The Other Side of Silence

I smiled. Cops are the same the world over, always expecting someone else to do their thinking for them. It’s a wonder that any of them ever managed to pass an exam at school without looking over the shoulder of the next boy. Then again, that’s certainly one way of passing.

“No. I can’t think of anyone. Least of all me. Given the way I play cards, it’s much more likely that Spinola would have killed me. Look, why don’t you ask the people at the casino? It strikes me that the kind of shady folk who operate these places, not to mention the ones who win and lose large sums of money-they’re just the sort of people on the Riviera who kill other people without a second thought. There’s organized crime in Nice, isn’t there? Much of it centered around the casino. Maybe Spinola might have had a run-in with the local mafia.”

“Rest assured that we will make every inquiry.”

“Is that all?”

“It’s enough, isn’t it?”

“What I meant was,” I said with true grand hotel patience and froideur, “do you require me for very much longer? Only, I have an appointment for which I’m already late.”

“You won’t try to go back to Germany, will you? Not until we’ve completed our inquiries.”

The last time I had seen my home in Berlin it was just one tall, improbably perpendicular wall of blackened brick with three short floors somehow attached, like a giant letter E. No doors, no rooms, no roof, just the open sky, which was so crimson from the setting sun it looked as if it was the blood of all those who’d wasted their lives in the battle for Germany, which had felt like the end of the world. I remembered looking at it and thinking how much pain and murder there was in that red sky and how it would never be blue again. You could smell death on the wind, like the Last Judgment. Not that any of this mattered much now that the end of the world was so very much nearer than it ever was before.

“Go back to Germany?” I said. “To Berlin? No, gentlemen. That certainly won’t be happening.”

TWELVE

As I drove up the gravel drive, the tall green front door was opened by Ernest, the butler, and a moment later there was Maugham wearing an open-necked blue shirt, white linen trousers, and espadrilles. He was carrying a Pan American flight bag over one shoulder. I didn’t get out of the car. I switched off the engine, wound down the window, and then Maugham leaned in. It was a beautiful deep summer evening-the kind of evening for talk of love, not blackmail money and an incriminating photograph.

Behind a hedge of thick pink and white oleanders I could hear the water trickling into the swimming pool, and the air was thick with the smell of orange blossom, which was preferable to the absinthe martini and the cigarette corrupting the old man’s mephitic breath, which now poured over me like chlorine gas drifting across no-man’s-land.

“Do you want a d-drink before you go?” he asked.

“No thanks. I’d best keep a clear head for the rubber I’m about to play with Herr Hebel. But I’ll certainly have one on my return. In fact, tell Ernest I might have several.”

“Of course. We’ll even save some dinner for you.”

He dropped the bag onto the passenger seat and, taking out a folded handkerchief, wiped his forehead, which was glistening with sweat. Robin appeared in the doorway, and then so did Alan Searle. Maugham sensed their lingering presence and glanced over his shoulder with a hint of displeasure, as if he were being minded like someone who was senile; he was anything but that.

“Where are you meeting him?”

“He’s rented a room at the Voile. That was his suggestion, not mine. But it’s neutral territory, you might say. Harder for me to lay any kind of trap for him there.”

“Robin and Alan are both of the opinion that one of them should accompany you. And, more importantly, the money.”

“Those aren’t Hebel’s instructions.”

“I know.”

“But sure, why not? As long as Robin or Alan stays in the car, I guess it would be all right.”

“Aren’t you a bit nervous?”