Elizabeth Peters: Laughter of Dead Kings

Elizabeth Peters

The Laughter of Dead Kings

to Roxie Walker

FOREWORD

Recently I discussed, with several mystery writer friends, the problem of what we sometimes call “the current now.” One of my series is set in real time; the characters age appropriately with each passing year and with each volume. The Vicky series, and those of many of my friends, don’t work that way. Vicky made her first appearance in 1973. She was not yet thirty. The most recent volume was published in 1994, more than twenty years later, but Vicky had aged only a few years. She’s still in her early thirties, although the world in which she lives has changed a great deal. The Cold War has ended, the horror in Iraq is under way, the Internet has its tentacles into everybody’s lives, and people go around with cell phones glued to their ears.

So how do we writers explain the inconsistencies and anachronisms? We don’t. We can’t. So please don’t bother writing to point them out to me, ignore them as I have, and place yourself in the “current now.” To quote my friend Margaret Maron, to whom I owe that phrase and other excellent advice, “Isn’t it fun being God in our separate universes, where we can command the sun to stand still, and it does?”

ONE

I cover my ears, I close my eyes,

Still I hear your voice, and it’s tellin’ me lies…

My singing doesn’t inspire thousands of fans to emit screams of delight, but I was a trifle hurt when my dog jumped up with a howl and streaked for the stairs. Usually he likes my singing. He’s the only one who does like my singing. Otherwise his hearing is pretty good.

John was coming down the stairs. He halted Caesar’s headlong rush with a peremptory order—something I’ve never succeeded in doing—and sauntered toward me.

I hadn’t seen him for two weeks. My toes went numb. He was wearing a blue shirt that matched his eyes and those of the Siamese cat draped over his shoulder. One of his hands supported Clara’s front end, his long fingers as elegantly shaped as the small seal-brown paws they held. Clara had not cared much for John at first, but he had set out to win her feline heart (the alternative being bites and scratches) and he had succeeded, with the aid of frequent offerings of chicken. They looked sensational together. He looked sensational.

So I said grumpily, “Right on cue. Why can’t you come in the front door like normal people instead of climbing up to my bedroom window?”

“It brings back such fond memories.”

Memories of the time when Interpol and a variety of competing crooks had been looking for him and the art treasures he had made off with. He was now a respectable antiquities dealer, if I could believe him. Which I probably shouldn’t. Tellin’ me lies had been one of his favorite activities.

I picked up the grubby wad of white yarn and the crochet hook precariously attached to it, which I had dropped onto my lap, and pretended to study it. Playing it cool, so as not to be beguiled by the winsome smile and melting blue eyes. Damn him, he hadn’t showed up for two damned weeks. London is less than two hours from Munich by air. I should know, I’d made the trip often enough. Thanks to an indulgent boss I could get away from my job at the museum more easily than John could get away from his antiques business. Or so he claimed. Tellin’ me lies?

“So how’s business?” I inquired.

No answer. A thud and a loud Siamese complaint made me look up. Clara was on her feet—at HIS feet, glaring at him, and John was…not glaring…staring at me with a look of glazed disbelief. No, not at me. At the misshapen object I held.

“What is it?” he croaked.

“You needn’t be so rude,” I said defensively. “It’s a baby cap. I’m not very good at crochet, but I’ll figure it out eventually.”

John staggered to the nearest chair and collapsed into it. He was white as a sheet, a lot whiter than the mangled little cap, which had suffered from Clara’s occasional attempts to play with it.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” I demanded. “Bob—you know, my brother Bob—his new wife is expecting her first and I thought it would be a nice gesture if I…if I…”

He let out a long gasp of air, and then it hit me. Like a sock in the solar plexus.

“Aaah,” I said. “Aha. Sometimes I am so slow. Is that what you thought? That is what you thought! Not only that I was about to become a mummy but that I—wait a minute, it’s coming, I’ll get it eventually—that I had got myself pregnant in order to trap you into unholy wedlock. And the very idea made you sick! You low-down skunk! You son of a bitch! I’ll bet your mother has been hinting for months, ‘Watch out for that worthless trollop, she’ll try to—’”

“Vicky!” His voice is usually a mellifluous tenor, but he can out-shout me when he has to, and believe me, he had to. He jumped up and came toward me. I threw the baby cap, complete with crochet hook, at him. He ducked. The ball of yarn rolled off the couch and Clara went in pursuit. John grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Stop yelling and listen to me.”

“You did, didn’t you? Believe it.”

“Believe what? That you’d be dim enough to pull an antiquated stunt like that one? Never in my wildest fantasies. But you must admit my initial impression was justified by the evidence available to me at the time.”

“Stop talking like a lawyer. It wasn’t what you thought, it was your reaction. The very idea terrified you. You looked as if you were about to pass out.”

“Yes.”

I was gearing up for a loud, satisfying fight, but that quiet-voiced confession took the wind out of my sails. The best I could come up with was a feeble “So you admit it.”

“I may be all the things you called me and more, but I’m not so complacent as to be blind to the consequences of my own misdeeds. Bloody hell, Vicky, I’m terrified all the time! Admittedly I’m one of the world’s most flagrant cowards, but I’m also afraid for you. There are a lot of people in the big bad world who hate my guts and who harbor grudges.” The words came spilling out, his face was flushed and his fingers bit into my skin. “When we agreed to be together, I tried to talk you out of it. I put you in danger simply by associating with you. But as you pointed out with considerable eloquence, you were an adult and it was your choice. You convinced me against my better judgment, and the few remaining shreds of my conscience. How do you suppose I felt, for one ghastly moment, when I thought there might be another hostage to fortune, a helpless, totally vulnerable, completely innocent potential victim of my various sins? The people I’m referring to wouldn’t feel the slightest compunction about using a child to get back at me—and you.”

I felt like a low-down skunk.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I blew up without stopping to think. There are a few people who hold grudges against me, too.”

“Quite a few.” He managed to smile.

“Well. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry. For…everything.”

I knew what he meant, and I didn’t dare go down that road, even in my own mind. I stood up, leaving him sitting with his hands limp in his lap, looking uncharacteristically helpless, and rescued the pitiful remnants of my attempt at domesticity from Clara. By the time I had untangled the yarn from under chairs and around legs of tables, John was at the cupboard mixing drinks. I didn’t blame him. Tossing the pathetic wad of yarn into a wastebasket, I accepted the glass he handed me.