Henry Berger is aware as he enters the Florentine villa that he has been set up by his own people, has been marked for assassination. What he doesn’t know is that a friend and former colleague is the intended assassin.
At some point Emile departed the kitchen on some unannounced mission. Marjorie took the occasion to ask Terman if he didn’t think the actor was beautiful.
“I suppose so,” Terman said, “though it’s not my line.”
“Isn’t that just the kind of thing a man would say,” she said. “I have no difficulty appreciating female beauty — your little friend, Isabelle, for example — without it being quite in my line you know.”
He admired her largeness of spirit, he said.
“He’s tres jeune, but in important ways mature beyond his years.”
“He’s been around a long time,” Terman said. “I only wondered why you brought him along.”
“I’m flaunting him,” she said. “Is that what you think? Flaunting or flouting — I’m never quite sure which is the right word.” Her leg brushed his or his hers, an accident in which no one admitted being hurt. She said with the cup of tea at her lips, “I’ll send him away if you like.”
A woman comes into the parlor and offers Henry Berger a cup of tea, which he declines. Beyond the offer of tea, she makes no comment and might have been a servant or the lady of the house with equal plausibility.
When Emile returned she escorted him into another room and Terman, if he made the effort, could hear the murmur of their conversation. It was as though two or three bees had gathered at a closed window to conspire.
Henry Berger sits with his hat in his lap — it is a hat one has rarely seen him wear, a gray stetson from another time. He is waiting for his host to appear.
Emile, who had aged in the intervening minutes, returned to the kitchen to announce the necessity of his departure, some tiresome business with a producer that had slipped his mind. “My pleasure,” he said, offering Terman his hand as though it were meant to be kissed. “We will meet again it is my hope.”
Terman had seen him in a film at the NFT about three weeks ago — it struck him when the actor said “it is my hope”—an Italian western in which Emile had played one of the two principal villains. He had a breathtaking death scene, somersaulting in air from a blast of gunfire.
The door opens behind him and Henry Berger stands up, turning in no particular hurry to see his friend, Adriano, stride in with outstretched hand, greeting him with an old ¡oke they had once shared. A shadow passes over Henry Berger’s face, a mingling of disappointment and disbelief. Perhaps the information he had been given is incorrect or imcomplete and this friend, this partner of his early days, is not the one assigned to terminate his career.
Emile was gone. Marjorie indicated Emile’s absence with a wave of her purple scarf as if, by some feat of prestidigitation, she had caused the actor to vanish into air. “The great thing about him,” she confided, “is that he is not in the least way possessive.”
Emile’s disappearance, that well-managed trick, put Terman under a certain obligation to Marjorie, an obligation he had no intention of making known. Each was walking on a cane and Terman thought of them as a matched pair, a remark he heard himself make to his companion, one that pleased him more in consideration than in echo.
They sit facing each other on opposing brown velvet sofas, an octagonal marble table between them. “Is this splendid place yours?” Henry Berger asks him. “Adriano looks around him, assessing his apparent domain. “Would you like a guided tour, old friend? There are more rooms than I ever learned to count.” “I’m stunned with admiration,” says Henry Berger. “I’ve had a little luck,” says Adriano, motioning to Berger to follow him. “As you probably heard, I retired from the profession a little over three years ago.”
“I feel as if I’ve given up,” Terman said, “only there’s no one appropriate around to whom I might surrender.”
“You poor man,” Marjorie said. “If you want to surrender your sword to me, I’ll find some use for it.”
He took her hand, a transient possession he had no recollection of having acquired, and brought it to his lips. She blushed at the gesture, touched to confusion.
Terman was prey to unobjectified sexual hungers that surged and receded like the tides. An aspect of his fragmentation, he found himself susceptible to Marjorie, whose charms up until the present moment had the weightlessness of myth.
“I find this conversation odd in the extreme,” she said.
There is an army of people in the house all pretending not to be there, faces at the windows like faded posters. Henry Berger pretends not to notice the things he sees, follows his old friend through a maze of extraordinary rooms. If the international detective feels his life in some danger, his manner gives no indication of it. More disturbing even than the danger is the apparent treachery of his old friend, who is so ingratiating as he shows him about. Where will he make his move? he wonders. He knows the friend well enough to know that he will not leave the business to a henchman. Adriano leads him out onto a elegant terrace, invites the detective to admire the panoramic view, the mountain stream below, the gray gnarled cliffs which frame the villa on three sides like outer walls. “The vista is most admirable from the south-east,” says the friend, leading Henry Berger to a corner of the terrace, stepping back as if to offer him the spectacular vista as a gift. This is where he intends to do it, thinks Berger.
She sat with her legs tucked under her, holding a cigarette she only on rare occasion brought to her lips. Terman came back from the kitchen with a bottle of Muscadet and two champagne glasses. “I like that idea,” she said. She rose to her knees, put her arms around his neck and kissed him, the cigarette held behind his head.
The phone was ringing and she called his attention to it but he merely shook his head. “Mightn’t it be important?” she asked.
His hand was shaking. “I’d quite like to go into the room with all the mirrors,” she said. “That doesn’t offend you, I hope. I’ve always adored that room, though I can see that it might be pall after a while once you’ve had the initial frisson.”
The phone had stopped ringing, but after a few minutes interval began again. “I wish to hell you’d answer it,” she said. He took her cigarette from between her fingers and tossed it into the fireplace. “Don’t do that,” she whispered. “I don’t like things taken out of my hands.” The phone was still ringing as they went up the stairs, could be heard now from one of the rooms on the second floor in muffled counterpoint to the ringing downstairs. “Do you know who it is?” she asked him, poking him with her cane. They dueled briefly on the steps, each holding on with one hand to the bannister behind. He knocked her cane from her hand, sent it sprawling over the bannister to the floor below. She gave out a small cry of pain, more shock than pain. The phone stopped then started again. “The room I’m talking about is on the third floor, isn’t it?” she said.
This is where he intends to do it, thinks Berger. The old friend is standing a step behind and to the left, has not yet revealed his intention, speaks of the capacity of the landscape to change in different light. “We all change in different light.” says the detective. The dark young woman who offered him tea on his entrance, steps out onto the terrace carrying a bowl of olives. Two cars drive up to the other side of the house. “The note I received said you had some information for me,” says the detective. “You’ve been stepping on too many toes,” says Adriano. “There are some people in high places that might wish you out of the way.” They are facing each other, the hat in Henry Berger’s hand held out in front of him. The old friend points to something in the distance while moving his other hand into the pocket of his coat. Henry Berger fires first, his gun under his hat. The impact of the shot sends the friend careening into the side of the villa, his mouth a broken line, eyes frozen open in astonishment. The woman drops the bowl of olives, covers her mouth with her hand. Berger’s hat sails over the railing into the ravine below. The detective stands over the fallen Adriano, his gun still drawn. Adriano beckons him with a finger and Berger leans toward him, “One always pays for weakness in the end,” Adriano whispers, a gun in his hand pointing at Berger.