Closed Circle (23 page)

"Good morning, General," I said, as my host administered a crushing handshake. "I heard you give the eulogy at Fabian Charnwood's funeral. I didn't have the chance to speak to you then, but '

"We speak now, eh?" He clapped me on the shoulder, knocking me off balance in the process. "We all speak now. We and my friends."

His friends were gathered round a table beneath the mi zen-mast: Faraday and two others. One, who would have counted as tall and burly in any other company but Vasaritch's, was a good-looking fellow of about fifty, wearing a blazer and flannels. Beside him, standing ramrod-straight, was an old man in a cream suit and white kepi. His head-gear and white mutton-chop whiskers gave him a faintly Ruritanian air. Beyond the group, sun-bathing on the poop-deck, was a bronzed-limbed brunette in an abbreviated yellow swim-suit. She was spreadeagled on a towel, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings behind enormous dark glasses.

"This is the Horton you have heard so much about," declared Vasaritch. "Noel's latest recruit." By Noel he clearly meant Faraday. With a shock, I realized I had never heard his Christian name used before. "Well, Pierre, Karl, what do you think?"

Pierre was the younger of the two and evidently French. Karl I took definitely to be of Germanic origin. Their accents subsequently confirmed both suppositions. Pierre looked me up and down for a moment, then said: "Looks the part. But can he act?"

"I chose him specifically for his acting abilities," said Faraday, with a smile in my direction.

Vasaritch laughed. "Very good. But does the leading lady approve?"

"Oh, I think so," said Faraday.

"We need more than approval," said the unsmiling Pierre. "We need her secrets."

"I'm sorry," I said, tiring of the charade, 'but I'm afraid you're all labouring under some '

"Horton's a little reluctant," said Faraday through gritted teeth. "He has made a new discovery in his life: scruples."

"Are you a rich man?" asked Pierre.

"No."

Then you cannot afford scruples. They are more expensive than a virtuous woman. And even rarer."

Vasaritch laughed again, but nobody joined in. Pierre looked as if he laughed only when alone, Karl as if he had set the weakness aside about fifty years ago. "A drink for you, Horton?" said Vasaritch, encircling my arm in a manacle-like grip. "We have everybody's poison here."

"Er.. . No thanks."

"Sobriety is an asset," Pierre remarked.

"But, alas, not usually one of Horton's," said Faraday. "I think he must be nervous."

"What is there to be nervous of?"

The consequences of his newly discovered scruples."

"When will you obtain what we want?" asked Karl, speaking for the first time.

"As I've been trying to '

"We cannot wait beyond the end of this month."

"Quite true, I'm afraid," said Faraday. "We really must have some results by then."

"Well, you won't be getting them from me."

"A pity," said Pierre. "It would be better for her if we did it this way."

"Something soon," Vasaritch growled in my ear. "For the girl's sake."

"What do you mean?"

"Ah," said Pierre. "A flicker of concern. Do you care about her, Horton?"

"If you mean Diana Charnwood," I replied, glaring at Faraday, 'then, yes, I care about her. And I don't believe she's hiding anything."

"Not good enough," said Vasaritch.

"Well, it'll have to do, because I shall be leaving Venice soon and '

"Not very soon," put in Faraday. "I happened to speak to Martelli this morning. He tells me the inquest is provisionally scheduled for the twenty-sixth."

"The twenty-sixth? But.. . that's more than two weeks away."

"Quite so. Two weeks in which you could extract the truth from Diana Charnwood. After all, what else is there for you to do?"

"I've already told you '

"Tell us nothing," said Vasaritch. "Until you can tell us what we want to hear."

"I happen to know she plans to visit the Isola di San Michele this afternoon," said Faraday. "Offering you an excellent opportunity to effect a graveside reconciliation. With a few well chosen words, you could find yourself restored as a guest at the Villa Primavera."

"I'm not going back there."

"Think of the girl, Horton," said Vasaritch. He moved past us and leaned against the rail of the poop-deck, reaching out to rest his hand on the brunette's shapely rump while still looking at me. She turned her head and gave a little purr of pleasure as he tickled the soft flesh at the top of her thigh. "Think of her and enjoy her. But strip her mind as well as her body."

"We must know by the end of the month," said Karl.

"And if you don't?"

"We shall use other methods," Vasaritch replied, the geniality gone from his voice. He grabbed suddenly at the brunette's hair, yanking her head up violently. She gave a cry of pain, then another as his grip tightened. "Other men and other methods."

"You wouldn't like either," said Faraday. "Believe me."

I did believe him. As Vasaritch released the girl, my gaze moved to Karl and Pierre, who seemed not to have noticed the incident at all, then round the deck to the accommodation ladder, where Klaus was leaning against the rail, arms folded, staring straight at me. Other men and other methods. Who those men might be and what methods they might employ I did not care to imagine. But the threat was genuine. My involvement in Diana's future was no longer a matter of choice. It had become a matter of necessity -for her as well as for me.

"Klaus could take you to San Michele," said Faraday.

"I'd prefer to make my own way."

"But you will go?" asked Pierre.

"Yes," I replied, looking at each of them in turn, pausing to be sure they understood me. "I will go."

As soon as I was sure the funeral would be over and the Wingates long gone I walked to Fondamenta Nuove and caught the next vaporetto out across the sparkling lagoon to the Isola di San Michele. The cemetery was, as I had hoped, empty of all save the dead, sheltered from wind and eye by high walls and cypress trees. There, in one of the overgrown corners reserved for foreigners, Protestants and sundry apostates, was a mound of freshly dug earth and a single wreath of white lilies. To our dear son Max, read the card. You strayed far and often, but never left our thoughts. I, who had brought no flowers and sung no hymns, stood reproached by blind parental love.

How long I remained there, staring at my friend's last resting place, helpless to hold back the cavalcade of memories in my mind, I do not know. It might have been five minutes or fifty. But, suddenly, I was not alone.

"Hello, Guy." She was dressed all in white and was staring at me with a strange and desolate intensity. "So," she said softly, 'you couldn't stay away either." Stretching forward, she dropped a small wreath of blood-red roses at the foot of the grave. There was no card attached. Words, it seemed, had failed her as they threatened to fail me.

"I'm sorry," I began. "Sorry they wouldn't let you attend the service."

"It's not your fault. Nor mine, I hope, that they wouldn't let you."

"It's nobody's fault. Not theirs. Not ours. Not Max's."

She stood beside me in silence for a moment, head bowed. Then, glancing round at me, she said: "How have you been, Guy these past few days?"

"Pretty low. And you?"

The same."

"I didn't mean us to part as we did, Diana. I've wished a dozen times I could have those few minutes after Vita left the room over again to use differently." Would I be saying this, I wondered, if I had not agreed to do as Faraday asked? Did I really mean it? Or did necessity enable me to imagine I meant it?

"I've wished the same, Guy." Our fingers entwined so instinctively it was impossible to judge whose had reached out first. "Why don't we try again? Why don't we give ourselves a little more time?"

"I'd like to."

"We both have to stay here until the inquest. And that's more than two weeks away."

"So Faraday told me."

"Did he also tell you he's leaving Venice?"

"No."

"Tomorrow, apparently. So, you wouldn't have to dread him forever popping in. If you moved back to the villa, I mean."

Our eyes met for more than the fleeting moment we had so far risked. To look at her was to remember what we had done and to see, reflected in her gaze, the irresistible uncertainty of all we might yet do. May God forgive me. For surely Max would not have.

"It's not going to be easy, Guy. Waiting to have our .. . immorality ... exposed in court. But at least it might be bearable if we waited together."

"It wasn't immoral."

"No. But some will say it was."

"Let them."

"I will. If you'll give me the strength not to care what they say."

"I'll try."

"Then you will come back to the villa?"

"Unless Vita objects."

"She never objects to anything that's good for me."

"And am I good for you?"

"I hope we're good for each other."

"Yes," I said, leading her away from the grave. "So do I."

CHAPTER

NINE

And so I went back to the Villa Primavera. I cannot be sure now whether, left to my own devices, I would have succumbed to temptation during the weeks I had still to spend in Venice. Not that it matters. I was forced to return to the villa for Diana's sake. And once there, it was not hard to persuade myself that more or less any deception any indulgence was justifiable on the same grounds.

Diana had moved to a different room since Max's death. It was hardly necessary to ask why. Mercifully, though, no memory of that afternoon clung to the fabric of the villa. Max's presence had been too fleeting for any ghost to linger. When I thought of him which was frequently it was in other places and moods than those in which he had died. By the second night when Diana came to me, weeping and nervous in the still small hours1 could wrap her in my arms without seeming to see Max's face hovering at my shoulder. And by the third night when we surrendered, as I had thought we never would again, to the needs and instincts of the flesh no scruple stayed my hand as it slid around her body.

Nor could it reasonably have been expected to. They were strange and unsettling, those days of waiting on the Lido, as autumn seeped about us in salt-tinged mists and ever colder dawns. What could we do to still our doubts and anxieties but cling to each other? I did not love her. I did not believe in the possibility of love. But she did. And every time and every way she gave herself to me made the next time and the next way more irresistible still.

I gleaned her secrets without compunction. Though she did not know it, I was trying to help her, trying to save her from whatever persuasions Faraday's friends might devise. There seemed to be nothing she was not willing to tell me. Nothing except what I needed ever more urgently to discover. But for the conversation between her and Vita I had eavesdropped on that night in the garden, I would have become convinced of her innocence, convinced there really was no hidden pile of Charnwood's money. But there had to be. Otherwise, what had they meant? What else could be worth such artful concealment?

For artful they undoubtedly were. Diana opened her soul to me. There was nothing she denied me. Save one scrap of knowledge, the scrap I sought in bedroom drawers and wardrobe shelves, in purses and handbags, explored whenever chance allowed. I did not spare Vita either. Her bureau I opened, her letters I read, her pockets I searched. For time and idleness make many opportunities. And I seized them with mounting desperation. Only to be left as I had begun empty-handed.

As the days ticked away, I reached a grim conclusion. I would have to tell them. There was no other way. I would have to make them understand the gravity of their position. Then they would volunteer the truth to save themselves. But, in the process, I would have to admit I was merely Faraday's spy, somebody more contemptible even than he was. In saving Diana, it seemed certain I would also lose her. And no amount of money could compensate me for that. Reject the concept of love as I might, I could not deny infatuation, addiction, even obsession. I was the victim of them all. And she was the cause.

Yet what could I do? What alternative was there? None, so far as I could see except delay. The inquest was now definitely fixed for Monday the twenty-sixth. Martelli had said so during one of his several visits. He had also assured us of the outcome: a verdict of involuntary homicide and the immediate end of our confinement. We were all eager to leave Venice and planned to do so as soon as possible. What then? I did not care to wonder, for by then the end of October would be upon us. And I would have to speak. Until the inquest, I could hold my tongue and my place in Diana's affections. But no longer.

Often, I found myself hoping for some sudden extrication from my dilemma, some deus ex machina to resolve my every difficulty. But it was no more than a hope and not a very pious one either. Certainly I did not think it was fulfilled by the unexpected arrival five days before the inquest of Quincy Z. McGowan, younger brother of the late Maud Charnwood and seldom-heard-from uncle of Diana.

He was a tall barrel-chested man in his mid-forties, with a booming voice and a beaming smile, running to fat and inclining to baldness, but defiantly projecting a boyish charm. He had decided, he explained, to bring forward a business trip to England in order to give Vita and Diana any help he could in the wake of his brother-in-law's death. The news of their latest misfortune had been waiting for him at Amber Court and he had therefore proceeded to Venice immediately.

Vita and Diana both seemed overjoyed to see him and it was easy to understand why. He blew through the villa like a spring breeze, dispelling much of the unspoken dread that had settled upon us. Diana had fond memories of him as the strapping young god of her childhood, a playful uncle who had largely lapsed from her life after her mother's death. He recalled hoping the United States would declare war on Germany after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 and so give him the chance to avenge his sister. But he had had to wait until 1918 for that, in the form of a few glorious months under arms on the Western Front. His descriptions of combat did not tally with my memories, but it was impossible to resent or resist the force of his enthusiasm. I was only grateful Max and I had never crossed swords with him. The McGowans of Pittsburgh ranked not that far short of Carnegie and Frick in the American steel industry. They would have made powerful enemies. And I had enough of those already.