Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

In the late afternoon the hotel’s swimming instructor, Pierre Gruneberg, stopped by my desk on his way home to tell me that my second swimming lesson would have to wait a while because of the numbers of Medusa jellyfish that were presently in the bay. For some reason I had never learned, not properly, and Pierre was reputed to be an excellent instructor; he’d taught everyone from Picasso to David Niven and he’d promised to teach me, in the sea-it would never have done for me to have used the hotel pool. He always started the first swimming lesson the same way, by asking his students to put their heads in a salad bowl full of water. ‘Learn to swim without getting wet,’ he would say; it didn’t sound any more strange or perverse than what was happening up at the Villa Mauresque.

I didn’t see any sign in the hotel of Harold Hebel, but Anne French showed up for afternoon tea at around five and, by largely ignoring each other, we pretended that the intimacy that had taken place between us hadn’t happened; although it had, of course. I could still recall the turbulent emotions that had poured out of her sensuous mouth and onto the pillows of a capacious brass bed. After I’d watched her cross the floor of the lobby I opened the newspaper and looked for some sedative story that would take my mind off her naked body and what it looked like when she was bent over in front of me like the keenest entomologist. I didn’t find anything that did the job and twenty minutes later I was still marveling at my own erotic good fortune.

At just after eight o’clock I finished work. It would have been my bridge night but instead of going to La Voile d’Or to play cards, I drove east along the Grande Corniche to Eze, whose situation on a height dominating the coast makes it seem more like Hitler’s seaside Berghof instead of a medieval village largely abandoned by its natives. Then again, I’m probably the only man in that part of the world who’d ever be reminded of the Berghof. Sometimes it’s hard to forget about Adolf Hitler. Maybe the history of Germany might have been a little different if our great men had spent less time on mountaintops and a bit more on the beach. In fact, I’m more or less sure of it.

A little farther inland was the village of La Turbie, where Jack and Julia Rose had a villa the size of a modest French hamlet. I parked a little bit short of the cliffside house, lit a cigarette, and settled down to smoke it. Jack’s cream-colored Bentley convertible was in the drive and I wanted to see if I’d remembered his habits correctly; on the nights when he and Julia didn’t turn up for bridge he usually went to the casino in Monte Carlo, where he liked to play baccarat. By Spinola’s account, he was pretty good at it, too. His was a fine house on a quiet, winding road, and it was easy to see why Jack and Julia lived there, quite apart from its proximity to Monaco. None of the homes on that road were any less exclusive than a summer palace. A couple of motor scooters buzzed by very loudly, like angry hornets, startling me a little; but as dusk arrived, things quieted down a lot and I closed my eyes. I dreamed about Anne, and my wife, Elisabeth-and for some reason I even dreamed of Dalia Dresner, the movie star, who was staying along the coast in Cannes, at the Carlton. I don’t remember much of what happened in the dream except that it left me feeling sad and wistful. These days all my dreams leave me feeling sad and wistful, probably because they’re only dreams.

About ten o’clock the closing of a car door woke me. The cream-colored Bentley was lit up like a television set and already on the move in the Rose drive. In the moonlight it resembled a boat in the harbor at the Cap. I waited until it had disappeared up the road and then got out of my car and I walked to the front door. There was no knocker but I saw a brass handle the size of a horse stirrup that I was supposed to pull. I pulled it. The bell sounded as if there should have been a cow attached to it, probably in a Swiss meadow. Julia came to the door holding a martini glass, which was maybe why she seemed pleased to see me.

“Walter. What a pleasant surprise. But if you were looking for Jack, I’m afraid you just missed him.”

“That’s a pity. Never mind.”

“He went to play baccarat.”

“I can never understand that. Bridge requires skill. Baccarat is all luck.”

“Jack’s always been lucky. Don’t underestimate luck.”

“Oh, I don’t. Not for a minute.”

“Now that you’re here, would you like to come in for a drink? I just mixed a jug of martinis.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She stood aside with a smile and ushered me through a wide hallway into a huge drawing room. The French windows were ajar and a light current of air blew through the room off the sea, just enough to stir the petals that had fallen from a vase of roses on a table. Julia Rose was wearing a ruffed white shirt and tapered wafer-colored pants; there was a little red clasp on her fair hair that was shaped like a cherry; she looked like an ice-cream cone. She poured me a large one from a tall glass pitcher and we sat down on one of the several sofas there were to choose from.

“Nice room. You should send out a missionary sometime. See what new plants and undiscovered tribes he comes home with.”

Julia smiled. “It is kind of large, I guess.”

“But I like Eze and La Turbie. The view of Monaco is the best there is.”

“Nietzsche thought so. He used to stay down the road in Eze.”

“That explains it. Why I feel so very much at home here. It’s the kind of place that mad Germans take to.”

“We like it.”

“You’re English. You’re almost as mad as us Germans.”

“But you always seem so very sane, Walter. I’m afraid I find it hard to imagine the concierge at the Grand Hotel in Cap Ferrat doing anything mad at all.”

“It’s usually the sanest people who turn out to be the craziest, Julia. Who do the most insane things. That’s how history is made.”

“I can see I’m going to have to keep a close eye on you, Walter.”

“There’s a flip side to that.”

She lit a cigarette and smiled a little nervously. “Oh, you needn’t worry about me, Walter. I come from a family of Lloyd’s insurance brokers. Who are all notoriously sane. And there are very few opportunities for going crazy in Eze.”

“Unless you’re Nietzsche.”

“Did he go insane? I don’t actually know much about Nietzsche.”

“He was mad but not noticeably. At least not in Germany.” I glanced around the room again. “Anyway, it’s a lovely home you have. Living up here must be like heaven. It’s close enough, after all.”

“Have you been here before, Walter? I can’t remember.”

“Once. With Antimo. To play bridge when the Voile had closed for the summer. We lost.”

“Poor Antimo,” she said. “That was awful what happened to him. The police were here, of course. Asking their questions. Did we know anyone who might have had a grudge against him? As if. They asked a lot of questions about you. Yes, they seemed quite interested in you. But Antimo was such a dear, sweet man. I shall miss him enormously.”

“Me, too.”

“Do they have any idea who did it, yet?”

“No,” I said. “Not a clue. But I do.”

“Really? You surprise me. Who?”

“You shouldn’t be surprised. It was you who shot him, Julia.”

“Me? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not ridiculous. You were having an affair with him and you’d threatened to put a hole in yourself when he gave you the cold cut. Spinola took your gun-or at least a gun-away from you to stop you from doing it. I still have that gun at home somewhere. I guess he never figured you might own more than one firearm. Or that you might just shoot him instead of yourself.” I sipped my drink. “This is a good martini, Julia. You’re quite a cocktail barman.”