Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [151]
She found Younger downstairs the next morning, eating breakfast at a white-linen table in a grand salon with rococo columns and a floor of checkerboard black and white marble. Daintily robed cherubs cavorted on the ceiling. Colette looked simultaneously happy and alarmed.
“Have you seen the policemen?” she asked quietly. “They’re everywhere.”
“Nothing to worry about,” replied Younger. “Just another American male wanted for murder. Movie star, I’m told. His wife, also a movie star, was found dead on their bed on top of a hundred fur stoles, naked. It was their honeymoon. Something to eat?”
“Madame took me aside last night before we left,” said Colette, troubled, as she sat down across from him. “I’ve never seen her that way. She never shows anyone her feelings.”
“What happened?”
“She burst into tears. She said that Monsieur Langevin doesn’t love her anymore because she’s old. That she gave up her name for him. That she let the whole world condemn her. All she wants now is her science, her experiments. But without radium, she says, she’s nothing. She told me she’s ready to die.”
A waiter whisked into view, set a place for Colette, and with a flourish unfolded a linen napkin for her. She barely noticed. Then she saw the piece of paper next to Younger’s plate.
“You received a wire?” she asked. “Is it from Dr. Freud?”
“No. Littlemore. I went back to the cable office this morning to see if he’d replied.” Younger showed her the cable:
WHERE HECK HAVE YOU BEEN STOP YOU HAVE COURT DATE NOVEMBER TWENTY SECOND STOP TWO PM STOP YOU BETTER BE HERE
“Court date?” asked Colette. “What for?”
“For assaulting Drobac.”
“Assaulting him?” she protested. “He kidnapped me. He killed that woman on top of the building.”
“Yes, but he hasn’t been convicted yet. In the eyes of the law, he’s an innocent man.”
“You mean you could go to jail?”
“Littlemore says it’s very unlikely,” he answered.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go back. I have to.”
“Why?” she asked. “Just stay away until they convict him.”
“Littlemore got me out of prison after they arrested me. If I don’t appear in court, it will be bad for him. Very bad. I have to go.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No,” he said. “It could still be dangerous for you.”
“How? Even if anyone were looking for me, they couldn’t possibly know I came back into the country.”
“Someone was watching you in New Haven. Whoever it was may still be there.”
“I won’t go to New Haven.” Colette sat quietly for a long time. At last she said, “I have to come with you; I’m going to raise the money for Madame’s radium. Mrs. Meloney told me I could do it. She said I just had to be nicer to one rich man, and we could make up the whole shortfall. Besides, Luc will be with Dr. Freud for at least two months. I can’t stay here by myself and worry about him.”
That afternoon, they caught a train to Rouen from the Saint-Lazare station. The next day, they went on to Le Havre, where they boarded a ship for New York.
With her hand at his elbow, Colette allowed Younger to lead her on an exploratory tour of their ocean liner. They wandered through a glass-domed rotunda, observed ladies and gentlemen playing belote in the hall of Louis XIV, and took tea in a blue-tiled Moorish saloon. In an empty smoking room, they kissed beneath a gently swaying crystal chandelier. And many levels down, as a hard rain began to fall, causing passengers to scurry indoors, they saw a thousand human beings confined to less opulent and more redolent quarters.
“You’re corrupting me,” said Colette as they climbed the stairs back to the upper deck—the first-class deck. A steward readmitted them into the Louis XIV hall.
“You like it.”
“I feel like Dante,” she said, “emerging from the inferno, with you as my Virgil.”
“No, you’re Beatrice, and you’ll rise to heaven while I end up below. But,” he considered, “I’d pay the price again. I’d pay it every time.”
“What price?”
“Eternal damnation,” he answered, “for a night in your arms.”
“Only one night?”
That evening, despite a fierce storm outside, the ocean liner erupted