‘Don’t.’ Basil spoke sharply. ‘Not yet. If you don’t like this hotel, find another. But do stay in a hotel – a big, bright, noisy hotel like this, with plenty of doormen and elevator men. Use the main dining-room for meals. Don’t go off by yourself. Stay in crowds. And please lock your door at night until you hear from me again.’

  ‘Lock my door?’ Faustina’s laughter rang dry and cracked. ‘Do you think a locked door would make any difference to . . .?’

  ‘To what?’ He forced her to go on, believing it would be cathartic for her mind to drag its worst fears into words.

  ‘Can’t you guess what I’m afraid of?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’m afraid of seeing the – thing myself. As Goethe did.’

  ‘Then you’ve never seen it yourself?’

  ‘Only once, and that was only a glimpse. Now I’m no longer sure what I saw. It was the night I left Brereton. I was standing at the head of the front stairs. Mrs Lightfoot was below me. I seemed to see a sort of movement among the shadows at the foot of the stairs – nothing more. But Mrs Lightfoot’s behaviour made me suspect that she had seen more. Whatever it was, it – disturbed her.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I wasn’t too frightened. If there were never anything more than that, I could bear it. Just a movement in the shadows beyond the light . . . I could even bear seeing the back of a figure that resembled mine at a distance, in a dim light, for a few moments, with other people around me. That could be anything or nothing – say, an optical delusion. I could even bear it if I saw the face of the figure, fleetingly, at a distance. That, too, could be some trick or illusion. But – suppose it doesn’t stop there?’

  ‘What else could happen?’

  ‘Don’t you really understand?’

  Faustina’s voice was low and throbbing. Her slim hands gripped the arms of her chair in sudden tension. ‘Suppose, some day, or some night, when I’m quite alone in my own room, with all the lights turned on and the door locked, I should suddenly see a figure and a face close to mine and recognize it as my own face, feature for feature, in every detail and every flaw, even this pimple on my left cheek. That couldn’t be fake or illusion. If that happened, I’d finally be sure that I, or some part of me, was travelling in undiscovered country.

  ‘. . . I wouldn’t know how I got there, or why I went there, or what I did there . . . I would only know that I was there . . . And I’d be afraid of the unknown within myself. Can you imagine the mortal shock? Then I’d know it was real and believe I should die . . .’

  ‘Don’t dwell on that idea.’ Basil put all the firmness at his command into his voice. ‘That cannot happen and you know it.’

  But he was more honest with himself than most men of scientific education. As he stepped into the street a few moments later he looked up at the watchful stars – bright, silent, impersonal, and unimaginably far away if the astronomers’ guesswork had any basis in reality. At his university he had been taught that the black distance was immeasurably cold the farther it was from the earth. Now, later researches had revealed alternate layers of cold and heat as far as thermometers could be sent. No one knew why it wasn’t all cold, as it was supposed to be.

  He shivered and turned up his coat collar. His heels rang sharply on the pavement through the cold, still night. As he walked to the corner he muttered half aloud: ‘Who am I to say what cannot happen in this unknowable world?’

  Chapter Ten

  For in the time we know not of

  Did Fate begin

  Weaving the web of days that wove

  Your doom, Faustine.

  Juniper’s reluctant tap on the door woke Basil from a few hours’ fitful sleep. Anathematizing the eccentric office hours of Septimus Watkins, he dragged himself out of bed, still sleepy, and forced his shrinking flesh into a cold shower that roused him without refreshing him. A low, dark sky blotted out the dawn. A ground mist, rolling in from the East River, veiled the city in ragged streamers of white vapour as he walked two blocks to the Third Avenue garage where he kept his car.

  He knew Watkins only by reputation. The man was one of those lawyers who never appear in court, yet for over fifty years he had served as counsellor and confidential agent to half the great fortunes of New York. He administered their trust funds, drew up their marriage and divorce settlements, executed their wills, and stood guard over their investment portfolios. He was so widely known and so rarely seen that he had become a tradition, almost a legend. Innumerable anecdotes illustrated the tough suppleness of his mind and the shrewdness of his worldly judgement. But, like most people, Basil had no idea what the man behind the myth was really like.

  At ten minutes to six the lobby of the great office building at the corner of Broad and Wall was empty except for an elevator man and a scrubwoman who was wearily dragging a dirty mop across a mosaic floor inlaid with brass. When Basil reached the twenty-sixth floor there was no light behind the double doors of ground glass lettered Watkins, Fisher, Underwood, Van Arsdale, and Travers. He tried the handles. Both doors were locked. He found a small button in the jamb and pressed it. After his fourth ring, he began to wonder if Watkins misled people deliberately about his habits – an ingenious way of discouraging visitors. He was turning away when the glass glowed yellow and the door was thrown open by a slight, agile man. His hair was white, but thick and springy, the cheeks below it round and pink. He looked like a man in middle age whose hair had turned white prematurely. Septimus Watkins was over seventy.

  ‘I understand Mr Watkins is here at this hour?’ Basil was still not quite able to believe in such unconventional office hours. ‘Will you please tell him that Dr Willing is here?’

  ‘I’m Watkins. Come in, won’t you?’ He spoke without ceremony. ‘You must be Basil Willing, the psychiatrist?’ The blue eyes were sharp, but not unfriendly. ‘My office is down the hall. This way.’

  They passed through a reception room, large as the lobby of a small hotel. Watkins led the way down a long corridor with closed doors on either side, through three private offices, each large, dark, and empty. At last he threw open another door. They entered a corner office, larger than all the others, with windows on two sides giving a magnificent view of the harbour. The sickly November sun was just struggling above the white mist that still blurred the skyscrapers.

  Basil paused before a fireplace of tawny marble where yellow tongues of flame licked lazily at a pile of birch logs, taking the edge off the morning chill. ‘I haven’t seen a wood fire in an office since I was in London. Do you serve tea here at five o’clock?’

  Watkins’s smile was cordial, frank, unhesitating – the smile of a man who had not been rebuffed or outwitted for many years. ‘I believe in being comfortable, wherever I am. I don’t care for tea, but there’s a small bar behind that panel if you care to press the button.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Basil’s glance went back to the window-panorama of the world’s greatest seaport. ‘No wonder you come here so early. If I were you, I’d live here!’

  ‘That’s not why I am here so early.’ The blue eyes twinkled. ‘You must have wondered about that. I’ll explain. Many years ago, when my practice was smaller, I discovered that a man with an office is constantly hampered by time-wasters. A tough receptionist can take care of obvious pests. Men selling insurance, women selling silk stockings, self-styled philanthropists soliciting for organized charity, and just plain bums asking for handouts. She can even stand off reporters and district leaders and crackpots and con men. But what are you going to do about your own clients and your own partners when they just want to sit and talk? You can’t work while they’re there, but you have no work if they’re not there at all.

  ‘At last I hit on this scheme. I decided to keep peculiar office hours. Every weekday I would be in my office but only from six to seven a.m. I would never refuse to see anyone who asked to see me personally, no matter who he was and what his business or lack of business. But – and this is a big “but” – in order to see me, he would have to be in my office by six in the morning, which generally meant he would have to get up at four-thirty or five. From what I had seen of human nature, I suspected that no one would get up that early in the morning just to see me unless he had something really important to say to me.’

  ‘And you were right?’

  ‘In the last twenty-three years, only twice have I had my time wasted by long-winded visitors with nothing to say. And I didn’t really mind those two. I felt that if they wanted to waste their time so badly they were willing to get up at five a.m. to do so, they deserved a little of my time.

  ‘Most people, when they hear they have to get here by six if they want to catch me, decide that they would rather see one of my partners at a more reasonable hour and let him relay the facts of the case to me. You’d really be surprised how few visitors I have, but I still make it a point of honour never to refuse anyone a personal interview providing he will take the trouble to come at this hour. And I really believe I get more work done here in one hour without interruptions than I could do in eight hours with a constant stream of visitors. Of course, the telephone is disconnected until I leave at seven and whatever work is unfinished I take home with me.’

  Basil smiled ruefully. ‘Well, Mr Watkins, I shall try not to be long-winded, but I’m afraid you are going to count me as the third visitor in twenty-three years who came at six with nothing important to say. That is, nothing of importance to you. Naturally it’s important to me, or I wouldn’t be here.’

  Watkins laughed. ‘That is the whole point. If it’s important to you, I’m willing to listen. What I objected to were people who bothered me about things that weren’t important even to them, just for the pleasure of hearing themselves talk. Please sit down and tell me what’s on your mind.’

  Basil sat with his back to the fire, facing a window. ‘You – or at least your firm – are acting as trustee for Miss Faustina Crayle. I want to know who will inherit her property in the event of her death.’

  The pleasant twinkle faded from Watkins’s eyes. ‘That is not the kind of information lawyers give to casual inquirers.’

  ‘I’m not precisely a casual inquirer. I’m medical assistant to the district attorney and a friend of Miss Crayle’s. Do you know anything about the circumstances of her leaving Brereton?’

  ‘I know that she has left,’ replied Watkins cautiously. ‘She didn’t tell me the reason. In any case, it shouldn’t matter very much to her. She will inherit a tidy little nest-egg on her thirtieth birthday next fall. Her property is safeguarded in every way.’

  ‘I am not thinking of her property,’ answered Basil. ‘I am thinking of her sanity, perhaps her life.’

  ‘Did she consult you as a psychiatrist?’

  ‘She is not a patient of mine. She consulted me as a friend. But, as a psychiatrist, I cannot help realizing how her situation may affect her mental health. Hasn’t it occurred to you that there was something odd about the fact that she lost two teaching jobs two years in succession? Each a few weeks after school opened? Each involving the breaking of a contract?’

  ‘As Miss Crayle’s only guardian I should like to hear the details of her difficulties. Or would you be violating a confidence if you told me?’

  ‘I think not. In any case, I should be willing to violate a confidence if that would save Miss Crayle.’

  ‘Save Miss Crayle? From what?’

  ‘Perhaps you can tell me.’ Briefly Basil summarized Faustina’s experiences at Maidstone and Brereton.

  Watkins listened attentively, without comment. When Basil had finished, there was a suspended moment before Watkins roused himself to reply.

  ‘An amazing story, Dr Willing. I am too old – I have seen too many strange things – to dismiss all this as schoolgirl hysteria. That doesn’t mean that I accept an extra-human explanation. I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Neither do I. But there is always the possibility that someone has a motive for driving Miss Crayle to suicide or insanity. That motive might be rooted in psychopathic malice or it might spring from the most material thing in the world – property.’

  ‘Or both.’

  ‘Do you know Miss Crayle’s heir, or heirs?’

  ‘I do. There’s only one.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Myself.’ Watkins smiled at Basil’s astonishment. ‘I’m not being entirely frank with you,’ he went on. ‘Legally, I am Miss Crayle’s heir. According to her mother’s will, if Miss Crayle dies before her thirtieth birthday, I inherit some jewels that would otherwise go to Miss Crayle. But her mother made an informal verbal agreement with me that I was to pass the jewels along to certain other people whom she did not wish to mention by name in her will.’

  ‘Will you name them to me?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’

  ‘Would you name them to Miss Crayle herself?’

  Watkins allowed his eyes to wander toward the nearest window. The steeple of Old Trinity looked dark and dwarfish far below the grey stone battlements of high finance. ‘I can’t even do that. You see, Miss Crayle’s circumstances are extraordinary. I’m going to tell you what I can because I believe that it is the quickest way to disabuse your mind of the preposterous notion that any threat to Miss Crayle can come from – from this direction. But I must withhold names. And I must ask you to keep all this confidential between us. I particularly do not want it repeated to Miss Crayle herself. I know you by reputation. I’m trusting you to be discreet in a delicate situation. And I’d rather tell you myself than have you probing into Miss Crayle’s history.’

  ‘So Miss Crayle has a history?’

  Watkins’s eyes narrowed and his lips puckered together in a centripetal grimace as if he were gathering together all his mental forces. ‘That unfortunate girl, Faustina Crayle, is illegitimate. Her mother was – well, I believe it was Mr Kipling who first called it the “oldest profession in the world”. Today we know more about prehistoric customs and we know that prostitution is one of the most modern professions. Where there is no property there is no marriage and where there is no marriage there is no vice.’

  ‘Faustina’s mother was a prostitute?’ exclaimed Basil incredulously.

  ‘More accurately a courtesan in the great tradition of Ninon de l’Enclos.’ Watkins’s smile was smaller and closer now, seeming to savour a scandal safely sterilized by time. ‘Crayle was her real name. Professionally she was known as – by another name.’

  ‘You won’t tell me what it was?’

  ‘I should prefer not to. She was born in Baltimore, the daughter of a man who wrote hymns. She had red hair. In the nineties she ran away from home – first to New York, then Paris. There she became a star of the demi-monde – one of those fabulous Parisian houris Balzac describes with such relish and detail. She was only a provincial American girl, yet from highly cultivated lovers she learned to speak and write perfect French, to understand music, art, and letters . . . Oh, it’s impossible to make an American of your generation understand! Only Paris in the nineteenth century and Athens in the Periclean age have produced such women. The true demi-mondaine – who had everything the most distinguished mondaine could have except one thing – legal marriage and the status among other women that goes with it. She had a better life than any respectable woman living outside the world of fashion. She had wealth, a brilliant social life, the affection and even the respect of her lovers. In our time, my dear young man, even vice had a refinement that your generation will never see again. I tell you she was a courtesan and what does that convey to your twentieth-century mind? Bleached hair, blood-red nails, and a disgusting slang word – “floozy”. This woman had a mind. And manners.’

  ‘And the father?’ put in Basil.

  ‘The man was a New Yorker, with a fortune invested in shipping. In 1912 he wanted a divorce without accusing his wife publicly, so he went to Paris and let himself be seen once driving in the Bois with this woman. At that time she was so notorious on both sides of the ocean that a single drive in an open carriage with her was held by a shocked American court to be adequate proof of adultery. Witnesses were imported from France and the wife was able to secure the divorce her husband wanted.

  ‘It was common gossip that he paid the co-respondent a thousand dollars for the privilege of that public drive and the use of her name in court. She stipulated that they should part at her doorstep without his so much as kissing her fingertips, but . . .’ Again came that small, salacious smile. ‘Faustina Crayle is the daughter of these two.’

  ‘Then they didn’t part on her doorstep . . .?’

  ‘Oh, yes, they did – that time. But an extraordinary thing happened. Or perhaps it wasn’t so extraordinary. Perhaps she knew her trade. Perhaps it was part of her technique to maintain such great reserve during that first drive. You see, he meant her to be a mere convenience, a pretext for divorce. She may have resented that and taken her revenge. In any case, this woman, who was to have been a convenience, altered the whole course of the man’s life, for he fell in love with her. You find that hard to believe? I don’t. Her years in Paris had given her a polished wit and she was a most beautiful woman then – hair like fire, skin like snow, and the body of Botticelli’s Aphrodite . . .’

  ‘You knew her in those days?’ Basil spoke before he realized that the verb had several meanings in this context.

  ‘I – I had that privilege.’ Watkins responded almost primly, but there was an unmistakable spark in his old eyes. ‘I was the man’s lawyer, among other things.’

  ‘And this is the origin of that shy, anaemic, day-dreaming girl!’ Basil was rearranging every idea he had ever had about Faustina.

  Watkins’s shoulders sketched a shrug. ‘We used to have a saying – the daughter of a flirt is always a prude.’

  ‘Has she no suspicion of the truth?’

 

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