The Night Manager

From far away, Jonathan hears a voice not unlike his own, enumerating the advantages of the new lift: a security measure, Mr. Roper, but also an attractive extra feature, installed last autumn for the sole convenience of our Tower Suite guests...

And as Jonathan talks, he dangles between his fingers the golden master key created to Herr Meister's personal design. decked with a golden tassel and capped with this rather amusing golden crown.

"I mean, doesn't it remind you of the pharaohs? It's quite outrageous, really, but I can assure you that our less sophisticated guests adore it," he confides, with a camp little smile that he has never vouchsafed to anyone before.

"Well, I adore it," says the Major, off-screen. "And I'm bloody sophisticated."

Roper balances the key in his palm as if to cost its melt weight. He studies both sides, then the crown, then the tassel.

"Taiwan," he pronounces and, to Jonathan's alarm, slings it at the blond blazer with cauliflower ears, who catches it low down and fast on his left side, shouting "Mine!" as he dives.

Beretta .09 automatic with safety catch at the "on," Jonathan records. Ebony finish, holster-carried under the right armpit. A left-handed OBG, with a spare magazine in his belt bag.

"Oh, well played, Frisky, heart. Good catch," Corkoran drawls, and there is relieved laughter from the affluent outfield, led by the woman, who squeezes Roper's arm and says honestly, darling, though in Jonathan's clouded ear it at first sounds like policy, darling.

Now everything is in slow motion, everything is happening under water. The lift takes five at a time; the rest must wait. Roper strides in, drawing the woman after him. Roedean and model school, Jonathan is thinking. Plus a special course that Sophie had also taken in how to do that with your hips when you walk. Then Frisky, then Major Corkoran without his cigarette, finally Jonathan. Her hair is soft as well as chestnut. She is also nude. That is to say, she has slipped off her quilted coat and slung it over her arm like an army greatcoat. She wears a man's white shirt with Sophie's puffy sleeves rolled to the elbows. Jonathan starts the lift. Corkoran stares disapprovingly upward like a man peeing. The girl's hip rides carelessly against Jonathan's flank in cheerful friendship. Get off, he wants to tell her irritably. If you're flirting, don't. If you're not flirting, keep your hip to yourself. She smells not of vanilla but of white carnations on Commemoration Day at cadet school. Roper stands behind her, wide hands resting possessively on her shoulders. Frisky gazes blankly downward at the faded bite mark on her neck, at her unsupported breasts inside the expensive shirt. Like Frisky, no doubt, Jonathan has a disgraceful urge to scoop one out.

"Now why don't I go ahead and show you all the new goodies Herr Meister's put in for you since your last visit?" he suggests.

Perhaps it's time you gave up manners as a way of life, Sophie had said to him as she walked beside him in the dawn.

He went ahead, indicating the suite's priceless advantages; the amazing low-flush bar... the thousand-year-old fruit... the very latest in superhygienic Jetstream loos, does everything for you except clean your teeth.... All his whimsical little jokes, whisked out and polished for the delectation of Mr. Richard Onslow Roper and this long-waisted, funny-faced, un-pardonably attractive woman. How dare she be so beautiful at a time like this?

* * *

Meister's legendary Tower hovers like an inflated dovecote over the magic peaks and valleys of the hotel's Edwardian roof. The three-bedroom palace inside it is built on two floors, a pastel experience in what Jonathan confidingly calls Swiss Franc Quatorze. The luggage has arrived, the chasseurs have received their largesse, Jeds has retired to the master bedroom, from which issue the far sounds of female singing and running water. The singing is indistinct but provocative, if not downright bawdy. Frisky the blazer has stationed himself at a telephone in the landing and is murmuring orders to someone he disdains. Major Corkoran, armed with a fresh cigarette but minus his camel hair, is in the dining room, talking slow French on another line for the benefit of somebody whose French is worse than his. His cheeks are fluid as a baby's, the dabs of colour very high. And his French is French French, no question. He has slipped into it as naturally as if it were his mother tongue, which perhaps it is, for nothing about Corkoran suggests an uncomplicated provenance.

Elsewhere in the suite, other lives and conversations are unfolding.