Sins of the Flesh Page 5

  “Or the year. Never mind, we can but try.” Came one of those explosive sighs; Rha’s voice turned weary again. “In the meantime, Rufus, we have a pool of sicked-up grape juice to deal with.” He stopped dead, looking thunderstruck. “Gold!” he roared. “Gold, gold, gold! When the richest king in the world is blue from unrequited love, he does a Scrooge McDuck and rolls in gold, gold, gold!”

  “Open treasure chests everywhere!”

  “A waterfall of gold tinsel!”

  “He’ll have to roll on a monstrous bean-bag of gold coins, that won’t be easy to make look convincing—”

  “No, not a bean-bag! The pool of gold dust at the bottom of the tinsel waterfall, numb-nuts! He bathes in his sorrow!”

  Rufus giggled. “He’ll have to wear a body suit, otherwise the tinsel will creep into every orifice.”

  Rha bellowed with laughter. “So what’s new about that for Roger Dartmont? Shitting gold is one up on shitting ice-cream.”

  Still chuckling at their shared visions of Broadway’s ageing star, the immortal Roger Dartmont, Rha Tanais and Rufus Ingham went back to work, imbued with fresh enthusiasm.

  Abe went straight to see Hank Jones as soon as he returned from his interview with the design duo.

  “How’s it going, Hank?”

  The pencil kept moving. “A proposition, sir?”

  “Hit me.”

  The pencil went down. Hank flipped his left hand at two drawings of naked skulls side by side on his drawing board. “A black-and-white pencil sketch won’t do it, sir. James and Jeb will have different faces, but the sameness of the medium will diminish the differences and make the similarities overwhelming. They’re very much the same type, what I call a Tony Curtis face. I have to play up each man’s individuality! D’you get my drift, sir? Tony Curtis is a type.”

  “Make it Abe, Hank. You’re as much a professional in your line as I am in mine, so formality’s not necessary.” What he couldn’t say was that he was beginning to realize their incredible luck in finding Hank Jones, clearly too good for the job’s pay and status. Not only was he an unusually gifted artist, he was also a young man who thought. In September he’d have to pow-wow with Carmine and Gus, then they could go to Silvestri to have Hank’s status and pay improved. “What do you suggest?” he asked.

  “That I paint them rather than draw them,” said Hank eagerly. “Oh, not in oils—acrylic will do, it dries at once. Each Doe would have his natural color of hair, whatever the fashionable cut was that year, and the right skin tones. The eyes I’d do as blue, like Jeb’s.” Hank drew a breath. “I know speed is a part of my job description, but honest, I’m fast, even in paint. If you had a color portrait of Jeb and James at least, people’s memories would trigger better, I know they would. But it does mean a few extra days.”

  Abe patted the artist on the back, no mean accolade. “Right on, Hank! That’s a brilliant idea.” He smiled, his grey eyes crinkling at their corners. “If you have a thoroughbred in the stables, don’t hitch him to a wagon. Use your talents, that’s what they’re there for. Take as long as it takes.”

  “For Jeb, by Friday,” said Hank, delighted.

  On the dungeon front, things were gloomier. Liam and Tony were wading through possible sites for a dungeon, but after Abe’s visit to Busquash Manor, they crossed it off their list; those gargantuan roofs hid not underground cells but a full-sized theatrical stage, complete with a trap room and pit below stage level. The whole area was in use, the acoustics superb—no, Busquash Manor was not a possible. When Kurt von Fahlendorf had been kidnapped they had ransacked Holloman County for a soundproof cellar, which made this new quest much easier. Most structures were listed, had been inspected then, and could be inspected again. The chamber where von Fahlendorf had languished had been filled in since. No local builder had installed a soundproof studio anywhere, and what new cellars had come into existence were just ordinary basements. War relics like gun emplacements hadn’t changed, and theaters in a try-out city like Holloman containing three repertory companies and a faculty of drama were, like Busquash Manor, in constant use.

  “This sucks,” said Tony to Abe.

  “It’s here somewhere,” Abe said stubbornly.

  “Needles in haystacks,” said Liam, as disgruntled as Tony.

  “Paint on, Hank Jones,” said Abe under his breath.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 1969

  Ivy Ramsbottom had invited Delia to “a late afternoon and entire evening of entertainment” at Busquash Manor, and Delia was bewildered. The invitation had come out of the blue last Thursday, which didn’t give a girl much time to sort out what to wear when the hosts were Rha Tanais and Rufus Ingham. Oddly, it had been Jess Wainfleet who explained it yesterday over lunch at the Lobster Pot.

  “No, Delia, you mustn’t decline,” Jess had said.

  “I think I must. I don’t know Ivy’s brother and his friend from a bar of soap—if I came, it would look as if my reason for doing so was vulgar curiosity.”

  “Believe me, it wouldn’t. The short notice is unusual, except that Ivy tells me the new musical Rha’s designing is hopeless. As they’re party animals, Rha and Rufus throw a party on the slightest of excuses, and they like to mix and match their invitation list,” Jess said, sipping sparkling mineral water. “I met them first at one of their parties, and Rufus, honoring my profession, I suppose, told me that every social get-together needed a certain amount of abrasion to go well. The recipe called for one stranger and several guests who set people’s backs up a little. Drop them into the mixture, said Rufus, and you were guaranteed to have a memorable party.” Jess grimaced. “My senior staff almost inevitably form the several guests who set people’s backs up—they’re a serious bunch who only attend to please me.”

  “How extraordinary!” Delia stared at her friend, intrigued. “If you know all that, why oblige your hosts?”

  “Because they’re two of the sweetest guys in the world, I love them dearly, and I love Ivy most of all.” The big dark eyes held a softer look than Delia was used to seeing; clearly it mattered to Jess that her motives be understood. “I’m very aware of my less admirable personality traits, the worst of them being an abnormal degree of emotional detachment—common in obsessive-compulsives of my kind. My affection for Ivy, Rha and Rufus is important to me, I’d rather make them happy than please myself. So I push my senior staff to attend Busquash Manor festivities, even if they dislike it.”

  “It rather sounds to me,” said Delia shrewdly, “as if you dislike your senior staff.”

  Jess’s laugh was a gurgle, the eyes brimmed with mirth. “Oh, bravo, Delia! You’re absolutely right. Besides, a Rha-Rufus party is a joy, and once they’re here, my HI bunch wallow in them. What they hate is being yanked out of their routines.”

  “Then they’re obsessive-compulsives too.”

  “They sure are! But please come, Delia.”

  “What should I wear?”

  “Whatever you like. Ivy and I will wear eveningified things—Busquash Manor is fully air-conditioned. Rha and Rufus will be in black trousers and sweaters, but Nicolas Greco will look like an advertisement for Savile Row and Bob Tierney will be in black tie. My bunch will dress down rather than up, and favor white—a mute protest at being pressured into attending.”

  As a result of this lunch, Delia’s curiosity was so stimulated that she phoned an acceptance taken by a secretary, and ransacked her several wardrobes for something interesting to wear to what sounded like a sartorial free-for-all. She needed a diversion.

  The Shadow Women had repaid the strenuous efforts of her last few days with absolutely nothing. The photographer responsible for the portraits hadn’t come to light, a sign of the times: the days when such a person had a shop kind of studio were gone save for an established very few. Nowadays prosperity was so widespread that any would-be artist could buy an excellent single lens reflex camera and advertise in the Yellow Pages. The difference in cost for wedding photos between one of these enterpris
ing photographers and an established professional was slowly forcing the latter out of the market. So most of Delia’s time had been frittered away in phoning the would-be photographers of the Yellow Pages. Some had come into County Services to look at the portraits, but none had admitted to creating them.

  Driving up in her own red Mustang, Delia found that parking space was available within the imposing mansion’s grounds, an expanse of tar marked with white lines and conveniently hidden by a tall hedge from the kind of landscaped garden that required no specialist attention or concentrated work: lawns, shrubs, an occasional tree. Once Busquash Manor had stood in ten acres on the peak ridge of the peninsula between Busquash Inlet and Millstone Beach, but at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century it had been subdivided, and four acres sold off in acre-lot parcels. The house itself was enormous, though the attic windows of its third storey suggested this had been a servants’ domain, leaving the family with two flights of stairs to climb at most. Excluding the third floor, Delia guessed there might originally have been as many as fifteen bedrooms.

  She was more used to looking at the rear end of Busquash Manor, as this faced Millstone, where her condo sat at beachfront. A far less pleasing view, incorporating as it did an ugly acreage of sloping roofs that reminded her of a movie-theater complex in an outdoor shopping mall. From Ivy she had learned that the enormity of the roofs came from a genuine theater inside, mostly a gigantic stage. The house itself was built of limestone blocks and was plentifully endowed with tall, broad windows; where it really belonged, she decided, was at Newport, Rhode Island.

  Inside, it revealed the unique eye and taste of its owners, though what in a lesser eye and taste would have been vulgarity here was lifted to a splendor that took the breath away. Had she known it, every piece of furniture and every drape had once adorned a Broadway stage in days when props had been custom-made by true artisans, and only the finest materials had been used. The colors were rich, sumptuous, and always uncannily right; there were chairs shaped like sphinxes, like lions or winged Assyrian bulls; walls turned out to be vast mirrors that reflected on and on into a near-infinity; one room was completely lined in roseate, beaten copper. Mouth agape, Delia trod across marble or mosaic floors, gazed at priceless Persian carpets, and wondered if she had gone through the looking glass into a different universe. No stranger to the trappings of wealth or to palatial houses, Delia still felt that Busquash Manor was an impossible fantasy.

  Her nose was about level with Rha Tanais’s navel; she had to tilt her head far back to see his face, lit from within by what she sensed were warmly positive emotions. He gave her a delicate crystal glass of white wine; one sip told her it was superb.

  “Darling, you are magnificent!” he cried. “How dare Ivy hide you? Come and meet Rufus.”

  Who was already watching her, a stunned look on his handsome face. Organza frills upon frills in magenta, acid-yellow, orange and rose-pink. In shock, he stumbled to his feet.

  “Delia darling, this is my other half, Rufus Ingham. Rufus, this is Ivy’s friend Delia Carstairs. Isn’t she magnificent?”

  “Don’t ever change!” Rufus breathed, kissing her hand. “That dress is gorgeous!” He drew her toward a striped Regency sofa and sat down beside her. “I have to know, darling—where do you buy your clothes?”

  “The garment district in New York City,” she said, glowing, “but once I get them home, I pull them apart and tart them up.”

  “It’s the tarting up does it every time. What an eye you have—totally individual. No one else could ever get away with that dress, but you conquer it like Merman a song.” He smiled at her, his eyes caressing. “Dear, delicious Delia, do you know anyone here?”

  “Ivy and Jess, but I seem to have arrived ahead of them.”

  “Fabulous! Then you belong to me. D’you see the decrepit old gentleman posing under the painting of Mrs. Siddons?”

  Rapidly falling hopelessly (but Platonically) in love with Rufus, Delia studied the elderly, debonair man indicated. “I feel I ought to know him, but his identity eludes me.”

  “Roger Dartmont, soon to sing the role of King Cophetua.”

  “The Roger Dartmont?” Her jaw dropped. “I didn’t realize he was so—um—up in years.”

  “’Tis he, Delicious Delia. God broke the mold into a million pieces, then Lucifer came along and glued him together again, but in the manner Isis did Osiris—no phallus could be found.”

  Delia giggled. “Difficult, if your name is Roger.” Her gaze went past Roger Dartmont. “Who’s the lady who looks like a horse eating an apple through a wire-netting fence?”

  “Olga Tierney—a wife, darling. Her husband’s a producer of Broadway plays, including the abortion we’re working on at the moment. That’s him, the one in black tie who looks like a jockey. They used to live in Greenwich, now they have one of the islands off our own Busquash Point.” Rufus’s mobile black brows arched. “It’s a gorgeous place—or would be, if Olga weren’t one of the beige brigade.” His voice dropped. “Rumor hath it that Bob Tierney is overly fond of under-age girls.”

  “An island,” said Delia thoughtfully, “would be excellent.”

  Something in her tone made Rufus’s khaki-colored eyes swing to Delia’s face, expression alert. “Excellent?” he asked.

  “Oh, privacy, sonic isolation, all sorts,” she said vaguely.

  “Delicious Delia, what does a ravishingly dressed lady with an Oxford accent do for a living in an Ivy League town?”

  “Well, she might discuss Shakespeare with Chubb undergrads, or run a swanky brothel, or operate an electron microscope, or”—a wide grin dawned as she paused dramatically—“she might be a sergeant of detectives with the Holloman police.”

  “Fantastic!” he cried.

  “I’m not undercover, Rufus dear, but I’m not advertising my profession either,” she said severely. “You may tell Rha, but I would prefer to meet everyone else as—oh, the proprietress of that swanky brothel or that expert on Shakespeare. Once people know I’m a cop, they become defensive and automatically censor their conversation. Would you have been so frank if you’d known?”

  A slow smile appeared. “For my sins, probably yes. I have a lamentable tendency to voice what I’m thinking—isn’t that well expressed? I’m a parrot, I collect ways of saying things. But seriously, mum’s the word. However, your desirability mushrooms with every new snippet of information you feed me. I love unusual people!” His face changed. “Are you here on business?”

  She looked shocked. “Oh, dear me, no! I wouldn’t be here at all if I didn’t know Ivy. My police cases are as decrepit as Roger, I’m afraid, though I admit that a detective never doffs her deerstalker hat either. So when I hear something interesting, I file it in my mind. We have lots of old cases we can’t close.”

  “Age,” he said with great solemnity, “is the worst criminal of them all, yet perpetually escapes punishment. Ah! Enter the Kornblums! Ben and Betty. She’s the one in floor-length mink, he’s the one with the knuckle-duster diamond pinky ring. Betty is the sole reason to ban air-conditioning—it enables her to wear mink indoors in August. It wouldn’t be so bad if she weren’t addicted to two-toned mink—the spitting image of a Siamese cat.”

  “Does she keep Siamese cats?” Delia asked.

  “Two. Sun Yat Sen and Madame Chiang Kai Shek.”

  “What does Ben do to earn diamond pinky rings?”

  “Produce plays and movies. He’s another backer. They used to have a penthouse on Park Avenue,” Rufus said chattily, “but now they live in the Smith place—you know where I mean, tucked away inside a cleft of North Rock.”

  Delia straightened. “The Smith place, eh? Hmm! Privacy galore. Has Mr. Kornblum any sordid secrets?”

  “He fancies ponies way ahead of Siamese cats.”

  “A gambler? An equestrian? A practitioner of bestiality?”

  “Darling, you are delicious! The ponies he fancies are in the back row of the chorus.”
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br />   “I thought they were called hoofers.”

  “No. Hoofers can dance well, they’re in the front row.”

  “But Holloman isn’t rich in chorus girls.”

  “That’s what Betty thought too. What she didn’t take into account was Holloman’s thousands of beautiful girls at various schools. Ben attends classes on everything from typing to dancing to amateur photography.”

  The very large room was beginning to look populated; about twenty people were dotted around it engrossed in talk larded with laughter, witticisms and, Delia was willing to bet, gossip. They all knew each other well, though some on arriving behaved as if considerable time had gone by since last they saw these faces.

  True to his word that she belonged to him, Rufus Ingham took Delia on a round of introductions, feeding her information so guilelessly that no one on meeting her had any idea that Rufus was steering the conversation to yield maximum results for a sergeant of detectives.

  Perhaps due to her diminutive size, Delia wasn’t sure she could ever make a close friend of Rha Tanais in the same way she knew she could of Rufus Ingham. It was just too much constant hard work encompassing someone that big. Political cartoonists sometimes drew General Charles de Gaulle with a ring of cloud around his neck, and Rha inspired the same feeling in Delia. Whereas Rufus provoked emotions that shouted a friendship as old as time; having met him at last, she couldn’t imagine her life without him. Had Hank Jones been Rufus’s forty, he would have ranked with Rufus; how strange, that in the space of one short summer she should have met two men of great significance to her, when it hadn’t happened since her first days in Holloman. Women friends were essential, but men friends were far harder to find, as Delia well knew. Very happy, she let herself be introduced.

  Simonetta Bellini (born Shirley Nutt) bowled Delia over. The principal model of Rha Tanais Bridal, she was tall, thin, and moved with incomparable grace; her genuinely Scandinavian-fair coloring lent her an air of virginal innocence even her skin-tight lamé tube of a dress couldn’t violate. She could wear a hessian sack, Delia decided, and still look like a bride.