So. Here I stood, the day after Gogo’s heartbreak, two days after waking up in Suitor Number Ten’s coveted bed. The timing was suspicious, to say the damnedest.
“Miss Schuyler.” Those famous pale eyes did an ankle-to-bosom evaluation, weighted arithmetically to the bosom. Mr. Lightfoot had a face that recalled Bath sandstone, grandly proportioned and always lightly tanned, as if he’d just stepped off a Mediterranean liner accompanied by twenty steamer trunks filled with cigars, tailcoats, and hair oil. Actually, I liked him. He made no bones about who he was and what he wanted. He was a man I could deal with. “Please sit. I suppose you know why you’re here.”
I dropped into the chair and set my briefcase on the floor. “I can’t imagine. My sins are so numerous.”
“My daughter is home in bed today. I expect she’ll be out all week.”
“Poor Gogo. She told me about it last night. It’s awful. How is she? Is there anything I can do?”
He flipped open a silver case on his desk and withdrew a cigarette, which he lit in a single experienced strike of a gold Zippo lighter. “You can tell me the nature of your relationship with Dr. Salisbury.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“I understand you had a heated conversation with him in the library, before he took my daughter out to lunch and broke her heart.”
Pale eyes could be so piercing.
“Ah, your network of spies at work again. Do you mind if I smoke, Mr. Lightfoot?”
That, at least, got a twitch of eyebrow out of him. He nudged at the silver box. “Be my guest, Miss Schuyler.”
I rose and took a cigarette, and then I leaned forward so he could light me up. I settled back in my chair. It was a modern number, low-slung, designed to lull the sitter with an excess of ergonomic comfort. Also to hold him in place a good foot or two lower than the boss. “I’ll be candid, Mr. Lightfoot, if I may speak in confidence.”
“Please do.”
“I am acquainted with Dr. Salisbury. We met over the weekend. I didn’t realize he was Suitor Number Ten.”
“Suitor Number Ten?”
I waved my smoky hand. “Gogo and I are close, as you know.”
“Not close enough, evidently.”
“No, no, Mr. Lightfoot. You’ve got it all wrong. If I’d known who Dr. Salisbury was, I’d never have . . .” A flutter of the fingers.
“Hmm.” He considered. “May I ask what occurred between you?”
“You may not.”
“I see.”
“Yes, I expect you do. However, once he walked into the office yesterday and I put one and one together into three, if you take my meaning, I told him it was off. That I was off. I am very fond of Gogo, Mr. Lightfoot, and I would never indulge myself at her expense.” I looked at him straight and true, piercing eye for piercing eye.
“By God,” he said. “Then why did he break things off with her after all?”
And here we are again, Vivian and her shortcomings. If you weren’t well disposed to me before, you’re really going to despise me now. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. I am who I am. And that Tuesday morning, in contrast to Monday, I had nothing to lose. I had no more Doctor Paul. I had a suitcase full of unsolved Violet and Lionel. I had a promise to keep to myself, a resolution to guard and protect against human weakness.
So here’s what I said next.
“Because he’s in love with me, Mr. Lightfoot. Passionately in love.”
“After a single weekend?”
I shrugged modestly. Lightfoot’s eyes dropped back to my bosom.
“I can’t explain it, sir. I suppose the heart has its reasons. As you can imagine, the confrontation was taxing for us both.” I dragged hard on my cigarette and stared out the window to Lightfoot’s private terrace, thick with potted chrysanthemums. “He refused to give me up. He says he’ll keep trying until he’s sixty.”
“I see. And what do you intend to do about it?”
I turned bravely back to him. “Well, I have my career, don’t I? I suppose I’ll just have to throw myself into my work at the Metropolitan and hope for the best. Hope it can distract me from all this.”
Lightfoot twiddled his thumbs. He lifted his cigarette. He blew out a sizable cloud and tipped the ash into a handsome glass tray. He pushed it toward me.
“Thank you.” I leaned over and did the necessary.
“Admirable sentiments, Miss Schuyler,” he said. “Of course, I stand ready to support you in any way I can.”
“I appreciate the gesture, sir. I do so happen to have a bit of research I’m working on, in my spare time. An exposé, of a sort.”
“Do you, now?”
“Yes. A fifty-year-old murder mystery. High-society wife murders husband, disappears into the German countryside with lover. If the Metropolitan is interested in that kind of thing.”
“Have you spoken to Tibby about this?”
I extended my crossed legs, fatale-style. “I’m afraid Mr. Tibbs doesn’t possess quite so much eagerness to support my noble intentions, sir.”