‘Are you sure you don’t mean you want a Vanderbilt connection for your financial sideline?’
‘I won’t pretend I’d find the connection unwelcome. How do you know I have a financial sideline?’
‘There’s talk among other summer-school students. There’s talk in anti-war circles.’
‘Is there?’ Marlowe is disconcerted but grateful for the warning. He covers quickly. ‘It’s because I’m Southern, you know. To be Southern in Boston is like being Jewish in Germany. The ugliest prejudice floats up.’
‘Oh, right,’ Lilith says. ‘I’ve noticed the barbed wire and the concentration camps for Southerners in Harvard Square.’
‘Ouch,’ Marlowe says. ‘Okay. So I’m slightly overstating the case. But who’s maligning me?’
‘A couple of guys in our seminar told me they’d invested with you. They said they’d made money. They said you get uncanny returns.’
Marlowe runs a hand through his hair. ‘My secret’s out. I do have financial skills. Genetic inheritance, I guess. It’s just a hobby. Something I do for friends. You want to invest?’
‘I don’t have anything to invest.’
‘Well, when you do, I’ll triple it for you. In return for an introduction to a French countess and a quick peek inside a Vanderbilt penthouse.’
‘If I did have anything to invest, I wouldn’t trust a company that calls itself Lucifer Investments. But I’m willing to introduce you as the devil incarnate.’
Marlowe laughs. ‘I’ll consider it an endorsement. Free advertising.’
‘And I will go back by Greyhound. I don’t care for imposed obligations but I do meet those I impose on myself. See you at six in the Oyster Bar.’
There is a doorman on the desk in the lobby of the building on Fifth Avenue, but Lilith presses the buzzer for the penthouse.
‘C’est qui?’ a voice responds.
‘C’est moi, ma chère marraine. Je viens d’arriver de Boston.’
‘Melusine? C’est vraiment toi?’
‘Oui, ma marraine. C’est moi.’
‘Monte, monte, ma petite enfant.’
‘Ma marraine, I have a guest with me. He has driven me down from Boston. He would very much like to meet you.’
‘C’est mon fils?’
‘Je suis désolée, ma marraine. Mais non. Your son has a paper due and he is also teaching a class. He could not get away. My guest is an American friend. I am obligated to him for the ride. He will only stay for one minute.’
There is a pause. ‘Il me faut?’
‘Mais non, pas du tout, of course you don’t have to, ma marraine. It would be a case of noblesse oblige. Americans are besotted with the very idea of aristocrats.’
‘Je le ferai si’l me faut,’ the countess says. ‘Bien. Let him come up.’
‘If she has to, then she has to,’ Lilith explains. ‘I think you may have noticed a lack of enthusiasm in the tone.’
‘I’m tone deaf,’ Marlowe says cheerfully.
‘I’ve noticed,’ Lilith responds.
‘I know a bit of French,’ he says, ‘but I don’t know what marraine means.’
‘It means godmother. The countess is like a mother to me.’ In the elevator she tells him: ‘I’ve been here before, but it was when the countess was still in France. It was before she shipped her furniture back. I know she will have changed things. I’m not sure what to expect.’
The elevator doors open onto the marble lobby of the penthouse floor. Opposite, there is an ornate baroque mirror, baseboard to ceiling, twelve feet high, and Marlowe notes Lilith’s sudden intake of breath, the kind that indicates déjà vu. On the antique sideboard facing them is a potted orchid that curves in a long graceful arc to the right, its ivory flowers displaying their speckled pink throats. Reflected obliquely in the mirror is a large canvas of the Virgin and Child. Marlowe has the usual surface knowledge of art and he recalls that this portrait is famous and worth a fortune.
‘I should not have brought you,’ Lilith says. The painting seems to overwhelm her. But a door is even now opening and the slender form of a woman once and still beautiful is emerging, a woman in softly draped silk, a woman who is accustomed to having her wishes received as law, a woman who expects to be perceived as beautiful even though she is well beyond a certain age. She wears a long double string of pearls to which is attached a jewelled crucifix that she clasps constantly with her right hand.
‘Melusine!’ she says. ‘Quel plaisir!’
The two women embrace, formal French style, kissing the air beside each other’s cheeks, left, right, left, three times.
‘Votre fils vous embrasse aussi,’ Lilith says.
‘Tu mentes,’ the countess responds sadly.
‘No, no, I’m not lying,’ Lilith protests. ‘But you know how it is. Madame la Comtesse, may I present the American friend?’
‘Enchantée,’ the countess says.
Marlowe takes the hands of the countess in his own and kisses them. ‘Madame la Comtesse,’ he says. ‘Such a privilege. Will you permit me to say that you bear a striking resemblance to Poussin’s portrait of The Assumption of the Virgin? You must surely have stepped out of the seventeenth-century French court.’
Lilith closes her eyes in embarrassment.
‘How very charming of you,’ the countess says. ‘Though Poussin was living in Rome when he painted that series. He spent more of his life in Rome than in France.’
‘The nomads of history,’ Marlowe says smoothly. ‘Art and commerce owe everything to them.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Those who move, move history. Like yourself, Madame la Comtesse. And like myself too. I’m a Southerner living in Boston, but I have been a guest at Biltmore, your Vanderbilt chateau in the South.’
‘Indeed?’ the countess says politely. ‘You refer to that nouveau riche country house in North Carolina? I haven’t been there myself. It belongs to my husband’s family. It is not, you understand, a chateau in the French sense.’
‘I understand the spiral staircase was copied from the chateau at Blois.’
‘Is that so?’ The countess inclines her head graciously. ‘Will you join us for an aperitif?’
‘Oh no, he can’t stay,’ Lilith says.
‘I could stay for a little while,’ Marlowe offers.
‘As it happens, I have another guest at the moment,’ the countess says. ‘The timing is most opportune. You are both Americans, you have both been guests at that imitation chateau in the South – you can amuse each other out on the terrace while Melusine and I converse in private.’ She raises her voice slightly to call back into the salon. ‘Celise, come and entertain a fellow American for me.’
The woman who appears is probably around his own age, mid-twenties, or perhaps she is thirty. She seems colourless. There is something oddly diffident, bashful (staged, he senses) and yet overly eager about her. Marlowe sees that she wants to please. She very much wants to please. She advances on Lilith as though they were childhood friends, long parted. ‘Melusine,’ she says, with altogether more ardour than seems appropriate. ‘I am so happy to meet you. La comtesse never stops talking about you.’
Over the top, Marlowe thinks, wincing, feeling ostentatiously American and wishing he could rewind his own performance.
‘I hope ma belle-mère will grant us a formal introduction,’ Celise murmurs.
‘Forgive me,’ the countess says, exquisitely polite, ice crystals on the tips of her words. ‘This is Celise, the bride of my husband’s nephew, a young man much involved with horses.’ She invests this statement with the most refined nuance of disdain. She waves Celise towards Marlowe. ‘Take this American out to the terrace and talk horses with him,’ she orders. Marlowe is close enough to hear what she then murmurs in Lilith’s ear. She speaks in French, which Marlowe understands only slightly, but he picks up the gist of her comment. That woman does meekness well, the countess says. Gentille comme un scorpion.
Ah. In retrospect, Marlow
e wishes he had paid more attention to that warning.
‘And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?’ Celise asks.
‘His name is Lucifer,’ Lilith says.
Marlowe notes a sudden quiver, like a small electric charge, pass through the body and cross the face of Celise. He is used to having this effect on women. ‘So,’ he says, offering his arm. ‘Horses?’
‘Racehorses,’ Celise explains. Out on the terrace, she takes Marlowe’s hand between both of her own soft palms and waits for him to raise hers to his lips. When he does so, she says demurely: ‘A Southern gentleman. Unmistakable. When were you at Biltmore?’
‘Oh, years ago,’ Marlowe says lightly. ‘Weekend house parties. My family’s connected.’
‘Then that means we are connected. Who are your folks?’
‘Let’s talk about racehorses,’ Marlowe says. ‘It’s a much more interesting topic. Your husband’s an owner?’
‘An owner, a breeder, a trainer, a very fine horseman himself. Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont, Ascot.’ She looks up at him from under her lashes. ‘We were invited to the Queen’s box at Ascot.’
‘Is that so? Racing royalty then,’ Marlowe feels obliged to say.
Is it possible to reconstruct his first impression? Can he recall what she looked like on the penthouse terrace? He knows he would not have looked at her twice if they were anywhere else. Simpering, he might have said if asked for an opinion at the time. He cannot really remember what she looked like. She did indeed do meekness well. But, then, who was he to cast stones? He did what the occasion required and so did she. In that sense, they were well matched from the start.
‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘We were treated as royalty at Ascot. In fact, the Queen was seriously interested in our breeding lines. She asked if her equerry could contact ours.’
‘Is that so?’ Marlowe murmurs again. He is trying to see where the countess and Lilith have gone.
‘We do of course have our own equerry,’ Celise explains. ‘On Long Island. And he has been in contact with Buckingham Palace.’
‘Yes?’ Marlowe says, beginning to feel desperate to escape. ‘I regret,’ he says, ‘that I must –’
‘By the way, the countess has her own little whims but I’m hardly a bride. Billy and I have been married for nearly two years, and we would absolutely adore to have you come for a weekend to the Hamptons,’ she says. ‘Oh, you really must come. How is the weekend after this?’
‘Ah … I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ he says. ‘I live in Boston.’
‘Boston! We have friends who’ve discovered the most amazing investment broker in Boston. You wouldn’t by any chance be the Lucifer of Lucifer Investments, would you?’
‘As a matter of fact …’ In retrospect, how obtuse could he have been? How stupidly narcissistic, how slow-witted?
‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘Somehow I knew it. Our friends swear that you have the Midas touch.’
‘Combination of good luck and good management.’
‘That’s not what our friends say. We have so many more who’d be interested. They’d love to meet you.’
‘Actually, I’m about to sell the business and start over. Trade under a different name.’
‘Oh, that’s such a shame. Lucifer is perfect. What will your new name be?’
‘Can’t share that,’ he says. ‘Secrecy is the point. I don’t advertise. People come to me.’
‘How tantalising. Do say you’ll come the weekend after this.’
‘I’ll be back in Boston, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, that’s hardly a problem,’ Celise says. ‘Billy could send his private jet. We have the most extraordinary weekend house parties. Not just horse people but baseball superstars, painters, musicians, even writers. One weekend we had Plácido Domingo and Robert Rauschenberg at the same dinner party and all they could talk about was John Cage. The rest of us might as well not have even been there. Of course, Rauschenberg was at college with John Cage.’
John Cage? The name sounds familiar, although symphony concerts are not Marlowe’s thing. Isn’t Cage that modern composer who writes music no one can understand?
‘Do you know we’ve had Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller and Denis Johnson as guests at the same party? As a matter of fact –’ and here she leans close, confidentially – ‘at one of our dinners, Denis Johnson got so drunk that he climbed across the table and fell into my lap.’
‘Must have been a bit of a shock,’ Marlowe says, though at that very instant the word voracious drops into his mind. Celise is voracious, and the thought arrives with a weird visual image, the letters of voracious scrunched into alphabetic pulp in the talons of a great bird of prey. The bird has the face of Wallis Simpson. Where did that come from? he wonders. All because of Celise’s predator eyes? He is puzzled by the associations his own retrieval system makes.
But the truth is, the down-swooping eagle also carries arrows and sparklers in its claws and danger has always been a turn-on. Contacts, he is thinking. Investors. It is not as though he is short of links to people with more money than sense but the nature of his business requires constant infusions of new blood, innocent blood, and he has already felt the need to sell his current corporate name while the going is good. He needs to restart: a new name, a new set of contacts. Possibilities swarm: British royalty, Ascot toffs, the Hamptons, the Upper East Side, massive inflows of cash to keep the delicate house of cards standing, the sky the limit.
‘You really must come,’ Celise says. ‘We’ll invite Mailer and Heller and anyone else you’d like to meet.’
He thinks he had better start reading back issues of the New Yorker.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’ll think about it.’
From that moment, he now realises in retrospect, he was a marked man. He remembers reading somewhere that when multiple piranhas are placed in an aquarium, they hunt as a school and strip the flesh from all other forms of aquatic life, but when only two are in the same tank, they tear each other to shreds. No one wins.
How does one piranha perceive another one? he wonders. Is there a quiver of recognition when fin slithers against fin in a school? Probably not.
Obviously not.
Something he does now know: it is profoundly disorienting – a shocking heart-stopping moment – for a Master of the Game to understand that from the very beginning, from before the beginning, he has been set up and conned.
Marlowe refills his coffee mug and reads again the note propped against his cappuccino machine. It is not handwritten. Celise’s printer is set always to print in turquoise ink and an imitation calligraphic font.
He has never before thought much about the premature death of Billy Vanderbilt in a hunting accident, convenient though that had been. He and Celise had been involved for two years by then. He has never even been curious about Celise’s first husband, but now he is. He has never even inquired as to whether she was widowed or divorced the first time round. He has never been sufficiently interested, but now he is. He has all the right contacts, all the best access to coroners’ reports.
The verdict in both cases is ‘Untimely death due to accidental causes’. He is given a name for that first husband: Tom Boykin, of Asheville, North Carolina, a groundsman on the Biltmore Estate, killed in a tractor accident.
As to Billy Vanderbilt: the bit in the horse’s mouth had corroded, become suddenly acidic, driving the horse mad with pain. Billy had been dragged across three hurdles. A groom in the Vanderbilt stables was charged with negligent use of the wrong kind of brass polish and was sentenced to three years of house arrest.
Marlowe makes a phone call to the Grand Hyatt and asks to speak to Lilith Jardine. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ reception told him. ‘She checked out this morning.’
Marlowe’s phone calls to sundry legal offices are returned. There are two answers to his question: Who is the executor of the estate of the Vanderbilt widow?
The first answer is another question: Which Vanderbilt widow
?
The second answer is unequivocal. Celise Vanderbilt is executor of the estate of the French countess. As to how such a thing could have possibly come about: there, all answers are tentative and obscure. Marlowe is confident – well, reasonably confident – that he will have the last laugh, but there are matters that require his urgent attention before the collapse of his own house of cards.
As to the imperatives of memory: he never made it to the demonstration in Central Park. He cannot quite remember the stages by which he and Celise Vanderbilt shared the night in a suite at the Grand Hyatt, but he can remember with horrible clarity that moment at six-twenty p.m. when he heard Lilith’s voice. I’m not going to wait any longer, she said. I have a dinner engagement with my friends. It was, of course, a vocal hallucination from some layer deep in his subconscious mind, but he heard it, he actually heard it like a voice in the room.
‘What’s wrong?’ Celise asked with alarm, because he had bolted upright in bed and doubled over with something that resembled heartburn, an inferno behind his ribs.
‘Nothing,’ he assured her, gasping, staggering out of bed and pulling on clothes. ‘I’ve got cocktails with a banker that I totally forgot, a crucial contact. That’s the kind of power you have. I’ll be late. I’ll grab a taxi. Wait here until I get back.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Celise promised him, pulling the sheet up to her shoulders.
And he ran. He actually ran. He ran to the elevator, zoomed down to the street-level floor, and then he ran across the lobby. He ran along East 42nd and into the Oyster Bar. His shirt was only partially buttoned up and not fully tucked into his pants. Lilith was still there. She was just sliding down from her bar stool and was smiling at the bartender and a tip was passing from her hand to his.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he gasped. ‘The demo got a little wild. We were detained by the police.’
‘Really?’ she said, and the word was covered with burrs. She pointed to the television set over the bar. ‘I’ve been watching. I guess they didn’t show the violent part.’
‘Can we have a table?’ he asked the waiter.
But Lilith said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve called a taxi. My friends made a restaurant reservation for seven and I’m meeting them there. Enjoy your weekend, Lucifer, and thanks for the ride. I’ll take the Greyhound back to Boston in the morning.’
The Claimant Page 12
