Jamie Reid - Monsieur X: The Incredible Story of the Most Audacious Gambler in History

For VC and the stories yet to come

Contents

There are two kinds of gambler. The good and the bad. They have one thing in common. In the end... they all lose.

Patrice des Moutis

When the French take revenge, it ravages the innocent along with the guilty. They do it principally through the murderous inefficiency with which they operate their pari-mutuel system of betting.

Hugh McIlvanney

1974

It was cold in Paris in the Parc de Saint-Cloud at twilight on a winters day. In summer the gardens of the former royal chteau on a hillside overlooking the Seine were a favourite setting for picnics, games and family outings. But by half-past four on a December afternoon the childrens play area by the northwestern entrance was deserted. The smart mothers and nannies had all swept up their charges and set off back to their haute bourgeois homes in the suburbs. Other than a gardener making a bonfire of old leaves there were just a few solitary dog-walkers and a middle-aged man in an old rugby shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms.

The 54-year-old had been coming to the park for years, running miles along the manicured pathways and over the forested hillside that covered more than a thousand acres between Saint-Cloud and Garches. He was proud of his fitness and routine. It reassured him of his readiness for the battle and his ability to live like an English milord, smoking five Havana cigars a day yet retaining the energy of a much younger man. He wasnt about to stop now, hed assured friends, despite all the rumours and the stories in the press. But on his own in the fading light, with the smell of bonfire smoke hanging on the frosty air, he found it harder to dispel the tension and the mounting fear of arrest or worse.

The man slowed down as he reached the crossroads by the ornamental fountain and the little caf that was closed and boarded up now until the spring. After satisfying himself that he was alone and not being followed, he turned left down a gravelled path that led to a viewpoint beside some wooden benches and a green painted wicket fence. The city lay stretched out before him with the Bois de Boulogne and the Eiffel Tower in the foreground and Sacr-Cur on the far horizon. This was his home. This was where he had grown up and been educated, married and had children. He knew its offices and boardrooms, its bedrooms and salons, cafs, restaurants and bars. He knew all the racetracks too and all the leading owners, trainers and jockeys.

Hed made the running in his time. Hed set the pace and maintained it for almost fifteen years. Taunting and outwitting a massive bureaucratic monolith and leaving it chasing his shadow. At the highpoint of his success they had called him the Prince of Gamblers and a modern-day Robin Hood. But he had ended up becoming the reluctant leading man in an increasingly dangerous roman noir from which there seemed to be no escape. And if the tip-offs hed been given were correct, he was starting to believe that he might have run his race.

There had already been two deaths one a jockey, the other a gangster in Marseille and now the French champion jockey was in the Sant prison, with more arrests expected soon. People were asking, who was the mastermind? And when would he be unmasked? The story was all over that mornings papers, the sensational news of the police swoop on the Mafia du Tierc sharing top billing with reports of President Valry Giscard dEstaings forthcoming trip to Guadeloupe and the Sret Nationale being on the lookout for Lord Lucan. When would they come for him? he wondered... and who would come first?

Down below he could see lights coming on in the houseboats on the Seine, and a barge heading downstream towards Svres. The noise of the rush-hour traffic drifted back up the hillside. Commuters hurrying home to the comfort and warmth of wives, husbands, lovers, family and friends. Good food, sex and untroubled sleep. Pleasures he could no longer count on.

He took one last, long lingering look at the city lights. Then he turned away and began to run back down the empty path towards the dark places beneath the trees.

1950

It was the last weekend of August and Deauville was packed with well-to-do families and gambling high rollers in town for the climax of the summer season. The weather, as so often on the Normandy coast, was variable, but early each morning strings of superbly bred racehorses came down into the town from the racecourse stables to enjoy a canter by the waters edge. Later on, children cavorted happily on the sandy beach and ran screeching in and out of the waves indifferent to the temperature and the Channel breeze. Adults posed elegantly behind windbreaks or stayed lounging around the swimming pools at the Normandy and Royal hotels, interrupting hands of bridge and gin rummy for cocktails at the pool bar or a round of golf on the slopes of Mont Canisy.

As was the case every year at Deauville, people-watching was a major pastime. The composer Vincent Scotto, who had written the music for the films of Marcel Pagnol, caused a sensation by strolling up and down the wooden boardwalk, accompanied by a pet lion cub with whom he later shared a drink at an outdoor table at the Bar du Soleil.

Another to make a big impression was King Farouk of Egypt, who arrived in a red Bentley and was staying at the Htel du Golf. The moustachioed overweight monarch was a compulsive gambler who spent his afternoons at the races and his nights at the casino. On the evening of Saturday 26 August Farouk and his entourage turned up late for the Grand Prix de la Chanson in the casino ballroom. Other guests, all attired in evening dress, looked on in astonishment as the gluttonous potentate proceeded to devour an entire gigot dagneau and a couple of lobsters which were served to him on a special table at the front of the room. The occasion culminated in a concert by Maurice Chevalier, but the King was more interested in cards than chansonneurs and left for the gaming tables halfway through.

Farouk and the exiled King Peter of Yugoslavia were two of the biggest players, and losers, at the casino. But out at the racecourse, La Touques, on Avenue Hocquart de Turtot, it was Prince Aly Khan, one of the richest and most successful racehorse owners in the world, who made the headlines. The Aly, who was the eldest son and heir of the old Aga Khan, or Aga Khan III, was a debonair playboy as renowned for his gambling as he was for his pursuit of beautiful women. In Deauville that August he was accompanied by his second wife, the Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth, who he had married the previous year.

The Aly had bought Hayworth a few racehorses as a present and on Sunday 27 August one of them, a colt called Skylarking, won the Prix de Saint-Arnoult, while her filly Double Rose finished second in the Grand Prix de Deauville, the climactic race of the meeting. The sun refused to shine but a huge crowd still came out to the racecourse to watch. It was the usual mix of comtes and concierges, chancers and gigolos. The serious ownerbreeders were there in their hats and suits with their well-worn binocular cases. Their wives and mistresses were there too, in black cat-eye sunglasses by Lanvin and Dior, and then there were the curious once-a-year racegoers tempted away from the beach by the prospect of celebrity. Double Rose did her best, leading the field for much of the race until she was unable to match Baron Guy de Rothschilds three-year-old colt Alizier in the home straight.