CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Service Entrance

A LONG CORRIDOR crisscrossed by pipes, with a tiled floor and walls partly hung with an old plastic-coated wallpaper vaguely representing clumps of palm trees. Milky glass globes, at each end, give it light, harshly.

Five delivery men are coming in, bringing various victuals for the Altamonts’ party. The shortest leads the way, wilting under the weight of a fowl fatter than he is; the second one is carrying with extreme care a great beaten-brass tray laden with oriental sweetmeats – baklava, gazelles’ horns, honey and date cakes – arranged as a set piece and surrounded with flowers; the third has in each hand three bottles of vintage Wachenheimer Oberstnest; the fourth bears on his head a metal plate covered in small meat pies, hot snacks, and canapés; and, lastly, the fifth man, closing the procession, carries a case of whisky on his right shoulder, a case on which is stencilled

THOMAS KYD’S

IMPERIAL MIXTURE

100% SCOTCH WHISKIES

blended and bottled in Scotland

by

BORRELLY, JOYCE & KAHANE

91, Montgomery Lane, Dundee, Scot.

In the foreground, partly occluding the last delivery man, a woman is leaving the building: a woman of about fifty, wearing a macintosh with a Dorothy bag – a green leather purse with a black leather string fastening – hanging on her belt, her head covered with a printed cotton scarf whose pattern is reminiscent of Calder’s mobiles. She is carrying a grey she-cat in her arms and, between the index and middle fingers of her left hand, holds a postcard depicting Loudun, that town in Western France where someone called Marie Besnard was accused of poisoning all her family.

This lady does not live in this building, but in the one next door. Her cat, answering to the fond name of Lady Piccolo, spends hours on this staircase, dreaming perhaps of meeting a tom. A vain dream, alas, for all the male cats in the building – Madame Moreau’s Pip, the Marquiseaux’ Petit Pouce, and Poker Dice, who belongs to Gilbert Berger – have been doctored.