reveals itself at last: firm and regular, the nose a trifle large, the hair short and dark as ink above his white collar. His forehead is high, overhanging the eyepiece, and in the soft yellow light Violet cannot detect a single line. “Ready.”
She drops her gaze back to Christina’s watch.
“And … go.”
Aunt Violet. I had a great-aunt named Violet, an adulteress and murderess, about whom I’d never heard. A scientist. What sort of scientist?
I regarded the valise on my table, and then turned to tell Doctor Paul the extraordinary news.
Alas. Too late.
Inexplicably, unfathomably, he lay upon my sofa, in the hollow left by Sally’s debauched corpse an hour or two earlier, so profoundly asleep I was tempted to hold my compact mirror to his mouth and check for signs of life.
Hands to hips. “Well. There’s courtship for you.”
But then a tiny steel ball bearing of sentiment rolled downward through the chambers of my heart. Poor dear Doctor Paul. One arm crossed atop his chest; the other dangled to the floor. His legs, far too long for the sweeping red Victorian curves of the sofa, propped themselves over the edge of the opposite armrest.
I knelt next to him and touched the lock of hair that drooped in exhaustion to his forehead. Up close, I could see the tiny lines that fanned from the outer corners of his eyes. I bent my nose to his neck. Here, he smelled of salt instead of antiseptic, and perhaps a little long-forgotten soap, too, sweet and damp. I rubbed the tiny golden bristles of his nascent beard with my pinkie. He didn’t even flinch.
“Aren’t you just too much,” I whispered.
AUNT JULIE blew into the apartment half an hour later, smelling of cigarettes and Max Factor pancake foundation. She flung her hat on the stand but kept her coat in place. When you maintained a figure like hers so far past its biblically ordained two score and ten, you lived in a perpetual state of Pleistocene chill.
“Where is this suitcase of yours?” she demanded, lighting a cigarette.
“It’s not mine. That’s the point. Drink?” I didn’t wait for an answer. The liquor filled a cabinet of honor in the kitchen—such as it was—and while Aunt Julie might not admire the quality of the refreshment provided, she had to approve of its quantity.
She whipped off her gloves just in time to accept her Bloody Mary, no celery. “Haven’t you opened it yet?”
“Of course not. It’s not mine.”
“For God’s sake, my dear. Did your mother raise you with no standards at all?” She drained down half a glass, set the tumbler on the table, and put her hand on the valise’s tarnished brass clasp. “Well, well.”
“Now, wait just a minute.” I darted over and snatched her hand away.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t think we have any right to look inside.”
“Darling, she’ll never know.”
“How do we know that?”
“Nobody’s heard from her for fifty years. I’d say that was a pretty decent indication, wouldn’t you?”
“We should make some sort of effort to track her down first.”
Aunt Julie rolled her eyes and picked up her pick-me-up. “Ah, that’s good. You’re the only one of my nieces and nephews to mix a decent drink.”
“I had the finest instruction available.”
She wagged a finger. “Teach a girl to fish—”
“Look, Aunt Julie, about this Violet of yours …”
But Aunt Julie had already turned, aiming for the kitchen and a refill, and stopped with a rattle of dying ice. “Vivian, my dear,” she said slowly, “there’s a man on your sofa.”
“You don’t approve?”
“Oh, I approve wholeheartedly. But I do feel compelled to ask, for form’s sake, where the hell you picked him up on such short notice, and why he isn’t dressed more suitably.”
I came up behind her and slipped my arm about her waist. “Isn’t he a dream? I found him at the post office.”
“Delivered and signed for?”
“Mmm. Poor thing, he works such long shifts at the hospital. He carried up the package for me with his last dying surge of energy, and then he just”—I waved my hand helplessly—“collapsed.”
“Imagine that. What do you plan to do with him?”
“What do you suggest?”
She resumed her journey to the liquor cabinet. “Just don’t sleep with him right away. It scares them off.”
“Funny, Mums already warned me. Tell me about Violet.”
“There isn’t much to tell. Not much that I know, anyway. I was the baby of the family. I was only nine years old when she left for England. That was 1911, I believe.” Aunt Julie wandered back from the kitchen and leaned against the table, drink in hand, staring lovingly at Doctor Paul.
“Why did she leave for England? Was she sent away?”
“No, the opposite. She wanted to be a scientist, and naturally that didn’t go down well in Schuylerville. I remember the most awful rows. They let her go eventually, I suppose—there’s not much you can do with a girl if she’s got her heart set on something—and washed their hands of it.” Aunt Julie cocked her head. “What color are his eyes?”
“Blue. Exactly the same shade as his scrubs. And stop trying to distract me.”
“I’ve changed my mind. Get him in bed pronto.”
“You know, I’ll bet he can hear you in his subconscious.”
“I hope he does. You could use a good love affair, Vivian. It’s the one thing you’re missing.”
I wagged my finger. “You’re the most miserable excuse for a chaperone in the history of maiden aunts.”
“I am not a maiden aunt. I’ve been married several times.”
“Regardless, I’m not going to sleep with him. Look at the poor darling. He’s exhausted.”
“I find,” said Aunt Julie, swishing her gin, “they can generally summon the energy.”
I crossed the floor to my bedroom—it didn’t take long—and took the extra blanket from the shelf. I called back: “Now talk. What did Violet do in England?”
“Got married to her professor, like the sane girl she was. She was very pretty, Violet, I’ll say that, though she didn’t care about anything except her damned atoms and molecules.”
I returned and spread the blanket over Doctor Paul, taking extra care with his doughty shoulders. “But then she murdered him.”
“Well, I don’t know the details of all that. The family hasn’t spoken of it since, never even uttered her name. I don’t think there was a trial or anything like that. But yes, the fellow was murdered, and Violet ran off with her lover. From a suite at the Adlon, of course. She did have taste.” She snapped her fingers. “And poof! That was that.”
“There must be more to it.”
“Of course there’s more.”
“And you were never curious?”
“I was young, Vivian. I hardly knew her, really. She was at school, and then she