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Back One Enchanted Evening
Chapters (50)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. The Grand Masquerade Ball
  5. Five Months Earlier . . .
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. September 1936
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. October 1936
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. November 1936
  30. Chapter Twenty-two
  31. December 1936
  32. Chapter Twenty-three
  33. Chapter Twenty-four
  34. Chapter Twenty-five
  35. Chapter Twenty-six
  36. Chapter Twenty-seven
  37. Chapter Twenty-eight
  38. Chapter Twenty-nine
  39. Chapter Thirty
  40. Chapter Thirty-one
  41. Chapter Thirty-two
  42. Chapter Thirty-three
  43. Chapter Thirty-four
  44. Chapter Thirty-five
  45. Epilogue
  46. A New Year
  47. Extract from Anton Du Beke’s next novel’
  48. Acknowledgements
  49. About the Author
  50. Letter from Author

He looked up. He had almost been able to feel Maynard Charles’s whiskers tickling his ear. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ he said to the table – and then, braving their inscrutable glances, he marched across the Queen Mary and, throwing his arms open as if to embrace them, ushered his family back out of the room.

In the hallway outside, Raymond stopped dead.

‘What are you . . . ?’

‘You look like you seen a ghost!’ crowed Mrs Cohen. ‘A ghost at that feast of yours. Well, did you think we was going to forget you on Christmas Day, Ray? After what you done for Artie? After what you done for us? Well, we were all sitting there – Artie, your aunts and me – and we thought . . . Christmas is for families, Ray. We ought to be together. Your pa always sorted you brothers out when you was fighting. What would he have thought of the way we been carrying on?’ She paused. ‘Well, Ray? Aren’t you gonna invite us in?’

Raymond looked over his shoulder. He fancied he could still feel the glaring eyes of Maynard Charles boring holes in his back. Through the portholes in the door he could see that somebody was making a speech.

He ought to have been there too. Raymond should have been waltzing between the tables, putting on a performance every bit as flamboyant and dramatic as his demonstrations down in the ballroom.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t take you in.’

Artie’s face turned to thunder. ‘I thought we’d got an understanding, Ray? I thought we was good . . .’

‘No,’ Raymond grinned, ‘I won’t take you in there, but I won’t go back either.’ He opened his arms, directing his family back up the corridor, to the reception hall. ‘Come – there’s somewhere else, but you’ll have to hurry. Mr Simenon’s sloping around here somewhere, Artie. You remember the last time you met Mr Simenon?’

‘I remember,’ said Artie, ‘that he couldn’t keep a Cohen boy down.’

‘Yes,’ said Raymond with a smile, ‘but let’s not tempt the fates, shall we?’

*

The doors of the housekeeping lounge opened wide and into the chaos of music and drinking stepped Raymond, his brother at his side.