The Love Talker

THE LOVE TALKER.

Elizabeth Peters.

CHAPTER 1.

Once upon a time there was a nice big girl named Laura. She had rosy cheeks and nut-brown hair and three dimples, one in one cheek and two in the other. This nice big girl (no, she was not a nice little girl; she was five feet nine inches tall and weighed one hundred and twenty-seven pounds). ... As I was saying, this nice big girl lived in a nice little house. (It was little, even if it wasn"t a house. It was actually an apartment, the kind they call an efficiency; so you see, it was very little indeed.) One winter day she was sitting by her window watching the snowflakes make pretty patterns on the pane when there was a knock at the door. A messenger dressed in blue, with gold braid, had brought her a letter. Little did she know it then, but the letter was from the elves, inviting her to visit them in their woodland haunts.

An hour after the mailman had handed her the special delivery letter Laurie was still sitting by the window staring at the big fat snowflakes. Instead of thinking pretty thoughts about their exquisite patterns she was wondering how many more inches the snow-beleaguered city of Chicago was due to get this time. She swore aloud, in language unbecoming a nice girl, big or little. What evil imp had possessed her to select Chicago as the place in which to write her dissertation? Why not Florida or California, for G.o.d"s sake?

There had been sensible reasons for the decision. The chance to sublet a friend"s apartment, at a reasonable rent; the proximity to the university, with its excellent library. And there was the real reason: Bob. Bob was majoring in philosophy at the university. Bob was big and blond and adorably homely .. . and selfish and lazy and arrogant. She had not discovered that he possessed these additional attributes until after they had tried a brief experiment in communal living, and she thanked heaven that some residue of common sense, and the terms of her lease, had persuaded her to keep her own tiny apartment. Well, she should have known better. No doubt Bob"s field of study had given her a false impression. She wouldn"t have been surprised to find that a budding lawyer or doctor or business executive was a ravening chauvinist in sheep"s clothing, but philosophers were supposed to be gentle, rational, and fair-minded. She should have remembered Nietzche and the Superman, Plato"s views on slaves, women, and other inferior creatures, and similar philosophical aberrations.

The storm-gray skies were so dark that she could see her face reflected in the window gla.s.s, and its malevolent expression and dim transparency suggested something out of a horror story-a windblown demon, pausing in its flight over the cities of men to perch for a moment and leer in at her window. A doppelganger, the phantom double of the soul, whose appearance portended danger and death.

The externalization of her own evil thoughts, grimacing and glowering at her. . . .

Laurie"s wide mouth curved in a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt, and the reflected features changed from diabolical to benign. Malevolence sat strangely on her face; it was round and pink and healthy-looking, with big brown eyes-the Morton brown eyes, so dark they looked black in most lights-and a generous, full-lipped mouth. Normally her mind was as healthy as her face; hostile thoughts were alien to it. She had spent too much time thinking up rude descriptions of Bob. At least the letter had given her something new to worry about.

Laurie should not have been staring out the window. She had a towering pile of notes on the table, on the left side of her typewriter, and a stack of virgin typing paper on the right side. She should have been working. Instead, she reached for the letter and read it again.

The beautiful, Spencerian handwriting was a little tremulous, but that was not surprising. Great-Aunt Ida was getting on. She and Laurie shared a birthday, so it wasn"t hard for Laurie to figure out the old lady"s age. Ida had been sixty-eight the year Laurie was sixteen. She had spent most of that summer at Idlewood, and they had had a joint birthday party. So Ida was now seventy-five.

Her mind was as sharp as ever, though. The meticulous grammar and formal phrasing learned in Ida"s long-ago school days were still faultless.

"My dear Laura," the letter began. "Far be it from me to place an additional burden on your time; I know the demands of a scholar"s life and realize you must be "burning the midnight oil" with your books."

Laurie grinned again at that. She had been burning the midnight oil, all right, but not with her books. How typical of her great-aunt to enclose that phrase in quotation marks, as if it were a bit of daring slang.

"However," the letter continued, "it has been some 9 weeks since we last heard from you, and naturally we are concerned over your well-being. I trust you do not leave your apartment after dark. The news broadcasts these days horrify us with their accounts of violence in the cities. I wish you would seriously consider coming to us to finish your dissertation. Our library is excellent, as you know; your old room is waiting for you; you would have the advantages of healthy country air and good food, instead of the sandwiches on which you no doubt subsist. I cannot believe you would patronize establishments of the sort we see on television; surely the waiters and waitresses constantly singing and dancing in the aisles would be enough to disturb one"s digestion, even if the food were edible, which I understand it is not."

Laurie"s grin broadened. Did Ida really suppose that the overworked employees of MacDonald"s and Roy Rogers" burst into song whenever someone ordered a hamburger? The old lady had never set her sensible oxfords inside such a place. Indeed, the very idea of Ida, or Uncle Ned, or dear fluttery Aunt Lizzie munching french fries at a fast-food restaurant set Laurie"s imagination reeling.

So they wanted her to return to the old family homestead, safe from the dangers of the city. Naive as they were, they watched enough television to be aware of those dangers, including some Ida was too proper to mention. Wouldn"t they just love to have her there at Idlewood, firmly under their collective thumb, supervising her diet and her "young men," as they had done when she was sixteen! Remembering some of the young men Ida had considered suitable, Laurie rolled her eyes heavenward. Hermann Schott, for instance. Ida had mentioned that Hermann was still at home, still unmarried. Heaven save her from Hermann, and from Great-Aunt Ida"s matchmaking habits.

And yet . . . Her cynical smile softened as the memories flooded back. There might be worse fates than spending a few months at Idlewood; many advantages to balance the horror of Hermann and his kind. Idlewood had been her summer home for over ten years, and she loved it as much as the old people did.

The stone house had stood on the hilltop for more than two hundred years. Walls three feet thick resisted the cold winds from the western mountains; cedars and pines formed a protective barrier around it. The first Morton to come to Maryland, fleeing the harsh retaliation of a Hanoverian king, had carried his Stuart loyalties and his threadbare kilt to the new world, his only wealth the cut-gla.s.s goblet with the Stuart rose, which had been used to drink the forbidden toast to Bonnie Prince Charlie. In the fertile farmlands of western Maryland he had won a grant of land and founded a family. Unlike many a f.e.c.kless Highland cavalier, Angus Morton had been a hard worker and a shrewd businessman. He and his descendants had prospered. In the early part of the twentieth century Idlewood had been one of the great studs of Maryland, producing two Derby winners. The lovely blooded horses no longer graced the white-fenced pastures, but the original grant of over three hundred acres remained. Fields and pastures had been leased to neighboring farmers, but acres of tangled woods were untouched, giving sanctuary to Uncle Ned"s beloved birds and animals. No hunter ever carried a gun onto the Morton property. The local people knew that Ned haunted the woods like a benevolent troll, and that he was perfectly capable of smashing an expensive rifle to tatters against a rock if he caught someone violating his No Trespa.s.sing signs. Despite his age-Laurie realized he must be nearing seventy-eight-he was in superb physical condition, probably because he spent most of his waking hours out of doors.

Ned had been the first one to welcome her to Idlewood. He had been a hale and hearty sixty-three then; she had been a bewildered, unhappy eight- year-old. Arriving at the bus station in Frederick, she found herself handed over by the driver to a terrifying apparition-a tall, burly, red-faced man in high laced boots and a heavy plaid shirt, who towered over her scrawny frame. But when he leaned down to take her hand she saw that the brown eyes behind his steel-rimmed gla.s.ses were soft with an emotion he was too reticent to express; and his big, hard fingers were very gentle as they clasped hers. They continued to rea.s.sure her as he led her toward the door, although he was muttering to himself in angry tones.

". . . little thing like that, come so far alone . . . always was irresponsible . . . birds make better mothers than Anna!"

Even at eight, Laurie had known why her mother had sent her away. Her parents were both actors; lots of her friends had several daddies and mommies. Dad and Mother were getting a divorce, and they didn"t want her around while they went through the process, which Laurie knew must be unpleasant. "Breaking up," they called it, and they certainly had smashed a lot of dishes while they discussed it. No doubt, Laurie had thought, the divorce itself involved an awesome amount of broken crockery. But until Uncle Ned"s muttered criticism of her mother Laurie had harbored a vague, nagging feeling that she might be at fault in some way. His blunt comments swept away guilt she hadn"t even known she possessed.

So the ride to Idlewood, which she had dreaded, became a pleasant experience. A city child, Laurie had never seen such wide, rolling fields, or a sky so broad and blue. Black-and-white cows, all in a row along a fence, peering interestedly at her, made her giggle. Uncle Ned hardly spoke to her, which was good; most adults asked such silly questions, and she never knew what to answer. He whistled through his teeth, a most fascinating sound; Laurie determined to ask him how he did it. Long before they reached the tree-lined drive that led to the house she had decided she liked him. Then-the wonder of that moment would never be forgotten-she found out he was a magician.

He stopped the car under a canopy of green boughs and opened the door. With a gesture that cautioned her to be still, he walked away from the car and began making strange chirping noises. Something moved among the trees. Before Laurie had time to be frightened, a deer and two fawns stepped delicately onto the gra.s.sy bank.

From one of his pockets Uncle Ned took a handful of grain and held it out. The fawns danced skittishly; but the doe walked up to Ned and ate from his hand.

The moment had imprinted itself on Laurie"s mind, not with the vagueness of most childhood memories, but as brilliant and perfect as a tiny scene from an illuminated ma.n.u.script-the vivid emerald green of the summer leaves washed with sunlight, the soft brown velvet of the doe"s coat, the bright reds and blues of Uncle Ned"s shirt. When the animals finally left, in a flash of lovely movement, Laurie"s chest ached from holding her breath.

"Teach you how to do that," Ned had remarked, as he got into the car. "Takes patience. But you can learn."

Reluctantly Laurie returned from that glowing memory picture to snow and gray skies and the boring realities of adulthood. Had any child ever had a more magical introduction to a place? No wonder she had thought of Idlewood as her private fairyland- Oz, Middle Earth, Avalon, Narnia, a land where the animals could talk and no one ever grew old.

But the aunts and Uncle Ned were getting old. Ned was seventy-eight, Ida three years younger. It had taken Laurie some time to get over her awe of the stately, gray-haired lady who had addressed her, from the first, as an adult. Ida, who never admitted weakness or asked for help, had done so now, in the letter Laurie held. It was not a direct appeal; but knowing her great-aunt as she did, Laurie was able to read between the lines.

"Please consider this suggestion seriously, Laura. I feel I must warn you that you will find some of us sadly changed. Your Uncle Ned continues in excellent health, and I have nothing of which to complain, considering my age. I only hope I will be taken before my mind fails. As you know, your Aunt Elizabeth has always been subject to fancies; but this latest affectation exceeds everything. Fairies in the woods, indeed!"

With this incredible statement the letter ended. Ida"s signature was squeezed onto the bottom of the page.

Laurie knew quite well that her meticulous great-aunt would never have concluded a letter so awkwardly if she had been her usual calm, controlled self. There must have been another page, or part of one, in which Ida had enlarged on Lizzie"s fancies, but for some reason the old lady had decided not to send it.

Aunt Lizzie, the baby-now seventy years old. .. . Aunt Lizzie had always been something of a problem to her strict, literal-minded elder sister. Ida was the only one who called her Elizabeth.

Again Laurie"s memory returned to the past-to that first visit. Her eight-year-old mind had still been bemused by the magic of the deer when they reached the house to find both aunts waiting at the door. Ida, grave and tall in her sober dark dress, had shaken her hand and greeted her formally, but Lizzie had emoted enough for two people. She immediately dropped to her knees and enfolded Laurie in her arms, dripping tears all over her. Marshmallows, chiffon, goosedown pillows, whipped cream .. . Lizzie was all the soft, sweet, gooey things Laurie had ever known, coalesced into the shape of one plump old lady. Aunt Lizzie called her "darling" and "sweetheart," and hugged her a dozen times a day, and stuffed her with cookies when Ida wasn"t looking.

Lizzie was "the domestic one." She cooked superbly, she embroidered and crocheted, and she made Laurie inappropriate, exquisitely st.i.tched Kate Green-away dresses, tucked and trimmed with lace and ruffles. Laurie would have preferred jeans, but she wore those dresses without a word of complaint.

And now, at the tender age of seventy, Lizzie had finally flipped. That was what Ida"s terse hints meant.

Aunt Lizzie"s fancies were a family tradition. Over the years she had enjoyed every psychic fad from spiritualism to a firm belief in flying saucers. Once, when investigating astral projection, she had hypnotized herself so thoroughly that it took a doctor to snap her out of it. Another time she had hired a strange young man from a local college to erect a tower from the top of which electrical impulses would be beamed toward distant galaxies, in the hope of getting return greetings from Arcturus. ("But, Aunt Lizzie, why Arcturus, of all places?" "Oh, I don"t know, darling; it just seemed like the logical spot, don"t you think?") The doctor had to come again, two years later, when Aunt Lizzie, attempting some form of yoga, had found herself unable to get her foot out from under the opposing elbow. Laurie"s favorite fancy was the reincarnation bit; Aunt Lizzie, having concluded that she was the reborn soul of an ancient Egyptian princess, had gone jingling around the house in gold jewelry, draped in a sheet, emitting cryptic sentences in what she fondly believed to be the tongue of Ramses and Tutankhamon. She had bought a dictionary and a grammar and had taken up the study of hieroglyphs, which she scribbled on every flat surface in the house.

It had all been very entertaining and harmless. True, Aunt Lizzie had limped for a few days after the doctor finally got her foot out from under her elbow, but that had only been a slight sprain. Lizzie had a restless, imaginative mind; it was childish in the same sense that children"s minds are unconfined by convention, open to wonder. That very quality had made Aunt Lizzie a wonderful companion for a small girl, and she had unquestionably shaped Laurie"s mental development. She had supplied Laurie lavishly with fairy tales and books of fantasy; the two of them had told each other ghost stories by the light of the dying fire in the parlor, and had scared one another half to death.

So Laurie was not surprised that her aunt should be pursuing fairies. She had tried everything else, and "the little people" were in fashion. The bookstores had several new books on the subject-not, as one might expect, in the juvenile section. Gnomes and fairies and the fantastic worlds of Tolkien and Richard Adams were quite respectable hobbies for intelligent adults.

No, the alarming thing was not the subject itself, or Lizzie"s interest in it. It was Ida"s reaction. She had never been other than scornfully contemptuous of Lizzie"s fantasies; neither had she ever been particularly worried by them. She was worried now. Her concern was implicit in every guarded word, in the very handwriting of her letter. The fact that it had been sent special delivery was a cry of alarm in itself. The Mortons didn"t have to worry about money, but they did not waste pennies. They were still Scots at heart.

Laurie switched on a lamp. It was only four o"clock, but the sky outside was night-dark with winter. Two more hours until the telephone rates changed. She had her own share of Scottish blood, but in her case frugality was necessary; she was supporting herself, and a graduate student"s stipend left no cash for extras. Anyway, Aunt Ida would have a fit if she wasted the money.

As she sat staring at the telephone, it began to ring. The strident shrilling sounded abnormally loud in the silent room. Laurie reached for the phone, and then hesitated. Once before, after a quarrel, Bob had called her and made extravagant promises, which she had been stupid enough to believe. She didn"t want to go through that again. The phone insisted. Reluctantly, Laurie picked it up.

Her heart jumped at the sound of a masculine voice, but even before she had said, "Yes," in reply to the questioning, "Laurie?" she knew it wasn"t Bob.

"You sound funny," the voice said. "Didn"t you ever have those adenoids taken out? Or is it just your corn-fed Midwest accent?"

Laurie removed the telephone from her ear and stared at the mouthpiece. Then she replaced it.

"Who is this?" she demanded.

"Break, my heart," the unfamiliar voice moaned. "She has forgotten. And I had hoped I had left an indelible impression. Dear sibling, don"t you know your one and only brother?"

"Doug?"

"Have you other brothers? I didn"t think so, but with Mother you can never be entirely-"

"Really, Doug!"

"Prissy as ever. How long has it been, sister mine? Five years?"

"Longer than that," Laurie said.

She remembered only too well. The summer she was sixteen, when she and Ida had celebrated their July birthdays with high revelry.

Doug had been seventeen, going on ten; preparing for college in the fall, and insufferably superior as only a boy that age can be. He wasn"t her brother, he was her half-brother, a souvenir of Anna"s first marriage. After Laurie was born her mother had decided that the joys of motherhood were overrated; she had not had other children. Which was a good thing, Laurie thought, if Doug was a specimen of what Anna produced. His father had received custody of him after the divorce, and he was supposed to spend his summers with Anna; which meant, as in Laurie"s case, that he spent them at Idlewood with the Mortons. For six or seven summers she had seen a good deal of him, and had hated every moment of the time they spent together. After he started college he managed to visit Idlewood for a week or so every year, but somehow these visits had never coincided with Laurie"s increasingly infrequent trips east. Normal sibling rivalry had been intensified by other factors, quite obvious to her now. She had no memories of Doug except unpleasant ones.

Doug stuffing himself with cookies so there would be none left for her (and he never even got sick, which added insult to injury); Doug beating her at Scrabble, Parcheesi, and Monopoly every time they played, and jeering at her for being stupid; Doug teaching her to play football, and tackling her every time she got her hands on the ball. It was many years later before she discovered that kicker and pa.s.ser were supposed to be exempt from late hits.

"How did you get my number?" she demanded.

"Ida."

"Why did you. . . . ? Oh." Her mind, usually so quick at putting the pieces together, was slow today. "You got a letter from her too?"

"Right. She sounded so worried I thought I"d better call her."

"I was about to telephone her myself," Laurie admitted. "Though I can"t figure out why she"s so upset."

"She"s upset, all right." Doug"s voice deepened portentously. "My letter was sent special delivery."

Laurie couldn"t help laughing.

"Mine, too. So being richer or not as cheap as I am, you called her. What did she say?"

"Not much. You know how she is about long-distance calls. I had a hard time convincing her I wasn"t on the verge of death, and when she found out I was okay I had an even harder time keeping her from hanging up on me. I couldn"t get much out of her. But I"ve decided to take her up on her invitation. I don"t like the sound of things, and I want to see for myself."

"You really think the situation is that serious?"

"Yes, I do. All the more so since you tell me she sent you the same distress signals. I won"t go into laborious detail about why I think so; you know the old girl as well as I do. You and I are the only ones who care about them. The only ones Ida would call on for help."

"I know."

"So," Doug went on rapidly, "I figured I had better call you. There"s no point in both of us going if you"re tied up with work. I mean, if it"s hard for you to get away ... No point in both-"

"Tom Sawyer," Laurie interrupted.

"Huh?"

"The old "don"t help me whitewash the fence" technique," Laurie muttered. "Never mind. I don"t suppose you are aware of your own foul subconscious motives. How is it you can take time off to go chasing little green elves? I thought you were working for a firm of architects in Atlanta."

"No, no, nothing so plebeian. I"m my own boss. Left Banks, Biddle, and Burton to start my own show."

Laurie grinned fiendishly.

"Aha. You"ve got no clients."

The ensuing silence vibrated with unexpressed emotions. Then Laurie heard a m.u.f.fled sound that might have been, and in fact was, a laugh.

"Got it in one," Doug said. "I"m starving. If I don"t accomplish anything else, at least I can fatten up on Lizzie"s cooking. You coming or not?"

Laurie glanced at the window. It was frosted over, but the hiss of sleety snow was clearly audible.

"I"m coming."

"I could pick you up at the Baltimore airport . . . when?"

"I"ll call you back after I"ve made a reservation."

"Good. If I"m not in," Doug said grandly, "just leave a message with my secretary."

He hung up before she could ask the obvious question: if he was broke, how could he afford a secretary?

The following afternoon, when Laurie"s plane took off from O"Hare, it was snowing again. She was glad she hadn"t waited any longer; a little more of this, and by nighttime the airport might be closed. She settled back in her seat, beamed at the stewardess, and ordered a drink. The pilot announced that it was raining in Baltimore, and that the temperature was forty-three. Rain! Forty-three! Practically tropical, by Chicago standards. A further source of satisfaction was the fact that her phone had been ringing as she locked the door of her apartment, and some psychic sense told her that the caller was Bob. She hoped it had been, and that he would continue to call an empty apartment and wonder where she was.

However, as the plane descended for its landing at Baltimore, Laurie was conscious of a mounting discomfort. She knew its source. She hadn"t seen Doug for years, and she had detested him. Modern psychology had relieved her of any old-fashioned need to love her brother; all the same, she was nervous about seeing him again. She wondered if she would recognize him.

Nor did she. Her eyes pa.s.sed over the tall, sandy-haired man in the leather jacket, though her basic instincts registered his appearance with approval. He knew her, though. Before she had time to look further, she was enveloped in a leathery embrace, her nose mashed against a shirt front smelling of tobacco, aftershave, and . . . Chanel Number Five? As he held her at arms" length, caroling joyful greetings, she saw the smudge of lipstick on his collar and understood the perfume. She also understood how Doug could afford a secretary.

"Dearest sister," Doug murmured, and pulled her toward him again. This time, prepared, she fended him off with a hard hand against his chest.

"You"ll never see any of these people again," she said coldly, indicating the pa.s.sing throngs. "Why put on a show for them?"

"Why not? Gives them a warm, happy feeling about the nuclear family which, as we all know, is in serious trouble. I"d know you anywhere, dear. Same plump face, same buckteeth. . . . Too bad n.o.body in our family believed in orthodontists."

"I have been told," said Laurie, "that the teeth give me a piquant air. I"m so glad your acne didn"t leave bad scars. I mean, in a dim light I can hardly see them."

"Good, good," Doug said approvingly. "Hit back. You"ve toughened up, haven"t you? You used to cry."

"With rage." Laurie found her arm tucked chummily in his as they walked toward the baggage area. He was tall; the top of her head only reached his chin. Yet somehow their strides seemed to match quite well.

They left the terminal with Laurie"s bags, and Doug gestured.

"That"s my car."

It was a low-slung sports car, bright red, adorned with extra strips of chrome and waving antennas. Standing by it, his hands on his hips, was a uniformed policeman.

"Yours?" he demanded unnecessarily, as Doug whipped the door open and slung Laurie"s suitcases in the back.

"Sh.o.r.e is, suh," Doug replied, with a candid smile. "Part of it, leastways; the bank still owns ever"thing "cept the fenders."

Bemused by his sudden lapse into a corny Southern accent, Laurie let him shove her into the car.