They were actually moving about! Dancing! George could hardly believe his eyes. He released Alice’s wrists at once and cleared his throat in embarrassment. A scene of this nature could never have been staged in London. He tensed, wondering whether he should at once set an example and make noisily for the exit, tearing up his pro-gramme and tossing it into the audience like confetti in the time-honoured tradition, snorting his disapproval. Writing off the remainder of what promised to be a disastrous evening. Apparently catching and understanding his sudden uncertainty, his companion put a hand on his arm, gently restraining.

George watched on. Was it his imagination . . . or . . .? No. He had it right. The girls, without exception, were tall and lovely and – yes – one would expect that of chorus girls. Rumour had it that they were all shipped in from England. But this bunch were all blonde or titian-haired with alabaster-white skin. After the years of exposure to Indian-brown limbs, this degree of paleness struck him as exaggeratedly lewd. While he was pondering the reasons for this blatant piece of artistic stage management, the girls started on their routine.

To his bemusement the chorus-girl-mannequins were beginning to act out a scene of shopping. They were selecting garments held out for their inspection by a group of vendeuses whose sketchy notion of uniform appeared to be a pair of black satin gloves and a black bow tie. Their clients inspected the garments on offer and saucily began to put them on, layer by layer, tantalizingly and wittily not always in the expected order. It was a while before George realized what was going on and when he did he began to shake with suppressed guffaws.

Alice leaned close and whispered: ‘A striptease in reverse. They start naked and end up in fur coats. Different, you’d have to admit! You’re to think of this as an aperitif,’ she murmured.

The girls, fully clothed at last, eventually took a bow to laughter and applause and swayed off, flirtily trailing feather boas, silk trains and mink stoles, leaving the stage empty.

The lights went out at once and a backdrop descended. A single spotlight was switched on, illuminating in a narrow cone of blue light marbled with tobacco smoke, an area of stage front right. It picked out what appeared to be the contorted limbs and trunk of a tree. The drums took up a strong rhythm and a tenor saxophone began to weave in and out, offering a flirtatious challenge to the beat, tearing free to soar urgently upwards.

The shape on stage began to move.

George could have sworn that a boa constrictor was beginning to ripple its way down the trunk then he gasped as the tree straightened. A second light came on from a different angle, compelling his eye to refocus. He now saw a massive black male figure carrying on his back, not a boa, but a slim, lithe and shining black girl. George forgave himself for his failure to make sense out of the contorted figures: the girl was being carried upside-down and doing the splits. Her limbs were distinguishable from the man’s by their difference in colour – hers, by the alchemy of the blue-tinted spotlight, were the colour of Everton toffee, his gleamed, the darkest ebony. She twined about lasciviously, her body moving in rhythm with the pounding drumbeat, naked but for a pink flamingo feather placed between her legs.

The athletic undulations continued as the spotlight followed the black giant to centre stage. Once he’d mastered his astonishment, George decided that what he was seeing was a pas de deux of the highest artistic quality. Yes, that was how he would express it. But he wondered how on earth he could ever convey the shattering erotic charge of the performance and decided never to attempt it. The relentless sound of the drums, the stimulation of the dance and the overriding pressure of the enigmatic presence by his side were beginning to have an effect on George. He ran a finger around his starched collar, harrumphed into his handkerchief and breathed deeply, longing for a lung-ful of fresh air – anything to dispel this overheated soup of tobacco, perspiration and siren scents.

On stage, the dancing pair were writhing to a climax. The giant, at the last, determined to rid himself of his unbearable tormentor, plucked the girl from his back, holding her by the waist in one great hand, and spun her to the floor. He, in turn, collapsed, twitching rhythmically.

‘Thank God for that! Know how you’re feeling, mate!’ George thought and knew that every man in the audience was experiencing the same sensation. He watched, with a smile, for any sign of Alice’s predicted rush for medical attention for the elderly but saw none. To enthusiastic applause and shouts the lights went out, allowing the pair to go offstage, and the curtains swished closed again.

‘Would you like me to loosen your stays, Sir George?’ Alice asked demurely. ‘No? Well, tell me – what do you make of her, the toast of Paris? The Black Venus? La belle Josephine?’

‘Miss Baker lives up to her reputation,’ he said, ever the diplomat. ‘A remarkable performance. I’m glad to have seen it.’

‘And you’re lucky to have seen it. This was the first act she impressed the Parisian public with when she arrived here two years ago. Her admirers have pressed her to repeat it for some time and at last they’ve persuaded her partner – that was a dancer called Joe Alex – to perform with her again. The order of performance, for various reasons, has been changed this evening, you’ll find. Word got out, which is why the theatre is packed tonight.’

‘Is she to reappear?’ he asked, trying for a casual tone. ‘Or have we seen all of Miss Baker that is to be seen?’

‘She’ll be back. Once more in this half – doing her banana dance – and then again in the second. We’re to hear her singing. She has a pleasant voice and an entertaining French accent. Now, George, why don’t you sit back and enjoy the rest of the acts?’

George could well have directed the same question at her, he thought. He felt he could have better entered into the spirit of the entertainment had his disturbing companion herself been at ease. But she was not. He hadn’t been so distracted by the spectacle that he’d failed to notice the tremble of her hand, the bitten lower lip, the anxious glances around the auditorium. Troubling signs in a woman he had always observed to be fearless and totally confident. And if Alice Conyers had no fear of the influential Sir George Jardine with his powers to effect her arrest for deception, embezzlement and murder, culminating in repatriation and an ignominious death on an English gallows, then whom did she fear? He concluded that there must be, lurking somewhere in this luxuriously decadent space – in her perception at least – someone of an utterly terrifying character.

He followed her gaze. Her eyes, under lowered lashes, were quartering the theatre like a hunter. George sighed with frustration. This refurbished and enlarged theatre now housed, on a good night, up to two thousand souls. And of those, all but two were strangers to him. He wondered how many were known to Alice. And in what dubious capacity? Everything he knew of the woman’s past suggested that her associations were likely to be of a criminal nature, after all. And he’d never been aware of a leopard that could change its spots. Good Lord! Could it be that the woman might actually be thinking herself safer in his custody than running loose in Paris? That the grip of his improvised handcuffs about her wrists was not threatening but welcome?

Chapter Four

London, 21st May 1927

Croydon Aerodrome. Gateway to the Empire, the hoarding announced.

‘Arsehole of the Universe, more like,’ Joe Sandilands corrected.