tacitly transferring ultimate decision-making to him.
“How about home, right now,” he suggested. “Unless you fancy another night out here.” Peter found that his possessions had been discreetly moved from the guest bungalow to the owner’s significant private quarters on the north tip of the island.
His toilet articles had been laid out in the mirrored master bathroom, which flanked that of the mistress. His clothing, all freshly cleaned and pressed, was in the master’s dressing-room where there was one hundred and fifty-five feet of louvred hanging space Peter paced it out and calculated it would take three hundred suits of clothing.
There were specially designed swinging shelves for another three hundred shirts and racks for a hundred pairs of shoes although all were empty.
His light cotton suit looked as lonely as a single camel in the midst of the Sahara desert. His shoes had been burnished to a gloss that even his batman had never been able to achieve. Despite himself he searched the dressing-room swiftly for the signs of previous occupancy and was ridiculously relieved to find none.
“I could learn to rough it like this,” he told his reflection in the mirror as he combed the damp, darkly curling locks off his forehead.
The sitting-room off the suite was on three levels, and had been decorated with cane furniture and luxuriant tropical plants growing in ancient Greek wine amphoras or in rookeries that were incorporated into the flowing design of the room. The creepers and huge glossy leaves of the plants toned in artistically with jungle-patterned curtaining and the dense growth of exotic plants beyond the tall picture windows yet the room was cool and inviting, although the sound of air-conditioning was covered by the twinkle of a waterfall down the cunningly contrived rock face that comprised one curved wall of the room. Tropical fish floated gracefully in the clear pools into which the waterfall spilled,
and the perfume of growing flowers pervaded the room, and their blooms glowed in the subdued lighting.
One of the little golden Polynesian girls brought a tray of four tall frosted glasses for Peter to choose from. They were all filled with fruit and he could smell the sweet warm odour of rum mingled with the fruit. He guessed they would be almost lethal and asked for a whisky, then relented with the girl’s eyes flooded with disappointment.
“I make them myself,” she wailed.
“In that case “He sipped while she waited anxiously.
Tarfait!” He exclaimed, and she giggled with gratification, and went off wriggling her bottom under the brief pa reo like a happy puppy.
Magda came then in a chiffon dress so gossamer-light that it floated about her like a fine green sea mist, through which her limbs gleamed as the light caught them.
He felt the catch in his breathing as she came towards him, and he wondered if he would ever accustom himself to the impact of her beauty.
She took the glass from his hand and tasted it.
“Good,” she said, and handed it back. But when the girl brought the tray she refused with a smile.
They moved about the room, Magda on his arm as she pointed out the rarer plants and fishes.
“I built this wing after Aaron’s death,” she told him, and he realized that she wanted him to know that it contained no memories of another man. It amused him that she should find that important and then he remembered his own furtive search of the dressing-room for signs of a lover before him, and the amusement turned inward.
One wall of the private dining-room was a single sheet of armoured glass, beyond which the living jewels of coral fish drifted in subtly-lit sea caverns and the fronds of magnificent sea plants waved in gentle unseen currents.
Magda ordered the seating changed so they could be side by side in the low lovers” seat facing the aquarium.
do not like you to be far away any more,” she explained, and she picked special tit bits from the serving dishes for his plate.
“This is a speciality of Les Neuf Poissons. You will eat it nowhere else in the world.” She selected small deep-sea crustaceans from a steaming creole sauce of spices and coconut cream and at the end of the meal she peeled chilled grapes from Australia with those delicate fingers, using the long shell-pink nails with the precision of a skilled surgeon to remove the pips and then placing them between his lips with thumb and forefinger.
“You spoil me,“he smiled.
“I never had a doll when I was a little girl,” she explained,
smiling.
A circular stone staircase led to the beach fifty feet below the dining-room and they left their shoes on the bottom step and walked bare-footed on the smooth, damp sand, compacted as hard as cement by the receding tide. The moon was a few days past full, and its reflection drew a pathway of yellow light to the horizon.
“Caliph must be made to believe that he has succeeded,” Peter said abruptly, and she shivered against him.
:“I wish we could forget Caliph for one night.” We cannot afford to forget him for a moment.”
“No, you are right. How do we make him believe that?”
“You have to die, He felt her stiffen. or at least appear to do so. It has to look as though I
killed you.”
“Tell me, “she invited quietly.
“You told me that you have special arrangements for when you want to disappear.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How would you disappear from here if you had to do so?” She thought for only a moment. “Pierre would fly me to
Bora-Bora. I have friends there. Good friends. I would take the island airline to Tahiti-Faaa on another passport and then a scheduled airline in the same name to California or New Zealand.”
“You have other papers?” he demanded.
“yes, of course.” She sounded so surprised by the question, that he expected her to ask.” doesn’t everybody?”
“Fine, he said. “And we’ll arrange a suspicious accident here. A scuba diving accident,
shark attack in deep water, no corpse..”
“What is the point of all this, Peter?”
“If you are dead Caliph is not going to make another attempt to have you killed. “GoodV she agreed.
“So you stay officially dead until we flush Caliph out,” Peter told her, and it sounded like an order but she did not demur as he went on. “And if I carry out Caliph’s evident wishes by killing you, it’s going to make me a very valuable asset I will have proved myself, and so he will cherish me.
It will give me another chance to get close to him. At least it will give me a chance to check out a few wild hunches.”
“Don’t let’s make my death too convincing, my love. I am a great favourite of the police on Tahiti,” she murmured.
“I’d hate to have you end up under the guillotine at Tuarruru.”
Peter woke before her and raised himself on one elbow over her to study her face, delighting to find new planes and angles to her high broad cheekbones, gloating in the velvety texture of her skin, so fine that the pores were indefinable from farther than a few inches. Then he transferred his attention to the curve of her eyelashes that interlocked into a thick dark palisade seeming to seal her eyelids perpetually in sleep yet they sprang open suddenly, the huge black pools of her pupils shrinking rapidly as she focused, and for the first time he realized that the irises were not pure green but were flecked and shot through with gold and violet.
The surprise of finding him over her changed slowly to pleasure,
and she stretched her arms out over her head and arched her back, the way a lazy panther does when it rouses itself. The satin sheet slid down to her waist and she prolonged the stretch a little longer than was necessary, a deliberate display of her body.
“Every other morning of my life that I woke without you there was wasted,” she murmured huskily, and
