Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [164]
“Flo, I really don't care if you haven't slept in a week. What did your father look like?”
“He used to be handsome once,” she replied, and settled her back against the head-board in resignation, although I watched her closely to make sure she didn't fade into sleep again. “At least, that's what Mummy says, and the picture she has of him is kind of dreamy, in an old-fashioned kind of a way.”
“How tall was he?”
“Oh, yes, his height. Poor Daddy, he was so sensitive about it. Used to wear shoes to make him taller. Oh, thank God!” she exclaimed as the house-maid backed in with a tray of coffee. “This feels like one of those horrible dreams you keep trying to wake up from and it drags you back.”
“Just a little more and I'll let you go back to sleep,” I said ruthlessly. “What about a ring?”
“A ring?” she said uncertainly, her cup paused in front of her mouth.
“A pinkie ring with a stone.”
She took a gulp, gasped a little with the heat of it, then wheezed out, “How did you know that? He never used to, but when I saw him later, he had it. I always figured it meant he'd made it big after the divorce. Although it was a little flashy.”
“You mean, he didn't wear the ring when you were small and they were still married, but he did later on? When did you see him, later?”
Her face took on a look of childish shiftiness and she glanced at the door, where the maid had just gone out. “I didn't.”
“Flo, I know you saw him. When was it?”
“Mummy didn't like it.”
“I won't tell her. When?”
She let out a gusty breath. “Just every so often. After the fire, I didn't see him for a long time, and when he came back he sort of scared me, his face I mean. But then I could see that it was him, and he told me that he'd gotten it rescuing people, so it was all right, sort of. Sad, I mean, and not nice to look at, but he was so brave and that mattered. But not to Mummy.”
“Your mother wouldn't let you see him?”
“She didn't like it. They had a bad divorce, you know, and later on he kept asking her for money. But I didn't see why that should mean I couldn't see him. He was fun, you know?”
“Do you remember what years you saw him?”
“No.”
“Flo, please. Try.”
She screwed up her face again, thinking hard. “He was here for a couple of my birthdays—that's in September,” she added, “the twenty-fifth. He was here for my tenth, and I think my twelfth—yes, it was pretty much every other year.”
She was the same age as I, born in 1900. “And your fourteenth?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, he brought me a very pretty pearl necklace from Paris that year,” she said happily. “I told Mummy they were good fakes that a friend had gotten tired of and gave me, but they're real, and they were from him.”
I rubbed my face, suddenly tired. Flo's father, who had been my own father's close friend in his youth, whose crimes during the fire had driven the final wedge between them, had been here immediately before the accident.
“Tell me,” I said, “do you know a woman, she might have been an acquaintance of your father's, who is taller than he is by several inches, and younger, with brown hair she wears up on her head?”
As descriptions went, it did not go very far, Flo's quizzical expression seemed to say. I began to tell her it was all right, but she surprised me.
“Not a friend, but his sister used to have long brown hair she wore up.”
“Sister? The one who owns a night-club in Paris?”
“I don't know about that, but last I heard, she lived in Paris. She was actually his half-sister, that's what he told me, a lot younger than him. Didn't look a bit like him, and Daddy kind of flirted with her, which was a bit strange. Still, she was nice enough to me, sent me pretty things to wear. When Mummy didn't catch them and take them from me,” she said, and yawned. She added, “Although she must be some kind of old maid, to be so devoted to her half-brother. Hung on his every word.”
The “sister” sounded less and