The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  “How will you get her to talk?” Conor asked.

  Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, Kate glanced at him with affectionate pity. “Are you kidding? She’s dying to talk. I’ll say something like ‘how did you and Martin meet?’ I probably won’t get another word in for the rest of the morning.”

  “Right so.” He watched her from the end of the bed, happy to see the color back in her cheeks, grateful for her spirit. When she gathered up her hair to wind it into a bun, the lovely curving line of exposed skin was too much for him to resist. He felt her shiver as his breath stirred the soft curls at the nape of her neck.

  “How are those aching ribs?” Kate asked.

  “Remarkably better.”

  “Are you going downstairs?”

  “In a minute.” With the button already handled, Conor pulled gently at the zipper of her pants.

  “Or maybe twenty?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  When he made it back downstairs Conor went to the room he’d passed through but not yet spent any time in: the library. It was the middle of the three large salons on the second floor and was lined with ten-foot-tall shelves holding artfully arranged leather-bound books and pieces of Bohemian crystal. Even with the shelving on three sides, the room was still big enough to hold the concert grand Steinway that extended like a long, ebony thumb from one corner of it.

  He found Sonia there with Martin, the two of them talking quietly near the windows with their backs to the door, their heads close together. Although Conor came in without a sound, Martin sensed his presence. His hand cupped Sonia’s elbow as they both turned to him.

  “So,” Martin said. “The rehearsals commence.”

  Conor simply swung the violin case forward as confirmation. He noted the quality of Martin’s smile—more forced than it had previously been—and Sonia’s small frown of impatience as she moved away from him.

  “I understand you’ll be playing an orchestral version of the Kreutzer Sonata at the closing concert. A rare treat.” Martin lifted his coffee cup from a side table and strolled after her, leaving a wafting scent of cologne in his wake. “Sonia is quite good with that piece also, but I expect it’s as well you are playing the Strauss. Better not to tempt fate, hmm?”

  Having no idea what he was on about, Conor placed his sheet music on a handsome wooden music stand next to the piano before facing Martin again. His wordless curiosity received a frown of disbelief.

  “The Tolstoy novella, of course. You are not familiar with it?” Martin positioned himself behind Sonia as she sat at the piano, brushing his fingers over the back of her neck. Although both she and Petra seemed untroubled by it, Conor thought this constant touching, brushing, and fondling seemed less like affection and more like territorial marking.

  “I’ve heard of it,” he said, “but what’s your point?”

  Martin smiled. “My point is the theme, of course—a discourse on the perverse nature of conventional marital relations and their capacity to incite a jealous rage. As I’m sure you recall, the protagonist is married to a pianist. He murders her, as she and the man he perceives to be her lover—a violinist—are practicing the Kreutzer.” Martin’s smile broadened into a grin. “Fortunately for you, Conor, I am anything but conventional.”

  Conor returned the smile, suppressing a laugh at the scenery-chewing quality of his warning. “And fortunately, the pianist is not your wife.”

  Martin gave a shout of laughter and lowered his lips to Sonia. “I will be off to work now and leave you to yours.”

  She received his long kiss while regarding Conor with an open-eyed challenge. He dismissed it—bored with the theatrics—by bending to open his case. Once Martin had left she began playing, crouched over the piano as though near-sighted and running through scales at a pounding volume. After tuning the Pressenda Conor tucked the instrument under his arm and patiently waited for her.

  “Don’t you need time to get loose?” She barked the question without stopping, and he deliberately kept his response inaudible. Abruptly, she pulled her hands from the keyboard and sat upright.

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said I got loose upstairs.” Ignoring her facetious grunt he tapped his bow against the sheet music. “Will we take a run at it? I’d like to see where we stand.”

  Sonia nodded, clearly appreciating the layered meaning in his words. “You are the virtuoso. I look forward to learning from you.”

  “I think we’ll be learning a lot from each other.” He nodded for her to begin. She plunged into the opening fanfare of the Strauss sonata and Conor tucked the violin under his chin.

  He lowered it at the end of the final movement a half-hour later and swiped at a line of perspiration above his lip. “About as bad as I expected—meaning me,” he added, seeing Sonia’s haughty glare. “You were fine.”

  “Kind of you. As I’ve been playing it for two months, I’m pleased you found it ‘fine’.”

  “I meant ‘brilliant.’ You were dead brilliant.”

  “Now you’re being sarcastic.”

  “Sorry.” Hiding a grin, he removed the pencil he’d tucked behind his ear and bent over the sheet music.

  Sonia shifted on the stool. “Obviously, in the second movement—”

  “The mute. I know, I forgot it completely. I haven’t needed it for a while so it’s still in the case.” He shuffled through the pages, scribbling notes. “Thoughts on the first? Don’t hold back; I’m not as touchy as you are.”

  “To me, it sounded quite good.”

  “Did it? I thought my tempo was shite.” Conor looked up and accidentally knocked a few pages from the stand. He made an awkward, twisting grab for them and yelped at the pain slicing through his side.

  “What is it? You are hurt?”

  “Thanks to your boyfriend,” he said, straightening slowly. “Or maybe I should say your other boyfriend. Farid knocked me onto a curbstone when I hauled him out of the Praŝná Vĕž two nights ago.” She held his gaze then dropped her head with a faint smile. “You played a dangerous game with him, Sonia. Or would you rather be called Greta?”

  “I prefer ‘Sonia’ now.” She looked up again, amused. “At least you got him out.”

  “We did, but he disappeared in Hřensko. I’ve no idea where he is now, which is a problem for me but a bigger one for you. You’d better prepare for him looking you up again. I don’t think he’ll be asking you to run away with him this time.”

  It wasn’t possible for her face to lose any more color, but it certainly lost its lighthearted smirk. For a moment, the tense silence was broken only by a yap from the microscopic dog in a room above them. Conor came forward and leaned against the piano.

  “What have you been getting up to? This would be a good time to tell me.”

  “Does Frank know?”

  “That you burned an MI6 asset and nearly got him killed? I told him that, yeah, but unless I’m wrong and Frank put you here, he doesn’t know about this ménage à trois sideshow. What about Ghorbani? I’d be a little more concerned about him at the minute. Does he know you’re living here?”

  Sonia shook her head. “No, Frank didn’t put me here, and Farid only knows of my flat near the botanical gardens. I leased it to be able to offer the New Přemyslids a place to hold their meetings.”

  “So, what’s all this about, then?”

  She put a hand over her face and took a deep breath. “It’s about love.”

  “Rubbish,” Conor said. “There’s something nesting in the rafters of this house all right, but it sure as hell isn’t love. I can’t feel a hint of it in a single one of you.”

  “Yes, it’s true. We have none for each other,” she said quietly. “It’s all for Leo.”

  “Your son.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Martin’s.”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “Why is his nursery in the master suite? Do the three of you sleep together every night?”

 
“No.” After a long silence, she rose. “I would like a cigarette. Do you mind?”

  Apparently, the house rules prohibited smoking inside on the main floor. Conor found that ironic, since Petra seemed about one-third human and two-thirds tobacco, but he followed Sonia through the French doors at the front of the room out to a semicircular balcony. It felt like walking onto a stage; it was only one level above the street, but no one in the square below paid them the slightest attention.

  “Right,” he said. “Whatever story you’re about to tell, I’m guessing by the end you’ll want me believing it’s pure coincidence that you’re having an affair with the man the New Přemyslids have decided they want to kill.”

  “Sometimes the simplest explanation is the truth,” Sonia said.

  “Sometimes. Not often, in my experience.”

  She blew a stream of smoke out over the balcony. “You may not wish to believe it, but what choice do you have?”

  That’s what worries me, Conor thought.

  Looking across to St. Nicholas Church, he peered at a shallow niche near the pinnacle of the facade. A statue of the saint himself stood there in glorious isolation—a melancholy figure, bent under the weight of what he saw beneath him: the persistent, banal idiocy of mankind.

  16

  Although a city of legendary beauty, with every vista begging to be captured on canvas, Prague also had its share of oddities and this was the oddest Kate had seen yet.

  She stood in the open doorway to the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, trying to understand what she was looking at while Petra urged her to lean in for a better view. The tiny room was tucked into a corner of the Loreto, a shrine that had been a place of pilgrimage since the seventeenth century. It was also only yards away from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs parking lot, where she’d sat waiting for Conor two nights ago.

  In the shrine’s cloister, several chapels were arranged along the shaded colonnade, but visitors weren’t allowed to enter them. They were obliged to stand or kneel behind a railing that spanned the doorway. This seemed a pity because Kate would have liked a closer look at the disturbing crucified effigy mounted on the chapel’s side wall. It was a life-sized figure—more like a mannequin than a statue—clothed in a fringed shawl and full-length gown.

  “You’re telling me that’s a woman?”

  “A woman, yes,” Petra assured her. “St. Wilgefortis.”

  “She has a beard,” Kate said, stating the obvious. The thick brown facial hair looked exceptionally real, and in combination with the delicate features, decidedly creepy.

  “Her affliction, her salvation, and her doom,” Petra said. “It is a very strange legend.”

  “Which you absolutely have to tell me.”

  Kate moved away from the colonnade to join her. Petra stood on the grass, soaking in the sunlight and gently rocking the carriage where baby Leo was enjoying a late-morning nap. In her shoulder bag the tiny dog, Algernon, was also dozing. Only his ears were visible, standing at attention even in sleep. They were each half the size of his head and looked like two sculpted leaves of radicchio rising above the edge of the bag.

  “Certainly, I will tell you.” Petra smiled. “Come, let’s sit for a while.”

  They walked to the opposite side of the cloister, and after positioning the carriage a few yards away, Petra sat on a stone wall surrounding an ancient cistern and lit a cigarette. Kate nervously glanced around to see if someone would challenge this, but there were no authorities in sight and the tourists were oblivious. She sat down and watched—fascinated—as Petra tilted her head back and dragged on the cigarette. She was a human backdraft, pulling the smoke down her throat until it disappeared, and just when it seemed every molecule had been absorbed without a trace, it came pouring out again as if belched from a refinery.

  “As the story goes, Wilgefortis was a devout virgin who wished to remain so.” Small puffs continued emerging from Petra’s mouth as she spoke. “Her father cared nothing for what she wanted. He promised her to a rich man, a heathen, and so Wilgefortis prayed. She was a very pretty woman but perhaps not so wise. She asked God to make her face repulsive, and so …” She trailed off with a wave in the direction of the chapel. “The fiancé rejected her, and her spiteful father had her crucified. As though she were to blame for the jokes of God and the cruelty of men. Now she is patron saint for women in difficult marriages.” Petra sniffed, tapping her cigarette against the iron grate covering the cistern. A fragment of ash broke away and fell into the darkness. “It is absurd, of course—this legend. Quite comical.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” Kate said, not fooled by her breezy dismissal.

  She wondered how often Petra came to lay her own grievances before the martyred saint, and found it only further muddied her efforts to form an objective opinion of the Labuts. The couple shocked and disgusted her, but Kate also pitied them. They had twisted love into something more vicious than tender and seemed unable to recognize the difference.

  Above them, the sun emerged from a thin patch of cloud. The unfiltered light flooding the cloister accentuated the thin lines around Petra’s mouth, making her face appear older.

  “Sonia was not the first,” she said abruptly, without turning. “There were others before her, but this time Martin preferred not to share. At least, not right away. What matter though? I took a lover as well … and did not share.”

  Petra absently fingered the amber pendant she was wearing. Lying below the hollow of her throat on a black cord, it glowed like honey with inclusions of fossilized insect wings frozen inside.

  “Sonia was different,” she continued. “More like us. She knew how to manipulate, but he and I have been doing that for so much longer. There were threats and tears, but in the end we all got what we wanted, or thought we did. At least we got Leo.”

  Kate glanced at the carriage, afraid the baby might wake at the sound of his name. “Leo was an arrangement between the three of you?”

  “An arrangement, yes. This is a nice word for it. So delicate and well-bred.” Petra’s sardonic smile faded. “I am barren. An ugly word, no? Uglier than a bearded wife to a man who wants a child. I wanted one too. Sonia did not but became pregnant anyway. She thought it was checkmate, but she didn’t realize what game she was playing, or that we had invented it.”

  She paused as a lean, middle-aged couple in cycling gear strolled up to a sculpture a few feet away from them.

  “It’s a depiction of the resurrection of Christ,” Petra explained to them, gesturing at the statue with her cigarette.

  The man nodded and offered an impersonal smile. “We’re not religious.”

  She looked puzzled, watching them walk away. “What difference does he think that makes?” She tossed the exhausted cigarette butt through the grate and shrugged. “Americans.”

  Kate gently nudged the conversation back on track. “So Sonia agreed to give up the baby?” She felt uncomfortable prying into such a personal story, but as she’d expected, Petra was eager to share it.

  “For a sum, yes, although smaller than she’d planned. When she moved in it was understood she would leave after the baby was born, but when she saw him—when we all saw him—there was nothing to do but fall in love. She refused the money and refused to leave.” Petra frowned. “Martin agreed to let her stay. He has many secrets and I know them all, but now my threats have no power. Sonia has some stronger hold on him I don’t understand.” She turned to Kate and with a resigned, half-hearted motion flicked her hands as though waving off a fly. “Now my fear that she will never leave is nothing to the terror of her disappearing some day and taking my Leo with her.”

  Kate nodded, but said nothing. She’d expected something bizarre, considering what she and Conor already knew of the Labuts, but the tale left her stunned. What could she possibly offer for a response? It was a poisonous existence for all three of them. The only one she truly felt sorry for was the baby.

  She was spared the challenge of offering sympathy she
didn’t feel by a sudden movement from the shoulder bag Petra had placed on the ground. With a whimper and an enormous yawn Algernon emerged. He leapt daintily from the bag onto the lawn and gave a violent shake of his head—which he couldn’t do without violently shaking the rest of his tiny body. Petra looked affectionately down at him and rose as the dog fixed her with a look of bright expectation.

  “One is awake and the other will follow soon. Shall we go back to the house for some lunch? You’ve had enough of legends and scandalous stories, I think.”

  “I’ll walk down the hill with you,” Kate said, “but I’m having lunch with Conor at the Café de Paris. I’m meeting him there.”

  This wasn’t a complete lie, since they were in fact having lunch at the restaurant with Eckhard, but first she was meeting Conor at the address he’d given Winnie for their final rendezvous. He’d thought it safer for her to hold on to the private investigator’s passport, and she was carrying it now in her purse.

  “Excellent choice. The steak au poivre is divine, and the place is of course romantic.” Petra scooped the dog back into her bag. She pushed the carriage onto the cement walkway but then stopped to look at Kate, her brow furrowed in warning. “He is too handsome and too charming. You realize this? You must see how women respond to him.”

  “I’ve seen how you respond to him.” Kate kept her voice light and teasing to soften the sarcasm.

  Petra bent her head to nuzzle the dog, avoiding Kate’s eyes. “But this is just for playing. Some enjoyment. A little attention even.”

  “I didn’t mean to scold you.”

  “No. I am so much older. It is not me to be worried about, but there will be others who are younger. There always are, and he will break your heart.”

  Hiding her astonishment at the woman’s presumption—that her warped experiences offered useful insights into other people’s relationships—Kate smiled. “How do you know I won’t break his?”

  “If you have the power you should do it. Break it now, while you have the chance, because some day you will wish you had, but too late. All that power will be gone, and you will never have it again.”