And One to Die On(34)

“Oh.” Lydia Acken blushed scarlet. “Oh, I am sorry. I just assumed—and of course I shouldn’t have—that’s what comes of trying to be modern when you don’t have the faintest idea what it is that’s going on—”

“No, no,” Gregor said quickly. “I can see how you thought what you thought. Lots of people think it. It’s just that it doesn’t happen to be the way—”

“My mother always told me I didn’t have sense enough to mind my own business,” Lydia said miserably.

“Bennis isn’t home,” Gregor threw in, feeling desperate. “I came across the hall to see if she’d fix my tie, but she’s already gone.”

Lydia Acken stopped in the middle of the muttered recriminations she was still directing at herself and looked up into Gregor’s eyes. Then a smile began to spread across her face, and she bit her lower lip to stop its spreading.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Have I made a fool of myself, or what?”

“You made no bigger a fool of yourself than I made of myself. By the way, is my tie crooked?”

“Yes. Yes, it is, as a matter of fact. Here, give me a minute and I’ll fix it.”

Gregor stood very still. Lydia rose up on tiptoe and fussed around at his throat. The tickle against his Adam’s apple was comforting and familiar. Elizabeth had always fixed his ties for him and straightened out his collars. These are the kinds of things, Gregor thought, that any man can do for himself, but that most men don’t really want to.

“There,” Lydia Acken said. “You look fine now. Are you going to wait for Miss Hannaford to come back, or are you going downstairs for cocktails?”

“I suppose I’m going downstairs for cocktails. I don’t know when Bennis is going to be back, or even if. Can I come downstairs with you?”

“Yes,” Lydia said. “Of course you may. I’d like that.” Maybe on the way down I’ll pump you for the information everybody in the house is just dying to find out about you.”

“Really? What information is that?”

“Information on what you’re doing here, of course,” Lydia said. “I ran into Geraldine Dart this afternoon after lunch, in a back hallway while I was looking for the loo, and she’s absolutely convinced that Hannah Graham hired you to find out what really happened to Lilith Brayne.”

“I can’t imagine what would induce me to work for Hannah Graham. A personal visit from God Almighty, maybe.”

“Well, Hannah Graham also thinks you’ve been hired to find out what happened to her mother, or maybe to cover it up, but she thinks I hired you. Has somebody hired you? Are you here to find out what happened to Lilith Brayne?”

“In the first place,” Gregor said, as they started side by side down the stairs, “nobody can hire me. I don’t have a private detective’s license, and I don’t need money. Sometimes I look into things that interest me. I no longer investigate anything for money.”

“You’re a very intelligent man.”

“In the second place,” Gregor continued, “as far as I know, everybody already knows what happened to Lilith Brayne. A tragedy. An accident. A mess. But none of my business.”

“I wish it were none of my business.” Lydia sighed. “You know, Mr. Demarkian, when I went off to law school, back in the early fifties, when girls just didn’t get accepted, I had this vision of starting out on a great adventure, a modern crusade full of knights and dragons and damsels in distress. And what did I get? Tasheba Kent and Cavender Marsh, two very old people who still think sex is the only point of life and who are just as silly and narcissistic in everything else they do.”

“Call me Gregor,” Gregor said.

“My name is Lydia. Lydia Ann. I’ve never liked it.”

“We’ll have to think of a suitable nickname, then. Look. I think we’re the first ones down. I wonder where everybody’s gone.”

Lydia Acken’s eyes flashed. “Hannah Graham has probably gone off for a spot of surgery before drinks,” she said tartly.

Then she marched off ahead of Gregor into the living room.





2


Tasheba Kent’s official birthday, and official birthday party, weren’t until Saturday, but while Gregor had been upstairs reading his book somebody had begun decorating the living room anyway. Most of the decorations were the standard sort of thing that could be found in any Hallmark card shop. There was a string of shiny-surfaced multicolored cardboard letters held together with tin swivel fasteners tacked up just above eye level on one wall, spelling out “HAPPY BIRTHDAY.” There were blue-and-white crepe-paper streamers wound barber-pole fashion around the two decorative posts that separated the living room from the study beyond it. There were quilted crepe-paper-and-cardboard stand-up happy faces in blue and yellow and green, scattered across the coffee tables and end tables and shelves, each proclaiming “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” in a riot of exclamation points. It would have looked like the setup for a children’s party, except that here and there there were indications that the woman for whom all this fuss was being made was not young. There was a metal walker tucked discreetly into a corner. There was an arm brace lying on the floor next to one of the larger couches. There were magnifying glasses everywhere, as if the person who needed them could never remember where she had put them down.