Free Seven Kinds of Death by Kate Wilhelm Page B

have missed whatever Victoria had said about smoke, and whatever she said about his ironic pose. Constance studied the young woman in silence for a time, until Toni stepped through the open window again carrying Paul’s book. “I couldn’t find my copy,” she said. “But I remembered where I saw Marion’s down in the music room. This is hers.” Her face was sweatshiny and her breaths were coming hard and fast. She had been running.
    Constance stood up to take the book, and then started back toward the stairs. “Thanks,” she said. “See you later.” Toni lay down again, her head turned so that she could watch Constance.
    The deck had been added by inept carpenters; the floor was not level, and the slope was toward the house, not away from it. At the far end where the steps had been built, there was a walkway that led toward the rear of the house. Constance followed it to an outside door that opened to a very narrow hall, then to the central hall of the upper floor, and on to her own room that overlooked the back of the property, the kitchen garden area, the ancient oak trees in the distance, shrubs that needed pruning. It was very quiet out there today. She sat at a window in her room with the book in her lap, wondering why Toni did not want to lend her copy. She must have written in it, Constance decided, underlined passages, highlighted it, annotated it in some way. And by now probably no one would be able to find it without a prolonged search. She opened the copy she held and began to read.
    Alice Weber, the woman from town who had made lunch, returned to cook dinner. Ba Ba joined her in the kitchen and their voices rose and fell, rose and fell. Spence and Paul returned from the village; Paul looked as if he had been sleep deprived for a week; his eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot, and sunken deep in the sockets. Spence went straight to the little bar. Johnny came back and talked in a low voice with Max for a few minutes, exactly like a child checking in, making a report. Afterward, he said to Tootles, “I had to leave this number for calls to be returned. You can’t find anyone on a Saturday afternoon.” It sounded almost like an apology, but not quite; it was too sullen for that. He glanced at his father as if to say, okay, I did it. Max’s expression was unreadable. Tootles shrugged.
    Dinner dragged interminably. No one except Ba Ba had anything to say, and no one paid any attention to her flow of words. As soon as possible Constance went up to her room to finish Paul’s book, only to find that after she was done with it, she was too restless to settle down. What did he believe? She saw again his haggard face, his trembling hands, and realized that she did not have even a clue about the man behind the appearance. She knew his column, read it with some regularity, in fact. He was witty writing about art, with a dry humor that was lacking in personal exchanges, as far as she could tell, and that wasn’t a fair judgment, she knew, not under the circumstances. And, of course, he was so knowledgeable, recognized as a world authority. But what did he believe? Possession? A jealous muse? A price that must be paid for every success? What did he believe? And more important at the moment, what had happened between him and Victoria Leeds? Tomorrow, she thought, she would find an opportunity to have a little conversation with Paul Volte, not more than that. Just a little talk to satisfy her own curiosity before she started for home. She finally went to bed and was lulled to sleep by the music of crickets, tree toads, a frog chorus.
    When she woke up, it was fifteen minutes past eight. She started to roll over, to pull the sheet over her head, to go back to sleep, but she remembered that today she was going home, that she had packing to do, and she forced herself out of the bed, to her feet.
    Spence was in the kitchen drinking coffee, reading the Washington Post . He had already been down to the village. He grinned his