"Because I told the mayor I'd keep his secret."
Meg went, "Tuh!"
"Meg, I gave my word!"
"Then take Myles with you. Just don't tell him what they mayor told you."
"That's hairsplitting, Meg."
"You're right." Meg picked the bottles up and carried them tenderly out of the storeroom into the kitchen. "Myles swallowed his pride and came back here for you. Not because he heard you were in trouble. Not because he thought you'd welcome him with open arms. But because he loves you. Can't you at least call him and tell him where you're going?"
"It's not even noon. It's an hour round-trip to Syracuse and back. And it won't take me too long to talk to the editors. I'll be back before four."
"You are driving? In this weather?" Bjarne walked to the windows overlooking the herb garden. "You see this sky?"
"Blue," Quill said promptly.
"Those wispy clouds at the edges? Like mushy potatoes with too much cream? Very bad. Very, very bad. In a few hours, perhaps, there will be snow."
"Perhaps? Or for sure?" Quill hated driving in snowstorms.
Bjarne shrugged.
"I'll be back in less than four hours, Bjarne. Will it hold off until then?"
"It may not or it may."
"Great," said Meg. "I just hope the heck we get those food deliveries." She gave Quill a fierce hug. "Go do your thing. If Myles calls, do you have a message?"
"We're meeting for dinner at six. He won't call."
"Take my ski parka. And my hiking boots. And my hat."
"And make sure the gas tank's filled, ya-ta-ta, ya-ta-ta."
She went upstairs to her room and dressed for the drive, in a long sweater, ski pants, and long underwear. She rummaged through her bureau drawer for her "Investigations" notebook, unused since her last foray into murder, and slipped it into her shoulder bag. She went back downstairs, and walked through the busy kitchen to the coatrack. The sleeves of Meg's parka were too short, but otherwise it was a comfortable fit. Quill added her own scarf and pulled out a pair of snow boots from the wooden box piled with odds and ends. She left by the back door to get her OIds from the garage.
The air outside was very cool and humid. A thin stream of water ran from the eaves, where the direct rays of the sun had melted the snow built up in the gutters. Mike the groundskeeper had shoveled the paths free, and she could see the Inn pickup truck, plow blade glinting in the sunlight, clearing the driveway to the road below their hill. The OIds would start easily in this weather. It always did. It was past time to get a new car, thought Quill, just like it was past time to get a new coat, but she was reluctant to give the OIds up. It was heavy, with front-wheel drive that gave her a lot of confidence in icy weather. It had also had its transmission replaced three times in its seventy-five-thousand-mile life, but the mechanic had assured her that this last install would last the life of the car. Quill skidded down the walkway to the outbuilding where they garaged their cars and maintenance equipment. She tugged on the latch of the overhead door, and it slid open, the bright day outside flooding the inside so that, for a moment, she saw the figure standing by the Oldsmobile as a blur of scarlet and tangled hair.
Despite herself, she gasped and jumped back, her heels skidding in the slush. Her voice was unexpectedly harsh. "Get out of there!"
Robertson Davies? Wearing my coat?
She raised her hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the sun. "Mr. Blight?"
"Yes?" The voice was unexpectedly gentle. Somehow, Quill had expected a gravelly rumble or a stentorian shout.
"Um. How do you do? I'm Sarah Quilliam."
"You are."
This was a statement. Not a question. Quill wasn't certain whether this was acknowledgment of her existence or mere inattention to the requirements of the spoken word.
"Mr. Blight? I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude, but... where did you get that coat?"
Evan Blight stepped vigorously into the sunlight. The picture on the book jacket had smoothed out the wrinkles in his sun-beaten face and not really done justice to the impressive beard. There were bits of things in it - small sticks, a clot of scrambled egg, and possibly bird droppings, although Quill wasn't certain. Her down coat concealed the rest of him, but Quill had the impression he was thin and wiry. He could have been anywhere from sixty to ninety.
"Ms. Quilliam! Delighted. Delighted!" He grabbed her hand and shook it. His own was hard, muscular, and calloused, the fingernails blunt and dirty. "The irony implicit in the heart of the Flower series. The sardonic comment on the state of humankind! I saw the 'Chrysler Rose' in a traveling exhibit in New Jersey. Wonderful. Wonderful! There is a strong streak of the primordial male in you, Ms. Quilliam. The thrust of brush strokes! The intensity - if I may say so, the masculinity of the color - wonderful! Wonderful!" Quill felt an immediate (and cowardly) impulse to tell Evan Blight she was proud of her breasts and really missed sleeping with Myles McHale. She suppressed these politically incorrect (and socially inappropriate) responses and thanked him, in as hearty a voice as she could manage.
"You have read my Book," he asserted. "There could be no other explanation for the quality of your work. How pleasing to see the effects of my own small efforts to stem the tide of corruption of our basic, most natural drives."
Quill, who had recently read a most interesting book on the way that men verbally dominate social and business conversations, interrupted firmly, loudly, and with a terrific feeling of guilt. "Mr. Blight?"
"Call me Evan. Not Urban, if you please, which was the highly charged response to a review of my Book by the female reviewer of the San Francisco Chronicle. I was not offended. No, not offended. Was Hannibal offended by the piteous mewings of the Romans when he swept down on Trebia? I think not. Was the Khan himself dismayed by the pleas of the reindeer people as he led the mighty charge against their tents?"
He paused, either for breath or agreement, and Quill said hastily, "That coat, Mr. Blight. Have you had it long?"
He looked down at himself. "This coat? A gift of the forest, my dear." He shrugged himself out of it with a decisive movement. "But your softer flesh clearly is more in need of it than I. The garment you yourself are wearing must have clothed you as a child."
"It's my sister's," said Quill. "She's shorter than I." She took the coat, holding it by thumb and forefinger. He was wearing a baggy, hole-at-the-elbows gray cardigan, a knitted vest underneath that the color of a bird's nest, tweed trousers, and a pair of sensible boots. He shivered in the cold air. "Oh, dear, Mr. Blight. Don't you have a coat of your own?"
"Nature's embrace is all that I need." Any forensic evidence that might be in the folds of the down was already tainted, and Quill handed it back to him with a resigned sigh. "Here. Take the coat back and get into the car. I'll turn the heater on."
Blight accepted the down coat with an intolerant air, although what he was intolerant of, Quill couldn't imagine, since he'd been wearing the coat only moments before. He lowered himself into the passenger seat of the OIds with the tenderness of the arthritic.
"Why don't I drive you around to the front of the Inn so you can go inside?" Quill suggested. "Then I'm afraid that I will need my coat back, Mr. Blight."