“I can’t believe you’re saying this. He should thank you for letting him tag along on your talented shirttails.”
“It doesn’t work like that. In this business—”
“In any business. You should hear yourself, you sound like a battered wife.” They sat very still. “Oh, look,” she said, “let’s not argue. Please. I have no right.” She took his hand. “I am so happy. Even through all this, everything that’s happened, I… I can’t help being happy.”
A yearning sadness came over his blue-green eyes. She felt it like a tug on her heart. There were some people like that in your life. You could feel with them as if there were a line stretched between you, even when they didn’t speak. “I don’t even have the excuse of a failed marriage,” she said. “My husband is a decent man. A good father.”
“That can’t be true. If you were happy in your marriage, you never would have seen me, felt me.”
“You talk like someone never married, Mr. Fortune.”
“Call me Douglas now,” he said. He put both hands around her waist. “Just once.”
“Douglas,” she whispered.
They shared a fervent kiss. He looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry I am such a coward,” he said.
She started to protest, but he touched her lips with his fingers and sighed. “I am. I know I am. Look. I know how you feel about me. I feel it. Just the way I feel it for you. But if I left Mara, the next thing would be you’d have me leaving Puffin.”
“I never would think to ask you to leave Mara,” she protested. “I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here.” His words had stung her into aloofness.
“No, wait. Let me finish. You think you’re terribly sophisticated and European, but you’re not. You’re hopelessly American, with your idealism and your belief that right must prevail. I don’t say you’re wrong. For God’s sake, I love you for it. I do. I love you.” His voice caught with emotion. “But it’s too late for me. I am a maelstrom of vice. Don’t laugh. I am. You don’t know what it was like for me before I had my bit of success. It wasn’t charming and cozy where I’m from in Ireland. It was cold and dirty and damp. Where I grew up there were so many babies, the house smelled of diapers. And if not diapers, then cabbage. Boiling bloody cabbage. Every time I smell the stuff I can see my mother. Her broad back at the stove. You never saw the front of the woman because she was always busy off doing something. There was nothing. No jobs. My father sodden from year after year of the drink. No hope. He’d sort of bumble out of his stupor long enough to rabbit my mother yet another time, she too old for any of it. Never complaining. Just doin’. Doin’ and doin’.
“I swore I’d get out. Brendan Timmons, this kid, moved to Belfast to marry a Protestant, and his mother threw his guitar in the rubbish bin. I snatched it right out. I was, like, fourteen. I learned all the songs. There was a lot going on back then. You remember. Out of Liverpool and all. Well, I didn’t have any other records to play but a pile of old rhythm-and-blues things from the Rectory. So when I saw an ad in a London paper for a lead guitar player with experience in rhythm and blues, I swiped my mother’s savings out of her extra teapot and I ran. I never looked back. I sent the money. I did that. I went back once. And again for her funeral. And again for his. The kids were spread all over. It was bad.” His eyes glazed over in the memory. Then he snapped out of it. “Anyway,” he said, “that’s when I met Puffin. Harry, then. Harry Almut Brown. He was managing another group. We hit it off straightaway. Used to get high together like a couple of fiends. I got stuck. That was when me mum died. He gave me the money for the flight, Puffin did. Said not to worry about payin’ it back. Just like that. He said his father was a bigwig and he had plenty of cash, so not to worry. I found out he didn’t, though. Didn’t even have a father, truth be told, just a mum. Very grand. A lady. Kept to herself in London. But he meant the bit about not bothering to pay back. I’ll never forget that. I won’t. Then, after the group thing went bad—all of a sudden there were six thousand groups coming from out of nowhere, everybody was a musician. And I wasn’t terrific, you know, just going along with the flow, carried by the times. But I’d bought myself one of those little film cameras, and I would record all our adventures. They had us flying all over the States, y’know? It was just a blur of hotels and stadiums and that. But I filmed it all. Musicians throwing electric guitars out hotel windows into swimming pools; their faces afterward. You know, I’d keep the camera on the faces after the main action. It was lovely, really. Little girls coming up to the door. Teenyboppers. Puffin would chat them up, and they would say the most amazing things. Family secrets. Offers of sex. Anything. It was wild. And the film was very good. I had a knack. Well, I stood still. King of the closeups, me. Everybody used to come over and get high. We smoked a lot of hashish back then. We used to laugh. Yeah. A lot of laughs. But then Puffin got me to enter one of my films in the Berlin Film Festival, and don’t you know, it won. I didn’t mind leaving the music world. The rock world, anyway. I was always more of a Coleman-Hawkins, Nina Simone-type, rather than rock. I used their music in my next film, by the way. I swear I think that’s why it won. So we got some backing, thanks to Puffin’s contacts up at school, and I made this other one, a serious one, and took a first at Cannes.
“Sure, I couldn’t do anything wrong. Then I met Mara. At Cannes. I was the up-and-coming filmmaker, and she was the model-turned-actress who was really going to make it. She had that film out about the Polish girl who fell in love with the border-patrol guard that was such a hit. Everybody wanted her. Hollywood. Everybody. But she fell passionately in love with me. I loved who she was, what she was. You know, a star. I told her. I admitted it. But the more I’d try to make her understand the way it was with me, the more she fell in love with me. She wouldn’t leave me. She would even come with me to the dentist’s office, she was that afraid I’d fall in love with someone on the street. But I never did. I never fell in love with a soul.”
“You don’t have to tell me this,” Claire interrupted, still holding on to his words from some few moments ago. Her tone was cool.
He grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her toward him with brutal force. “Yes, I must. You must let me tell you every bit of it. Everything.” He released his grip and pressed his mouth into her wrist, holding her with his eyes.
Obediently she let him finish.
“We got along okay, except for her jealousy. But it was all right. Up until a year or so ago. She started wanting a baby, and I told her I wouldn’t. It wasn’t right. I didn’t want one. God. The whole idea horrified me. And on top of that, the last two films didn’t make a farthing. Nothing. Now she decides if we have a baby, everything will turn around and be all right. Yeah, I would say, and what shall I do to support it, shoot kiddy birthday parties for the folks in Essex? And what does she do? She goes and lets herself get pregnant anyhow. I tell you I almost hit her. I could have. If I ever hated anyone, I hated her then. I used to wish she would die. Just fall away and die. She knew what I felt. How things were. And she went and took herself off the pill anyway. Claire, I never wanted it to be like that. I swear to God. She didn’t tell me until she was too far gone to do anything about it. And then I reacted so negatively that she went and had the abortion—after it was too late. Four months. Four months! Do you know what a baby looks like at four months? Christ! She went and had it out. It’s so damn easy to get one, you know. You hardly have to think about it. It’s only later, when you see what a ruin your life becomes, you bother to think of the consequences. It almost killed her, too. I’m telling you. She doesn’t really look the way she’s looking now. She’s really very beautiful. Was. But nobody could go through what she went through and not come up looking bad. And we had this film to do. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore if this film is any good. I trust Puffin, though. He’s got all the book knowledge. He loves this story. I don’t know.”
Claire didn’t know either. Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time was beginning to look more l
ike her own story more than anyone else’s.
Together they sat watching the house. The bird, the magpie, flew down and pecked at some seed in the vegetable garden.
“Wooh. There he is! He’s down and out now, too,” Temple sympathized, “now you’ve gone and stolen his treasure.”
Claire tried to laugh and couldn’t.
Evangelika came out the back door and threw a pan of dishwater at the magpie. “Weg!” she cried. “Geh weg!”
The large bird reared up, fluttered a couple of times for show and then settled impudently down right where he was before.
Evangelika, enraged, threw the heavy enamel dishpan at him. She missed him, but just barely grazed his left wing. “Scheissvogel!” she croaked.
“Christ!” Claire said.
“Here now,” Temple said, “she’s a hot-cross bun.” He pulled an apple from his vest and stroked it with his supple thumb.
Several men turned the corner of the house. One of them, no longer in Tracht but wearing a suit and tie, was the fellow Claire had seen on several occasions on the hill. “The Whistler!” she cried. “Temple, that’s the man. The one I told you about.”
“That the chap? He’s a copper. Can’t you tell? He’s the one questioned me at the airport. Detective Sergeant Martin Engel. He’ll be interviewing you next, you know.”
“No! I didn’t even think of that. I half thought he was the murderer!” Her throat felt stretched and tense. “I hoped he was.”
“Why hoped?”
“Because if he isn’t, then one of us has got to be.”
Temple slipped his hand under her hair and held the curve of her neck. “I know it couldn’t be you,” he said.
“You don’t even know what I’m like,” she muttered, pulling away.
“I think I know exactly how you are,” he said, cutting a slice of the apple with a Swiss Army knife identical to hers. Uncomfortably, she watched the juice of the apple leak from the slit as he ran the point down the skin. “Let me describe. You listen to listener-sponsored radio …”
“That’s true,” she laughed.
“You pick violets and put them on the table or in the window. On a doily, like.”
“When I can find them, yeah. What else?”
“You like this, don’t you, when we discuss the ways of you?”
“Yes,” she allowed, “who doesn’t? Go on.”
“You like it regular. No tricks or fancy effects. Oh, come on, don’t go red on me. I’m only teasing.”
There was a startling rap on the side window. It was Puffin, gasping and out of breath. Temple opened the back lock and he climbed in.
“I have such a thirst!” he complained, loosening his necktie. “Saw you both in here, out of harm’s way. I didn’t think you’d mind,” he said.
“Heavens!” Claire cried. “Why would we mind!”
“Where is everyone?” Temple said.
“Blacky went with Isolde. He’ll be back soon, though. She didn’t bring anything with her.”
“What?” Claire worried. “Do you think they’ll keep her?”
“At least overnight. She’ll need her things. Her toothbrush, her makeup.”
“Can’t Blacky put up bail?” she said.
“Don’t they have to post it first or something? I don’t know how it works, do you?”
“No,” Temple said.
“Well, have they arrested her or just taken her in for questioning?” Claire wanted to know.
Both men looked at her and shrugged. She couldn’t help thinking how unlike her husband they both were. He would have flown from the car, strode up to the detectives, spoken with them in professional, hushed tones. Knowing just what to do. He would protect her. That wasn’t true, she corrected herself carefully. He wasn’t like that at all. Why was she romanticizing her husband? It wasn’t as if he in any way were kind to her, wanted to spend even an hour of his time with her. He’d be upstairs in bed for the day, sleeping off the night’s beer.
Temple sat quietly, his mouth in his hand. Her heart went out to him. He didn’t understand this business any more than she did.
If they kept Isolde, she would have to go visit her. Maybe she’d just better go now. See if there was anything she could do. She started up the car. It didn’t go. She tried it again.
“What are you doing?” Temple said worriedly.
“I’m trying to start the car.”
“May I ask where we are off to? If we’re off?” Temple said. “It’s not going.”
“Smart,” Puffin said.
“I am smart,” Temple said jauntily, for Claire’s benefit.
“If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” Claire turned the key again.
“He is rich,” Puffin said easily. “So am I.”
“If you’re so rich, why ain’t you smart?” Claire said.
“It’s probably the generator.” Puffin sat with one ear cocked.
“I can’t imagine it’s the generator.” Claire frowned.
“Oh, generators go whether anyone wonders about them or not,” Temple said.
“Come on, Otto von Auto,” Claire pleaded, “turn over.”
“Only understands Deutsch,” Temple reminded her.
“Mach mal!” she crooned and petted the dash. “Tu es doch für mich.”
The car started right up. They jolted forward, then tooled down the drive and out onto the road.
“How about that,” they all cried and smacked one another’s shoulders.
It suddenly occurred to Claire that Fräulein Wintner might have spoken to the police about her just before she was killed. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head. And why wouldn’t she have? She’d said she would. No one had asked her about it, but maybe they were being cute. She suddenly lost her taste for the police station.
Her hand rested on something in her pocket that pricked. The miraculous medal. The one she’d grabbed hold of as she’d fallen down the bridge. She must show someone. Evangelika would know whose it was. Holding on to it, Claire felt suddenly sure Evangelika would certainly know, and had known Iris as well. She was old enough. It was feasible. How could she have been so stupid not to have put her and Iris together? She knew how. She looked over at Temple’s handsome profile. She’d been blind for the stars in her eyes.
She pulled over to the side of the road.
“Don’t turn it off,” both men cried.
“No, I won’t. I’ve got to go back. You go on ahead.”
“Hey, wait. I’m not sure I fancy the police station without any sleep,” Temple protested, “and without you.”
“Right.” She smirked sarcastically. “I thought you just decided you’re far better off without me.”
As though pained, he lowered the lids of his seductive eyes. “I cannot sleep for the wanting of you,” he said. “What am I to do? What? Leave the ones who love me so that the minute you’re sure you’ve got me, you’ll turn around and go back to your husband?”
Puffin sat huddled in the backseat. Strangely, it was his eyes she saw before she rose in protest. He was looking so cornered and woeful, sunk into his collar. He was cold, his hands in his pockets. Did even this have to be in front of him?
“And if you wouldn’t leave me for your husband”—Temple shook his head knowingly—“you would leave me for your family. You can’t deny that.”
Just then Blacky pulled up, coming from the other direction. He bounded out of the car and crossed the road over to them.
“How is she?” Claire said to Blacky, guiltily. Here she was discussing her love life, and his wife was being accused of murder.
“How do you bloody think she is!” he shouted at her.
“Who’s in the car?” Puffin bobbed his head up and down, craning to see.
“Oh, it’s Dirk,” Claire said. “Isolde’s son.”
“I’ve got to drop him at his old Kindermädchen’s,” Blacky said. “She’s to take him back to his school. The other one is half dead with Katzenjammer, hangover.”<
br />
“I’ll take him,” Temple volunteered. “I don’t want to go to the station house.” He glared at Claire.
Blacky waved Dirk over. The boy was happy to come and ride in the old-timer.
“Tell Isolde I’ll bring her things this afternoon,” Claire told Blacky. “Then you won’t have to waste time at the Mill.”
“Let me out, old boy,” Puffin said to Temple. “I’ll stay with Claire.”
Blacky gave Temple the address, and he sped back to Isolde. Temple took Dirk, and Claire and Puffin headed back to the Mill on foot.
Two police cars drove past, cutting Blacky off, headed back to town, followed by some reporters in Audis and timeworn Mercedes. On, she supposed, to the station house to question Isolde. Puffin was all wound up. One thing he loved was a catastrophe.
Claire walked slowly, trying to get her brain to clear. She kept feeling she was missing something. Puffin’s excited chatter was distracting, and she was relieved when he saw Friedel the gardener out back and went off to talk to him.
The yard was strewn with rice and broken glass. Wires from the twinkle lights hung, disconnected, from the branches. The kitchen door stood open. Evangelika was in there preparing a leg of lamb for the oven. She stabbed it full of garlic slices, surrounded it with wild rice and carrots and fresh rosemary branches.
“No Temple Fortune?” she greeted Claire meaningfully.
Claire’s eyes adjusted to the dark. “He’s gone back to take Frau von Osterwald’s son to the Kindermädchen. Doktor von Osterwald went back to the station house. They’re going up to see Isolde.”
“I thought you were keeping him away from the house so he wouldn’t be arrested.”
“Why should he be arrested?” Claire felt something coming. The kind of feeling you get at the start of a toothache.
Evangelika spit in the oven to test if it was hot enough, then slid the tray in. The serving girl came in with a pile of dishes, then left. Evangelika wiped her sinewy hands on the parchment-like apron. “Wasn’t her. That’s sure.”
“Wasn’t who?”
“Frau von Osterwald.”
“Wait a minute. You know it wasn’t Isolde who killed Fräulein Wintner? Why didn’t you tell the police?”
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