Lovers and Liars Trilogy (87 page)

There was a silence. Gini watched him. He had been speaking clearly and concisely, in the tone of voice a man might use when dictating a business letter. Looking at him, she realized that she felt as cold, and as exact as he evidently did. There had been, she now understood, one central question behind this whole investigation: What was the true nature of John Hawthorne? The answer to that question lay in the man now seated opposite. She looked down at the black blanket covering his paralyzed legs.

“I understand,” she said, “and I don’t doubt you for a moment. How long do you expect to live?”

That amused him. He laughed. “Long enough, Ms. Hunter. Long enough, I assure you. And don’t imagine you’d find safety after my death. I shall operate very well from beyond the grave, Ms. Hunter. My son John will see to that.”

He pressed the switch on the arm of his chair. There was a low hiss, a low whine; he began to move forward. Gini stepped in front of his chair. He stopped.

“Ms. Hunter,” he said. “This interview is over. Get out of my way.”

“This interview isn’t over,” Gini replied. “There are things I want to know. Things you are going to tell me.”

That delayed him. He gave her a glance that was suddenly filled with both malice and contempt, and the merest trace of admiration. He glanced over his shoulder toward the fireplace and the mirror above it. He looked back at her, then at the door.

“My cat,” Gini said.

There was a silence. He frowned, and for just one second she thought he seemed confused.

“That is what you want to know?”

“Yes, I want to know which of your brave hit men tortured and killed my cat?”

“I have three men here.” He shrugged. “Any one of them. Frank Romero will have issued the instructions. But I wouldn’t advise cross-examining him. His temper…his tastes—you understand?”

“All right. Then, let’s go on. What really happened in Vietnam?”

“Not what McMullen claims. The account John and your father gave you is the true one.” He paused. He gave her an amused, considering look. “
Those
were the questions uppermost in your mind? I’m surprised.”

Once again he looked her up and down. He gave a small, supercilious smile. When she did not speak immediately, his smile broadened. “Come now, Ms. Hunter. Something’s bothering you—which little detail do you need me to explain?”

“I want to know who the man was in that hotel room with the call girl and with Lise,” Gini began. Hawthorne gave a bark of laughter.

“Of course. I might have known. These are a woman’s questions, not a reporter’s, Ms. Hunter, aren’t they? You’re a whole lot more fascinated by my son than you’re admitting to yourself—you do realize that?”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, but I think it is. By my reckoning, Ms. Hunter, John gave up too quickly the other night in your apartment. You’re easier than you look. Play you the right way, and John could have you anytime he chose.”

“Who was the man with Lise and that call girl?” Gini repeated steadily. Hawthorne shot her another amused glance.

“I did warn you, Ms. Hunter. It was my son,” he said dryly.

Gini hesitated. It was the answer she had been expecting, but it disappointed her all the same. She would have liked to believe that John Hawthorne was above such sordid encounters. She gave a small shrug and held his father’s gaze.

“In that case,” she said quietly, “there’s only one more question I want to ask. In those pictures you sent McMullen, in the third of them, the December shot…” She hesitated, and remembering the details of that photograph, felt herself blush. S. S. Hawthorne noted this.

“Yes, Ms. Hunter?” he prompted.

“In the December photograph, Lise is looking out of frame. There was someone else in the room with her and that man. Someone who watched her go through that whole performance…”

“Indeed. Lise liked to have an audience, I understand. So, yes, there was someone with her, that December, that November, that October—and on similar occasions as well.”

“Who was it?” Gini said sharply, and at once regretted the tension she betrayed.

S. S. Hawthorne lowered his eyes; the complacent smile still remained. “Oh, Ms. Hunter,” he said in a half-playful, half-reproachful tone. “I think you already know the answer to that question.”

He looked down at the black blanket across his lap, and adjusted it. The door was opening. In the doorway stood John Hawthorne. He looked from his father to Gini in silence. S. S. Hawthorne gave her one last amused malicious glance, then maneuvered his chair past her to the door. There, he looked back at Gini over his shoulder.

“Perhaps you’re not quite so stupid as I thought, Ms. Hunter,” he said. “That question gets to the heart of the matter. As I say, I think you know the answer already. But if you want confirmation, don’t turn to me. Ask someone you like and admire rather more, Ms. Hunter. Ask my son.”

J
OHN HAWTHORNE CLOSED THE
door behind his father. He leaned against it and stood silently, looking at Gini. He moved across the room and drew back the curtains, looking out to the darkness beyond.

“What time is it?” Gini said.

“Eight. Nine. Between the two. Morning—and still not dawn.”

He turned back to face her then, and they looked in silence at each other. It was the first time she had ever seen him informally dressed, Gini realized. He was wearing a dark high-neck sweater and black corduroy pants, the kind of clothes Pascal might have worn. Beyond that, the alteration in him was profound. He emanated none of the energy she associated with him. His face was pale and drawn with fatigue. There was no verve or vitality. He looked like a man who had spent nights without sleep, a man who had moved into some dead zone on the other side of despair.

“How long were you speaking to my father?” he asked.

“A long time. And he did most of the speaking.”

“I see.”

“Were you listening to us? Or watching us?”

Gini gestured toward the mirror as she said this. Hawthorne glanced at the glass, then frowned. Her question seemed neither to surprise nor to annoy him.

“No, I wasn’t.” He hesitated. “I hadn’t realized that my father planned to do this.”

She saw him look at the tape recorder, and the pile of tapes. He moved across to the table, picked up the envelope of photographs, drew out the bundle with its covering letter, glanced at it, then replaced it in the envelope. He tossed it back on the table, as if it did not concern him at all, then, moving slowly, crossed the room. He came to a halt a few feet in front of her. She saw him look at her hair, and her scratched face. He took her right hand in his and examined the cuts gently, turning her hand this way and that. He released her hand and looked at her.

“I want to say two things first,” he began in a quiet voice. “This evening, when you believed me to be in some danger, you tried to warn me. I’m grateful for that. Under the circumstances, it was more than I had any right to expect. And second—” He paused and looked wearily around the room, then back at her. “You may well not believe me—but I am sorry, truly sorry, that you became involved in this.” He gave a sigh. “I’m sorry about a great many things—I should have dealt with this whole situation my way, and much sooner. Lise should have been hospitalized. I should not have held back. I know there’s no point in apologizing, but I would like you to understand. This has come very close to destroying me. These past few weeks, I came very close to wanting to die, closer than I have for many, many years. There seemed no point—no reason—in living like this.”

He moved away from her, then turned back. “I do still want to talk to you. Will you let me do that?”

“Yes,” Gini said. She glanced over her shoulder at the mirror. “But I don’t like this room.”

Hawthorne gave a half-smile. He picked up her bag and her coat. “We’ll go to my study. It’s safe, clean—if anywhere is. There’s something I want to show you in any case.”

He held the door for her, and then led the way along a corridor. In the distance, Gini could hear the sound of voices. The corridor curved toward the front of the house, and at a window there, overlooking the front drive, Hawthorne paused, gestured to her to join him, and looked out.

“The ambulances are arriving,” he said.

Gini looked down. Two white unidentified ambulances were parked in the driveway, she saw. As she looked out, their doors opened. Footsteps crunched on the gravel below.

“That’s partly why I couldn’t join you earlier,” Hawthorne said. “I had to finalize the arrangements for Lise. She’ll be taken to the sanitarium this morning. It’s over. It can’t go on. Now it’s just a matter of formalities. I have to sign the commitment papers, which I’ll do later today, once she’s been admitted and examined. The doctors say I should be able to do that around noon. And then it will be finished.” He paused and glanced at her. “Maybe then I’ll feel relief.”

He went to take her arm, then drew back. “I’m sorry. It’s just through here.” He opened a door. “I’m probably not thinking too clearly, Gini. You must forgive me. I’ve had Lise to deal with, and the security people—McMullen still hasn’t been found…I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept. Neither have you, I imagine. Come and sit down. Would you like coffee? Some sandwiches? A drink?”

The room into which he led her was almost monastically plain. It had both an outer and an inner door, both of which he closed. The window blinds were raised, and the windows, Gini saw, overlooked the front gardens, the park ring road, and the mosque.

She had refused his offer of a drink. While he moved away to pour one for himself, Gini stood by this window. She looked intently at the mosque, and tried to see the road that ran between it and this house, but her view was obscured. She frowned: Would Pascal have received her message, and would he have understood it, if he had? She turned back to look at Hawthorne.

“Is Pascal safe?” she asked.

Hawthorne met her eyes. “Oh, yes. Neither you nor anyone who matters to you will be harmed. I give you my word on that.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. My father probably does. You should have asked him.” He moved across to a desk at the far end of the room. “However”—he picked up something—“I do know where he was earlier—as you must understand by now. I let him take his pictures, Gini. In fact, I made it as easy for him as I could. Obviously, our opinions of Lamartine differ. I felt—put it this way—I felt I owed him that. I’m even with him now. Look.” He moved toward her, and Gini saw that in his hands he was holding a sheaf of photographic prints. “Lamartine won’t be needing these,” he continued in an even voice, a voice in which there was now a detectable edge. “He cannot use them. At around one o’clock this morning he left that house you’d rented. He left his camera equipment behind, and also his film. That was an unexpected bonus, from my point of view. I had intended to explain to you what he had done. But now I don’t need to. You can see for yourself.”

He handed her the photographs, which were in black and white, still sticky from the developing process. Gini looked at a woman with Hawthorne who was almost herself; she looked at Lise with blond hair and with black. She handed the pictures back.

“Do you understand?” Hawthorne was watching her closely.

“No. Not entirely. I don’t.”

“Lise likes role-playing. Particularly in the context of sex.” He turned away and tossed the pictures back on his desk. “In fact, Lise finds sex very difficult
unless
some role-playing is involved. She has a great many scenarios, performing fellatio on rough-trade hired help is only one of them. She also likes to believe that she can reawaken my interest in her as a woman—and her efforts to achieve that are sad. They involve her becoming someone else—someone she believes I find more attractive than I find her. Last December, when she was trying to substantiate that foolish story McMullen fed your newspaper, it was a blond-haired call girl—you’ve interviewed her, I think?”

“Yes. I have.”

“The girl left me stone cold. I imagine Lise realized that.” He gave her a cool glance. “So, this month, when she was becoming desperate, when she realized that she was finally going to have to provide you and Lamartine with some actual evidence, she decided that the best way to make sure I kept an appointment with a hired blonde was to play the woman herself. I know, I know…” He gave a quick gesture of the hand. “It couldn’t possibly have worked. But Lise knows nothing of modern camera techniques, and she was not expecting to go into a room with open shutters in full light. She was probably expecting that some quick hazy shots of a blond-haired woman on a doorstep with me would suffice. Once she was actually in the room with me—well, Lise is not good at controlling her own behavior, especially in that situation.” He looked off into the middle distance. “In one sense, as I expect my father will have explained, that part of Lise’s schemes was not of major importance in any case. If she could discredit me, well and good—it was less important than insuring that McMullen had the time and the opportunity to kill me, widowhood being infinitely preferable to annulment or divorce.”

He looked back at Gini, and his gaze became intent. “But apart from that, Lise had become very obsessed by you—had you not realized that?”

“No, I hadn’t.” Gini looked at him in surprise. “Why was that?”

“Because her instincts are acute.” He turned away. “Lise and I have known each other since childhood. We’ve been married ten years. She is attuned to me. She watched you with me very carefully, at Mary’s party. She knew at once what I felt.”

Gini stared at him. “Are you telling me that’s what provoked the scenes with her the next day—and the ones Mary witnessed?”

“That—and my decision to send my sons home. Yes.”

“But that’s crazy! It was a party, we were simply talking, that’s all.”

His mouth tightened. He turned away. “Perhaps that was how you saw it. It was not my reaction and Lise knew that. So, after a few days of hysterics, she set about removing the threat. She did that by
becoming
you, you understand? She copied your hair, talked to Mary, acquired the same dress—” He broke off. His voice hardened. “In short, I had you by proxy tonight. And if you want to know the truth, look at Lamartine’s photographs. There was a short while, five minutes maybe, when the illusion nearly worked for me. I thought, if I can’t have the real thing, maybe a copy will suffice.”