Gentleman's Relish Read Online Free Page B

the entire output of Crawford, Davis, Stanwyck, Garland, and the Turners Kathleen and Lana. He became a passive expert on the complete weepies of Douglas Sirk – of which the nurse was especially fond – and even the most misbegotten of MGM’s musical output. He sat, breathing heavily, through any film that could be remotely described as lesbian or gay, subtitles, Kenneth Anger and all. He watched nothing pornographic, however, at least nothing hard core. Despite Perry’s bland assurances, the nurse was sure the excitement would have dire effects on his bladder or even his heart.
    It startled Perry to find that he could be so vindictive. Apart from some singularly unhelpful grief counselling after Douglas died, he had never been in therapy and was not given to self-analysis. He had never given voice to the damage his father had done him, so had never given it substance. Even now, he did not immediately seek a retributive justification for what he was doing.
    He did not abuse his father physically, although the odd smack might have seemed only the mild repayment of a long-outstanding debt. He dressed him. He undressed him. He bathed him. He changed his incontinence pads. If he spoon-fed him the kind of food his father had always dismissed as foreign or nancy , if he occasionally buttoned him into a violet quilted bed jacket thathad been his mother’s (telling the nurse to humour a camp old man’s little ways) it was done in a spirit of domestic spite not unlike that practised between many a cohabiting couple.
    As a year went by, then two, during which his father was a powerless, dolled-up guest of honour at several of Perry’s more Wildean parties, he came to think of the old man less as a parent than a grouchy partner. As he pecked his father’s cheek on leaving for work or retiring for the night, as he amused himself by brushing his still thick, silver hair into a variety of fanciful styles, as he meticulously piped a saucily naked cherub onto his heart-shaped birthday cake, Perry would admit that, while still not exactly fond, he had developed a kind of tender dependence on his father’s being there. Bereft of any other outlet, his nurturing energies were making do with the only available man on the horizon. (The nurse was never an option; Perry had old-fashioned views on the healthy inflexibility of sexual roles and had marked the nurse down as a sister from day one.)
    Howard caught his eye over the contents of a dead woman’s intestinal tract. The corpse had been principal stockholder in a toy manufacturing firm due for flotation. She was found face-down, fully dressed, in her sunken bath. Her family claimed she had drunk too much, fallen in, passed out and drowned. As detective inspector on the case,Howard mistrusted them and ordered an autopsy. The stomach was duly shown to contain precious little bath water, which indicated that she had died before submersion. There was alcohol in her bloodstream but not enough to knock out, let alone kill, such a hardened drinker. Called in by the coroner to analyse the contents of her gut, Perry found beef, onions, red wine, button mushrooms, rice and significant traces of a powerful sedative administered to dogs and horses.
    â€˜Her brother’s a vet,’ Howard murmured. Beneath the crumpled, unshaven look of the overstressed detective, the ghost of a more dynamic person stirred. Leaning against the lab desk, he towered over Perry, who was perched on a stool. ‘How specific can you be?’
    â€˜Very,’ Perry told him, looking up from flicking through the pharmacology files on his computer screen. ‘These weren’t prescription tranqs. I mean, I can’t give you a brand name but I can narrow it to a choice of six or seven and they’re only for veterinary use.’
    Now Howard smiled, a grin of broad satisfaction that cracked the laughter lines fanning out from his sad, blue eyes. Normally Perry was curt with