marveled, not for the first time, at how the self insulates and protects itself against life’s shocks. He closed his eyes again, tight, and burrowed down into the warmth of the bedclothes and his own familiar fetor. He knew that things would seem different when the sun came up and the ordinary business of the day began. For now, though, he could have done with someone else’s warmth beside him, another’s body to cling on to for solace. But Louise had long ago, and without fuss, banished him from the master bedroom into the box room at the end of the corridor beyond the library. The arrangement suited him; mostly he preferred to sleep alone, if sleep was all that was going to happen, and it was some time since anything else had happened in bed between him and Louise.
He tried to fall back to sleep but could not. His mind was racing. It felt as if he were not so much thinking as being thought. Memories, nameless forebodings, speculations and conjectures, all were jumbled together in the ashen afterglow of the dreams he had forgotten. He turned on his back and lay gazing up at the shadowed ceiling. As so often late at night or in the early-morning hours he asked himself if he had made a mistake in moving from Ireland to America—no, not if he had made a mistake, but how great were the proportions of the mistake he had made. Not that he and Louise had been so very much happier living in Ireland, in Louise’s father’s gloomy gray-stone mansion at Mount Ardagh, and not that they had seen so very much of each other, for that matter. They had both spent the greater part of their time traveling, he on assignments abroad and Louise promoting charities across five continents. He knew he should not but in his heart he despised his wife’s career, so-called, as an ambassador of good works.
Maybe they should have had children.
He shifted, groaning angrily. The pillow was too hot, and his pajama top was damp with sweat and held him fast like a straitjacket. He could hear Clara in the kitchen, getting her mistress’s day started—Louise was an early riser. It made him uneasy, having a live-in servant. His father had died young and his widowed mother had kept house for a rich Dublin lawyer so that her only son could have an education. Coarse , he thought again, coarse as cabbage . He sighed. It was time to get up.
Dylan Riley’s murder was not reported in the Times , or at any rate he could find no mention of it. Louise would not have the Post or the Daily News in the house, so he had to go out and buy them. He took them into his workroom—where he never did any work—and sat on the silk-covered chaise longue that Louise had bought for him as a house-warming gift when they had moved in here six months ago. The Post had a couple of paragraphs on the killing, but the News ran a bigger story, on page five: Computer Wiz’s Mystery Slaying. There was nothing in either report that was new. Captain Ambrose of the NYPD was quoted as saying that he and his team were following a number of definite leads. There was a photograph of Riley’s girlfriend, one Terri Taylor, leaving the premises on Vandam in the company of a policewoman. She wore jeans and had long black hair; she had turned her face away from the cameras.
He switched on the miniature television set that squatted on a corner of his desk. There was an item on Fox 5 News, just a plain reporting of the facts. New York 1 had sent a camera and a reporter, and there was footage of Terri Taylor briefly on the pavement outside the warehouse. She was a pale, waiflike creature with a little pointed face and haunted eyes. She did not seem entirely heartbroken; rather, her look was one of bafflement and dismay, as if she were wondering dazedly how she had come to be involved in this mess. The camera team had managed to corner Captain Ambrose. On screen he looked even more like a tormented saint, in his brown suit and his big black brogues. He talked here also of “definite leads,”
He tried to fall back to sleep but could not. His mind was racing. It felt as if he were not so much thinking as being thought. Memories, nameless forebodings, speculations and conjectures, all were jumbled together in the ashen afterglow of the dreams he had forgotten. He turned on his back and lay gazing up at the shadowed ceiling. As so often late at night or in the early-morning hours he asked himself if he had made a mistake in moving from Ireland to America—no, not if he had made a mistake, but how great were the proportions of the mistake he had made. Not that he and Louise had been so very much happier living in Ireland, in Louise’s father’s gloomy gray-stone mansion at Mount Ardagh, and not that they had seen so very much of each other, for that matter. They had both spent the greater part of their time traveling, he on assignments abroad and Louise promoting charities across five continents. He knew he should not but in his heart he despised his wife’s career, so-called, as an ambassador of good works.
Maybe they should have had children.
He shifted, groaning angrily. The pillow was too hot, and his pajama top was damp with sweat and held him fast like a straitjacket. He could hear Clara in the kitchen, getting her mistress’s day started—Louise was an early riser. It made him uneasy, having a live-in servant. His father had died young and his widowed mother had kept house for a rich Dublin lawyer so that her only son could have an education. Coarse , he thought again, coarse as cabbage . He sighed. It was time to get up.
Dylan Riley’s murder was not reported in the Times , or at any rate he could find no mention of it. Louise would not have the Post or the Daily News in the house, so he had to go out and buy them. He took them into his workroom—where he never did any work—and sat on the silk-covered chaise longue that Louise had bought for him as a house-warming gift when they had moved in here six months ago. The Post had a couple of paragraphs on the killing, but the News ran a bigger story, on page five: Computer Wiz’s Mystery Slaying. There was nothing in either report that was new. Captain Ambrose of the NYPD was quoted as saying that he and his team were following a number of definite leads. There was a photograph of Riley’s girlfriend, one Terri Taylor, leaving the premises on Vandam in the company of a policewoman. She wore jeans and had long black hair; she had turned her face away from the cameras.
He switched on the miniature television set that squatted on a corner of his desk. There was an item on Fox 5 News, just a plain reporting of the facts. New York 1 had sent a camera and a reporter, and there was footage of Terri Taylor briefly on the pavement outside the warehouse. She was a pale, waiflike creature with a little pointed face and haunted eyes. She did not seem entirely heartbroken; rather, her look was one of bafflement and dismay, as if she were wondering dazedly how she had come to be involved in this mess. The camera team had managed to corner Captain Ambrose. On screen he looked even more like a tormented saint, in his brown suit and his big black brogues. He talked here also of “definite leads,”
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