The Laughter of Dead Kings

to Roxie Walker

R
ecently I discussed, with several mystery writer friends, the problem of what we sometimes call “the current now.” One of my series is set in real time; the characters age appropriately with each passing year and with each volume. The Vicky series, and those of many of my friends, don’t work that way. Vicky made her first appearance in 1973. She was not yet thirty. The most recent volume was published in 1994, more than twenty years later, but Vicky had aged only a few years. She’s still in her early thirties, although the world in which she lives has changed a great deal. The Cold War has ended, the horror in Iraq is under way, the Internet has its tentacles into everybody’s lives, and people go around with cell phones glued to their ears.

So how do we writers explain the inconsistencies and anachronisms? We don’t. We can’t. So please don’t bother writing to point them out to me, ignore them as I have, and place yourself in the “current now.” To quote my friend Margaret Maron, to whom I owe that phrase and other excellent advice, “Isn’t it fun being God in our separate universes, where we can command the sun to stand still, and it does?”

M
y singing doesn’t inspire thousands of fans to emit screams of delight, but I was a trifle hurt when my dog jumped up with a howl and streaked for the stairs. Usually he likes my singing. He’s the only one who does like my singing. Otherwise his hearing is pretty good.

John was coming down the stairs. He halted Caesar’s headlong rush with a peremptory order—something I’ve never succeeded in doing—and sauntered toward me.

I hadn’t seen him for two weeks. My toes went numb. He was wearing a blue shirt that matched his eyes and those of the Siamese cat draped over his shoulder. One of his hands supported Clara’s front end, his long fingers as elegantly shaped as the small seal-
brown paws they held. Clara had not cared much for John at first, but he had set out to win her feline heart (the alternative being bites and scratches) and he had succeeded, with the aid of frequent offerings of chicken. They looked sensational together. He looked sensational.

So I said grumpily, “Right on cue. Why can’t you come in the front door like normal people instead of climbing up to my bedroom window?”

“It brings back such fond memories.”

Memories of the time when Interpol and a variety of competing crooks had been looking for him and the art treasures he had made off with. He was now a respectable antiquities dealer, if I could believe him. Which I probably shouldn’t. Tellin’ me lies had been one of his favorite activities.

I picked up the grubby wad of white yarn and the crochet hook precariously attached to it, which I had dropped onto my lap, and pretended to study it. Playing it cool, so as not to be beguiled by the winsome smile and melting blue eyes. Damn him, he hadn’t showed up for two damned weeks. London is less than two hours from Munich by air. I should know, I’d made the trip often enough. Thanks to an indulgent boss I could get away from my job at the museum more easily than John could get away from his antiques business. Or so he claimed. Tellin’ me lies?

“So how’s business?” I inquired.

No answer. A thud and a loud Siamese complaint made me look up. Clara was on her feet—at HIS feet, glaring at him, and John was…not glaring…staring at me with a look of glazed disbelief. No, not at me. At the misshapen object I held.

“What is it?” he croaked.

“You needn’t be so rude,” I said defensively. “It’s a baby cap. I’m not very good at crochet, but I’ll figure it out eventually.”

John staggered to the nearest chair and collapsed into it. He was white as a sheet, a lot whiter than the mangled little cap, which had suffered from Clara’s occasional attempts to play with it.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” I demanded. “Bob—you know, my brother Bob—his new wife is expecting her first and I thought it would be a nice gesture if I…if I…”

He let out a long gasp of air, and then it hit me. Like a sock in the solar plexus.

“Aaah,” I said. “Aha. Sometimes I am so slow. Is that what you thought? That
is
what you thought! Not only that I was about to become a mummy but that I—wait a minute, it’s coming, I’ll get it eventually—that I had got myself pregnant in order to trap you into unholy wedlock. And the very idea made you sick! You low-down skunk! You son of a bitch! I’ll bet your mother has been hinting for months, ‘Watch out for that worthless trollop, she’ll try to—’”

“Vicky!” His voice is usually a mellifluous tenor, but he can out-shout me when he has to, and believe me, he had to. He jumped up and came toward me. I threw the baby cap, complete with crochet hook, at him. He ducked. The ball of yarn rolled off the couch and Clara went in pursuit. John grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Stop yelling and listen to me.”

“You did, didn’t you? Believe it.”

“Believe what? That you’d be dim enough to pull an antiquated stunt like that one? Never in my wildest fantasies. But you must admit my initial impression was justified by the evidence available to me at the time.”

“Stop talking like a lawyer. It wasn’t what you thought, it was your reaction. The very idea terrified you. You looked as if you were about to pass out.”

“Yes.”

I was gearing up for a loud, satisfying fight, but that quiet-voiced
confession took the wind out of my sails. The best I could come up with was a feeble “So you admit it.”

“I may be all the things you called me and more, but I’m not so complacent as to be blind to the consequences of my own misdeeds. Bloody hell, Vicky, I’m terrified all the time! Admittedly I’m one of the world’s most flagrant cowards, but I’m also afraid for you. There are a lot of people in the big bad world who hate my guts and who harbor grudges.” The words came spilling out, his face was flushed and his fingers bit into my skin. “When we agreed to be together, I tried to talk you out of it. I put you in danger simply by associating with you. But as you pointed out with considerable eloquence, you were an adult and it was your choice. You convinced me against my better judgment, and the few remaining shreds of my conscience. How do you suppose I felt, for one ghastly moment, when I thought there might be another hostage to fortune, a helpless, totally vulnerable, completely innocent potential victim of my various sins? The people I’m referring to wouldn’t feel the slightest compunction about using a child to get back at me—and you.”

I felt like a low-down skunk.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I blew up without stopping to think. There are a few people who hold grudges against me, too.”

“Quite a few.” He managed to smile.

“Well. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry. For…everything.”

I knew what he meant, and I didn’t dare go down that road, even in my own mind. I stood up, leaving him sitting with his hands limp in his lap, looking uncharacteristically helpless, and rescued the pitiful remnants of my attempt at domesticity from Clara. By the time I had untangled the yarn from under chairs and around legs of tables, John was at the cupboard mixing drinks. I didn’t
blame him. Tossing the pathetic wad of yarn into a wastebasket, I accepted the glass he handed me.

“I’m sorry for what I said about your mother.” At least I had run out of breath before I started calling her names. Jen and I would never be best friends, and in my not so humble opinion she was too possessive about her baby boy, but rudeness is rudeness, even when it’s true.

John shrugged. “She’s the reason I haven’t been in touch recently. No, it’s not what you think; I had to pop down to Cornwall and deal with a little emergency there. Someone broke into the house.”

“How terrible,” I exclaimed, with only a moderate amount of hypocrisy. I pitied the burglar who ran into Jen unless he was armed to the teeth.

“She wasn’t hurt, or even frightened. You know her.”

“Oh, yes.”

“She wasn’t aware a breakin had occurred until she took it into her head to do a spot of housecleaning, and ventured into the attic.”

My first, and thus far last, visit to the family homestead had been a well-meaning attempt on John’s part to get his mother used to me, or at least the idea of me. John had once told me: “You wouldn’t like her. She wouldn’t like you either.” But when I first met Jen, on what could be called neutral territory, I had found her mildly amusing and perfectly pleasant.

That was before she found out who I was—or rather, what I was, in relation to John.

When he suggested we spend a few days in Cornwall, giving Jen a chance to know me better, I thought, what the hell, why not give it a try? I did try, I really did. I even bought a dress. It was an inoffensive shade of green with a demure neckline and a skirt that reached to mid-calf. I put pink polish on my nails and bought a matching
lipstick. I had my hair done. I looked, as John was unwise enough to remark, like an ingénue in a forties musical.

Bear in mind, if you please, that I didn’t regard Jen as a threat. I had realized early on that John’s feelings about his mother were a mixture of exasperation and tolerant affection. He’d go his own sweet way no matter what she said or thought. What I hadn’t realized was that Jen refused to accept that.

They say Americans are suckers for antiquity. I suppose we are; we don’t have many houses that are over three hundred years old. This one had all the right stuff—gateposts with shapeless heraldic beasts on top, heavy wrought-iron gates, a winding drive overhung by gloomy trees, a circular carriage drive. The house itself was like a caricature of a Gothic novel’s cover: the original, rather elegant stone facade, now smeared with lichen and thick with ivy, had inappropriate towers on either end and, of all things, crenellations. I wondered somewhat hysterically if there was an Ornamental Hermit lurking in the grounds.

It had been raining and drizzling all day; clouds hung low and dark over the house and fog twined around the towers. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Jen had ordered up the weather. The front door opened as we approached and there she stood, like the evil housekeeper in one of those novels: robed all in black, leaning on a black, silver-headed cane. I felt pretty sure the cane was a prop; she had been brisk as a cricket during that Egyptian cruise, and there hadn’t been a single long black robe in her wardrobe.

We had tea in the Small Drawing Room (you could hear the capital letters when Jen pronounced the words). I had expected it to be served by an Aged Retainer (sorry about the capitals, they are contagious). I guess Jen couldn’t rake one up, but the maid wore an apron and a ruffly white cap pinned on top of her head. John sat there looking bland while Jen and I made conversation. I was so afraid of saying
the wrong thing I let her do most of the talking. It was all about the distinguished family tree and general worth of the Tregarth family. She summed it up by remarking, “There has never been a dishonest or dishonorable Tregarth.” I choked on my iced biscuit.

After tea Jen showed me round the entire place, making sure I realized that this wasn’t just a house, it was the Family Mansion, reeking with the sort of history and tradition a Colonial from the American corn belt could never appreciate. I knew what she was doing, and I didn’t appreciate it much, but as we paced along corridor after corridor and climbed stair after endless stair, my mounting annoyance had another cause. The place was an anachronism, a gigantic white elephant. I wouldn’t be in the business I’m in if I didn’t appreciate historical values, but one has to draw the line somewhere; in some cases the old has to make way for the new. This place was quaint but not unique, picturesque but useless for any practical purpose. It was costing John a small fortune to keep it from falling down around Jen’s ears. He had once remarked in a rare moment of pique that he’d have torn the house down and sold the land if it had not been for Jen.

“The storerooms are in the attic, if you remember,” John went on. “She got something of a shock when she saw what had been done—every box and chest opened, the contents strewn around. She rang up the local constable and got him out to inspect the wreckage. After she’d ranted at him for a while, he informed her there wasn’t much he could do. As far as she could tell nothing was missing—certainly nothing of any value, since nothing of value had been there. We don’t keep the family jewels in the attic.”

“I didn’t know you had any family jewels.”

“A metaphorical statement,” John said, looking shifty. “The point is that there was nothing worth stealing. And no useful clues. She couldn’t even be sure when the breakin occurred.”

“Still,” I said, getting interested, “it’s frightening to find out that you are vulnerable to any casual intruder. How did the non-thief get in?”

“My dear girl, you’ve seen the place; there are twenty doors and a hundred windows on the ground floor alone, and three separate sets of staircases. She’s a sound sleeper and her room is at the front of the house.”

“Doesn’t that suggest that the intruder knew the layout of the house? He wouldn’t go tramping past the door of her room.”

“Don’t get carried away, Sherlock. One can’t arrive at any sensible deductions from the evidence at hand. The most likely theory is that some local youth was dared by his friends to see whether he could get into the house and out again without being caught. Stupid, I know, but that’s youth for you. Jen is regarded as a mixture of lady of the manor and local witch. A challenge, in other words.”

He sipped his drink, and I said righteously, “That’s a very cavalier attitude for a dutiful son. She oughtn’t be there by herself, in that large isolated house.”

“I’ve tried to persuade her to move to London,” John said. “She won’t hear of it. Honestly, Vicky, she’s perfectly all right. We don’t breed serial killers in that part of the world, and any miserable sinner she might come across would be in more danger than she would. She takes her cane to bed with her. There’s a pound of lead under that silver head.”

I wandered to the window and looked out. Everything was gray—gray skies, gray streets, gray houses, little boxes all in a line, their flower beds and shrubs and other brave attempts at individuality dulled by the weather. I have to have a house and yard on account of my oversized Doberman, and this suburb, outside the city center of Munich, was the best I could afford. It was okay. I spend
my working hours surrounded by medieval and Renaissance art, I don’t need more of it at home.

The silence lengthened, broken only by the purring of Clara and the heavy breathing of Caesar. I said, without turning, “Something has happened, hasn’t it?”

“I told you—”

“Not Jen. Something else.”

He started to stand up and let out a yelp as Clara dug her claws into him. I took the empty glass from his hand and refilled it. Another sign, if I had needed one. As a rule it took him a lot longer to get through a drink.

“You overreacted,” I said. “Okay, so did I, but not for the same reason. You wouldn’t have gone into panic mode if you hadn’t been recently, and forcibly, reminded that you are, as you put it, of interest to several unpleasant persons. Who’s after you now? What have you done?”

“Nothing! Not a damned illegal thing. That’s the truth, believe it or not.”

I did believe it. Not because of the candid gaze of those cornflower-blue eyes—John could lie his way into heaven—but because of the note of indignation in his voice. Like that of a burglar who has been charged with breaking into a house when he has a perfect alibi because he was actually robbing a bank at the time.