“Well, I guess not. What is it?”
“Do you have to take insulin injections?”
Peter looked startled.
“Meredith . . .” Claire began.
“No, it’s all right,” said Peter. “Why did you ask me that?”
“Well, you’re a diabetic, aren’t you?”
“How did you know that?”
“You’re wearing a Medic Alert bracelet. I read what it said when you lifted your wineglass.”
“Hmm. You’re very observant, Meredith.”
Meredith shrugged. “It’s what I do,” she said with an unsuccessful attempt at modesty.
“Why do you want to know about the insulin?”
“Just curious, I guess.”
Claire felt she should intercede again.
“Meredith, it’s none of your business—”
Peter put his hand on her arm.
“No, Claire, it’s all right, really. How often do I get to talk to anyone so interested in my personal health? Yes, I do take insulin injections, since you ask. I’ve had this condition since childhood.” He smiled ruefully. “It’s a bloody nuisance.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Juvenile onset is much more serious, isn’t it?”
Peter’s smile faded. “Yes, it is.”
Peter’s eyes wandered around the room, and then he gripped Claire’s arm.
“Bloody hell—Willard at one o’clock high and closing in. I need one more Scotch before I face him.” Peter was partial to single-malt Scotch, and had probably brought his own bottle. He turned to Meredith. “It was nice meeting you. Stop by the office sometime and we’ll give you the official tour.”
“Thank you, I will.”
Peter darted off through the crowd with surprising agility, given his stubby little body. Claire turned to Meredith.
“Why did you ask him about the insulin?”
“Just doing my job. The poison was most probably injected into the apples with a syringe, you know.”
“You suspect Peter?”
“I suspect everyone and no one. The important thing is we have located someone with easy access to a syringe, though he wasn’t necessarily the one who used it.”
“But who . . .? Do you mean someone could have—”
“Could have used it with or without his consent. Or maybe it wasn’t his syringe at all. I don’t know yet . . . it’s interesting, though.”
“Well, presumably anyone could get hold of a syringe if they really wanted to.”
Meredith’s eyes narrowed and she bit the inside of her cheek. “Perhaps so . . . perhaps so.”
Claire thought about Peter and what reason he could possibly have to want Blanche dead. If he was involved, she decided, there was a lot she didn’t understand about human nature.
Just then she saw Sarah’s cousin Marshall Bassett slinking his way through the crowd toward them. He was wearing a loose-fitting black Armani suit over a grey silk shirt, and the clothes hung well on his elegant slim frame. The way he moved showed that he looked good, knew it, and wanted you to know it. Claire smiled. With Marshall, clothes were more than just vanity; they were an expression of his joie de vivre. He took the same pride in looking good that Amelia took in cooking well, and Claire had to admire his style.
“Hello, ladies,” he said, pulling up beside them. “So this is the famous Meredith.”
“I’m hardly famous,” Meredith said stonily.
“Well, you are in these parts, honey.” Marshall laughed. “You’re the hottest thing that’s happening right now.”
“This is Marshall Bassett,” said Claire. “He’s—”
“I’m the Dreaded Gay Relative of the Deceased,” Marshall interrupted, winking at Meredith. “I only come out at night, of course, to prey on innocent straight people. I serve a useful function, however, as the black sheep in an otherwise exemplary family. But enough about me—let’s talk about you. I hear you’re going to find the murderer.”
“That’s right,” said Meredith.
“How delicious.” Then Marshall’s face suddenly went slack and he dropped his sardonic tone. “I hope you do, you know. She was a good egg, Blanche was . . . a little crazy, but then, who isn’t? She was a good kid underneath all that mascara and shoe polish she called makeup. Now there’s only me and Sarah the Terrible left.”
“Did you get along with Blanche, then?” said Meredith. Marshall smiled.
“What an interesting phrase. Let me see . . . I suppose I went along with her, which is what you did with Blanche. She was rather—headstrong, I think, is the term they use with horses and women like her. Come to think of it, she was rather like a highly strung young filly. Well, not so young, maybe, but then Blanche had an interesting formula for divining her age. I’m not sure, but I think it involved calculus and phases of the moon . . . what was I saying? Oh, yes—about Blanche and me. We were great buddies as children down in North Carolina, you know; Sarah was older and thought we were just too boring for words, so Blanche and I did everything together. She was a great storyteller, and liked to scare people even back then. She had me believing that there were man-eating bears out in the woods, and Indians still roaming around looking for white people to scalp.
“She and I spent one entire summer jumping out from behind trees, trying to outdo one another scaring each other to death. She got me good, she really did. She hid behind the shower curtain for half an hour, waiting for me to come in and use the bathroom, and then when I did, she stuck her hand out right in front of my face and snorted really loud. I did a standing broad jump backward and landed in the hall, and then we both fell down on the ground laughing. We couldn’t stop laughing, it was so funny.”
Marshall swallowed, and Claire saw that his eyes were moist. He took a sip of red wine. “Funny how when people die everyone tells stories about them, isn’t it? Such a cliché, and yet . . . well, anyway, it’s a pity more people didn’t see that side of Blanche. Ever since college, what she presented to the world was her Southern Dragon Lady mask.” Marshall shrugged. “Well, she lost the love of her life in school, or so she used to say . . . uh, speaking of dragon ladies, there’s one approaching us off the port bow.”
Claire followed his gaze and saw Sarah winding her way slowly toward them, her tall, lean body stately as a stork on its long thin legs. Marshall looked around for an escape, but it was too late; Sarah was upon them.
“Claire, how are you?” she said graciously, extending both her hands. Her grip was firm, and there was emotion in the squeeze she gave Claire. Sarah was just barely holding on, and the act of shaking hands seemed to help her maintain her strength.
“Hello, dear,” she said to Meredith, who nodded in reply.
“Well, Sarabelle, it’s a lovely party you’ve thrown; Blanche would have approved,” Marshall said in a voice that Claire had trouble reading. It sounded sincere, but with Marshall the possibility of irony was always lurking behind every phrase.
“I’m so glad you think so,” Sarah returned politely, and again Claire wasn’t sure, but thought she sensed a frostiness under the polite Southern gentility.
“Will you excuse me?” Marshall said, addressing all three of them. “I have to go see a man about a dog. Nice meeting you, Meredith. I hope you succeed in your quest, and if you need any help, give me a call. I might know a thing or two that you could use.”
As Marshall sauntered off Sarah looked after him.
“What on earth was he talking about?” she asked, the disdain in her voice evident now.
“He’s going to help me find the murderer,” said Meredith.
Sarah raised a thin eyebrow.
“Oh, really? How very charming of him,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll be a natural; he’s good at poking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
“Why don’t you like each other?” Meredith wanted to know.
Sarah looked at her and laughed.
“Good Lord, child, do you ever stop?”
“Only when
I’m asleep.”
“Meredith, I think you’ve done enough sleuthing for today,” Claire said gently, with an apologetic glance at Sarah.
“Oh, come on—please?” Meredith begged, and the sudden shift from penetrating detective to whiny child made Claire laugh.
“Meredith, people have other things to do than answer your questions all the time.”
“But—”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Claire, surprised to hear her father’s Bargaining Parent tone in her voice. “Why don’t we stay a little longer and then we’ll go home and rent a video—anything you want, okay?”
Meredith sighed. “Okay,” she said, as if she were making a great and generous concession just to humor Claire.
As they were leaving, Claire saw Sarah and Marshall huddled alone in a corner. Sarah was staring off into space, and Marshall was leaning toward her, talking.
“Don’t worry, your little secret’s safe with me,” he said, and then he said something else Claire couldn’t make out. She looked down at Meredith, and saw that she had been watching too.
“Come on,” she said, feeling guilty for eavesdropping. “Let’s go before the video store closes.”
On the way home, Claire realized that she had not seen Anthony at the reception. She started to mention it to Meredith, but then checked herself. She couldn’t imagine why Anthony would miss the funeral reception of the woman he had loved so intensely.
Chapter 8
The next day Meredith took the first train to Hartford. With the girl gone, Claire became restless. It was as though she had left some of her incessant energy and movement behind, to be absorbed by Claire through the air. She began taking long walks along Riverside Drive, and when she was in her apartment she found it hard to sit still. She added to Meredith’s store of Pepperidge Farm cookies—Brussels, Mint Milanos, and Lemon Crunch—and ate them with tea in the evening after work.
She began taking more of an interest in the plots of her authors’ mysteries. Though plot details had never been her strong point—she was always more interested in character, setting, atmosphere—now Claire analyzed them closely, suggesting clues and red herrings to her authors.
“What’s gotten into you?” Willard said one day on the phone, after Claire suggested a couple of possible clues to use in his latest mystery, Death Comes Unannounced.
“What do you mean?” she responded, always on the defensive with Willard.
“Well, you’ve changed. What’s all this interest in plot suddenly?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . broadening my horizons, I guess.”
“It’s because of Blanche’s murder, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re obsessing about solving Blanche’s murder.”
“No, I don’t think so . . .”
Willard snorted, not exactly into the receiver, but loud enough so that Claire could hear him.
“All right, fine. I’m sorry I brought it up. When is the kid coming back?”
Willard always referred to Meredith as “the kid.”
“A week from Friday.”
“Good. Maybe you’ll start acting like yourself then, and leave the sleuthing to her.”
After they hung up, Claire decided Willard was just being possessive about his work. He never liked interference of any kind, and tended to regard any suggestion Claire made as interference. She shook her head and opened a new bag of Mint Milanos. Willard was such a pain. Many authors welcomed editorial advice—in fact, actively solicited her responses—but Willard was simultaneously arrogant and insecure, so that any suggestion she made was immediately perceived as a threat or a challenge. She had recently suggested to Peter that he consider assigning Willard to another editor—a man, perhaps—but Peter responded as though personally hurt by this idea. With Blanche gone, he pointed out, Willard was now their best-selling author.
“Think of what it would look like,” he said. “Think of what they’ll say—that you’re losing your touch, that I’ve lost confidence in you, that you’re on your way out.”
Claire had to agree that it would look odd. She had been Willard’s editor for five years now, and like him or not, he lent her prestige. Now that she had him, it seemed she was stuck with him. And so she endured the whiny phone calls and the complaining—his endless need for encouragement, for her assurance that his talent was indeed extraordinary, that he lifted the genre to a new level.
In fact, his books were little more than standard page-turners, but they were written with a spare and confident style. His books were brisk and commanding in a way that Willard himself could never manage to be in person. In fact, Claire consistently found it amazing how many of her writers transformed themselves in their work. Irritating, whiny Willard wrote with masterful terseness; flirtatious, distracted Blanche displayed a cool, collected intelligence in her books. It was as though the unexpressed or undeveloped aspects of their personalities found a home in their writing.
One of the things Claire had always liked about books was how words on a page always look the same as other words. A writer can communicate straight to the reader through these words, this black on white, without the intervention of physical appearance, voice, personality, or any of the other countless distractions involved in a face-to-face encounter. The words stood alone, the sole representation of the writer’s mind and feelings, and thus the playing field was always level: the tools were the same, and the reader would not be put off by a homely face or unpleasing voice, a regional accent or an ungainly, unattractive social persona. The writer’s voice resided solely in the arrangement of words on the page, and the reader could hear those words spoken in the voice of his or her choice, in the privacy of his or her own head. It was egalitarian and democratic: the only criterion for success was the writer’s skill with words.
People are so complicated, Claire thought as she dug into the bag of Mint Milanos . . . not like mirrors, but more like prisms, with their endless refractions of light—Hesse had talked about it in Steppenwolf, and Shakespeare had understood it, of course . . .
“Each man in his time plays many parts.”
Claire looked out onto 102nd Street and wondered what her parts would be . . . was she never to be a mother, never to hear the word “mother” spoken to her and only her? Meredith’s presence in her life had filled a gap she had not even known existed. Much of her day now consisted of thoughts about things to do with Meredith, sights Meredith might like to see when she came back.
“Willst, feiner Knabe, du mit mir geh’n?
Meine Töchter sollen dich warten schön
Meine Töchter führen den nächtlichen rein
Und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein.”
As the week progressed Claire fell into a funk. She began wandering around the apartment, moving things from one place to another. The phone rang several times over the weekend, and when she answered it the line went dead. This only contributed to her irritation, and she stopped overfeeding Ralph, who protested bitterly. For the first time even her beloved apartment felt confining, and she was restless and fidgety in it. She felt herself falling down a smooth slope of depression, with nothing to grasp onto. Everything seemed pointless and desultory, even eating and sleeping. She spent half the day Saturday in her ratty blue terrycloth bathrobe, dressing only to go out for milk—the only desire she seemed to have retained was her need for coffee.
She felt she was wasting time, letting it slip away, and yet the more she worried, the harder it was for her to do anything. She wished someone would call her, even just to talk—but then couldn’t imagine whom she would want to talk to. All of her friends suddenly seemed foolish and predictable; she couldn’t think of one she had anything important to tell. Her whole life in fact appeared ridiculous and pointless to her; here she was, a single, aging editor of run-of-the-mill mysteries, midwife to other people’s mediocrity. She told herself not to dwell on these things, but the harder she tried, the more she hardened into an an
gry silence.
Claire was sinking into what her father used to call her “people are idiots” mode, in which she felt everyone around her was useless or irritating or both.
“Uh-oh,” her father would say, “look out. Claire’s on the warpath. She’s decided we’re all idiots and she’s out to prove it.” Sometimes his teasing would snap her out of her mood like a splash of cold water in the face, and sometimes it would just drive her deeper into her perverse determination to suffer—and make everyone suffer along with her if possible. Her mother would react with an icy silence of her own, and then the standoff would last until one of them grew tired, or until Claire’s father prodded them both out of it.
She considered taking the train to Hudson and surprising Robert, but he had several jobs this weekend and wouldn’t have much time for her. She couldn’t see going all the way up there just to mope around his house. More than anything, she hated herself for falling into this black mood, hated the self-pity, but the more she tried to shame herself out of it, the more a part of her dug its heels in and refused to budge. Claire felt herself wallowing, slogging around in a mire of self-involvement. Objectively, of course, she knew she was one of the world’s lucky ones, that her life was privileged and comfortable, but this weekend, faced with the confining walls of her apartment, her life seemed empty. She considered calling Robert and telling him how she felt, but something told her that he would just be impatient with her; he was very English that way.
Finally, at a loss for what to do, she turned on the television. Charlie Rose was interviewing an insistently robust, tanned man whose assertive jaw and swept-back blond hair gave him the look of a movie star. The caption on the screen read DR. BOB ARNOT, and Dr. Bob was energetically explaining to Charlie that to control your blood sugar was to control your destiny. Charlie, haggard and hunched over, nodded warily, his eyes trapped. Claire sighed and changed the channel.
Oprah was talking to three young black women and three white women. One of the white women, an expensively dressed blonde, was speaking to the black women.
Who Killed Blanche DuBois? Page 9
