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"I did that on the way here. "
"In the state you were in?"
"Well, I certainly snapped out of it long enough to go into the hotel and make certain she'd left. I had to do that much. A limousine had taken her to La Guardia at nine a. m. this morning. She reached New Orleans this afternoon. As for the convent, I have no idea how to reach her there. I don't even know if she has the wiring in it for a phone. For now, she's as safe as she ever was while Roger was living. "
"Agreed. Let's go uptown. "
SOMETIMES fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.
As we entered the flat, I felt that for a couple of seconds. Panic.
Go No Farther.
But I was too proud to show it and David too curious, proceeding before me into the hallway, and noting, no doubt, as I did, that the place was without life. The recent death? He could smell it as well as I could. I wondered if it was less noxious to him since it had not been his kill.
Roger! The fusion of the mangled corpse and Roger the Ghost in memory was suddenly like a sharp kick in the chest.
David went all the way to the living room while I lingered, looking at the big white marble angel with its shell of holy water and thinking how like the granite statue it was. Blake. William Blake had known. He had seen angels and devils and he'd gotten their proportions right. Roger and I could have talked about Blake. . . .
But that was over. I was here, in the hallway.
The thought that I had to walk forward, put one foo
t before the other, reach the living room, and look at that granite statue was suddenly a little more than I could accept.
"It's not here," David said. He hadn't read my mind. He was merely stating the obvious. He was standing in the living room some fifty feet away, looking at me, the halogens throwing just a little of their dedicated light on him and he said again, "There is no black granite statue in this room. "
I gave a sigh. "I'm going to hell," I whispered.
I could see David very distinctly, but no mortal could have. His image was too shadowy. He looked tall and very strong, standing there, back to the dingy light of the windows, the halogens making sparkles on his brass buttons.
"The blood?"
"Yes, the blood, and your glasses. Your violet glasses. A nice piece of evidence. "
"Evidence of what!"
It was too stupid of me to stand here at the back door talking to him over this distance. I walked down the hall as if going cheerfully to the guillotine, and I came into die room.
There was only an empty space where the statue had stood, and I wasn't even sure it was big enough. Clutter. Plaster saints. Icons, some so old and fragile they were under glass. Last night I hadn't noticed so very many, sparkling all over the walls in the splinters of light that escaped the directed lamps.
"Incredible!" David whispered.
"I knew you'd love it," I said dismally. I would have loved it, too, if I were not shaken to the bone.
He was studying the objects, eyes moving back and forth over the icons and then the saints. "Absolutely magnificent objects. This is . . . is an extraordinary collection. You don't know what any of this is, do you?"
"Well, more or less," I said. "I'm not an artistic illiterate. "
"The series of pictures on the wall," he said. He gestured to a long row of icons, the most fragile.
"Those? Not really. "
"Veronica's veil," he said. "These are early copies of the famous mandilion¡ªthe veil itself¡ªwhich supposedly vanished from history centuries ago. Perhaps during the Fourth Crusade. This one's Russian, flawless. This one? Italian. And look there, on the floor, in stacks, those are the Stations of the Cross. "
"He was obsessed with finding relics for Dora. Besides, he loved the stuff himself. That one, the Russian Veil of Veronica¡ªhe had just brought that here to New York to Dora. Last night they quarreled over it, but she wouldn't take it. "
It was quite fine. How he had tried to describe it to her. God, I felt as if I had known him from my youth and we had talked about all of these objects, and every surface for me was layered with his special appreciation and complex of thoughts.
