Under My Skin (31 page)

What had been her words? “Killing him would be like killing a part of myself.” I thought back to her grief that morning after, in the apartment. Even with her skills not all of those tears had been crocodile ones. “No,” I said. “I didn’t think you did.”

“Tell me. Have you ever loved anyone like that?”

I shook my head.

“I didn’t think so. Just as well, really—it only brings you pain in the end. Well, I suppose you’d better call your young policeman now. You know, I don’t believe he’s even noticed your little scar. Or if he has, he finds it quite attractive.”

“You sure you don’t want to make the call yourself?” I said quietly.

She shook her head. “I don’t see how it could make that much difference, do you? Not in the long run. No, I think I’ll go and get myself ready. See if I can’t repair this ‘damage’ with a little makeup. I wouldn’t want to miss my Gloria Swanson moment, would I?”

And as she spoke, I realized how much I was going to miss her. All that cunning intelligence. God, what could she not have done, had she not been so in thrall to the image in the mirror?

I sat for a while after the door had closed. On the sideboard the Lauren Bacall picture winked at me. “So you’re a private detective. I thought they only existed in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping round hotel rooms.” The only woman who could really answer Philip Marlowe back. But it still didn’t make her a heroine. Just a more poignant kind of victim.

I don’t know when I began to realize that Olivia had been away too long. The bathroom light had activated a fan and it suddenly struck me that its noise might have conveniently
covered up any other. I stood up and went into the hall. The door was shut. I didn’t bother to knock.

Luckily the lock wasn’t a serious one. It gave at the first kick, the bolt splintering and tearing out of the wood. The tiled bathroom behind, lit by a harsh halo of bulbs around a makeup mirror, was empty. At the end stood another connecting door. This one I didn’t need to kick in. It was already open.

The bedroom beyond was airy and elegant, dominated by an enormous double bed. She was sitting in the middle of it, her back propped up on a bank of pillows and fancy cushions. They looked like they had taken some arranging, as did she, lying there, silk flowing over those perfect long legs, hands clutched to the left side of her chest as if she was cradling something to her.

As I burst through the door, her head snapped up to greet me and I registered a single wild second of terror in her eyes.

I was halfway to the bed when the call of her name was blown away by the sound of the gunshot. Her body jolted forward, then back, as if convulsed by a massive electric shock, arms thrown back onto the cover. And there, under her breast where the hands had been, was a shining dark hole the size of a fifty-pence piece, pumping blood like a newly burst pipe.

I grabbed one of the pillows and slammed it down onto her chest, stuffing it hard into the hole, holding it there as I screamed out her name. But even as I did, I knew it was useless. Whatever her faults, Olivia Marchant was a woman who knew about bodies—a woman who knew exactly where her own heart was.

I let go of the pillow and stood for a moment steadying myself, watching as the blood slowly leaked its way up through the soft folds, the contrast of the red and white spectacular and appalling. In the curl of her palm lay a
small but squatly efficient pistol, the kind rich women can buy without a permit if they know where to look. She must have hidden it well for the police not to have found it. At least she had had enough sense not to use it as the murder weapon, though it would have made for a kinder, swifter death than the one she’d reserved for her husband. And a prettier one. Trust Olivia to pick the more aesthetic way of blowing herself to oblivion.

I looked up at her face. In the profound stillness of death even the cheek seemed better now, softer, almost lovely again. Only the eyes were disturbed—that final terror frozen in their lidless stare. I did my client a last service and closed them. The skin was still warm. She’d make a greatlooking corpse. And as she would have known better than most, it was in Billy Wilder’s interest that Gloria Swanson should look particularly old in those closing shots of
Sunset Boulevard
.

I stood vigil over the body for a while longer, then turned and walked out, closing the door behind me. Back in the living room her perfect face stared out at me from a dozen pictures. I picked up the phone and dialed the number of a policeman I knew.

Well, every first date has to start somehow. To my surprise, now it was all over, I was quite looking forward to it.

Sarah Dunant has written eight novels, including
The Birth of Venus
and three Hannah Wolfe novels:
Birth Marks
;
Fatlands
, for which she received Britain’s prestigious Silver Dagger Award; and
Under My Skin
. She has worked widely in print, television, and radio. Now a full-time writer, she lives in London and Florence.