Nightwork

20

When I got back to the hotel, I was told by the concierge that Mr Fabian expected me to come up to his room. It was late in the afternoon. Lily and I had had several more brandies, sitting in silence as the restaurant slowly emptied. Death makes for long lunches.

I had left Lily at the hairdresser’s. “No sense,” she had said, “in wasting the whole afternoon.” We had taken the chair lift out of a sense of decorum. Skiing down, we agreed, after what had happened, would have seemed frivolous. Neither of us had spoken of Eunice.

“What was the last thing you said to the man?” Lily asked as we swung slowly toward the shadowed valley.

“Fuck off,” I said.

She nodded. “That’s what I thought you said. Hail and Farewell.” She gestured toward the peaks in the distance, still glowing in sunlight. The eagle, if that was what it was, was back on station, patrolling the neutral Helvetian air. “There are worse places to die.” She chuckled. “And worse last words. If there’s any justice, he cut that wife of his out of his will.”

“I’m sure he didn’t.”

“I said, if there’s any justice.”

“Do you think your husband has cut you out of his will?”

“Don’t be so American,” she said.

We left it at that.

On the way back to the hotel I stepped off at a shop and bought myself a topcoat. Didi Wales was welcome to her memento. It was a small price to pay for her absence.

Fabian was packing when I arrived at the suite he shared with Lily. He did not travel light. There were four big suitcases scattered around the two rooms. As usual, there were newspapers everywhere, opened to the financial pages. He packed swiftly and neatly, shoes in one bag, shirts in another, in crisp perfect piles. “I’m accompanying the body home,” he said. “It’s the least I can do, don’t you think?”

“The least,” I said.

“You were correct,” he said. “The IOU was in the left pocket. The formalities will all be taken care of before this evening. The Swiss are very efficient when it comes to getting a dead foreigner out of the country. He was only fifty-two. A Choleric man. Premature destruction. A lesson for us all. I called his wife. She took the news bravely. She’s going to meet us – the coffin and myself – at Kennedy tomorrow – She’s making the necessary dreary arrangements. By the way, do you happen to know where Lily is?”

“Getting her hair done.”

“Unflappable girl. I admire that in her.” He picked up the phone and asked for the hairdresser’s. While he was waiting for the call to be put through, he said. “Would you mind driving us down to Geneva tomorrow?”

“If the police let me out of town,” I said. “They still have my passport.”

“Oh,” Fabian said, “I nearly forgot.” He took my passport out of his pocket and tossed it onto a table. “Here it is.”

“How did you get it?” Somehow I was not surprised that he had it. Partially against my will he had established himself in my imagination as a looming father-figure, capriciously powerful, solver of problems and mysteries, mover of men and laws. I thumbed through the passport to see if there was anything added or missing. I could see nothing to indicate that I had been suspected of crime.

“The assistant manager gave it to me when I came in,” Fabian said carelessly. “They found the necklace.”

“Who stole it?”

“Nobody. The lady had it stuffed in a ski boot for safe keeping and forgot where she’d put it. Her husband found it this afternoon. The assistant manager was writhing in apology. There’s a large bouquet of flowers and a magnum of champagne waiting for you in your room as a sign of the hotel’s mortification. Hello, hello,” he said into the phone, “may I speak to Lady Abbott please?” Then to me. “You don’t mind being left alone for a few days, do you?” “Frankly,” I said “nothing could please me more.” He arched his eyebrows. “Well…” he said. “I feel as though I’ve been running cross-country for weeks,” I said. “I could use a little holiday.”

“I thought you were enjoying yourself.” There was a touch of reproach in his voice.

“Everybody to his own opinion,” I said. “Lily,” Fabian said into the phone, “I have to go to America tomorrow. Two or three weeks, at the outside. Do you want to come?” He listened for a moment, smiled. “That’s my girl,” he said. “You’d better get back rather quickly and start packing.” He hung up. “She loves New York,” he said. “We’ll be staying at the St Régis. In case you want to keep in touch.” “Roughing it, aren’t you?”

He shrugged, went back to his packing. “It’s convenient,” he said. “And I like the bar. Actually, even if this hadn’t come up, I would have had to fly over in a day or two anyway. I want to put together the chalet deal and just about everybody I can think of is on the East Coast. I may have to go down to Palm Beach for a week or so, too. After the funeral.” “Rough country.”

“I sense a certain resentment on your part, Douglas.” He frowned at a cashmere sweater he was folding. “I don’t think I’ll need this, do you?”

“Not in Palm Beach, you won’t.”

“You make it sound as though I’m going on this trip for pleasure.” Again I heard a mild reproach, “I assure you I’d much rather go down to Italy with you. As a matter of fact, there’s something I’d like you to do for me – for us – after you get to Rome. I’ve been in touch with a charming Italian gentleman. Name of Quadrocelli. Italians have all the luck when it comes to choosing names, don’t they? I’ll send the Dottore a wire to expect you. A nice little enterprise that’s waiting to be wrapped up.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t sound so suspicious.”

“You must admit your last enterprise was hardly a howling success.”

“It worked out all right in the end, didn’t it?” Fabian said cheerfully.

“I don’t think we can count on everybody we do business with dropping dead on payday.”

Fabian laughed, showing his excellent teeth beneath the neat mustache. “Who can tell? I myself am now approaching the crucial age.”

“It would take an axe to do you in, Miles,” I said. “And you know it.”

He laughed again. “Anyway, you can explain the circumstances to Dottore Quadrocelli. Why I couldn’t come in person. You’ll find him in Porto Ercole. That’s just about two hours north of Rome. It’s a delightful place. I had hoped to spend at least two weeks there. There’s a first-class small hotel overlooking the Med. It’s called the Pellicano. An ideal place to hide out with a girl.” He sighed, regretting the first-class small hotel overlooking the Med. “Lily adores it. Later in the year, perhaps. Ask for the room with the big terrace. The good Dottore has a villa not far from there.”

“What have you got going this time?”

“I wish you wouldn’t sound so surly, old man. I like contented partners.”

“My nerves aren’t as strong as yours.”

“No, I suppose they’re not. Wine.”

“What?”

“You asked me what I had going this time. What I have going is wine. With the way the world’s drinking these days, being in wine is like having a license to steal. Have you noticed how the prices for any kind of bottle have been going up? Especially in America.”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Trust me, they have. Quadrocelli has a small estate outside Florence. He makes a delicious Chianti. So far, on a very small scale. Just for himself and his friends. He’s surrounded by a lot of small farmers who also grow wine of the same quality. We played with the idea last summer of contracting to buy the crop of his neighbors, having a pretty label drawn up, and bottling it under his name and selling it in the States directly to restaurant chains. Eliminate all the middlemen. You can imagine the advantages.”

“I can’t really,” I said. “I’ve never eliminated a middleman in my life. But I suppose it’s enough if you can.”

“Believe me,” he said. “It would take a little capital, of course. Mr Quadrocelli doesn’t have the necessary and last summer, as you can imagine, neither did I.”

“And now you have.”

“We have. First person plural, old man.” He patted my arm in a brotherly gesture. “Forever and a day. I’ve been in touch with Mr Quadrocelli and he’s working out a set of figures. I’d appreciate it if you’d look them over and call me in New York so we can discuss it. In fact, I think it would be a good idea if you called me every few days, say at ten o’clock New York time. There’s always something coming up.” “That’s no lie,” I said.

“Keeps the blood circulating,” he said airily. “Tell Mr Quadrocelli that on my side I’ll be lining up restaurants in the States. Luckily, I have some dear friends who are in the business. Very much in the business. In fact, they’ve been after me to come in with them as vice-president in charge of public relations. But it would mean going to an office every day. Unthinkable. No matter what the money is. It would also mean smiling all the time. Not my cup of tea, at all. But they’d absorb a lot of wine.”

“Miles,” I said, “how many other schemes have you got at the back of your head that you’re going to spring on me one at a time?”

He laughed. “I don’t like to worry you about projects until they ripen”. Gentle Heart. “You should thank me.” “I thank you,” I said.

“After dinner,” he said, “I’ll give you Quadrocelli’s address and telephone number. Also the address of my tailor in Rome. Tell him you’re a friend of mine. I suggest a complete wardrobe. I’ll also give you the address of a very good shirt-maker. I also suggest throwing away your present wardrobe. It does nothing for our mutual image, if you get what I mean. I hope I’m not hurting your feelings.”

“On the contrary,” I said. “I understand. By the time you see me again, I’ll be a credit to you.”

“That’s better,” he said. “Would you like the telephone numbers of some lovely Italian girls?”

“No. I’ll do it alone, thank you, if you don’t mind.”

“I just thought you might like to save a little time.”

“I’m in no hurry.”

“Finally,” he said, “we’ll have to try to uproot the old Puritan in you. Meanwhile I suppose I’ll have to take you as you come.”

“The way I take you.”

He had been going in and out of the bedroom through all this, coming out with various articles of clothing that he stowed in one bag or another. Now he emerged with the pretty blue Tyrolean jacket. “This would look very good on you, Douglas,” he said. “It’s a little large for me. Would you like it?”

“No, thanks. I’ve had my skiing for the year,” I said.

He nodded soberly. “I understand. What happened today took the edge off Alpine joys a bit.”

“I never wanted to come here in the first place.”

“Sometimes you have to do things to please the ladies,” Fabian said. “Apropos of that. Do you want to tell me why Eunice decamped?”

“Not particularly.”

“I regret you didn’t see fit to take my advice,” Fabian said. “It was good advice.”

“Oh, come on, now. Miles! Enough is enough. She told me everything.” Somehow, the sight of this handsome, completely composed man, every hair in place, his trousers and shirt fitting him perfectly, his shoes with a high mahogany shine, deftly packing his array of bags, the perfect traveler for the jet age, suddenly infuriated me. “All about you. Or at least enough about you.”

“I haven’t the faintest notion of what you’re talking about, old man.” He tucked a half-dozen pairs of socks neatly into a corner of a suitcase. “What in the world would there be to about me?” “She’s in love with you.”

“Oh, dear,” he said.

“You had an affair with her. I’m not in the business of accepting hand-me-downs.”

“Oh, dear,” he said again. “She said that?”

“And more.”

“Ever since I’ve met you,” he said. “I’ve worried about your innocence. You have a terribly low threshold of shock. People have affairs. It’s a fact of life. People you’re associated with. More or less permanently. Good God, man, have you ever been to a wedding at which the bride hasn’t had an affair with at least one of the guests?”

“You might have told me,” I said, knowing it sounded foolish.

“What good would that have done? Be reasonable. I suggested her to you with the best intentions in the world. For both you and her. I can vouch for the fact that she’s a marvelous girl. In bed and out, not to put too fine a point on it.”

“She wanted to marry you.”

“A passing whim. I’m much too old for her, for one thing.”

“Oh, come now, Miles. Fifty’s not all that old.”

“I’m not fifty. I’m long past that, if you must know.”

I looked at him incredulously. If he hadn’t told me when we first met that he was fifty, I’d have found it hard to believe that he was much over forty. I knew he found it easy to lie, but I couldn’t see why he would pretend to be older than he was. “How much past?” I asked.

“I’ll be sixty next month, old man.”

“You must tell me your secret.” I said. “Someday.”

“Someday.” He snapped a suitcase shut decisively. “Women like Eunice have no sense of the future. They look at a man they’ve taken a fancy to and they see only their lover, ageless with passion, not an old man sitting by the fire in slippers a few years from then. There’s no need to tell anyone what you’ve just learned, of course.”

“Does Lily know?”

“Not on your life,” he said briskly. “So, you see, I rather thought I was doing both you and Eunice a good turn.”

“It didn’t quite work.” I said.

“Sorry about that.”

I almost told him about Didi Wales lying naked on my bed, but realized in time that it would not increase his esteem for me appreciably. “Anyway,” I said, “I think it’s better for all concerned that Eunice went home.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “We’ll never know, shall we? By the way, is there anybody you’d like me to call or see while I’m in America? Any messages?”

I thought for a moment. “You might telephone my brother in Scranton,” I said. I wrote down his address. “Ask him how he’s doing. And tell him all is well. I’ve found a friend.”

Fabian smiled, pleased. “You certainly have. Anybody else?”

I hesitated. “No,” I said finally.

“I look forward to it.” Fabian put the slip with Henry’s address on it in his pocket. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have to do my yoga exercises before my bath. I imagine you’re going to change for dinner?”

Yoga, I thought, as I left the suite. Maybe that’s what I ought to take up.

I watched the big plane take off from Cointrin, the Geneva airport, with Fabian and Lily and the coffin on it. The sky was gray and it was drizzling. I had said nothing would please me more than being left alone for a few days and I had thought that I would be relieved at seeing them finally on their way, like a schoolboy at the beginning of a holiday, but I felt lonely, depressed. I had a slip of paper with Mr Quadrocelli’s address and telephone number in my wallet and the addresses of the tailor and shirtmaker in Rome and a list that Fabian had made out for me of good restaurants and churches that I was not to miss on my route south. But it was all I could do to keep from going over to the ticket counter and buying passage on the next plane to New York. As the plane disappeared westward, I felt deserted, left behind, the only one not invited to the party.

What if the plane crashed? No sooner had I thought of it than it seemed to me to be probable. Otherwise, why would I have thought of it? As a pilot I had always taken a macabre professional interest in crashes. I knew how easily things could go wrong. A stuck valve, unexpected clear air turbulence, a flock of swallows … I could almost see Fabian calmly dropping through the deadly air, imperturbably drowning, perhaps at the last moment, before the ocean swallowed him, finally telling Lily his correct age.

I had been involved in two deaths already since the beginning of my adventure – the old man in the St Augustine and Sloane, now flying to his grave. Would there be an inevitable third? Was there a curse on the money I had stolen? Should I have let Fabian leave? What would the rest of my life be like without him? If there had been any way I could have done it, I would have had the plane recalled, run out to greet it, all reticence and reason gone, before it even rolled to a halt.

In the gray weather, Europe seemed suddenly hostile and full of traps. Maybe, I thought, as I walked toward where the Jaguar was parked, Italy will cure me. I wasn’t hopeful.