‘Well, let me know when you’d like to do that. And in the meantime, I hope you’ll excuse me but at this time of night I’m usually as they say in the theatre “front of house”.’

Subconsciously Joe had become aware of noises drifting through from the entrance, roars of hearty and European laughter, the angry, chiding voice of an Indian woman, a drift of drunken song and the scamper of light feet up and down the stairs and round the balcony.

Edgar Troop rose to his feet. ‘You must excuse me,’ he said. ‘Now come out this way. You really don’t want to go back through the entrance. Never know who you might meet! Senior officers sometimes feel the urge to buy a bunch of flowers at this time of night and we pride ourselves on the discretion of our service. Go with Claudio – he’ll let you out the back. And I’ll bid you both farewell. Let me know when you want to pop off a few guns.’

He clapped his hands and the elegant European youth appeared at once. Troop gave a mocking salute and made towards the door. He was halted by Claudio who murmured, ‘Excuse me, sir, I have a message for these gentlemen.’

‘A message? For these gentlemen?’ said Troop in surprise. ‘Who from? Does anyone know you were coming here?’

Claudio smiled a discreet smile. ‘The message is from madame. From Madame Flora, that is.’

Troop looked resentfully up. ‘Now what on earth…? But what was the message?’

‘Only to ask if the gentlemen would favour her with a visit before they left.’

Charlie Carter looked a question.

‘Certainly,’ said Joe. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world! Probably all in the night’s work for you but I’m mesmerized by the veiled hints of oriental promise.’

‘Well,’ said Troop, ‘if you’re going, you’d better go. We’ve got out of the habit of keeping Flora waiting. Claudio will show you the way.’

He hurried off.

Another woman whose will will be done, thought Joe with vivid memories of the skill with which Alice had kept him at arm’s length.

Claudio indicated that they should follow him. As Joe scrambled to his feet he gave a small exclamation of surprise. He leaned forward and picked something up from the floor. Handing the object to Claudio he said casually, ‘Captain Troop dropped this, would you hand it back to him?’

Claudio held out his hand, looked disdainfully at the packet of Black Cat cigarettes and gave it back to Joe. ‘I’m sorry, sir, you are mistaken. Captain Troop smokes only cigars. The best cigars. Perhaps your friend…?’

‘Oh, yes, quite. Mine, I’m afraid,’ said Carter and pocketed the cigarettes.

They were led down a corridor and along a raised internal verandah from where they glimpsed below them a vividly green indoor garden. The tinkling of a fountain drew Joe irresistibly over to the fretted balustrade. Small flowering trees were growing in carefully arranged profusion, lamps had been lit beneath each and the effect in the warm dusk was magical. The heat of the day was still rising from the earth of this south-facing slope and though a mountain chill would soon take its place, for this moment Joe thought he was peering down into paradise. An impression reinforced by the presence of girls sitting in twos and threes on cushions, laughing and chattering. Joe had a glancing impression of bright silks, dark eyes raised invitingly to his, white teeth and fluttering hands. The scent of strange flowers mixed with a trace of something more elusive – hashish? – rose teasingly to his nostrils as he leaned over.

He was drawn on by a look from Claudio, who was holding open a door at the far end. Joe and Carter moved through and along another corridor.

‘If we had to find our way out of here in a hurry,’ Joe muttered to Carter, ‘could you do it? Not sure I could.’

Carter grinned and nodded confidently. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got the place mapped.’

Claudio stopped at a carved wood door, listened, opened it and waved them in. He closed the door behind them and they were left alone with Madame Flora.

Chapter Nine

«^»

What had Joe expected? A flaunting madam of the kind he had encountered in London with gimlet eyes, bad teeth, rouged face and puffy bosom exuding wafts of Phul Nana? A corseted, iron-grey Frenchwoman with steel-trap mouth and cash box?

Carter’s eyes crinkled with amusement as he watched Joe’s reaction to his first sight of Madame Flora.

Joe was for a moment overwhelmed. He was taken back in time to a not-forgotten London summer which, at the age of thirteen, he had spent with two elderly uncles in Eaton Square. The uncles had set out to show him the town and make his stay a happy one. The gawky, inexperienced Borderer, neither truly Scots nor truly English in their estimation, but fully uncivilized, had been taken from gallery to gallery, to concert hall, to music hall and to the opera. And Joe had fallen in love. In love with Carmen.

He had been enchanted by the first opera he had ever seen but, even more, his awakening sexual and romantic yearnings had found a focus in the mezzo-soprano who had sung the part of Carmen. He could still call back, seventeen years on, the luxuriant dark hair, the glowing eyes that seemed to single him out in the audience and flirt with him, the voice, seductive, treacherous and reeking of death.

When his uncles had, at the end of the performance, declared their intention of taking him round backstage to meet her, Joe thought he’d never be able to breathe properly again. He remembered the moment still, the smell of the oil lamps, the shouts and laughter and bustle in the hidden and glamorous world behind the stage, and he remembered Carmen taking his hot hand in her two cool ones and leaning forward to kiss him on both cheeks.

Her soft hair had brushed his forehead and he hadn’t been able to say a word.

As Madame Flora took Joe’s hand in her slim, scented one he was transported back to that moment with a completeness that left him silent and astonished.

Carter covered for Joe’s unaccustomed gauche reaction by breaking into a very English speech, his voice just retaining the steely edge which might be considered appropriate to keep the distance between a police superintendent and the proprietor of a brothel, however elegant. ‘Always good to see you, Flora. Glad to see evidence of prosperity on every hand. I must present a friend and valued colleague…’

While he burbled on Joe dragged himself away from the past and focused on the woman smiling up at him. The same glossy dark hair but cut fashionably short and waving naturally about her head, large dark eyes in an olive skin and a nose of Grecian straightness – she could be southern French, Provençal, Joe guessed. A girl from Arles.

‘Madame,’ he said, ‘je suis enchanté de faire votre connaissance. J’ai tellement entendu parler de vous depuis mon arrivée à Simla.’

‘Oh, Commander,’ she said, ‘do let us speak in English! Captain Carter would feel we were excluding him perhaps from our conversation.’

The English was perfect with an attractive accent overlaying it. Whereas most French and certainly Parisians made a guttural, throaty sound when they pronounced the letter ‘r’, Flora rolled her ‘r’ sounds, making Joe even more certain that she was Provençal. And this distinctive sound was most likely the reason Carter had been uneasy with her accent – ‘… a little bit too ooh-là-là,’ he had said.

Joe persisted. He wanted to hear her speak French. ‘Madame est Arlésienne, peut-être? Vous avez un léger accent du Midi, il me semble…’

‘Ah, oui!. Vous l’avez bien deviné. Je suis, en effet, née en Provence. Et vous allez maintenant sans doute faire des observations sur l’authenticité de la ligne greque de mon nez?’

She stuck her nose in the air and offered him her profile and a smile undoubtedly inviting.