgar in the Mystery Writers of America awards. The Corners of the Globe is the second part in Robert Goddard’s extraordinary The Wide World trilogy set in the years after the First World War and featuring James ‘Max’ Maxted.
Also by Robert Goddard
Past Caring
In Pale Battalions
Painting the Darkness
Into the Blue
Take No Farewell
Hand in Glove
Closed Circle
Borrowed Time
Out of the Sun
Beyond Recall
Caught in the Light
Set in Stone
Sea Change
Dying to Tell
Days without Number
Play to the End
Sight Unseen
Never Go Back
Name to a Face
Found Wanting
Long Time Coming
Blood Count
Fault Line
The Ways of the World
For more information on Robert Goddard and his books, see his website at www.robertgoddardbooks.co.uk
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First published in Great Britain
in 2014 by Bantam Press
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Copyright © Robert and Vaunda Goddard 2014
Robert Goddard has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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