The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [37]
“Sssh,” Jean said. “This is a chapel, isn’t it?”
“It’s okay; they know me here. Hey, Jake. How do you like it? This last chapel is the best. The three small skeletons are children of the nephew of some Pope or other.”
After one incredulous glance Jacqueline turned her back on the arrangement Michael had been admiring.
“I hate it, if you really want to know. In fact, I’m leaving. If you two want to stay—”
“Not me,” said Jean.
“I’ll come with you, then,” Michael said. “I guess I’ve been here long enough.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Geez, I dunno. An hour, maybe.”
They emerged into the sunlight and air of the street, and Jean took a deep breath. Michael shook himself, like a dog coming out of the water; even his expression had changed. He looked at Jean as if seeing her for the first time that day.
“What happened to you?”
“I fell.”
“In the middle of the Piazza Barberini,” Jacqueline added.
“Old accident-prone,” Michael said. “That’s the second time in two days you’ve fallen on your face, love. Maybe you need a keeper.”
Jacqueline made an odd sound, halfway between a cough and a groan. Clearing her throat, she asked,
“The second time? What happened the first time?”
“She took a tumble down the stairs at her place. Some fool kid left a toy on the step.”
“Trust me to step on it,” Jean said. “If the light bulb on the landing hadn’t burned out, I’d have been all right.”
“The light was burned out,” Jacqueline repeated.
“It happens all the time.”
Michael had lost interest in the subject.
“What about a cup of coffee? If you have any bread, that is,” he added disarmingly. “I’m flat broke.”
“How were you planning to get home?” Jean inquired.
“Hitchhike. Walk. Who knows?”
“But we’re supposed to meet the others at four,” Jean said in exasperation. “Or weren’t you planning to go to Ostia with us?”
They sat down at a table; outdoor cafés run three to a block on the Via Veneto. Michael ordered an espresso.
“Sure, I’m going,” he said. “I can be back by…what time is it now? Two-thirty. Plenty of time.”
“Oh, you’re all going swimming,” Jacqueline said.
“Yes. Want to come along?”
“You do not know to whom you speak,” Jean said. “She has a pool in her apartment compound. She doesn’t have to mingle with the hoi polloi on a public beach.”
Jacqueline did not respond to this provocative comment, which was unlike her. Jean realized that she was looking peculiar too. Her cheeks were damp with perspiration, and her glasses had slipped clear down to the tip of her nose. Jean had come to regard the glasses as indicative; like the formal props of a noh play, they showed which of Jacqueline’s multiple personalities was uppermost. When the glasses were seated firmly on the bridge of her nose, the efficient librarian was in command; when they perched farther down and Jacqueline peered hazily over them, she was confused, or pretending to be. Occasionally the glasses rode high on the top of Jacqueline’s head, held in place by her thick hair. Then she was feeling giddy and eccentric. The absence of the glasses usually meant that Jacqueline was in a feminine mood and following Dorothy Parker’s famous advice.
Meeting Jean’s curious eyes, Jacqueline took a deep breath and pushed her glasses firmly back into place.
“You might as well use my pool, if you want to swim. Most of the neighbors are away for the summer. There won’t be anyone else in the pool.”
“Great,” Michael said happily.
“And you a revolutionary,” Jacqueline said.
“But that’s what the revolution is all about,” Michael explained. “Making the effete luxuries of the Establishment available to everybody.”
Again Jacqueline was uncharacteristically silent. Watching her, Jean saw the spectacles sliding slowly down her patrician nose.
II
As the afternoon passed, Jean decided she had become too fanciful about Jacqueline’s glasses. Her mood improved rapidly, and after they had collected the other Sinners, who were assembled at Andy’s apartment, she became her usual cheerfully caustic self.
When Jacqueline remembered that she was supposed to have a dinner date, she called