Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

“No,Mr Latham.”

“That’sthe trouble, you see. That’s just what everyone says. Kept to herself. And abad temper. Typical sulky Latin, that’s Herons’ version. But I think he triedto get under her duvet.”

Carversaid nothing. Herons liked to imply he could get under most female duvets,Latham should be well-enough educated in such facts not to mention theirveracity or falseness.

“Soshe was a social mystery, then,” said Latham, and his voice, which had becomethe plum-jam version, was sticky now with regret. “Bloody shit of a way for agirl like that to go. Not even thirty yet. Clearly something weighing on hermind, wouldn’t you think? Some deep problem. And never spoke to anyone. Feltshe couldn’t trust them.”

Heknows.Carver took another nearly non-existent nip of the vodka, scarcely more than ataste of its fumes. He knows she approached me.

“Wellany way, Carver,” said Latham, downing his own generous glass with adeliberately finalising flourish, “before I let you go, just one last thing. I’djust like you to listen to something for me.”

AsLatham touched the sound control button, and the yellow light winked on,Carver, if quite incoherently, somehow knew also what was coming. Not theperhaps predictable thing, but the nonsensical one; it was surreal and absurd,unbelievable, and could not happen.

Thenout of the 3P disc-player he heard Silvia Dusa’s voice, not yet thirty, letalone forty. “You see, Car,” she said as she had on the bench under the trees, “Ihave – I’ve done something stupid.” And behind her voice, if more muffled now,the intermittent rumbling of the council contraption relining the paths .

Thegap which followed was not, he thought, as long as it had seemed to be at thetime. But there – in it as before, he could count the three choruses of themachine.

Andthen his own voice: “You mean about your mother.”

Carverglanced at Latham. But Latham sat listening, relaxed yet intent, his chin onhis hand and the empty glass, of very polished crystal, resting carefully toone side. He might have been concentrating on a world class radio play, one hehad pencilled in, as he might have said, because it was by a writer he greatlyliked, or about a subject that intrigued him.

SilviaDusa had done what she had accused Carver of doing. She had taken out with her,and then activated, a 3P – a Third Person – the infallible Mantik recordingdevice which, allegedly, could even pick up conversation through the rush ofrunning water or a loudly played stereo.

Dusawas spitting out her dislike of the mother now, her mother’s irrelevance,filial fear or love, in this case, inapplicable. And then she said, as before,“...when not thinking clearly. I have – given something to... someone.”

Andnow Carver would calmly say, as he had done, “You need to talk to JackStuart,”

Butinstead Carver said something else.

Carversaid: “All right. You’d better tell me, then.”

Andafter another pause, “Come on, Silvia. You wouldn’t have spoken to me in thefirst place, would you, if you weren’t going to confide. Felt you had to. Solet’s get on with it, shall we? And I’ll see what I can do.”

Four

“You’re toosure. It can’t be so straightforward. How could it be? No – I don’t. I can’t. Ishouldn’t have spoken. No. I – am sorry, I apologise. It was nothing,’’

“Don’tbe ridiculous, Silvia. It’s obviously something.”

“Nothing.No. I was mistaken, Car.”

“Youcan’t go back on it now.” (He heard the man who was him, confident andpersuasive, with a numbed aversion that did not amount to doubt). “Simply tellme the rest. Oh come on, we’ve all done unwise things, from time to time. Ithappens. We can sort it out, you and I.”

“No.I see now, I must go to Jack Stuart–”

“OhGod, Silvia, do you reallythink that?” (The man – himself – gently laughed.) “Stuart? He’ll hangyou. He is very able, at that.”

Andthen the rising note of purely physical alarm in her voice, “Let me go.Let go of me–” And a kind of scuffling quite discernible over the on-offrumble of the path repairs. A bird gave a shrill alarm call, even itsretreating wings were to be heard. And then she hissed like a cat, or one ofthose snakes the nicknamers said she hid in her black hair.

Bothof them were breathing quickly, as if they had been running together, orhungrily kissing, or having sex. And then the disc roared into a huge chasm ofsilence, and nothing else rose from it. It had, maybe, offered up enough.

Although,of course, the sounds – machine, bird, voices, breath – went on playing.Replaying.

“We’realmost there, Mr Carver. There’s the church – houses – and the pub. The Bell,isn’t it?”

“Allright. You can let me out here.”

“Er,Mr Latham said all the way to your door, Mr Carver.”

“Mypartner,” Carver said, “is ill. The noise of the car will disturb her.”

“Well,Mr Carver, if it comes to that, I expect you will, too, when you go in – can’tavoid it. And it’s a bloody windy night. Temperature’s dropped to 9. No, I’lldrop you off up the lane, by your house. Nice and snug.”

Whatdid the Mantik cabby think Carver would do? Leap out and sprint for the woods?Vanish in the vast wild terrain that so briefly surrounded this English suburbanvillage? He could do it, anyway, surely, once the cab had gone.

“Yes.OK.”

And“Let me go,” insisted the panting, struggling Dusa-voice in his skull. “Letgo of me–”

“Thedisc’s been tampered with, Mr Latham.”

“Oh,come on, now, Carver. Don’t be a twat. 3P’s can’t be fiddled about with. That’sthe whole point of them. They can be used for all kinds of legit recording oraudio surveillance, or blocking of same. But once they have the record, thatis it. The old days of course were different. As they say, that was then.”

“Ididn’t speak to her the way I seem to be speaking on the disc.”

Latham,non-vocal, pursed his lips.

“Itold her myself to go to Jack Stuart at once. I said I couldn’t help, she had to see toit.”

“Howodd,” said Latham, in a quick, flighty, bantering way. “I wonder what it wasshe did though. Or didshe let you in on it, Carver? After she turned the 3P off – or whatever happenedto it. It sounded to me rather as if it had been