The Saint-Germain Chronicles (21 page)

“Oh! I didn’t mean…” She turned a curiously mottled pale pink. “You’re busy. I heard music and I thought…”

“Hardly music,” Franciscus said as he jangled a discordant arpeggio on the worn keys.

“I think it’s pretty.” Her eyes pleaded with him not to contradict her.

His curiosity was piqued. “That’s kind of you to say, but it will sound a great deal better once I get it tuned.”

“May I watch? I won’t say anything. I promise.” Her hands were knotting in the nervous way he had noticed before.

“If you wish. It’s boring, so don’t feel you have to stay.” His penetrating dark eyes rested on her cornflower blue ones, then he gave his attention to the harpsichord again. He used his D tuning fork, struck it and placed it against the raised lid of the instrument for resonance. He worked quickly, twisting the metal tuning pegs quickly. Methodically he repeated the process with all the Ds on the keyboard.

“Is that hard, what you’re doing?” she asked when he had worked his way up to F#.

“Hard? No, not when I’ve got my tuning forks. I can do it without them, but it takes longer because I have difficulty allowing for the resonances, the over and undertones, in my mind.” He did not mind the interruption, though he did not stop his task. He selected the G fork and struck it expertly.

“You have perfect pitch?” She found the idea exciting. “I’ve never known anyone with perfect pitch.”

“Yes.” Franciscus placed the vibrating fork against the wood, and the note, eerily pure, hummed loudly in the room. “That’s the resonant note of this instrument, which is why it’s so much louder than the others.”

The teen-aged girl looked awed. “That’s amazing.”

“No, it’s physics,” he corrected her wryly. What was wrong with that child? Franciscus asked himself. From her height and the shape of her body, she had to be at least sixteen, but she had the manner of a much younger person. Perhaps she had truly been ill. Or perhaps she was recovering from something more harmful than illness. “All instruments have one particular resonant note In the ancient world, this was attributed to magic,” he went on, watching her covertly.

“Did they? That’s wonderful.” She sounded so forlorn that he worried she might cry.

“Is something the matter, Miss…”

“Harper,” she said, with an unaccountable blush. “Emillie Harper.”

“Hello, Miss Harper. I’m R. G. Franciscus.” He offered her his right hand gravely.

She was about to take it when a stranger came into the room. He was a tall, lean man dressed, like Franciscus, predominantly in black, but unlike Franciscus, he wore the color with an air of menace. There was a flamboyance, a theatricality about him: his dark hair was perfectly silvered at the temples and there was a Byronic grandeur in his demeanor. His ruddy mouth curved in a romantic sneer, and though he was certainly no older than Franciscus, he gave the impression of world-weariness that the other, shorter man conspicuously lacked.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he announced for form’s sake, in a fine deep voice that oozed ennui.

“Quite all right,” Franciscus assured him. “I’m almost finished tuning, and Miss Harper and I were discussing resonance. Is there anything I can do for you? Dinner service began a quarter hour ago, if you’re hungry.”

The stranger gave a slight shudder. “Dinner. No. I’m looking for the manager. Have you seen Mr. Rogers?” His soulful brown eyes roved around the lounge as if he suspected the man he sought to be lurking in the shadows.

“He should be with the chef. He usually is at the start of dinner,” Franciscus told him with unimpaired good humor. “Give him another ten minutes and he’ll be out.”

“I need to see Mr. Rogers at once,” the stranger stated with great finality. “It’s urgent.”

Emillie Harper clenched her hands tightly and stared from one man to the other. Her blue eyes were distressed and she moved in quick, fluttery starts, as if attempting to flee invisible shackles.

“Miss Harper,” Franciscus said calmly, “I’m going to the kitchen to get Mr. Rogers for this… gentleman. Would you like to come with me?” He took his black wool jacket from the bench and began to roll down his shirt sleeves. With a twitch he adjusted the black silk ascot at his neck before shrugging on the jacket.

The depth of gratitude in the girl’s eyes was pathetic. “Oh, yes. I would. Please.”

Franciscus regarded the tall interloper. “If you’ll be good enough to wait at the registration desk, Mr. Rogers will join you shortly. It’s the best I can do, Mr.…”

“Lorpicar,” was the answer. “I’m in cabin 33.”

“Are you.” Franciscus had already led Emillie Harper to the door of the lounge. He sensed that Mr. Lorpicar wanted him to look back, and for that reason, he did not, although he felt a deep curiosity possess him as he led the frightened girl away.

Jim Sutton walked into the lounge shortly after ten the next evening, while Franciscus was doing his second set. The reporter was dressed with his usual finicky elegance in contrast to his face which held the comfortable appeal of a rumpled bed. He waved to Franciscus and took a seat at the bar, waiting for the buzzy and unobtrusive sounds of the harpsichord to cease.

“It’s good to see you again, Mr. Sutton,” the bartender said as he approached. “Cruzan with lime juice, isn’t it?”

“Good to see you again, Frank. You’re right about the drink.” He had often been amused by the tales he had heard of reporters and bourbon: he had never liked the stuff. Rum was another matter. He put a ten dollar bill on the highly polished mahogany of the bar as Frank brought him one of the neat, square glasses used at Lost Saints Lodge with little ice and a fair amount of rum. “When eight of this is gone, you tell me.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Sutton,” said the bartender in his faded southern accent as he gave the reporter an indulgent smile before answering the imperious summons of Mrs. Emmons at the far end of the bar.

Jim Sutton was into his second drink when Franciscus slipped onto the stool beside Mm. “I liked what you were playing,” he said by way of greeting.

Franciscus shrugged. “Haydn filtered through Duke Ellington.”

“Keeps the peasants happy.” He had braced his elbows on the bar and was looking over the lounge. It wasn’t crowded but it was far from empty. “You’re doing well this year. Rogers said that business was up again.”

“It is.” Franciscus took the ten dollar bill and stuffed it into Jim Sutton’s vest pocket. “Frank, Mr. Sutton is my guest tonight. Present me with a tab at the end of the evening.”

“Okay, Franciscus,” came the answer from the other end of the bar.

“You don’t use any nicknames?” Jim Sutton asked. “I don’t encourage them.” He looked at the reporter and thought there was more tension in the sardonic, kindly eyes than he had seen before. “How’s it going?”

“I wish I had more time off,” Sutton muttered as he finished his drink and set the square glass back on the bar. “This last year… God! The mass murders in Detroit, and that cult killing in Houston, and the radiation victims in St. Louis, and now this trial in Denver. I thought I was through with that when I came back from Viet Nam. I tell you, it’s getting to me.”

Franciscus said nothing, but he hooked the rather high heels of his custom-made black shoes over the foot brace of the stool and prepared himself to listen.

It was more than five minutes later that Jim Sutton began to speak again. “I’ve heard all the crap about reporters being cold sons-of-bitches. It’s true of a lot of them. It’s easier if you can do it that way. What can you say, though, when you look at fourteen bodies, neatly eviscerated, after two weeks of decomposition in a muddy riverbank? What do you tell the public about the twenty-six victims of a radiation leak at a reactor? Do you know what those poor bastards looked like? And the paper’s managers, who know nothing about journalism, talking about finding ways to attract more advertisers! Shit!” Frank had replaced the empty glass with another. Jim Sutton looked at it, and took it with a sigh. “I’ve been going to a shrink. I used to scoff at the guys who did, but I’ve had to join them. Lelland University has offered me a post on the faculty. Three years ago I would have laughed at them, but I’m thinking about it.”

“Do you want to teach?” It was the first question that Franciscus had asked and it somewhat startled Jim Sutton.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done it. I know that my professors were blithering incompetents, and much of what they told me wasn’t worth wiping my ass with. Still, I tell myself that I could make a difference, that if I had had the kind of reporter I am now for a teacher, I would have saved myself a lot of grief. Or maybe I’m just running away, and in a year, I’ll be slavering to be back on the job.” He tasted the drink and set it aside.

“Why not try teaching for a year, just to find out if you want to do it, and then make up your mind? Your paper will give you leave, won’t it?” His suggestion was nonchalant and he said it in such a way that he did not require a response.

Jim Sutton thought about it a moment. “I could do that. It gives me an out. Whether it works or it doesn’t, there is a way for me to tell myself I made the right decision.” He made a barking sound that was supposed to be a laugh.

“I’ve got another set coming up,” Franciscus said as he got off the stool. “Any requests?”

“Sure.” This had become a challenge with them in the last three years. “The ballet music from Tchaikovsky’s
Maid of Orleans
.” He said it with a straight face, thinking that this was sufficiently obscure, as he himself had only heard it once, and that was a fluke.

Franciscus said, “The court scene dances? All of them?” He was unflustered and the confident, ironic smile returned. “Too easy, Jim; much too easy.”

Jim Sutton shook his head. “I should have known. I’ll stump you one day.” He took another sip of the rum, and added, “Here’s a bit of trivia for you—Tchaikovsky collected the music of the Count de Saint-Germain. Do you know who he was?”

“Oh, yes. I know.” He had stepped back.

“Yeah, well…” Before he could go on, he was interrupted by Mrs. Emmons at the end of the bar who caroled out, “Oh, Mr.
Franciscus, would you play ‘When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain’ for me?”

Emillie Harper was noticeably pale the next day as she sat by the pool in her
tunic swimsuit with ruffled neck and hem. She gave a wan smile to Harriet
Goodman as the older woman came through the gate onto the wide, mosaiced deck around the pool.

“Good morning,” Harriet called as she saw the girl. “I thought I was the first one out.”

“No,” Emillie said hastily. “I haven’t had much sun, so mother said I’d better do my swimming in the morning and evening.”

“Good advice,” Harriet concurred. “You won’t be as likely to burn.”

“I was hoping there might be swimming at night,” she said wistfully. “I heard that Mr. Rogers has night swimming in the summer.”

“Talk to him about it,” Harriet suggested as she spread her towel over the depiction of a Roman bireme. She had often been struck with the very Roman fee! of the swimming pool here at Lost Saints Lodge. For some reason it did not have that phony feel that so many others had. The mosaics were part of it, but that was not it entirely. Harriet Goodman had a nose for authenticity, and she could smell it here and wondered why. It was cool but she did not deceive herself that her frisson came from the touch of the wind.

“Pardon me,” Emillie said a bit later, “but haven’t I seen you before? I know that sounds stupid,” she added, blushing.

Harriet had cultivated her considerable charm for many years, and she used it now on the distressed girl. “Why, not at all—it’s very kind of you. I do occasional television appearances and I lecture all over the country. If I made enough of an impression for you to remember me, I’m flattered.”

Emillie’s face brightened a little, though on someone as apprehensive and colorless as the teen-ager was, enthusiasm was difficult to perceive. “I did see you. A while ago,” she added guiltily.

“Well, I’ve been around for quite a time.” Harriet said as she lay back on the towel. What was bothering the girl? she wondered.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t remember what it was you talked about.” Emillie was afraid she had insulted the older woman, and was trying to keep from withdrawing entirely.

“Child abuse. I’m a psychiatrist, Miss Harper. But at the moment, I am also on vacation.” Her voice was expertly neutral, and she made no move that would suggest disapproval.

“A psychiatrist?” She repeated the word as if it were contaminated.

Harriet had experienced that reaction too many times to be disturbed by it. “Yes, more Jungian than Freudian. I got into child abuse by accident.” She had a rich chuckle. “That does sound ominous, doesn’t it? What I meant to say, though Freud would have it that my sloppy grammar was hidden truth, is that I became interested in studying child abuse unintentionally. Since I’m a woman, when I first went into practice I had few male patients. A great many men don’t feel comfortable with a woman analyst. After a while, I discovered that a fair number of my women patients were either child abusers themselves or were married to men who were.” She raised her head and glanced over at the demure girl several feet away. “Now it’s you who should forgive me. Here I’ve told you I’m on vacation and the next thing, I’m starting shop talk.”

“It’s all right,” Emillie said in a politely gelid tone.

They had been there quite the better part of half an hour when the gate opened again. Mrs. Emmons, in a lavish flowered purple bathing suit and outrageous rhine-stoned sunglasses, sauntered up to the edge of the pooL “Oh, hello, girls,” she called to the others. “Isn’t it a beautiful morning?”

“Christ!” Harriet expostulated, and lay back in the sun.

A little bit later, Mrs. Granger arrived, wearing an enormous flowered hat and a beach robe of such voluminous cut that the shrunken body it covered seemed like illicit cargo. By that time Mrs. Emmons was splashing in the shallow end of the pool and hooting with delight.

Pink more with embarrassment than the sun, Emillie Harper gathered up her towel, mumbled a few words that might be construed as excuses, and fled. Harriet propped herself on her elbow and watched Emillie go, scowling, her senses on the alert.