“I’d like a word,” said the first.
“How did you get in here? Who the hell are you?”
“Just a word. About your employer.”
“Are you from the press, is that it? Look, I’ve told you everything I know. Now get the hell out of here before I call the police. You’ve got no right breaking in here.”
The second man stepped out of the shadows and looked up the stairs. His face was made-up, that much was apparent even from a distance. The flesh was powdered, the cheeks rouged: he looked like a pantomime dame. Luther stepped back from the top of the stairs, mind racing. “Don’t be afraid,” the first man said, and the way he said it made Luther more afraid than ever. What capacities might such politeness harbor?
“If you’re not out of here in ten seconds-” he warned.
“Where is Joseph?” the polite man asked.
“Dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I saw you at the funeral, didn’t I? I don’t know who you are-”
“My name is Mamoulian.”
“Well, you were there, weren’t you? You saw for yourself. He’s dead.”
“I saw a box.”
“He’s dead, man,” Luther insisted.
“You were the one who found him, I gather,” the European said, moving a few silent paces across the hallway to the bottom of the stairs.
“That’s right. In bed,” Luther replied. Maybe they were press, after all. “I found him in bed. He died in his sleep.”
“Come down here. Furnish the details, if you would.”
“I’m fine where I am.”
The European looked up at the chauffeur’s frowning face; felt, tentatively, at the nape of his neck. There was too much heat and dirt in there; he wasn’t resilient enough for an investigation. There were other, cruder methods, however. He half-gestured toward the Razor-Eater, whose sandalwood presence he smelled close.
“This is Anthony Breer,” he said. “He has in his time dispatched children and dogs-you remember the dogs, Luther?-with admirable thoroughness. He is not afraid of death. Indeed he enjoys an extraordinary empathy with it.”
The pantomime face gleamed up from the stairwell, desire in its eyes.
“Now, please,” Mamoulian said, “for both our sakes; the truth.”
Luther’s throat was so dry the words scarcely came. “The old man’s dead,” he said. “That’s all I know. If I knew any more I’d tell you.”
Mamoulian nodded; the look on his face as he spoke was compassionate, as if he genuinely feared for what must happen next.
“You tell me something I want to believe; and you say it with such conviction I almost do. In principle I can leave, content, and you can go about your business. Except”-he sighed, heavily-“except that I don’t quite believe you enough.”
“Look, this is my fucking house!” Luther blustered, sensing that extreme measures were needed now. The man called Breer had unbuttoned his jacket. He wore no shirt underneath. There were skewers threaded through the fat of his chest, transfixing his nipples, crossways. He reached up and drew two out; no blood came. Armed with these steel needles, he shuffled to the bottom of the stairs.
“I’ve done nothing,” Luther pleaded.
“So you say.”
The Razor-Eater began to mount the stairs. The unpowdered breasts were hairless and yellowish.
“Wait!”
At Luther’s shout, Breer paused.
“Yes?” said Mamoulian.
“You keep him off me!”
“If you have something to tell me, spit it out. I’m more than eager to listen.”
Luther nodded. Breer’s face registered disappointment. Luther swallowed hard before speaking. He’d been paid what was to him a small fortune not to say what he was about to say, but Whitehead hadn’t warned him that it would be like this. He’d expected a gaggle of inquisitive reporters, perhaps even a lucrative offer for his story to go into the Sunday papers, but not this: not this ogre, with his doll’s face and his bloodless wounds. There was a limit to the amount of silence any money could buy, for Christ’s sake.
“What have you got to say?” Mamoulian asked.
“He’s not dead,” Luther replied. There: it wasn’t so difficult to do, was it? “It was all set up. Only two or three people knew: I was one of them.”