Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [38]
I did not need John’s sidelong smirk to tell me that the weather had put another spoke in my wheel. There would be no telephone call to the police tonight. I hadn’t expected I would get that far in one evening; older people are hard to convert to a new point of view, especially as one as hard to swallow as the tale I meant to tell. I’d have a better chance of persuading Gus of the danger with John to back me up; that expert and congenital liar undoubtedly had concocted a modified version of the facts that would convince Saint Peter, while leaving ‘Sir’ John in line for a halo.
As soon as he decently could, Gus turned the conversation to genealogy He seemed puzzled by John’s and my relationship.
‘Distant cousins,’ John said airily, when the question was put. ‘Vicky’s grandmother’s sister was my grandfather’s brother’s second wife.’
Even the expert genealogist was baffled by that one.
After dinner we went to Gus’s study, a room the size of a football field, lined with bookcases and equipped with comfortable chairs. Tables and desks were covered with papers – Gus’s genealogical materials. His eyes alight, his face beaming, Gus outlined the history of ‘our’ family back to the creation of the world. It was rather interesting, or it would have been if I had not had other things on my mind. At any rate, Gus enjoyed himself. He might be a recluse but he was also a fanatic, and every fanatic loves an audience.
He kept thinking of things he wanted to show us – a faded satin slipper that had belonged to a lady-in-waiting of Queen Christina, the sword an ancestor had carried at Narva. After watching him hoist himself painfully out of his chair a time or two, John offered his services; Gus kept him running back and forth to fetch more souvenirs, which were tucked away in cupboards under the bookcases. While John was scrounging in one such cupboard at the far end of the room looking for the birth certificate of a seventeenth-century Jonsson, Gus turned to me.
‘Mr Smythe,’ he whispered. ‘He is not – are you perhaps – your relationship is . . .’
‘We’re just friends.’ I gagged on the word, but Gus didn’t notice. He looked relieved.
‘I am so glad. He is a very pleasant young man. I have no prejudice, believe me; but there is something – I cannot say what. . .’
I was strongly tempted to tell him what. There wasn’t time. John trotted back with the birth certificate and we spent the rest of the evening on family history. I have never heard such lies as John told when Gus started inquiring about the English and American branches.
When the mellow tones of the old clock in the corner boomed eleven times, Gus rose. ‘Come with me to the window, Vicky,’ he said. The sun had dipped below the far mountains, outlining their snowcapped heights in molten gold. The storm had left a patch of broken clouds, like bloody footsteps running down the west. The shore lay deep in shadow, a slope of unbroken green whose reflection deepened the water to dark malachite.
‘I stand here each night,’ Gus said quietly. ‘Before I go to bed. Each night it is different, each night it is beautiful. You must see it in winter, Vicky, when every tree is trimmed in ermine and the full moon turns the snow to silver.’
‘I can see why you love it,’ I said.
‘It is part of your heritage too. I am so glad you are here to share it with me.’
‘Mr Jonsson,’ I blurted, ‘there’s something I have to tell you – ’
‘You must call me Gus. Cousin Gus.’
‘That’s very sweet of you, but I want to tell you – ’
‘I don’t think this is the time, Vicky,’ said John, close behind me.
‘No, it is late,’ Gus agreed. ‘You will be weary from your journey.’
He escorted us to our rooms. They were on the ground floor in a separate wing. I had seen mine when I went to wash up before dinner, but I had not realized that Gus’s room was next to mine and that John had been given a room at the far end of the corridor – with Gus’s door between.
‘I bid you goodnight,’ Gus said, standing tall in his doorway. ‘I am a light sleeper, so if there is