Lost.
This unforgiving pressure about his ears, it’s the weight of history. Of a million men in arms, ten million. More, if God, from His sacred distance, proved vengeful rather than merciful.
He strokes slowly back toward the canal wall, and something brushes against his arm.
Henry.
The faint light flashes against the back of his head. Lionel blinks, not quite comprehending, and then he wraps his arm around the young man’s chest and continues, a little faster, until the rough stones of the wall collide with his outstretched hand. There are stairs here somewhere. Lionel drags Henry’s inert body downstream, until the wall cuts away and his fingers find the first step.
He hauls Henry up the steps on his shoulder and pounds his back. No reaction, no vomiting of water, not even a spasm. Nothing more than a wet sack of flour, Henry Mortimer. He lays the young man out on the grass and checks his breathing, his pulse. Nothing. There is a deep cut on his forehead. How had the fellow managed to land himself in the canal? Swung the suitcase too hard, perhaps, and toppled over the railing?
Lionel stares for long moments at the shadow of Henry’s body, and a little pinprick of an idea flares in his mind, like the lighting of a cigarette on a cold night.
No. Surely not.
But the idea persists, winding together with that seductive word last, that dazzling possibility of a future outside the scope of his present life, that determination to build a Lionel outside the scope of his present self. The knowledge of Violet, waiting for him in her unswerving innocence, behind one of those golden windows set inside the pale and perfect facade of the Hotel Baur au Lac.
The two of them, primary suspects in the murder of Dr. Walter Grant.
The opportunity is too perfect, as if dropped by heaven, by a God turned merciful after all. As a consolation for his failure. An act of compassion he can never deserve.
Lionel lifts Henry’s jacket and finds the inner pocket, telling himself he must not hope, must not expect. His fingers encounter a packet of sodden papers, covered in leather. He pulls them out.
His heart bounds and rebounds against the wall of his chest. He feels its pulse in his ears.
He opens the packet, and inside, still damp but legible, protected by the leather binding of the notebook, is a United States passport for one Henry John Mortimer, birthplace Boston, Massachusetts, height six feet, weight a hundred and sixty pounds, hair dark brown, eyes gray.
Lionel tucks the papers in his inside jacket pocket. He removes the gold college ring from Henry’s left pinkie finger and smashes it down the length of his own. He empties all the remaining pockets and fills the trousers with gravel. He peels away the jacket and shoes, the shirt with its embroidered monogram, anything at all that might identify the body. He drags him as far as he can to the end of the park, where the Schanzengraben canal empties out into the spreading Zurichsee, and with a whispered prayer he releases Henry Mortimer over the side.
He stares for a moment or two at the shifting water, the flashing glimpse of skin and hair bobbing away in some unknown current.
? ? ?
VIOLET ANSWERS his soft knock at once. He looks at her astonished blue eyes, her round red O of a mouth, her pale and guiltless skin, and he cannot speak.
“Lionel.”
He steps inside, shuts the door, and takes her deep. As if he can somehow draw her into his chest and replace his soul with hers.
“Lionel, what’s happened? You’re all wet! My God! Your face!”
“Violet. There’s been an accident. We’ve been betrayed.”
A gasp from the other side of the room. Jane.
“Is it Henry?” she whispers.
Lionel lifts his heavy arms from Violet.
“Oh, God! You’re bleeding! Lionel!”
He reaches inside his jacket pocket and withdraws Henry’s passport. He fans out the pages, one by one, and lays it on the desk to dry.
“You’re mistaken,” he says. “I’m not Lionel. Lionel Richardson is dead.”
? ? ?
THE NEXT DAY, in the afternoon, the captain of a small tourist boat in the middle of the Zurichsee notices a small brown valise half hidden in a coil of rope in the stern. He holds it aloft. “Has anyone lost a piece of baggage?”
The passengers look at one another and shake their heads.
The captain shrugs. He will bring it to the town hall at the end of the day. They have a special department there for lost items.
Violet, 1964