The Lying Tongue (9 page)

I arrived back at the palazzo at 11:30. I crossed the bridge and let myself in. It was quiet.

“Gordon? Gordon?” I shouted as I opened the door. “Sorry I’m so late. You wouldn’t believe it—I couldn’t find a water taxi anywhere.”

There was no response.

I walked into the drawing room, but Crace wasn’t there, nor was he in the kitchen. I knocked on the door of his bedroom.

“Gordon? Are you there?”

I opened the door and saw him lying on his bed. Was he asleep? The parquet floor creaked as I walked toward him.

“Don’t come near me,” he said, still with his eyes closed.

“Sorry?”

“You promised you’d be back by eleven. And look what time it is. It’s just unacceptable behavior. Completely unacceptable.”

“But it was just impossible to find a water taxi. At Zattere—”

“So what did you come back in? What was it that dropped you off down there—a giant water rat?”

Crace had obviously been watching from a window and had seen me get out.

“Yes, I did get one—finally—but not until San Zaccaria. Honestly, Gordon, I—”

“You’ll find an excuse, but it’s no use.” The rhyme sounded odd, sinister even.

I realized there was no point in arguing. “I’ll let you calm down a little and then perhaps we can talk,” I said, turning to go.

Crace slowly eased himself up on the bed and opened his eyes. “It’s just that you know I simply cannot bear it.”

“What?”

I waited for an explanation.

“I cannot endure it, being left like that. You’ve no idea how much it pains me.”

I didn’t say any more, hoping my silence would prompt some further insight into his peculiar character, but none was forthcoming.

“I know I’ve made you promise before and it didn’t make much difference,” he said, pursing his lips. “But you must tell me now whether you are prepared to do what I say. Otherwise I will have to let you go just like I did with that other unfortunate boy.”

“The one before me?”

“Indeed.”

“What happened to him?”

“He reneged on his promises and he had to be dismissed.” I sensed that Crace’s anger was subsiding. “But I really would rather not go through the whole process of finding another.”

He obviously needed me. I could understand why my predecessor did not last long in Crace’s employment, but I realized I needed Crace too.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get back in time. But it was completely out of my hands. I probably should have set out sooner, but honestly I didn’t do it on purpose. And yes, I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Very well. Very well.” He paused. “So what’s for lunch?”

I cannot say how—or exactly when—the idea first occurred to me. It was one of those thoughts that seemed like it had been floating at the back of my brain for days, just waiting to take shape.

Crace’s biography.
I
was going to write it.

I was the perfect person. I had the access—the subject was under my nose. I had the time. And I doubted whether the novel I was planning would ever take shape. Surely it was better to make my name with this project—an in-depth portrait of a once-successful author, now so reclusive that he hadn’t stepped out of his crumbling palazzo for the last twenty years—and then present the publisher with my novel. I was certain that his was an extraordinary story, one I was sure I could make work. Why should some stranger—this Lavinia Maddon—cash in on Crace? For all her vestiges of seriousness, her
New Yorker
bylines and her flashy address, she had no inside knowledge of the man. She didn’t know him as I did.

I realized that it would probably be quite impossible to publish the book while Crace was alive. But surely it was only a matter of time before he keeled over and died. Even though he was not yet seventy, from my own eyes I could tell he was not in good health. He was as frail as an old, starved dog. I would do the research, get as close to him as I possibly could, and then publish as soon as reasonably possible after his death. And although Crace had said he loathed the idea of biography and biographers—nothing but “publishing scoundrels” he called them—I was sure that he would appreciate such a tribute to his life. It was only fitting that it should be done by someone who understood him, someone who cared.

In search of more letters from Lavinia Maddon, I tackled the pile of correspondence once again. But now, inspired by my new plan, I looked for anything of interest—snippets of biographical detail, postcards from old acquaintances, publishing returns. If a letter intrigued me, I either set it to one side to read later or copied it down into a new notebook I had bought for the purpose. To Crace, who sometimes walked in as I worked, it looked as though I was doing a particularly thorough job. He stood behind me, laying a hand lightly on my shoulder, uttered a couple of approving phrases and then shuffled out.

One of the first letters I came across in my quest for the heart and soul of Crace was the original approach from Lavinia Maddon, dated 12 February. My God, she was good. You had to admire her determination, her seductive way with words. No wonder she had attracted so much praise. The note was charm itself, shrouding her real intention—to expose and exploit her subject—with fancy phrasing and elegant expressions. She did not want to cause offense; she had Crace’s best interests at heart; if he agreed, she promised to show him his quotes for approval; she was not concerned so much with biographical fact as with literary form. Reading it almost persuaded me that she was the best person for the job. I slipped the letter into the sleeve at the back of my notebook; I would deal with her later.

That morning I also finally came across a couple of royalty checks. It was incredible that Crace’s novel was not only still in print, but that it sold in more than respectable quantities. I thought I’d present Crace with the checks over lunch. It would be interesting to see his reaction. After all, everything now was research.

Just after preparing a lunch of bread, Parma ham, figs and cheese, I told Crace to close his eyes.

“For what purpose, may I ask?”

“I’ve got something to show you”

“What?”

“Wait and see,” I said.

“It seems extremely tiresome. Why can’t you show me now?”

He pretended to be irritated, but I could tell he was as excited as a schoolboy faced with the prospect of an unexpected gift.

“Come on now.”

“Oh, very well.”

As the thinning skin drooped down over his lids, I imagined him dead and placing two coins on his eyes.

“Hold out your hands.”

He reached toward me, his hands cupped like a supplicant. I placed the two statements from his publishers into his palms.

“You can open up now.”

Crace blinked and looked down, his weak eyes first twinkling in anticipation and then recoiling in horror. He dropped the statements. His throat quivered, a gobbet of spit appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“What? What’s wrong?”

He was so perplexed he couldn’t talk.

“I thought you’d be pleased to see them—they’re your checks. You’re still selling quite well.”

Crace struggled to catch his breath as he reached out for his glass of water.

“The title—” he spat out. “Get rid of the name.”

“Sorry?”

“On that statement…I don’t want to see it. I can’t bear to. I thought I’d told you—no mention, no mention at all.”

I picked up the pieces of paper, ripped off the checks and then threw the accompanying statements, which bore the name of the offending novel, into the bin.

“Look—they’re gone now.”

“What were you trying to do? Kill me?”

“I’m sorry, Gordon. I just didn’t think.”

“That’s right, you didn’t, you never do. Do I really have to go through it all again?”

“But I don’t understand. Why do they upset you so much? Even though you don’t write now, I would have thought that you might at least be proud of your past achievements.”

I knew I was pushing Crace further than he really wanted to go. But it was important. I had to know.

“As I said, it’s a different life to me. What I am now and what I was then are two separate entities. I don’t really want to say any more.”

“Of course. I understand,” I said, nodding my head and trying to look as sympathetic as possible.

Could I risk another question? “But do you not miss it? Writing, I mean.”

The weak muscles on the right hand side of his mouth twitched, and for a second I thought that Crace would explode, that he might dismiss me on the spot for trying to probe into a territory that he had told me, many times, was definitely off-limits. But then his face relaxed and he looked at me with sad eyes.

“I made a decision to stop. It was just no good.”

I wanted to pursue the line of inquiry and try to get him talking while he was in the mood.

“Do you mean the writing? That you thought it was no longer up to your usual standard? Is that why?”

“No, that was not it at all. I mean it was no good for me, no good for those around me.”

“Oh, I see,” I said.

He was going to be a difficult subject to crack, but the secrecy with which he surrounded himself made the prospect so much more alluring. And I was determined. I was confident that this could be the making of me.

I wrote back to Lavinia Maddon that afternoon, telling her that Crace was not interested. I thanked her for her inquiry, but informed her that unfortunately Crace was an intensely private man and couldn’t abide the idea of a biography, no matter how literary. He would write to his publishers to tell them not to cooperate in any way, and if she continued to pursue the matter, he would consult his lawyer to see what further steps could be taken to prevent her writing such a book. Of course, he would deny use of his copyright material, and without that he was sure that any such book could not be written. I signed the letter in my own name and added, in parentheses, “personal assistant to Gordon Crace.” I was also careful not to give away the address of the palazzo. I didn’t want my competition to come sniffing around here.

There was no need to tell Crace any of this. After all, he had told me to weed out such inquiries and deal with them as I saw fit. I was just following orders. He would be pleased by my actions.

But what should I do about the other letter, the one from Mrs. Shaw? I searched through the correspondence to find previous letters from her but came up with nothing. I knew I had to be careful. If the situation ever got out of control, if she really was blackmailing Crace and the police became involved, I had to make sure that whatever I wrote could not be used against me. But I needed to find out more and I felt that this woman knew a great deal. Perhaps she was a way to understand Crace better. I decided on a simple, straightforward approach.