Background
At a meeting in the Paris Embassy, Charles, who is working for MI6, is asked to renew his liaison with Helen Culverson, which he does. Now he decides to catch up with her sister, Kayla, as well.
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Closing paragraphs of Chapter 56
Kayla laughed. "You are an old fogey! Where's your sense of fun? This is Paris - city of love."
I steered her back to her seat and resumed mine with some relief. Lifting my glass, I clinked it against hers. "Cheers!" I said, taking a large draught to regain my composure.
She giggled and wiped her nose with her sleeve. It was then that I noticed the tell-tale trace of white powder. Now I understood her sudden mood change, the reason for her meeting with Bellini's henchman, and her denial of having even seen him. Things were beginning to fall into place.
Chapter 57
"That was fun, wasn't it? Go on, admit it." Her teasing tone was provocative but not so arousing now I knew what had induced it.
I shrugged off the challenge with self-deprecating humour. "You're far too good a dancer for me. I've always been a bit of a stumblebum."
"Stumblebum! What a gorgeous word." She leaped to her feet, lurching around me, sticking her bottom out at odd angles and laughing. "Come on! Let's get out of here."
That suited me for I thought a bit of fresh air might do her good. As soon as I got up, she wrapped herself around me, kissed me on the cheek, and tugged me away towards the door. Two lads playing table football in the corner paused in their game to give me the thumbs up and a knowing grin. One of them thrust his loins out in an unnecessarily obscene gesture. I hoped Kayla hadn't noticed.
As soon as we were outside, she turned to me. There was a pleading look in her eye. "Take me back to my place, Charles. I'm scared to go there alone after what has happened."
"All right," I said, "but don't you have to be at the Moulin Rouge in time for the evening performance?"
"Yes, but that's not for another hour or two. Plenty of time for a quiet drink and, if we can't think of anything better to do, you can tell me what you've been up to in England for the past few days."
An hour or two? I wondered how I was going to navigate my way through the rapids looming ahead. I glanced around, half expecting to see a seedy sleuth with a trilby tilted down over his face, but the only thing lurking in the shadows was my overactive imagination.
Kayla's apartment turned out to be not much more than a bed-sit. It was in turmoil. She obviously hadn't done anything to tidy the place since André had been dragged away by the police.
She reached into a cupboard and brought out a bottle of absinthe and two tumblers, into which she splashed generous fingers of the clear green liquor. "You know what they say, don't you?" she said as she handed me my glass. "Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder."
I winced at the pun and gave her a weak smile before holding my glass to the light to appreciate its emerald translucence. I swirled the viscous fluid around and inhaled the pungent odour of wormwood. "Bottoms up," I said. We clinked glasses and I took a cautious sip.
"You know, of course, that a green fairy lurks in the absinthe bottle, intent on stealing your soul?"
"Thanks for the warning," I said. "How foolish of me. For a moment, I thought you were only after my body."
She laughed. "Not tonight, dear Charles. My memory of André is still too sharp. He was a very dear friend ... and a remarkable lover." She looked at me intently before continuing. "Yes, and that, too. I saw the look you gave me in La Divette, and I know you're not a fool. He kept me supplied when I needed it."
"Do you think that's why he was arrested?"
"I doubt it. If they'd wanted to pick him up for dealing, they'd have used les stups, not a full-scale paramilitary operation. They must have wanted to pin something far more serious on him."
"Any idea what?"
"No. He was a secretive man behind all of that showmanship. I don't know much about him, except that he was kind to me at a time when I desperately needed support."
"How did you meet up? Was it just coincidence?"
"Not really. He was a friend of Thaksin's."
"Thaksin?"
"Dear me. I was forgetting that you don't know about my time in Phuket. Just a minute." She fetched a small jug of water and came to sit beside me before continuing.
"Thaksin was the main reason I went to Phuket rather than anywhere else. I met him during Muay Thai training in Bangkok before he moved to become an instructor in one of the boys' training camps." A wistful look came over her face. "He helped me in ways you would hardly believe, but that's another story."
Pausing in her narrative, she added water to our drinks. The clarity of the liquor was instantly transformed to an eerie green mist. "When things got too hot for me in Phuket, he suggested I should come to Paris in search of Helen. Don't worry, he said. I know a man there who will look after you. That man turned out to be André."
"And now that he's gone, you're all alone. That must be dreadfully hard." I offered my hand to console her. "Is there no-one else to look out for you here in Paris?"
"There is one other person," she said. "By a strange coincidence, you introduced him to me. I thought he was a dreadful man when I first met him, but I was wrong. A diamond in the rough, you might say, but a diamond all the same."
I was puzzled, for I couldn't remember introducing anyone to her. "Who is this chameleon? I'm fascinated."
"Alain Gaudin."
"The grumpy gardener? You must be joking."
"No. He's not at all the way you and Helen described him after your meeting in Giverny. Under that gruff exterior, he's a sweetie. Did you know, he has a sister in Versailles that he looks after? That's why he moonlights at the Moulin Rouge."
"Yes, we knew about Françoise, but I didn't know that he was doing anything to look after her. She's in residential care. Mentally disabled from birth, according to Father Lacroix."
"The poor man has been responsible for her all these years and, to make matters worse, he was driven out of Versailles a few months ago by pernicious gossip. Damaging, but quite unfounded. No wonder he has a chip on his shoulder." Kayla sounded quite upset. She'd obviously developed a soft spot for Monsieur Gaudin.
"Fascinating. I'd love to meet him again. There are several things I want to talk over, if he's amenable. Tell me, does he live here in Paris or out at Giverny?"
"He rents an attic room on the outskirts and commutes to Giverny three days a week. I can speak with him if you like, and try to arrange a meeting."
"Could you? That would be wonderful." Although the mystery of the French letter now seemed insignificant in comparison with all the other things going on, I still wanted to get to the bottom of it. After all, it was what had set this bizarre train of events in motion.
I could see that Kayla was coming down off her high, and I was no longer quite so concerned about her. I drained my glass and got up. "I'm really going to have to leave now. I've promised to take Helen out to dinner, and she'll be wondering what has happened to me."
"Does she know where you are?"
"No."
"Well, don't you think it might be a good idea to call her? She'll be worried sick, if I know my little sister."
Author Notes
List of Characters
Charles Brandon - the narrator, a well-known travel writer.
Group Captain Bamforth (alias Sir David Brockenhurst) - an intelligence officer with MI6 and Air Attache in Paris
Helen Culverson - Also a travel writer, whose relationship with Charles is complicated by her relationship with Jeanne Durand.
Kayla Culverson - her older sister, who disappeared somewhere in Bangkok and has surfaced again in Paris.
Madame Jeanne Durand - a French magazine editor and undercover agent with the French Drug Squad.
Madame Madeleine Bisset - Helen's landlady in Paris
Mr Bukhari - a Pakistani businessman (now deceased)
Ian 'Bisto' Kidman - an ex-RAF friend of Charles's.
Monsieur Bellini - a denizen of the French Underworld.
Andre (aka Scaramouche) - an actor in Montmartre and friend of Kayla's
Dr. Laurent - a veterinary surgeon in Versailles.
Father Pierre Lacroix - vicar of the Versailles Notre Dame church.
Madame Lefauvre - an old woman living in Versailles - the town gossip.
Francoise Gaudin - an intellectually disabled woman living in Versailles.
Alain Gaudin - brother of Francoise, a gardener at Monet's house in Giverney
Estelle Gaudin [deceased] - mother of Francoise and Alain, a prostitute
Mademoiselle Suzanne Gaudin [deceased] - Alain's grandmother, to whom the mysterious letter of 1903 was addressed.
Jack and Nancy Wilkins - a Wiltshire dairy farmer and his wife.
Colonel Neville Arnoux [deceased] - of whom we may hear more later.
Gaston Arnoux - Owner of an art gallery in Paris, recently assassinated by Charles Asserted to be leader of an ISIS network
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