Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

She was out of breath when she arrived. “You won’t believe what I just saw,” she gasped out. “There’s a new guy at the newsstand back there. I took one look at him and I—”

In concert, Ruth and Vonda swiveled on their heels.

“You got a customer, Ruth,” Vonda said. “Better get to him, don’t you think?”

“I do think.” Ruth peeled left. “Will you go out to the storeroom and bring up some straws for the fountain?”

“Girl, I’d be glad to.” Peeling right, Vonda shot away.

“Ruth? Vonda? Hey!” Cookie said.

A Statesman’s Touch by Robert Barnard

With seven Edgar nominations to his credit, Robert Barnard must be placed with the leading crime writers of our day. Publishers Weekly called his recent novel Fatal Attachment “another gem.”

* * *

“Mais c’est incroyable!”

The hotel manager looked down towards his beautifully shod feet with an expression more of distaste than of disbelief. The head porter, who had summoned him, thought to himself that if you find a trickle of blood seeping under the door of one of the bedrooms into the corridor, it is not altogether surprising to discover a corpse behind the door, or to find that the corpse was murdered. But, as an intelligent man, he held his peace.

“It’s that man Radovan Radič,” said the manager, his mouth twisting as he looked down at the body with the gaping wound between its shoulders.

“A Bulgarian, wasn’t he?” the porter asked.

“Serbian, I believe. But Serbian, Bulgarian, Hungarian — they’re all the same. Brutes!” He looked around the spare, ill-furnished room, one of their cheapest. “I only know of this creature because the police were around asking about him last week.”

“Illegal resident?”

“Worse, much worse. Apparently he was a thoroughly unsavoury character. All sorts of activities, including blackmail. He had been touting letters from Marie of Romania.”

“Ah — to Prince Stirbey?”

“No, not that old story. Something more recent. They thought it possible he was an agent of the King of Serbia, but on balance they thought he was acting for his own ends. I was all for throwing him out onto the street at once, but the Sûreté begged me not to. Here they could keep an eye on him, they said. I wish now that I had insisted, but when the Sûreté begs...”

“Of course. In our position one obeys. Who have we in the hotel tonight?”

“Ah, that is the question.”

It was indeed. The Hotel George IV, formerly the Imperial, situated on the Avenue Decazes, had carved for itself a minor but vital role in the diplomatic comings and goings of that year 1919, the year of the Peace Conference. Paris was awash with kings, statesmen, and mere politicians, not to mention the attendant diplomats, secretaries, and the inevitable newspapermen. Behind the ceremonial and the open negotiations there mushroomed encounters of a more personal nature. The George IV catered, discreetly, for any assignation, whether political, romantic, or frankly sexual, that the participants wished to keep from the gaze of the public or of rival statesmen. The hotel’s system of backstairs access and private corridors was unrivalled in the French capital, and the manager was formidably discreet. He already regretted the renaming of the hotel, which had been done in the hope of profiting by a confusion with the new and magnificent George V. The hotel had found a quite different and much more lucrative identity, and would have benefited from a more anonymous name. That very morning an English visitor had commented cheerily that the only connection George IV had had with France had been his delusion that he led the allied troops at the Battle of Waterloo. The manager’s demeanour had been glacial. It was the height of bad taste to mention the Battle of Waterloo in Paris.

He now enumerated the hotel’s more sensitive guests, strictly in order of rank.

“The King of Spain is in Suite Fifteen with a woman who is not his mistress.”

“Madame Grigot would raise hell if she knew.”

“Quite... Alfonso XIII — such an unlucky number. I’m surprised his mother chose the name.”

The head porter caught his drift.

“Spain remained neutral during the course of the war,” he remarked.

“Very profitably neutral. His Majesty was a noncombatant, at least on the field of battle... I think, you know, that we need take no special steps where His Majesty is concerned.”

The head porter nodded sage agreement.

“Then there is the President of the United States. He is in Suite Seven with the Prime Minister of Italy.”

“There is no question of—?”

“No, no. Out of the question. The president has no such inclinations. Mrs. Wilson would never allow it. They are engaged in extremely sensitive discussions concerning Italy’s new borders in the Tyrol. They will have to be informed.”

“Of course.”

“And then there is the Prime Minister of Great Britain...”

“Ah yes. Mr. Lloyd-George.”