Applaud the Hollow Ghost Read Online Free Page B

going to say Nazi.”
    â€œWhatever. So … a guy like that, we know he’s bluffing. Three reasons. First, if he thought they’d stick, he’d have filed his charges without wasting time talking to you. Second, neither you nor Lammy has given me any authority to act on Lammy’s behalf. I’m the one paying your fee, but you have no control over what I do. Fact is, you work for me, come to think of—”
    â€œWrong. Who pays my fee makes no difference, and you know it. I work only for my client.” She paused. “But you’re right about the control part. It’s pretty clear even you don’t have much control over what you do. Anyway, I’ve warned you. Now I have to hang up, because there’s—”
    â€œWait. There’s a third reason we know Heffernan’s bluffing, and—”
    â€œGood-bye.”
    Renata hung up, but I told the phone anyway. “The third reason,” I said, “is that there were five witnesses at Melba’s, not four.”
    I dropped two empty beer bottles in the orange recycling bin outside my kitchen door at the top of the back stairs. The Lady was working on improving my dietary habits, so the homemade chili she’d sent over—five quarts of it, frozen, in plastic containers—was vegetarian. I’d added way too many hot peppers, trying to give it some flavor, which had made that second beer a necessity. But I’d finished one whole quart of the chili. For that I deserved a reward.
    So I popped the top off a third bottle of Berghoff, thinking maybe I should throw out the rest of the chili—for the sake of my liver. Instead, I called the Lady.
    â€œCould you use a gallon of your vegetarian chili back?” I asked, when she came on the line.
    â€œWhy certainly we can. But I was rather hoping you’d learn to like it, Malachy.”
    Malachy. The Lady always says Malachy.
    Lady Helene Bower, the widow of the late Richard Bower, who’d been a lord of the British Empire—or a knight maybe, I never got it straight—never calls me Mal. Her upbringing makes using nicknames uncomfortable for her and, as far as I can tell, she simply doesn’t want to waste the effort trying. Not that the Lady can’t change. For example, most people, even after I correct them, keep right on pronouncing my name so the last syllable rhymes with “sky.” But just one mention to the Lady that it rhymes with “key,” and she never made the mistake again. I told her once—when she was being especially annoying about something—that it amazed me how quickly she’d made that switch, given how slow she is to change sometimes. “Oh,” she’d said, “I just rhymed Malachy with smart- alecky  … and never forgot.” She’d said it with such a straight face, I couldn’t—
    â€œâ€¦ far too much red meat,” the Lady was saying on the phone. Then, “Malachy? Are you there?”
    â€œOh. Yes. I guess my mind was wandering. Anyway, I just called to tell you I’m trying to help Lambert Fleming.”
    â€œThat’s nice,” she said, “if that’s what you want to do.”
    â€œWell, you sent me the newspaper clipping. So that’s what you think I should do, isn’t it, Helene?” People only call her “the Lady” when she’s not around, because she insists on being called “Helene” in person. I never said she was any more consistent than the rest of us.
    â€œI don’t really have an opinion,” she said, “except that I believe unresolved issues such as that can often—”
    â€œWhat unresolved—” I started, but then thought better of it. “The point is I’ll do what I can for Lammy, but I have a feeling I might regret getting involved.”
    â€œFrom what I saw in the papers,” she said, “I’d be surprised if you don’t come to