“The law is so patriarchal,” Alice commented to me.
“Er,” I said.
“The husband has rights to his wife's possessions,” she explained.
“So, Ronnie is married to Bunny?”
“Bunny isn't her name, of course,” Alice said blithely. “We called her that after she proved so enthusiastic about-”
“ Alice!” Ronnie chided.
She giggled again, and finished the sentence. “-about reproducing. Three children in four years indicates a certain enthusiasm, don't you think? But yes, she and Ronnie and I are married. Does that shock you?”
I was not about to confess to any shock at the doctrines of free love, but I did go back to my initial concern with renewed urgency.
“Are the children living here?”
“Not at the moment. Bunny's mother wouldn't have it, and came to take them away.”
I breathed more easily; at least I didn't have the safety of innocents on my hands.
Ronnie cursed at the bottle; Alice propped her elbows on the high table to observe his struggles. I followed gingerly, keeping to the very edges of the room. The cork had come apart, so Ronnie jammed the remnants inside with a carving tool, then picked up the nearest glass, which bore both lipstick and food around its rim. He splashed some wine and cork bits into the glass and set it down in front of me. I raised it gingerly to the vicinity of my lips- although, from the raw smell rising out of the glass, any contamination would be well and truly sterilised.
“When did you meet the Adlers?” I asked bluntly. It had been a long day, and I figured these two were in no condition to require subtlety.
“The winter sometime.”
“It was at the Epsteins' Christmas party, remember?” Ronnie said.
“Jacob Epstein gave a
“It wasn't so much a Christmas party as a party at Christmas,” Alice explained helpfully. “His wife gave it to show that she wasn't still angry at Kathleen. You know Jacob's wife, Margaret? She took a shot at one of Jacob's lovers last year, when she found out Kathleen was pregnant, although she'd been perfectly willing to raise the little girl he had by someone else five or six years before. She's usually perfectly content to let Jacob's lovers live with them, but for some reason she took against Kathleen. Anyway, that's settled now.”
Heavens, my life was dull. “So that was when you met Damian and Yolanda?”
“Yolanda wasn't there, was she, Ronnie?”
“Wasn't she?”
“No, I remember because Damian couldn't come out with us to the country after the party, he had to be home because Yolanda would murder him if she heard he'd left the child by itself. It must have been when they first got here-that's right, there was some nonsense about finding a nanny. Children are so tedious, aren't they? Why can't one just leave them to their own devices?”
“Was Yolanda away, then?”
“Something religious, wasn't it?” he said, remembering.
“Probably,” she agreed.
“I do remember now. You wanted him to come along because you hoped you could get him into bed.”
Alice laughed and shot me a glance; I braced myself for further naughtiness. “Really, it was Ronnie who wanted to have a fling with him, and was hoping I'd join in. I would have, too.”
“I don't blame you,” I said evenly. “Damian is very attractive.”
“Have you-”
“No,” I said, my response a shade too quick. “No, I have not. Nor with Yolanda,” I added, to restore my Bohemian bona fides.
“Neither have we. He turned us down, first one, then the other. Not that I've given up on him-he has a dark side one can practically taste.”
“Er, what do you mean by dark side, exactly?”
“Oh, Damian comes across as the wholesome boy, married to one woman, a daddy even, but when one comes to know him, the darker impulses are there. I mean to say, just look at his paintings.”
I had to agree that
“He keeps his temper under control,” I ventured.
“One would hardly know he has one, most of the time,” she agreed, which exchange got me no further.
I had taken but a single sip from the glass in my hand, but either the alcohol was strong or the conversation itself was dizzying. I put the glass down, caught it as it tipped, and moved it to a flatter place on the edge of a sheet of gravy-smeared newspaper, the remains of someone's lunch. Perhaps several days' lunches. Ronnie stretched out a hand and absently broke off a bit of crust from a dried-up stub of beef pie, ignoring the mouse droppings scattered around it. I shuddered, and would have averted my eyes except they were caught by a word on the gravy-smeared newsprint:
Alice asked if Ronnie had picked up the eggs and bread she'd asked him to get, and he declared that it wasn't his job, causing her to retort that she was hungry, and they fell to wrangling about whose responsibility it had been to stock the pantry. Since I had no intention of putting any morsel of this household's food into my mouth, I idly nudged the wad of crust to one side, the better to see what event in the nation's placid southland had caught the attention of the afternoon paper. I read:
MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN SUSSEX
The body of a young Oriental woman in city dress has been found at the feet of the Wilmington Giant on the South Downs, near the busy seaside resort of Eastbourne.
Although the Giant is a popular landmark for country ramblers, Police say that the woman was wearing a summer frock and light shoes, inadequate for the footpaths that lead into the prehistoric si
This is the second death to
following the suicide at Cerne A
The rest of the article was glued to obscurity by brown gravy.
I ripped the page from the table and held it out to my companions. They fell silent.
“I must go,” I said. “May I have this?”
Alice looked at the torn, grease-spotted sheet in my hand and made a gesture to indicate I should help myself.
I turned for the door, felt as much as heard the beams creak from below, and hastily veered back to the walls. At the doorway I paused to look at the two, staring after me in bewilderment and, perhaps, disappointment.
“You really mustn't put any more weight onto those floorboards,” I urged them. “It's an awfully long way to the ground.”
Silence followed me all the way down the stairs.
20
within every individual, no matter how mean, a spark
that might be nurtured, fed, and coaxed into open flame.
Testimony, II:3
BY DINT OF PLANTING MYSELF IN FRONT OF A PASSING taxicab with another of Holmes' guinea coins gleaming in my outstretched palm, I reached Victoria and was sprinting across the platform-folding up the sagging waist of Holmes' trousers as I ran-just as the last southbound train of the night was gathering itself for departure.
