“It was,” Em said, but the look she gave me was strange. “But it’s not—”
There was another crack, loud enough to cut her off. We all turned to look at the lake. It was snowing more heavily. The scene was beginning to look like a black-and-white TV with bad reception. Between the flying flakes, it was possible to see that out in the middle a large sheet of ice had broken into pieces, one was sinking beneath the water, and a black hole was visible, gaping wide, where I had stood only minutes before.
“You know, Andy, you are completely fucking insane. How do you feel when you look at that? You could have died,” Rob said.
Priss, Zack, and Alice were looking at me curiously. Perhaps they thought I was capable of anything.
“Longing,” Marcus said. “She feels longing.”
* * *
In the boot room, I stripped off my outer layers and my wet socks. My ankle wasn’t entirely good, but I couldn’t really feel it. In the library, Zack built an enormous fire and while the others stood turning themselves before it, I took up a place in an armchair, jamming my bare feet beneath me. Away from the fire, the house was cold, but I was unbothered by it. My eyelids felt heavy and when I closed them for long moments, I found that I was still out on the ice, its frosted surface passing beneath my feet like a treadmill. Each time I felt the ice crack, I opened my eyes to see everything going on around me as before.
At one point a mug of coffee was thrust into my hand and then a ham sandwich.
I closed my eyes. The ice cracked. This time would I fall?
Peter and Marcus were at the window, looking out and discussing whether we should head back. “Must be four inches,” Marcus said. “We should go.”
“Up Burlip Hill?” Peter’s voice was doubtful.
“No one’s going anywhere. You have to stay. Besides there’s a mad man out there. It’s far too dangerous to set foot outside.” Rob had come to stand beside them. “Yes, a mad man, a slobbering, ax-wielding, staggering cliché of homicidal mania, with a suitcase full of wrath and an encyclopedic knowledge of sex crimes.”
“Are you sure?” Marcus asked.
“Oh, quite sure,” Rob said, clapping him on the back. “He’s practically family.”
So we stayed, drinking steadily, first whiskey in the coffees, and then wine. Priss bustled in and out with the glasses and later there were canapés. “I got them from Marks,” she said. “You just throw them in. What will you do with your prize, David?”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought about it.” David was by the fire and I saw him take the necklace from his pocket and hold it idly in one hand.
“It’s only glass, isn’t it, Em?”
“And if the necklace was real,” she said, “what would we all do then?”
“What would that even mean? For it to be real?” I asked.
“It would mean you could exchange it for lots and lots of money,” Alice said.
“Perhaps you should have them, Alice.” And David held them out to her, dangling between finger and thumb in the firelight. I saw Priss smile innocently at the gesture.
“I don’t take fake.” Alice swung round and plopped down in a chair pouting, but David made no move toward her. I watched as he lay the necklace down on the mantelpiece. He did it deliberately; the necklace was unclasped and he laid it down in a line, adjusting it till it was quite straight.
The evening was a little subdued. Perhaps they were tired. Were they happy? Bored? I can hardly place my friends in the room, nor our hosts, nor Priss or Zack. In my memory, I can barely make them out. My attention was elsewhere.
Again, I was the first to go up. The bed was stone cold. I lay on top of it in my clothes, listening and waiting. The curtains were open and when I looked out it was upon a dream world, the velvet night, the nacreous glow of the moon. Beyond the pane, flakes of snow were rising on an updraft so that it gave me the peculiar feeling that time was running backward.
As I told the police, it was about one a.m. when I went back down. You forget how it is to move quietly, to creep. I was out of practice and my ankle was still throbbing from earlier. The whole house seemed to creak at my footfall. The dark was total, and once I had let go the bannister, I had to walk like the cartoon image of a sleepwalker, my arms stretched out before me. The door to the library was open and since there were embers still smoldering in the hearth, there was the merest murky, reddish glow by which I found my way to the fireplace. The necklace was there, on the mantelpiece where he had left it. My hand closed over it and a piece of the darkness detached itself, stepped forward. A hand closed over mine.
It was David, of course. We stood like that for a little bit. At least I can say that on this occasion he touched me first. His hand over mine, mine clutching the necklace. But after that first touch, I have no defense. My mind went dead, like a phone line had been unplugged. Something else was taking over. He smelled the same, and his skin was warm and I could feel under my fingertips the stubble coming through. David put an arm around me and drew me in, chest to chest, cheek to cheek. A spreading shudder. Still holding the diamonds, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him. It had always been gentle between us, but it was not so gentle now. There wasn’t any of me left that didn’t want him. Still, I didn’t let the necklace loose from my fist, not through any of it, not until the very end when I had to let it go, to press down both of my hands on the small of his back, such was the moment.
And, while it may sound like a stretch, for a time, that night with David in the library, I succeeded in finding what I had looked for that afternoon, that dark place on the other side of the ice. The great fall with no landing.
* * *
Peter was playing the piano. I could hear him from upstairs. A little jagged melody picked out with one hand, over and over, throbbing like a toothache.
There was a pot of coffee and some bacon sarnies on the side. I couldn’t see Em or Marcus, but the others were there. David didn’t look up as I came in.
“Morning, Andy,” Rob said. He looked cheerful, buoyant, like he’d won the pools. No one else was smiling.
“Where’s Em and Marcus?”
“Not sure. I suppose we should wait for them though, since it’s traditional.”
“Traditional for what? You’ve lost me, Rob,” I said.
“I mean the gathering of the suspects before the great detective—Poirot, Marple, in this case me—reveals the guilty party, or parties.”
“Someone steal the diamonds again?” They weren’t on the mantelpiece. I threw a quick glance at the rug in front of the fire.
“No, we’ve got a new mystery. I’m calling it the bodies in the library.”
With that, I knew what he was getting at and experienced a wave of horror, so like desire when you come to think of it, in the way it gripped you, made you feel like your organs were melting.
I poured out a coffee, the pot chattering against the rim of the cup. “Pete, where are Em and Marcus? We should get going.”
“Marcus went to look for her.” Peter was still picking out the little tune.
“Can you stop that? It’s driving me nuts.” His hands froze and then he set them down gently in his lap.