Anyway. 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.