Part 13 (2/2)
”But,” she picked up her thread, ”while I trust him not to sample too much of the gin, I suspect he's making sheep's eyes and tupping a ewe.” She laughed.
”Tup,” thought the patterer idly. Why, he had not heard the old English word for years. Only rustics and, it seemed, Celtic publicans, used it. Most people now chose other euphemisms for copulation. He remembered the s.h.i.+ver he had felt as a schoolboy (admittedly he had experienced a greater frisson surrept.i.tiously conning The Rape of Lucrece The Rape of Lucrece) when reading about the Blackamoor Oth.e.l.lo ”tupping” white Desdemona.
He murmured aloud the lines in which another character tells Desdemona's father, ”You'll have your daughter covered by a Barbary horse.” He hoped there had been no tupping in Miss Dormin's recital at Levey's theater.
”Pardon?” said Mrs. Robinson, frowning.
His reverie was broken by her puzzlement. ”Nothing. Sorry. I was just daydreaming.” So, indeed, the Bard had the right of it: The world is is a stage and there's always pa.s.sion and l.u.s.t upon it. Well, I'll act out this play, he decided. ”I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't quite follow what you said.” a stage and there's always pa.s.sion and l.u.s.t upon it. Well, I'll act out this play, he decided. ”I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't quite follow what you said.”
”Ah, Mr. Dunne! You're a slow rogue, toying with a poor simple woman.”
”On my honor, no, ma'am!”
”Well, he has a fancy woman there and I'll wager they're chewing each other's tongues as we speak. If they're not hard at it swiving, that is. Though maybe not that, for I hear he has put her in the family way and there she is now, as big as the governor's stables ... But what's your worry?”
Here goes nothing, thought Dunne. ”Unrequited love,” he said.
Mrs. Robinson stared at him. Sure, he was a well set-up boy-man, rather. And she'd heard that he was kind and she knew he was clever. He stared back at her. In the half-light coming through the small windows, her white skin looked almost luminous and her hair made a golden-red nimbus around her oval face.
”Make that one your last,” she said finally.
”I beg pardon if I've said something untoward!”
Mrs. Robinson smiled. ”No, dear. Just make it your last. In fact, don't finish it. Shut that outside door and bar it. Wait five minutes and come upstairs. There's something you should see.”
Dunne did as he was bid. On the level above he found a corridor. Only one door was open so he headed there. He crossed the threshold into a room dimmed by heavy, drawn curtains.
He heard a sound and turned. From behind the closing door stepped Norah Robinson, wearing only a s.h.i.+ft. Shutting off the corridor had lessened the light even more.
”All cats may be gray in the dark, but I'm no cat.” She opened a curtain slightly and now there was enough light for Dunne to see her draw the s.h.i.+ft over her shoulders and drop it to the floor. She stood still for a moment, almost a ghostly figure in the gloom, but a phantom with very real, high b.r.e.a.s.t.s and long legs. Legs that ended in a triangle of dark pelt that looked, he always thought, like a map of Van Diemen's Land.
”Will you love me, Nicodemus?” she asked softly, seizing his hands. ”Don't think ill of me. I'm no easy bunter. I haven't had a man for-G.o.d! What would it be? A year? More? If you're worried, my husband doesn't share my bed. Not even my room.”
”Can't he-doesn't he-claim his rights?”
”Ach! It's my money, dear. He does what he's told. I never loved him and he never loved me. Once, maybe. Besides, I have a long knife handy here always. He knows I'd fillet him.”
He licked his suddenly dry lips. ”I have nothing with me, ma'am-no protection.”
”I'm clean,” she said coldly. ”And for G.o.d's sake, stop calling me 'ma'am'!”
”I'm sure you are,” said Dunne. ”And I'm not poxed. But I always hope to use armor d'amour d'amour. And you must not risk becoming with child.”
”You're the perfect gentleman, Nick ...” She drew him over to the bed and from a side table took a box. ”If you're happier, here.” She opened it. ”Voila-lettres francaises, sheaths, an upright knight's armor, call them what you will. I sell a lot to hurried and worried men in the taproom. That's all I sell 'em, mind you!”
She helped the patterer shrug off his s.h.i.+rt and kick off his trousers and undergarment. She lay back as he rolled on a silk sheath and secured the ribbon ties. She held out her arms.
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DUNNE MUST HAVE dozed. He was woken by being shaken furiously. He looked up at the set face of Mrs. Robinson.
”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!” she hissed. ”You talked in your sleep, just as you did when we loved. Who in the h.e.l.l is Rachel? Some s.l.u.t who won't give you what you want? Or did she give it to someone else?”
He had already peeled off the silken layer, but that didn't stop him. The b.i.t.c.h! He slapped Mrs. Robinson hard and rolled over and into her.
Even in the half-light he caught the sudden look of surprise on her face and in her widened eyes. ”Where is your guardian? You have no armor, no protection!” She arched her hips desperately, trying to buck him off. But he held down her wrists and was too strong.
”d.a.m.n protection!” he said savagely through gritted teeth. ”d.a.m.n Rachel!”
Mrs. Robinson melted. And, for the first time, he said her name: ”Norah!”
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NICODEMUS DUNNE LEFT Norah Robinson sleeping and escaped quietly through the back door.
He returned to the Baccha.n.a.l later. The bar was filled and the hostess was busy.
”I'm sorry, Norah,” he said when she had a quiet moment.
”Don't be, love,” she said. ”I'm not.”
”You'll be all right?”
”'Course I will. I flushed you out ...”-Dunne looked around quickly-”And, anyway, I didn't get around to telling you, but I'm unfruitful-as barren as Pinchgut.” She smiled sadly. ”I don't suppose I can altogether blame my man for playing from home.” She laughed. ”Ah, well. Will you be having another? Drink, that is!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.
The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one.
-Herac.l.i.tus (c. 500 BC; translator unknown)
NORAH ROBINSON COULD LAUGH, MUSED THE PATTERER, AS HE nursed the drink she had offered him. And no bad thing. Better that than to leave her crying. He drained his gla.s.s, waved because she was busy again and walked out into the sunny street. There was still plenty of life left in the day.
He knew he would go back to Norah, but he still wanted the untouchable Miss Dormin. He tried to dismiss three vastly different feelings tugging in his brain-selfish pride, remorse, self-pity.
He decided to blot out his personal tangles by devoting himself to the murders and soon found that he seemed to be making more progress in a matter of hours than he had in the previous few days. His earlier scattered thoughts were coming together and seemed finally to be making sense.
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