Dark Angel Read Online Free

before air conditioning? I’m a bird of passage, dah-ling, just flitting through. Trying to finalize these”—he waved a hand toward a pile of photographs. “Sheer hell. I mean, fifty years of work, dah-ling—where does one begin? Who to leave in? Who to leave out? Those museum people are totally ruthless, my dear. They want the Royals, of course. Margot and Rudy, Andy and Mick, Wallis and Lady Diana. Oh, and they want Constance, of course—well, they would. But anyone they haven’t heard of is O-U-T out, dah-ling. I shall lose half my friends.”
    A small wail of distress. The next instant, distress forgotten, he was waving a hand at the arrangement of flowers on the table next to me.
    “ Aren’t they divine? Don’t you just love delphiniums? English garden flowers—I insist on them, wherever I am. And now I’ve found this terribly clever young man who does them just the way I want them. Madly original—I can’t bear flowers that look arranged, can you? No, of course you can’t—you’re far too clever. Now, shall we have some champagne? Do say yes. I can’t bear the martini habit—too noxious. One feels quite blind the next day. Yes, champagne. Let’s be madly grand and open the Bollinger—”
    Vickers came to an abrupt halt. He had just pronounced the name of my uncle Steenie’s favorite champagne. Color seeped up his neck; his face reddened. He fidgeted with the cuffs of his shirt. He turned away to give instructions to the houseboy who had admitted me and who had been waiting by the door all this time.
    He was Japanese, a pretty and delicate-looking young man kitted out in black jacket and striped trousers.
    As the young man left the room and Vickers sat down, I understood at last why I had been invited. Vickers was more than embarrassed; he was guilty. This invitation of his owed nothing to Constance and everything to my uncle Steenie.
    Since Conrad Vickers had been my uncle’s friend for more than fifty years, and his lover—on and off—for at least half of that time, and since he had contrived to be conspicuously absent when Steenie lay dying, I could understand that guilt. I said nothing. I wanted to see, I suppose, how Vickers would wriggle out of it.
    For a while he was silent, as if waiting for me to raise the subject of Steenie, and help him. I did not speak either. I looked around his drawing room, which—like all the rooms in all his many houses—was in perfect taste. Vickers’s sense of loyalty might be weak and his friendships facile, but when it came to the inanimate, to fabrics, to furniture, his eye was as unerring as Constance’s. This had seemed to me important once. I had believed there was virtue in taste. Now, I was less certain.
    Vickers fingered the arm of his French chair. The silk that covered it, a clever pastiche of an eighteenth-century design, was one I recognized. It had come from the most recent Constance Shawcross collection. The chair was painted. It had been restored, I thought, and then cunningly distressed. A wash of color over gesso: Constance’s workshops? I wondered. It was impossible to tell—almost impossible to tell—if the wash of pale slate-blue had been applied two hundred years before or the previous week.
    “Last month,” Vickers said, catching my eye. Vickers, for all his faults, had never been stupid.
    “Last month.” He sighed. “And yes—I know I can’t fool you—that restorer Constance always uses. Oh, God.” He leaned forward. He had apparently decided to take the leap.
    “We’d better talk about Steenie. I know I should have been there. But I just couldn’t … face it, I suppose. Steenie, dying. It seemed so out of character. I couldn’t imagine it, and I certainly didn’t want to witness it. Ah, the champagne.” He rose. His hand trembled a little as he passed me the glass.
    “Would you mind terribly if we drank to him? To Steenie? He would have liked that. After all, Steenie never had any illusions about me. I expect you