"At last, a familiar face."
He didn"t open his arms to embrace her, but she went to him and kissed him lightly on both cheeks.
"One of the nurses will get you something to drink, if you"d like," he said.
"Yes, I"d like some coffee. It"s bitter out there."
"Maybe Maurice"ll get it, if I promise to unburden my soul."
"Do you?" said Maurice.
"I do. I promise. You"ll know the secrets of my potty training by this time tomorrow."
"Milk and sugar?" Maurice asked.
"Just milk," Charlie said. "Unless her tastes have changed."
"No," she told him. "Of course not. Judith doesn"t change. Judith"s eternal."
Maurice withdrew, leaving them to talk. There was no embarra.s.sed silence. He had his spiel ready, and while he delivered it-a speech about how glad he was that she"d come, and how much he hoped it meant she would begin to forgive him-she studied his changed face. He"d lost weight and was without his toupee, which revealed in his physiognomy qualities she"d never seen before. His large nose and tugged-down mouth, with jutting over-large lower lip, lent him the look of an aristocrat fallen on hard times. She doubted that she"d ever find it in her heart to love him again, but she could certainly manage a twinge of pity, seeing him so reduced.
"I suppose you want a divorce," he said.
"We can talk about that another time."
"Do you need money?"
"Not at the moment."
"If you do-"
"I"ll ask."
A male nurse appeared with coffee for Jude, hot chocolate for Estabrook, and biscuits. When he"d gone, she plunged into a confession. One from her, she reasoned, might elicit one from him.
"I went to the house," she said. "To collect my jewelry."
"And you couldn"t get into the safe."
"Oh, no, I got in."
He didn"t look at her, but sipped his chocolate noisily.
"And I found some very strange things, Charlie. I"d like to talk about them."
"I don"t know what you mean."
"Some souvenirs. A piece of a statute. A book."
"No," he said, still not looking her way. "Those aren"t mine. I don"t know what they are. Oscar gave them to me to look after."
Here was an intriguing connection. "Where did Oscar get them?" she asked him.
"I didn"t inquire," Estabrook said with a detached air. "He travels a lot, you know."
"I"d like to meet him."
"No, you wouldn"t," he said hurriedly. "You wouldn"t like him at all."
"Globe-trotters are always interesting," she said, attempting to preserve a lightness in her tone.
"I told you," he said. "You wouldn"t like him."
"Has he been to see you?"
"No. And I wouldn"t see him if he did. Why are you asking me these questions? You"ve never cared about Oscar before."
"He is is your brother," she said. "He has some filial responsibility." your brother," she said. "He has some filial responsibility."
"Oscar? He doesn"t care for anybody but himself. He only gave me those presents as a sop."
"So they were were gifts. I thought you were just looking after them." gifts. I thought you were just looking after them."
"Does it matter?" he said, raising his voice a little. "Just don"t touch them, they"re dangerous. You put them back, yes?"
She lied and told him she had, realizing any more discussion on the matter would only infuriate him further.
"Is there a view out of the window?" she asked him.
"Of the heath," he said. "It"s very pretty on sunny days, apparently. They found a body there on Monday. A woman, strangled. I watched them combing the bushes all day yesterday and all day today: looking for clues, I suppose. In this weather. Horrible, to be out in this weather, digging around looking for soiled underwear or some such. Can you imagine? I thought: I"m d.a.m.n lucky I"m in here, warm and cosy."
If there was any indication of a change in his mental processes it was here, in this strange digression. An earlier Estabrook would have had no patience with any conversation that was not serving a clear purpose. Gossip and its purveyors had drawn his contempt like little else, especially when he knew he was the subject of the t.i.ttle-tattle. As to gazing out of a window and wondering how others were faring in the cold, that would have been literally unthinkable two months before. She liked the change, just as she liked the new-found n.o.bility in his profile. Seeing the hidden man revealed gave her faith in her own judgment. Perhaps it was this Estabrook she"d loved all along.
They spoke for a while more, without returning to any of the personal matters between them, and parted on friendly terms, with an embrace that was genuinely warm.
"When will you come again?" he asked her.
"In the next couple of days," she told him.
"I"ll be waiting."
So the gifts she"d found in the safe had come from Oscar G.o.dolphin. Oscar the mysterious, who"d kept the family name while brother Charles disowned it; Oscar the enigmatic; Oscar the globe-trotter. How far afield had he gone, she wondered, to have returned with such outre trophies? Somewhere out of this world, perhaps, into the same remoteness to which she"d seen Gentle and Pie"oh"pah dispatch themselves? She began to suspect that there was some conspiracy abroad. If two men who had no knowledge of each other, Oscar G.o.dolphin and John Zacharias, knew about this other world and how to remove themselves there, how many others in her circle also knew? Was it information only available to men? Did it come with the p.e.n.i.s and a mother fixation, as part of the male apparatus? Had Taylor known? Did Clem? Or was this some kind of family secret, and the part of the puzzle she was missing was the link between a G.o.dolphin and a Zacharias?
Whatever the explanation, it was certain she would not get answers from Gentle, which meant she had to seek out brother Oscar. She tried by the most direct route first: the telephone directory. He wasn"t listed. She then tried via Lewis Leader, but he claimed to have no knowledge of the man"s whereabouts or fortunes, telling her that the affairs of the two brothers were quite separate, and he had never been called to deal with any matter involving Oscar G.o.dolphin.
"For all I know," he said, "the man could be dead." Having drawn a blank with the direct routes, she was thrown back upon the indirect. She returned to Estabrook"s house and scoured it thoroughly, looking for Oscar"s address or telephone number. She found neither, but she did turn up a photograph alb.u.m Charlie had never shown to her, in which pictures of what she took to be the two brothers appeared. It wasn"t difficult to distinguish one from the other. Even in those early pictures Charlie had the troubled look the camera always found in him, whereas Oscar, younger by a few years, was nevertheless the more confident of the pair: a little overweight, but carrying it easily, smiling an easy smile as he hooked his arm around his brother"s shoulders. She removed the most recent of the photographs from the alb.u.m which pictured Charles at p.u.b.erty or thereabouts, and kept it. Repet.i.tion, she found, made theft easier. But it was the only information about Oscar she took away with her. If she was to get to the traveler and find out in what world he"d bought his souvenirs, she"d have to work on Estabrook to do so. It would take time, and her impatience grew with every short and rainy day. Even though she had the freedom to buy a ticket anywhere on the planet, a kind of claustrophobia was upon her. There was another world to which she wanted access. Until she got it, Earth itself would be a prison.
Leader called Oscar on the morning of 17 January, with the news that his brother"s estranged wife was asking for information on his whereabouts.
"Did she say why?"
"No, not precisely. But she"s very clearly sniffing after something. She"s apparently seen Estabrook three times in the last week."
"Thank you, Lewis. I appreciate this."
"Appreciate it in hard cash, Oscar," Leader replied. "I"ve had a very expensive Christmas."
"When have you ever gone empty-handed?" Oscar said. "Keep me posted."
The lawyer promised to do so, but Oscar doubted he"d provide much more by way of useful information. Only truly despairing souls confided in lawyers, and he doubted Judith was the despairing type. He"d never met her-Charlie had seen to that-but if she"d survived his company for any time at all she had to have a will of iron. Which begged the question: Why would a woman who knew (presuming she did) that her husband had conspired to kill her, seek out his company, unless she had an ulterior motive? And was it conceivable that said motive was finding brother Oscar? If so, such curiosity had to be nipped in the bud. There were already enough variables at play, what with the Society"s purge now under way, and the inevitable police investigation on its heels, not to mention his new majordomo Augustine (ne Dowd), who was behaving in altogether too snotty a fashion. And of course, most volatile of these variables, sitting in his asylum beside the heath, Charlie himself, probably crazy, certainly unpredictable, with all manner of tidbits in his head which could do Oscar a lot of harm. It could be only a matter of time before he started to become talkative, and when he did, what better ear to drop his discretions into than that of his inquiring wife? Dowd), who was behaving in altogether too snotty a fashion. And of course, most volatile of these variables, sitting in his asylum beside the heath, Charlie himself, probably crazy, certainly unpredictable, with all manner of tidbits in his head which could do Oscar a lot of harm. It could be only a matter of time before he started to become talkative, and when he did, what better ear to drop his discretions into than that of his inquiring wife?
That evening he sent Dowd (he couldn"t get used to that saintly Augustine) up to the clinic, with a basket of fruit for his brother.
"Find a friend there, if you can," he told Dowd. "I need to know what Charlie babbles about when he"s being bathed."
"Why don"t you ask him directly?"
"He hates me, that"s why. He thinks I stole his mess of pottage when Papa introduced me into the Tabula Rasa instead of Charlie."
"Why did your father do that?"
"Because he knew Charlie was unstable, and he"d do the Society more harm than good. I"ve had him under control until now. He"s had his little gifts from the Dominions. He"s had you fawn upon him when he needed something out of the ordinary, like his a.s.sa.s.sin. This all started with that f.u.c.king a.s.sa.s.sin! Why couldn"t you have just killed the woman yourself?"
"What do you take me for?" Dowd said with distaste. "I couldn"t lay hands on a woman. Especially not a beauty."
"How do you know she"s a beauty?"
"I"ve heard her talked about."
"Well, I don"t care what she looks like. I don"t want her meddling in my business. Find out what she"s up to. Then we"ll work out our response."
Dowd came back a few hours later, with alarming news.
"Apparently she"s persuaded him to take her to the estate."
"What? What?" Oscar bounded from his chair. The parrots rose up squawking in sympathy. "She knows more than she should. s.h.i.t! All that heartache to keep the Society out of our hair, and now this b.i.t.c.h conies along and we"re in worse trouble than ever."
"Nothing"s happened yet."
"But it will, it will! She"ll wind him around her little finger, and he"ll tell her everything."
"What do you want to do about it?"
Oscar went to hush the parrots. "Ideally?" he said, as he smoothed their ruffled wings. "Ideally I"d have Charlie vanish off the face of the earth."
"He had much the same ambition for her," Dowd observed.
"Meaning what?"
"Just that you"re both quite capable of murder."
Oscar made a contemptuous grunt. "Charlie was only playing at it," he said. "He"s got no b.a.l.l.s! He"s got no vision!" He returned to his high-backed chair, his expression sullen. "It"s not going to hold, d.a.m.n it," he said. "I can feel it in my gut. We"ve kept things neat and tidy so far, but it"s not going to hold. Charlie has to be taken out of the equation."
"He"s your brother."
"He"s a burden."
"What I mean is: he"s your your brother. You should be the one to dispatch him." brother. You should be the one to dispatch him."
Oscar"s eyes widened. "Oh, my Lord," he said.
"Think what they"d say in Yzordderrex, if you were to tell them."
"What? That I killed my own brother? I don"t see much charm in that."
"But that you did what you had to do, however unpalatable, to keep the secret safe." Dowd paused to let the idea blossom. "That sounds heroic to me. Think what they"ll say."
"I"m thinking."
"It"s your reputation in Yzordderrex you care about, isn"t it, not what happens in the Fifth? You"ve said before that this world"s getting duller all the time."
Oscar pondered this for a while. "Maybe I should should slip away. Kill them both to make sure n.o.body ever knows where I"ve gone-" slip away. Kill them both to make sure n.o.body ever knows where I"ve gone-"
"Where we"ve we"ve gone." gone."
"-then slip away and pa.s.s into legend. Oscar G.o.dolphin, who left his crazy brother dead beside his wife and disappeared. Oh, yes. That"d make quite a headline in Patashoqua." He mused a few moments more. "What"s the cla.s.sic sibling murder weapon?" he finally asked.
"The jawbone of an a.s.s."
"Ridiculous."
"You"ll think of something better."
"So I will. Make me a drink, Dowdy. And have one yourself. We"ll drink to escape."
"Doesn"t everybody?" Dowd replied, but the remark was lost on G.o.dolphin, who was already plunged deep into murderous thought.
20
Gentle and Pie were six days on the Patashoquan Highway, days measured not by the watch on Pie"s wrist but by the brightening and darkening of the peac.o.c.k sky. On the fifth day the watch gave up the ghost anyway, maddened, Pie supposed, by the magnetic field surrounding a city of pyramids they pa.s.sed. Thereafter, even though Gentle wanted to preserve some sense of how time was proceeding in the Dominion they"d left, it was virtually impossible. Within a few days their bodies were accommodating the rhythm of their new world, and he let his curiosity feast on more pertinent matters: chiefly, the landscape through which they were travelling.