'Yes.'
'That is right. It is eight kilometres from here, you understand.'
'Eight kilometres?' Hilary was dismayed. 'It's not in the town, then.'
'It is by the old town,' the Frenchman explained. 'Me, I stay here at the hotel in the commercial new city. But for the holiday, the rest, the enjoyment, naturally you go to the Palais Jamail. It was a former residence, you understand, of the Moroccan nobility. It has beautiful gardens, and you go straight from it into the old city of Fez which is untouched. It does not seem as though the hotel had sent to meet this train. If you permit, I will arrange for a taxi for you.'
'You're very kind, but…'
The Frenchman spoke in rapid Arabic to the porters and shortly afterwards Hilary took her place in a taxi, her baggage was pushed in, and the Frenchman told her exactly what to give the rapacious porters. He also dismissed them with a few sharp words of Arabic when they protested that the remuneration was inadequate. He whipped a card from his pocket and handed it to her.
'My card, Madame, and if I can be of assistance to you at any time, tell me. I shall be at the Grand Hotel here for the next four days.'
He raised his hat and went away. Hilary looked down at the card which she could just see before they moved out of the lighted station.
MONSIEUR HENRI LAURIER
The taxi drove briskly out of the town, through the country, up a hill. Hilary tried to see, looking out of the windows, where she was going, but darkness had set in now. Except when they passed a lighted building nothing much could be seen. Was this, perhaps, where her journey diverged from the normal and entered the unknown? Was Monsieur Laurier an emissary from the organisation that had persuaded Thomas Betterton to leave his work, his home and his wife? She sat in the corner of the taxi, nervously apprehensive, wondering where it was taking her.
It took her, however, in the most exemplary manner to the Palais Jamail. She dismounted there, passed through an arched gateway and found herself, with a thrill of pleasure, in an oriental interior. There were long divans, coffee tables, and native rugs. From the reception desk she was taken through several rooms which led out of each other, out onto a terrace, passing by orange trees and scented flowers, and then up a winding staircase and into a pleasant bedroom, still oriental in style but equipped with all the conforts modernes so necessary to twentieth-century travellers.
Dinner, the porter informed her, took place from seven-thirty. She unpacked a little, washed, combed her hair and went downstairs through the long oriental smoking room, out on the terrace and across and up some steps to a lighted dining room running at right angles to it.
The dinner was excellent, and as Hilary ate, various people came and went from the restaurant. She was too tired to size them up and classify them this particular evening, but one or two outstanding personalities took her eye. An elderly man, very yellow of face, with a little goatee beard. She noticed him because of the extreme deference paid to him by the staff. Plates were whisked away and placed for him at the mere raising of his head. The slightest turn of an eyebrow brought a waiter rushing to his table. She wondered who he was. The majority of diners were clearly touring on pleasure trips. There was a German at a big table in the centre, there was a middle- aged man with a fair, very beautiful girl whom she thought might be Swedes, or possibly Danes. There was an English family with two children, and various groups of travelling Americans. There were three French families.
After dinner she had coffee on the terrace. It was slightly cold but not unduly so and she enjoyed the smell of scented blossoms. She went to bed early.
Sitting on the terrace the following morning in the sunshine under the red striped umbrella that protected her from the sun, Hilary felt how fantastic the whole thing was. Here she sat, pretending to be a dead woman, expecting something melodramatic and out of the common to occur. After all, wasn't it only too likely that poor Olive Betterton had come abroad merely to distract her mind and heart from sad thoughts and feelings. Probably the poor woman had been just as much in the dark as everybody else.
Certainly the words she had said before she died admitted of a perfectly ordinary explanation. She had wanted Thomas Betterton warned against somebody called Boris. Her mind had wandered – she had quoted a strange little jingle – she had gone on to say that she couldn't believe it at first. Couldn't believe what? Possibly only that Thomas Betterton had been spirited away the way he had been.
There had been no sinister undertones, no helpful clues. Hilary stared down at the terrace garden below her. It was beautiful here. Beautiful and peaceful. Children chattered and ran up and down the terrace, French mammas called to them or scolded them. The blonde Swedish girl came and sat down by a table and yawned. She took out a pale pink lipstick and touched up her already exquisitely painted lips. She appraised her face seriously, frowning a little.
Presently her companion – husband, Hilary wondered, or it might possibly be her father – joined her. She greeted him without a smile. She leaned forward and talked to him, apparently expostulating about something. He protested and apologised.
The old man with the yellow face and the little goatee came up the terrace from the gardens below. He went and sat at a table against the extreme wall, and immediately a waiter darted forth. He gave an order and the waiter bowed before him and went away, in all haste to execute it. The fair girl caught her companion excitedly by the arm and looked towards the elderly man.
Hilary ordered a Martini, and when it came she asked the waiter in a low voice,
'Who is the old man there against the wall?'
'Ah!' The waiter leaned forward dramatically, 'That is Monsieur Aristides. He is enormously – but yes, enormously – rich.'
He sighed in ecstasy at the contemplation of so much wealth and Hilary looked over at the shrivelled up, bent figure at the far table. Such a wrinkled, dried up, mummified old morsel of humanity. And yet, because of his enormous wealth, waiters darted and sprang and spoke with awe in their voices. Old Monsieur Aristides shifted his position. Just for a moment his eyes met hers. He looked at her for a moment, then looked away.
'Not so insignificant after all,' Hilary thought to herself. Those eyes, even at that distance, had been wonderfully intelligent and alive.
The blonde girl and her escort got up from their table and went into the dining room. The waiter who now seemed to consider himself as Hilary's guide and mentor, stopped at her table as he collected glasses and gave her further information.
'Ce Monsieur lа, he is a big business magnate from Sweden. Very rich, very important. And the lady with him she is a film star – another Garbo, they say. Very chic – very beautiful – but does she make him the scenes, the histories! Nothing pleases her. She is, as you say, 'fed up' to be here, in Fez, where there are no jewellers' shops – and no other expensive women to admire and envy her toilettes. She demands that he should take her somewhere more amusing tomorrow. Ah, it is not always the rich who can enjoy the tranquillity and peace of mind.'
Having uttered this last in a somewhat sententious fashion, he saw a beckoning forefinger and sprang across the terrace as though galvanised.
'Monsieur?'
Most people had gone in to lunch, but Hilary had had breakfast late and was in no hurry for her midday meal. She ordered herself another drink. A good-looking young French man came out of the bar and across the terrace, cast a swift, discreet glance at Hilary which, thinly disguised, meant: 'Is there anything doing here, I wonder?' and then went down the steps to the terrace below. As he did so he half sang, half hummed a snatch of French opera,
'Le long des lauriers roses,
Revant de douces choses.'
The words formed a little pattern on Hilary's brain. Le long des lauriers roses. Laurier. Laurier? That was the name of the Frenchman in the train. Was there a connection here or was it coincidence? She opened her bag and hunted in it for the card he had given her. Mons. Henri Laurier, 3 Rue des Croissants, Casablanca. She turned the card over and there seemed to be faint pencil marks on the back of it. It was as though something had been written on it and then rubbed out. She tried to decipher what the marks were. 'Qщ sont,' the message began, then something which she could not decipher, and finally she made out the words 'D'antan.' For a moment she had thought that it might be a message, but now she shook her head and put the card back in her bag. It must have
