The Night Manager

The tall man with the ponytail is called Sandy, we learn, and Sandy is talking English on another telephone to somebody in Prague called Gregory, while Mrs. Sandy sits in a chair with her overcoat on, glowering at the wall. But Jonathan has banished these secondary players from his immediate consciousness. They exist, they are elegant, they revolve in their far periphery around the central light of Mr. Richard Onslow Roper of Nassau, the Bahamas. But they are chorus.

Jonathan's guided tour of the splendours of the palace is complete.

It is time he took his leave. A graceful wave of the hand, an endearing exhortation ― "Please to be sure to enjoy every bit of it" ― and in the normal way he would have descended smoothly to ground level, leaving his wards to enjoy their pleasures by themselves as best they could at fifteen thousand francs a night including tax, service and continental breakfast.

But tonight is not the normal way, tonight is Roper's night, it is Sophie's night, and Sophie in some bizarre way is played for us tonight by Roper's woman, whose name to everyone but Roper turns out to be not Jeds but Jed ― Mr. Onslow Roper likes to multiply his assets. The snow is still falling, and the worst man in the world is drawn toward it like a man who is contemplating his childhood in the dancing flakes. He stands cavalry-backed at the centre of the room, facing the French windows and the snow-clad balcony. He holds a green Sotheby's catalogue open before him like a hymnal from which he is about to sing, and his other arm is raised to bring in some silent instrument from the edge of the orchestra. He sports a learned judge's half-lens reading spectacles.

"Soldier Boris and his chum say okay Monday lunchtime," Corkoran calls from the dining room. "Okay Monday lunchtime?"

"Fix," says Roper, turning a page of the catalogue and watching the snow over his spectacles at the same time. "Look at that. Glimpse of the infinite."

"I adore it every time it happens," says Jonathan earnestly.

"Your friend Appetites from Miami says why not make it the Kronenhalle ― food's better." Corkoran again.

"Too public. Lunch here or bring his sandwiches. Sandy, what does a decent Stubbs horse make these days?"

The pretty male head with the ponytail pokes round the door. "Size?"

"Thirty by fifty inches."

The pretty face barely puckers. "There was a good'un went at Sotheby's last June. Protector in a Landscape. Signed and dated 1779. A lulu."

"Quanta costa?"

"You sitting comfortably?"

"Come off it, Sands!"

"A million two. Plus commish."

"Pounds or bucks?"

"Bucks."

From the opposite doorway, Major Corkoran is complaining. "The Brussels boys want half in cash, Chief. Bloody liberty, if you ask me."

"Tell 'em you won't sign," Roper retorts, with an extra gruffness that he apparently uses for keeping Corkoran at arm's length. "That a hotel up there, Pine?"

Roper's gaze is fixed on the black windowpanes where the childhood snowflakes pursue their dance.

"A beacon, actually, Mr. Roper. Some sort of navigational aid, I gather."

Herr Meister's treasured ormolu clock is chiming the hour, but Jonathan for all his customary nimbleness is unable to move his feet in the direction of escape. His patent evening shoes remain embedded in the deep pile of the drawing room carpet as solidly as if they were set in cement. His mild gaze, so at odds with the pugilistic brow, remains fixed on Roper's back. But Jonathan sees him in only a part of his mind. Otherwise he is not in the Tower Suite at all but in Sophie's penthouse apartment at the top of the Queen Nefertiti Hotel in Cairo.

* * *

Sophie too has her back to him, and it is as beautiful as he always knew it was, white against the whiteness of her evening gown. She is gazing, not at the snow, but at the huge wet stars of the Cairene night, at the quarter-moon that hangs from its points above the soundless city. The doors to her roof garden are open; she grows nothing but white flowers ― oleander, bougainvillaea, agapanthus. The scent of Arabian jasmine drifts past her into the room. A bottle of vodka stands beside her on a table, and it is definitely half empty, not half full.

"You rang," Jonathan reminded her with a smile in his voice, playing the humble servant. Perhaps this is our night, he was thinking.

"Yes, I rang. And you answered. You are kind. I am sure you are always kind."

He knew at once that it was not their night.

"I need to ask you a question," she said. "Will you answer it truthfully?"

"If I can. Of course."

"You mean there could be circumstances in which you would not?"

"I mean I might not know the answer."

"Oh, you will know the answer. Where are the papers that I entrusted to your care?"

"In the safe. In their envelope. With my name on it."

"Has anybody seen them except myself?"

"The safe is used by several members of the staff, mostly for storing cash until it goes to the bank. So far as I know, the envelope is still sealed."