“Fuck off! Your wages aren’t here!”
Desdemona departed, still smiling; through the open door she could hear the distant ringing of her phone.
“Miss Dupre,” she said, sitting down.
“Oh, good, glad to know you’re in to work,” said the voice of her other bête noire.
“I am always in to work, Lieutenant Delmonico,” she said very curtly. “To what do I owe this honor?”
“How about having dinner with me one evening?”
The request came as a shock, but Desdemona didn’t make the mistake of thinking that he was paying her a compliment. So the Lord High Executioner was desperate, was he?
“That depends,” she said warily.
“On what?”
“How many strings are attached, Lieutenant.”
“Well, while you’re trying to count them, how about you call me Carmine and I call you Desdemona?”
“First names are for friends, and I regard your invitation more in the light of an inquisition.”
“Does that mean I can call you Desdemona?”
“May, not can.”
“Great! Uh – dinner, Desdemona?”
She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, remembering his impressive air of calm authority. “Very well, dinner.”
“When?”
“Tonight if you’re free, Carmine.”
“Great. What kind of food do you like?”
“Ordinary old Shanghai Chinese.”
“Fine by me. I’ll pick you up at your house at seven.”
Of course the bastard knew everybody’s home address! “No, thank you. I prefer to meet you at the venue. Which is?”
“The Blue Pheasant on Cedar Street. Know it?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll meet you there at seven.”
He hung up without further ado, leaving Desdemona to deal with a query from Dr. Charles Ponsonby, standing in her doorway; only once she was rid of him could she plot and plan not a seduction but a fencing match. Oh, yes indeed, a little thrust and parry with the verbal rapier would be welcome! How she missed that aspect of life! Here in Holloman she was in exile, banking her lavish salary as fast as she could to get out of this vast and alien country, return to her homeland, pick up the threads of a stimulating social life. Money wasn’t everything, but until you had some, life of any sort was depressing. Desdemona wanted a small flat at Strand-on-the-Green overlooking the Thames, several consultancies at private health clinics, and all of London as her backyard. Admittedly London was as unknown to her as Holloman had been, but Holloman was an exile and London was the hub of the universe. Five years down, five more years to go; then it would be goodbye to the Hug and America. A super reference to get herself those consultancies, a plump bank account. That was all she wanted or needed from America. You can take the English out of England, she thought, but you can’t take England out of the English.
She always walked to and from work, a form of exercise that suited her hiking soul. Though this activity appalled some of her colleagues, Desdemona didn’t think herself imperiled because her route led right through the Hollow. Her height, her athletic stride, her air of confidence and her lack of a pocketbook rendered her an unlikely victim of any kind. Besides, after five years, she knew every face she encountered, and received none but friendly waves in answer to her own.
The oak leaves were already falling; by the time Desdemona turned on to Twentieth Street to walk the block to Sycamore, she shuffled through piles of them because the council trucks hadn’t been this way yet. Ah, there he was! The Siamese who always hung out on top of a post to say hello as she passed; she stopped to pay homage. Behind her, footsteps shuffled for a fraction of a second after hers had ceased. It was that made her turn in surprise, a tiny hackle prickling. Oh, surely not after five years! But there was no one in sight unless he lurked behind a nearby oak. She went on, ears tuned, and stopped again twenty feet farther on. The rustle of dead leaves behind her stopped too, half a second too late. A faint sweat broke out on her brow, but she continued as if she had noticed nothing, turned onto Sycamore, and astonished herself by racing the last block to her three-family house.
Ridiculous, Desdemona Dupre! How silly of you. It was the wind, it was a rat, a bird, some small creature you didn’t see.
When she climbed the thirty-two stairs to her third-floor apartment she was breathing harder than either the run or the steps warranted. Involuntarily her eyes went to her work basket, but it was undisturbed. Her embroidery lay exactly where it ought to be.
Eliza Smith had made Bob’s favorite dinner, spare ribs with a side salad and hot bread. His state of mind worried her hugely. Ever since the murder he had gone steadily downhill; touchy in temper, critical of things he usually didn’t even notice, often somewhere so distant that he neither saw nor heard anything. She had always known that he had this side to his nature, but between a brilliant career and his folly in the basement – as well as a good marriage, she hastened to add – she had been positive that it would never dominate his thinking, his world. After all, he had gotten through Nancy – oh, been a bit rocky for a while, yet rallied – and what could be worse than that?
Though the papers and the TV news programs had ceased to harp on the “Connecticut Monster,” Bobby and Sam hadn’t taken their hint. Every day that they went to the Dormer Day School they basked in the glory of having a dad closely involved in the murders, and failed to see why they ought not to harp on them some more after they came home. I mean, cut in pieces!
“Which one do you think it is, Dad?” Bobby asked again.
“Don’t, Bobby,” said his mother.
“I reckon it’s Schiller,” said Sam, gnawing at a spare rib. “I bet he was a Nazi. He looks like a Nazi.”
“Hush up, Sam! Leave the subject alone,” said Eliza.
“Pay attention to your mother, boys. I’ve had enough,” the Prof said, his plate hardly touched.
Conversation ceased as the boys ate more spare ribs, crunched through crusty bread, and eyed their father speculatively.
“Aw, gee, Dad, please, please tell us who you reckon it is,” Bobby cajoled.
“Schiller’s the killer! Schiller’s the killer!” sang Sam. “Achtung! Sieg heil! Ich habe ein tiger in mein tank!”
Robert Mordent Smith put both hands on the table and lifted himself to his feet, then pointed to a vacant space in the big room. Bobby gulped, Sam whimpered, but both children got up and went to where their father had pointed, rolling their pants up to their knees. Smith took a long switch with a shredded end from its traditional position on the sideboard, walked across to the boys, and swung the implement at Bobby’s calf. He always hit Bobby first because Sam was so terrified of the switch that having to watch Bobby doubled his own punishment. The first cut raised red welts, but five more followed while Bobby remained still, manfully silent; Sam was bawling already. Six more cuts on Bobby’s other calf and it was Sam’s turn for six on each calf, laid on as hard and viciously as Bobby’s despite the screams. Sam was a coward in his father’s opinion. A girl.
“Go to bed and think of the pleasures in being alive. Not all of us are that lucky, remember? I’ll have no more of this pestering, hear me?”
“Sam maybe,” Eliza said when the boys had gone, “he’s just twelve. But you shouldn’t take a switch to a fourteen-year-old, Bob. He’s bigger than you already. One day he’ll turn on you.”
For answer, Smith went to the basement door, the keys to its police locks in his hand.
“And there’s no need for this obsessive locking up!” Eliza called from the dining room as he disappeared. “What if something happened and I needed you in a hurry?”