Skeleton Key(43)

3


Half a minute later, they were in the lobby in front of the check-in desk, standing on thick rugs that were patterned with gigantic roses. The lights were all amber-tinted and soft. The people going back and forth all looked like they had children at good prep schools, which they probably did. What other reason could there be to come to Washington Depot, Connecticut, at the very end of October, except to go to Parents’ Day at the kind of school that charged more in tuition than most people paid for their cars, brand new?

Bennis stopped at the desk to hand in her key and ask them to take any messages. Gregor noted idly that she looked a little too fashionable for the people in this lobby, who tended to the kind of good wool and cashmere classic cuts that used to be sold at Peck and Peck. Even so, she looked good. He took a lot of pleasure watching her cross the room. She said hello to one or two people, as if she half knew them, maybe because she had run across them a couple of times in the halls. In some ways, Gregor realized, Bennis ran very much to type. You could tell just by looking at her that she had come from money, and never really fallen off the perch.

“Ready?” she said to him, as she came up beside him and laid a hand on his arm.

“Ready,” he told her.

Then he let himself be guided down a small hall toward a sign that said TAP ROOM. Tap room was a much better name for it than bar would have been. He understood that immediately. Places like the Mayflower Inn did not have bars.

They were just sitting down at a sturdy wooden table for two near one of the windows that looked out onto the inn’s front drive when the woman walked up to them, and for a moment Gregor couldn’t remember who she was. Her familiarity was overwhelming, but that was as far as he got. She was middle-aged and a little heavy, but definitely not obese. Her clothes were determinedly but unobtrusively provincial.

“Excuse me,” she said.

Gregor’s head went up. The voice he remembered. He had always been better with voices than with faces.

“The woman on the train,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Bennis said.

The woman was nodding. “That’s right, Mr. Demarkian. We met on the train. Or on the bud car, really. Coming up to Waterbury from Bridgeport.”

Bennis got her cigarettes out. The woman frowned at them, but she didn’t protest. Gregor was sure that she wouldn’t, no matter how much she wanted to.

“I’m Iris Brayne,” the woman said. “You wouldn’t recognize the name. I work for the Torrington Register-Citizen. In about half an hour, I’m going to file a story about you.”

“Ah,” Bennis said. She blew a thick stream of smoke in the air—directly at Iris Brayne, Gregor was certain, although he wouldn’t have accused her of it out loud.

Iris Brayne waved smoke away from her face and grimaced. “I thought I’d give you a chance to comment,” she said. “You’re here. You’re with the woman who discovered Kayla Anson’s body. You might want to say something the general public would understand.”

“Why should I say anything?” Gregor asked her reasonably. “I don’t even know what’s going on. I just got here. Miss Hannaford and I have barely had a chance to talk.”

“You’ve been here for hours. I know that. We came up together on the train.”

“I’ve been asleep. I was asleep on the train, if you were paying any attention.”

“She was the one who told me where to find you,” Bennis said drily.

“There, then,” Gregor said. “Why don’t you just let us talk, and then after I know something I might have something to tell you.”

“You consult with police departments,” Iris Brayne said. “I want to know which one you’re consulting with now.”

“I’m not consulting with, or for, any police department.”

“Your own—lady friend—found the body. Did you know Kayla Anson well?”

“I never met Kayla Anson in my life,” Gregor said.

“Did your lady friend know Kayla Anson well?”

There was something about this woman that was all wrong, mean-spirited and pinched. The lines in her face were too deep. She wouldn’t look at Bennis Hannaford, even when she wanted Bennis to answer a question she obviously felt she needed to ask. Gregor looked down at her hands clutched together on the table and saw that the nails were bitten ragged.

“I think it’s about time you went someplace and left us alone,” he said, as pleasantly as he could. Then he stood up, as if he were about to help her—guide her—in getting where she was supposed to go.

By now, Bennis had finished her cigarette and started another one. This was defensive smoking, the kind of thing she did when she was trying to ward off some evil, like someone she thought might be stalking her on a city street. Iris Brayne had begun to rub her hands together fretfully. Her shoulder bag—the same one she had had on the train—was slipping down along her arm. Every once in a while she pushed at it, as if it were in her way.