The Other Side - J. D. Robb [79]
But then, after the joky introductions and condescending baby talk were out of the way and no one but Henry was looking at them, Lucien Jr. poked Little Eddie in the eye with his toy soldier, and Little Eddie retaliated by shoving Lucien Jr. down the two steps from the folly to the gravel path. Shrieking, wrestling, and hair-pulling ensued, leaving the combatants bloody, dusty, and vowing revenge.
Over the heads of the intervening parents, nanny, and servants, Angie caught Henry’s eye. You see? her expression asked. He made a terrified face and nodded back. I see.
“May I?” Walker Hersh asked, waving the lit end of a cigarette at him.
“Be my guest.” Henry held still while Walker flicked ash into the collapsible brass receptacle clipped to his lapel—Angie’s grandfather’s “traveling pocket ashtray,” patent pending. Henry was wearing it to please her, but it turned out to be a lot more useful than he’d thought.
Walker was about forty, according to Angie, but he looked older. He had narrow, slumping shoulders, tired eyes, and an air of amiable distraction that hid, Henry suspected, a shrewd and canny mind. “Norah and I used to want a big family,” he said in a wistful voice, watching the Darlington children being led away, still caterwauling.
Henry smiled. “It’s a good idea in theory.”
“I’ve got four brothers and two sisters. You?”
“Just a brother. Three years younger.” A straight answer, and it felt good. How long since he’d told the truth about himself to anyone? Under other circumstances, he could imagine Walker Hersh and himself becoming friends.
“I see you’re a smoking but not a drinking man,” Walker said, lighting his cigarette for him.
“True,” Henry said. “Nowadays.”
“But not always?”
“Not always.”
“Well, good for you while it lasts. Drink’s a ruinous thing,” Walker said, slugging down the rest of the sherry in his glass. “Runs like a river through my profession.”
“Does it?” Henry said innocently.
“Oh, yes. Something about newspapering just seems to bring on a powerful thirst.” He kept his tone humorous and impersonal, but Henry thought he saw something in the other man’s eyes. A spark of knowledge. A hunch.
Relax, he told himself. Hersh was no fool: why wouldn’t he have doubts about a strange man in town whose alleged profession was investigating ghosts? Henry was getting complacent, that was the problem. That, and Paulton had too many seductive attractions. Like Angiolina Darlington. The solution was easy—be more careful. Especially around agreeable, sensible, clever Walker Hersh.
Mrs. Grimmett dominated conversation at the dinner table, holding forth on a lot of subjects, including her view of xenoglossis (trance speaking in tongues). Henry valued any chance he got to speak to Norah Hersh, the lady on his other side, an attractive brunette as neat and tidy as her husband was disheveled. They said polite things to each other about the unseasonably early heat, how he was finding life in Paulton, if he’d dined at the Gryphon House yet. Then Mrs. Hersh leaned in and said in a low voice, “I count Angie as one of my closest friends.”
He replied that he knew that, and started to say something about how lucky both ladies were in their friendships. She interrupted him.
“Angie doesn’t have very many friends. That may surprise you, but think about it. She had the most unconventional upbringing imaginable, and some in this town regard it as nothing less than scandalous.” She lowered her voice another degree. “Certain people, I think you can surmise who, treat her as if she’s not quite respectable—they hold her at a distance.”
“I can imagine that,” he said slowly.
“On the other hand, people with not as much . . . social status to uphold find her the delight she is—and yet they, too, keep her at arm’s length, because they think she’s not one of them. Do you see what I mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Most