“Yes.”
“What was it about? Was someone murdered?”
“Yes.”
Now she did turn, setting an elbow on the back of her chair and looking at him with a faint, questioning smile. “Someone we know?” she said lightly.
He put his head back on the cushions and considered first one corner of the ceiling, then another. “No.”
When he failed to continue she waggled her head in a parody of regal impatience and said, “Weh-ell?” in her Queen Victoria voice. He lowered his gaze and fixed it on her. Her eyes shone, and her glossed lips caught points of light from the chandelier above his head and glittered. Why was she excited? It must be, he thought, the prospect of the smoldering Antonini. He went back to gazing at the ceiling.
“A young man called Dylan Riley,” he said. “Computer wizard. Would-be spy.” And? Go on, say it. “Researcher.”
“And the police were calling you why?”
“He had phoned me, this Riley.”
“He had phoned you.”
“Yes. This morning. And in the afternoon he was killed. Murdered. Shot through the eye.”
“My God.” She sounded more indignant than shocked. “But why was he phoning you, this person-what did you say his name was?”
“Riley. Dylan Riley. Doesn’t sound like a real name, does it, when you say it out loud?”
He picked up a copy of The New Yorker from the low table in front of him. Sempe. The Park, spring leaves, a tiny dog.
“Are you,” Louise said, “going to tell me what this is about, or not?”
“It’s not about anything. I contacted this Riley because I thought he might do some research for the book. He called me back. Mine happened to be the last number on his cell phone. Hence the call from the police.” She still sat turned toward him from the waist, her arm still resting on the back of the chair, the fountain pen in her fingers. “The nib will dry up,” he said. “I remember that, how the nib would dry up and then you had to wash it out with water and fill it in the inkwell again.”
“The inkwell?” she said. “You sound like someone out of Dickens.”
“I am someone out of Dickens. That’s why you married me. Bill Sikes, c’est moi. ”
Clara the maid came in to announce dinner. She was a diminutive person. Her color, deep black with purplish shadings, fascinated Glass; every time he saw her he wanted to touch her, just to know the feel of that satiny skin. In her little white uniform and white rubbersoled shoes that Louise made her wear she had the look of a hospital nurse. When she was gone, Louise whispered: “You must remember to compliment her. She’s made a souffle. It’s a big moment.” Louise had been teaching Clara how to cook, with considerable success, which was fortunate for Clara, since otherwise she would have gone by now-Louise did not entertain failure.
In the dining room the lamps burned low, and there were candles on the table, their flames reflected in countless gleaming spots among the silver and the crystal. It occurred to Glass that what he had admitted a moment ago was true, that he was coarse, compared to all this that Louise had set in place, the elegant table, the soft lights, the fine wines and delicate food, the expensively simple furniture, the Balthus drawing and the Giacometti figurine, the leather-bound books, the white-clad maid, the Glenn Gould tape softly playing in the background-all the rich, muted, exquisitely tasteful life that she had assembled for them. Yes, he fitted ill, here; he had tried, but he fitted ill. He wondered why she had tolerated him for so long, and why she went on tolerating him. Was it simply fear of another divorce and her father’s rage? No doubt it was. He was perfectly capable, was Big Bill, of cutting off her inheritance. So much would go, for her and for David Sinclair, if those millions went-not just the house in the Hamptons, the rooftop suite at the Georges V in Paris, the account at Asprey’s in London, but most important, control of the Mulholland Trust. That was what Louise prized most; that was the future.
Clara’s spinach souffle was excellent, and Glass remembered to compliment her on it, and she fled back to her kitchen in confusion. Louise had put down her fork and was gazing at him. “You can be so sweet, sometimes,” she said.
“Only sometimes?”
“Yes. Only sometimes. But I’m grateful.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Still she watched him, at once frowning and smiling. “You have been up to something,” she said, “haven’t you. I can see it in your eye.”
“What sort of something?”
Her face, candlelit, was reflected in the window by which she sat. Outside in the darkness the crowns of the massed trees in the Park gave off an eerie, silverish glow. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something to do with that young man who was murdered?”
“What?” Glass said, “Do you think I shot him?”
“Of course not. Why would you?”
A sudden, constrained silence fell then, as if both had taken fright at something vaguely seen ahead. They ate. Glass poured the wine. At length he said: “I don’t know that I can write this book.”
She kept her eyes on her plate. “Oh? Why not?”
“Well, for a start I suddenly remembered that I am a journalist, or used to be, and not a biographer.”
“Journalists write biographies.”
“Not of their fathers-in-law, they don’t.”
“Billuns gave his word he wouldn’t interfere.”
Billuns was Big Bill’s pet name in the family; it made Glass’s skin crawl, especially when his wife used it. He drank his wine and looked out over the treetops. How still it was, the April night.
“Why do you think he asked me to write it? I mean, why me.”
“He told you himself: he trusts you.”
“Does that mean more, I wonder, than that he thinks he has a hold over me, through you?”
“Thinks?” She smiled, pursing her lips. “Doesn’t he have a hold over you, through me?”
He looked at her levelly in the candlelight. He did not understand why she was behaving so tenderly toward him tonight. There was a languorous, almost feline air about her. He was reminded of how, on their honeymoon, which seemed so long ago now, she would sit opposite him at a balcony table in the Eden Roc at Cap d’Antibes after a morning of lovemaking and smile at him in that same caressing, mischievous fashion, and kick off her sandals under the table and wrap her cool bare feet around his ankles. What days those had been, what nights. At moments such as this one now, here in the stealthy candlelight, the sadness he felt at the lapsing of his love for her became a desolation. He cleared his throat. “Tell me,” he said, “about Charles Varriker.”
Something flickered in her eyes, a far-off lightning flash. “Charles?” she said. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s a figure in the landscape-your father’s landscape.”
Her mood had altered now: she seemed impatient, angry, almost. “He’s been dead for twenty years, more.”
“How well did you know him? Was he a figure in your landscape?”
She put down her fork again and lowered her head and turned it a little to one side; it was a thing she did when she was thinking, or upset. “Is this how it’s going to be if you write this book?” she asked, in an odd, low voice with a shake in it. “Will there be dinnertable interrogations? Will I be required nightly to pick over the past for you? A pity your researcher got shot, he would have spared me a lot of work.” She rose abruptly, not looking at him. Her napkin had fallen to the floor and she found herself treading on it. “Damn!” she said, in that same, angry undertone, and kicked the napkin off into the shadows, and strode away, the skirts of the kimono ruffling about her. Glass thought to call after her but did not. The silence seemed to vibrate faintly, as in the aftermath of something having shattered.
What had Dylan Riley discovered, and why had he been shot? And how were the two things connected, as Glass was now convinced they were? He looked again to the window, but this time saw only his own face reflected there.
