The Thousand Faces of Night - Jack Higgins [30]
He nodded and offered her a cigarette. 'That's too bad.' As he sat back in his chair he smiled and added: 'However, I'm not complaining. This will do very nicely. It's a beautiful room.'
She nodded and got up to replenish his drink. 'I like beautiful things,' she said. 'They make me feel good. Life can be so drab.'
'The trouble is they all cost money,' he said as she came back with his drink.
She smiled. 'Oh, I don't know. Some things are still pretty inexpensive.' She flicked a switch by the fireplace and plunged the room into half darkness. 'Firelight for instance.' She settled back on the settee. 'It's one of the few things that haven't changed.'
Marlowe was puzzled. 'Changed?' he said.
'From the old days.' She pillowed her head on one arm like a little girl and turned towards the fire and her eyes glinted, amber and gold. 'When I was a little girl I can remember having tea with my father in his study at four o'clock on Autumn afternoons. It was a special treat, something to look forward to. It was a wonderful room, lined with books and there was always an immense fire. The maid used to bring in tea and hot muffins on a tray and my father would let me be hostess.' She chuckled. 'I loved handling the silver teapot and the beautiful china cups. There was a special intimacy about it with the dead leaves falling outside the long window and the shadows moving from the corners of the room.' She shivered and there was an utter desolation in her voice. Marlowe didn't speak and for a moment there was silence and then she said briskly, 'But that was a long time ago. Before the flood.'
Marlowe frowned. There was something he didn't understand here. 'What happened?' he said.
She shrugged. 'My father lost his money. He got mixed up in some financial swindle.' She hesitated and said briefly, 'He blew his brains out.'
'I'm sorry,' Marlowe told her. 'That was a rough break.'
She smiled and shrugged. 'The only trouble about being born into money is that you find it impossible to do without it. It means one has to look for a solution and sometimes it may be rather unpleasant.'
The picture was becoming a little clearer. 'And you found your solution?'
She smiled wistfully. 'Solutions are usually hard to come by. How old do you think I am, Mr Marlowe?'
He shrugged. 'It's hard to say. Eighteen - nineteen.'
She laughed. 'I'm twenty-eight next month. When I was seventeen I married a wealthy man because I wanted security. He gave me ten years of hell. He was unfaithful, a drunkard and when the mood was on him, he wasn't above knocking me around. I put up with him because I didn't have the courage to go out and face life on my own. When he died in a car crash last year I thought I was free. Unfortunately he left nothing but debts.'
'And that's when O'Connor stepped in?' Marlowe said.
She nodded. 'That's right. He was my father's half-brother. I knew very little about him. I believe there was some scandal when he was young and he had to leave home. He got in touch with me six months ago and offered to provide for me.'
'And you accepted,' Marlowe said.
She shrugged. 'Why not? I'm weak.' She indicated the room with a gesture of one hand. 'He's good to me. In some queer way of his own he's proud of me. He likes people to know that I'm his niece. I suppose he's looking for a veneer of respectability now that he's rich.'
'Are you happy?' Marlowe asked her.
She smiled sadly. 'Isn't it the Bible which tells us we must pay for our weaknesses, Mr Marlowe?' She laughed in a strange way and reached for a cigarette from a silver box on a small table beside her. 'I have everything I want. Everything. It's just that I get so lonely at times. So damned lonely.'
For a long moment they stared at each other and the terrible dryness clutched at Marlowe's throat again. As the firelight flared up, illuminating her face, he saw tears glisten in her eyes and then the cigarette fell from her fingers and