The Invitation(94)

The yacht is a chaos of noise, of sensation. Some of the guests have departed on their assigned craft with the lanterns now lit at their prows, motoring back across the water toward Cannes in a moving chain of light. But by some strange trick there appear more people on board than ever. The bathing-suited woman is now seated at the piano and is playing a nimble-fingered jazz number, her goggles pushed up on her brow. One of the crew is sweeping up the remains of the champagne-bottle skittles match.

He is no longer wading through the evening, he is floating upon the very meniscus of it, never breaking the surface. The people around him blink on and off like so many fireflies.

Every so often, he catches sight of Stella. She is the only one who seems real. Her light is different, he thinks, it burns brighter. Clearly, others see this too. He catches the glances that linger, that follow, and again, and forces himself to swallow his jealousy. It is something new, this – brought on, no doubt, by all that is at stake. It is like a kind of temporary madness. Or perhaps it is the alcohol. He tries to think clearly. When they have escaped, when everything is safe and certain, then it will be different.

When she passes by, he steps toward her.

‘Come,’ he says, landing a hand on her wrist. His words come thickly, as though he is trying to speak through cotton wool. ‘Dance with me.’

‘No,’ she snatches her arm back. And then, in a whisper, so that they cannot be overheard, ‘Hal, you’re drunk. Go and sleep it off downstairs. Or you will make things worse for both of us.’

When he sees the fear in her expression he is chastised. He is drunk. And he knows that she is right. If Truss believes the thing to be one-sided it is for the best. They are only in danger if he makes a further connection.

He retreats below deck, understanding now that to remove himself from the scene is the only way to prevent himself from making some sort of scene. He heads for the library, takes one of the armchairs, and shuts his eyes, willing himself sober. He is sober enough to realize the irony of it. All those sleepless nights and only now, now that it is important to stay alert, is sleep trying to claim him.





39


‘Hal. Hal, wake up. Wake up, Hal.’

His eyes feel glued shut. He has to force them open. He is not in his cabin, he realizes, blinking around himself at his unfamiliar surroundings. He is in the library, still in the armchair. His back aches and his mind is a hot blur of pain. He must have drunk far more than he had meant to. The English actor is curled in the chair like a sleeping babe, an empty tumbler clutched against his chest.

Then Hal becomes aware of someone saying his name.

Gaspari stands before him, looking small and tired and much older, somehow. Hal can see immediately that something is the matter. He is about to ask, but Gaspari speaks first.

‘Have you seen Mrs Truss? Stella?’

His instinctive reaction is guilty, defensive. ‘No. Why should I have?’

Gaspari makes a helpless motion with his hands. ‘No one has.’

Through the fuzz in Hal’s brain comes the same, insistent message. Something is wrong.

‘What do you mean,’ he says, carefully, ‘no one has?’

‘She isn’t on the boat.’

He sits up, suddenly charged with awareness. He looks down at himself, and realizes that he is still wearing Aubrey Boyd’s tuxedo. But there isn’t time to change, he decides. He must find Stella.

‘What time is it?’

‘Five. It is getting light.’

‘But … where else could she be?’

‘They thought, perhaps … they wondered if she might have taken one of the boats back to the shore. But no one saw her leave. The crew were manning them, and they would have recognized her. But she is not on the boat.’ He coughs.

‘I don’t understand,’ Hal says. He realizes that he is looking at Gaspari as though expecting him to provide a solution.

‘None of us do,’ Gaspari says. ‘The police are here now, talking to Truss.’

‘The police? Why the police?’

‘They think,’ Gaspari covers his face, muffling his voice, ‘they think she went in the water.’

‘Went swimming?’ Hal thinks of the acrobat woman in the silver bathing costume, diving a perfect arc into the inky water; a falling star.

‘No,’ Gaspari says. ‘Not that.’

The next few hours pass in a kind of shifting fog. In a Cannes police station Hal is interviewed by the sole police officer who speaks any English, who receives his questions from his superior, so that there is a strange time lag for every one, even the shortest and most banal of enquiries.

‘What was the last time you saw Mrs Truss?’ the man asks.

‘Last night.’

‘When would that have been?’

‘Ah—’ Hal thinks, hard. It is important to be certain, he realizes, it will aid the men in their work. But his thoughts are clouded by fear. In his gut is a rising nausea. ‘About nine o’clock, I think.’

‘Was she alone?’

‘No – she was with her husband, Mr Truss.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’ Hal isn’t sure he likes the man’s tone.

‘Because he said that he was certain he saw you with her, later in the evening.’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, I did.’ Of course – now he recalls that brief, strained conversation he had had with her – when she had pleaded with him to leave her be. How could he have forgotten? His mind doesn’t seem to be working properly. Too many other thoughts are crowding in.