Stone's Fall: A Novel by Iain Pears

Author:Iain Pears
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Europe, International finance, Historical fiction, Mystery & Detective, Europe - History - 1871-1918, Capitalists and financiers, General, 1871-1918, Mystery fiction, Historical, Arms transfers, Fiction, History
ISBN: 9780385522847
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Published: 2009-05-05T00:18:16+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The soirée was a great event; I could with only a touch of hyperbole say that it transformed my own position in France and (at the same time) added an important footnote to the history of the French courtesan. For much of the day I took my ease; reading the newspapers over my morning coffee, going for a walk along the beach, passing a few moments in conversation with recent acquaintances briefly encountered. And then, at lunch, I had my meeting with Wilkinson; we ate together at a restaurant in the town, and had a perfectly pleasant, though entirely useless, conversation. He went on at great length about some rare bird he had spotted in the mountains, and was so excited—apparently it had not been seen since some legendary Spanish ornithologist had recorded it in the 1850s, and Wilkinson believed that he had won undying fame in the world of bird lovers as a result—that he could talk of little else. I told him about the coal, which pleased him, but he quickly went back to his birds once he had absorbed the information. All he said was “Good, good. Very pleasing.” He had no requests about anything else the Government needed to know. Apparently I was beginning to be trusted to work that out for myself.

But it was pleasant enough and it saved me a good deal of weary memorandum writing later on, so I was satisfied. I also mentioned my remarkable meeting of the previous day, for I was aching to tell someone and knew that Wilkinson was about the only person in the world it was fair to confide in. He, after all, had been partly responsible for Virginie paying off her debts and launching herself on such a meteoric career. Besides, I was proud of her, and vain about my sagacity in spotting something that Lefevre had entirely overlooked.

“In that case, I must meet her,” he said gaily, and my heart sank. “A soirée, you say? Excellent, I will come with you.”

“I really don’t…”

“I have long desired to meet her; I feel as though I know her so very well.”

“I very much doubt she would want to meet you.”

“She does not know of our association, I hope?”

“Of course not.”

“In that case, what possible objection could she have? I would like to thank her, and I think I know the best way to do it. Don’t worry, Cort. I’m not going to ruin your mascot. Quite the contrary. She might at some stage prove very useful.”

He would not be dissuaded, and I heartily repented of my sudden garrulousness. I should have kept absolutely silent; but the levels of discretion I was forced to maintain were quite unnatural. I am not by nature a gossip, but all men need someone to talk to. I had no one in France, and the sudden appearance of Wilkinson made me treat him with more trust than he should have received. No harm came of it, but I had, nonetheless, made a mistake which stemmed from youth and naïveté.

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