A Temporary Ghost (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Series 2) (15 page)

Then I thought: If Alexander wanted to sabotage the book, he was doing a good job of it. I didn’t believe he’d been carried away by solicitude for Vivien. He saw a chance to sow discord and was alert enough to take it. What a smart, manipulative, hateful son of a bitch he was.

A gust of wind came up, flapping the pages of my legal pad and banging the door of the shed back against the wall. Ross had left it standing open when he rushed out to defend me. I went to close it. I hadn’t been this close to Ross’s studio before. He sometimes spent time in there. Was he doing anything? After a millisecond of inner debate, I decided to look inside. Inexcusable, I admit, but also irresistible.

The shed, built of crumbling stucco with a tile roof, had probably served some agricultural function when Mas Rose was a real farm. I looked in the door. Two windows, their shutters open, overlooked the valley and let in plenty of light. I stepped over the threshold. The room was cool, with a stone floor, a trestle worktable under the windows, canvases stacked against the walls. It made a small but pleasant artist’s atelier.

The first thing to catch my eye, and by far the most striking object in the room, was “Nice Boy.” Ross’s rendition of an enraged gorilla giving the finger to the Mona Lisa was leaning by itself against the end wall. The day we met, I remembered, Ross had told me Vivien had shipped some of his work over to inspire him, although what “Nice Boy” might inspire was unclear to me. The piece was even uglier than the photograph in
Patrician Homes.
The massive gorilla-frame was covered with ratty, disgusting-looking dark brown fake fur. Its rolling glass eyes were bloodshot and wild, its fangs brownish-yellow. Somehow, Ross had made the yawning red gullet look wet with saliva. A filthy middle-finger claw pointed precisely at the Mona Lisa’s cleavage as she smiled imperturbably on. The Mona Lisa was actually painted, not a printed reproduction. Ross must have gone to considerable trouble if he’d copied it himself.

I had stepped back from “Nice Boy” and was about to continue snooping when I heard footsteps. It couldn’t be Ross. He’d be comforting Vivien for hours yet.

Except he wouldn’t. I had almost reached the door when Ross put his head in and said, “Oh. There you are.”

I was mortified. “You left the door open,” I said breathlessly. “I went to close it, and looked in and saw this.” I waved my hand toward “Nice Boy.”

“Yeah.” Ross seemed indifferent to my intrusion. He stepped inside and regarded “Nice Boy.” “There’s the fellow who started it all.”

“Because Carey bought it?”

“Carey bought it. God, I was excited. He paid a bundle, too, because I’d been on an updraft— been mentioned in a couple of key places. Buying it wasn’t enough, though. He had to be an even sweeter guy and invite me to dinner.”

“Where you met Vivien.”

He nodded. “The rest is history.”

“Nice Boy” rolled his hideous eyes at us. “You’ve changed it since Carey bought it, haven’t you?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I thought so.

He frowned. “No. Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. It looks different.”

“What do you mean? You haven’t seen it before, have you?”

“Just the picture in
Patrician Homes.”

He grimaced.
“Patrician Homes.
Mr. and Mrs. Howard in their lovely apartment with their daring artwork on the wall.” He took my arm. “Let’s get out of this mausoleum.”

Outside, gathering my things from the table, I asked, “How’s Vivien?”

“I couldn’t say. She refuses to speak to me. But I
can
tell you that poor Marcelle is in the kitchen in tears.”

“Oh, God.”

He stared toward the gate. “Christ, I hate that little bastard. What right does he have to—” He broke off.

“He’s trying to sabotage the book.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

I said, “I’d better go talk to Marcelle.”

“Don’t tell me what excuses you’re going to make. I don’t want to know about it.”

When I walked in, Marcelle was blowing her nose on a lace-edged hanky. She said, “I’m leaving, Madame. This is too much.”

“Marcelle! You’re not!” Her meals were the only positive thing left at Mas Rose.

“Yes, I am. I can’t stand any more.”

“We’re all under a strain—”

“Yes indeed! Yes, we are! And I can’t stand it!” She gave her nose another vigorous blowing.

I said, “Marcelle, you live here. This is your home. We’re the ones who’ll leave.”

“When?” She sounded desperately eager.

“Well— soon, probably. Then everything will be back to normal for you.”

She wasn’t convinced. She said she was going to write the owners of the house and tell them she was resigning, and tell them why. She and Antoine could live with Antoine’s family. Or even with her family, although her family’s home was very small.

Detecting uncertainty, I jumped in. “Why should you and Antoine be cramped and uncomfortable, when you have a beautiful place here?”

“I would rather be cramped and uncomfortable with sane people than in a beautiful place with lunatics!”

She had a point. “Of course you must do as you think best.”

“Yes, I must!” The tone was defiant, but she seemed crestfallen at my capitulation. I sat down at the table, too tired to move. After more sniffling, she said, “Poor Monsieur Alexander.”

Since I couldn’t agree, I didn’t say anything. In a teary voice, she went on, “He’s so worried about his mother. He told me he’s afraid her health will fail because she’s working so hard.”

Puffs of steam may have escaped from my ears.

“He’ll be so disappointed,” she continued gloomily.

“Disappointed? About what?”

She gave her raw-looking nose another swipe. “I’d promised to prepare my special trout for tonight. Broiled with bacon and rosemary.”

Even in my current overstressed state, I felt a stirring of the salivary glands. “I’m sure he’s looking forward to it.”

“Yes. He said it sounded delicious. He loves trout.”

“You probably cook trout better than he’s ever tasted it.”

She waved her hand in self-deprecation. “It’s only what my grandmother taught me.”

We were close, very close, to a meeting of the minds. Delicately, I said, “Perhaps you could reconsider— since you promised Alexander—”

“Oh, I couldn’t! My mind is made up.” Her dimples deepened in tragic determination.

I couldn’t play anymore. I stood up and said, “Your grievances are perfectly justified, Marcelle. You’ve been wonderful. I’m heartbroken that you’re leaving. I’ll break the news to Alexander about the trout.”

As I started for the door, she said, “All right, then. I’ll stay.”

After telling her how delighted and grateful I was, I hauled myself upstairs. When I walked into my room, my eye was caught by
The Book of Betrayal,
lying on the table where I’d left it when I rushed off to interview Vivien. Blanche had given me her precious poem to read, and I’d forgotten it existed. She’d probably been in her room all afternoon chewing her nails and wondering what I thought.

I sighed, kicked off my shoes, and took the notebook with me to bed. I propped myself up on pillows and opened it. The first thing I saw was a note to me: “Georgia Lee: It isn’t finished yet. I know it’s terrible. I copied out a clean version toward the back.”

I leafed through pages of scribbles and strikeovers until I found the clean copy. Blanche had written, “The Book of Betrayal: A Dialogue on Love” at the top and, under that, “By Blanche McBride.” Then began several pages of elaborate stage directions. The scene was a Provencal court, where richly dressed lords and ladies sat listening to the performance of a troubadour. After his song, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Bernart de Ventadorn entered from opposite sides of the stage to elaborate obeisances from the courtiers and took their places on a dais in the center. The troubadour sang again, then the court danced, and finally Eleanor and Bernart danced together. “During their dance their gestures complement each other so perfectly, their timing is so exact, that they are obviously two halves of the same person,” Blanche had written.

When they were seated again, and the musicians had withdrawn to one side, the dialogue began. Bernart spoke first:

Celestial Lady, now that May is here

To bring us thoughts of love with the sweet sun
—

was as far as I got. The notebook slid out of my hands. I fell asleep.

A FORBIDDEN DOOR

I didn’t get back to
The Book of Betrayal
until after dinner, a meal which, despite succulent trout wrapped in bacon and broiled on a bed of rosemary branches, was notable mainly for suffocating tension. Before we sat down I murmured an apology to Blanche for not having read the poem yet. She nodded briefly and acted embarrassed. At the table Vivien, who usually chattered away, was stony-faced. As Marcelle’s food was so perfectly seasoned that nobody had to ask for the salt, the meal was passed largely in silence.

Only Alexander, who had returned shortly before dinnertime, ate heartily, as usual. He ignored Ross and me and treated his mother warily, but made unsuccessful tries at conversation with Blanche. When the meal limped to a close, nobody waited for coffee.

Alexander followed Vivien into the living room, and I guessed a reconciliation was in the offing. I stepped outside for my usual after-dinner walk. The breeze that had sprung up in the afternoon was quickening. The olive leaves rustled, and the pointed tops of the cypresses bent in silhouette, black against the black sky. Provence was a long way from the dunes, marshes, and pine woods of northwest Florida, where I grew up. I had the hollow feeling I got at low times, thinking I’d been wrong to travel so far from the place where I really belonged.

I walked to the end of the wall and turned around. On my way back I was chagrined to see Alexander approaching. I couldn’t possibly evade him, so I gritted my teeth and forged ahead.

Light from the house picked out his white T-shirt and gleaming Rolex. “I was looking for you,” he said.

“Oh?” I hoped I sounded adequately frosty.

“I— uh— overreacted today.”

I didn’t reply. He fell into step beside me. “It freaks me out to see Vivi cry. Brings back a lot of bad stuff.”

I assumed he was referring to his father’s death. Unwilling to fall for such a blatant bid for sympathy, I still didn’t answer.

“Vivi says I should apologize to you,” he said.

I mustered my sarcasm. “How gracious.”

“Oh, come on. Can’t we lighten up?” To my vast irritation, he was grinning.

I detested him, but prolonging a quarrel with him wouldn’t be smart. I blasted my last salvo. “Did you tell Vivi— I mean Vivien— how you tried to buy me off?”

His grin widened. “Nope. The offer’s still open, though.”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

“Hey— sleep on it.” He gave me a chummy pat on the back and, whistling through his teeth, ambled into the house ahead of me. When I walked in he was leaning against the sink, laughing with Marcelle.

I went upstairs, got ready for bed, climbed in, and with limited enthusiasm applied myself to
The Book of Betrayal.

I might as well have taken a sleeping pill. Blanche’s writing wasn’t dreadful. In fact, after another couple of tries she might be good.
The Book of Betrayal,
though, had an amateur’s over-reliance on generalities and banalities and, worse, it was written in a semi-archaic style that didn’t make for lively reading.

Before long, my eyelids were leaden. Bernart would pose a situation, and Eleanor would comment on it. Then Eleanor would pose, and Bernart would comment. Eleanor asked: When is lying a betrayal, and when is it an expression of love (as in lying to save someone’s feelings)? Bernart wanted to know: Is unconscious betrayal (such as forgetting a promise) less serious than conscious betrayal? And on and on, all decked out in words like “midst” and “prithee” and “ ’sblood.”

Blanche’s neat handwriting was dancing before my eyes and the notebook once again slipping from my fingers as I neared the end. Blanche had broken off in a section titled “Redemption.” The question was whether betrayal can be made right. Eleanor stated it:

I steal a key to a forbidden door

And find out, in a place I shouldn’t be

Something that would bring harm to one I love

As well as giving dreadful pain to me.

If I keep silent under long duress

Can my refusal ever to confess

Absolve me of the taking of the key?

Bernart didn’t have an answer. At this point,
The Book of Betrayal
ended.

I sat up straighter and squinted at the page.
I steal a key to a forbidden door.
This passage had an immediacy the rest of the poem lacked. In the person of Eleanor, Blanche was asking whether keeping your mouth shut could compensate for knowledge wrongfully gained. The difference in style from the rest of the poem was striking. I suspected the passage was based on a true incident.
If I keep silent under long duress
— had Blanche herself kept silent under long duress? What door had she stolen the key to, and what had she seen? Larded with troubadour trappings, buried in archaic language, the passage could be telling me what her problem was.

Blanche had given her manuscript to me, I began to believe, in hopes of answering her question.

I closed the notebook. I had to get Blanche to talk to me, tell me what she had seen, what she knew. I, too, was standing outside the forbidden door, and I was beginning to be afraid.

A WALK TO THE CHURCH

By the next morning, I had wrestled myself to a standstill on the question of confronting Blanche. The matter was crucial, and if I handled it clumsily I’d blow my chance of getting her to talk to me. I grabbed a quick breakfast and skulked, Hamlet-like, in my room as I tried to orchestrate my next move.