The Corpse with the Silver Tongue (25 page)

Asking a question whose answer was probably perfectly obvious, I said, “Is that where Chuck lives? Right there?”

“Of course,” replied Tamsin, as though I were a complete idiot. To be fair, she had a point. It hadn't occurred to me that when Chuck had said he “lived upstairs,” he had meant it literally: his apartment was directly above the Townsends'.

“Oh, handy,” I said. “It must save a lot of phone calls when you can just speak to a neighbor like that.”

“Yes,” replied Tamsin, who like a greedy child had already set upon the scrambled eggs that Beni had prepared. “He and Ally used to chatter like that for ages, until the mean old woman in the apartment between us complained. She said she didn't want to know all our comings and goings and we should be more thoughtful about who we disturbed out here. She even had a go at Ally when he was hosing down those boxes of snails—she said it was unhealthy for him to put them underneath her window. Silly woman! I mean, it's not like she even speaks much English, so I don't know what she had to complain about.” Tamsin seemed unable to comprehend that having to hear people talk loudly to each other could be annoying in whatever language they might choose to communicate.

“Well, maybe she saw it as a bit of an imposition on her peace and quiet,” I suggested.

“I don't see how—she's old and deaf, like half the people who live here,” was Tamsin's sulky reply. She sighed through a mouthful of eggs. “I wish there were more young people living here like me. We could have lovely parties. I like parties.”

Chuck rang the doorbell and Beni let him in. Chuck popped on his sunglasses and handed the sticks of bread to Beni as he walked out to greet Tamsin and me, and Beni let him take a seat before presenting him with his plate.

“
Bon appétit
,” said Chuck in his best French accent as he picked up a fork, and we all dug in. It was a quick meal to eat, but it hit the spot: scrambled eggs, cheeses, fresh bread . . . all simple, delicious, and sort of comforting.

“You make great eggs,” I told Beni when my plate looked as though it had already been through the dishwasher.

“And you enjoy your food with real enthusiasm,” replied Beni, smiling. I took it as a compliment.

“You eat very fast,” observed Tamsin, who, despite her quick start, was now just picking at the middle of a piece of bread, rolling it into little balls and piling them along the side of her plate. I felt as though she was accusing me of some terrible crime.

Beni leapt to my defense. “Cait eats at a normal pace, Tamsin. You are very slow.”

“It sure is a nice day,” commented Chuck, finally entering the conversation on a neutral note. We all agreed that the day was wonderful.

“I didn't realize that you live so close—vertically speaking, Chuck,” I said.

“Yes, it's a great view from up there, and with my desk at the window it's almost as though I'm outside all day. Great place to work.” He nodded and smiled. “Very inspiring.”

“Have you read any of Chuck's books?” asked Beni.

Oh dear—the answer was “yes,” but I hadn't enjoyed them. They weren't my sort of thing, really. I like a good, old-fashioned murder-mystery, rather than those complicated spy books, where everyone's running around shooting at people and blowing things up, but not knowing who to trust.
Clue: the answer is always “no one.”

“Yes, I have,” I answered honestly enough. “I read a couple when I was on holiday a while back.” It had been years earlier and I couldn't find anything else on the paperback-swap shelves in the hotel. “They're really interesting—” confusing? “and full of action—” for the boys who read them, “and gosh, there are some untrustworthy people in them. How do you come up with your stories and your characters, Chuck? It must take forever!” I thought I'd navigated the treacherous waters pretty well—
and
I'd managed to hit the ball into Chuck's court.

Chuck rocked back in his chair and said, “Oh, I don't know—it's a mixture of research and just thinking hard about things, really. Sometimes I'll read something, a fact maybe, that sets me off.”

“Was that what happened with those guns in the baskets in
The Democratic Despot
?” I asked, appearing interested.

Chuck beamed. “Oh, you've read that one. That's the one they've just made into a movie, you know?”

I didn't, but it made sense. The book had one main character, two supplementary ones, and just one location—they could have saved up most of the budget for all the explosions at the end.

“It's been a great experience adapting it for the screen. Quite the learning curve.” He seemed excited. “And, yes, to answer your question, the idea of putting guns in a basket and lowering and raising them was something that really happened during the Second World War in several locations where someone was held prisoner high up in a building, and they were able to get help from outside. Well spotted!”

He seemed genuinely delighted that I'd remembered the detail.
Little did he know!
I thought I'd take one more opportunity to please the man who, frankly, other than the conversation at the party, I'd hardly got to know at all, so I added, “What about that device in
The Fledgling Fugitive
? You know, where Dana, the female spy, pours poison down a wire into Dimitri's ear while he's sleeping? Did you get that idea from Shakespeare?”

“Hey—she's good!” laughed Chuck. “Boy, you sure know your English literature! What's with the names of my characters? How'd you remember them so clearly?”

“She's weird,” replied Tamsin, still sulking and being bitchy.

I shot Tamsin what I hoped was a withering look, but I let it go. “Oh, I read it quite recently,” I lied, “and you write your characters so well, I guess they just stuck. As for the poison, well, I was lucky enough to get to ‘do'
Hamlet
in school, so I remember that Claudius poured poison into old King Hamlet's ear . . . And, of course, it was a common theme for Shakespeare—he liked the idea of ear-poisoning, either with actual poison, or with words, as in
Othello
.” I realized I was letting this all get away from me a bit, but it had started me thinking.

“Well, you say very kind things, Cait,” continued Chuck, “and I'm sure pleased to meet a fan. Hey, how'd you like me to sign some books for you? I have a bunch of them upstairs.”

Well, what could I say?

“Oh Chuck, you're too kind, thank you!” I wondered how much they'd weigh and if they'd take my suitcase over the limit—assuming I ever managed to get on an airplane to fly home at all, that is.

“Why don't we do it now? You're finished here, right?” He was all action, like his books.

I'd been planning on enjoying a cigarette, but I had to agree, and pushed myself out of my chair.

“I will make coffee while you are gone,” said Beni, also rising because, after all, a lady was leaving the table.

I glanced back at him as Chuck led the way, “That would be great,” I called. Meaning it. I dutifully followed Chuck past the elevator to the stairs.

“It's not far,” he said, then bounded up the stone steps two at a time, his slim frame making easy work of the climb. I labored up behind him. Every time I climb stairs I promise myself I'll stop smoking, and lose weight, and get more exercise, and just generally be a much better person . . . Then I get to the top, recover, and throw all my promises out of the window. I finally met Chuck outside his apartment, where he'd left his front door open behind him. As I entered I could see that the floor plan of his home was pretty much exactly the same as the Townsends', except that, of course, he didn't have the balcony. His apartment was much more masculine in its furnishings and its atmosphere. Lots of bookshelves lined the walls between the tall windows, as one might have expected. Most of the books, I noted quickly, were about the Second World War, and the wood of his furniture matched the wood of the floor, making it almost disappear. The room looked quite spartan, without much adornment upon the walls except several frames filled with wartime German medals. There was one jarring note, however. In a corner there was a strange contraption that looked like an orange plastic fishing rod, broken into in sections, but without the reel attachment. I couldn't begin to imagine what it was, so I asked.

“What's that?” I pointed at the plastic tubes.

Chuck looked in the direction I was indicating and smiled. “Ah, one of the ‘research' parts of my work. It might feature in my next book. Or maybe not . . . I'm not quite sure yet.”

Ah well, I wouldn't hold my breath!

As he had mentioned, Chuck's desk was beside the window which overlooked the balcony below. He sat down at it, pulled a few volumes off the shelves beside him, carefully removed the gold cap from a beautiful fountain pen and started to write inside their covers. He was giving me hardbacks—even heavier!

“Is there anything special you'd like me to write? It's K-A-T-E, right?”

I shook my head. “No, it's C-A-I-T. It's short for Caitlin. I always use Cait. Please, write what you think is appropriate . . . but maybe don't mention the murders. I might want to forget them!” I smiled. I'm sure that irony was playing about my lips somewhere.

“Is that a Welsh name?” he asked politely. “I remember you saying you were Welsh, right?”

“Yes, I am, but the name's more Gaelic than Welsh. My mum liked it. It means ‘pure,' the same as ‘Catherine,' which was a very popular name when I was born. She wanted something a bit different, so ‘Caitlin' it was.”

“Wasn't Dylan Thomas's wife named Caitlin? He was from the same place as you, right? Swansea?” Chuck asked.

I was impressed. He'd obviously been paying attention to our conversation at dinner.

“Yes, he was from Swansea, and his wife's name was Caitlin. I don't think she lived up to the meaning if it,” and I laughed.

“And do
you
, Cait? Are
you
‘pure'? Or are you something different—something you pretend not to be?”

What
very
strange questions, and the way Chuck asked them gave me the creeps. There was something menacing in his voice and his eyes. He smiled quickly, as if he was trying to imply that he was being cheeky. I'd read him quicker than he'd been able to change his expression, though, and cheeky wasn't what he was being. Not at all. I decided to play along.

“Oh, Chuck,” I patted him as he resumed writing, “you
are
naughty! Of
course
I'm pure. As the driven snow.” I laughed—probably too operatically.

“Hey,” I could hear Beni, below us, “don't have too much fun up there! I am feeling left out. Besides, the coffee is almost ready.”

I walked around behind Chuck and peered out of the window, to see Beni about thirty feet below me. I spoke in my normal voice when I replied, “We'll be right down.”

Beni also used his normal voice to reply, “Very good,” and he disappeared back into the Townsends' kitchen. It was interesting that Chuck could have communicated so easily with anyone on the balcony below.

“Beni said that the coffee's ready,” I said, turning to Chuck.

“Yeah, I heard him,” replied Chuck casually, finishing his final signature with a flourish, then passing three fat books to me. I looked inside them, one at a time. They were all signed and dated, but beside his signature he'd written three different notes: one said “To Cait . . . a very clever woman”; the second read “To Cait—I've enjoyed our time together”; the third simply said “To Cait—a true fan.” I felt bad about that one, and I could feel myself blush. Luckily, Chuck misinterpreted my reaction. He reached up and put his arm around my waist and said, “Don't blush, Cait, it's true, you really
are
a clever woman.”

I laughed, nervously no doubt, as I slid myself from his embrace and moved toward the door, which was still open. “We'd better get back down,” I called, trying to get away as quickly as I could. I looked back to see Chuck carefully stowing his fountain pen back in its proper place. I held the door open, waiting for him. A woman in her sixties came down the stairs ahead of me, walking past Chuck's front door before turning toward the next flight down. She looked at me with some curiosity, smiled politely, and nodded a greeting, then caught sight of Chuck inside his apartment and her face brightened.

“
Ah, Monsieur Damcott, une femme! Quelle surprise agréable! Bonne journée!
” She waved at him cheerily.

Chuck waved back as he walked toward me and replied, “Ah, Madame Blanche—
bonjour
to you too!” As he locked his door he whispered to me, “I don't know why she always talks to me in French like that—she has a very strong accent—she knows I don't speak French very well!”

Ah, but I caught it, and I bet you have no idea she just said that it makes a nice change to see you with a woman!
I thought, but I decided to keep that to myself and make my way back to Beni . . . and the coffee. As I walked down the stairs I wondered about Chuck and the comment his neighbor had made. Was he gay? He certainly gave off an aura of hiding something about himself. Maybe that was it. Luckily there's not the stigma attached to homosexuality that there used to be—if it even
had
existed that way in literary circles at any time. I wondered how a gay spy novelist would fare, given the demographic of his target market. If his upstairs neighbor had formed an impression about his possible sexuality, then what about his downstairs neighbor? Interesting. Boy, sometimes you can learn a lot in a short time!

Back at Tamsin's front door, Beni let us in, and we all trooped to the balcony for coffee. I couldn't help noting that Beni was a natural host, whereas Tamsin, our
real
hostess, didn't seem to give a hoot if we lived or died.