Valentin retired from the room, not taking his beady eyes off Harry until the last possible moment. 'Somebody died,' said Harry, once the man had gone.
'That's right,' the widow said, sitting down again. At her invitation he sat opposite her, amongst enough cushions to furnish a harem. 'My husband.'
Tm sorry.'
'There's no time to be sorry,' she said, her every look and gesture betraying her words. He was glad of her
8
grief; the tearstains and the fatigue blemished a beauty which, had he seen it unimpaired, might have rendered him dumb with admiration.
'They say that my husband's death was an accident,' she was saying. 'I know it wasn't.'
'May I ask . . . your name?'
'I'm sorry. My name is Swann, Mr D'Amour.
Dorothea Swann. You may have heard of my husband?' The magician?'
'Illusionist,' she said.
'I read about it. Tragic.'
'Did you ever see his performance?'
Harry shook his head. 'I can't afford Broadway, Mrs Swann.'
'We were only over for three months, while his show ran. We were going back in September . . .'
'Back?'
'To Hamburg,' she said, 'I don't like this city. It's too hot. And too cruel.'
'Don't blame New York,' he said. 'It can't help itself.'
'Maybe,' she replied, nodding. 'Perhaps what hap- pened to Swann would have happened anyway, wherever we'd been. People keep telling me: it was an accident. That's all. Just an accident.'
'But you don't believe it?'
Valentin had appeared with a glass of milk. He set it down on the table in front of Harry. As he made to leave, she said: 'Valentin. The letter?'
He looked at her strangely, almost as though she'd said something obscene.
'The letter,' she repeated.
He exited.
'You were saying -'
She frowned. 'What?'
'About it being an accident.'
'Oh yes. I lived with Swann seven and a half years, and I got to understand him as well as anybody ever could. I learned to sense when he wanted me around, and when he didn't. When he didn't, I'd take myself off somewhere and let him have his privacy. Genius needs privacy. And he was a genius, you know. The greatest illusionist since Houdini.'
'Is that so?'
'I'd think sometimes - it was a kind of miracle that he let me into his life . . .'
Harry wanted to say Swann would have been mad not to have done so, but the comment was inappropriate. She didn't want blandishments; didn't need them. Didn't need anything, perhaps, but her husband alive again.
'Now I think I didn't know him at all,' she went on, 'didn't understand him. I think maybe it was another trick. Another part of his magic.'
'I called him a magician a while back,' Harry said. 'You corrected me.'
'So I did,' she said, conceding his point with an apologetic look. 'Forgive me. That was Swann talking. He hated to be called a magician. He said that was a word that had to be kept for miracle-workers.'
'And he was no miracle-worker?'
'He used to call himself the Great Pretender,' she said. The thought made her smile.
Valentin had re-appeared, his lugubrious features rife with suspicion. He carried an envelope, which he clearly had no desire to give up. Dorothea had to cross the carpet and take it from his hands.
'Is this wise?' he said.
'Yes,' she told him.
He turned on his heel and made a smart withdrawal.
10
'He's grief-stricken,' she said. 'Forgive him his behaviour. He was with Swann from the beginning of his career. I think he loved my husband as much as I did.' She ran her linger down into the envelope and pulled the letter out. The paper was pale yellow, and gossamer- thin.
'A few hours after he died, this letter was delivered here by hand,' she said. 'It was addressed to him. I opened it. I think you ought to read it.'
She passed it to him. The hand it was written in was solid and unaffected.
Dorothea, he had written, if you are reading this, then I am dead.
You know how little store I set by dreams and premonitions and such; but for the last few days strange thoughts have just crept into my head, and I have the suspicion that death is very close to me. If so, so. There's no help for it. Don't waste time trying to puzzle out the whys and wherefores; they're old news now. Just know that I love you, and that I have always loved you in my way. I'm sorry for whatever unhappiness I've caused, or am causing now, but it was out of my hands.
I have some instructions regarding the disposal of my body. Please adhere to them to the letter. Don't let anybody try to persuade you out of doing as I ask.
I want you to have my body watched night and day until I'm cremated. Don't try and take my remains back to Europe. Have me cremated here, as soon as possible, then throw the ashes in the East River.
My sweet darling, I'm afraid. Not of bad dreams, or of what might happen to me in this life, but of what my enemies may try to do once I'm dead. You know how critics can be: they wait until you can't fight them back, then they start the character assassinations. It's too long a business to try and explain all of this, so I must simply trust you to do as I say.
11
Again, I love you, and I hope you never have to read this letter.
Your adoring,
Swann.'
'Some farewell note,' Harry commented when he'd read it through twice. He folded it up and passed it back to the widow.
'I'd like you to stay with him,' she said. 'Corpse-sit, if you will. Just until all the legal formalities are dealt with and I can make arrangements for his cremation. It shouldn't take them long. I've got a lawyer working on it now.'
'Again: why me?'
She avoided his gaze. 'As he says in the letter, he was never superstitious. But I am. I believe in omens. And there was an odd atmosphere about the place in the days before he died. As if we were watched.'
'You think he was murdered?'
She mused on this, then said: 'I don't believe it was an accident.'
'These enemies he talks about..."
'He was a great man. Much envied.'
'Professional jealousy? Is that a motive for murder?' 'Anything can be a motive, can't it?' she said. 'People get killed for the colour of their eyes, don't they?'
Harry was impressed. It had taken him twenty years to learn how arbitrary things were. She spoke it as conventional wisdom.
'Where is your husband?' he asked her.
'Upstairs,' she said. 'I had the body brought back here, where I could look after him. I can't pretend I understand what's going on, but I'm not going to risk ignoring his instructions.'
Harry nodded.
12
'Swann was my life,' she added softly, apropos of nothing; and everything.
She took him upstairs. The perfume that had met him at the door intensified. The master bedroom had been turned into a Chapel of Rest, knee-deep in sprays and wreaths of every shape and variety; their mingled scents verged on the hallucinogenic. In the midst of this abundance, the casket - an elaborate affair in black and silver - was mounted on trestles. The upper half of the lid stood open, the plush overlay folded back. At Dorothea's invitation he waded through the tributes to view the deceased. He liked Swann's face; it had humour, and a certain guile; it was even handsome in its weary way. More: it had inspired the love of Dorothea; a face could have few better recommendations. Harry stood waist-high in flowers and, absurd as it was, felt a twinge of envy for the love this man must have enjoyed.
'Will you help me, Mr D'Amour?'
What could he say but: 'Yes, of course I'll help.' That, and: 'Call me Harry.'
He would be missed at Wing's Pavilion tonight. He had occupied the best table there every Friday night for the past six and a half years, eating at one sitting enough to compensate for what his diet lacked in excellence and variety the other six days of the week. This feast - the best Chinese cuisine to be had south of Canal Street - came gratis, thanks to services he had once rendered the owner. Tonight the table would go empty.
Not that his stomach suffered. He had only been sitting with Swann an hour or so when Valentin came up and said:
'How do you like your steak?
'Just shy of burned,' Harry replied.
Valentin was none too pleased by the response. 'I hate to overcook good steak/ he said.
'And I hate the sight of blood,' Harry said, 'even if it isn't my own.'
The chef clearly despaired of his guest's palate, and turned to go.
'Valentin?'
The man looked round.
'Is that your Christian name?' Harry asked. 'Christian names are for Christians,' came the reply. Harry nodded. 'You don't like my being here, am I right?'
Valentin made no reply. His eyes had drifted past Harry to the open coffin.
'I'm not going to be here for long,' Harry said, 'but while I am, can't we be friends?'
Valentin's gaze found him once more.
'I don't have any friends,' he said without enmity or self-pity. 'Not now.'
'OK. I'm sorry.'
'What's to be sorry for?' Valentin wanted to know. 'Swann's dead. It's all over, bar the shouting.' The doleful face stoically refused tears. A stone would weep sooner, Harry guessed. But there was grief there, and all the more acute for being dumb.
'One question.'
'Only one?'
'Why didn't you want me to read his letter?' Valentin raised his eyebrows slightly; they were fine enough to have been pencilled on. 'He wasn't insane,' he said. 'I didn't want you thinking he was a crazy man, because of what he wrote. What you read you keep to yourself. Swann was a legend. I don't want his memory besmirched.'
14
'You should write a book,' Harry said. 'Tell the whole story once and for all. You were with him a long time, I hear.'
'Oh yes,' said Valentin. 'Long enough to know better than to tell the truth.'
So saying he made an exit, leaving the flowers to wilt, and Harry with more puzzles on his hands than he'd begun with.
