The Night Manager

Jonathan's hands stiffened, and he instinctively flicked his elbows as if to ready them for combat. A car, a Mercedes by its radiator, had entered the forecourt, the beams of its headlights choked with swirling snowflakes. He saw Herr Kaspar's senatorial head lift and the chandelier glint on its pomaded rivers.

But the car had parked on the far side of the forecourt. A taxi, a mere city cab, a no one. Herr Kaspar's head, now glowing with acrylic light, sank forward as he resumed his study of the closing stock prices. In his relief, Jonathan allowed himself a ghostly smile of recognition. The wig, the immortal wig: Herr Kaspar's one-hundred-and-forty-thousand-franc crown, the pride of every classic concierge in Switzerland. Herr Kaspar's William Tell of a wig, Frau Loring called it: the wig that had dared to raise itself in revolt against the millionaire despot Madame Archetti.

Perhaps to concentrate his mind while it was tearing him in so many directions, or perhaps because he found in the story some hidden relevance to his predicament, Jonathan recounted it to himself yet again, exactly as Frau Loring, the head housekeeper, had recounted it the first time she made him cheese fondue in her attic. Frau Loring was seventy-five and came from Hamburg. She had been Herr Meister's nanny and, as rumour had it, Herr Meister's father's mistress. She was the keeper of the legend of the wig, its living witness.

"Madame Archetti was the richest woman in Europe in those days, young Herr Jonathan," Frau Loring declared, as if she had slept with Jonathan's father too. "Every hotel in the world was after her. But Meister was her favourite until Kaspar made his stand. After that, well, she still came, but it was only to be seen."

Madame Archetti had inherited the Archetti supermarket fortune, Frau Loring explained. Madame Archetti lived off the interest on the interest. And what she liked at the age of fifty-something was to tour the great hotels of Europe in her open English sports car, followed by her staff and wardrobe in a van. She knew the names of every concierge and headwaiter from the Four Seasons in Hamburg to the Cipriani in Venice to the Villa d'Este on Lake Como. She prescribed them diets and herbal remedies and acquainted them with their horoscopes.

And she tipped them on a scale scarcely to be imagined, provided they found favour.

And favour was what Herr Kaspar found in bucketloads, said Frau Loring. He found it to the tune of twenty thousand Swiss francs each annual visit, not to mention quack hair remedies, magic stones to put beneath his pillow to cure his sciatica, and half kilos of Beluga caviar on Christmas and saints' days, which Herr Kaspar discreetly converted to cash by means of an understanding with a famous food hall in the town. All this for obtaining a few theatre tickets and booking a few dinner tables, on which of course he exacted his customary commission.

And for bestowing those pious signals of devotion that Madame Archetti required for her role as chatelaine of the servant kingdom.

Until the day Herr Kaspar bought his wig.

He did not buy it rashly, said Frau Loring. He bought land in Texas first, thanks to a Meister client in the oil business.

The investment flourished, and he took his profit. Only then did he decide that like his patroness he had reached a stage in life where he was entitled to shed a few of his advancing years. After months of measuring and debate, the thing was ready ― a wonder wig, a miracle of artful simulation. To try it out he availed himself of his annual holiday on Mykonos, and one Monday morning in September he reappeared behind his desk, bronzed and fifteen years younger as long as you didn't look at him from the top.

And no one did, said Frau Loring. Or if they did they didn't mention it. The amazing truth was, no one mentioned the wig at all. Not Frau Loring, not Andre, who was the pianist in those days, not Brandt, who was the predecessor of Maitre Bern in the dining room, not Herr Meister senior, who kept a beady eye for deviations in the appearance of his staff. The whole hotel had tacitly decided to share in the glow of Herr Kaspar's rejuvenation. Frau Loring herself risked her all with a plunging summer frock and a pair of stockings with fern-pattern seams. And things continued happily this way until the evening Madame Archetti arrived for her customary month's stay, and as usual her hotel family lined up to greet her in the lobby: Frau Loring, Maitre Brandt, Andre and Herr Meister senior, who was waiting to conduct her personally to the Tower Suite.

And at his desk Herr Kaspar in his wig.

To begin with, said Frau Loring, Madame Archetti did not permit herself to notice the addition to her favourite’s appearance.

She smiled at him as she swept past, but it was the smile of a princess at her first ball, bestowed on everyone at once.