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“Which one do you think it is, Dad?” Bobby asked again.

“Don’t, Bobby,” said his mother.

“I reckon it’s Schiller,” said Sam, gnawing at a spare rib. “I bet he was a Nazi. He looks like a Nazi.”

“Hush up, Sam! Leave the subject alone,” said Eliza.

“Pay attention to your mother, boys. I’ve had enough,” the Prof said, his plate hardly touched.

Conversation ceased as the boys ate more spare ribs, crunched through crusty bread, and eyed their father speculatively.

“Aw, gee, Dad, please,
please
tell us who you reckon it is,” Bobby cajoled.

“Schiller’s the killer! Schiller’s the killer!” sang Sam. “Achtung! Sieg heil! Ich habe ein tiger in mein tank!”

Robert Mordent Smith put both hands on the table and lifted himself to his feet, then pointed to a vacant space in the big room. Bobby gulped, Sam whimpered, but both children got up and went to where their father had pointed, rolling their pants up to their knees. Smith took a long switch with a shredded end from its traditional position on the sideboard, walked across to the boys, and swung the implement at Bobby’s calf. He always hit Bobby first because Sam was so terrified of the switch that having to watch Bobby doubled his own punishment. The first cut raised red welts, but five more followed while Bobby remained still, manfully silent; Sam was bawling already. Six more cuts on Bobby’s other calf and it was Sam’s turn for six on each calf, laid on as hard and viciously as Bobby’s despite the screams. Sam was a coward in his father’s opinion. A
girl.

“Go to bed and think of the pleasures in being alive. Not all of us are that lucky, remember? I’ll have no more of this pestering, hear me?”

“Sam maybe,” Eliza said when the boys had gone, “he’s just twelve. But you shouldn’t take a switch to a fourteen-year-old, Bob. He’s bigger than you already. One day he’ll turn on you.”

For answer, Smith went to the basement door, the keys to its police locks in his hand.

“And there’s no need for this obsessive locking up!” Eliza called from the dining room as he disappeared. “What if something happened and I needed you in a hurry?”

“Holler!”

“Oh, sure,” she muttered, starting to carry the remains of dinner to the kitchen. “You wouldn’t hear over the racket. And mark my words, Bob Smith, one day our boys will turn on you.”

“Appropriate considering our menu, but is the gossip at the Hug really that bad, Charles? After all, no one
knows.”

“I agree that no one
knows
whether the body parts went to the incinerator, but speculation is rife.” He tittered. “The main object of gossip is Kurt Schiller, who blubbered all over me — pah! An ornamental Teuton, a furtive fumbler — I had to bite my tongue.”

“That smells divine,” Claire said, turning to face him with a smile. “We haven’t had a beef daube in God knows when.”

“But first, shrimps in garlic butter,” said Charles. “Have you finished?”

“Last one being deveined now. Perfect music for a perfect meal. Saint-Saëns is so
lush.
Shall I melt the butter, or will you? The garlic’s crushed and ready to go. That saucer there.”

“I’ll do it while you set the table,” Charles said, pushing a block of butter into his pan, the shrimps ready for their brief immersion the moment the butter boiled and the garlic was brown. “Lemon! Did you forget the lemon juice?”

“Honestly, Charles, are you blind? Right beside you.”

Every time Claire spoke in her husky voice the big dog lying with its chin on its paws in an out-of-the-way corner would lift its head, thump the floor with its tail, its lumpy blond brows rising and falling expressively in its gentle black face like an accompaniment to the music of Claire speaking.

The shrimps in Charles’s capable hands, the table set, Claire moved to the battered, stained marble counter and picked up a large bowl of canned dog food. “Here, Biddy my love, dinner for you too,” she said, crossing the room to where the dog lay and putting the bowl down just beyond its front paws. On its feet in a trice, Biddy gulped at the food hungrily. “It’s the labrador in you makes you greedy,” said Claire. “A pity the shepherd can’t tone you down. Pleasures,” she went on with a purr in her voice, “are infinitely sweeter when taken slowly.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Charles. “Let’s take an hour at least to get through our meal.”

The two Ponsonbys sat down one on either side of the wooden slab end of the table to eat, a leisurely process that was only interrupted when the LP record on the turntable needed replacing. Tonight was Saint-Saëns, but tomorrow might be Mozart or Satie, depending on the dinner menu. To choose the right music was as important as the right wine.

“I presume you’re going to the Bosch exhibition, Charles?”

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away. I can’t wait to see his actual paintings! No matter how good the color prints in a book are, they can’t compare to the originals. So macabre, so full of what I don’t know is conscious or unconscious humor. Somehow I can never get inside Bosch’s
mind!
Was he schizophrenic? Did he have a source of magic mushrooms? Or was it just the way he’d been brought up to see not only his world, but the next? They thought of life and death, reward and punishment, differently than we do today, of that I’m certain. His demons
ooze
glee while they subject their hapless human victims to torture.” He chortled. “I mean, no one in Hell is supposed to be happy. Oh, Claire, Bosch is a genuine genius! His work, his work —!”

“So you keep telling me,” she said rather dryly.

Biddy the dog bustled over to put its head in Claire’s lap. Her long, thin hands pulled at its ears rhythmically until its eyes closed and it groaned in bliss.

“We’ll have a Bosch menu to celebrate when you get back,” Claire said with a laugh in her voice. “Guacamole with plenty of chili, tandoori chicken, devil’s food cake…Shostakovitch and Stravinsky, some Moussorgsky thrown in…An old chambertin…”

“Speaking of music, the record’s stuck in a groove. Fix the daube, will you?” he asked, moving to the never-used dining room.

Claire walked around the kitchen efficiently while Charles, now in his chair, watched her. First she took the tiny potatoes off the Aga hotplate, strained them in the sink, patted a dab of butter over them in their bowl, then carried the bowl to the table. The daube she divided into two pieces which she placed on two old Spode plates and put one between each set of knife and fork. Last to come was a bowl of blanched green beans. Not one container or plate clinked accidentally against another; Claire Ponsonby laid everything on the table exactly. While the dog, knowing itself unneeded in the kitchen, went back to its square of rug and put its chin on its paws again.

“What do you intend to do tomorrow?” Charles asked when the daube had been replaced by treacly black demitasse espresso and both of them were savoring the smell-taste of mild cigars.

“Take Biddy for a long walk in the morning. Then Biddy and I are going to hear that talk on subatomic particles — it’s in the Susskind lecture theater. I’ve booked a taxi there and back.”

“It should not be necessary to book a taxi!” Charles snapped, watery eyes gone dry with anger. “Those unfeeling cretins who drive taxis ought to know the difference between a guide dog and any other dog! A guide dog, piss in a taxi? Rubbish!”

She reached out, put her hand on his unerringly; no groping, no slipping. “It’s no trouble to book one,” she said pacifically.

“Ginger it up a tad, dear.”

He tasted the result suspiciously and reared back in horror. “It’s sweet!” he squeaked.
“Sweet!”

“Oh, darling, a tiny bit of sugar won’t cause another heart attack!” she cried, striking her hands together in exasperation. “You’re the doctor, I’m only a humble R.N. of the old-fashioned, non-degreed kind, but even nurses know that sugar is the ultimate fuel! I mean, everything you eat that isn’t built into new tissue is turned into glucose for right now or glycogen for later. You are killing yourself with
un
kindness, Addison! A twenty-year-old football star doesn’t train as hard.”

“Thanks for the lecture,” he said bitingly, ostentatiously scraped the cranberry sauce off his nut loaf, then piled his big plate high with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, celery and capsicum. No dressing, even vinaigrette.

“I had my weekly talk with Roberta and Robina this morning,” she said brightly, terrified that he would notice that her loaf was meat loaf from the deli, and that creamy Italian dressing lurked under her own modest salad.

“Did Roberta get accepted into neurosurgery?” he asked, only slightly interested.

Robin’s face fell. “No, dear, they rejected her, she says because she’s a woman.”

“And rightly so. You need a man’s stamina for neurosurgery.”

No point in going there; Robin changed the subject. “But,” she said chirpily, “Robina’s husband got a big promotion. They can buy that house they love in Westchester.”

“Good for what’s his name,” he said absently; his work was calling to him from the top of the tower.

“Oh, Addison, he’s your son-in-law! Callum Christie is his name.” She sighed, tried once more. “This afternoon I saw a rerun of
Quo Vadis
— goodness, didn’t they give the poor Christians a hard time? Lions dragging human arms around — brr!”

“I know scads of Christians I’d happily throw to the lions. Rob you blind six days of the week, then go to church on Sunday and fix it up with God. Pah! I’m proud to stand by my sins, no matter how awful they are,” he said through his teeth.

She giggled. “Oh, Addison, honestly! You do talk nonsense!”

The salad had gone; Addison Forbes put down his knife and fork and wondered for the millionth time why he had ever married an empty-headed nurse halfway through medical school. Though he knew the answer, just didn’t care to admit it; he hadn’t had the money to finish, she was crazy about him, and a nurse’s income was just enough. Naturally he had planned to get through his residency before contemplating a family, but the fool woman fell pregnant before he graduated. So there he was, battling with an internship and twin daughters she had insisted on naming Roberta and Robina. Despite their homozygousness, Roberta had inherited his medical bent, whereas Robina the airhead had become a successful teenaged model before marrying an up-and-coming stockbroker.

His repugnance for his wife hadn’t dissipated with the years; rather, it had grown until he could hardly stand the sight of her, and had private fantasies of killing her an inch at a time.

“You would do better, Robin,” he said as he rose from the table, “to enroll in some degree program at West Holloman State College instead of scoffing popcorn in a movie theater. Or you could throw pots, which I’m told is what middle-aged women with no talent do. You couldn’t take a refresher course in nursing, you’d never manage the math. Now that our daughters have left the safety of your maternal river for a life in the ocean, your river has turned into a stagnant pond.”

The same ending to the same meal; Addison stalked off up the spiral stairs to his padlocked eyrie while Robin shrilled after him.

“I’d sooner be dead than run a vacuum over your stupid eyrie, so leave the door open, for God’s sake!”

His voice floated back. “You’re nosy, my dear. No, thanks.”

Mopping at her eyes with a tissue, Robin mixed the creamy Italian through her salad and flooded her meat loaf with cranberry sauce. Then she jumped up, ran to the refrigerator and unearthed a container of potato salad she’d hidden behind the cans of Tab. It wasn’t fair that Addison visited his pitiless regimen on her, but she knew exactly why he did: he was petrified of falling off his wagon if he saw
real
food.