by L. J. Greene
He left as suddenly as he’d come in. I sat where I was, sock in hand, and thought long and hard.
Thanks to Leo, I knew he and Cresswickham would be having tea at the eastern side of the mansion in the cultured rose garden, so at least I could avoid them by taking myself elsewhere. I wasn’t eager to stay in my room and I sure wasn’t going to get any writing done, so I made my way to the parlor.
I was counting on time to myself, but of course it wasn’t to be. Betts was there, laying out a game of Solitaire.
“Hullo, there,” he said, surprised. “I thought you’d be with the men of the house.”
“And I thought you’d be with Alice. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I said, and made to leave.
“Her Ladyship is out riding. Come and sit down,” he said. “Play some gin rummy. Or honeymoon bridge. You know honeymoon bridge? Oh, pity. I’ll have to teach you. But rummy’s fine for now. A penny in the pot to start traditional—where I’m from, anyway. We can make it a dime if you prefer. Funny money you Yanks have. No offense meant.”
“No offense taken,” I said, and gave my first genuine grin for a while. “You play gin for money, too?”
“No point otherwise, is there?” he said matter-of-factly. “Fix us a drink, will you? And why don’t you try something other than that poor American excuse for whiskey that you like so much?”
I laughed and went into the bar. I hadn’t seen Betts drink before, so I asked, “What’s your poison?”
“Let’s match the game, eh? One way or t’other,” he said cryptically. My eye fell on a bottle of Tanqueray, and then a bottle of Jamaican rum. I’d had a horror of gin since a bad night a decade ago, so I held up the rum in a silent question. “That’s the stuff.”
I lost a few dollars to him over the course of an hour, and sank a good deal of rum while I did it. Betts enjoyed conversation, but talked mostly about the game, about the English football leagues, and about racing. We had the ponies in common, and could commiserate and congratulate with amity.
“Betty, can I ask you something?” I asked, when I was comfortably lubricated.
“Free country. Let’s have another pull at the beaker, eh?”
I poured him out another rum in his proffered glass. “What would you say if I told you I had reason to be worried about Alice?” I threw out the end card in my hand without watching what I was doing, and picked blind.
He threw out a card, picked up my queen of hearts, and then busied himself stuffing his pipe with tobacco from a crumpled pouch. He lit his pipe before he answered me. “I’d say I thought we’d already had this conversation. Gin.” He laid down his cards, but I didn’t bother checking them.
I tossed my hand down. “I mean she’s in danger. Imminent danger.”
He surveyed his fanned-out cards and said nothing.
“Betts—”
“I’m thinking,” he said pedantically. He gathered up all the cards and shuffled the deck together before laying out another Solitaire game. And then he said, “Where’s this danger coming from?”
“Why, Lord Cresswickham of course.”
He turned out sets of three cards methodically. Flick. Flick. Flick. Red and black dancing before my eyes. He played out his cards quickly, perfectly.
“If your silence is supposed to suggest Leo’s involved—” I started wearily, because I was starting to think that myself, but he waved a hand to cut me off.
“After that business he pulled me into, I began to wonder about the both of you. But you seem a harmless chap after all.”
“Bear with me, Betty,” I said, and gave what felt like a gruesome smile. “Go back a little. What business did Leo pull you into?”
He blinked rapidly at his cards, and paused in laying them out. “Eh-hem,” he said. “Well. I’m a man of the world, but…”
If I could have wrung the words from his throat with my hands, I would have, but with a superhuman effort I waited. I kept my mouth tight, knowing Betts would spill. He was a talker by nature, despite his strong and silent act when Cresswickham was around.
I was right.
“The beating he wanted,” he said in a rush. “I didn’t like it, but he insisted, and it seemed to me he took more pleasure in it than pain. Made me uncomfortable. But I was plastered that night, we both were. I gave him a few whacks—a few more than I would have liked, actually—but I gave it away in the end even though he wanted more.”
“The beating he wanted,” I parroted.
“Didn’t he tell you about that?” Betts cringed. “I thought he must have, when he told me the whole plot was off after all. And then you coming here, everything seemed cozy between you. Look, I’m sorry about the whole blasted thing, I truly am. I tried to argue him out of it. I tried to make him forget the whole bloody idea the morning after, but…”
The door opened.
“Speak of the devil,” Betts chirped, and deftly pocketed the money left on the table from gin rummy.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Leo said, and came straight to me.
“I’ll just bet you have,” I growled. I shoved my chair back to stand. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Several bones, as it turns out.”
Leo gave me a warning glance, inclining his head at Betts.
“I wouldn’t worry about him,” I said. “He knows what’s what. In fact, he’s a very entertaining storyteller.”
“Is he now?” Leo sauntered across to the fireplace. He placed an arm across the mantelpiece with a studied manner and turned his face towards me. “Spun you a tale, has he?”
“Come on, boys,” Betts interjected. “Don’t make me separate you.” He continued playing his cards.
Leo tapped his fingertips against the Italian marble of the fireplace like he was trying to make up his mind. “What exactly have you been telling stories about, Betts?”
I answered before Betts could. “Your little scheme. Betty told me the whole deal.”
“Did he?” Leo asked calmly. He took one of the Gauloises from the jade cigarette box on the mantel, and looked across at Betts as he lit it.
Betts shrugged and smiled cheerfully. “Afraid it just slipped out.” He turned over the next lot of three cards.
“I rather wish it hadn’t,” Leo murmured. “But what’s done is done, I suppose. I say, Betts, would you give us the room?”
I crossed to the bar to make myself a drink. If I was going to have to listen to more of Leo’s lies, I’d need something to make them more palatable.
“Oh,” Betts said in disappointment. “But I’m just about to go out in this game. Look, I can put this Ace of spades here, then the red Queen—”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come back to it.”
“I’ll be two shakes of a—”
“Betts!”
I’d never heard Leo raise his voice quite like that, barking like a despot and expecting to be obeyed. It reminded me of someone else entirely. Betts left without another word but with an injured air.
Chapter 22
“No need to take it out on him,” I said after Betts had gone. “He thought you’d already told me and we were in the kiss and make up stage.”
“Oh, damn him to hell,” Leo growled. “He can’t keep his nose out of my business.”
“It was his business, too. And mine, though I didn’t know it.”
Leo sat down and beckoned me over. “Come on, sweetheart. At least give me a chance to explain.”
“No need for any more lies. It’s clear enough: you were playing me. You have been from the start. Cresswickham never gave you that whipping, did he?”
He gave an impatient huff. “You’re cross with me, but you needn’t be. Yes, alright: we hatched up a hare-brained scheme, Betts and I, thinking we might convince someone else to take care of our problem. But it was after a night of heavy drinking. We’d talked ourselves into a frenzy. Thought we could get someone to do our dirty work for us, because Lord knows we’d never be able to do something like that ourse
lves.”
“Oh, but I would. And you suggested me,” I said bitterly. “I seemed like the right type to convince, did I? Not the kind to be particular about who I murdered?” I was still standing at the other side of the room, and my glass, I discovered, was empty. I poured myself another as Leo lit a cigarette from the glowing butt of his first.
“You’re making it sound so cold-blooded,” he said at last, once he’d puffed out several clouds of smoke around him. “It wasn’t like that at all. It was me and Betts and a bottle of some ghastly aniseed liqueur, which I’ll never touch again, by the way. We’d had a devil of a night with Reggie; he was looking for any excuse to make the evening unbearable. We were all at the opera, and he insisted Alice come despite her migraine—when you know how ill she gets—“
Yes, I knew. Leo had mentioned them before, and Alice had suffered one the day after I arrived; got a glazed look and had to retire to her bedroom, where she stayed in the dark for hours with a cold cloth across her forehead. This is what Leo had told me she was doing. I hadn’t seen her myself, of course. But I could imagine it. I had imagined it: her slim limbs taut with pain and her lips parted in a silent prayer for the agony to stop. She wore robin’s egg blue chiffon in my mind, sprays of it covering her modesty but shifting gently with her deep, slow breaths.
Leo had continued his story while my thoughts strayed, but I tuned back in to hear him say, “—so of course we were in simply the blackest mood, and once I’d got Reggie finally bundled off to bed and Betts had seen Alice safe to her room, we reconvened down here with that evil gut rot.”
“And planned out how you might get me to murder your meal ticket.”
“For God’s sake,” he said irritably, puffing out another cloud of smoke. “I tell you, it wasn’t like that, and if that’s what he told you then he’s exaggerating. I just said to him that we’d need someone who knew the seedier side of LA. You were the obvious choice.” I couldn’t take umbrage at that, certainly not after my interlude with the Walker Boys. “We were going to ask you to find someone. Hire someone.”
“A hit?” I gaped at him. “That’s a straight way to the gas chamber. And besides, that’s not the way it happened. You asked me—you suggested that we—”
“Well, yes,” he said. “I was still very angry with Reggie when I came to you that evening. But obviously the horror of what we’d talked about began to weigh on my mind, and when I returned the next day I was relieved to find you felt the same; that it had only been a folie à deux we’d talked ourselves into.”
I ran a hand over my mouth. There was something in what he was saying, after all. He had abandoned the idea quick-smart when I backed out.
“There, you see?” Leo said, and gave me a smile. “Whatever you’d worked up in your head, you can forget it. You must trust me. We have a common enemy, you know.”
God help me, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to think it was the two of us together against a tyrannical sadist.
I asked, “Does he actually beat you, or—”
“He hurts me. Yes, sometimes it’s physical. Sometimes he wants to humiliate me, like this afternoon. And sometimes he hurts me by destroying the things I love.”
“Like the Miles Davis record.”
He gave me a long, sad look, like I’d disappointed him somehow. “Yes,” he said at last. “Like the record.”
I wondered whether or not to give away what Cresswickham had insinuated in my bedroom, but I was too drunk to err on the side of caution. “Did you ask him to buy me for you?”
“No. I did not,” he said, and started up a third cigarette. “I told you that day, I had nothing to do with him paying off your debt. He wanted to go for a drive—made me stop there—I was as surprised as you that day—”
I broke in. “He told me he bought off my debt because you asked him to. Because he is—” I paused to recall his words exactly. “He is a kind and generous benefactor, and he wants you to have whatever you desire.”
He came close to me, like he might try to take me in his arms, but stopped when I clenched my fists. “Does this seem to you,” he asked in a low, pained voice, “to be what I desire? You can’t bear to be around me. You shrink away from me, you—”
“Christ, Mancini, can you blame me?” I asked coldly. He fell silent. “What Cresswickham was saying about you being…” I couldn’t articulate the thoughts I’d been having. They seemed ludicrous now, with the sun low in the sky and shining red and gold into the room, making Leo’s dark eyes fire bronze and picking out auburn lights in his hair. Leo, a savage murderer, a woman-killer? No. Ridiculous.
Leo said, “He likes to call me oversexed. He likes to dehumanize me, describe me as an animal, ruled by instinct. Crazed by my libido.” He saw my face, and looked upset. “Oh, for God’s sake. You know me. I’m always careful, aren’t I? I’ve never hurt you, not more than you wanted to be hurt, my best beloved.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snarled. “That’s what you called him this afternoon.”
He lit yet another of his Gauloises. The room was reeking of them, so I crossed to open the window. The air outside was still warm and smelled sweet. In the distance, on the green hill well beyond the pool and the outer hedges, I saw a horseback rider trotting towards the stables. Alice.
“I’m sorry you overheard that conversation. I was just—”
“Why was he talking about Alice?”
“My darling heart, whatever you heard—”
“Alright, don’t waste your breath,” I said, turning back to face him. “I’ve had a gutful of your lies. I’m choking on them. Just stay the hell away from me, why don’t you?”
“I suppose you’ll choose to believe me or you won’t,” he replied tightly. He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace and stalked to the door. “It’s up to you. But I’m not lying. What he meant was, you’re looking for comfort and you’re cold enough to take it where you can.” I turned my back on him again. “Frankly, I can understand why he thinks that way.”
I whirled around to say something just as vicious in return, but he’d already gone.
Alice was still trotting across the field, and it occurred to me that there was nothing stopping me from walking out to the stables to meet her on her return. She made a striking, slim figure on a massive white horse, bright against the green and brown of the grass.
I did as I’d decided to do, and when she turned into the corral at the stable I saw she was riding bareback.
“Hello,” she said, surprised to see me. She was flushed from the exercise, her hair blowing around her face like angel wings. “What are you doing here?”
“Thought I’d come to say hello. Say, is that safe?”
“Is what safe?” she asked, swinging down off the horse. She was wearing jodhpurs and a dusty white sweater. The outfit clung to her curves as sweet as a lover might. She saw me looking and quirked her mouth.
“You know,” I said. “Without a saddle.”
“Of course it’s not safe,” she said, and took the reins in her hand to guide the horse back to the stables. “But I wanted to bring Thor in from the far paddock, and I didn’t want to carry a saddle all the way out there. Besides, once this gentleman gets the bit between his teeth, he’s lovely and docile. Easy to lead.”
I grinned stupidly. “Oh, I believe it,” I said. “I believe it.”
She walked the horse back into his stall and started to brush him down. The stables were a riot of scent: woodchip, hay, sweat, leather, and an acrid, dirty undertone. Reminded me of Leo, somehow.
“Don’t tell Reggie, will you?” she asked between brushstrokes.
“That you’re out riding bareback?” I leaned against the stall and watched her work. It was something to see the tiny blonde so confident around a massive beast like Thor. And he just stood there, acquiescent and meek.
“And straddling.”
“Ah,” I said. “Straddling.” She was around the other side of the horse, and so she didn’t see my face.
“Reggie, bless him, thinks that ladies should ride sidesaddle,” she continued, coming back around.
“I’ve heard some ladies prefer American-style.” I was lucky Betts wasn’t about. He’d’ve clocked me for that one.
Alice gave me an appraising look. “Reggie doesn’t like Americans much.”
“Apart from Leo,” I pointed out.
“One forgets Leo is your compatriot sometimes. He’s become quite Continental over the years.”
“You seem to like my species okay.”
“It’s true. I am fond of Americans,” she said, ducking her head to hide a smile. “There’s no falsity about them. One knows what they seek.”
“Does one?” I asked, and took the brush from her hand. I pulled her away from the horse, into the stable proper.
“Oh, yes,” she said, looking up into my face.
I cupped her face in my hands and drowned myself in her perplexing icicle eyes. I got an inch from her soft, parted lips before she closed her fingers around my wrist and took a little step backwards.
“I don’t think it’s really on,” she said good-naturedly. “Do you?”
“Uh?”
She shook her head with a grin. “You are delicious, darling, I will admit, but I’m not quite up to doing this kind of thing in a horse stable. What is it you Americans like to call it—necking? Besides,” she said, stepping away and picking up a shovel, “Reggie wouldn’t like it. And nor, I’m certain, would Leo.”
So Alice knew everything. Or did she? Did she know exactly what the men of the house got up to? The thought made my cheeks flame. But yes, she must know; how could she not? We none of us went out of our way to hide it. I rubbed the back of my neck, and screwed up my face. “I keep getting shot down by the fair sex,” I said. “Maybe I need to fine-tune my act.”
“Maybe you need to find another.”
“Hm.” I watched her rolling up her sleeves. “What’re you doing with that spade?”