“But in this case the necessary murder was not accomplished. Someone still lives who, in the mind of the gentleman who left the Seven of Calvary, needs killing. It will surprise me very much if another strange death in Berkeley does not in its turn supersede the Twin Peaks Murder.”
“You know,” said Alex to Martin as they walked home together, “I think he’s right.”
Saturday, Martin, with no rehearsal to worry him, spent the day with Mona. They lunched together—for the third time that week—and boated on Lake Merrit in the afternoon. Martin rowed over the sunny lake while Mona sang plaintive South American folksongs from time to time, and grew every moment more charming to him.
They dined—and on this occasion, Martin thought, the word was properly used—at the Capri, with a bottle of Chianti to aid digestion and other things. When they had reached the stage of coffee, liqueurs, and cigarettes—Martin had rather wanted a cigar, but realized in time that he looked somewhat ludicrous smoking one—Mona asked, “And what sort of a party is it that you’re taking me to tonight?”
“A Morris party,” Martin replied.
“Is that an idiom?” Mona looked delightfully puzzled.
“It’s a Berkeley idiom,” he explained; “or perhaps an idiotism, as you call it in Spanish. Haven’t I mentioned Mr. Morris before?”
“I do not think so. Who is he?”
“I’m none too sure myself. I don’t even know his first name. He’s moderately wealthy and thinks he’s a philologist. He lives in a pleasant house in the hills and does pseudophilological research at the University. His hobby is parties.”
“Does he give so many?”
“He practically never gives any. The rest of us do at his house. You call him up and say, ‘Mr. Morris? Martin speaking. Will you be home Saturday evening?’ He says, ‘Yes. Why don’t you get together some friends and have a party?’ So you give a Morris party.”
Mona laughed. “That should be fun.”
And it was fun. About a dozen people were there when Martin and Mona arrived, and a dozen or so more dropped in in the course of the evening—during which time some of the original dozen vanished. It was a kaleidoscopic gathering. There were Cynthia and Alex, Mary Roberts and a boy named Chuck Withers (who never liked any of Mary’s friends, but insisted on coming to their parties to assert his own superiority), Paul in his usual celibate loneliness, and various assorted couples, among them Dr. Ivan Leshin and his attractive wife Tanya. Kurt had been invited, but had stayed at home with his worries. (Lupe, Mona had confided to Martin, was getting on as well as could be expected.) Boritsin had not been invited, but had come anyway.
No one noticed especially the entrance of Mona and Martin. The phonograph was playing and Boritsin was attempting a tango with Cynthia. The spectacle was quite enough to distract anyone from new arrivals.
Martin nodded random greetings here and there and struggled through to the host, who, oblivious to the dance, was explaining to an extremely uninterested Chuck Withers how the golf term stymie was derived from the Greek stigma in the sense of fault or blame. Martin interrupted long enough to introduce Mona, and Morris, with a glance of approval and the question “Wine or whiskey?” slipped off to the kitchen.
He returned with whiskey for Martin and Angelica for Mona, and relapsed almost instantly into his discussion. This derivation, he was apparently maintaining, clearly proved that golf was known to the Greeks.
Martin drew Mona after him through the crowd and found a large cushion on the floor by a welcome open window. There they sat, with more comfort than grace, as the ballet number ended and applause broke out. Someone changed the record and substituted Strauss’s Wienerblut. Martin finished his whiskey, stretched out almost his full length, and looked up at Mona. She smiled down on him, and he began mentally to quote “The Blessèd Damozel.”
But his pre-Raphaelite musings were interrupted by a voice which gave him good evening with a harsh Slavic accent. He looked up to see Dr. Leshin, who was smiling condescendingly at Martin’s pose of sprawling devotion.
“Hello,” he responded, with something less than a proper attitude of respect for an Exchange Professor. “Having a good time?”
“Ah, yes.” Dr. Leshin’s white teeth glittered. “It is an amusing party, is it not?”
“These parties usually are. Nobody tries to make people enjoy themselves, and as a result they generally do. Oh, pardon me. Miss Morales—Dr. Leshin.”
The Slav bowed gracefully, with no attempt at hiding the gleam in his eyes. Martin realized with some annoyance why the visitor from Prague had singled him out of the party. Mona smiled in slight confusion.
“How is Mrs. Leshin?” Martin asked unfairly.
“Very well.” Dr. Leshin’s gaze wandered across the room. “She seems to be enjoying herself.”
Martin followed Leshin’s glance and saw Tanya Leshin, slim and striking in a flaming gown, dancing the Strauss waltz with a seemingly reluctant Paul Lennox. The inflection of Dr. Leshin’s last sentence amused him. It showed that a consummate rake was perfectly capable of jealousy where his wife was concerned—jealousy even of Paul, or more probably merely of Strauss.
“Have you seen the current Soviet film in San Francisco, Mr. Lamb?” Dr. Leshin asked, forcibly removing his gaze from the dancers. On Martin’s negative reply, he proceeded into a long, but keen analysis of its merits, interrupted by the arrival of Boritsin.
“Of what is it that you speak, Dr. Leshin?” the exiled aristocrat asked.
“The newest Soviet film—to my mind perhaps the most—”
“Dr. Leshin!” Boritsin seemed wounded. “Can it be that a man of your intellectual attainments can be intaken by the pseudo-art of propaganda which they of the Soviet seek to foister upon us? To me—”
“Martin …” Mona whispered.
“Yes?”
“If they are going on for long like this … I think I need more wine.”
Quite unnoticed by the Russian disputants, who were fast reaching such a heat that English words no longer sufficed to express their feelings, Martin slipped away with Mona’s glass and his own. Cynthia, he noted in passing, was the current unwilling victim of Mr. Morris’s philological vagaries.
He entered the kitchen, looked about, and finally found the bottles. As he was filling the glasses, he felt a tap on his shoulder and looked around to find Cynthia.
“Got a cigarette, Martin? Like an idiot, I’ve run out.” He obliged her gladly. “And while you’re pouring, you might pour me one too.”
“Angelica?”
“Hell, no. Is that what your little Latin’s drinking?” She shuddered, and added, “Bourbon. Straight.”
The glasses filled, Cynthia lifted hers, exclaimed, “Here’s to philology!” and gulped the whiskey down. Martin joined her. “Ouf!” she gasped. “For ten minutes by anybody’s clock and ten hours by my feeling I’ve been listening to how bosom is originally the same word as besom because the peasants of Swabia were flat-chested and filled out their bosoms with broom-straw. Thank God I’m not a peasant of Swabia!” She looked down with not unjustified satisfaction at her own full breasts.
“You are not alone in being thankful for that,” Martin ventured awkwardly.
“Sweet of you, Martin. I didn’t think you noticed such things. And to think that this man actually believes all this rot about words …! Tell me, Martin,” she switched abruptly, “do you like Mrs. Leshin?”
“I scarcely know her. I’ve been to their house once or twice. She’s a pleasant hostess—seems intelligent—”
“You know that’s not what I mean. I mean do you think she’s—well, attractive?”
“That’s a matter of taste. To my mind, she’s a trifle slim—”
“Slim? Martin, you’re always too damned betwixt-and-between to please everybody. Slim …? She’s thin—she’s scrawny—she’s—she’s—a peasant of Swabia, that’s what she is!” Cynthia had poured another drink, and downed it triumphantly at this mot juste.
Martin was puzzled by the violence of Cynthia’s outburst. “I don’t quite see …” he began.
“Martin darling, do you ever quite see anything? Run along and take your Latin her Angelica. Auntie Cynthia’s staying right here for a while with the Bourbon.”
Precariously bearing the two filled glasses, Martin re-entered the main room. Some kind soul, in the midst of the general confusion, was keeping the phonograph in action, holding its repertory fairly steadily to Strauss, Lehar, and Kalman. Seeing that the cushion by the window was vacant, Martin looked over the dancers until he spied Mona waltzing with Dr. Leshin. He felt annoyed, and then annoyed with himself for being annoyed.
“What do you think, Martin?” he heard Alex’s voice at his side.
It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “I think you’d better go out to the kitchen and keep Cyn from making a fool of herself,” but he controlled his impulse—it was none of his business—and merely asked, “What do I think about what?”
“This absurd theory of your Dr. Ashwin’s,” Paul replied.
“I was telling Paul,” Alex explained, “about the ideas that Dr. Ashwin was expounding last night.”
“They seem reasonable enough,” said Martin.
“Reasonable?” Paul puffed on his pipe with extra vigor. “My dear Martin, this isn’t a detective novel. You can’t reason things out in actual life with such absolute precision. If a thing is reasonable and yet fantastic, it’s not worth considering.”
“And still I think he may be right,” Alex said quietly.
“Our opinion can make very little difference to the murderer,” Paul observed conclusively. “It’s a futile discussion.”
That was the only mention of the murder in the course of the evening, and yet Martin felt that this brief snatch of dialogue contained some important meaning which he was unable to grasp. Perhaps, he consoled himself, it was only the bourbon.
The music stopped momentarily, and he saw Mona coming toward him. Dr. Leshin, after a polite adieu to his partner, had hurried off to rescue his wife from Boritsin, who seemed, to judge from his gestures, engaged in another of his periodic dissertations on the decadence of the Russian ballet.
“Thanks, Martin,” Mona smiled as he handed her the glass. “Let’s sit down.”
Their window cushion was now occupied by Chuck and Mary, but they finally found sitting space on the floor behind the piano.
“Please, Martin,” Mona begged earnestly as she sipped her wine, “don’t leave me alone with him again, not even if I want another glass.”
“Was he so dull?”
“No, no. Not dull.” She paused. “I only do not like to dance with him. He … he is not a nice dancer.…”
Martin nodded. He had heard that commentary on Dr. Leshin before, and reproached himself for deserting Mona, even at her own request.
They sat in silence for a while, smoking and sipping and listening to the waltzes. Somehow Mona’s hand had slipped into Martin’s. Suddenly she spoke.
“Please, Martin, dance with me.”
“I’m an atrocious dancer, I warn you—”
“That is no matter. I see your Russian doctor coming this way, and I think—”
Dr. Leshin looked a trifle disconcerted. He arrived from across the room just in time to see Martin waltz off with Mona. The music was Kalman’s magnificent Sari waltz, and its surging rhythm brought to Martin a sense of surprising abandon. Paul, he noticed, was dancing again with Tanya Leshin, and her husband had been trapped by the host for a little give-and-take on Slavic philology. Dr. Leshin’s dark glances wandered appealingly around the room, resting in turn on each attractive girl, while he vainly tried to correct Mr. Morris’s fixed impression that Finnish was a Russian dialect. Martin laughed and swung joyously in the rhythmic compulsion of the music. He reveled in international joy—a joy compounded of American bourbon, Hungarian music, and a Bolivian smile.
“Martin,” Mona whispered, brushing her cheek lightly against his, “you were right. You are atrocious.”
The joy collapsed. Martin stopped dancing and stood still with a comically rueful countenance.
Mona laughed softly. “I am sorry. But you are, you know.” And then, as though to make amends, “Where is it that we might find fresh air?”
Fresh air, indeed, was sorely needed. No amount of open windows can prevent partial suffocation in a room of a dozen constant smokers. Taking her hand, Martin led her up the stairs, through an unused room, and out onto a small balcony. The night was cool. There was no moon; but here, high in the hills, far from disturbing street lights, the light of the stars was bright. Over on the bay the ferryboats crawled, and beyond them glowed the lights of San Francisco. From the party below came a faint sound of waltzes.
Mona sighed deeply. “It is beautiful. It is of the beauty that is ever sadness.…”
Martin looked at her face. Her olive skin seemed ivory in the starlight and her hair jet. “And your beauty … is that sadness too, Mona?”
“Please do not talk.”
As they sat silently on the balustrade, watching the glimmer of distant lights, Mona began softly to sing. Her song was Las Cuatro Milpas, the Mexican lament—the saddest, Martin had often thought, of all the world’s folksongs. To the beat of a slow waltz of tragedy, its sadness seemed to envelop them both.
… toditito se acabó. ¡Ay! …
Martin took her hand as she sang. It was cold and lifeless.
… ni hiedras, ni flores. Todito murió …
Her voice rose in the impassioned appeal of the second part.
… Me prestaras tus ojos, morena,
en el alma los llevo que miren allá …
Her parted lips were black in the starlight. Her small breasts trembled.
… los despojos de aquella casita
tan linda y bonita.…
Martin felt her hand grow warm in his.
… lo triste que está.…
Martin kissed her.
It was a surprising kiss. For one moment her lips were pressed warmly against his, as though the strong emotion of the song had continued into the kiss. The next moment she was sitting on the balustrade a foot away from him and gazing at him reproachfully.
“Martin …” was all she said. But when he tried to approach her she waved him away. “You do not love me, Martin,” she said after an unhappy pause.
“No,” Martin admitted frankly, “I don’t.” He had always been rather sceptical as to the possibility of his ever falling in love. “But is that all that matters? I like you. I think that you are sweet, charming, lovely—”
“Nor do I love you,” she continued as though he had not spoken. “Martin, one does not kiss without love.”
To Martin this seemed an indefensibly exaggerated statement, but he said nothing.
“It was better that Lupe did … what she did with love, than that I do only this without love.” She paused again, and finally added, “Martin, are we friends?”
“Of course, Mona.”
“Let us go in.”
She held out her hand.
By common consent, Mona and Martin separated when they returned to the party. While Mona danced with Chuck, Martin wandered into the kitchen.
Paul was sitting there, in pipe-equipped placidity, listening to a long tirade from Cynthia, who had given up by now any pretense to sobriety. The tirade broke off as Martin entered, but he gathered that it still concerned the boyish figure of Tanya Leshin, a subject that seemed to agitate Cynthia quite disproportionately.
Paul rose and sauntered back to the main room. “You’re in for it, Martin,” he observed. “She’s got to tell her troubles to somebody.”
Without a word, Martin crossed to the whiskey bottle, filled with a childish resolve to get good and plastered just to prove that scenes on balconies didn’t bother him one little bit.
“What’s the matter, Martin?” Cynthia inquired in practically one syllable, as he resolutely swallowed a large dose of bourbon.
“Nothing.”
“Something’s the matter. Tell Cynthia.”
“Nothing, damn it.”
“Mm. He’s angry. Nice quiet Martin’s angry. Is it the little Latin? I thought she looked like a nice girl, Martin. And were you naughty? Should have fed her bourbon; you’ll never get any place with Angelica.”
Martin poured himself another drink.
“That’s the idea, Martin. We’ll have another drink. One for you and one for me and one for—No. Just you and me. Here’s to—here’s—well, anyway, here’s!”
They drank in unison. Martin produced an amazing glurping noise as aftermath; it was really pretty bad bourbon.
“Don’t make faces, Martin. Isn’t nice. Are we downhearted? No! No! A thousand times no!” And Cynthia was singing in a loud voice to no apparent tune that she’d rather diiiiiiie than say yes.
Martin began to feel better. The immortal spirit of Mehitabel was permeating him. “Wotthell, Archie!” he exclaimed. “Toujours gai, kid, toujours gai!”
“Once a lady, always a lady,” Cynthia responded duly. “How’s about maybe another drink maybe?”
From that point on, with one strongly marked exception, the entire evening became rather vague in Martin’s memory. How long he and Cynthia were in the kitchen God only knew. The time could be calculated only approximately from the size of the whiskey bottle which they resolutely depleted.
It was when the bottle was about empty that Mona appeared in the doorway. Martin thought it was at the moment when Cynthia was teaching him to tango, a process which resulted in their both collapsing on the floor in hysterics.
“I’m going home now, Martin,” Mona said. She was not smiling.
Martin rose with extreme dignity. “In an instant,” he announced, “I shall have secured my cat and hoat. Then I shall escort you, Mona.”
The Seven of Calvary Page 9