“Bill will tell you. He wants to see you. He’s in the library.”
Toy looked weary, but not as ill as he had when last they’d met. Maybe he’d seen a doctor in the interim, or taken a holiday.
“You wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes, Marty, Yes. You enjoy your night on the town?”
“Very much. Thank you for making it possible.”
“It wasn’t my doing; it was Joe. You’re well liked, Marty. Lillian tells me even the dogs have taken to you.”
Toy crossed to the table, opened the cigarette box, and selected a cigarette. Marty had not seen him smoke before.
“You won’t be seeing Mr. Whitehead today; there’s going to be a little get-together tonight-”
“Yes, Pearl told me.”
“It’s nothing special. Mr. Whitehead has dinners for a select few every now and then. The point is, he likes them to be private gatherings, so you won’t be required.”
This pleased Marty. At least he could go lie down, catch up on some sleep.
“Obviously we’d like you to be in the house, should you be needed for any reason, but I think it’s unlikely.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I think you can call me Bill in private, Marty; I don’t see any need for formality any longer.”
“OK.”
“I mean . . .” He stopped to light the cigarette. “. . . we’re all servants here, aren’t we? In one way or another.”
By the time he’d showered, thought about a run and discounted the idea as masochistic, then lain down to doze, the first signs of the inevitable hangover were on the way. There was no cure that he knew of. The only option was to sleep it off.
He didn’t wake until the middle of the afternoon, and only then roused by hunger. There was no sound in the house. Downstairs the kitchen was empty, only the buzz of a fly at the window-the first Marty had seen this season-interrupted the glacial calm. Pearl had obviously finished whatever preparations were required for this evening’s dinner party, and gone, perhaps to come back later. He went to the refrigerator and rifled it for something to quieten his growling belly. The sandwich he constructed looked like an unmade bed, with sheets of ham tumbling out from its bread blankets, but it did the job. He put on the coffee percolator and went in search of company.
It was as though everyone had gone from the face of the earth. Wandering through the deserted house the pit of the afternoon swallowed him. The stillness, and the remains of his headache, conspired to make him jittery. He found himself glancing behind him like a man on an ill-lit street. Upstairs was even quieter than down; his footsteps on the carpeted landing were so hushed he might not have had weight at all. Even so, he found himself creeping.
Halfway along the landing-Whitehead’s landing-came the cutoff point beyond which he had been instructed not to go. The old man’s private suite was this end of the house, as was Carys’ bedroom. Which room was it most likely to be? He tried to recreate the outside of the house, to locate the room by a process of elimination, but he lacked the imaginative skill to correlate the exterior with the closed doors of the corridor ahead.
Not all were closed. The third along on his right was slightly ajar: and from inside, now his ears were attuned to the lowest level of audibility, he could hear the sound of movement. Surely it was her. He crossed the invisible threshold into forbidden territory, not thinking of what the punishment for trespass might be, too eager to see her face, maybe to speak to her. He reached the door, and peered through.
Carys was there. She was semirecumbent on the bed, staring into middle distance. Marty was just about to step in to speak to her when somebody else moved in the room, hidden from him by the door. He didn’t have to wait for the voice to know that it was Whitehead.
“Why do you treat me so badly?” he was asking her, his voice hushed. “You know how it hurts me when you’re like this.”