Cobalt (24 page)

Her feathers shook with her excitement, and the audience applauded madly.

Angel Smith bowed, straightened, and smiled sweetly. “But first,” she said in a low voice, “I want to thank some of the many fine organizations that have contributed to make this night possible.” She named several bars, guesthouses, and shops, and in a number of cases pointed out representatives of those concerns. A spotlight briefly picked out these persons in the audience, which by now had grown to about four hundred.

“And last and not least, I'd like to thank Beatrice Rowell's Provincetown Crafts Boutique, which during the day is presided over by my very dear friend, Clarisse Lovelace. Clarisse is in the audience tonight.”

The spotlight clicked on again and wandered around the audience, but could not pick out Clarisse. Valentine giggled and Clarisse sighed. “They can't get it right here either.”

There was a dim voice from the man running the lights from a high platform on the far side of the room. “I can't find her,” he called.

“She's in the back,” said Angel into the microphone. “She's impossible to miss. Clarisse is the one with the tits that go from here to the Bourne bridge—and back.”

The smile froze on Clarisse's face. The spotlight came closer.

“Once I invited Clarisse to a party,” said Angel, waiting for the spot to find its quarry, “and her tits showed up five minutes before she did. She has to pry 'em apart to look at her feet. Last week she was voted Sweetheart of the International Brassiere Makers Union.”

Clarisse balled her fists, and said in a low voice, “There is a woman at the front of this room who is talking into a microphone about my…my physical attributes.”

“Hide 'em,” suggested Valentine.

The spot finally found Clarisse, and widened just enough to shine upon her breasts as well as her head. Clarisse nodded in acknowledgment of the wild applause, then stood. She raised her hand, and everyone grew silent. Her face was a smiling frozen mask. She said in a loud clear voice, “I'd just like everyone in the room to know that this is the single most embarrassing moment of my entire life.”

She sat down, and the spotlight lingered on her until at last, the applause died away.

“And now,” said Angel, “on to the tableaux. We begin at the beginning. Not, as you might think, with Eve. Adam asked for and deserved what he got. He drove Eve to it. We begin with Lot, on a hill overlooking the destroyed city of Sodom.” She was interrupted by loud cheers of “Yea Sodom!” and “Right on, Gomorrah!”

The curtain opened to reveal Lot, represented by a young man with a strong clean-shaven jaw, a chest with well-developed pectorals, a washboard belly, and long sinewy legs. He was naked except for a length of shot silk draped across his hips. He lay in a drunken stupor, while his two daughters—represented by two very tall and very slender men in long flowing wigs and diaphanous spangled gowns—crawled toward him on their hands and knees. On a painted backdrop was Sodom in smoking ruins. The tableau was held for fifteen seconds, then the curtain closed.

The curtain opened again, and the three performers bowed to the applauding audience, Angel introduced them by name, and the curtain was closed. Angel disappeared, the lights came up, the waiters circulated in the audience, and the band played for a few minutes, until the next tableau had been prepared. This was the format for the next hour and a half, with Angel introducing such tableaux as Lola Montez inspiring Liszt, Josephine Beauharnais and Madame Tallien dancing before Barras, the Suicide of Antinoüs, Nell Gwynne leaning over the wall, Henri III and his minions on the way to mass, Hephaestion and Roxanna fighting for the favors of Alexander the Great, the conversion of Thaïs, Mary Magdalene calling for her zebras to be harnessed, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies testifying at the Old Bailey, Harriet Wilson locking out the Duke of Wellington, Marion Davies presiding at table at San Simeon, Catherine the Great ennobling Prince Orloff, George the I's German mistresses, the elephant and the maypole, Warren Harding's girlfriend hiding in the closet, Du Barry mounting the scaffold, Miss O'Murphy being painted by Boucher, St. Mary of Egypt lifting her skirts to the ferryman, Moll Hackabout pounding hemp, and Phryne revealing herself to the Greek Areopagus.

At the table at the back of the room, Clarisse was desperate to talk to Margaret, and find out what she had meant about Terry O'Sullivan's being the killer of Jeff King, but the noise, the splendor of the tableaux, and the constant bringing up and turning down of the lights made any protracted conversation impossible. Valentine and Clarisse, deep in thought, waited impatiently for the program to come to an end.

At last, Angel appeared and said, “We have one last treat for you. This one we've been saving. Now we present for your edification one of the most notorious women in history, a woman—I may say, a
great
woman, whose insatiable lust for power could be fed only through the prostitution of her tender flesh.”

The curtain parted, and there stood the White Prince, dressed as Eva Perón, in a voluminous pale blue gown copied exactly from one the dictator's wife had worn to the opera, with a blond wig pulled back into a tight chignon. A scarlet banner emblazoned with the insignia of Perón's presidency was attached at an angle from the strapless bodice to the waist. It was a startlingly faithful recreation of Juan Perón's mistress-wife.

Anger streaked Eva's face and her body was stiff with barely restrained rage as she glared at another woman who stood before her. This second woman wore a revealingly tight gown of dark blue silk with a butterfly bodice. Several pounds of jewelry adorned her neck, arms, and ears; her bright red hair billowed to her waist. Her stance was accusative, one arm raised and finger pointing at Eva.

“Yes!” cried Angel, from the shadows, “the infamous Argentine dictatoress, Perón's greatest weapon. Behind her back she was called ‘Evita Piranha—First Lady of Argen
tuna
.' She ate her way to the top. Here we are shown the famous confrontation between Evita and her arch-rival Lyla Cantanya, the notorious Slut of the Andes! Reminding the First Lady, on the
very night
of Juan Perón's election as president, of the old South American adage, ‘Once a whore, always a whore'!”

There was thunderous applause. The White Prince was called out twice, and the second time he was joined by the rest of the cast. They received standing ovations. When she had at last succeeded in calming the audience a little, Angel said, “Thank you, we thank you all. Now please stay and have a good time, and tell your friends to come tomorrow night!”

The stage lights went off, and most of the cast went backstage to change. A number of them, however, came out into the audience to join their adulatory friends. The White Prince, still in costume, came to Valentine and Clarisse's table, and took one of the chairs between Margaret and Scott.

“You were Queen of the Ball,” said Noah with a smile.

“You are
right
,” said the White Prince, and with a complacent smile received the rest of the table's praise.

Two waiters appeared with a variety of mixed drinks for the Prince, anonymous gifts from awed spectators. The Prince lined them up before him, and knocked the first one back with a single gulp. He went a little slower on the second.

Angel, still in tuxedo and feathered front, pushed through the curtains and made her way to the table. Chairs were brought for her and she sat to one side of the Prince. He offered her one of his drinks and she toasted him with it, saying, “Brava, Evita!”

Axel got up as if to leave, but Clarisse motioned him down again. “Nobody leaves,” she said imperiously. “We have a murder to solve. Margaret, what did you mean when you said that Terry O'Sullivan killed Jeff King?”

“A
RE YOU STILL playing detective?” said the White Prince languidly, irked that his praise had been a subject so soon abandoned. When no one replied, the Prince turned his gaze to Margaret. “We're on hooks, dear. Do continue.”

Margaret lighted a cigarette unsteadily. “Terry O'Sullivan and Jeff King—those are their right names, aren't they?—were lovers. I don't know for how long, but they were. Ann found out.”

“Lovers!” Valentine exclaimed. “Terry told me he hardly knew Jeff, that Jeff just supplied him with grass.”

“No,” Axel cut in. “She's right.”

All heads turned to Axel, then back to Margaret.

In a low voice, Clarisse said to Valentine, “Looks like you and I are the only ones who aren't going to be able to contribute to this conversation. Was everybody in town lying?”

“At the Garden of Evil party,” said Margaret, “Ann and I were standing there talking to Terry when this man dressed as Cain comes up and latches on to Terry. Well, Terry was none too pleased, and didn't even introduce him. But I saw him slip the man a key, which seemed strange because Terry had just told us he was with you.” She nodded to Valentine. “He made a big point about it, too. He said you two had something heavy going. So Terry went away, and Cain came up to us later. Of course, we didn't know him from Adam but he started going on about how Terry was his lover but wouldn't recognize him in public and wasn't he a real bastard and all that sort of thing. And then I realized, when I saw him in the light and saw those eyes—”

“Cobalt eyes,” said Clarisse, and Margaret nodded.

“—then I realized it was the same man who had come to the house to see Noah.”

“Except,” said Valentine, “he was looking for
Terry
when he came to the house, because he didn't know that Terry had moved to the Boatslip. Which also means that Terry didn't expect him.”

“And when he saw me there,” said Noah, “he thought he might as well try to get a place to stay out of me.”

“Yes,” said Clarisse, “but Margaret, why did Ann lie to me when I asked her about Jeff King? She said there was no connection between him and Terry O'Sullivan.”

“Well,” said Margaret, “at that time she wasn't sure, because Jeff could have just been lying.”

“Ann had worked for Terry for years—wouldn't she know if he had a lover?” said Valentine.

“Remember how uptight he was?” said Clarisse.

“Yes,” Margaret nodded. “Ann told me that so far as work went, he was in the closet. He didn't even come out to her until she ran into him at a bar one night after they had worked together in the same room for eighteen months. And if he had had a lover who was a drug dealer, it's just the sort of thing he
would
have kept secret. But then Ann and Terry had a fight. That was on Tuesday. Terry was being a real pest about wanting to talk shop all the time, and Ann was in town to have a good time, and so I sent her up to his room to talk to him. He was very nasty and said awful things to her, and she told him she knew that he had been lovers with the man who got killed on the beach. He said if she told anybody, he'd fire her, so she kept her mouth shut.”

“Ohhh!” cried the White Prince. “Intrigue. I
love
intrigue.”

“You're ripped,” said Angel. “Be quiet.”

Valentine turned to Axel. “Why didn't you say something—if you knew Terry and Jeff were lovers?”

“Because I didn't really
see
anything,” replied Axel.

“See? What was there to see?”

“At the Garden of Evil.” Axel looked at Scott and then down at his drink, rubbing his thumb about the rim of the glass. “There was the fight between Scott and me, which I'm sure everybody at this table has heard about—”

“I haven't!” cried the Prince.

“Yes, you have,” said Noah, “be still!”

The Prince adjusted his bodice with a frown.

“Well, the fight was over Jeff. And when it was over, Jeff jumped over the railing onto the beach. Scott ran off and I couldn't find him, so I thought I'd go after Jeff instead.”

“Why did you want to find Jeff?” asked Clarisse.

“Who knows? I was drunk—everybody was drunk.”

“I don't think there's been sufficient discussion of my performance tonight,” remarked the White Prince.

“Shut up, Prince Valium,” said Angel.

“Anyway,” said Axel, “I caught up with him, on the beach behind one of the guesthouses. He had just come out of the water. So one thing led to another and…”

“There was a lot of knee-crashing in the sand,” sneered Scott.

Axel ignored him. “But then that man who was Daniel's date popped up out of nowhere, madder than hell. He pushed Jeff around and called him all sorts of names. Jeff was so drugged up he thought it was funny.”

“What did Terry want?” asked Valentine.

“He said, ‘This is it! No more! We're through!' Then he said, ‘Give me back my room key.'”

“What were you doing during all this?” said Valentine.

“Nothing,” said Axel. “I didn't say anything. I get into enough arguments on the home front without worrying about somebody else's love life. So I left. I went to the meat rack.”

“To look for fresh pork,” snapped Scott.

“No,” said Axel soberly, “to look for you. I waited for half an hour. It wasn't till I got back to the cottage and saw that the car was gone that I realized you had already left town.”

“Well, well, well,” said Noah, leaning forward. “So it looks like Terry O'Sullivan killed his shadow-lover in a jealous rage and then when his secretary made the lethal connection, he dispatched her too. Nasty business.”

Clarisse sat back, troubled. “He must have mixed the drugs in the wine, and Ann drank it without realizing what she was doing. You'd think she'd have tasted it, though.”

“If you knew how much she had had to drink that night,” said Margaret, “you'd know she couldn't have tasted a fistful of Mexican peppers if she'd swallowed them.”