The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [132]
‘His mood at present is convivial enough,’ Giuseppe said. ‘But we all know how easily Mr Greb’s aspect can darken.’
Seaton was wondering what lay under the lid of the salver.
‘If you would be so good as to follow me, sir, I would like to take the liberty of reuniting you with an old and valued acquaintance.’
Seaton followed the dead factotum around the perimeter of the room, picking his way between tables, trying not to look at the faces of the guests, each as lifeless as Fischer’s man and watching him with empty curiosity. They gained a corridor and walked along its length of uniform doors. Light from under one in a feeble ribbon on the floor distinguished it. There was music along the corridor, grimy with needle-dust, busy with remembered static. It was the John Lennon song ‘Imagine’, sung in a baritone growl to barrelhouse piano accompaniment. Seaton took it to mean that Nicholas Mason must be somewhere in the house.
Giuseppe opened the door and stood back from it. Lucinda Grey, surprise showing in her once-lovely features, looked up from where she sat over her sewing machine. Her pale body was clothed only in an underskirt and bra. When she pressed on the treadle of the old machine, Seaton could see her kneebone flap through a tear in the skin of a wasted leg.
‘I’ll be joining the party the minute my dress is finished,’ she said. The flat, familiar vowels of her northern accent were heartrending to him. But there was no garment under the needle and no thread on the spindle to sew one with.
‘Oh, Lucinda,’ Seaton said. He was trembling suddenly, overwhelmed with shock and grief. He had not prepared himself for this. He had put Lucinda Grey away in the safe refuge of his mind where the sun always shone on her lambent skin and she could go on forever being twenty-one and beautiful. Surely her life could not be over. Surely not her. He groaned.
‘Why did you have to die?’
‘Dying is easy,’ she said. ‘Living was the complicated part. You remember the night you wouldn’t come to the opening of that bar David Haliday had painted?’
He nodded. And he noticed the shape of someone else, indistinct, in the corner of the room. It didn’t matter. Only Lucinda mattered.
‘We went on to Tabu, that night, Paul, after the place with David’s murals. And I snorted heroin. I was low because you hadn’t come and someone had a wrap at Tabu and I snorted a line of it. And the disappointment melted away. And I felt I was floating on air.’
He remembered. He had met her coming home. He’d had Pandora’s journal hidden in his pocket. She had looked like she was floating on air as she came around the corner into his vision on Lambeth High Street.
‘I went back to York, after you. Couldn’t deal with London any more. And the low feeling got worse. And heroin was very fashionable then. It took the pain away, Paul. And it was cheap.’
‘Oh, Lucinda.’
‘Did you not wonder why we never ran into one another? Even accidentally? I don’t think you could have helped me. That said, of course, it never occurred to you to try. But the overdose was accidental.’ She frowned. Her eyes were coloured an absent, recollected green under the dead strands of her fringe. Her bobbed hair, its texture once satin, had been turned by death into a coarse wig. ‘At least, I think it was accidental.’
The figure emerged from the corner. It was Patrick, as Seaton had guessed it would be. He had thought for a moment that his own anticipation might prepare him. But it did not. When he saw his brother’s face, lost and sorrowful in death, he began to weep. He had missed him so. Behind him, Fischer’s man coughed politely. ‘Sir?’ Giuseppe said. He had taken the lid off the salver. He held the salver out. A gun lay on it, an ancient Webley revolver pocked with shrapnel scars. It had new grips on the stock and a shiny new nickel-plated cylinder. The hammer was cocked and Seaton saw the seat of a bullet, snugly poised in the cylinder’s uppermost chamber.
‘What