The Night Manager полностью

"Jed's riding Sarah. She always rides Sarah as soon as she gets back. Sarah hears her and gets in a rage if she doesn't come. Roper says they're a pair of dykes. What's a dyke?"

"A woman who loves women."

"Roper talked to Sandy Langbourne about you while they were in Curaçao. No one's to discuss you on the telephone. Radio silence on Thomas until further notice. Chief's orders."

"Maybe you shouldn't eavesdrop on people so much. You'll wear yourself out."

Daniel arched his back, flung up his head and yelled at the punkah: "I don't eavesdrop! That's not fair! I wasn't even trying! I just can't help hearing! Corky says you're a dangerous riddle, that's all! You're not! I know you're not! I love you! Roper's going to feel your bones for himself and take a view!"

* * *

It was just before dawn.

"Know the best way to make a bloke talk, Tommy?" Tabby asked from the futon, offering a helpful tip. "Infallible? One hundred percent? Never known to fail? The fizzy-drink treatment. Bung his mouth up so he can't breathe except through his nose. Or her. Get a funnel, if there's one handy. And pour the fizz into his nose. Hits you right in the switchboard, like your brain's boiling. Bloody diabolical."

* * *

It was ten in the morning.

Walking uncertainly at Corkoran's side across the gravel sweep of Crystal, Jonathan had an exact memory of crossing the main courtyard of Buckingham Palace on the arm of his German Aunt Monika the day she took him to collect his dead father's medal. What's the point of prizes when you're dead? he had wondered. And school while you're alive?

A stocky black manservant admitted them. He wore a green waistcoat and black trousers. A venerable black butler in a striped cotton waistcoat came forward to receive them.

"For the Chief, please, Isaac," said Corkoran. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We're expected."

The immense hall echoed like a church to their footsteps. A curved marble staircase with a gilded handrail rose into the cupola, making three landings on its way to a blue-painted heaven. The marble they were walking on was pink, and the sunlight lifted from it in a rosy dew. Two man-sized Egyptian warriors guarded an arched doorway of carved stone. They passed through it and entered a gallery dominated by a gold head of the sun god Ra. Greek torsos, marble heads, hands, urns and stone panels of hieroglyphics stood or lay about in disarray. Brass-bound glass cabinets ran along the walls, crammed with figurines. Hand-printed signs declared their provenance: West African, Peruvian, pre-Columbian, Cambodian, Minoan, Russian, Roman and in one case simply "Nile."

He plunders, Burr had said.

Freddie likes to sell him stolen artefacts, Sophie had said.

Roper's going to feel your bones for himself, Daniel had said.

They entered the library. Leather-bound books reached from floor to ceiling. A rolling spiral staircase, unmanned, stood by.

They entered a prison corridor between arched dungeons. From their solitary cells, antique weapons glimmered in the twilight: swords and pikes and maces, suits of armour posed on wooden horses; muskets, halberds, cannon balls and green cannons still barnacled from the sea.

They passed a billiards room and came to the second centre of the house. Marble columns supported a wagon roof. A tiled blue pool mirrored them, bordered by a marble concourse. On the walls hung Impressionist paintings of fruit and farms and naked women: can this really be a Gauguin? On a marble chaise two young men in shirtsleeves and twenties baggy trousers talked business across open attaché cases.

"Corky, hi, how's tricks?" drawled one.

"Darlings," said Corkoran.

They approached a pair of high doors of burnished bronze. Before them sat Frisky in a porter's chair. A matronly woman emerged, carrying a shorthand pad. Frisky shoved out his foot at her, pretending to trip her up.

"Oh, you silly boy," said the matronly woman happily.

The doors closed again.

"Why, it's the Major," Frisky cried facetiously, affecting not to have noticed their arrival till the last minute. "How are we today, sir? Hullo there, Tommy. That's the way, then."

"Tit," said Corkoran.

Frisky unhooked a house telephone from the wall and touched a number. The doors opened to reveal a room so large, so intricate in its furnishings, so bathed with sunlight and blackened by shadow, that Jonathan had a sensation not of arriving but ascending. Through a wall of tinted windows lay a terrace of strangely formed white tables, each shaded by a white umbrella. Beyond them lay an emerald lagoon bordered by a narrow sandbar and black reefs. Beyond the reefs lay the open sea in lakes of jagged blues.