by Ed McBain
“Did you fuck all of them?”
“You know I have no intention of answering a question like that, Peter. I will say this: there can never be any conflict, any—hidden tension between my subjects and myself that will adversely affect my work. The work is all that really matters.”
Peter looked around at him as blandly as he could manage, but the sun was in his eyes and they smarted.
“Here’s what matters to us. Echo and me are going to be married. We know there’re problems. We’ve got it covered. We don’t need your help. Was there anything else?”
“I’m happy that we’ve had this time to become acquainted. Would you mind one more stop before we head back to the city?”
“Take your time. I’m on the clock, pop said. So far it’s easy money.”
______
At the end of a winding uphill gravel drive bordered by stacked rock walls that obviously had been there for a century or longer, the limousine came to a pretty Cotswold-style stone cottage with slate roofs that overlooked a lake and a wildfowl sanctuary.
They parked on a cobblestone turnaround and got out. A caterer’s van and a blue Land Rover stood near a separate garage.
“That’s Connecticut a mile or so across the lake. In another month the view turns—well, as spectacular as a New England fall can be. In winter, of course, the lake is perfect for skating. Do you skate, Peter?”
“Street hockey,” Peter said, taking a deep breath as he looked around. The sun was setting west of a small orchard behind the cottage; there was a good breeze across the hilltop. “So this is where you grew up?”
“No. The caretaker lived here. This cottage and about ten acres of woods and orchard are all that’s left of the five hundred acres my family owned. All of it is now deeded public land. No one can build another house within three-quarters of a mile.”
“Got it all to yourself? Well, this is definitely where I’d work if I were you. Plenty of peace and quiet.”
“When I was much younger than you, just beginning to paint, the woods in all their form and color were like an appetite. Paraphrasing Wordsworth, a different kind of painter—poetry being the exotic pigment of language.” He looked slowly around, eyes brimming with memory. “Almost six years since I was up here. Now I spend most of my time in Maine. But I recently had the cottage redecorated, and added an infinity pool on the lake side. Do you like it, Peter?”
“I’m impressed.”
“Why don’t you have a look around inside?”
“Looks like you’ve got company. Anyway, what’s the point?”
“The point is, the cottage is yours, Peter. A wedding present for you and Echo.”
Peter had hit a Trifecta two years ago at Aqueduct, which rewarded him with twenty-six hundred dollars. He’d been thrilled by the windfall. Now he was stunned. When his heartbeat was more or less under control he managed to say, “Wait a minute. You . . . can’t do this.”
“It’s done, Peter. Echo is in the garden, I believe. Why don’t you join her? I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“Omigod, Peter, do you believe it?”
She was on the walk that separated garden and swimming pool, the breeze tugging her hair across her eyes. There were a lot of roses in the garden, he noticed. He felt, in spite of the joy he saw in Echo’s face, a thorn in his heart. And it was a crushing effort for him just to breathe.
“Jesus, Echo—what’ve you done?”
“Peter—”
He walked through the garden toward her. Echo sat on a teak-wood bench, hands folded in her lap, her pleasure dimmed to a defensive smile because she knew what was coming. He could almost see her stubborn streak surfacing, like a shark’s fin in bloodied waters. Peter made an effort to keep his tone reasonable.
“Wedding present? That’s china and toasters and things. How do we rate something like this? Nobody in his right mind would give away—”
“I haven’t done anything,” Echo said. “And it isn’t ours. Not yet.”
“I’m usually in my right mind,” John Ransome said pleasantly. Peter stopped, halfway between Echo and Ransome, who was in the doorway to the garden, the setting sun making of his face a study in sanguinity. He held a large thick envelope in one hand. “Escrow to the cottage and grounds will close in one year, when Mary Catherine has completed her obligation to me.” He smiled. “I don’t expect an invitation to the wedding. But I wish you both a lifetime of happiness. I’ll leave this inside for you to read.” Nobody said anything for a few moments. They heard a helicopter. Ransome glanced up. “My ride is here,” he said. “Make yourselves at home for as long as you like, and enjoy the dinner I’ve had prepared for you. My driver will take you back to the city when you’re ready to go.”
The night turned unseasonably chilly for mid September, temperature dropping into the low fifties by nine o’clock. One of the caterers built a fire on the hearth in the garden room while Echo and Peter were served after-dinner brandies. They sipped and read the contract John Ransome had left for Echo to sign, Peter passing pages to her as he finished reading.
A caterer looked in on them to say, “We’ll be leaving in a few minutes, when we’ve finished cleaning up the kitchen.”
“Thank you,” Echo said. Peter didn’t look up or say a word until he’d read the last page of the contract. Wind rattled one of the stained-glass casement windows in the garden room. Peter poured more brandy for himself, half a snifter’s worth, as if it were cherry Coke. He drank all of it, got up and paced while Echo read by firelight, pushing her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose with a forefinger when they slipped.
When she had put the twelve pages in order, Peter fell back into the upholstered chair opposite Echo. They looked at each other. The fire crackled and sparked.
“I can’t go up there to see you? You can’t come home, unless it’s an emergency? He doesn’t want to paint you, he wants to own you!”
They heard the caterer’s van drive away. The limo chauffeur had enjoyed his meal in a small apartment above the garage.
“I understand his reasons,” Echo said. “He doesn’t want me to be distracted.”
“Is that what I am? A distraction?”
“Peter, you don’t have a creative mind, so I really don’t expect you to get it.” Echo frowned; she knew when she sounded condescending. “It’s only for a year. I can do this. Then we’re set.” She looked around the garden room, a possessive light in her eyes. “My Lord, this place, I’ve never even dreamed of—I want mom to see it! Then, if she approves—”
“What about my approval?” Peter said with a glower, drinking again.
Echo got up and stretched. She shuddered. In spite of the fire it was a little chilly in the room. He watched the rise and fall of her breasts with blurred yearning.
“I want that too.”
“And you want this house.”
“Are you going to sulk the rest of the evening?”
“Who’s sulking?”
She took the glass from his hand, sat down in his lap and cradled her head on a wide shoulder, closing her eyes.
“With real estate in the sky, best we could hope for is a small house in, you know, Yonkers or Port Chester. This is Bedford .”
Peter cupped the back of her head with his hand.
“He’s got you wanting, instead of thinking. He’s damn good at it. And that’s how he gets what he wants.”
Echo slipped a hand over his heart. “So angry.” She trembled. “I’m cold, Peter. Warm me up.”
“Isn’t what we’ve always planned good enough any more?”
“Oh, Peter. I love you and I’m going to marry you, and nothing will ever change that.”
“Maybe we should get started home.”
“But what if this is home, Peter? Our home.” She slid off his lap, tugged nonchalantly at him with one hand. “C’mon. You haven’t seen everything yet.”
“What did I miss?” he said reluctantly.
“Bedroom. And there’s a f
ireplace too.”
She dealt soothingly with his resistance, his fears that he wasn’t equal to the emotional cost that remained to be exacted for their prize. He wasn’t steady on his feet. The brandy he had drunk was hitting him hard.
“Just think about it,” Echo said, leading him. “How it could be. Imagine that a year has gone by—so fast—” Echo kissed him and opened the bedroom door. Inside there was a gas log fire on a corner hearth. “—and here we are.” She framed his his face lovingly with her hands. “What do you want to do now?” she said, looking solemnly into his eyes.
Peter swallowed the words he couldn’t speak, glancing at the four-poster bed that dominated the room.
“I know what I want you to do,” she said.
“Echo—”
She tugged him into the room and closed the door with her foot.
“It’s all right,” she said as he wavered. “Such a perfect place to spend our first night together. I want you to appreciate just how much I love you.”
She left him and went to a corner of the room by the hearth where she undressed quickly, a quick-change artist down to the skin, slipping then beneath covers, to his fuming eyes a comely shadow.
“Peter?”
He touched his belt buckle; dropped his hands. He felt at the point of tears; ardor and longing were compromised by too much drink. His heartbeat was fueled by inchoate anger.
“Peter? What’s wrong?”
He took a step toward her, stumbled, fell against a chair with a lyre back. Heavy, but he lifted it easily and slammed it against the wall. His unexpected rage had her cowering, his insulted hubris a raw wound she was too inexperienced to deal with. She hugged herself in shock and pain.
Peter opened the bedroom door.
“I’ll wait in the fuckin’ limo. You—you stay here if you want! Stay all night. Do whatever the hell you think you’ve got to do to make yourself happy, and just never mind what it’ll do to us!”
SIX
The first day of fall, and a good day for riding in convertibles: unclouded blue sky, temperatures on the East Coast in the sixties. The car John Ransome drove uptown and parked opposite Echo’s building was a Mercedes two-seater. Not a lot of room for luggage, but she’d packed frugally: the clothes she would need for wintering on a small island off the coast of Maine. And her paintbox.
He didn’t get out of the car right away; cell phone call. Echo lingered an extra few moments at her bedroom windows hoping to see Peter’s car. They’d talked briefly about one A.M., and he’d sounded okay, almost casual about her upcoming enforced absence from his life. Holidays included. He was trying a little too hard not to show a lack of faith in her. Neither of them mentioned John Ransome. As if he didn’t exist, and she was leaving to study painting in Paris for year.
Echo picked up her duffels from the bed and carried them out to the front hall. She left the door ajar and went into the front room where Julia was reading to Rosemay from the National Enquirer. Julia was a devotee of celebrity gossip.
Commenting on an actress who had been photographed trying to slip out of a California clinic after a makeover, Julia said, “Sure and she’s at an age where she needs to give up plastic surgery and place her bets with a good taxidermist.”
Rosemay smiled, her eyes on her daughter. Rosemay’s lips trembled perceptibly; her skin was china-white, mimicking the tone of the bones within. Echo felt a strong pulse of fear; how frail her mother had become in just three months.
“Mom, I’m leaving my cell phone with you. It doesn’t work on the island, John says. But there’s a dish for Internet, no problem with e-mail.”
“That’s a blessing.”
“Peter comin’ to see you off?” Julia asked.
Echo glanced at her watch. “He wasn’t sure. They were working a triple homicide last night.”
“Do we have time for tea?” Rosemay asked, turning slowly away from her computer and looking up at Echo through her green eyeshade.
“John’s here already, mom.”
Then Echo, to her surprise and chagrin, just lost it, letting loose a flood of tears, sinking to her knees beside her mother, laying her head in Rosemay’s lap as she had when she was a child. Rosemay stroked her with an unsteady hand, smiling.
Behind them John Ransome appeared in the hallway. Rosemay saw his reflection on a window pane. She turned her head slowly to acknowledge him. Julia, oblivious, was turning the pages of her gossip weekly.
The expression in Rosemay’s eyes was more of a challenge than a welcome to Ransome. Her hands came together protectively over Echo. Then she prayerfully bowed her head.
Peter double-parked in the street and was running up the stairs of Echo’s building when he met Julia coming down with her Save the Trees shopping bag.
“They’re a half hour gone, Peter. I was just on my way to do the marketing.”
Peter shook his head angrily. “I only got off a half hour ago! Why couldn’t she wait for me, what was the big rush?”
“Would you mind sittin’ with Rosemay while I’m out? Because it’s goin’ down hard for her, Peter.”
He found Rosemay in the kitchen, a mug of cold tea between her hands. He put the kettle on again, fetched a mug for himself and sat down wearily with Rosemay. He took one of her hands in his.
“A year. A year until she’s home again. Peter, I only let her do this because I was afraid—”
“It’s okay. I’ll be comin’ around myself, two, three times a week, see how you are.”
“—not afraid for myself,” Rosemay said, finishing her thought. “Afraid of what my illness could do to you and Echo.”
They looked at each other wordlessly until the kettle on the stove began whistling.
“Listen, we’re gonna get through this,” Peter said, grim around the mouth.
Rosemay’s head drooped slowly, as if she hadn’t the strength to hold it up any longer.
“He came, and took her away. Like the old days of lordship, you see. A privilege of those who ruled.”
Echo didn’t see much of Kincairn Island that night when they arrived. The seven-mile ferry trip left her so sick and sore from heaving she couldn’t fully straighten up once they docked at the fishermen’s quay. There were few lights in the clutter of a town occupying a small cove. A steady wind stung her ears on the short ride cross-island by Land Rover to the house facing two thousand miles of open ocean.
A sleeping pill knocked her out for eight hours.
At first light the cry of gulls and waves booming on the rocks a hundred feet below her bedroom windows woke her up. She had a hot shower in the recently updated bathroom. Some eyedrops got the red out. By then she thought she could handle a cup of black coffee. Outside her room she found a flight of stairs to the first-floor rear of the house. Kitchen noises below. John Ransome was an early riser; she heard him talking to someone.
The kitchen also had gone through a recent renovation. But the architect hadn’t disturbed quaint and mostly charming old features: a hearth for baking in one corner, hand-hewn oak beams overhead.
“Good morning;” John Ransome said. “Looks as if you got your color back.”
“I think I owe you an apology,” Echo mumbled.
“For getting sick on the ferry? Everybody does until they get used to it. The fumes from that old diesel banger are partly to blame. How about breakfast? Ciera just baked a batch of her cinnamon scones.”
“Coffeecoffeecoffee,” Echo pleaded.
Ciera was a woman in her sixties, olive-skinned, with tragic dark eyes. She brought the coffeepot to the table.
“Good morning,” Echo said to her. “I’m Echo.”
The woman cocked her head as if she hadn’t heard correctly.
“It’s just a—a nickname. I was baptized Mary Catherine.”
“I like Mary Catherine,” Ransome said. He was smiling. “So why don’t we call you by your baptismal name while you’re here.”
“Okay,” Echo said, with a glance at him. It wasn�
��t a big thing; nicknames were childish anyway. But she felt a slight psychic disturbance. As if, in banishing “Echo,” he had begun to invent the person whom he really wanted to paint, and to live within a relationship that he firmly controlled.
Foolish, Echo thought. I know who I am.
The rocky path to Kincairn light, where Ransome had his studio, took them three hundred yards through scruffy stunted hemlock and blueberry barrens, across lichen-gilded rock, thin earth and frost-heaves. At intervals the path wended close to the high-tide line. Too close for Echo’s peace of mind, although she tried not to appear nervous. Kincairn Island, about eight and a half crooked miles by three miles wide with a high, forested spine, was only a granitic pebble confronting a mighty ocean, blue on this October morning beneath a lightly cobwebbed sky.
“The light is fantastic,” she said to Ransome.
“That’s why I’m here, in preference to Cascais or Corfu for instance. Clear winter mornings are the best. The town is on the lee side of the island facing Penobscot. There’s a Catholic church, by the way, that the diocese will probably close soon, or Unitarian for those who prefer Religion Lite.”
“Who else lives here?” Echo asked, blinking salt spume from her eyelashes. The tide was in, wind from the southeast.
“About a hundred forty permanent residents, average age fifty-five. The economy is lobsters. Period. At the turn of the century Kincairn was a lively summer community, but most of the old saltbox cottages are gone; the rest belong to locals.”
“And you own the island?”
“The original deed was recorded in 1794. You doing okay, Mary Catherine?”
The ledge they were crossing was only about fifty feet above the breakers and a snaggle of rocks close to shore.
“I get a little nervous . . . this close.”
“Don’t you swim?”
“Only in pools. The ocean—I nearly drowned on a beach in New Jersey. I was five. The waves that morning were nothing, a couple of feet high. I had my back to the water, playing with my pail and shovel. All of a sudden there was a huge wave, out of nowhere, that caught everybody by surprise.”