F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S
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C H A P T E R O N E
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TAKE ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE,” said Isabel.
Jamie nodded. “One hundred.”
“Now, out of those one hundred,” Isabel continued, “how many will mean well?”
It was typical of the sort of trying question Isabel asked herself, in the way in which we sometimes ask ourselves questions that admit of no definitive answer. She was an optimist when it came to humankind, unfashionably so, and so she thought the answer was ninety-eight, possibly even ninety-nine. Jamie, the realist, after a few moments’ thought, said eighty.
But this was not a question which could be disposed of so easily; it raised in its wake other, more troubling questions.
Were those one or two people the way they were because of the throw of the genetic dice—a matter of patterns and repeats deep in the chemistry of their DNA—or was it something that went wrong for them a long time ago, in some dark room of childhood, and stayed wrong? Of course there was quite another possibility: they
She was sitting in a delicatessen when she remembered this conversation with Jamie. Now, from that convenient vantage 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h point, she looked out of the window—that man who was crossing the road right then, for example; the one with the thin mouth, the impatient manner, and the buttoned collar was perhaps one of that tiny minority of the malevolent. There was something about him, she felt, that made one uneasy; something in his eyes which suggested ruthlessness, a man who would not wait for others, who did not care, who would suffer from road rage even while walking . . . She smiled at the thought. But there was certainly something unsettling in his demeanour, a hint of poisoned sexuality about him, she felt; a whiff of cruelty, something not quite right.
She looked away; one did not want such a person to see one staring; nor, she reminded herself, did she want to catch herself engaging in such idle speculation. Imagining things about perfect strangers might seem a harmless enough pursuit, but it could lead to all sorts of ridiculous fantasies and fears. And Isabel was aware that of all her manifold failings, thinking too much about things was one of the most egregious.
Of course a delicatessen in Edinburgh was not the most obvious place to entertain such thoughts on the nature of good and evil, but Isabel was a philosopher and knew full well that philosophical speculation came upon one in the strangest places and at the strangest times. The delicatessen was owned by her niece, Cat, and in addition to selling the usual things that such shops sold—the sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, the fresh anchovy fillets and the small bars of Austrian marzipan—this delicatessen served coffee at the three or four small marble- topped tables that Cat had found on a trip to the Upper Loire valley and that she had carted back to Scotland in a hired self-drive van.
Isabel was sitting at one of these tables, a freshly made cap-puccino before her, a copy of that morning’s
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paper open at the crossword page. Her coffee had been made by Cat’s assistant, Eddie, a shy young man to whom something terrible and unexplained had happened some time ago and who was still awkward in his dealings with Isabel and with others.
Eddie had gained in confidence recently, especially since he had taken up with a young Australian woman who had taken a job for a few months in the delicatessen, but he still blushed unexpectedly and would end a conversation with a murmur and a turning away of the head.
“You’re by yourself,” said Eddie, as he brought Isabel’s coffee to her table. “Where’s the . . .” He trailed off.
Isabel smiled at him encouragingly. “The baby? He’s called Charlie, by the way.”
Eddie nodded, glancing in the direction of Cat’s office at the back of the delicatessen. “Yes, of course, Charlie. How old is he now?”
“Three months. More or less exactly.”
Eddie absorbed this information. “So he can’t say anything yet?”
Isabel began to smile, but stopped herself; Eddie could be easily discouraged. “They don’t say anything until they’re quite a bit older, Eddie. A year or so. Then they never stop. He gurgles, though. A strange sound that means
“I’d like to see him sometime,” said Eddie vaguely. “But I think that . . .” He left the sentence unfinished, yet Isabel knew what he meant.
“Yes,” she said, glancing in the direction of Cat’s door. “Well, that is a bit complicated, as you probably know.”
Eddie moved away. A customer had entered the shop and was peering at the counter display of antipasti; he needed to return to his duties.
6
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel sighed. She could have brought Charlie with her, but she had decided against it, leaving him instead at the house with her housekeeper, Grace. She often brought him to Bruntsfield, wheeling him, a wrapped-up cocoon, in his baby buggy, negotiating the edge of the pavement with care, proud in the way of a new mother, almost surprised that here she was, Isabel Dalhousie, with her own child, her son. But on these occasions she did not go into Cat’s delicatessen, because she knew that Cat was still uncomfortable about Charlie.
Cat had forgiven Isabel for Jamie. When it had first become apparent that Isabel was having an affair with him, Cat had been incredulous: “Him? My ex-boyfriend? You?” Surprise had been followed by anger, expressed in breathless staccato: “I’m sorry. I can’t. I just can’t get used to it. The idea.”
