Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  The woman began to cry. She cried in a heart-rending way, Colin thought, making ugly, gulping sounds, and twisting her face. Colin found he pitied her, and that Court’s quiet words, for all their obvious effectiveness, made him uneasy. They were familiar to him, but he could not place them; recently, he felt, he had heard, seen, or used words that were very similar himself. He shifted his weight from his right foot to his left; he had some vague, nasty sensation of evil, breathing quietly, standing close.

  ‘Hate you,’ said the woman, glancing down. ‘Hate you, hate you, hate you…’

  ‘Of course.’ Court glanced towards the knife; it had moved a little, but not, Colin thought, enough.

  ‘Don’t always hate you,’ she added, in a low voice. An expression of irritation passed across Tomas Court’s face. As soon as the woman saw it, she made a low, moaning, anxious sound. Hope, and fear, flickered across her face.

  ‘You know what I want, Tina?’ Court fixed his pale gaze on her. ‘I want you in my arms—and at this moment I want that more than anything else on this earth.’

  ‘Lies.’ The woman’s eyes flashed at him. ‘Lies, lies, lies, lies.’

  ‘No. The absolute truth.’ Court’s pale gaze did not waver, but again that expression of irritation passed across his face. ‘I’m not arguing with you, Tina. If you want to hurt me there are more imaginative ways of doing it than this. When I tell you to put him down, I mean it. Now do it.’

  ‘Shan’t.’ She stared at him. Court, to Colin’s alarm, gave a sudden shrug and a look of dismissal.

  ‘Fine,’ he said coldly. ‘Fine. You’re boring me. Jump.’

  Colin stared at him in stupefaction. He heard himself make some low sound of fear and protest. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he said, starting to move forward, because he could see the woman’s expression altering, and he could see her starting to turn towards that ten-storey drop. She lifted the boy high in her arms, and Colin knew that she was about to throw him. The child gave one terrified cry; Court did not move, and as Colin lurched forward, the woman dropped the boy at his feet.

  Colin made a grab for him; he got his arms around him and started to scoop him up. Neither Court nor the woman had moved, Colin thought, and he could sense that they were looking at each other, that their gaze, which he could feel rather than see, was interlocked. He gripped Jonathan more tightly, and the instant he touched him, the boy began to fight. He was half-crazed with fear, and the fear gave him strength. Colin was straightening up with the boy in his arms, trying to back away, to get him out of the woman’s reach, and the boy was fighting him. It was like trying to hold an armful of fish. The boy threshed and squirmed; he rained down punches and slaps on Colin’s head and face. He sank his teeth into Colin’s hand, and as Colin tried to catch hold of his arms, he began to kick and scream. He caught hold of Colin’s hair, and tugged at it. ‘Jonathan, Jonathan,’ Colin said, trying to calm him, trying to get him out of the woman’s reach and away from that ten-storey drop. The boy rose up in his arms, arching and yelping. For a moment Colin could see nothing but his flailing arms, and that moment was all it took.

  Darkness moved; something clattered to the floor, and somewhere to the side of him, something bunched. Over the boy’s shoulder, past his white face, Colin saw Tomas Court enfold the woman in his arms. He knew that was all right, because he had heard her drop the knife. He started to tell Jonathan this, that it was all right, that he was safe, that it was over—but Jonathan was still yelping and screaming and trying to scratch his face.

  Colin ducked his head away; he heard a crunching sound, then a sharp exhalation of breath, and he began to realize that some blow had been struck. He started to turn, and heard himself make some sound, of fear, of protest. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ Jonathan cried, and Colin froze in horrified disbelief.

  He watched the woman move upwards and over the bannisters with a gymnast’s grace. She went over backwards, head first, in a beautiful dive; he saw her eyes widen and her hands grasp space. She seemed to hang there, supported by air, for an immensely long time, then she disappeared from sight. Tomas Court stepped back from the bannisters. He brushed at his jacket—one sleeve was torn; he stood listening, white-faced.

  There was a silence, then a faint, thin cry, then a thud. Colin, shocked, appalled, unable to move, did not need to look over the bannisters to know what had happened; he knew she was ten floors down on a stone floor, and she was dead. He began to tremble violently; he found he had begun to weep. The little boy, sensing some change, made a whimpering sound, lay still and covered his face. Colin cradled him tightly against him and stared at Tomas Court, whom he could scarcely see for distress.

  ‘Why? Oh, dear God, why? Tomas—she’d let him go. He was safe. Tomas—she was this poor, mad, pathetic thing. Oh, Christ. You hit her. I heard you hit her

  ‘I did not hit her. Colin, I tried to take the knife from her. She was struggling—I don’t know what happened. One second I had hold of her, the next she was toppling over. These bannisters are deadly; they’re not even waist-height…’

  ‘Ah, dear God, you pushed her. You lifted her up and pushed her over…I can’t believe—Christ, Christ…’ There was a silence; this silence, to Colin, was very loud. It was filled with clamour and movement and cryings out. He buried his wet face against the boy’s hair. Tomas Court put his hand on his arm; Colin flinched and held the boy tight.

  ‘Colin,’ Court began, in a quiet voice. ‘Colin, you’re in shock. Wait until you’re calmer before you speak. It doesn’t matter what you say to me, I understand—but what you say matters very much when you talk to the police.’

  ‘She believed you.’ Colin raised his eyes to Court’s. ‘All those things you said to her—all those lies. She believed them. This awful mad hope. Tomas, she’d given me the boy, she wasn’t dangerous any more. Oh, why did you touch her? Why did you lie? It was horrible—’

  ‘Much of what I said was true as it happens.’ A spasm of pain passed across Court’s face. ‘Colin, you’re not thinking clearly. I told her what I knew she wanted to hear. What else was I supposed to do?’ His voice had begun to break; Colin saw that he too was now beginning to tremble, that his face was drained of colour, and that the love he felt for his son was naked in his face. ‘Colin. I’m grateful to you for what you did, you’re a good man, but—just give me my son, Colin…’

  Colin looked down at the boy, now curled in his arms in a foetal position. He kissed his hair, then lifted him into his father’s arms. Court clasped the boy tight against his heart, and began to say his name over and over again, in a low voice. Colin saw the boy slowly begin to move. He made a small mewing sound, and scrabbled at his father’s jacket, then stole his arms about his neck.

  Colin’s vision blurred. He found he was blinded by tears, and by the force of his own emotions. He rejoiced that the boy was safe, but his rejoicings were shot through with fear and with doubt. He thought: I heard the knife fall; I heard it fall before he touched her. The knife fell and then there was that embrace.

  The knife was lying on the floor, he realized; it lay several feet away from the bannisters, and its position told him nothing. He stared at it, and as he stared, the sequence of events, so clear to him only seconds before, began to shift. He found he was not certain of sequence, of cause and effect. Had the knife really been dropped before the embrace? And why did he think of it as an embrace anyway? It might, as Court claimed, have been a struggle of some kind, a contest for the weapon. He stared at the area of the landing where these glimpsed events had occurred. He found they were now receding from him fast; they were as fragmentary as the details of a dream, forgotten on waking. The harder he struggled to recall them, the ghostlier and more insubstantial they became. They were impressions only, and Tomas Court was correct: a muddle of impressions should not be imparted to the police.

  He swung around to Court, suddenly wanting to ask him again why he had put his arms around the woman and what that embrace meant. Court was now huddled against the
far wall, stroking his son’s hair and speaking to him in a low, soothing voice. He did not look like a murderer; an embrace could mean so many things, Colin thought.

  He turned away; he was beginning to see why this one question so preoccupied him. He was still almost sure that he had seen Court embrace the woman, and he was absolutely sure that he had seen his friend Rowland with his arms around Lindsay in a bedroom doorway—and now, with his whole heart, he wished to believe that both embraces were innocent. Concentrate, concentrate, he thought. He looked at his watch and found an impossibly short length of time had passed since he had slammed the door of Emily’s apartment. He looked up at the dome, then down at the floor. Neither were securely themselves. I understand nothing. I am certain of nothing, he thought.

  He moved towards the bannisters, gripping them tightly, and looked down. The air came rushing up at him. He began to understand that, for some time now, the Conrad building had been stirring, and coming back to life.

  He could sense its pulse now, and its intakes of breath. He found he could see a shape on the floor below, arms flung out, and a stain spreading. A man he knew was bending over that shape, and he could see people, emerging, merging, and milling back and forth. He could see a woman in a red dress, standing to one side at the foot of the stairs; his heart, in whose promptings he retained faith, told him this was the woman he loved and wished to make his wife.

  He watched the man bending over the body rise to his feet with a shake of his head; he watched this woman he loved turn away and cover her face with her hands.

  This is happening and it is not happening, Colin thought, as he watched Rowland gently put his arms around Lindsay, and hold her against him for the second time that night.

  XVI

  AT FOUR THE FOLLOWING morning, Colin and Lindsay were finally able to leave the Conrad. They stepped out of the building into a hushed, near-silent Manhattan. The snow on the sidewalks was unbroken; there was a serene high moon, and each limb of the trees in Central Park was frosted silver.

  ‘Oh, let’s walk, Colin.’ Lindsay took his hand. ‘Let’s walk. How quiet it is…’

  ‘You won’t be too cold?’

  ‘No. I need air and silence. And you must need them far more than I do.’

  Colin was indeed desperate for both. He took her arm in his; they crossed to the far side of the avenue, and began to walk south. Colin listened to the crunch of their footsteps; he glanced back at the trail they left in the fresh snow. Snow was continuing to fall, gently, as they walked, and it was already beginning to fur and obliterate the marks of their feet. Much preoccupied with death that evening, Colin thought of death as he walked. He and Lindsay were the same age—how many years or decades had they left? It was so important that they should waste none of this future time, he thought. He hoped they would be granted many years, but for all either of them knew, the time allotted might be short.

  He could hear the wheels of Time’s winged chariot very clearly tonight, but he heard them, he found, without fear. They concentrated the mind wonderfully; he drew Lindsay’s small cold hand into the warmth of his overcoat pocket and clasped it tightly. He wondered if Lindsay could sense his thoughts, if she felt something similar. Looking at her quiet face, he felt that she might.

  As they walked, the unusual quietness of the city began to calm him; he allowed his mind to consider the events of that long strange night. He thought of his still-unanswered proposal, of a death he had now decided was accidental, of the labour of his interviews with the police; the more accurate and factual his replies to their questions had been, the less accurate they felt. He still was not sure of the dead woman’s name, he realized. He had still been trying to piece together her story and her connection to Tomas Court, when he had learned that she had an accomplice, and that this accomplice had been found when, at Tomas Court’s suggestion, the tiny service room off the elevator shaft on the first floor had been searched.

  A man—perhaps her brother; the police had seemed as uncertain as Colin—had been found. According to one of Colin’s informants, he had been in a delusional state. According to another, the man, freaking out, had finally been yanked out of the tiny room gibbering about ghosts.

  ‘So—was he Joseph King?’ Colin had asked Tomas Court, as they sat together between police interviews.

  ‘No.’ Court had given him one of his still, pale looks. ‘No, he was just her medium, if you like. He killed that tourist in Glacier. It was he who attacked me at my loft that time but his sister planned it, I think. Colin, don’t worry about the details; they’re not important, and they don’t concern you. Let it go. Just tell the police what you saw and heard tonight.’

  Colin looked around the room where they were waiting. Its light was too bright. There was a clock on the wall which Colin refused to look at. He had a strong sense that he and Court were outside time, outside place. Here, he found, he could ask Court anything, and Court would reply without evasion or deceit.

  ‘Do you feel free, Tomas?’ Colin had looked at his white, strained face with concern. ‘Do you feel free—now she’s dead?’

  ‘Free?’ Court considered; the concept of freedom seemed unfamiliar to him. ‘No, not really. I had hoped I might, but I can’t erase the tapes, or forget those letters she wrote. I listened to those tapes once too often.’

  ‘I heard a bit of them.’ Colin coloured. ‘That night with Thalia, at your loft. They were still playing—and I couldn’t find the switch-off mechanism…’

  ‘Really? I usually used a remote.’

  ‘In the end, I couldn’t bear it any more. I just ripped the tape out of the machine. That stopped it.’

  ‘Did it?’ Court gave a half smile. ‘And do you still remember what was said?’

  ‘No, not really. I did for a bit, but it’s worn off now. It was just pornography anyway…’

  ‘Just pornography?’

  ‘All pornography’s the same.’ Colin coloured more deeply. ‘It’s repetitious. I hate things like that.’

  ‘“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom—”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘William Blake.’ Court gave a sigh. ‘It was one of King’s favourite quotations, that. There were a lot of quotations…’ He turned and gave Colin a still, tired and affectionate glance. ‘What a good decision I made when I hired you, Colin.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’ Colin sank his head in his hands. ‘I’ve been a fucking disaster as far as I can see. I couldn’t find you the right Wildfell Hall. I spent weeks sitting around saying “but”. And tonight, I tried reasoning with a mad woman. I kept saying “please” and “don’t do that”. It was the most fucking pathetic thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’

  ‘I wouldn’t agree.’ Court frowned. ‘I could hear what you were saying as I came up the stairs. I knew it wouldn’t work, but that wasn’t the point. To the pure in heart, all things are pure—and besides, I think it had some effect. After all, she didn’t stab Jonathan; she didn’t jump; so maybe she did listen to you after all…’ His pale eyes rested on the wall opposite. He sighed. ‘You used the word “wicked”. It’s years since I’ve heard anyone use that word in its proper sense. Ah well.’ He touched Colin’s arm briefly. ‘You’re a very good location manager, Colin. Let’s leave it at that.’

  Court had said nothing more. Colin had completed his police interviews, but had not seen Court again that night. In a state of glassy and unnatural calm, he had returned to Emily’s apartment. There, he found Lindsay and Rowland waiting for him. Nic Hicks, to his relief, had already left; Henry Foxe had returned to his own apartment, it seemed, once he was sure that Emily’s collapse in her hallway was not, as had been feared, a heart attack.

  Emily, Frobisher informed him, had been put to bed and was now asleep. Her three ancient indistinguishable friends, meanwhile, were preparing to depart. They had wanted to wait, it seemed, until Colin came back. Why they should have wished to do this, Colin could not conceive, since they seemed remarkably uncon
cerned as to that night’s events. The eldest and frailest of the three was virtually blind, Colin realized, as she kissed him goodnight; all three lingered, and all three were still twittering on about the elevator.

  ‘The override switch! Such a useful device!’ the eldest cried, fiddling with her gloves. ‘Do remember it on another occasion, Frobisher dear. My sisters and I were shown how to use it by our father—a little trick he taught us when we were girls. All you need is a very small implement, dear; nail scissors will suffice. You open up the control panel, flick the override, and up you go! Most useful tonight, for dear Henry’s party. Ten flights of stairs, which we could never have toiled up. Dangerous in the wrong hands, of course…’ She paused. ‘Do you know anything about hydraulics systems, Mr McGuire?’

  Rowland, silent and abstracted, started. ‘No, no—I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Ah well. Goodnight Mr McGuire. Lindsay, Colin With which, they wrapped themselves in their ancient moleskins and glided out. And Colin, finding himself alone with Lindsay and Rowland, had discovered that he knew what he had to do next.

  ‘Rowland, could I have a word with you alone?’ he said.

  Lindsay at once rose, consternation on her face. She had been about to protest, Colin feared—but perhaps his determination communicated itself to her. She glanced from one man to the other, then, saying she would fetch her coat, quietly left.

  The door closed behind her. As if from a great distance, Colin considered his friend. Rowland had risen, and his discomfiture was evident. Colin saw he was finding it difficult to meet his gaze, and this puzzled him for a second. He was not angry with Rowland, he realized. He did not feel angry, or jealous, or confused, or betrayed. He simply felt calm—and armed. Excalibur was in his hands, he thought.

  ‘I have to say this, Rowland, and I have to say it now,’ he began, in a quiet voice. ‘There’s been enough confusion and uncertainty tonight—’