The Amber Rooms

Chapter Seven

By the afternoon of the following day, Saskia had completed the ten-hour journey to Monte Carlo, where she finessed her plan while drinking an espresso in Le Café de Paris, which overlooked much of Monte Carlo and abutted the Hôtel du Paris and the casino. Her right arm had fully healed. Her amputation remained just that.

She had spent the Count’s money—intended for bribes and other disbursements—in a waterfront boutique. She had even bought a postcard for Yusha, but she had not posted it. Did he think she was dead? It would be better that he did.

Now, over this perfect coffee, she watched cooling, autumn Monaco. It made her think of St Petersburg, where less was not more. Her eyes moved again to the casino: a fortress of competing architectural styles; hierarchical; symmetrical; ripe.

Yes, St Petersburg. She longed for it, too.

‘And two teaspoons of Maraschino.’ Her voice was raised to be heard over the crowd in the casino. ‘Very good thus. Do not shake the glass! Let each cordial show its own place.’ A nod with half her head. ‘That, my clumsy friend, is a pousse-café.’

‘May I try it, Mademoiselle Carrault?’

She made a winding gesture with her fingers. The waiter—well spoken, pretty, likely a prostitute—took a metal cup from beneath the glass bar and poured some of the cocktail into it. He sipped.

‘Good?’ she said.

The waiter looked embarrassed. Saskia laughed. Her delight was in character but true.

‘It grows on you,’ she said.

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Well, sayonara.’ She hated this word, but its use was common among the clique within which her fictional self—a bored French straycat, likely rude, certainly idle—found a dull but tolerable existence.

‘Good luck, Mademoiselle,’ he said. There was innocence in his smile. She hoped he kept it.

Saskia turned to the floor of the casino. It held more than two hundred people. The stations were busy and the costumes colourful. White nebulae of tobacco smoke hung around the chandeliers. That cliché of the shuttered windows held: to deny the day when it came. In a glance, Saskia noted the games being played. The most popular, by table, was Baccarat Chemin de Fer. That was good.

She stayed at the bar and sipped her pousse-café as she noted the clockwork of the casino employees. In fifteen minutes, she had them all. There were two hosts. They stood on the gallery to enjoy an elevated view. Each took one half of the room. Next, she looked for the sweepers, those men who walked the casino floors. There were three.

She moved her attention to the blackjack tables. The nearest, beneath one of the chandeliers, had only two of its six bases free. The dealer used a shoe, not a free deck. This annoyed her because it would be harder to predict the fall of the dealer’s hand, unless she could calculate the number of decks in use.

An elegant man rose from the nearest blackjack table. Either he had placed a large bet, or he was about to give up. He coughed into his fist and scanned the faces of those around him as he walked away. Saskia took the opportunity to replace him, gliding at a speed just short of unladylike.

The two players at the remaining two bases stood as she joined the table. She acknowledged this with a slow blink.

‘Mademoiselle Carrault,’ Saskia said.

‘Goodrington,’ said the first. ‘This is Barnes.’

‘Let me guess,’ she said, in French, ‘you’re alpinists.’

‘Alpinists!’ said the first. ‘We are’—he leaned over his gin and tonic—‘alpinists!’

‘I know this already,’ she said, shaking their hands, ‘because you are two of the loudest and most drunk people in the house.’

Goodrington nodded. He stared at her. The tip of his nose made small circles. He said, ‘Alpinists!’

‘You charm me.’ This time, she spoke English, in part because it was the language of Shakespeare and she loved the pebble-smooth edges of its sounds. Also, she already disliked the role she had cast for herself. Mademoiselle Carrault was rude and spoiled: a trifle par for this course.

The flattering mirror behind the dealer reflected her art nouveau ball gown. It had been worth the money: unweighted silk, a lavender-coloured lace over the pigeon chest and throat; the black buttons on the arm-length sleeves; the prominent waist sash. Only her handwarmer marked her as eccentric. Within it, her right hand worried the stack of chips.

‘You will oblige me,’ she said to the dealer, who was an old gentleman with a Grenadier’s moustache, ‘with a reprisal of the house variation.’

‘Of course, Mademoiselle,’ he said. He also spoke in English, no doubt in a vain attempt to reinforce the rules to the alpinists, who had made little effort to observe them thus far. ‘A higher hand than my own will pay at a ratio of three-to-two. Late surrender is permissible. I win ties. I do not receive a hole card. Finally, I am required to stand on seventeen and draw to sixteen.’

‘Very well,’ she said.

Goodrington announced, ‘Very well,’ to the room at large.