The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  “Come on, Medora. Take Auntie Hazel’s advice. Go on brooding like this and you’ll wind up in the nut house. I want to help you. But you’ve got to be ready to help yourself first. What do you say to joining us in an hour?”

  Medora had been shamed, and was now hesitant. “You really wouldn’t mind?”

  “I’ve no time for insincerity. I want you there with Carol Earnshaw and me. Joseph’s restaurant. A block off the Champs-Élysées. Make it in an hour and a half. I’ll be expecting you.”

  “Hazel, you are a dear. You’re too considerate of me. One day, if ever I’m home, I shall put you in for the Victoria Cross. Heroism against the common enemy, you know… Very well, I’ll be there. Look forward to it. I’m sure your Carol will be a doll.”

  Now, in Joseph’s, Medora Hart knew that her journalist friend’s instincts had been correct. Carol Earnshaw was a doll. From the moment that Hazel had introduced them, almost an hour ago, they had hit it off.

  Medora considered Carol’s profile as the American girl lengthily and enthusiastically answered the final question put to her by Hazel Smith. She considered Carol’s adolescent bob, little nose, spattering of freckles, fresh and untroubled oval face, and chaste, unsophisticated white dress (like a Communion dress), and she guessed that Carol was a virgin and she envied her. How wonderful, Medora thought, to be nineteen and unused, so excited about the present, so optimistic about the future. How wonderful, Medora thought, to have such advantages, to be brand-new and prepared to offer all of love and all of self to the right man when he came along.

  Medora felt her eyes welling with tears of self-pity, and to prevent her mascara from running, she stopped envying Carol and forced herself to trace the restaurant wallpaper—a fabric decorated with roses—visually, and then she allowed her gaze to roam over the dining room of Joseph’s until it held on a great abundant green plant that was the room’s centerpiece.

  She must not equate her life with others’ lives, Medora reminded herself. Where there is life there is hope, she told herself, and despite the past, her disillusionments, she could still feel renewed and cleansed inside when she met the right man, if ever. She remembered an American play she had once seen in London, where the mature heroine, who’d had a “chequered” past, finally met her true love, who knew of her past and suffered for the knowledge of it. And the heroine said to the hero that in her life she’d had no way of knowing she would ever meet him, meet the one she would love, and so she’d had no one to save herself for. But now that she had finally met the man she wished to live with forever, the past had no existence or meaning, for there had been no love in it, and only the present had existence and meaning, for she was in love for the first time and therefore was a virgin in love. Medora had always cherished those lines. But suddenly, this moment, in her situation, they sounded stage-contrived and false.

  “Garçon!” she heard Hazel call out, and guiltily Medora brought herself back to the booth.

  Hazel was counting out francs for the bill, grouchily muttering about the way French restaurants included the fifteen-per cent service charge and yet expected customers to tip on top of that. “And when you realize the word tip is derived from the initials of the phrase ‘to insure promptness,’ it slays you.” But once the waiter was gone with the money, she grinned. “Like to keep them on their toes,” she said, adjusting her hat and picking up her purse. “Got to skip the dessert. I’m late for another interview. You girls stay put. Get your money’s worth. Besides, I’ve done all the talking. I’m sure you’ll both have a lot to say to one another.” She edged out of the booth and straightened her wrinkled tweed skirt. “Carol, thanks for the interview. It’ll please your uncle, I promise you… Medora dear, don’t fret. Let me set my mind on your problem. In fact, tonight I’m seeing someone—you know, the man who interrupted us in the café yesterday—and I’ll put it to him. He’s got a fathead enough to have maybe one idea. Anyway, I’ll be in touch.”

  They watched her leave in a rush, and when she was gone, their eyes met and they smiled awkwardly.

  “I wish I had Miss Smith’s energy,” said Carol. “She must love her work.”

  “I suppose she does,” said Medora, but then she recalled Hazel’s confession about having been ill-treated by some man, and she added, “Of course, one never truly knows about another person.”

  “No,” said Carol quickly, “one doesn’t.” She seemed anxious to say more, but the waiter appeared with the profiteroles glacées au chocolat and they both felt rescued. There had been a breach left by Hazel’s departure that had momentarily left them strangers. Somehow, the profiteroles in common closed the breach between them.

  When Medora finished and raised her head, she saw that Carol was already done and waiting to speak to her.

  “Medora, I want to make a silly apology about something you don’t even know about,” Carol began. “When I met Miss Smith, and she told me you would be joining us, I was as excited as I used to be when I was a kid and my uncle had some movie star to dinner in the White House. I told Miss Smith I couldn’t wait to set eyes upon you. I told her all of us at school used to discuss you constantly, like you were the glamorous woman that all of us dreamed of being, except you didn’t dream like us, you lived it. I told Miss Smith I’d be a big wheel when I got back to school, because I could say I’d met you. I carried on just like that when I heard you were lunching with us.”

  Surprised, Medora said, “I’m flattered, Carol, but I’m nothing at all like you’ve imagined, you know.” She paused. “Perhaps Hazel told you?”

  Carol gulped and nodded vigorously. “She did. I hope you don’t mind. She was very frank about everything you’ve been through.”

  “I don’t mind It’s not much of a secret.”

  “I guess she spilled it all out because she didn’t want me to behave starry-eyed and foolish in front of you, like a silly fan. I guess she thought it would embarrass you. But honestly, I’m glad she told me. Not only so I wouldn’t behave stupidly, but because it made me realize how immature and lacking in understanding I was. I can’t tell you how ashamed I was of myself after I heard what you’d been through. I guess, without ever thinking deeply, all of us, the friends I know, myself, we thought of you as a grand courtesan, with men at your beck and call, that kind of silliness, never realizing what a horror it must’ve been for you and how badly you were treated. Suddenly, after Miss Smith was done, I saw the whole Jameson case in a new light, and I saw you as a human being, like—like myself, going through all that when you were my age, and I was so ashamed of my childishness. And—well—I thought I’d tell you.”

  Medora wanted to reach out and hug this girl, but she refrained. “You’re very nice to have told me that, Carol, you really are. I appreciate it”

  Embarrassed, Carol said quickly, “When you’re young and kind of cloistered, and brought up strictly, as I was, all you know is what you’re taught or what you read in books. Not until you’ve broken away and been on your own do you find out that most of what you’ve learned is a glossed-over version and maybe one-half true. I remember reading about Madame de Pompadour in several history textbooks. All you learned was that she was gifted and beautiful, and as the mistress of King Louis XV she ruled over Versailles for twenty years and had everything a woman could want Well, you read that and you have to tell yourself, ah, that’s the life, that’s glamour, that’s being a woman. But a few months ago, I read an honest biography of Madame de Pompadour, and my eyes almost popped out There it was, the real truth in black and white. King Louis XV was obsessed about—about sex. All he wanted to do was to make love. And Madame de Pompadour, poor woman, she was really frigid—she couldn’t help it but she was cold—and the King wore her out—isn’t that wild?—and she was always trying to avoid sex and yet she was forced to cooperate because she wanted to stay his mistress. So she went on special diets and took special drugs to make her more passionate, and she begged Dr. Quesnay, the court physician, to help her, and he prescribed mo
re exercise. But nothing helped. Her private life was literally a terror. Only most girls today don’t know that. They sigh and envy her, the way they envy you, Medora. I’m glad Miss Smith told me the truth.”

  Listening to this naive, engaging American girl, knowing that she could be trusted as a friend, Medora suddenly said, “How much of the truth did Hazel tell you? Did she tell you why I’m in Paris?”

  “Why, yes. To see Sir Austin. In fact, she said you were expecting to see him soon, to persuade him to let you go home again.”

  “Did Hazel tell you how I intended to persuade him to let me go home?”

  “No,” Carol said uncertainly. “No, she didn’t.”

  “Well, you know he’s the one who got me banished from England on an immigration technicality, although it really amounts to a morals charge. And you know he’s the one who’s keeping me in exile. You know all that?”

  “Yes. I think it’s awful, it’s sinful. I didn’t like him when I met him in London. There’s something so selfish and insincere about him. But I couldn’t tell my uncle. My uncle trusts everyone—you should know how people use him. He trusts everyone except people in the opposite political party. When Miss Smith was telling me about you, my first thought was to have Uncle Emmett go to Sir Austin and make a plea for you. But then—well, I had second thoughts—you see, I know you’ll understand, but Uncle Emmett is a little old-fashioned, and—”

  Medora stopped her. “I do understand. And I appreciate your even thinking of it, Carol. But you’re right. It wouldn’t work. Anyway, I don’t mind confessing to you what Hazel was too discreet to mention. I’m not in Paris to talk Sir Austin into letting me return home. I couldn’t do that in a million years. I’m here to blackmail him into letting me return home.”

  Medora had expected her companion to react with shock. It surprised and pleased her to see that Carol’s single visible response was one of being totally intrigued. “Blackmail?” Carol whispered.

  “Just that,” said Medora, “I’ve thought about it, and it’s absolutely as right as Robin Hood taking money from the evil rich to help the oppressed poor. Sir Austin used his power to warp the law, in order to exile me. Now I’ve got the means to ruin his name unless he revokes what he’s done and behaves decently.”

  “How?” Carol asked breathlessly.

  Medora launched into the entire story of her friendship with Nardeau and the nude of Fleur Ormsby that Nardeau had once painted. She had come to Paris, Medora explained, for the sole purpose of arranging a barter with Sir Austin—his guarantee of a re-entry permit to England in exchange for the scandalous nude of his wife.

  “Sounds a perfect scheme, doesn’t it?” said Medora. “It would be, except for one flaw that I hadn’t anticipated. To make it work, I have to see Sir Austin. Well, I haven’t been able to see him. I’ve telephoned, I’ve telegraphed. No luck. The invisible man. You can’t dicker with someone you can’t reach. So I’m up against a blank wall.”

  “But it shouldn’t be that hard,” Carol said. “Why don’t you send him a letter telling him right out what you have? And enclose a photograph of the painting?”

  “I’ve thought of that very thing, Carol. I don’t believe he’d pay attention. He’d think it more fiction from a hysterical girl. He’d simply tear up my letter and the photograph and ignore me. Besides, my intuition tells me that if this is to be successful, it should be handled quietly and privately between Sir Austin and myself. If others in his entourage should see my letter and photograph, Sir Austin would be inclined to ridicule it or demand absolute proof from me. I can pretend I have Nardeau behind me, but I really don’t, I mean not in supporting my blackmail publicly.”

  “Why not write Sir Austin a frank letter and threaten to make this public unless he sees you?”

  “It amounts to the same thing, Carol. Maybe worse. As Nardeau reminded me, Sir Austin is not an ordinary person. He’s a Cabinet Minister, a guest of the French Government. He could show my threat to the police, and they might run me out of France. I don’t dare risk it.” She sighed. “Oh,

  I’ve tried to think of every possibility, all kinds of improbable schemes. There is one other I’ve been considering.” She thought about it and looked at Carol. “I’ve considered having a go at Lady Ormsby,” she said. “Fleur herself. She’s the principal. Her stake in keeping the nude a secret is as great as her husband’s. And she might be easier to get to. If she knew I had the painting, she might do anything on earth to get her hands on it and destroy it. To acquire it, she might prevail upon her husband to drop the immigration edict against me.”

  Carol’s enthusiasm was instantaneous. “I think that’s the best idea yet! You must try it, Medora. There must be a way for you to get to Fleur.”

  ‘There must be,” said Medora, “but I can’t figure out how to manage it. If I call or write her, I’ll receive the same treatment I’ve been getting from her husband. Silence. She knows about me, and how I’ve been swept under the family rug. Well, I’m sure she wants to keep me there, too, because now she’s part of the family. I did have one notion, but…” Medora’s voice had drifted off, as she reviewed the notion in her own mind.

  “What was it?” Carol inquired eagerly.

  “Oh, a bit fanciful, I’m afraid. You see, there’s a big Retrospective Exhibit of Nardeau’s work to be shown here, at the Nouvelle Galerie d’Art, in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. This evening, there’s a special-preview grand opening, admission by invitation only, for the press and celebrities and that sort. I had a brief letter this morning from the Riviera, from Signe Andersson—she’s Nardeau’s present model—oh, it’s no secret, his mistress, too—we’re friends—and Signe wrote that she was arriving in Paris this morning, bringing along a few more oils Nardeau wanted hung. She invited me to drop by the Galerie tonight for champagne. Said she’d see that I got in. Well, I can’t do that, of course. I’ll be working, anyway. But then I had the notion that I might ask Signe to get Monsieur Michel Callet—everyone calls him Michel, he’s the proprietor of the Galerie and Nardeau’s dealer—to hang my picture, my nude Fleur, in the Galerie as part of the exhibit. My notion was that Fleur, priding herself on being such a publicized art collector and being interested in Nardeau, would sooner or later have to look in on the Retrospective Exhibit. Well, she’d see the nude of herself—how could she miss it?—and she’d recognize it and become terribly anxious and distraught and try to find out who owned it And Monsieur Michel would tell her who. And then she’d have to look me up to try to acquire the nude. And then I’d tell her my price.”

  If a person could dance while sitting, Carol Earnshaw was dancing. “Medora,” she said excitedly, “that’s it! It’s a tremendous idea! Why haven’t you done it?”

  Medora made a face. “Because it won’t work,” she said. “I mean, it won’t work unless Fleur Ormsby visits the exhibit. And the odds are she hasn’t the time for any exhibits here. Haven’t you read the papers? She’s the social hit of the Summit. Giving parties, going to parties, meeting celebrities, traveling everywhere. So there my picture is, hanging there, and here I am, waiting, waiting, and no Fleur to see it. And before I know it, the Summit is over, and she’s gone back to London, and I’ve lost my chance.”

  Medora looked to Carol for agreement, and was disconcerted to find that her companion had hardly been listening. Carol sat as if in a trance, eyes squeezed shut, nose wrinkled, entirely removed into a world of her own.

  Suddenly, like a delighted jack-in-the-box springing free, Carol’s features sprang open, eyes opening, mouth opening, and her expression was one of ecstatic delirium. “I’ve solved it, Medora! I know what to do!”

  Taken aback, Medora murmured, “To do about what?” .

  “About getting Lady Fleur Ormsby to positively see the nude of herself in the Galerie Whatever-it-is.” She gripped Medora’s arm. “Medora, listen, I can swing it, I know I can. My uncle is real close to the Ormsbys, you know that. We’re supposed to go to dinner with them one nigh
t here. I don’t think it’s been set up yet, but we’re supposed to. Uncle Emmett’s the key, and he’ll do anything to make me happy. So what if I go back to the hotel and tell him I’m dying to see the Nardeau exhibit, and tell him there’s a grand opening tonight, and it would be great fun if we invited the Ormsbys along for it, since Fleur is such a Nardeau expert, and she might like it and could explain the pictures to us. That would do it. Uncle Emmett would call Fleur, invite them to the exhibit opening tonight and to dinner afterward, and there we’d be. Of course, if Sir Austin is busy with diplomacy tonight, well, we could go to the exhibit tomorrow or the next night. But Fleur is a big one for social openings, and I’m sure she’d want to go tonight. She might even cancel anything else for that, because she’d want to please Uncle Emmett, anyway.” Carol released Medora’s arm and beamed at her. “What do you think of that?”

  Medora could not control her blinking. “Do you—do you think it’s possible, Carol?”

  “Of course, it is! You just arrange for that nude of Fleur to be hung in the show—”

  “But I will, immediately.”

  “—and I’ll guarantee to produce Fleur in front of it, in the flesh!”

  After that, both of them, caught up in their collaborative intrigue, reviewed it and reviewed it again as they left Joseph’s restaurant. At the Champs-Élysées they parted, Carol to go back to the Hotel Lancaster to try to wheedle her Uncle Emmett into fixing an immediate date with the Ormsbys, and Medora to return to the Hotel San Régis and transport the painting from the hotel vault to the exhibit building.

  For Medora, the hour that followed had the unreality of a dream. Her telephone call caught Signe Andersson, as she was about to leave for the Nouvelle Galerie d’Art for the third time that afternoon, to oversee M. Michel’s supervision of final preparations for the evening’s grand opening. Medora begged Signe to come by the San Régis on the way to the Galerie, for a few minutes only, for a few private minutes, about something personal concerning the exhibit.