What a more than brief glance might have told wasn't an option because at that moment he had a stroke. No other explanation for the way his head suddenly seemed to explode and he fell forward across the desk.
He seemed to be destined to come into close contact with this desk, he thought as he tried to force himself upward.
There were voices in the room now, or were they just inside his skull? He managed to get a few inches of space between his face and the woodwork, and twisted his neck in search of the source of the voices.
His blurring gaze found it, or the possible source of one of them, or maybe not. Lucy Naysmith's lips didn't seem to be moving. In fact, her whole face was unnaturally still. You'd think a woman swinging a golf club at your head would show some emotion. What kind of club was it? he found himself wondering as survival instinct and buckling knees combined to have him falling away from the next stroke. (Stroke. Perhaps that's where the word came from, ho ho.) Maybe it was a mashie-niblick, where'd he heard that phrase recently? The club head caught him on the chest this time and clipped his chin in passing. Lady needed to practise if she was going to improve her handicap. But she had the time, he acknowledged as he hit the ground and lay there, still as a ball on a nice lush fairway.
The voices were still talking ... something familiar about them ... Shoot! He must've hit the answer-machine button as he fell against the desk and these were the same un scrubbed messages he'd heard last time the Christmas greetings, the guy after a taxi, the pissed off client, Potter urging him to ring back, Dome's hidden threat... voices on the air, empty of meaning ... except that Endo Venera said that ninety per cent of what people said told you ten per cent more than they intended, so the sharp Eye was also a sharp Ear.
And he was right, realized Joe. The blow which had unscrambled most of his senses had sharpened that always pretty sensitive area of hearing that dealt with intonation and accent and sequence and all the other things which made listening so vital to a good gumshoe.
That's great, interposed another more cynical area of his brain. But shouldn't we be concentrating on why this nice ordinary lady is so keen to kill us and trying to find some way of dissuading her?
He said, 'Feelie
The club upraised for the possibly final blow, paused.
He said, '... not yours ... hers ... Dome's ...'
'She promised,' said the woman. 'She promised ... in the New Year ... I thought that was why ...'
No, he thought, he promised in the New Year, not she. But it didn't seem a good time to correct a lady. In fact, the sensible thing to do was to agree with everything she said. The customer was always right even when she wasn't a customer and was also clearly teetering on the edge of her trolley.
'She will keep her promise,' he said. 'That's why I'm here. I'm Joe Sixsmith, remember! We met earlier. It's all under control. That's why Felix asked me to come.'
A man could get addicted to this lying business, he thought. Specially when it kept your head from having a divot taken out of it.
'Felix asked you?' she said, lowering the club gently so that it rested on his chest. 'He didn't tell me.'
'Just in case of emergencies,' said Joe. 'And you've got an emergency, right?'
It seemed reasonable to assume that whatever was going on in this poor woman's mangled mind could be labelled an emergency.
'Yes,' said Lucy Naysmith. 'You see, I thought when I saw her she'd brought my little girl round like she'd promised. But when I tried to take her she started screaming at me. Felix told me he had to talk to her alone, and he took her upstairs, and I was in the kitchen getting a drink when I heard you and I thought it might be ... I'm sorry I didn't recognize you, Mr. Sixsmith. If only Felix had told me you were coming. Let me help you up.'
Suddenly she had become very middle-class hostess, full of concern for her guest's comfort. Joe let himself be pulled to his feet and though he would have preferred to remain upright in case she had another change of heart, he was so weak at the knees he couldn't resist when she eased him into one of the high-backed leather armchairs. He touched the side of his head. There was blood on his fingers. She poured him a glass of whisky from a crystal decanter. He drank it then reached for the decanter, soaked his handkerchief in the Scotch and gently bathed the broken skin. It felt very tender but his guess was no worse. He had, as attested by surviving many hard falls in his accident strewn childhood, a very hard head.
Finally, after another internal application of the very smooth Scotch, he said, 'So Felix is upstairs with Dorrie and the kid, right?'
That's right. It will be OK, won't it, Mr. Sixsmith? I mean, I don't think I could stand any more
Her good-hostess veneer was very fragile. Beneath it she was crazed in every sense, her whole being ready to fly apart in unpredictable fragments.
Joe tried to bend his mind to the task of keeping her together long enough to regain his strength and find out exactly what was going on. But his mind kept veering back to the answer-machine tape. Dorrie's voice ... your order is ready for collection... and Dorrie telling him I was sure I'd hear from him the day after Boxing Day but nothing. So I thought enough's enough and first thing the next morning I rang.. He dragged himself back to here and now.
: 'It must have been hard finding out Felix had fathered a child on Dorrie when you couldn't have one,' he said
! sympathetically.
'Yes. At first I just wanted to kill them both,' she said, very matter-of-fact. 'But once Felix explained ...'
Explained what? This was important, but all he could think of was that the next morning had to be the morning of the twenty-eighth. But the message from Potter saying how urgent it was that Naysmith should come to town and meet
! him the next day hadn't been left till the afternoon of the
| twenty-eighth, not long before his own abortive meeting with Potter had taken place. Yet that message came on the machine before Dorrie's His head felt like it was splitting open. But he mustn't let a silence develop into which Lucy Naysmith's sanity might fall. He opened his mouth and discovered that miraculously not thinking about
