The Secret Life of Violet Grant (25 page)

•   •   •

WAIT FOR ME,
Lionel said,
trust me
, but Violet knows she can't sleep another night in the villa. The afternoon deepens, and still no automobile growls up the long drive from the road. She must act for herself.

She enters the warm acid-scented quiet of the laboratory and packs her notes; the apparatuses and materials she must leave behind. As she leaves, she stands at the door and casts her gaze about: the clean surfaces, the singular motes of circling dust. In the center of the room sits the black box with its scintillation screen, its aperture, its chamber lined with lead.

•   •   •

VIOLET BATHES
and dresses for dinner. No sign yet of Lionel; he has disappeared into the thick Prussian summer. Through the plaster walls
comes the clatter of pots and china, the distinct high laugh of the downstairs maid.

Walter arrives as she's sitting in the slipper chair, buckling her shoes. He's still dressed in his summer linen suit, wrinkled from heat. “How are you feeling?” he asks, unbuttoning his jacket.

She straightens and says coldly: “Well enough.”

“Excellent.” He smiles, a slow and straight-edged smile in the middle of his neat beard. “I say, I was rather surprised when I happened to see the linens this morning.”

“Happened
to see the linens.”

“You lied to me.”

“I had to tell you something, didn't I? You weren't going to stop otherwise.”

“You shouldn't have provoked me.”

“I don't recall provoking you.”

“Hmm.”
He walks across the room, removing his cuff links as he goes, and drops them into the silver tray on his chest of drawers. “You do have an astonishingly handsome figure, child. I believe your bosom is a degree or two fuller than when I first met you in Oxford. More womanly. Don't you think?”

“I was only nineteen then. I suppose it's possible.”

He removes his jacket and waistcoat and hangs them in the wardrobe. “No, I'm quite certain. I can picture you clearly, lying on my sofa like a newly opened peach. Those months afterward. Do you remember them?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I took excellent care of you, do you agree?”

“You were attentive, if that's what you mean.” Violet folds her hands behind her back, so Walter can't see how her hands are shaking.

“Of course I was. My God, what a fresh young child you were. Entrancing. To take a girl for the first time, it's the greatest joy a man knows. And you were as innocent as a newborn. I could think of nothing else.”
Trousers, shirt, drawers. Violet stands by the wall with her hands pinned to her back, watching her husband undress, willing herself not to look at her own wardrobe, in which her battered leather valise sits, packed and ready.

“Yes, I was very young, wasn't I?” she says clearly.

He is naked and monstrously erect. He walks back to the chest of drawers and finds his pipe and his tin of tobacco. “Do you have anything to tell me, Violet?”

Violet curves her fingernails into her palms. But her face is cool and without shame as she replies: “I kissed him.”

Walter, unhurried, strikes a match and lights his pipe. He turns and leans one elbow atop the bureau, sucking carefully to start the flow of smoke into his lungs, one loving hand cupping the bowl. His gray hair, ordinarily in perfect order, has come disheveled, and the electric light casts his lean body into a relief so stark as to be emaciated. He blows out a long cloud of smoke and smiles. “Is that all?”

“It was a lovely kiss. A tremendous kiss.”

“I hope you're not hiding something from me, Violet.”

Violet rises from the chair, walks to the dressing table, and picks up the little pot of lip rouge she owns but rarely uses. “If there's one thing I cannot abide about you, Walter, it's your hypocrisy.”

“
My
hypocrisy. And what do you think of a wife, Violet, who fucks another man and then refuses concourse to her own husband? Her husband who's done everything for her.”

“I'd say she was in love, for the first time in her life.”

Walter's image appears suddenly in the mirror, like an apparition, eyes narrowed and blazing. His hands close about her arms. The pipe nearly burns her skin. “You are an ungrateful idiot,” he says, between his teeth.

“Go away, Walter.”

“Do you think Richardson will stand by you? Do you think he loves you?”

“I know he loves me.”

“Do you know how many women he had in Oxford?”

Violet's teeth cut into her lower lip. “Not as many as you, I'm sure.”

“He's already left, you know. Packed his bags and left. Since he had what he wanted.”

Violet's cup of rage runs over. In a swift jolt, she breaks one arm free of Walter's enclosing hand and jams her elbow into his ribs.

He grunts and falls back. The pipe drops to the floor. Violet flies to the bathroom, where Walter's things have been laid out already by the maid: soap, brush, towel, scissors, the razor he uses to create the crisp borders of his beard. She grasps the straightedge, flicks out the blade, and whirls around just as Walter invades the doorway.

He halts respectfully at the sight of the razor. “Violet, really. Don't be melodramatic.”

“I will if I have to.”

“I'm your husband, Violet. I have your interests at heart. Richardson is a scoundrel.”

He stands before her, wiry and watchful, smiling and aroused, muscles flexing gently. There is a curious light in his eyes, a primal excitement.

What a fool she was. What a fool, to think that Lionel was the predator of which she must beware. She has never felt more hunted than this moment.

Walter takes a step toward her. “Put down the razor, Violet. Don't be ridiculous. Would I ever hurt you?”

“You tried, last night.”

“Because you refused me. After all I've done for you, Violet.”

“Am I not allowed a choice? I thought we had a
partnership
. A marriage of equal minds.”

Walter's fingers twitch. “You can't lie with Richardson in the grass like a whore, and deny your own husband in his bed. That is a fact, Violet, the bedrock of our agreement. Did I ever neglect you, whatever my other adventures?”

“I see. Then it's all right if I take lovers, as long as I let you have me, too? Perhaps we should all get in bed together. Wouldn't that be daring and modern!” The metal razor warms in her hand, light and agile. She wonders why Walter doesn't simply turn around and leave her alone.

“Violet, my dear. You're being ridiculous. Put down the razor.”

“You cannot touch me, Walter. Never again.”

“Trust me, child. Put down the razor. You're overwrought.”

“I am not—”

But Walter strikes in a flash, knocking the razor from her hand. He pins her hands neatly behind her back and forces her from the bathroom. She struggles against him, but his hold on her is expert, perfectly placed to lever her across the bedroom, as if he's done this sort of thing before. He turns her over the bed and places his knuckles in the small of her back, atop her kidneys. He smells of sweat.

“You're a brute.” She locks her legs together, but he inserts his knee exactly in the center of her thighs and forces her open.

“You do not
refuse
me, Violet.” Walter's breath invades her ear, and she braces herself, shuts her eyes and mouth, shuts down every sensation and thought in her body so she will live through the next two minutes.

Because of this, because she's concentrating so hard on severing her mind from the workings of Walter's brusque hands, she doesn't hear the knock on the door, the rattle of the locked knob. She hardly notices the crash of wood as a booted foot forces it open.

Then Walter is gone: his hands, his heavy body, his sweaty breath. Shouts, thumps. A hard grunt. With effort, Violet pushes herself up and turns around, bracing herself on the mattress.

Walter lies on the floor. Lionel stands above him, rumpled and unshaven, rubbing his fist. “Christ, Violet.” He turns and pulls her against him. He is as thick as a pillar, as solid as a tree. “I'm sorry, Christ, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Did he hurt you?”

“Not . . . not yet.”

“I'm sorry. Christ. What an idiot. I'm sorry.”

“Is he dead? Is he dead?” Violet shoves her nose into his scratchy tweeds, full of outdoors and automobiles and Lionel. Her nerves jump, her head spins.

“Dead? No, damn him. If I'd had my revolver he would be.”

She pushes away and stumbles over Walter's body to the wardrobe. “Is your motor outside?”

“Yes, but—”

“Take me to Berlin.”

“Violet, wait—”

“Now, Lionel. Before he wakes up.” She finds the valise and yanks it out from behind her dresses with a spring of her electric muscles. Her brain is a blur, coalesced around a single overriding thought: flight. “For God's sake.”

“We can't just leave . . .”

She drags the valise across the floor and drops it at Lionel's feet and takes his jacket into her fists. She stares up at him to communicate the desperation in her babble of words. “We can. We can. We can. Jane will take care of everything. Take me to Berlin, Lionel. Now. We can. We can.”

Lionel's hands find her elbows. His brow is worried, his cheekbones pink with a sunburn that disappears under the new prickles of his beard. The skin around his eyes is heavy with exhaustion.

He looks down at Walter and back at Violet. She wants to touch his face, but her fingers have stiffened around Lionel's lapels, the only way she can hold herself still, and she doesn't dare open them.

Lionel releases her elbows and pries her hands from his jacket. He keeps one firmly in his palm and reaches down for her valise.

“Right, then. Berlin.”

A
nyway. I'm not going to bore you with a long and self-indulgent description of the scene that followed, there in the orchid-scented Lightfoot mansion that fine November evening, a week before Thanksgiving. I'm sure you can imagine it for yourself. To be honest, I don't even remember most of the details.

Not that I dragged myself through dinner in a trance. No siree. No no no. Not Vivian Schuyler. I was the life of the damned party. You should have seen me! You'd have been so proud. The way I kissed Gogo's cheek and hailed Doctor Paul with a vigorous congratulatory handshake; the way I exclaimed over the height and breadth and brilliance of the engagement rock that perched precariously atop Gogo's slender finger. The way I turned to Lightfoot and began to flirt as I'd never flirted before. Nothing vulgar, mind you. Just the
nulli secundus
of elegant flattery, the ne plus ultra of sparkling admiration. I knew how to pirouette along that slender line without losing my balance.

I'd learned it from a master, after all. I out-Mumsied Mums herself at dinner tonight.

Oh, and what a dinner! Lightfoot had pulled out all the stops for his treasured daughter. The crispiest champagne, the meltiest foie gras. Tournedos in perfect meaty circles, served with a dollop of creamy
Béarnaise. I don't remember the trimmings. I think there was a salad. Waldorf. A fine Bordeaux, really top-drawer. As I ate, I watched the sparkle of Gogo's finger while it went about its business. (I couldn't meet her face, not yet.) Knowing Doctor Paul's salary as I did, I imagined Lightfoot had selected Gogo's engagement ring with the same consummate deliberation as he had selected the fiancé himself, and I wondered whether the cost had been subtracted from the half-million-dollar engagement bounty. Whether the money had changed hands yet, or whether Doctor Paul would have to wait for his cold hard cash until the announcement actually appeared in the
New York Times
.

Oh. Doctor Paul! You're probably wondering about him. Well, he didn't say much. His face never quite regained its color, though he ate heartily enough for three fiancés. I watched his strong throat move as he drank his champagne (I couldn't quite meet his gaze, either) and his capable surgeon's hands as he dissected his filet. A splendid animal, Doctor Paul. A prime specimen to fertilize the Lightfoot breeding stock. Worth every penny.

Well, that was lovely, I said, after the last graceful bite of
bombe glacée
, but I really must head home. Work tomorrow, you know! Bright and early!

The gentlemen rose. I felt Doctor Paul's pleading eyes like an attractor beam from an enemy starship. But I slid right over his gaze, skated right past his desperate ocular apology with a laugh and a
Now, you two behave yourselves tonight, you crazy kids, you're not married yet!
I kissed Gogo again and told her she'd better make me her maid of honor, or else.

Then.
May I kiss the groom?
I daringly asked, and Gogo laughed and said you'd better do it quick, before I get started, I might never want to stop, just look at him! Laugh laugh. Oh, how we laughed.

I leaned in and laid one on Doctor Paul's terrified cheek, a big fat see-if-I-care to Mr. S. Barnard Lightfoot III. And then I . . .

Well, damn. Here I am, going on like this, after I promised not to indulge myself.

Anyway. Et cetera, et cetera. Good-bye, good-bye. You get the idea. The Lightfoot door slammed behind me, leaving me in the dark void between two pale streetlights, and I trudged down Seventieth Street to Lexington Avenue and two blocks to the subway entrance. I didn't want to take a taxi. I wanted the rattle of New York around me, I wanted stink and strangers and the sour dank air of the IRT clutching me to its bosom. I wanted hustle and bustle. I wanted to know that millions of lives were playing out on my doorstep, and not one of them gave a damn about my little problems.

I took the local train down to Union Square and trudged the beaten path west by southwest. The air had hardened, and a flake or two blurred past me to disappear into the rotten gray pavement. I thought, how magical, the first glimpse of snow. By March I would be sick of it, but here in this November instant those tiny flakes swirled with the unspeakable purity of a divine gift.

The storefronts were all closed and barricaded in metal. I passed fruit stands and bookstores, dry cleaners and travel agents. The snow was picking up, filling the air. I felt it ping the back of my throat as I breathed. I turned the corner of Bleecker and Christopher Street, where the crowd at the Apple Tree was just getting started. A man in a thick black overcoat stood against the lamppost just outside, smoking a cigarette, staring at the snow. I might have passed him right by, if the light from one of the windows hadn't fallen on his face just so.

I stopped. Took a few more steps. Stopped and turned.

“Didn't know you smoked, Mr. Tibbs,” I said quietly.

He looked startled, and yet wearily not. As if he couldn't be bothered to feel any surprise at the sight of me. He took an awkward puff and blew it into the street. “I don't.”

I glanced at the wide-open entrance to the Apple Tree, and back to Tibby. “Need a drink?”

He finished the cigarette and dropped it on the sidewalk, where he crushed it with his heel. “Sure do.”

By the smell of him, as we walked the block or two to my apartment building, this wouldn't be his first drink of the evening. Possibly not his second, either, but who was I to judge? I unlocked the door and left him to follow me upstairs.

“Obviously we don't pay you enough,” he said, when he walked through the door. He took in the disheveled living room, the half-dressed roommate asleep on the sofa, the half-full bottle of Smirnoff on the table.

I slung my coat and hat on the hall stand and stalked into the kitchen for glasses. “Make yourself at home.”

When I turned to face him, mission accomplished, he had taken my advice and hung up his overcoat. He sat now in my usual chair, eyeing the vodka wistfully. A distant pink neon sign flashed like a heartbeat on his cheek. I took the opposite chair, set down the glasses, and poured the vodka.
“Salut,”
I said.

“Salut.”

I finished first, but it was a close call. I opened my pocketbook and found my cigarettes. “Smoke? Or another drink?”

“Both.”

I lit him up and then me, and I refilled the glasses. “I should warn you. In about an hour, a man's going to burst into this room and enact a melodrama. You're welcome to stay. But I thought I should give you the choice.”

Tibby was right, he wasn't a smoker. Something in the unfamiliar way he held the cigarette between his forefinger and thumb, the tremor of trepidation as he lifted it to his mouth. He raised his glass with a relieved expression. A poison he recognized. “Do I know this man?”

“He's Gogo's brand-new fiancé. You heard it here first.”

“I see.”

“As I said.” I tipped my vodka at him and polished it off with beeswax. “Melodrama.”

Tibby sat back in his chair. I pushed an ashtray at him. He let his half-finished cigarette drop gratefully inside. “How's the article going?”

“Jesus. I forgot.” I opened my pocketbook and drew out Violet's letter, Violet's letter that had seemed so vital a few hours ago.

From the sofa, Sally made a startled noise and sat up. One breast fell out of her robe, and then—as an afterthought—the other. She belted herself back up without haste. “Who the hell is he?” she asked, wide awake.

Without lifting my head: “Sally, Mr. Edmund Tibbs, editor extraordinaire, takes his coffee black, with sugar. Tibby, Sally.” I waved my hand.

She stood up. “Enchanted. I'm going to bed.”

Tibby reached for the vodka bottle. “First thing tomorrow, I'm going to recommend you for a raise.”

I looked up awestruck from my letter. “Tibby, this is
it.
I think this is
it.”

Tibby did the slow blink. “Is what?”

“Look at this.” I handed over Violet's letter.

He pulled his reading glasses out of his waistcoat pocket and said aloud, in a voice that slurred only once or twice:
“‘My dear Christina, I am leaving Walter at last. I don't mean to surprise you, but there it is. He has always been selfish and unfaithful, but I could live with that; now he's turned brutal, and I have fallen in love with another man. Lionel Richardson. You remember I've written about him. We're off to Berlin tonight, as soon as we can slip away. I shall stop at the flat for a few things, but I hope never to see or speak to Walter again, unless the divorce process requires it. I have all the grounds in the world, or at least I will once I've reached the flat and find what I'm looking for. I hope you're not disappointed in me. I hope I may count on you to give evidence if necessary. I know I've made a dreadful mistake. I expect the family would disown me, if they hadn't already done so years ago. I shall write again when I can. Your loving sister, Violet. Postscript. All well. Terrible scene in Wittenberg. Have just reached Berlin with Lionel. Will post this immediately.'”

Tibby pulled off his glasses and looked at me. “There's no date.”

“It's postmarked July twenty-sixth.”

“Assuming she did as she said and posted the letter right away . . .”

“She never intended to murder her husband. He must have followed her and confronted her at the flat in Berlin, and then . . .” I shrugged.

The telephone let loose.

“Aren't you going to answer that?” asked Tibby.

“Why bother? It's just Gogo. I know what she's going to say. She wants to tell me how happy she is, how it's been a whirlwind the last week or two, he just called her up out of the blue and said he'd made a terrible, terrible mistake. She's been dying to tell me but he swore her to secrecy. For some reason. And now she wants to spill every detail. Proposal, ring, kiss, the works.” I pulled out another cigarette.

The shrilling stopped. Tibby sat absolutely still, no mean feat for a man in his condition. I knew he was watching my profile. Me, I watched the ashtray. The smoke drifting from my fingers.

I could face Doctor Paul. Probably would face Doctor Paul in short order. But I could not face Gogo, even and especially the telephone Gogo, crackling her joy down the copper wire from the Lightfoot mansion to my sordid squalor.

“All right,” said Tibby. “But then why did Violet flee? If she killed Walter in self-defense. She was a scientist. A rational thinker. She would have stayed to clear her name. She wouldn't have simply run off and disappeared.” He held out the letter.

I laid the paper flat on the table. The old ink stared back at me, the hasty scribble of a woman in love. My eyes fastened on the words
Terrible scene
. What did that mean? “Because of the war?” I offered.

“She was an American. She wasn't in any danger.”

I looked up. “But not Lionel. Lionel was English. An officer in the British Army.”

A distant crash made the walls tremble. The front door.

“That was quick.” I folded up Violet's letter and put it away in my pocketbook. I lifted my cigarette and gave Tibby an assessing look. He was already on his unsteady feet, putting on his overcoat.

“What's the rush?” I said. “Make yourself at home.”

“I thought I might be a little
de trop
.” He aimed for dry, but it came out all wet.

“Oh, you would be very much
de trop
. Deliciously, perfectly
de trop
. Do you mind taking off your shirt for me?”

“I do.” A touch of huff.

“Well, the jacket and waistcoat, at least.” I stood up and unbuttoned him. “We could loosen the tie a bit. Ruffle your hair.”

Thump thump
went the stairs. Those feet, they were not kidding around.

Asked Tibby: “He's not a large man, is he?”

“Well, he's not small. But I don't think he's violent. And even if he were, he's a doctor. Do no harm, you know the rest. He'd have an ethical obligation to put you back together again afterward.”

Tibby released his necktie with a sigh and draped it over the sofa arm like a good sport.

“How immensely reassuring,” he said, slurring each
s
.