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“You had better sit down,” she said, and wondered where to take him. She led him to the den, and he gazed around as he followed her. “Would you like something to drink?” She was unsure of this new role as hostess.
He glanced at her, then smiled faintly. “I’ve been fed at the breast of death, and no other food now can sustain me.
She giggled nervously. “Is that yes or no?” Good grief, listen to me, she thought. How sophisticated.
“Sorry,” he said stiffly. “It’s something I wrote once. I never thought I’d see the day when an opportunity arose to use it. I couldn’t resist.”
He writes? Her eyebrows went up a little.
“I am not illiterate,” he said, piqued at catching her surprise, in another of his swift glances. “And I don’t want any of your beverages.”
“Well, I think I’ll have something.” She left to get a Coke. He’s as jittery as I am, she thought. She took her time in the kitchen, time to steady her nerves and take a few deep breaths.
When she came back, he was fiddling with the radio. The painting he had carried in was propped up on the couch. He found a rock station that seemed to suit him and came over to stand next to her in front of the gilt-framed portrait. He still wouldn’t look at her, and it was beginning to bother her.
He reached out as if to put an arm around her shoulders, and she stepped aside hastily. “No,” he said, sounding anxious to reassure her. “I just want your necklace.”
She wondered why, so she stood still as his fingers nimbly untied the knot and freed the crucifix from around her neck. He dangled it gingerly by its ribbon at arm’s length and, for the first time since he had entered, looked her full in the face. Without taking his eyes from her, he deposited the crucifix in a ceramic jar on the coffee table, with uncanny accuracy. “The dress is beautiful, but that thing doesn’t suit you.”
She was angry but afraid to protest. Let it lie, she thought. It’s not important enough to fight over. And she moved away to sit in an easy chair with the coffee table between them.
To her relief he didn’t follow, but sat on the couch and looked around the room. He relaxed into the cushions like a cat at home, all nervousness now gone. He seemed especially interested in the paintings on the walls. He rubbed his hands as if warming them by a fire. “I have a painting too,” he said unnecessarily.
The Ramones filled the air around them with pulsing music. “I love rock,” he said. “I have ever since it started. There’s something elemental about it. It’s the pounding of blood through veins. Before that there was the blues, and jazz—I liked that, too, but not this way. Not this heart-thumping way. They didn’t allow music in the village I was born in, you know, but I’ve had plenty of time to make it up since.”
“Psychotherapy. Psychotherapy,” the lyrics pounded.
He turned dreamily to face the painting he had set up on the couch. “I wanted you to see this.”
Slow motion, Zoë thought.
“Come look.” He beckoned her.
Curiosity lured her, and she knelt on the floor in front of the couch, pushing the small glass-topped table askew with her feet. The frame was battered and chipped, and one corner had been crushed. The painting within looked old. It was a family portrait: a stern man in black, with a large white collar, stood by a chair where a woman, also in black, sat with a baby in her lap. A small boy of about six stood proudly in front of his father, dressed in the same severe clothes. He reminded her of someone. The painting was full of shadows. The furniture was sensible, and their expressions somber. Well, perhaps not the woman’s. It seemed like she was trying very hard not to smile; her eyes sparkled, as if she were too merry to stay solemn for long.
Zoë looked up questioningly at Simon.
“My family,” he said.
“You mean your ancestors?”
“My parents and brother.”
Zoë frowned. She wasn’t sure if she really felt like dealing with this. “Like those fake old photos you can have taken??
?? she asked. “Dressed up like cowboys or something?”
Simon turned the painting around and handed it to her. There was faded brown writing on the back, a date—1651—and words that curled in unexpected ways. Edmund Bristol Gentleman and his ladie wyfe (she couldn’t read this part) their sons (unintelligible again).
“It was the year Old Rowley came back behind a Scottish army,” Simon said. She stared at him. “He became Charles II,” he explained, “but not that year. Cromwell sent him running at Worcester.”
Zoë waved him quiet, impatiently. “What does that prove? People can fake that stuff.”
He took back the painting firmly and turned it around again. He looked at it longingly. “That’s me,” he said, pointing at the baby.
Oh, no, she thought.
“And that’s your killer,” he said, pointing at the other child. “My brother, Christopher.”
