The Short Forever(40)

Stone looked out the window and saw the pavement rushing past, and it seemed closer than he had ever been to it. He had the feeling that, if they hit a bump, he would scrape his ass on the tarmac.

“Ever been in one of these?” Sarah asked.

“A Mini? I’ve seen them around London.”

“A Mini Cooper,” she said. “Very special, from the sixties. I had this one restored, and it’s very fast.” She changed down, accelerated across two lanes, and careened into Hyde Park.

Stone winced. Why was it his lot in this country to ride with women who drove as if they had just stolen the car? “Try not to kill me,” he said.

“Frankly, you look as though death would come as a relief,” she replied. “What were you drinking?”

“Port.”

“Ahhhhh. Goes down easily, doesn’t it?”

“All too easily.”

“And who was your host?”

“A man named . . . Bartholomew.” He still didn’t feel comfortable calling him Hedger.

“English or American?”

“American, but an anglophile.”

“Thus, the port.”

“Yes.”

“How did you like the Garrick?”



“It’s beautiful.”

“They’re just about the last of the old London clubs that still bar women from membership,” she said. “I rather admire them for it; I think I enjoy going there more because it has an entirely male membership.”

“Hmmpf,” Stone said. He was drifting off.

He came to in a hurry a few minutes later, as he was thrown hard against his seat belt. He looked out the windshield to see the narrow road ahead filled with sheep. One came up to his window and briefly pressed its nose against the glass, and it was eye to eye with him. “Where are we?” he asked.

“In the middle of a flock of sheep,” Sarah replied. “They have the right of way in the country.”

“I mean, where are we?”

“Halfway there. You hungry?”

Oddly, he was. “Yes.”

“There’s a pub round the bend; we’ll have a ploughman’s lunch.” She drove on when the sheep had passed, then turned into a picturesque country pub. They went inside, picked up their lunch—bread, cheese, and sausage, and a pint of bitter each, then made their way into a rear garden and sat down.

Stone drank deeply from the pint. “There, that’s better,” he said.

“The bitter will set you right,” Sarah said.

“That’s the second time today I’ve been told that.”

“And we were both right, no?”

“Yes, you both were. What do you know about Lance Cabot?”

“I told you already—not much.”

“Remember everything you can. Anything ever strike you as odd about him?”

“Only that he seems to fit in awfully well with English people. People I know don’t even seem to regard him as a foreigner.”

“Have you ever seen him with anyone you didn’t know?”

She thought. “Once, in a London restaurant, I saw him across the room, dining with a couple—man and woman—who looked foreign.”

“What kind of foreign?”

“Mediterranean.”

“That’s a big area.”

“Turkish or Israeli, perhaps.”

“Describe them.”

“About his age, well dressed, attractive—the woman, particularly. She was quite beautiful, in fact.”

“Could you hear them talking?”

“No, but they didn’t seem to be speaking English. I couldn’t read their lips, and I’m quite good at that, even from a distance. I don’t know if I told you, but as a child I had some sort of flu or virus that resulted in a sharp hearing loss. My hearing came back after a few months, but during that time I became adept at reading lips. Most people couldn’t tell I was hard of hearing.”

Stone nodded in the direction of a young couple sitting on the opposite side of the garden. “Tell me what they’re talking about.”

Sarah squinted in their direction for a moment, then giggled. “She’s lying to him,” she said.

“How?”

“She’s saying they were just friends, that they never slept together, and he believes her, but she’s lying.”

“How do you know?”

“I can just tell.”

“You’re a woman of many talents,” he said.

“I thought you already knew that.”

“I had forgotten how many.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m going to remind you.”





Chapter 25



THEY DRESSED FOR DINNER AND DINED in a smaller room than last time, at a round table, the heavy curtains drawn to shut out the night, in the English fashion. Stone didn’t understand why the Brits did that; he enjoyed the long summer twilights.