“Yes, sir.” She was happy again. He gazed absently at her round bottom as she struggled with the window catch. How marvelous it was to be able to make a woman happy in an instant with the simplest of gestures. A bunch of roses, a mumbled apology. If only it were always so simple.

The phone rang.

“Don’t hang up, Mr. Shelby King,” came the hated voice at the end of the line. “Not until you’ve heard what I have to tell you.”

( thirty-one )

ROBERT MADE HIM WAIT until Marie-Claire left the room. “Felperstone, I thought I’d made myself abundantly clear.”

“Indeed, sir. But I consider it my duty to inform you of a situation requiring your urgent attention. Your wife is at a hotel, right now, with her lover.”

“Ah, come on. This is crazy! It’s flagrant invention.”

“This is no invention. I only wish it was.”

Robert took out his handkerchief and mopped the sweat from his forehead and neck.

“Sir, my associate, Monsieur Cannes, called me just moments ago. He saw them go in. And they haven’t come out.”

“Mr. Felperstone, this is—at the very least—a mistake.”

“There can be no mistake, sir. I’d be prepared to stake my fee on it.”

“My wife is at home!”

A scratching sound on the line, like a mouse behind a wainscot. He must have been at the end of his snuff, scraping out the last vestiges of powder from his little box. “Are you quite sure, sir? You had better be absolutely certain, don’t you think?”

“Genevieve is resting in bed.” Robert’s mouth was so dry he could hardly speak. “My wife is pregnant.”

“Congratulations, sir. Why don’t you give her a little tinkle on the telephone? Tell her how much you love her, or whatever else you happily married types like saying to each other. That way you can show me just how wrong I am.”

They were the only two customers in the grand, heavily gilded and rose-damask-covered hotel bar, at a round, alabaster-topped corner table with a solid gold ashtray, beside a statue of a horse with a fish’s tail atop a gray stone plinth.

“I nearly didn’t come today,” said Genevieve.

“Why?” Zachari added a spoonful of sugar to his coffee and stirred it with a delicate silver teaspoon. “I thought we understood each other.”

“So did I.”

Zachari added two more sugars.

“I came to the shop last night. Violet de Frémont’s car was outside.”

“I didn’t ask her to come.” He was still stirring the coffee. “She just turned up.”

Genevieve took a breath to steady herself. “Did you sleep with her last night?”

“No.” Finally he set down the spoon. “She came to the shop. We talked. That’s all. She went away again.”