He tossed back his drink and was about to go to bed when his phone rang again. Probably one of his enforcers with a problem. He could do without it right now, but picked up anyway.
‘Oui?’
‘Darling?’
Christ, it was her. He looked at his watch. Past one. ‘Diana! Where are you calling from? Is something wrong?’
The silence at the other end lasted so long he thought they’d been cut off. Then she spoke again.
‘I have to see you. Tomorrow. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Where are you speaking from?’
‘I’m in the kitchen. Douglas is upstairs asleep. We had a row. I have to see you? Can I?’
‘Of course. Let’s meet for coffee tomorrow morning in La Petite Maison. It’s at the edge of the Old Town. Eleven o’clock. Do you know it?’
‘Yes, I know it . . . James?’
‘Yes, Diana?’
‘You do love me, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I promise. You yourself said today how complicated this all is, but that we’d work it out – and we will. Now get some sleep. Everything will look much better in the morning. It always does.’
‘Yes – I know that. I— damn, I think I can hear Douglas on the stairs.’ Her voice became a whisper. ‘I’ll have to pretend I’ve come down to make myself a drink or something. Goodnight, James.’
‘Goodnight, Diana. Sleep well.’ He replaced the receiver, thoughtfully.
Douglas.
The generous, and doubtless besotted, husband.
James Blackwell went to bed, the ghost of a fresh idea beginning to form.
53
Breakfast at the villa was a subdued affair. Stella looked from her mother to her stepfather and, with a child’s bluntness, asked if they’d had a row.
‘Just a silly one, darling,’ Diana replied. ‘And it was all my fault.’ For the first time that morning, she looked directly at her husband opposite. ‘I’m sorry, Douglas. I probably had a glass of wine too many at lunch yesterday and I should never have got on that stupid rollercoaster. I felt dreadful when I got home and I was in a foul temper. I was very unfair on you.’
Douglas looked relieved. ‘I was pompous and irritating. No wonder you were cross.’ He got up and came round to where Diana was sitting, and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry too.’
‘Yeuch!’ Stella stuck her tongue out. ‘Soppy!’
Douglas leaned over and rubbed the end of her nose with his forefinger. ‘There’s never anything wrong with saying you’re sorry, young lady. Nothing at all.’ He turned to his wife. ‘There’s something I keep meaning to tell you – there’s a letter for you on the mantelpiece in the salon. I noticed it last night, but with everything that happened, I forgot to mention it.’
He picked up his briefcase from beside his chair and walked to the kitchen door. ‘Marseilles for me. I’ll be back tomorrow evening. You’ll both be all right?’
‘More than all right,’ Stella told him. ‘I’m going riding for the whole day near Vence, remember? Mummy’s dropping me off straight after breakfast. There’ll be a picnic by a waterfall and everything.’
Diana’s heart sank. She’d completely forgotten the arrangement, made the previous month with a riding school in the hills above the nearby market town. Stella, an accomplished rider, desperately missed her riding lessons back in England and had been looking forward for weeks to a day in the saddle. All the other girls – they were mostly girls – would be French, but Stella didn’t seem to mind going on her own.
‘I’ll probably meet some of the people I’ll be at school with when I start next term,’ she had said airily. Diana and Douglas had marvelled at her casual confidence.
As soon as Donald had left and Stella was upstairs changing into her riding clothes, Diana telephoned James. Fortunately he was still at his apartment. She explained about the riding lesson – he said he knew the school concerned and that it was a good one – and they agreed to meet for lunch instead of coffee. Diana calmed down. She was still going to see him today after all.
Diana was in such a rush to get Stella to the stables that she grabbed the envelope from the mantelpiece without opening it and stuffed it in her bag. She could read whatever was inside later.
In fact, she delivered her daughter to the little ranch in the hills above Vence well before time, and was safely in Nice by noon with an hour to kill before she was due to meet James. She toyed with the idea of going to see Armand and Hélène, but instead chose to walk along the Promenade from its eastern end, all the way past the Negresco and on to where the private beaches owned by the restaurants ended, and the long public shoreline began.
It was a hot day but the breeze coming off the sea was cooling and Diana began to feel her optimism return. She was glad she’d made up with Douglas. She was still certain that their marriage would have to end – the prospect of life without James was unthinkable now – but she resolved to behave with more fairness and kindness from now on. God only knew how she was going to break the news to Douglas, but self-indulgent, faux anger must play no part in it. None of this was his fault. If she felt guilt – which she did – that was a burden for her to carry, not to be transferred to him in histrionics like those of the previous evening.
As for Stella . . . Diana was no closer to knowing how to handle that side of the equation, and until she was, the status quo must remain. She supposed inspiration would strike at some point, but every imaginary conversation with Stella that she rehearsed now made her realise just how difficult it was going to be.
‘Stella, you know we thought that Daddy died in the war? Well . . .’
‘Stella, there’s someone I’ve been wanting very much for you to meet . . .’
‘Darling, you know that sometimes miracles can happen?’
All awful, just awful. If only there was someone she could ask for advice, but twice-married widows whose first husbands returned from the grave were thin on the ground.
She turned round and headed back to La Petite Maison and the flower-market.
The flower market. Hélène.
Of course. Hélène may have been wrong about James being a figment of her imagination, but her counsel had been fundamentally wise and kind. With a sudden rush of hope, Diana realised she would be comfortable confiding everything to Hélène. She would not be judged. The woman was worldly – she was a war-widow too, and had a daughter – and shrewd. Diana felt instinctively that if anyone could think of the right way to introduce Stella to her father, it was the flower-seller.
First thing tomorrow, she would come down to Armand’s café and ask Hélène’s advice.
Twenty minutes later, still feeling a sense of relief from her decision and brimming with anticipation at seeing James again, Diana walked into the restaurant and was shown to her table. She looked at her watch. She was a quarter of an hour early.
She was about to ask a waiter to fetch her a newspaper when she remembered the envelope in her bag.
Hélène was hurrying to the bank to deliver her morning’s takings before they closed for lunch, when she saw Diana cross the road ahead of her and disappear into the doorway of La Petite Maison.
Hélène came to an abrupt halt. Had the Englishwoman read the letter yet? Surely not. If she had, Diana would have come straight to the flower-market that morning, Hélène was certain of it. Besides, even though she had only caught the briefest glimpse of her just now, Diana looked happy, even excited.
No, she had not read the letter.
Hélène was a woman of instinct and she knew with a calm certainty why Diana had come to this restaurant.
She was meeting Le Loup Anglais.
Hélène forgot about going to the bank. She spun on her heel and walked as quickly as she could back to the flower-market. Armand must come with her to La Petite Maison – now, this instant. Perhaps Le Loup had yet to arrive; there might still b
e a chance to speak to Diana alone.
She must hurry.
Diana dropped the final page of Hélène’s letter onto the table in front of her and stared at her reflection in the mirrored wall opposite. The blood had drained from her face; her bright red lipstick was stark against the pallor of her cheeks.
She felt as if she had been physically struck over the head. Black spots danced before her eyes and she felt so dizzy she had to grip the edge of the table to keep herself upright.
Disjointed fragments of the letter kept flashing through her mind like lurid neon signs:
He will want to take advantage of you . . . one of the cruellest men on the Riviera . . . stabbed in the eye . . . do not believe any of the lies I am certain he will tell you.
She realised with dull horror that from the moment she had begun reading the pages, she had not doubted their veracity; not in the slightest. It wasn’t just that she could think of no reason for Hélène to lie (nor Armand, who she saw had signed the letter too); it was as if Hélène’s careful, deliberate sentences shed ever-strengthening light on something she now realised had been in plain sight all along, ever since James stepped from his taxi and she’d spun him around to face her.
That expression on his face – the fleeting, feral snarl – so swiftly replaced by . . . by what? A beautiful mask?
Later, there had been the craven behaviour of the Negresco’s manager, and of the waiter there – not to mention the boy who’d served them yesterday at La Colombe d’Or. All three men were clearly terrified of James. Why hadn’t she recognised their fear of him for what it was?
Well she had, of course – but she had allowed James to explain it away. It was as if she’d been hypnotised – willingly so. She’d wanted to believe everything, anything, he said to her; how he lived in Nice now, why he’d gone there, what he’d had to do to survive.
Now, she replayed James’s account of his actions the day he was shot down. How had she allowed herself to be persuaded to accept his justification of shooting the doctor? It was cold-blooded murder, obviously. And the bedridden old woman upstairs? Diana shuddered. She was certain that if she made enquiries in the village of . . . what was it? Licques – she would learn that a double murder had been committed in the doctor’s house that afternoon.
Diana was overwhelmed by a devastating sense of loss. In its way, it was more painful than the day at the Dower House when she was told that James was dead. Hélène’s neatly written pages had utterly dissolved the image of the husband she thought she had found again. That man had evaporated into nothingness in the time it took to read a letter.
A new and terrible question came unbidden to her. What if the James she had married; the James she had fallen in love with and been besotted by, had been a carefully crafted illusion, too? If he hadn’t been shot down, and they had had some sort of married life together, how long might it have been before cracks began to appear in his smooth façade?
They had never really spent time together, had they? A few dates, and those days leading up to their wedding. If you put it all together, it wouldn’t add up to much more than a week.
A whirlwind romance indeed. How could she ever have thought she knew him?
Such a silly girl. Such a ridiculously stupid girl.
Diana bowed her head. Her tears fell onto the white tablecloth where they formed dark, spreading circles.
A few moments passed. She heard steps behind her and turned to see Hélène and Armand walking over to her table. Both wore set, determined expressions.
‘Diana!’ called Hélène. ‘We have sent you a—’
‘Yes,’ Diana said dully. She wiped her eyes with a napkin. ‘I know. I’ve just read it.’ Slowly, she stood up.
Hélène reached out to her, taking the younger woman’s hands in her own. ‘I am so, so sorry, my dear. This is a terrible thing for you to learn, terrible. You do not doubt us?’
Diana shook her head. ‘No. No, I don’t.’ Her voice sounded thick and strange to her, as if she had not spoken for days.
Hélène looked at her, her eyes full of pity. ‘Then you must be in much pain, I fear.’
‘I don’t know how to describe the way I feel . . . How did you know I was here, Hélène?’
‘I saw you walk in. You are here to meet him, oui?’
Diana nodded miserably.
Armand spoke for the first time. ‘Then we must leave at once. Allons-y.’
They were too late. The restaurant’s revolving door turned and James Blackwell entered the room. He didn’t see them immediately, turning to the head waiter and asking for his table. The man gestured in their direction, and the next moment James’s gaze fell on the three figures who were staring at him from across the room.
He cocked his head to one side, taking in the little tableau. Then he nodded to himself before crossing the floor to them, smiling faintly.
‘Well, well,’ he said, bowing slightly to Diana and Hélène. ‘Not quite the tête-à-tête I was expecting, Diana.’ He turned to the café-owner. ‘Armand. I had no idea you could afford to eat in restaurants like this. I feel it may be time to review our arrangement.’
Armand made no reply. James looked at Hélène and smiled engagingly at her. ‘I don’t think we’ve met, madame, but your face is familiar.’
Hélène regarded him without fear. ‘You may have seen me in the flower-market, monsieur. I have a small stall there. Doubtless if it was a larger affair I would have come to your attention.’
James’s smile broadened. ‘Indeed you would. We’d be old friends by now, I think. Like Armand and me.’
Armand cleared his throat. ‘We are not friends, monsieur.’
James frowned. ‘No? Well, perhaps you’re right. Business and friendship don’t really mix, do they?’
For the first time, he looked directly at Diana, and her alone.
‘Well, Diana? Would you mind telling me what’s going on? I take it our lunch is cancelled. You don’t look very pleased to see me, I must say.’
A faint but unmistakable tone of mockery in his voice sparked a new response in Diana. Her misery and dislocation were replaced by a surge of anger so sudden and unexpected that she struggled to speak. When words eventually came, she was surprised at how calm she sounded.
‘Armand, Hélène – would you wait outside for me, please? I’ll join you shortly. Don’t worry, I’ll be perfectly all right.’ She indicated the only other occupied table, where four men in business suits sat quietly talking. ‘There are others here.’
Reluctantly, the pair left the restaurant. When they’d gone, Diana turned to James, her eyes shining with fury.
‘Have you spoken one word of truth to me, James? Ever? About anything? Anything at all?’
‘Ah.’ He folded his arms and sighed. ‘I can see you’ve been got at, Diana. Your new friends have been telling you things about me, haven’t they?’
‘At least they’ve given you a name. You still haven’t told me what you’re called.’
‘Well, I have a few names here, I told you that. Which one did they supply you with?’
She ignored the question.
‘You’ve been deceiving me from the moment we met. You didn’t want my money to help your businesses and keep people in their jobs. You’ve given it straight to the Mafia, haven’t you? You’re a gangster, James. An out-and-out criminal. I’ve heard about some of the things you’ve done. You’re disgusting. You disgust me.’
He looked at her steadily. ‘You didn’t find me so disgusting yesterday.’
Her blow surprised them both. Diana stepped back, breathing rapidly, the imprint of her palm and outstretched fingers livid on James’s cheek. He shook his head quickly from side to side. ‘Good for you, darling. That’s the spirit.’
‘Don’t you dare call me that. Don’t you dare call me anything. I never want to set eyes on you again. Who are you, James? What kind of a monster have you become? What did you think you were doing with me this week? Did you honestly think
I wouldn’t find out about you; that it wouldn’t end like this? What was the point?’
He shrugged. ‘Does there always have to be a point? Come on, Diana, we were both confounded to find each other again, and of course all the old feelings came back. We both gave in to them. You, every bit as much as me. And you did your share of the chasing, didn’t you? It wasn’t me calling you at one in the morning, was it? I didn’t drag you kicking and screaming into bed in the middle of the afternoon. It’s not my fault if you have a boring marriage.’
Diana moved as if to strike him again. ‘Don’t you dare talk about my marriage. Douglas is worth a thousand of you. He’s a wonderful, decent man. He’s not a murderer.’
James sighed again. ‘I explained all that to you. I had no choice; the doctor was—’
Diana jabbed him hard in the chest with her forefinger, aware that the thrilled businessmen were covertly watching the two of them from their table. A lovers’ tiff. Who knew the English could be so passionate?
‘I’m not talking about the poor man you shot in the back. But while we’re on that subject, what really happened to his mother, James? You killed her too, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’
After the briefest of hesitations, he nodded. ‘Yes. But I don’t expect you to understand why.’
‘You’re bloody right there; I wouldn’t, not if you spent a year justifying your sordid actions. But tell me, James: how many other people have you murdered since? Are we into double figures yet?’
He held both palms up. ‘Sorry, Diana. I know confession is good for the soul but there is a limit.’
‘Soul? That’s a good one. You have no soul!’
He considered the point for a few moments. ‘No, I don’t think I do. We at least agree on that, Diana. I came to that conclusion myself a long, long time ago. Before we even met. First met, I mean.’
She gathered up her bag and stuffed Hélène’s letter inside it.
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