Their eyes met. “That’s why it could be Denton,” said Stephanie. “Protecting his pleasant world.” They gazed at the leaping flames in the fireplace. “Do you know, almost the first thing you ever told me about him, when I came to your wedding at Treveston, was that he strolled through the world as if it were one of his Treveston gardens.”
Sabrina smiled faintly. “I remember. I thought it was wonderful, that kind of confidence. But in fact it’s far different from confidence; it’s a supreme arrogance that I suppose makes just about anything possible. Including murder.”
Stephanie put down her cup. “Let’s go somewhere. We can’t sit around and think about Denton all night; how incredibly depressing. And you did say you’d think about going out to dinner. Did you find a restaurant?”
“Yes, but—”
“Sabrina, please!”
“Well, I read about a new Italian place in Cambridge. I haven’t been there for years and I don’t know anyone there. It’s about an hour and a half away; if you don’t mind the drive, I think we’d be all right.”
“Then let’s go.”
They dressed in evening suits with short skirts and long jackets with beaded lapels, Sabrina in black, Stephanie in deep blue. They took capes from Sabrina’s closet, and then Sabrina called a limousine. “The first rule for strange places is, always make sure you have a way to get home.”
Their eyes met in the mirror. They had not done that when they traded lives. Such a simple rule, and they had forgotten it.
They looked away. “Time to go,” Sabrina said.
The limousine drove slowly through the early evening traffic, weaving among high black taxis and small MGs and Volkswagens that skittered along the road like children thumbing their noses at authority. At intersections, streams of workers flowed past and vanished as they plunged into the earth, descending on escalators to tube stations far below. Locked in their thoughts, Sabrina and Stephanie watched through tinted windows as the neighborhoods changed, the crowds thinned and then disappeared, and only a few cars moved through the streets.
They were in the suburbs: neat cottages and half-timbered houses, blocks of apartments sprouting forests of television antennas, children playing in front yards, shops, schools, a hospital. And then open fields and dense forests, deep green in the fading light. Sabrina remembered a line from Blake—“England’s green and pleasant land”—and she thought of how long it had been her green and pleasant home but now was a country for others. She could not imagine living there again.
She glanced at Stephanie, gazing out her window, absorbed in . . . what? Her children? Her husband? Léon? How far away she is, Sabrina thought, and touched Stephanie’s hand lying on the seat between them. Stephanie turned and smiled briefly, and then they turned away again, into their own thoughts.
The limousine slowed as it reached Cambridge, driving past the mellowed red brick buildings of the university and through narrow streets lit by gas lamps and the illuminated windows of shops. “Wait, could we stop?” Stephanie asked suddenly. “Look, Sabrina, what a lovely shop. Ballard’s. Have you ever heard of it?”
“No, it must be new.”
“Let’s go in, shall we?” When Sabrina hesitated, she said, “Please, Sabrina, we’re so far from London, what harm could it do?”
“Oh, I suppose it’s all right. It’s been a long time since we went to an antique shop together. We’ll be about half an hour,” she said to the driver, and they walked to the shop.
The entrance door, of old leaded and stained glass, opened into a wide, shallow room, dimly lit and filled with European and American furniture, clocks and chandeliers from three centuries. “What an incredible collection,” Stephanie said. “Jacqueline would love it.” There was no shopkeeper in sight and she and Sabrina moved slowly through the room, looking at telltale details that could distinguish a genuine piece from a reproduction. “Georgian,” Sabrina murmured. “Just right for Billy Koner’s lobby. Vern would love it, but Billy would say it’s too old-fashioned.”
“Who are they? Billy Koner and Vern.”
“Billy owns the building I told you I designed. The one in Printer’s Row. Vern is the architect.”
“And Vern likes Georgian furniture? Isn’t that strange, for an American architect?”
“He’s more interesting than most of them.” She looked up as an enormous man came into the store, his bald head shining as he flipped a light switch near the entrance.
“So sorry, my dear,” he said to Sabrina, peering at her through his glasses. “I stepped out for a pint and ran into some friends.” He did not see Stephanie, who was shielded by a large armoire. “Closing in half an hour; I’ll be in the office back there if you need me.”
“Tell me about Vern and Billy Koner,” Stephanie said when he was gone. Sabrina described them, and her designs for the apartments, the lobby, the elevators and stairwells. “I loved that job; it was the biggest I’ve ever done, and the most fun because of Vern. And Billy, too; I like him. Vern and I played a game, guessing how long it would take to convince him of something we both knew was perfect.”
“Did you convince him?”
“Most of the time. Sometimes he dug in his heels, but then, why not? It’s his building.”
“It sounds wonderful. Much bigger than Max’s town house, and that’s the only job I’ve ever done.”
“But you had a good time. Did you buy all the furniture?”
“Good heavens, no; he had tons of it in storage. He took me to see it one day and I couldn’t believe it; he had so many pallets in the warehouse it was like opening one treasure chest after another.”
They were sitting on one of the sofas now, close together, their voices low. Stephanie described her remodeling of Max’s house around his massive furniture, covering the walls with suede, adding Oriental rugs and bringing in low lamps because he liked the rooms dim at night. “It wasn’t as good as your design of Alexandra’s house—I couldn’t get the same light touch you had—but Max was pleased. He said it was the best house he’d ever had.”
After a moment Sabrina said, “You really became me, didn’t you? I didn’t realize, from our telephone calls, how perfectly you made my life your own. I knew you were having a good time, but it was more than that, wasn’t it?”
“It was magical; it was a fairy tale that I’d dreamed about and envied as long as I could remember. And the most incredible thing was that I couldn’t seem to do anything wrong. It was the only time in my life when everything went perfectly: I went to auctions and parties and dinners and I did what you would have done, and I did it well. I don’t understand how that happened, but it did and it was so wonderful I didn’t want to give it up. The problem is, I became you, but you did better: you became both of us. I don’t know how that happened, either, but somehow the whole time you were Stephanie Andersen, you never stopped being Sabrina Longworth. I was so sure you’d be bored and furious that you had to stay there, but you were happy. So what happened? You changed them; is that it? Somehow you changed Garth and Penny and Cliff so they fit in with the way you wanted to live. How did you do that?”
“I didn’t change them. They changed me.”
“No, don’t you understand? You were still Sabrina. You are now. You’re both of us. So who am I?” Her eyes were pleading for an answer. “Who am I, Sabrina? You know who you are, but I’ve lost myself.”
Sabrina took Stephanie in her arms. “You’re my sister and I love you.” Stephanie laid her head on Sabrina’s chest like a child, her breathing slowing as if she would settle there for good.
“Closing, my dears, sorry, but it’s time.”
The voice came from the office and Stephanie shot upright with a small laugh. “The voice of doom. Closing. Coming to an end. Oh, Lord, I’m getting morbid. Let’s go to dinner.”
The Italian restaurant had a small front room with a bar and a larger room with tables and high-backed booths. Sabrina had requested a booth and they were led to one in the corner, dra
wing stares as they walked to it. “Not one familiar face,” Sabrina said as they sat opposite each other.
“You didn’t expect any.” Stephanie leaned out of the booth to look behind her. “I like the room.”
Sabrina, facing the room, nodded. The walls were of rough plaster hung with watercolors of Italian hill towns and harbors; the floor was tiled in white stone, crisp paper covered the cloth on their table. “It could be Italy; they’ve done a nice job.”
The waiter, wearing an open-necked shirt, black pants, and a towel wrapped around his waist as an apron, brought glasses and a bottle of Chianti and took their order. “Tell me again about Penny’s puppets,” said Stephanie, and Sabrina thought how like a child she sounded, asking for a bedtime story. Over the past three nights, in their long evenings together before the fire, she had told Stephanie everything about Penny and Cliff she could think of, but still Stephanie asked for more.
As if she’s memorizing things for her return, Sabrina thought, but she talked to Stephanie calmly and steadily, as if the thought had never been.
“—so somehow her teacher arranged with Kroch’s to display Penny’s puppets in the window with her name on a card in front of them—” She stopped, looking across the restaurant, her face frozen.
“What is it?” Stephanie’s voice rose in alarm. “What’s wrong?” She turned, but the booth was too high for her to see over it, and before she could slide to the front to look out, Alexandra was there, bending down, hugging Sabrina.
“My God, Stephanie, what a place to find you! Is this for antiques or academics? Garth giving lectures—” She turned to the other side of the booth and sucked in a loud breath. She staggered and grabbed the table, staring at Stephanie. Her mouth moved but no words came.
“Sit down, Alexandra.” Sabrina held her arm and pulled her down beside her.
She sat, her eyes on Stephanie. She looked from one sister to the other. “I don’t . . . How could . . . Who are you?”
As she asked that of each of them, the waiter arrived with bowls of risotto. “Ah, there are three signorinas for dinner?”
“Later,” Sabrina said and waited until he left. She pushed away her dinner and held Alexandra’s hand between hers. “My sister wasn’t killed on Max’s yacht; she escaped, but she lost her memory and only regained it two weeks ago. But that’s only—”
“Sabrina!” She rose to lean over the table, stretching her hand to Stephanie. “Oh, my God, my God, I can’t believe it . . . Sabrina!”
“No, wait,” Stephanie said. “That’s only the beginning.”
“We’ll tell you all of it,” Sabrina said. “but first we owe you an apology.”
Alexandra turned to her. “For what? You don’t owe me anything. Sabrina was the best friend I ever had, and when she was gone, it was as if you took her place. I mean, when I visited you in Evanston I almost felt—”
“You were in Evanston?” Stephanie exclaimed in surprise.
“I forgot to tell you about that,” Sabrina said to Stephanie.
“So what’s the apology for?” asked Alexandra.
Sabrina and Stephanie exchanged a look. “You tell it,” Stephanie said.
The waiter returned. “Is there anything—?”
“More wine,” Sabrina said.
“Just a minute.” Alexandra took a pad of paper from her purse and wrote a brief note. “Give this to Mr. Tarleton when he comes in, with my apologies. My would-be dinner companion,” she said to Sabrina and Stephanie. “Now, go ahead. You’re apologizing—for what?”
“We played a trick on you. You were a loving friend and we tricked you, and both of us hated doing it, but we were in so deep by then—”
“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”
“No. I’m about to tell you.” Sabrina paused impatiently while the waiter filled three wineglasses. He looked at them curiously. “That’s all,” Sabrina said, and, reluctantly, he left. “First of all, I’m Sabrina; that’s my sister, Stephanie. Thirteen months ago we took a trip to China . . .”
Gradually the restaurant emptied. The waiter drifted by as he crisscrossed the room. He removed the cold risotto. Unasked, he brought espresso for three. Soon all the waiters were clustered near the kitchen door, relaxing. Talk and laughter still came from the bar and a few diners dallied at tables near them, but Stephanie felt the change in the atmosphere: the evening coming slowly to an end, busboys clearing the last dishes and spreading fresh table-cloths and white paper on the tables, waiters changing into their street clothes, the owner preparing to make a final swift appraisal of his domain before closing and locking the door.
Closing. Coming to an end.
She shook her head and turned back to Alexandra, who, all through Sabrina’s story, had looked back and forth from one of them to the other, listening, looking, wondering. By now she was no longer disbelieving, as she had been when Sabrina began, but she was still stunned, clinging to every word.
“—and we came to London a couple of days ago, to try to figure out what happened. We never went anywhere together, but we thought we were safe in Cambridge, that no one would know us. What in heaven’s name you’re doing here—”
“A new restaurant, and the owner is a friend and he asked me to show up so he’d get a mention in the gossip columns. You and I used to do this a lot; we did it a year ago, as I have good reason to remember, since that was the night you introduced me to Antonio. Oh. But it wasn’t you, was it? It was Stephanie, and you were in America, being her.” Alexandra’s eyes flashed to the ring on Sabrina’s left hand. “You haven’t said anything about that.”
“That’s a separate story.”
“But I visited you, and you had the most wonderful family . . .” She saw Stephanie wince. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . . well, yes, I did; that’s what I saw. And all that time you’d found Léon. I have one of his paintings, by the way; I bought it at Galeries de Rohan. I liked the way Sabrina described him. Is he really that wonderful?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve told him all of this?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe it. It is the most fantastic, unbelievable, incredible story . . .” A slow smile lit her face. “You two are amazing. You know, I don’t even mind it that you fooled me; good Lord, how many times have I wished I could do the same thing? I’ve looked at other women and wanted to be them, just for a little while . . . What the hell, there was a time, some years back, when I wanted to be Sabrina.”
“A tangled web,” Sabrina murmured.
“Yes, a good way to put it. But who could have guessed the things that would happen?”
“We never even tried to predict what could happen,” said Stephanie. “We just talked about how to make it work for a week.”
“Well, it did. And for a lot longer. You were perfect. And you must have been having a good time; everybody in London said how happy you looked all that fall.” She looked at Sabrina. “Both of you, right? Building new lives. Well, I have to hand it to you; you’d win best actress at Cannes hands down.” She saw Sabrina’s face harden and glanced again to her left hand. “Sorry, that was dumb. You weren’t acting, were you? Not after a while. But why didn’t you tell me?” she suddenly demanded. “We were as close as friends could be. When we all thought you’d been killed, and you came back as Stephanie to bury her—oh. For God’s sake, whom did we bury that day?”
“We don’t know. We can’t understand it. I was in the funeral home for a long time; I sat by the coffin . . .”
“But you said it was dark,” Stephanie said. “Just a few candles. And you were crying.”
“Yes, but my own sister . . . Well, maybe that was it; I really didn’t see anything clearly. I saw what I expected to see.” Slowly she repeated it. “What I expected. Everyone does that, you know; that’s why Stephanie and I were so successful; people arrange reality to fit their expectations, and they’ll go through all sorts of contortions to make the world seem logical rather t
han take something seriously that doesn’t make sense at all.”
“I did that,” Alexandra said to Stephanie. “Remember, at my dinner party, you told a story about Greece, when you were young, and you said, ‘Sabrina saved me.’ We all thought it was very odd, but you covered it up somehow and that was that. It never occurred to any of us . . .”
“Why would it?” Stephanie said with a faint smile. “Who would try such a crazy trick?”
“Yes, but wait a minute. Didn’t Denton identify the body?”
“He did, and that really doesn’t make sense,” Sabrina said. “I’m sure he wasn’t crying his eyes out when he did it. That’s one of the things we’re going to ask him.”
“Both of you? Didn’t you tell me you’d been taking turns?”
“Yes, up to now.” She and Stephanie smiled at each other. “But I think this time we’ll go together.”
Alexandra’s eyes gleamed. “Won’t that be something to see. You know, I was never fond of Denton; he didn’t seem to connect with anybody, me included: we were all background to whatever he was doing to make himself happy. But I never would have pegged him for a murderer. It makes me wonder about some other people I know in the upper ranks, so to speak, of society, here, South America, everywhere. Do you think it’s dangerous, going to see him?”
Sabrina thought about it. She met Stephanie’s worried frown. “He’ll be confused when he sees us; we’ll definitely have the advantage. And I’ll bet he never does his own dirty work. I think we’ll be all right.”
“You’re just going to walk up there, both of you, and ring the bell?”
“That’s the idea.”
“It has great possibilities. I’d love to see it. Can I go along? I promise I’ll stay in the background; you won’t even know I’m there.”
“No, but we’ll tell you what happens. Where are you staying?”
“Claridge’s. I’ve been meeting with Brian at Ambassadors. I love that shop, Sabrina. I love owning it.”
A Tangled Web Page 52
