The Lemur by Benjamin Black Page B

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.

7
     
    THE CLEAVER
     
    John Glass woke early out of a riot of vivid and disorderly dreams, all detailed recollection of which drained from his mind the moment he opened his eyes. He lay in the half dark feeling paralyzed by dread. What was the matter, what terrible thing was amiss? Then he remembered the murder of Dylan Riley, the black weight of which lay over him like a shroud. How was it he could have been so calm yesterday, so detached, when he heard of the young man’s killing and Captain Ambrose summoned him to Police Headquarters? He