James Hadley Chase - A Lotus for Miss Quon

C HAPTER O NE

HE had come upon the diamonds one hot Sunday afternoon in January.

Now as he lay on the bed, feeling a trickle of sweat running down his massive chest, he thought bleakly that in three days' time, he would have to send his wife yet another cheque. He had only 8,000 piastres in the bank. When she had been paid, he would have very little left to last him to the end of the month which was quite some time ahead. Well, it served him right, he thought. He had been reckless to have bought that picture. It had been quite an unnecessary extravagance, but all the same, he thought of it with great pleasure. He had come across it in a dealer's shop in Duong Tu-Do, and it had immediately arrested his attention. It was an oil painting of a Vietnamese girl wearing the national dress of white silk trousers, a pale-blue sheath tunic and a conical straw hat. She was posed against a white wall over which climbed a rose-coloured bougainvillea. It was a set piece, but well painted, and the girl reminded him of Nhan. She had the same innocent expression; the same childish way of standing, even the same doll-like features. The girl in the painting could have been Nhan but for the fact he knew Nhan had never posed for an artist.

Jaffe went over to where the painting stood against the wall, still in its paper and string. He stripped off the paper and stood the painting on the table and looked at it.

Although his two servants slept in a little building just across the courtyard that served both as a kitchen and their sleeping quarters, they too knew when Nhan visited him, but being Vietnamese, they were more intolerant and more critical than his European friends. They hinted silently by their attitude and expressions that he had lost face by taking a Vietnamese girl as a mistress instead of one of the many married or unmarried European women who were to be had for the asking.