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.He had sat first in the big central living room and tried to read, but the silent house with other people asleep in it made him uneasy and so he had come out here.The salt air was cold still.Birds swooped down swiftly to the lawn in pursuit of the early worm and then flew up again.He was wondering at what time Captain Ambrose started work.He needed to talk to the policeman; there were questions he needed to ask him.He had been wrong about Dylan Riley, all wrong.He had a sense of smoldering anger that at any moment might flare into flame.Later, he was eating a silent breakfast with Louise in the big sunfilled kitchen when David Sinclair arrived from the city.His mother rose from the table and kissed him, and then held him for a moment at arm’s length, scanning his face and touching him lightly here and there with her fingertips, as if to check him for damage.She worried about the places David frequented, the Chelsea clubs and dives where he spent most his nights.“I know so little of what he does,” she would say.“He won’t tell me anything.” Glass had no comment to make; this was territory he did not venture into willingly.“Uh-oh,” David said now, lifting his head and pretending to sniff the air.“This atmosphere that I’m getting.Have you two been having a long day’s journey into night? I can almost hear the foghorns.” He was wearing a blazer with brass buttons and a crest on the pocket, and white duck trousers and an open-necked white shirt and a Liberty cravat.All he lacked was a yachting cap.The young man had as many personalities as he had outfits.And he had seen too many movies.Today he was Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, camp lisp and all.When his mother asked how he had managed to arrive so early he said he had driven up, setting out at six while the dawn was still an hour off.“They say the city never sleeps,” he said, “but it does, it does.There wasn’t a soul about, not even a bag lady.” He turned suddenly to Glass.“Anybody else get shot since I saw you last?”Big Bill appeared then, unshaven, in a terrycloth robe and purple velvet slippers.He looked greatly unwell.The tanned skin of his cheeks still had a grayish tinge, and the stubble on his chin glittered like spilled grains of salt.After her father had gone to bed the night before, Louise had berated her husband yet again for bringing up the painful subject of Charles Varriker and his suicide.“Don’t you think he deserves a bit of peace,” she had said, “after all these years?” Peace, Glass thought, did not come into it; peace was not the point.“Good morning, Granddad,” David Sinclair said, with exaggerated deference.Big Bill gave him a sliding glance from under his eyebrows and muttered something and sat down at the table.Glass wondered how Louise had persuaded her father to let her hand over the directorship of the Mulholland Trust to a young man who was the old man’s opposite in every way imaginable.Would he understand it, he wondered, if he had a daughter who herself had a son? The subtleties of familial loves and loyalties baffled him; his own father had died too young.Big Bill drank the coffee that Louise had poured for him and crumbled a piece of bread in his fingers but did not eat it.Glass noticed the tremor in his hand.He had aged overnight.“Need someone to drive me down to St.Andrew’s,” he said.St.Andrew’s in Sag Harbor was where he heard Mass on Sundays when he was at Silver Barn.“You can do that, can’t you, darling?” Louise said to her son.“But of course,” David said, with fake eagerness, and turned to his grandfather.“I’ll come to Mass, too.Simply can’t resist those gorgeous vestments.”He winked at Glass.Big Bill said nothing.In the end all four of them climbed into David Sinclair’s vintage open-top gold Mercedes, the old man in the passenger seat and Glass and Louise crowded together in the back.As they drew away from the house and set off down the hill Glass realized he had forgotten to call Captain Ambrose [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]