Death at King Arthur's Court (5 page)

Rocco stood at the bottom of the patio steps with an end of the cut telephone lines. ‘Let's recreate your story,' he said. ‘A person, who you cannot identify, threatened you with a sword.'

Lyon pointed to a stand of pine trees that began fifty yards from the side of the house. ‘It happened over there.'

Bea Wentworth watched the two men walk across the lawn toward the tree line. Lyon had to look up to speak to the taller Rocco. A breeze unexpectedly swirled in off the river and ruffled Lyon's hair. She automatically brushed the edge of a hand across her own forehead in an exact duplication of the gesture her husband performed two dozen yards away. Her tight smile reflected a nostalgic wistfulness. She knew him so intimately that even his small unconscious gestures and the other nuances that create a unique person were familiar.

At the tree line, Lyon looked over his shoulder and saw his wife enter the house. It was apparent that she'd remained outside to watch them cross the field. He wondered what she'd been thinking.

‘Are you with me, Lyon?' Rocco said.

Lyon refocused his thoughts. ‘Yes, sorry. Last night, I was returning to the house after helping someone remove a car from a ditch when this thing came out of nowhere. It was dark, but in the moonlight I could see light refractions from the sword blade. I fell.'

‘Let's back up from that point,' Rocco said. ‘Start with the early evening and tell me exactly what happened. Include every detail you can recall, no matter how inconsequential it might seem.'

‘Early last night, while it was still light, I was on the patio having drinks with Ernest Harnell,' Lyon said …

Four

‘I'm Ernest Hemingway's bastard son, but you know that.' Ernest Harnell put one foot up on Nutmeg Hill's low parapet and struck what he considered a heroic pose. He peered across the Connecticut River, which far below them meandered toward Long Island Sound.

Lyon tilted a wrought-iron patio chair back on its legs as he braced his feet against the wall and socially lied. ‘No. Actually, I don't believe you've ever mentioned it before.' His companion's jaw imperceptibly tightened without breaking his distant gaze. Lyon wondered if Ernest was checking Spanish Loyalist troop positions across the river, or watching long columns of the retreating Italian army at Caporetto. He couldn't resist an impish impulse. ‘I see a lot of those Hemingway trucks on the Interstates. I would suppose that there would be a rather large estate involved if you were legitimized.'

Ernest immediately broke off his posturing as he snapped his head around to glare down at Lyon. ‘I hardly meant that branch of the family. I speak of the writer. The Nobel Prize laureate.'

‘In that case, I do see a marked family resemblance,' Lyon agreed. He failed to add that it was more than a genetic familiarity of features. Ernest Harnell wore a short white beard and sprouted a round paunch cultivated to the exact dimensions familiar in the author's later photographs. His round face mimicked a typical Hemingway set, which was usually accentuated by a baseball cap, although tonight's head covering was the only slightly less usual safari hat. It was a studied imitation that created a close look-alike of the older writer.

Harnell's face brightened. ‘You do see it then?'

‘It's unmistakable. There's a remarkably close similarity.' Lyon looked up at a formation of scudding off-white clouds crossing directly overhead. He was rather surprised to see his two imaginary Wobblies fly in perfect formation to a position just below the cloud layer. To his further astonishment, the two benign monsters began flying extremely complex patterns of outside loops. They had both positioned their front paws at right angles to their bodies in an imitation of wings. Their hind feet were pressed closely together, with the claws acting as ailerons and their long tails as rudders. Their aerial acrobatics were perfectly executed. He reflected on these surprising maneuvers, since during all the years he had written about his monster creations, he had never before realized that they could actually fly. Perhaps this was only a temporary aberration.

‘It doesn't mean a damn thing to him,' Ernest said with an unmistakable tone of deep belligerence.

‘Well, that's understandable,' Lyon answered. ‘Hemingway's been dead for a number of years now.'

‘I don't mean the writer. I mean Morgan.' He gestured toward the driveway, where a long RV was parked. ‘When's he coming out of his goddamn Trojan horse? Or could we be so lucky that he's been entombed in there forever?'

‘I haven't seen him all day,' Lyon said. ‘He told me yesterday that he had a journal deadline, so he's probably sealed himself inside to get some work done. Another drink, Ernest?'

‘Never ease off till the soldier's dead.' He reached for his empty glass balanced on the edge of the parapet and handed it to Lyon. ‘For Christ's sake, build a man's drink this time, Went. Fix one like they mix them at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West.'

Lyon stepped through the French doors into the living room and over to where the bar cart was parked. He smiled as he carefully mixed a potent double for his guest. He held the drink up to examine it in the light and decided it was not of a hue acceptable at Sloppy Joe's. He laced it with more liquor until it darkened to an acceptable shade.

‘As a matter of curiosity, Ernest, where did your mother meet Hemingway?' he called through the doors.

‘I was conceived during a romantic afternoon in Hong Kong. Papa was in China to cover the Chinese-Japanese War. My mother was the daughter of missionaries and was attending a convent school in Hong Kong. On that particular afternoon she was having tea at an outdoor café … She was very young, and in those days Papa was really quite handsome. He graciously commented on her beauty and she coyly responded. One thing led to another that exquisite day and …'

Lyon returned to the patio and gave Ernest his fresh drink. ‘All this happened in one afternoon?'

‘That's all it takes, Wentworth.'

‘So I've heard.'

‘They were only able to share a few precious hours together. Their love affair may have been brief, but the height of their passion made up for its brevity.'

‘I'm amazed that your mother would discuss these intimate details with her child.'

‘Mother was too much the lady of the old school to talk about her sexuality. She never revealed any intimate details, but there were enough facts for me to piece together what actually happened.'

‘Ernest, did your mother ever specifically say that she had an affair with Hemingway and that you are the offspring?'

‘Not in so many words, but the evidence is irrefutable. Look at the facts. She named me Ernest when I was born. Mother and Hemingway were in Hong Kong at the same time. She was forced to leave the convent when they discovered her pregnancy. Her lips remained sealed for the rest of her life and she never told anyone who my father was. But look at me!' He thumped his chest. ‘You can see the family resemblance. My God, man, the evidence is practically prima facie. And most important of all, when I put all the facts together and presented them to her, Mother just smiled enigmatically and never denied it.'

So be it, Lyon thought. Men have died for lesser truths. ‘I suppose it's all harmless,' he said.

‘What do you mean harmless! Damn it, man, not only am I proud of my heritage, but I have always acted with grace under adversity. In addition to that, like any true man, I've got the proper cojones.' He paused in his tirade and lowered his voice. ‘Have I mentioned this to you before?'

‘Oh, possibly you've made some brief allusions, a hint here, a sprig of suspicion there.'

‘The Hemingway family has never recognized me, of course. But I know my heritage and I've spent the majority of my adult life dedicated to the study of my father's work.'

‘Some people consider your book,
Machismo
, a benchmark in American literary criticism,' Lyon said.

‘You wouldn't know that from reading the crappy articles Morgan writes. That junk he published in
New Forward
really got to me. “Bloody Rights or Bloody Rites.” If the goddamn Brotherhood of Beelzebub hadn't vowed to get him, I might have contracted a hit myself. I probably should have gone ahead and made arrangements as job insurance, since the bastard is never going to give me that endowed chair.'

‘Morgan doesn't have the final word on that, you know,' Lyon said. ‘The department head only recommends, and the full faculty council has to vote.'

‘There are only two of us in the department who have published enough to be really eligible. And no one in their right mind would vote the chair to Garth Wilkins.'

‘That might depend on literary taste,' Lyon said. ‘And whether or not you preferred writers like Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. His book,
The Gentle Americans
, was well received in the academic community.'

‘His writers are a bunch of pantywaist scribblers! It's a wonder that a bunch of limp wrists like that could hold pens long enough to create anything.'

‘I agree that they are quite a contrast to your machismo group of Hemingway, James Jones, and Norman Mailer.'

‘Some men have true cojones, and others …' He broke off the sentence to watch a bright yellow Ford Escort slowly proceed up the drive and park carefully behind the RV. The driver was a tall man of an incongruous size for the small car. He unwound from the front seat and hesitantly approached the RV. Garth Wilkins had a narrow cadaverous head which was in direct proportion to the rest of his lanky frame. His height created the impression that he was barely in control of his physical movements, as if he had to constantly wage battle to force his limbs to obey mental commands. He knocked softly on the RV door.

‘Some men don't seem to have any,' Ernest said as a completion of his thought. ‘Like Garth over there, who's not about to attract anyone's attention with his timid taps.' He flipped a contemptuous finger gesture in the direction of his competitor.

Lyon's front chair legs clanked as he rocked forward and turned to watch the tall man knocking on the metal door. ‘Over here!' he called out.

Garth stepped back from the door, gave it a last wistful look, and started up to the patio. ‘Are you sure he's in there?'

‘I saw him go in this morning after we had breakfast,' Lyon said. ‘Are you two speaking?'

‘Unfortunately I can't avoid having to speak with Morgan,' Garth said.

‘I mean you two,' Lyon said as he gestured toward Ernest, who maintained his back to them as he resumed his pose at the wall.

‘Only one of us is going to get that endowed chair,' Garth said. ‘And if that poseur should be selected, I will immediately resign from the university.'

‘The Gay Alliance will be devastated,' Ernest snorted.

Garth ignored the remark and went through the French doors to the bar cart, where he poured a pony of Dry Sack sherry and one of brandy. He handed Lyon the sherry and sipped on the remaining pony. ‘Most psychiatrists feel that extreme homophobic reactions are indicative of severe inner conflicts over sexual identity.'

‘Jesus, what bilge water!' Ernest pulled on his drink as if the amount consumed established a certain benchmark of masculinity.

‘I wish you were back in the department, Lyon,' Garth said. ‘While you were around, at least there was one person who brought some sanity to faculty meetings. I sometimes feel that Morgan backs dissension. One week he'll back me on a question and the next he'll be in the camp of the great white hunter over there.' He shrugged a shoulder toward the man by the wall.

‘He not only encourages trouble, he precipitates it,' Ernest said without turning from his mental emplacement of gun positions across the river. ‘That's how he gets his jollies. What's the gen, for Christ's sake? Why is he hiding in his tin can? He's the one who invited us out here for a discussion of the vacant chair.'

‘He's working on a new literary pastiche for the journal,' Garth said. ‘This one really strips Papa naked. I believe he calls it “The Moveable Beast”. I understand it's a very funny piece written in an exact replica of the Hemingway style. You know the formula. It's filled with lots of “It was good”, and “the wine was cold”. The juices run a lot and everyone including the women have mucho cojones.'

‘That's it!' Ernest said menacingly. He advanced toward the other teacher until Lyon inserted himself between them and steered Ernest through the French doors.

‘Time for a refill,' Lyon said as he escorted him into the living room.

The bearded man began to mix a huge drink. ‘I'd appreciate it if you kept confidential the discussion we had before Tinkerbell arrived.'

Garth had stretched out along the top of the stone parapet. ‘I do hope your tête-a-tête wasn't about being the bastard son of a certain Nobel winning author.'

Ernest stopped pouring. ‘Where did you hear that?'

‘For God's sake, Ernest! You've been using that Hemingway's bastard bit to hit on every pretty grad student we've had for the past five years. I've often wondered if it ever worked.'

‘I've had my share of conquests.'

‘They don't give points for misfires.'

‘You're taking a header into the river, faggot!' He started for the patio but was stopped by Lyon's reflexive grasp of his shirt tail.

Garth laughed and shook a limp wrist. ‘Why don't I just fly across the river and into the trees?'

Rocco Herbert strode around the corner of the house carrying an empty can of spray paint. He shook the can until it rattled and then slammed it down on a glass-topped table. ‘OK, who's the joker?'

‘Hopefully someone has painted dirty limericks on Morgan's RV,' Garth said.

‘How about graffiti on the side of the construction project crane down the road?' Rocco said.