Chapter 2

By the time Kintyre got back, it was close to sunset. He entered a book-lined living room. There were a few good pictures, a small record player, his sabers hung on the wall by Trig, the furniture bought used or made out of old boxes—otherwise little. He did not believe in cluttering life with objects.

He poured himself a stiff drink. Glenlivet was his only expensive luxury. He sat down to savor it and perhaps think a little about Bruce. There was no solid reason why the boy should have made so large a niche in Kintyre’s existence, but somehow he had. The emptiness hurt.

When the phone rang, Kintyre was there picking it up before consciousness of the noise registered. He was not surprised to hear Margery Towne’s voice.

“Bob? You know?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I wish to hell I could tell you just how sorry.”

“I can guess.” Her tone was flattened by the control she must be keeping on it. “We both loved him, didn’t we?”

“I think everybody did.”

“Somebody didn’t, Bob.”

“I suppose you heard through the police?”

“They were here a few minutes ago. Do they know everything?”

“Probably I gave them your name. They came to me first, for the identification.”

“They were very nice about it and all that, but—”

Silence whistled remotely over the wires.

“Bob, could you come talk to me? Now?”

“Sure, pony. Give me half an hour.”

Kintyre hung up one-handed, starting to undress with the other. He went through a shower and put on a suit in ten minutes.

Margery’s apartment was catercorner from his, with the University between. He parked his battered ‘48 De Soto on the near side of the campus and walked across, hoping to hoof out some of the muscular tightness and set his thoughts in order.

Level yellow light came through eucalyptus groves to splash on a cropped greensward and pompous white buildings, almost bare of mankind in this pause between baccalaureate ceremonies and summer classes. Kintyre reflected vaguely that he would have to go through Bruce’s desk, finish his work, yes, and complete his study of the Book of Witches ... His mind drifted off toward a worried practical consideration. What could he do about Margery?

He wanted to help her, if he could—double damnation, hadn’t he tried before? At the same time he was not, repeat not, going to get himself involved. It would be unfair to both of them.

There were rules of the game, and so he had played it with her. You left wives and virgins alone: well, she was long divorced, and had slept around a bit since then. You neither gave to nor took from a woman. You made it perfectly clear you weren’t interested in anything permanent. And when you broke it off, after a pleasant few months, you did it cleanly: he had the best excuse in the world, back in 1955, an academic grant that returned him to Italy for a year of research in his specialty, the Renaissance. (But she had been very quiet, the last few weeks; sometimes at night he had heard her trying not to cry.) Back home again, you didn’t resume old affairs: you were simply friendly, on such occasions as you happened to meet.

Yes, of course. Only then she took up with Bruce, and Bruce had wanted to marry her, and she had plainly been considering it, and now Bruce was dead and Kintyre was on his way to console her. Could you walk in her door and say: “Hello, I still subscribe to the why-buy-a-cow philosophy so be careful, now you may weep on my shoulder”?

He realized he was sucking on a dead cigarette. He threw it away and stopped to light another. He was almost under the building which housed his own department.

“Good evening.”

Kintyre looked up. Jabez Owens was walking toward him.

“Hello,” he answered. “How are you? Excuse me, but I’ve got to—”

Owens reached him and took his hand. “My dear old chap,” he said in his most Harvard accent, “I’m awfully sorry.”

“Hm?”

“Young Lombardi. I saw it in the papers. You know?”

“Yes.” Kintyre looked coldly at Owens. The writer was a tall man, the breadth of his shoulders attributable only in part to his tailor. He had straight ruddy features, dark wavy hair graying at the temples, blue eyes behind wrought-iron glasses, tweedy clothes with a scarf filling the V of the jacket, and a small calabash pipe in one pocket.

“I know he was murdered,” said Kintyre, watching the other’s face.

“Terrible. I remember once in Sumatra—but that was long ago. See here,” said Owens candidly, “I know you know of my disagreements with the poor young fellow. Why, it was only—when? Thursday night we were at that party at Clayton’s. You must have heard us quarreling over his silly thesis. But this! De mortuis nil nisi bonum.”

Kintyre did not like Owens. It was not so much the scholar raising his hackles at a rather lurid popularizer. What the devil, Owens’ books stirred up some public interest; they passed on some information, however distorted; and that was more than you could say for the average historiographic monograph. But during the whole week he had been in Berkeley, one long theatrical performance had gone on, with Jabez Owens the plot, dialogue, director, producer, star, supporting cast, and claque. It grew monotonous.

Wherefore Kintyre said maliciously: “I’ll be completing that thesis for him. Doubtless I too will be forced to include a side glance at those Borgia letters of yours. But it’ll take me a while, I don’t have all the facts and deductions at my fingertips as he did. So I suggest you hurry to Hollywood and get that movie started.”