Dangerous to Know (30 page)

Suddenly I had no further time for thought. I heard the sound of footsteps on the marble floor of the foyer, and a moment later Hubert was opening the door of the salon.

I rose and turned to face the door expectantly.

“Madame,” he said, ‘our guest is here.” He ushered her into the salon, and went on, “Madame Trent, I would like to present you to the Comtesse de Grenaille.”

I stepped forward, arranged a polite smile on my face, and stretched out my hand. “Good afternoon, I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Trent.”

The young woman smiled at me and grasped my hand firmly in hers.

“And I am pleased to meet you, Countess. It is so very kind and gracious of you to see me.”

I nodded, extracted my hand, and waved it in the direction of the seating arrangement near the French doors to the garden.

“Shall we go and sit over there? In a few moments, Hubert will serve tea, but we can chat whilst we’re waiting, I think.”

“Thank you,” wienne Trent said, and followed me across the room.

She took a seat on the small sofa.

I sat down on the same straight-backed chair as before, which I preferred, and said, “When the Institut Pasteur telephoned me, they said you wished to talk to me about my daughter Ariel. Something to do with an article you are writing about the late Sebastian Locke.”

“That’s true, Countess, yes. I am writing a profile about him for the Sy Times, the British newspaper. I am calling it ‘The Last Great Philanthropist,” and it will deal with the essence of the man, what made him tick. I will touch on his great achievements, his compassion and generosity to the world’s poor and suffering. It’ll be a very positive story. Very upbeat, actually.”

“I see,” I murmured. “However, I am not quite sure how I can help you.

My daughter is away, and I didn’t know Mr. Locke.”

“But your daughter did, Countess. Didn’t she?”

I hesitated, but only fractionally, and then I nodded. “Yes, she did.”

“I would like to talk to her about him, get her impressions of him as a man who set out to work miracles in the world.”

“I don’t believe she is available at the moment. In fact, I am quite certain she’s not.”

Vivienne Trent looked crestfallen, and then she leaned forward, rather urgently I thought, and said, “I want to be very open and straightforward with you, Countess. I am not only a journalist writing a story about him, but a member of the Locke family.”

I merely nodded.

Mrs. Trent said, “If I may explain?”

“Of course, please do,” I answered.

“I knew Sebastian from the age of twelve. My mother had a relation ship with him for six years. When she died, when I was eighteen, he became my guardian. He sent me to college, to Wellesley actually, and looked after me in general. He and I were married when I was twenty two and he was forty-two. We were married for five years and remained friends after our divorce. It was an amicable one.” She paused and looked at me intently.

“I see,” I murmured.

“Anyway, Countess, I’m telling you this because I want you to understand that my profile of him will be laudatory. It won’t be critical of him, I’m not about to write a ‘warts and all’ portrait of him. Quite the opposite. And of course it would only be laudatory about your dough ter, Dr. Ariel de Grenaille.”

“I understand,” I responded. “Thank you for explaining. But I don’t know how much my daughter could contribute, even if she were avail able.

And I did just tell you she’s not.”

“I think she could contribute quite a lot,” Mrs. Trent said swiftly.

“After all, she was the last woman he was involved with.

Personally involved on an emotional level.”

I stared at her but I said nothing. I just sat there, waiting, wondering what she would say next.

There was total silence in the room for several minutes. I knew Vivienne Trent was expecting me to make a remark, but I remained silent.

Finally, it was she who broke the silence. Clearing her throat, she said, “Countess de Grenaille, Sebastian told me he was going to marry your daughter.”

“He said that?”

”Yes, he did.”’

“When did he tell you this?”

“Last October, early October. On the Monday of the week he died.”

“You were his confidante, Mrs. Trent? Or did other members of his family know of his intentions?”

Vivienne Trent shook her head. “No one else knew, Countess, be cause I was his only confidante.”

When I said nothing, she asked, with a slight frown, “Didn’t you know they were planning to marry?”

“Oh yes, Ariel had told me. You must have been meIy close to him if he confided in you, Mrs. Trent, even after your divorce.”

“I was. Sebastian trusted me implicitly.”

“What did he tell you about Ariel?”

“Not a great deal about her, only that she was a doctor, a scientist, working in Africa. But he did speak to me about his feelings for her, the depth of his feelings.”

“Did he now. How extraordinary. Unusual really, under the circum stances.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“But you were once his wife. Was it not upsetting for you to hear that he loved another woman? and be told that he was going to marry her?”

“No, not at all!” she exclaimed rather fiercely. “I cared about him. I loved him. I wanted him to be happy, to have love and companionship in his life, just as he would have wanted that for me.

Did want it, actually. As I’ve said, we were very, very close.”

“I realize that you must have been.”

“Countess de Grenaille, I know your daughter is working in Africa.

I would like to go and see her. Could you arrange this for me, please?”

“That is very doubtful, Mrs. Trent. She is unavailable.”

“The Institut lasteur said the same thing. The person I spoke to indicated she was working with infectious diseases. And explained that Dr. de Grenaille was in some kind of … quarantine.”

“That is correct, she is.”

“Could you explain what it is she is doing exactly?”

“I’ll try,” I answered. “Ariel is a virologist. Currently she is working with viruses that are known as hot viruses.”

“In a laboratory in Africa?” Mrs. Trent asked, leaning forward eagerly , her expression alert, questioning.

I nodded. “Yes.”

‘Whereabouts in Africa?” she pressed.

‘Central Africa.”

‘Could you be more precise, please, Countess?”

‘Zaire. She is working in Zaire.”

‘With those hot viruses?”

‘Yes, Mrs. Trent, I just said so. That is what she does. She has been working on them for the past seven years, especially the filoviruses.”

“What are they?”

“Sometimes they are called thread viruses, because fila is the Latin word for thread. They are highly contagious and deadly.

Lethal.”

There was a knock on the door and Hubert came in, carrying the tea tray.

“Excuse me, Madame,” he said placing the tray on the small antique table in the center of the seating arrangement, and glanced across at me.

“Shall I pour the tea, Madame?”

“Oui, merci, Hubert.”

‘It sounds like very dangerous research,” Vivienne Trent murmured.

“;h‘1et slightest little mistake, the merest slip on her part, and she could is the most dangerous work in medical science today,” I replied.

infect herself. She would die, of course, if that happened.

There are no known vaccines.”

We were silent, she and I, as we sipped our lemon tea, but after a few seconds Vivienne Trent put down her cup and said, “I think I’ve read about the hot viruses. They’re somewhat rare, aren’t they?”

“Very, but so lethal I can hardly bear to think about them,” I responded . “As I explained a moment ago, there are no vaccines against them, no known cures. They kill in a matter of a few days, and in the most devastating ways.”

“How do they kill?”

“You don’t want to know,” I answered and drank a little tea.

Vivienne Trent did not press me. She asked quietly, “And they come out of Mrica, am I correct?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Where from exactly?”

“Various areas. I’m not really an expert, you know,” I said giving her a slight smile.

“But surely your daughter has discussed her work with you? Told you about it?” she asserted, and a dark brow lifted.

“Yes, she has talked to me from time to time.”

“Then you must know more than the average person, Countess, a person like me.”

“I suppose I do.”

“Countess de Grenaille, forgive me if I sound as if I’m prying.

I’m not, really. I’m just trying to understand about your daughter’s work.

For my profile of Sebastian. Their emotional involvement aside, I can see that she must have had quite a lot in common with Sebastian, in that the foundation funded medical research there, fought disease.

And, of course, he did love Africa, had so much knowledge about it.

They must have got on very well-” She broke off, reached for her handbag. “Would you mind if I made a few notes? Just for background information.”

208Barbani Taylor Bradfrrd Briefly, I hesitated, and then before I could stop myself I acquiesced

“No, I don’t mind, that’s perfectly all right, Mrs. Trent.”

“Thank you so much.” She offered me a warm and very winning smile, took out a notebook and pen, closed her bag, and went on. “You said the viruses come from various areas in Africa. Did your daughter ever tell you anything about their actual source?”

“Ariel and the other doctors and scientists working in this field of medicine believe that the viruses come out of the rain forests of Africa According to Ariel, the viruses have probably been around for him dreds of millions of years. However, they’ve been undetected.

Undi covered.

My daughter explained to me that because the tropical forests are now being destroyed in a very systematic way, the viruses are beginning to .

‘ come out. Emerge. And they’ve gone into the human population.

“But how does that happen?” she asked, her voice rising an octave, her intelligent eyes fixed more intently on mine than ever. L “Scientists have discovered that the monkey can act as a host for the viruses, other monkeys get infected and become corners. Ariel told me that the viruses have somehow managed to mutate, have changed their genetic structure in order to jump from monkeys into humans.

“Oh, my God, that is frightening!” she exclaimed. Her voice was full of sympathy when she added, “It must be extremely worrying for you, Countess, knowing that your daughter is working with these deadly viruses, handling them constantly.”

“It is,” I answered, and then found myself unexpectedly confiding in her. “I’m afraid for Ariel. Always afraid. And afraid of the viruses.

I try very hard not to think about her work, what she’s doing.

She’s talented, you know, and very skilled. And she is careful, cautio” I broke off, reached for my cup of tea, reminding myself that I had not intended to have a long discussion with Vivienne ‘Trent. But she was extraordinarily disarming. Her soft, sympathetic manner was el fective, and I had begun to relax with her. I felt at ease. From the moment she had walked into the small salon I had detected something special in her, something fine and decent. Instinctively, I knew she was trustworthy, a good person. Besides which, we were only talking about Ariel’s work.

Not that there was much else to discuss anyway.

“That’s quite a pressure on you, Countess de Grenaille,” Mrs.

Trent was saying. Iivmg with that kind of… apprehension. About some one you love, I mean. I know only too well. Years ago, when I was married to Sebastian, and he went off alone to places that were in turmoil, in the midst of revolution or upheaval, I could barely sleep for worrying about him. I was always quite certain he was going to catch a bullet or get blown up. Or be kidnapped by rebel troops. I also worried that he would catch some deadly disease. He used to wander around Mrica quite unconcerned for himself, and my heart was very often in my mouth, the risks he took.” She smiled and shrugged lightly. “But nothing ever did happen to him. I used to tell him that he had a I guardian angel sitting on his shoulder.”

I nodded but made no comment. I hoped my daughter had a guard ian angel sitting on her shoulder when she was working in the laboratory .

Night and day I lived with the knowledge that if she made the slightest error she would endanger her life.

Vivienne Trent cut into my thoughts, when she said, “There’s been quite a lot written about hot viruses in the past few years, quite aside from the MDS virus, I mean. Isn’t one of the more deadly ones called Marburg virus?”

“Yes. It’s from the ffiovirus family I told you about.”

“Is she working on that?”

“Not anymore.”

“What is she working on then?”

“A virus called Ebola Zaire. It’s the deadliest, the worst. It kills in nine out of ten cases.”

“Oh my God, how ghastly.”

“It is.”

“What are the symptoms?”

“A lot of bleeding … terrible bleeding … hemorrhagic fe ver-” I let my voice trail off. The horror of it was always too much to contemplate.

Vivienne Trent seemed to be digesting my words. Then she looked across at me and said, “What prompted Dr. de Grenaille to become a virologist?”

“Ariel was always interested in viruses and in Africa, and one day these two interests merged.”

“So she always wanted to be a doctor, did she?”

“Not a doctor practicing medicine, but a scientist, and even when she was quite a young girl.”

“I can certainly understand her interest in Africa,” Mrs. ‘Trent said and confided, “I went there with Sebastian on our honeymoon, to Kenya, and I fell in love with the place. I often went back to other parts of Africa with him, on foundation business, and it never ceased to fascinate me. Does your daughter feel that way?”

“Yes, I think she does. My husband’s uncle had business interests and holdings in French Equatorial Africa, the French Congo, as it was known years ago. Ariel loved to sit and listen to his tales when he 210Barbara Taylor Bo,d visited us. In 1973, when she was about twelve, he invited us all to the French Congo. We started out in Brazzaville and then traveled all over Africa. She too fell in love with its beauty and its mystery, its sense of timelessness.”