The High Commissioner. Jon Cleary
somehow I can’t see them going for a concubine down in Chislehurst. And that’s what she’d have to be. I already have a missus.”
“We’re backward here in Britain. We need a New Society.”
At the supper table Malone had turned as the woman spoke to him. “You are an Australian, I believe? Are you here for the conference?”
Out of the corner of his eye Malone saw that Jamaica had halted for a moment beyond the doorway and looked back. Had he warned Malone to be careful of this woman? If so, why? Malone looked down at the woman, tiny, beautiful, as dangerous-looking as a budgerigar.
“Sort of.” He had never become adept at looking at a woman while pretending to look elsewhere; he gazed frankly at this woman with the schoolgirl’s face. There was an innocence about her that seemed incongruous with the sophistication of the tight-fitting gown she wore. The ao dais exposed almost nothing of her but a shimmer of leg, yet it was more revealing than any other gown Malone had seen tonight. But the woman had not cheapened herself: what the gown hinted at was not for sale at bargain prices. “My name’s Malone. Pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you – I have never heard that greeting before. It is so much friendlier than How do you do. I am Madame Cholon.” Malone put out his free hand. After a moment’s hesitation Madame Cholon smiled and put her hand in his; it felt like the wing of a small bird and he pressed it with rough but gentle fingers. “You seem a very friendly man. One does not meet too many of those at receptions like this.”
“I’m new here. I’ll learn to be like the rest of them. Like something to eat?”
Eyed by the curious journalists, they moved out of the room on to a terrace that overlooked a large garden. Green lanterns bloomed in the trees and guests moved through the aqueous light like floating upright corpses. In the huge houses the chatter of the reception buzzed like the sound of a plague of summer night insects; the effect was heightened by the sultry warmth of the evening. Beyond the garden London was only a dull gold reflection on the low clouds, silent as a faraway eruption.
“This road used to be called Millionaires’ Row.” Madame Cholon pointed to the huge houses behind them, then to the mansions on either side. She picked with long-nailed fingers at a small bunch of grapes. “Then the embassies moved in here. Governments are the only ones with money these days.” Malone noticed the sharp blade of resentment in her soft high voice; this schoolgirl could be spiteful. “But then you are a government man, are you not?”
“None of the money filters down as far as me.”
“I have heard there is very little corruption in Australian government. Where I come from, a man is suspect if he is not corrupt.”
Malone, his mouth full of crab and salad, said nothing. He was ravenous, but he was doing his best not to look as if he were shovelling the food into himself.
“I like to see a man eat.” Madame Cholon bit delicately at a grape as if it were a mango. “Men are always more honest about the sensual pleasures, do you not think so?”
Malone gulped, clearing his mouth. “I hadn’t thought about it. Are they like that where you come from? Where do you come from?”
“Out East,” said Madame Cholon, and Malone remarked the evasiveness. He looked towards the doorway to see if Jamaica was still watching them, but the American had disappeared.
“That covers a lot of territory, Out East.”
“Yes, doesn’t it?” said Madame Cholon, and smiled. She ate another grape, spitting the seeds into her hand with something of the peasant coarseness that occasionally showed in her in the simpler body functions. She had seen this tall, socially awkward man arrive with the Australian High Commissioner and she wondered if he would he returning to Belgrave Square when Quentin returned there. Pallain, Pham Chinh and Truong Tho would want as few witnesses as possible when they killed Quentin.
“Do you gamble, Mr. Malone?”
Malone looked at her in surprise: he was finding it a little difficult to keep up with this woman. All the girls he had known had been straightforward, the sort that a confirmed bachelor preferred: you knew where you stood with them. “Once or twice a year I might have a quid on a horse.”
Betting on racehorses: that was for peasants, like fan-tan and dice. “No, I mean chemin de fer or baccarat.”
“Those games are illegal where I come from.”
This was going to be harder than she had thought. Australia was beginning to sound like a country run by missionaries. “Don’t you ever do anything illegal?”
“Not if I can help it,” he said, and knew he must sound priggish. He waited for her to tell him so, but she was politer than Leeds had been. “Anyhow, what gambler ever finishes up in front?”
“Some of us do,” she said, and her smile was secretive. “You should try your luck some time.”
“Not at baccarat.” He could see the headlines in the Sydney Mirror: Cop Does Dough At Baccarat. That would mean an early retirement, all right.
“I once met an Australian. He said Australians were great gamblers, they had very little respect for your law. He said your national hero was some sort of outlaw. Ed – Kelly?”
“Ned Kelly.” I’ll shoot the next bastard that repeats that lousy joke. He looked at Madame Cholon over a heaped fork and wondered at her interest in gambling. If she was Chinese, that would explain it; but somehow she didn’t look Chinese. “He was what we call a bushranger.”
“And are you not a bushranger?” Malone shook his head, his mouth full. “What are you, Mr. Malone? Are you on Mr. Quentin’s staff?”
Malone turned his face away from the light while he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. Was every newcomer to a High Commission or an embassy queried as he had been? Or was Quentin so important that anyone connected with him became important? If so, it was a distinction Malone did not want. “Let’s just say I’m attached to him.”
“Too attached to be allowed a night off?” This man was not so stupid after all. If he was a security officer, some sort of bodyguard for Quentin, then she did not want him on hand when the attempt was made to assassinate Quentin. She did not know how forward women were in this country of cold men, but she had to take a risk. She smiled, employing all the subtle charm she had acquired professionally over the last twenty years. “I want to go gambling, Mr. Malone. There is a club in Mayfair, but ladies are not allowed in unescorted. It is very English.”
Malone put down his plate on the stone balustrade of the terrace and picked up his glass of champagne. This was Millionaires’ Row and he was an intruder, a beggar whose bank book would have been laughed at as a worthless visa in this territory.
“Better try someone else, Madame Cholon. I’m not in the Mayfair class. With my salary they’d probably restrict me to the one-armed bandits.”
“What is your salary, Mr. Malone?”
He raised his eyebrows. He had once read that the Asians had very different ideas on privacy from those of the Europeans, but he had never been asked a question as blunt as this before, not even by the Chinese opium smugglers he had met before he had gone on to the Murder Squad. “I get just over two thousand a year, Australian. Sixteen hundred sterling.”
“It is not much, is it?” Diamonds on her fingers winked derisively at him as she raised a hand to the pearls at her throat.
“I was happy enough with it back home.” Which was the truth: he had never dreamed of riches and so had been incorruptible. He had never been smug about his incorruptibility. He knew that every man had his price: he had just never found out what his was.
“But you are not now?”
Malone looked back into the big main room, at the silk walls, the frozen explosion of the huge chandelier, the beautiful women in gowns that would have cost him