The Secret History - Donna Tartt [151]
Henry put a finger to his lips.
We listened to their footsteps going down the stairs, and were quiet until we heard Cloke’s car start. Henry went to the window and pulled aside a shabby lace curtain. “They’re gone,” he said.
“Henry, are you sure this is a good idea?” said Camilla.
He shrugged, still looking at the street below. “I don’t know,” he said. “I had to play that one by ear.”
“I wish you’d gone. Why didn’t you go with him?”
“I would have, but this is better.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Well, it should be pretty obvious even to Cloke that Bunny isn’t out of town. Everything he owns is in that room. Money, extra glasses, winter coat. Odds are that Cloke will want to leave, and not say anything, but I told Charles to insist that they at least call Marion over for a look. If she sees—well. She doesn’t know a thing about Cloke’s problems and wouldn’t care if she did. Unless I’m mistaken she’ll call the police, or Bunny’s parents at the very least, and I doubt Cloke will be able to stop her.”
“They won’t find him today,” said Francis. “It’ll be dark in a couple of hours.”
“Yes, but if we’re lucky they’ll start looking first thing tomorrow.”
“Do you think anyone will want to talk to us about it?”
“I don’t know,” said Henry abstractedly. “I don’t know how they go about such things.”
A thin ray of sun struck the prisms of a candelabrum on the mantelpiece, throwing brilliant, trembling shards of light that were distorted by the slant of the dormer walls. All of a sudden, images from every crime movie I’d ever seen began to pop into my mind—the windowless room, the harsh lights and narrow hallways, images which did not seem so much theatrical or foreign as imbued with the indelible quality of memory, of experience lived. Don’t think, don’t think, I told myself, looking fixedly at a bright, cold pool of sunlight soaking into the rug near my feet.
Camilla tried to light a cigarette, but one match and then another went out. Henry took the box from her and struck one himself; it flared up high and strong and she leaned close to it, one hand cupped around the flame and the other resting upon his wrist.
The minutes crept by with a tortuous slowness. Camilla brought a bottle of whiskey into the kitchen and we sat around the table playing euchre, Francis and Henry against Camilla and me. Camilla played well—this was her game, her favorite—but I wasn’t a good partner and we lost trick after trick to the others.
The apartment was very still: clink of glasses, ruffle of cards. Henry’s sleeves were rolled above his elbows and the sun glinted metallic off Francis’s pince-nez. I did my best to concentrate on the game but again and again I found myself staring, through the open door, at the clock on the mantel in the next room. It was one of those bizarre pieces of Victorian bric-a-brac that the twins were so fond of—a white china elephant with the clock balanced in a howdah, and a little black mahout in gilt turban and breeches to strike the hours. There was something diabolical about the mahout, and every time I looked up I found him grinning at me in an attitude of cheerful malice.
I lost count of the score, lost count of the games. The room grew dim.
Henry lay down his cards. “March,” he said.
“I’m sick of this,” said Francis. “Where is he?”
The clock ticked loudly, a jangling, arrhythmic tick. We sat in the fading light, the cards forgotten. Camilla took an apple from a bowl on the counter and sat in the windowsill, eating it morosely and looking down at the street below. A fiery outline of twilight shone around her silhouette, burned red-gold in her hair, grew diffuse in the fuzzy texture of the woolen skirt pulled carelessly about her knees.
“Maybe something went wrong,” Francis said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. What could go wrong?”
“A million things. Maybe Charles lost his head or something.”
Henry gave him a fishy look. “Calm down,” he said. “I don’t know where you get all these Dostoyevsky sorts of ideas.”
Francis was about