The Corpse with the Ruby Lips

by Cathy Ace

  “As usual, and no,” replied the nurse, all business.

  “Would you mind if Valentin joined us, Cait?” asked Alexa.

  “Of course not.” So long as he doesn’t hurl stuff at me.

  “Very well then, tell him to come. And bring him yourself. I don’t want him getting lost again, like last evening.”

  I steeled myself for what might turn out to be an even more difficult luncheon than it already was.

  A few minutes later Valentin joined us. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, navy tie, and had bare feet. He arrived in a happy mood, helped himself to the food, and joined us at the table, where Alexa ceded her place to him and moved to sit in one of the dozen empty seats beside her daughter.

  Eating his goose with gusto, Valentin looked across the table at me and said, “Hi, I’m Valentin. Who are you? Friend of hers?” He stabbed his fork toward his niece, who answered on my behalf.

  “This is Professor Cait Morgan, Uncle. She teaches at the University of Vancouver usually, but she’s visiting Budapest for a while. She was here last week. Do you remember?”

  Valentin paused, stared at me, then returned to his meal. “No. I don’t. Sorry. I forget things. It’s expected. But Vancouver? I remember that place. Great weed. Too many cops. And . . .” He dropped his fork onto his plate and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “Got a light, anyone?”

  “You don’t smoke, Valentin. Where did you get those?” Alexa sounded tired.

  “I do smoke. I must. I’ve always smoked. You’ve always smoked, too. They were in my pocket. Did I give up?”

  “You did, dear. They must be years old. Give them to me and I’ll see to them.” Alexa seemed to be operating on autopilot.

  He handed the pack to his sister, who stuffed them into her own pocket. Looking directly at me, she said, “He forgets that he gave up years ago.”

  The man stared at his cutlery as though he wasn’t sure what to do with it, then picked up his knife and fork and began to mash his food together on his plate—not the easiest thing to do with roast goose. “It was in the autumn, I recall,” said Valentin between mouthfuls of mushed-up vegetables. “She went out. It was raining a lot.”

  “Who, dear?” Alexa was trying to sound patient.

  “Ilona. Kristóf was at home, he was sick. Had a terrible cold. He blamed the students for passing germs to him. She went out to meet a man, and never came home again. That was in Vancouver. At the university. Where you’re from.” He stabbed his fork in my direction. “I know I’m right. I haven’t forgotten that.”

  “Who did Ilona go to see?” asked Zsófia urgently, drawing a glare from her mother.

  “Just a guy. She was always doing that.” Valentin sounded almost jolly.

  Alexa looked scandalized and leaned toward her brother. “Don’t say that about Ilona, Val. Not in front of Zsófia. That’s a horrible thing to say.” She emptied the last of the bottle of wine into her glass, spilling some as she did so.

  It struck me as odd that, unlike most people—who tend use the full name of a person they are admonishing—Alexa seemed to shorten her brother’s when she was angry with him.

  “What do you know?” mocked Valentin with the level of disdain siblings reserve specifically for each other. “You were just a kid. I remember you then. Daddy’s girl, you were. Always following him about, doing whatever he asked you to do. Brownnoser. He didn’t like me. He hated me. Oh, but he loved you.” Valentin held his chest, mock-swooned, and put on a singsongy voice. “His ray of sunshine. The apple of his eye. All those loving things he’d say to you. Remember?” He dropped his fork onto his plate. “I do. I remember. Funny that, eh? For a guy who’s losing himself piece by piece, I can remember that. Ironic, eh? But what did he ever say to me? Nothing loving, nothing supportive, nothing encouraging. Just criticism. Carping on and on about how I could do better. How lucky I was.”

  “It wasn’t just you who got it in the neck, Val. Ilona always nagged at me about that, too,” said Alexa angrily. “I was so lucky to be growing up in Canada, not Hungary. I could live free and easy in Canada, not like back here, where everyone had to follow rules and watch what they said and did. Always going on and on about it.”

  Valentin picked up his fork again and shoved mush around on his plate. It was almost empty. “Don’t remember that,” he said. Then he winked at me and added, “Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, of course. Avoided each other like the plague, didn’t we, Alexa?”

  His sister shrugged. With about five years between me and my own sister, I could imagine the dynamics between these siblings when they were both teens.

  Valentin pushed his plate away and let out a belly laugh. “You were a lanky girl, Alexa, all teeth and greasy hair. Spotty, too. Couldn’t have pulled a muscle, let alone a boy. Even so, you were the favorite. When you were born it was as though they stopped seeing me. Like I ceased to exist. Especially for him. He always looked at you with love in his eyes. He only ever looked at me to know what I was doing. Always asking why I did what I did. Never asked you. Loved you. Quizzed me.”

  “I think that’s unfair, Val. Ilona and Kristóf were our parents. They loved and watched over us both,” said Alexa petulantly. “They saved us from seeing the true ugliness of the world, which I also do for my baby princess.”

  “You were a whiny little kid,” snapped Valentin. “You wouldn’t have been aware Ilona was a woman who liked men. Young men especially. I always knew when she was going off to meet someone; she had a particular perfume she’d wear. It was heavy. Musky. Like an animal’s smell. And she’d put on her lipstick a special way. Lipstick, then powder on her lips, then lipstick again. That’s what she did when she was going out for a good time. Ordinary days it was just one layer of lipstick. I used to watch her do it all, sitting there in her slip and stockings at her dressing table, anointing herself.” He paused as if looking back down the decades. “Always left their bedroom door open when she was getting dressed. Clouds of hairspray would billow out into the hallway, hanging in the air forever, it seemed. I remember how it smelled. Sickly. Acrid. I always knew what she was up to. Kristóf did too. You didn’t. You were too little to understand.”

  The exchange was fascinating and revealing, in more ways than one. I took my chance to find out more. “Is that why the original queen in your first two books paints her arms with red dye, then covers them with soil that’s been blessed by the priest, then more red dye, before she goes to watch over a battle?” I asked Valentin.

  “Whoever you are, you’re clever,” said Valentin, smiling. “Read my books, have you? Then I guess you know all about my family already.” He waved his arms in the air, indicating himself, Alexa, and Zsófia.

  “I think I do,” I said, wondering what the reaction would be. “I was talking to your niece the other evening about the way your books could be read as more than just a fantasy, and I’ve found them to be intriguing. Am I correct in thinking you are both Zoth, the eldest son, and Frag, the middle one?”

  Valentin stared at me, nodding slowly, a smile of admiration on his thin, pale face. “Indeed. I am both the scheming, evil son, and the pure son. The warrior, and the man of learning. I am the brawny, battling one, and the effete scholar. The one with the strength of arms, and the one with the strength of mind. You saw that, did you?” I nodded.

  “I didn’t see it, Uncle,” said Zsófia. “I haven’t read your work properly at all, it seems. I thought I knew it well, but I didn’t understand it, did I? Who am I? Will you tell me?” She leaned forward, apprehension and hope on her pale, innocent face.

  Valentin’s expression softened as he gazed at his niece. “You, like me, are more than one character, my dear. Who do you think you might be? Who do you hope you are?”

  Zsófia spoke quietly. “I hope I am Elba, but maybe I am Vanna too?” She’d named the most sympathetic female character first—a young woman of humble stock given to the third son of the family as a child bride, who’d then helped hu
manize the brutal young man by loving and nurturing him. Next she’d named the siren with the liquid voice every warrior desired, but none could possess, because she was a priestess of the weird religious cult they all followed.

  Valentin smiled, looking suddenly tired. “Very good. I bet my sister can’t pick herself out, though. Nor Kristóf. He’ll never guess who he is.”

  Alexa moved uneasily in her seat. “Oh, Valentin, Kristóf’s been dead for years. You remember that, I know you do. Besides, you’re kidding, right? You don’t mean to tell me the whole world is reading about our family? Not really.” Her eyes began to dart about as the thought nibbled into her consciousness, and I could tell her mind was racing. “I can’t believe you’d do that. What about Ilona’s death? Oh!” She stood abruptly, scraping her chair across the antique wooden floor. “The queen is killed in the second book. And the way she dies! What have you done, Val? Val—what does that mean? Tell me!”

  Zsófia tried to calm her mother, who was pacing about, muttering to herself. Eventually she said, “Uncle Valentin, don’t be cruel to poor Mama. You have made her worry. Please explain what you have written.”

  Valentin stood, with some difficulty. “I’m tired now. Thinking about then and now, and there and here, is too much. I’m in too many places and times all at once. I should sleep.” He pushed the little button hanging beneath his tie.

  Zsófia moved to help him, but Martin arrived almost immediately.

  “Mr. Valentin will sleep now,” explained the nurse, helping the suddenly feeble Valentin.

  “Do you have any pages for me to work on, Uncle?” asked Zsófia as the sagging man was being helped through the door. “Shall I come to collect them from you later?”

  “It’s done. All done. Finished it weeks ago,” said Valentin weakly.

  “But it can’t be—I’m still editing the final battle scenes,” said his niece, puzzled.

  I saw Valentin’s eyes twinkle when he turned to answer. “You think it will end with a great battle where everyone dies? Too simple, child. Those chapters come earlier. I have the rest written out. It’s all finished.”

  “Let him sleep now,” said Martin, and the two men left.

  I’d stayed in my seat while all of this unfolded, and couldn’t imagine we’d reconvene at the table, but I was wrong. When we were three once more, the two women sat and became lost in their own worries, contemplating new puzzles.

  “I don’t know where those chapters fit in,” announced Zsófia after a few minutes. “I cannot imagine where he can take it all after that battle. There’s almost no one left alive. The entire family’s been decimated. There’s only—oh, how clever. I wonder if . . .”

  “That’s of no consequence,” snapped Alexa at her daughter. “What’s important is what he’s written about us. I’ll admit I’ve only read his books once, when they were still just his handwritten manuscripts. I haven’t really taken much notice of them since they were all published. Tell me, Zsófia, who am I? What does he say about Ilona and Kristóf?” She looked desperate. “Is Kristóf the king in the books, do you think? Is Ilona his first queen?” her eyes searched her daughter’s face for an answer.

  Zsófia furrowed her brow. “I think so. Or maybe Grandfather is the priest? Or the magician? Or am I being too literal about all this? Cait, you’ve read the books, what do you think?”

  Their eyes turned to me, and I knew I was in a tricky position. Then I realized I had a great chance to find out more than Alexa might imagine about the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death, so I decided to play along.

  I knew I had to tread carefully to not reveal the secret of my eidetic memory, so I made an effort to sound much vaguer than I really was. “I think the king might well be Kristóf. Let’s look at the evidence: he flees to lands far from his original home”—in my mind’s eye I saw page 473 of book one telling of his decision to leave his homeland, then I ran through the next couple of chapters mentally, rapidly reliving the terrible journey he’d made with his wife across an unforgiving landscape in the dead of winter—“taking with him his young bride, and establishes himself in the new land, as ruler of all.” That’s chapters eleven to sixteen in book one. “He starts a family and rules with an iron will—through terror, not love.” Book two, chapters one to five. “The queen is lusty, and dallies—and much more—with quite a few of the young men at the court.” Pages 335, 546, 681, 846, 932, 1056, and 1127 in book two. “He tries to bully all of his sons into being warriors, even though two of them are far from warlike, and one, certainly, would rather be studious and thoughtful.” The king’s bullying ways were too numerous to recount, even to myself. “I do think this suggests Kristóf is the king, especially given what Valentin just told us about his father.”

  “The books are so very long and I got confused by them. But there is something I remember—the king ordered his first queen to be put to death,” said Alexa staring into the bottom of her empty glass with dread in her voice.

  “He did,” I said quietly. “He had her tied to a stake and stoned by every woman in the town, then ordered her body chained behind a horse, to be dragged around the castle walls from sunup until sundown. Chapter twenty-six, book two.” It slipped out.

  Zsófia whispered, “Until now, I’ve always felt sorry for the horse in that part of the book, having to run all day like that. Now? Oh, Mama.” She held her hand over her mouth, her eyes round with horror.

  Alexa pushed her empty glass away from her and stuck out her chin. “That’s just stuff Val made up, my darling child. Stop looking like that, Zsófia. Buck up. It’s all rubbish.”

  “In the fourth book, the ghost of the queen comes back to haunt the king, and shows him her wounds. The wounds made by the stones,” I said. “Might that be Valentin alluding to the time your father took you to see your mother’s body, Alexa?”

  The woman stood, grabbed the second bottle of wine that had been standing almost untouched between myself and her daughter, and filled her large glass. She drank it as though it were soda, and angrily wiped its red remnants from her lips with the back of her hand.

  “Enough. That’s it. I’ll read his blessed books again. I’ll have to. What more can there be in them?”

  “I do have one question,” I ventured. “Who do you think might be the model for the Listener, Alexa? The shadowy figure that never seems to sleep, hides in every corner, and hears every word. The character is never described physically, seems to be able to be in many places at once, and passes information to any and all parties. I’ve found the Listener to be a pivotal character in the entire saga. Was there someone in Valentin’s, or your, early life who might have inspired that character?”

  Alexa sagged into a chair. I was surprised she could manage even that. Her voice sounded distant as she replied, “There was a man who lived with us for some time. I don’t know how long. It seemed like a very long time indeed. By the time Ilona died, he’d left. He went because of Valentin, I remember that much. Valentin didn’t like him at all, and there were lots of times when I knew Ilona and Kristóf were arguing about him, but they’d stop when I came into the room. He always seemed to be where you didn’t expect him to be, I remember. Maybe he made an impression on Valentin, and he put him into his books.”

  “You say he’d left by the time your mother was killed?” I pressed.

  “Yes, a long time before,” said Alexa airily. “Not the university, but our house. Kristóf said he’d found him a place in the halls of residence.”

  “Was he a student? The same age as your brother?”

  She shook her head heavily. “Oh no, he was older. Like a man, not a boy. Always wore a suit or a sports coat. He was all grown up.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember his name, do you, Alexa?”

  Alexa burped, then slurred, “Of course I do. It was Mezey. Peter Mezey. He was from Budapest, like Ilona and Kristóf. He left. Suddenly he wasn’t there.”

  I wondered if Bud might be able to find out more abo
ut this additional person in the family’s home. It was possible this Peter Mezey was the lodger he’d told me about.

  “Did the police question him at the time?” I knew this was something I could ask Bud about too.

  Alexa looked vague. “I don’t know. Why would they? By then he was just like anyone else living on campus. Just another man. I can’t imagine my father would even have mentioned him. Why would he?”

  “Do you recall when he arrived?” I didn’t hold out much hope.

  Alexa tried to focus on my face. “When he what? Oh. Yes. No, I don’t know. Maybe he was with us for a year? Maybe less. I really don’t know. I think he stayed on campus after Ilona died, but I don’t know for how long.” She slumped, then, almost immediately, seemed to rally. Her back straightened and she just about managed to control the movement of her upper body as she said loudly, “He could have killed her! Will you find out about him, Cait? Maybe he did it. I never thought of that idea before now. And tell me all about the people in his books. Do that too. Yes, that.” Her eyes gleamed with what I judged to be relief.

  I leaned forward and said, “You told me you didn’t want me meddling in your family’s affairs anymore.” I felt it only fair to remind the woman she’d said as much just a couple of hours earlier.

  Alexa shifted in her chair. Her daughter moved as if to save her from toppling, but she managed to keep herself upright. “Okay,” Alexa mumbled with a sly grin, “you’ve got me. If Valentin is writing coded messages about my family, especially my little princess, in his books, and if they tell us something about who killed Ilona, then I guess I do want to know, after all. There might be clues in the books that point to that Peter guy. Or someone else. One thing’s for damn sure,” she made grand gestures as she spoke, her face working hard to form words, “if some geek living in his parents’ basement is so into the books that he writes something online about my family, and manages to somehow link it all to Ilona’s death—however much we’re all sure no one knows who VS Örsi really is—I don’t want to be in the dark and the last to know. So go ahead, Cait. Ask what you want. Dig all you can. You and your lovely husband in Canada.” The sigh she let out shook her whole body. Her eyes were blank—I didn’t know if that was because of the wine she’d consumed, or because she really didn’t know what to think, or feel, anymore. “What can I do?” she said, completely without emotion.