Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

“Had enough?” he asked Erica, reaching her.

She looked startled. “Does it show?”

“Not really. But you don’t have the gift of small talk, and you’re not motivated to acquire it.”

“Are you suggesting that I find the motivation?”

“That depends. If you’re serious about Myron, then yes. He lives in a world of small talk, banter, double-talk and the patois of wheeling and dealing. Where did you meet?”

“In New York, at a board meeting of Hardinge’s, the bank. I thought Myron was tremendously attractive.”

“You and half the feminine world. No doubt he’s told you that he’s married to my ex-wife?”

“Yes. I confess I can’t understand how he and you would ever have eyes for the same woman.”

“Oh, that’s because you’ll never know what Sandra was like at twenty! Very much in your mold, though without the brains. What she did have was an adorable waifish quality that made a man want to shelter her from every wind that blew. Sophia is very like her physically, but her intelligence masks that.”

“Just as well, in my opinion. I loathe stupid women!” said Erica tartly.

“Stupidity doesn’t mean a woman’s unlikeable, surely.”

“It does to me!”

“So you’re glad Sophia is smart.”

“Yes. She doesn’t despise her face, but she’s not going to let it decide her destiny.”

“You think of Sophia’s beauty the way you think of your own-as a tool if your back’s against the wall, but otherwise as a nuisance. Whereas Sophia is very different. She thinks of her face as part and parcel of what’s behind it. Sophia doesn’t live in compartments.”

“You always manage to put me in the wrong!” she snapped, turned, and spotted two latecomers. “Philomena, Tony!”

Carmine retired to a good vantage point and watched Erica take Philomena Skeps and Anthony Bera to meet Myron, who, as ever delighted to see new faces, welcomed them with all the verve of a host greeting his first guests rather than his last.

Philomena, Carmine decided, was probably at least five years younger than Erica, and quite cast the ice queen in the shade. Like Delia, she was wearing a tight-waisted dress of pink frills, but there the comparison ended. Despite what she had said to Carmine about Skeps’s miserly tendencies, she was wearing a suite of amazing pink diamonds. Paired with Bera, she looked complete.

Some talk passed between Philomena and Erica, then Myron took Bera away to meet the Mayor while Philomena and Erica continued their discussion. Their manner seemed pleasant, their smiles genuine, but Carmine still felt that whatever they were saying was not all sweetness and light. A glass of champagne was refused, but one of a Chilean red wine accepted; Erica fluttered around Desmond Skeps’s ex-wife like a nervous bride around a fierce mother-in-law. Lobster? No? Chicken vol-au-vent? No? This wonderful country terrine? Oh, good!

Finally Bera extricated himself from Myron’s clutches and rescued Philomena, escorting her to a chair, finding a little table, then giving her the glass of Chilean wine and putting a piled plate down on the table where she could pick at it. Having settled her, he took up his station behind her and let his gaze follow Erica Davenport wherever she went. There were undercurrents here, but Carmine wasn’t sure of their origin or their nature. Phil Smith arrived, with his wife, who-ye Gods!-was saying hello to Philomena in all the glory of her brown pancake hat.

Smith’s visit with Philomena was brief. His wife, poor soul, was unhappy to be dragged away willy-nilly, and tried to stay, but Smith hustled her off as if afraid of what she might say. Recognizing a kindred sartorial being, Delia grabbed her out from under her husband’s grasp, and the two worst-dressed women in the room went off together. Gus Purvey and Fred Collins paid court next, Collins without Candy. Anthony Bera greeted them stiffly, then fell silent and listened to Philomena talk. When Collins, drunk enough now to stagger, began to get agitated, Bera moved quickly in front of Philomena’s chair and obviously told Purvey to remove him. Purvey obeyed, but not a minute later Philomena gave Bera orders to leave her. He protested, but she lifted her chin in a gesture so imperious that Carmine was intrigued. Biting his lip, Bera stalked off, leaving her alone on her chair. Who did she want to see?

Then Myron joined her, and that meant the excellent host had just ruined the lady’s plans. How exactly she got rid of him the watching Carmine couldn’t know, but she did, and so charmingly that he gave her a worshipping smile as he went away. Philomena Skeps was alone again.

Several more people approached her and were dismissed with the same charm she had used on Myron: Dr. Pauline Denbigh (interesting, that one!) and Mawson and Angela MacIntosh. Carmine inched closer, wishing that the room wasn’t beginning to empty; he would never be able to overhear what Philomena Skeps said.

And finally came the desired one; the body language was unmistakable. Erica Davenport.

A waiter passed by; Philomena detained him, and the little table was stripped bare instantly. Erica perched herself on it, turning sideways to see Skeps’s ex-wife, who slewed sideways as well. Frustrated, Carmine stared at their profiles as they talked; he could lip-read dialogue if it was well enunciated and its speakers face-on, but side-on it was impossible.

They talked with such a determined air of isolation that several people, heading their way, backed off. Possibly too the news of Erica’s guardianship had spread party-wide, and no one wanted to be the inadvertent destroyer of a pact. It certainly seemed as if negotiations were going on, and it solved the riddle of why Philomena Skeps had come to the party at all. Neutral ground. Where else could she plead her case without the specter of Cornucopia looming? At Orleans? Erica would never come.

Anthony Bera watched the two women with painful intensity, absently answering the questions Wallace Grierson was throwing at him. Then Phil Smith and the brown pancake came up, blocking Bera’s view of Philomena’s chair, and he gave up.

Treaty negotiations must have lasted a good half hour, at the end of which Erica Davenport looked very tired and Philomena Skeps more beautiful than ever. Then Erica slapped her hands on her knees and got up from her perch. She leaned down to drop a kiss on Philomena’s brow, and walked off toward Myron.

“I’m pooped,” Desdemona said, kicking off her sandals as soon as she was in the car.

“Me too, my lovely lady. You looked fantastic tonight.”

“Did I?”

“Yes, you did. Your figure is as good as any Hollywood movie star’s, and that dress set it off just fine.”

“Isn’t it funny? Women are always moaning that babies ruin their figures, but Julian did mine the world of good.”

“How do you think Myron is feeling right now?”

She frowned. “Good question. He’s fathoms deep in love-did you notice the diamond bracelet?-but it must be dawning on him by now that his darling Erica doesn’t relish a party. Sandra would have suited him better, I imagine.”

“I did find out that he hasn’t filed divorce papers yet.”

Desdemona sat up as the Fairlane eased out onto a deserted South Green Street. “Oho! He hasn’t removed his last defense.”

“That’s how I read it.”

She slid across the wide seat and snuggled into his side. “Did you notice the woman in that terrible brown hat?”

Judge Douglas Wilfred Thwaites presided over the Holloman District Court, and was an institution. He had taken both his undergraduate and law degrees from Chubb, and was a Chubber to his bootstraps. Imbued with no ambition to move on to greater jurisdictions, he was a Connecticut Yankee who couldn’t conceive of living or practicing anywhere else. He had a delightful house on Busquash Point from which he could mess around in boats, a devoted wife who thought him deliriously funny, and two children in their early twenties who had escaped his tyranny by seeking higher education on the West Coast, a place he equated with the planet Mercury.