“Yes, that’s it,” Jonas said. “Hackett. Good name for a detective. Bit of a rough diamond. Country cute, I’ll grant you, but not what you’d call bright. Can you tell me now, young lad, ” he said, doing an uncannily close imitation of Hackett’s tone and accent, “ where you were on the night of the full moon, and can you produce a witness to prove it? ” He smiled at her, and his voice sank to a purr. “That would be you, my dear. Our witness.”
“Me?”
“Yes. At Breen’s place, the night of the party. I told you already.”
“Why did he want to know where you were? Why that night?”
The brothers glanced at each other. Jonas laughed. “Because, my dear, that was the night Jack Clancy fell out of his boat and drowned.”
She looked away. Yes; yes, of course.
Abruptly Jonas sprang up from the sofa. “Music,” he said. “Let’s have some music.”
At the other end of the room there was a radiogram, a great mahogany brute standing on four little braced peglike legs. Jonas opened wide the cabinet doors and leaned down to read the spines of the record sleeves. “Eeny meeny miney mo,” he murmured, and extracted an album, “catch old Frankie by the toe!” He turned, showing the record cover with its stylized portrait of the singer-the hat, the cigarette-standing in a melancholy mood on a street corner at night. “Frankie-boy,” he said, “every bobby-soxer’s damp dream. Here we go.” He took out the disc and put it on the turntable. There was a faint hiss and then came the first plinking notes of the tune picked out against a soupy orchestral background. Jonas struck a pose, head back, nostrils flared, his arms encircling an invisible partner, then danced a sweeping step or two, singing along with the record. Phoebe could feel James beside her laughing without sound. Still singing, Jonas now supplied his own lyrics.
“Where were you, lad, on that fatal evening?
Can you prooooove your whe-ere-abouts?
If I ask Miss Griffin if she saw you
Will she back up your cast-iron al-i-biiieee?”
He danced now in the direction of the sofa, and as he swept past he grabbed Phoebe’s wrist and drew her stumbling to her feet and took her in his arms and waltzed her off around the room at such a pace she felt her feet were hardly touching the floor. His brother, meanwhile, threw himself back on the sofa, clapping his hands and raucously whinnying.
Phoebe, her heart hammering in its cage, saw the room spinning around her. She was dizzy already. She could smell the man who was holding her, his odor a mingling of sweat, cologne, and something else, sharp and sour, a faint acid reek. On the second turn around the room she glimpsed over Jonas’s shoulder the door opening, and someone, a woman, coming in. For a second the woman’s face, slender and pale, was a point of stillness in the general whirl; then Jonas swept on, whirling Phoebe with him. They passed by James, asprawl with his arms stretched out at either side along the back of the sofa, watching her with huge enjoyment. Then in rapid succession came the window, the sideboard, the sofa and James seated, the Jellett abstract, and then the woman again, in the doorway.
Jonas too had seen her, and veered towards her now, and letting go of Phoebe’s left hand he caught the woman by the wrist and pulled her into the dance with them. On they dashed, three of them now, whirling and whirling. The woman seemed quite calm, and merely amused, as if she were used to this kind of thing. Smiling, she kept her eye fixed on Phoebe. Abruptly Jonas let go of both of them and flung himself down with a great laughing gasp to sprawl beside his brother. Phoebe stumbled, and would have fallen if the woman had not put an arm round her waist and held her firmly. They waltzed on together, the woman keeping no better time to the music than Jonas had. She was wearing a green silk blouse and a black skirt with petticoats underneath it.
“I’m Mona,” she said. “Mona Delahaye. And you’re Phoebe, yes? I know your father, a little.”
The song ended and they stopped, and Phoebe stood panting, and smiled back at the smiling woman, and thought how little like a widow she seemed. Both twins now regarded them with keen interest. Mona ignored them, and walked to the rosewood sideboard and poured herself a gin, and added a splash of tonic. “You two,” she said accusingly, addressing the twins over her shoulder, “you’ve used all the ice again!”
Jonas looked sideways at his brother, and James put his hands on his knees and heaved himself to his feet with a histrionic sigh. “Oh, all right,” he said, “I’ll go.”
When he had left Mona went and sat where he had been sitting, pressing down her skirt and ballooning petticoats with a careless gesture, and smiled at Phoebe again and patted the place beside her. “Come,” she said, “come and sit.” She turned her head and spoke to Jonas. “Move over, you.”
Phoebe did as she was invited and came and sat down beside Mona. She felt exhilarated, but dizzy, too, more than dizzy-how much gin had she drunk? — and her tongue felt thick and she had difficulty focusing her eyes. Mona had grabbed Jonas’s glass and with her fingers fished out what remained of the ice cubes in it and dropped them into her own drink.
“Hey!” Jonas said, laughing as he attempted to take back his glass. “You are a cow.”
“And you’re a pig,” Mona answered complacently.
They were like a pair of spoiled siblings fighting over a toy, Phoebe thought. This observation seemed to her at once profound and funny. She blinked-could she be tipsy already?
Mona turned to her. Mona had the most extraordinary violet eyes that tapered at their outer edges and turned up into points. Her scarlet lipstick made her face seem all the more pale. She was very lovely, though her lips were a little thin. Phoebe wondered what it would feel like to be a man kissing that mouth. At that moment, as if Mona had read Phoebe’s thoughts, she parted her lips and Phoebe glimpsed between them the fire-pink sharp little tip of her tongue. That was what she would do if she were being kissed, she would open her mouth like that, just barely parting the lips, and the tip of her tongue would dart out.
“You look quite wild,” Mona said. “What have these two brutes been doing to you?”
“Oh, just-dancing,” Phoebe said. Her head felt terribly heavy all of a sudden, and she leaned back against the sofa, letting her shoulders droop.
“She’s a very good dancer.” Jonas spoke in a soberly judicious tone.
“Yes, she is,” Mona said.
She was still smiling and gazing searchingly at Phoebe.
“She has wings on her heels.” Jonas, too, was looking at Phoebe, leaning forward to see past Mona.
“Have you?” Mona said, still gazing at Phoebe. “Have you wings at your heels?”
With both those pairs of eyes fixed on her, Phoebe felt as if she were an exotic creature perched in a cage and being stared at. What a narrow face Jonas had, a narrow face and a wide mouth, which gave him a faintly cruel look.
James came back with the ice and Jonas insisted that they all have another gin and tonic. Phoebe protested feebly that she did not want anything more to drink, but was ignored. She was still sitting with her head leaning against the back on the sofa and her hands resting limply in her lap. Mona, beside her, touched her hair, peering more deeply still into her eyes. “Jonas,” she said, “you haven’t given her anything, have you?”
Jonas, at the sideboard again pouring drinks, threw her a look of exaggerated outrage. “As if I would!” He brought them their glasses. Phoebe had difficulty holding hers, though it felt wonderfully cool. She lifted it before her face in both hands and watched with fascination a drop of condensed moisture making its way in a gleaming zigzag down the misted side. It seemed to her magical, a thing never witnessed before now. She wanted to tell the others about it but did not think she would be able to find the words.
“Come along,” Jonas said briskly, extending a hand to each of them and taking Phoebe’s glass. “Let’s us face the music, my dears, and dance!”
The two women stood up. Phoebe’s knees wobbled, and she reached out before her for support, and Mona took her hand and put an arm round her waist again, and slowly they began to dance. James and Jonas too were dancing together now. Round and round the floor they went, the two couples, in opposite directions. Each time they passed each other Jonas would make an elaborate, eighteenth-century bow, and James would laugh his laugh.
Phoebe, her head spinning, felt herself gliding off into a sort of trance. Her feet seemed very far away, and glancing down she saw with surprise that they were moving as if by themselves, to their own rhythm, pacing out the measure of the dance. Once her arm brushed against the side of Mona’s breast, but Mona seemed not to notice. The scarab-green silk of Mona’s blouse felt as if there were electricity running through it.
