She shrugged. “A last throw of the dice from Britain and France to prove that these old colonial powers still matter? After all, it’s them who administer the canal. Of course. Why not?” She smiled. “But you didn’t come up here to talk international politics, did you?”

“We can if you like. Just as long as I don’t have to vote for anyone. That never changed anything. Even in the good old days.”

“How old?”

“Very old. Old enough to be good. Before the Nazis, anyway. Speaking of the very old, I spent the evening with Somerset Maugham. At the Villa Mauresque.”

“How is he?”

“Getting strangely older by the minute, if that were humanly possible.”

“Makes two of us.”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“You’d be surprised. The longer I stay parted from that fifty-thousand-dollar publishing advance, the older I feel.”

In the car, I’d resolved to tell her everything; if I was going to risk my neck for the Englishman there had to be something in it for me, and that something had started to look like it might just be Anne French.

“Then it’s good that I’m here. I’ve got some news that should make you and your publisher very happy. I’ve persuaded Somerset Maugham to meet with you.”

This was making more of my effort on her behalf than was perhaps warranted, of course, but it sounded like the sort of thing she probably wanted to hear, which, for obvious reasons, was the kind of thing I was keen to tell her.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Really? That’s fantastic.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Frankly, I think he is a kind of vampire.”

“All authors are a bit like that.”

“I wouldn’t know. But I feel like I lost a lot of blood up there tonight. I feel drained.”

“Then you’d better come in the house and let me mix you a transfusion.”

“I think I’ve had enough to drink already.”

“Something else then. Coffee, perhaps.”

“Are you sure? It is late. Maybe I should go.”

“Look, Walter, I’ve never been one for knowing what I should and shouldn’t do. I always wanted to be good but now I realize I should have been a little less specific. Especially now you’re here. Now I think I just want to be wanted.” She shrugged off the nightdress like an extra skin and stood there naked in the moonlight. “You do want me, don’t you, Walter?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go in before I change my mind, or I get bitten by something while I’m standing here naked. A mosquito, perhaps.”

“Not if I get there first.”

SEVENTEEN