The House That Jack Built (42 page)

    Effie listened, and Pepper was right. First she heard jazz music, playing very faintly in another room. Then she heard women's laughter, and The Blue Danube, and then jazz again, and men discussing something between themselves in deep, confident voices.

    'Is there a party going on someplace?' asked Brewster, in awe.

    'Sh,' said Norman.

    Effie heard laughter, more laughter. She thought she was standing next to Pepper, and yet in a peculiar way she wasn't, she was standing much closer to the doors that led to the library. She looked back at Pepper but Pepper didn't seem to be able to see her. Another man was walking across the room. She didn't know who he was. He was a big, balding man, with a face that had the pale lumpy texture of a root vegetable. He was wearing rimless spectacles with clip-on sunglasses, which made him look' like a croupier. His shirt was stained with sweat and his beige cotton trousers were creased. He was carrying a cassette recorder and a flashlight, and he was talking to himself.

    He passed right by Effie without even acknowledging her. As he passed, he said, 'Dry rot, wet rot, extensive termite infestation…' He opened the library doors, stepped inside, and closed them behind him.

    Effie turned to Pepper and said, 'Did you see that? Pepper, did you see that? Who was that man?'

    But for some reason Pepper ignored her. She kept slowly waving the hazel twig from side to side, in smaller and smaller arcs, until at last she had located the point at which it twitched at its strongest.

    'Pepper-' Effie began. But Pepper had her eyes closed now, and it was obvious that she was meditating. Whoever the balding man had been, he obviously wasn't very important. Maybe just one of Norman's carpenters, making some last-minute notes. Maybe Effie had imagined him.

    She opened the library doors, and went inside. The room was lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, and each shelf was packed with leather-bound, gilt-embossed books. They gave off a rich aroma of Morocco and calfhide, and this mingled with the smell of cigar tobacco and men's cologne, Floris Special No 27 if she wasn't mistaken (although how she knew that, she couldn't understand). The windows were heavily draped with green-and-white striped curtains, and the floor was carpeted in bottle-green. In the middle of the room stood a baize topped table, with ornate mahogany legs, around which a dozen men in evening dress were sitting, playing cards, and over which a cadaverous-looking croupier stood guard.

    She recognised most of them: Michael Arlen and Viscount Castlerosse; Karl Majorian and Remy Morse. Nico Zographos with his pout and his little moustache. And of course there was Douglas - dear, dear Douglas - with his white wavy hair and his panicky smile.

    On the far side of the table, in a revolving captain's chair upholstered in black leather, a dark-eyed man with a dazzling white shirt front was dealing from the shoe. She knew him, too. Jack Belias. Momentarily, he raised his eyes to her as he dealt. His look was neither crude nor lustful. It was a look which meant nothing less than: you will very soon belong to me.

    She was afraid of him. She had always been afraid of him. He had the coiled-up tension of a man who knows that he is stronger and crueller and far more skilful than any of those who sat around him. His face was well sculpted and refined, with deep-set eyes and sharply defined cheekbones; but his refinement was compromised by the scars which pitted his skin - evidence of poor nutrition when he was a child, and a harder upbringing than most people care to think about.

    It was always his eyes which terrified her most. The last time she had seen anybody look at her the way that Jack Belias looked at her, that person had been sitting in the back seat of a crashed DeLage tourer, on the coast road just west of Nice, with a lapful of blood, dead.

    All the same she walked up to the table and ostentatiously caressed Douglas' cheek. He glanced up at her, and kissed her wrist, but his jovial expression seemed to be held onto his face with two-inch nails.

    'You shouldn't distract him, sweetheart,' said Jack Belias, gently tapping an inch of ash from the end of his cigar. There was no humour in his voice at all; no pretty-please; no cajolery. He said it as if he would happily stub his cigar out on her forehead. 'Now, why don't you run along and let the men get back to- what they're doing.'

    She walked around the table, staring at each man in turn. 'What did you stake?' she asked Remy Morse.

    He slicked back his greasy black hair with his hand. 'My yacht, the
Agrippina
, and all her crew.'

    'And you?' she demanded of Karl Majorian.

    'My racehorse, Great Pretender.'

    'My chateau,' said another player; and still another said, 'The Cope Diamond; all 47'/2 carats of it.'

    She returned to Douglas, and wrapped herself around his shoulders. 'My husband, though, he doesn't stake horses or trinkets. He's far too daring for that. My husband stakes his wife; his own wife; the same woman with whom he walked up the aisle. I have every right to distract him. He's my husband. If he loses, then I lose.'

    'He could still win,' said Jack Belias, lifting his sockless ankle and revealing a bony ankle, scarred with mosquito bites. 'You know what baccarat's like. Ruination one minute, salvation the next. It all depends on your nerve.'

    Effie leaned close to Douglas' ear. 'I've given you everything,' she whispered. 'I've given you money; I've given you confidence; I've given you luck. If I have to sleep with Jack Belias because of you, then I swear to God I'm never coming back.'

    Douglas looked up at her, his eyes wide. 'It's only for three days and three nights. For God's sake, Gina, what are you trying to say to me?'

    'Is that what you thought? Three days and three nights? I agreed to this, yes, because I love you, and because I promised when I married you that everything I had belonged to you. But once I've done this, I've given you everything. There isn't any more of me left. Not money, not possessions, not body, not soul.'

    'But you said-'

    'Yes, I said. I offered! I agreed! But you didn't have to accept my offer, did you? You were my husband, Douglas! Didn't it ever occur to you to say no?'

    Douglas was grey now, the colour of rainsoaked newspaper, and his hands were shaking. 'When you said yes, I didn't realise.'

    Effie stood up straight. Jack Belias was watching her with huge amusement; especially since she was destroying Douglas Broughton wholesale, and ruining his concentration. She couldn't have done better for him if she had picked up Douglas' hand and showed him his cards.

    'It doesn't matter who wins, and it doesn't matter who loses,' Effie declared, right into Douglas' face. 'You can't lose me playing baccarat, because you've lost me already.'

    'Please! Please! May we continue to play?' asked Jack Belias. 'I hate to see a good game of cards spoiled by a little domestic unhappiness.'

    'My God,' said Effie. 'Do you know what you are? He's down on his knees and you still want morel Why don't you just get it over with, and shoot him?'

    'I don't want your husband, Mrs. Broughton. As far as I'm concerned, he's nothing but whale meat in a three-piece suit. I don't care if he lives or dies. I don't care if he contracts plague or wins the Nobel Peace Prize. I don't care if he's happy and I don't care if he's miserable.'

    He picked up a card from the table between two fingers, and twisted it around so that Effie could see it. The Queen of Hearts.

    'I want you,' he told her, and grinned even wider. Some of the other players sat back in obvious embarrassment.

    Michael Arlen said, 'Come on, Jack, this isn't the way,' and Remy Morse wreathed his head in cigar smoke as if he were trying to hide.

    'Very well, you want me,' Effie retaliated. 'But this is the only way you could ever have me. By winning me, at baccarat, like a racehorse, or a diamond, or a house. You could never win me any other way.'

    Jack Belias condnued to smile, but his eyes looked oddly piggy. 'First of all let me win you at baccarat. Then let's see if I can't get you to change your mind. I promise you, Gina, I'll have you crawling on your hands and knees for me. I'll have you dancing barefoot on broken glass. How about that? Would you dance barefoot on broken glass for me?'

    'Come on,' Douglas protested. 'Let's get on with it.'

    He didn't look at Effie again; but Jack Belias gave her one last Cheshire-cat grin, which seemed to linger on his face long after he had returned to the serious business of dealing cards.

    Effie was about to return to the ballroom, to see what Pepper was doing, when a jerky, shadowy modon caught her eye. She looked back at the baccarat table. Jack Belias was slowly, almost casually spinning in his revolving chair: two, three, four times. She couldn't think what he was doing at first. Was he playing? But then - with a prickling feeling all the way up her neck and into her scalp - she saw a shadowy, semi-transparent figure rise out of Jack Belias' chair and move rapidly around the table, lifting up the three hands of cards he had dealt to see what they were. Then he returned to his seat, and seemed to become solid again. None of the other players appeared to have noticed - neither they, nor the croupier. It was just as if the spirit of Jack Belias had left his body and checked on his opponents' cards.

    It's not a floor, it's a clock, Norman had told her. And that was why Jack Belias played baccarat in the library, where the very construction of the room would allow him to turn the page of time, just for an instant, so that he could see what was going to happen next… or with complete impunity look at the cards that he had dealt. Effie saw the cards flutter slightly as they reached the moment in time when Jack Belias had lifted them up to look at them; but then the room returned to normal, and the baccarat players continued to play.

    'A cheval,' said Douglas, and placed a thousand dollars between 1 and 2.

    Effie left the library. Just before she closed the double doors behind her, she saw Jack Belias raise his head and give her a cold, possessive, reptilian stare. At that moment, he looked more like Craig than Jack Belias, but she knew that Jack Belias had taken him over so completely that there was no point in trying to appeal to the man who had once said he would love her 'for all eternity, and a couple of months more'.

    Once she had closed the doors, she hesitated for a split second, wondering if she ought to open them up again, just to check that Jack Belias and his fellow gamblers were still there. But then she walked quickly across to Pepper, and touched her shoulder. Pepper was engrossed in her dowsing, and she turned and blinked at Effie as if she hadn't realised that she was there.

    'It's Jack Belias - he's here.'

    'How do you know?'

    'I've just been into the library. He's playing baccarat with his friends.'

    'What do you mean you've been into the library? When?'

    'Just now. About twenty seconds ago.'

    Norman came over and said, 'What?'

    'Effie says she just went into the library.'

    Norman looked perplexed. 'Like, how did you manage that? You've been standing here the whole time.'

    'I went into the library. I swear it. Jack Belias is there, and so are his friends. They're real. They're really there. Come take a look if you don't believe me!'

    Pepper looked down at her hazel twig. It was still bent back, but it wasn't twitching any longer. 'Shit,' she said, and dropped it onto the floor.

    'What's the matter?' Effie asked her.

    'Don't you understand? All of these spells, all of these candles, all of these goddamned mirrors. They're not having any effect at all.'

    'But I saw a man walking across the library, and when I followed him, Jack Belias was there.'

    'We didn't see any man. What did he look like?'

    'Well, he was balding… not very good looking. He wore a white shirt and creased-up pants - and, yes, a pair of red and green braces.'

    'My God,' put in Brewster. 'That sounds just like my partner, Morton Walker.'

    'You saw Morton?' asked Norman, incredulous.

    'Red and green braces, who else could it be?' Brewster replied.

    'But for Christ's sake, Brewster, Morton's dead.'

    'And Jack Belias is dead,' put in Pepper.

    'I can't understand why you didn't see him,' said Effie. 'For the same reason that none of my spells are any use, and my hazel's a waste of time. These psychic disturbances are not just happening on their own. They're all to do with you, and Craig, and Jack Belias, and whatever he did to Gina Broughton.'

    'So, like, what's going on?' asked Norman, jack Belias is back, that's what's going on. Don't you see? He must have had the idea of building Valhalla the same way as the Benton House so that he could shift himself seconds forward in perceived time, and cheat at cards. He certainly didn't build it for religious reasons: he was an atheist. He made millions out of it, and nobody ever guessed, because how could they guess, especially when they were angry, and they weren't thinking straight.

    'Originally, he built the house this way to help him to cardsharp. But when Gina Broughton fell out of that window and died, that was when he thought of using it for something else. I think I made a mistake when I thought that Jack Belias was trying to get away from the law when he disappeared down by Bear Mountain Bridge. He didn't give a monkey's ass for the law. When Gina Broughton died, she robbed him of the chance to break her completely. No woman had ever done that to him before. So that's what he's doing here now. He's back for another try.'

    'Can't we stop him?' asked Effie. 'I thought you said these mirrors would help to get rid of him.'