Les Noctambules

Exterior of Les Noctambules, as seen in the Daily Express comic strip, Casino Royale.

Les Noctambules (French for "night-reveller" or "the night owl") was a fictional French villa rented by Le Chiffre, paymaster of the Soviet counterintellience agency, SMERSH. The isolated holiday villa was situated near Royale-les-Eaux, just north of Dieppe. The location appeared in Ian Fleming's 1953 James Bond novel, Casino Royale, and was subsequently adapted for the comic strip which ran in The Daily Express newspapers between 7th July and 13th December, 1958.

Appearance

In June 1951, Le Chiffre, one of the Soviet Union's chief agents in France and undercover Paymaster of the trade union, Syndicat des Ouvriers d’Alsace (English: Union of Workers of Alsace), attempted to recover a large sum of misinvested SMERSH money at the baccarat table in Royale-les-Eaux's Casino Royale. He withdrew the final twenty-five million francs from the union treasury and took the nearby Les Noctambules as his base of operations.

Situated ten miles down the coast-road from Royale-les-Eaux, the isolated villa was at the end of a hundred yard, partly overgrown side-road. A pair of dilapidated stucco pillars ushered visitors into an unkempt forecourt surrounded by a high wall. The building's cement frontage was typical of the French seaside style. Through its peeling white door was a passageway which led to the rear of the house and, to the right, a large room used subsequently for torture. Possibly a living- or dining-room, it was sparsely furnished in cheap French art nouveau style, with a flimsy-looking mirrored sideboard, faded pink sofa, and two candlesticks mounted on a brightly papered wall opposite the door. Under its alabasterine ceiling light, there was a small square of stained carpet in a futurist design with contrasting browns, atop brown-stained floorboards. Its sole window was partly covered venetian blinds, under which there sat a throne-like chair in carved oak with a red velvet seat, a low table, and a light cane armchair.

During the high-stakes baccarat game, Le Chiffre operated out of Les Noctambules, accompanied by his two guards. After Le Chiffre lost his remaining funds to James Bond, he abducted the spy and his love interest, Vesper Lynd, and took them to the villa for interrogation. Binding 007 to the bottomless cane chair, Le Chiffre unsuccessfully tortured him with a carpet beater for the location of the money. As he prepared to castrate the spy, a SMERSH operative infiltrated the villa executed Le Chiffre for failing to recover the funds.