Act of Darkness(70)

“What did he talk about to the American Osteopathic Association?”

Clare shrugged. “How wonderful osteopathy is. How wonderful osteopaths are and what good work they do. How any group made up of such caring, concerned, selfless people deserves—”

“Never mind,” Gregor said.

Clare rubbed her knee absently and sighed. “I know. I know exactly how you feel. I didn’t used to, but I do now. Maybe it is time I looked for another line of work.”

“Maybe it’s time I got back to what I was doing when I ran into you,” Gregor said. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Bennis Hannaford around. I’ve been looking for her for half an hour.”

“I haven’t seen anybody but Dan. Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Did all those questions you just asked me have anything to do with anything? Is there some connection between Stephen’s attacks and Kevin’s death?”

“I don’t know. Right now I wouldn’t say there is.”

“You mean you were just asking out of curiosity?”

“Not exactly.”

“I think you are like Hercule Poirot,” Clare Markey said. “That was the first thing I thought of, when Kevin told me who you were.”





[2]


At ten minutes to one, Gregor Demarkian let Clare Markey go. She disappeared up the stairs as he went out to look at the beach. Five minutes later, when he came back, she was gone, but standing in the beach room he could now hear someone else on the stairs. He came into the foyer, but whoever it was had gone. Over his head, the balcony of the second-floor guest wing was quiet.

He headed upstairs, not sure what he intended to do next, or even what he wanted to do. While he had been talking to Clare Markey, or not long after, the rain had stopped. He looked at the skylight to see if the sun had come out too, but it hadn’t. The sky up there was as gray as it had been when he first came down that morning.

He started down the balcony toward Bennis’s room and his own, picking up steam and hope along the way. He was going to find her. He was going to lecture her. He was going to wring her neck if she kept going on with things like this.

He was halfway to where he wanted to go when he heard a sound that made him stop, not because it was so odd but because it was so ridiculous. “Psst,” it went, and he found himself thinking of Cagney and Lacey.

He looked at the door to Bennis’s room. It was closed and blank. He looked at the door to his own. That was closed and blank, too. He looked up and down the balcony. It might as well have had a sign on it—closed and blank.

Gregor turned around slowly, looked out over the balcony rail, and then turned back again. There was another “psst,” but he still couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then Bennis said, “Gregor, I’m over here, for God’s sake please,” and he swung to face Stephen Whistler Fox’s door.

For a moment, he thought he was looking at nothing but another closed door, that the acoustics had played a trick on him, that he had been deceived by sound. Then the door swung open, and Bennis was standing there, looking small and very white. There was nothing Cagney-and-Lacey-like about her at all. Gregor thought she looked ready to faint.

“Bennis. What are you doing in there? That’s—”

“It’s Stephen’s room,” Bennis said. “Yes, Gregor, I know. You’d better come in here.”

“But what are you doing in there?”

“I’ll tell you later. Come in here, please. I’ve got—I’ve got another body.”

For a half second, he thought it was a joke. He couldn’t take in what she was telling him. It didn’t feel real. Then her face cracked and he found himself watching a sudden spill of tears, flowing down out of her eyes and across her cheeks in a gush.

“You’ve got to come in here,” she repeated. “I—it’s not like the other time, Gregor—it’s not—”

He took two quick strides to the door, pushed her out of the way, and pushed himself in.

And stopped.

Bennis was absolutely right. This one was not like the other one, but not because of the condition of the body. Stephen Fox lay dead on his own bed, and from what Gregor could see there was no more obvious cause here than there had been in the case of Kevin Debrett.

The difference was in the state of the room. The maids, quite obviously, had not been in. But somebody else had.

The room was strewn end to end with pieces of women’s underwear.





PART THREE


Oyster Bay, Long Island July 3





ONE


[1]


OYSTER BAY HAD BEEN a rich town for so long, nobody really remembered what it had been like before—but it had always been the right kind of rich. Old money, quiet money, family money: these had enough in common with the ordinary lives of ordinary people to ensure that there was very little friction between rich and poor—or rather rich and middle class—on this small section of the North Shore. Unlike Greenwich, over there in Connecticut, Oyster Bay had never developed a fortress mentality. There were gates at the road ends of the drives that led to the great estates, but they were more ornamental than functional. There were electronic security systems wired into the front doors and kitchen windows of the great houses, but they were no more sophisticated than the ones wired into the houses of the local general practitioner and the local real estate lawyer. In fact, they were less. It was the nouveau comfortable who were afraid for their possessions and nervous about burglary. The solid, habitual rich put their trust in a maxim they had developed during the Depression and never thought to question since: There are no revolutionaries on the North Shore.