Page 54 of The Gathering Storm

Out again in the unfeeling day, he hurried, almost ran through the streets to the Maison de l’Évangile. There were three people there, the girl he had met the first day, whose name he now knew was Madeleine, and two older women. One of them was Nina Berberov. They turned and looked at him in silence as he came in. Nina’s eyes were red, her lower lip drooping. ‘You!’ she said.

‘I’ve just heard,’ James said. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Now you know why we’re always so careful,’ Nina said. ‘What did you do? What did you do?’ She ran at him and beat his chest ineffectually with her small fists, crying. He caught her wrists and held them, trying to be gentle.

Madeleine said, ‘I checked him, Ninochka. I checked everything I could.’

Nina pulled herself free from James and took a step back. ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said to Madeleine, dragging a handkerchief from her sleeve. She pressed it to her eyes as if she could push the tears back to their source. ‘It’s him.’

James was aghast. ‘You think I had something to do with it?’

‘You went to Russia with Bedaux. I know Tata warned you they would be watching you all the time. What did you tell them? You brought this on us!’

‘I didn’t!’ James protested. ‘I didn’t say anything to anyone. I was just the secretary. I never mentioned Tata, or any of you.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Nina,’ the other woman said. ‘You know they’ve been watching Natalie for years, and Bedaux has been to her parties. It could have been any of us. There’s no reason to think—’

‘You think the Soviets did this?’ James said, in astonishment. ‘How? Why? Why would they want to kill Tata?’

‘As a warning to us,’ Nina said. ‘To teach us a lesson.’

‘They want to find – certain people,’ Madeleine said. ‘They think we harbour their enemies.’

‘They have agents everywhere,’ the third woman said, in defeated tones. ‘The Soviet state has a long arm. They like to remind us that we can never be free of them. They want us to know they can reach out any time, anywhere, and snuff us out.’ She made a gesture on the air of pinching out a candle flame.

Madeleine spoke again. She looked dog-tired. ‘Someone followed you, James. They established that you were a regular visitor to Tata. Then you went to Russia. There they think everyone is a spy.’

‘We—’ he began, then stopped. Better not mention that they had been arrested and questioned.

Madeleine went on. ‘So they made an example. That’s what we think. Poor Tata was chosen. Or perhaps chosen is too strong a word. They told their operative, “Kill someone,” and he killed her.’

‘It’s happened before,’ Nina said.

‘But – but there’s no reason to think …’ James stammered. ‘It could have been just another vagrant, like the one who found her.’

Madeleine gave him a pitying look. ‘If it were that, her purse would have been taken, her trinkets. She might have been raped. There would have been a struggle, there would be torn clothes or bruises. This was not that. One cut, no other injuries, the body not interfered with, the possessions untouched. So quick no-one would have seen or heard a thing. A professional assassin. The flics know that,’ she concluded, with a contemptuous look. ‘That’s why they won’t investigate.’

‘Oh, God,’ said James.

‘So you go, now,’ Nina said, moving a step closer to James, threateningly. ‘And don’t come here again. Don’t come near any of us. You smell of death.’

James turned and left, walked out into the street with no idea of where to go or what to do. He walked, without seeing where he was going. In his mind, Tata danced across the darkness, the placement of her hands and white arms pure Cecchetti, her hair flying about her face.

The competition for the film rights of Gone With the Wind had thinned out. The front-runner, Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, had just dropped out.

‘He wanted it for Bette Davis,’ Al Feinstein said, ‘but she didn’t fancy the part.’ He was standing at the window of his office, his back to Lennie, looking down onto the lot, his fists jammed into his trouser pockets, jingling his change. It was a hot day, and he had abandoned his jacket. In a blue-and-white-striped shirt and scarlet braces, he looked a yard wide, immovable as an elephant, and oddly festive, like a circus tent. He swung round. ‘That’s what happens when a star gets too big. They start thinking they run the show. They forget who made them a star in the first place,’ he said accusingly.

Lennie, accustomed to Al after all these years, didn’t flinch. He had read the book now. ‘Bette Davis wasn’t right for it anyway.’

‘She’s young. She’s spunky.’

‘Not the right sort of spunky.’

‘Yeah,’ Al conceded. ‘She wouldn’t have mooned over that Ashley feller. She’d have kicked his pansy ass. Well, Jack’s out. Louis Mayer’s out. That leaves us and Fox. Fox has made an offer, but I don’t know how much for. I’ve not made up my mind.’

‘The book’s doing well,’ Lennie mentioned.

‘Mixed reviews. The New York Times says it’s too long.’