The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [70]
The victim of this tragedy, Macy—and this was clear as crystal to me before I’d even finished my first lemonade—was your lovely and hypnotising aunt. A sweet, innocent girl, her head turned by a murderous pervert, used for her family’s money. I wanted to help, and that’s the God’s honest, I saw clearly that she’d been made a fool by a sodomite and was already abandoned, though she didn’t know it yet. If I told her, she’d hate me forever. If I waited for events to unfold at their own pace, she’d be the laughingstock of Boston society. I felt, even that first lemonade, my hands being tied, and none of my choices were good.
Your aunt Margaret’s second mood, I learnt over the coming weeks, was an early evening specialty. Some days later, I was returning to the hotel, having spoken to more Harvard professors and some students of Trilipush’s, and I found, to my great surprise and pleasure, Margaret in the lobby. She hadn’t been far from my thoughts since I’d met her. It was about seven in the evening, and she was unaccompanied. “Now tonight you’re going to put your notebook away, Harry, and we’re going to have some fun.” She was at her very best like this. She still made you feel like you were the most important person in the world, but she didn’t have any of the affectations of the rich hostess at home. No, now she was exuberant and natural, a young girl whose eyes shone, excited to see the next thing life had to offer. She had her jokes, her little smart remarks at your expense, but you liked it, believe me. She put her arm through mine and walked me through parts of Boston it never would’ve occurred to me to visit. “Don’t you be worried there, Harry, I know my way around, we’ll be just fine.”
She walked me into alleyways that made me wish I had a weapon on me, but she just glowed under the dim lights, smiled at the shady figures lurking here and there, clearly enjoyed herself by shocking her foreign friend, though I did my best to smile throughout it all. “You know, I’ve never taken Ralphie to this place, and I never would. He wouldn’t fit in like you will, Harry.” I liked the comparison. “Let’s keep all this our little secret, Harry.” Suited me fine—I didn’t want her mentioning me to Trilipush either.
She pushed a button on an unmarked wall in a dark street, I couldn’t even tell you where we were. A small hatch at eye level slid aside, black eyes examined us, the hatch slid shut, and the wall opened up to let us into a noisy party, a bar and billiards and dancing to jazz music, men and women comfortable on couches, floor cushions, laps. “Welcome to JP’s, Harry,” she said, ushering me in. It was one surprise after another with your aunt. That evening she was all charm, and I rather thought it was all for me, and I remember thinking, that evening, that for whatever reason, she’d found something in me she was drawn to. I thought I could see a natural progression unfolding, can’t say anyone would’ve blamed me. Now, of course, I’d say she was just a bit of a flirt. Played with fire a bit, she did, your aunt, didn’t know when she’d gone too far, pushed things over a line. Girls like that always look surprised when people turn out not to be toys, when people don’t stop what they’re doing at the girl’s instruction, the second her whim changes.
She brought us cocktails, and we sat on a red velvet couch. I might’ve been pursuing the case or my own interests, hard to say from this distance, but I asked her about Trilipush again, not sure what I was looking for. “Oh, he’s a dream,” she said, but looking at the ceiling, hardly paying attention as she murmured, “English noble, explorer. Quite a man . . .” Not the ceiling: she was peering up at the dark balcony that ran around the perimeter of the room before she brought her attention back down to me. “What was I saying, Harry?”
She pulled me up, and we danced to the Negro jazz orchestra. We drank. To be more accurate, I