Prospero's Daughter. Elizabeth Nunez

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ had missed the point of Gardner’s tirade: first, to establish that there had been no assault, but, rather, an attempt to assault, thus leaving no doubt of his daughter’s purity. Then (his real purpose) to lay the foundation that would seal his argument that that very attempt had threatened her future, the plans he had in place for her.

      “A good boy from New England would not marry a slut,” Gardner concluded.

       Yes. Yes, it was clear now. He should have known.

      “A woman who had been broken into. Used. You understand me, Mumsford?”

      He understood him now. He turned to a clean page in his notebook. “I would need to know the beginning,” he said.

      “The beginning?” Gardner’s eyes drifted across to the record player.

      “Can we start from the beginning, sir?” Mumsford asked quietly.

      “The adagio.” Gardner was not listening to him. “Mozart’s clarinet concerto in A.” He was conducting again, lifting his hand when the music arced, lowering it when it descended.

      “Sir?” Mumsford tried to rouse him. It was mournful, the music, though he could barely hear it.

      “She was a piece of virtue,” he said.

      “She?”

      “My wife.” His hand fell to his side. “Faithful to me. Pure as driven snow. She died shortly after Virginia was born. Twelve years we are here.”

      “A long time,” Mumsord said.

      “There is no doubt Virginia . . .”

      “Tell me about her, sir.”

      “No doubt my daughter. Her mother said she was my daughter.” He glanced at Mumsford as if daring him to contradict him.

      Not missing the challenge in the glance, Mumsford said quickly, “Indeed, sir. The commissioner said there is a great resemblance between you two, sir.”

      “A virgin when I married her, Inspector. Never been touched. A piece of virtue.”

      Afraid he was about to launch into another lecture about virginity, Mumsford interrupted him, but not unkindly. “If you don’t mind, sir, could we start at the other beginning, the time immediately before the incident, sir?”

      Gardner rubbed his eyes. The edges of his mouth had hardened, and nothing remained of the slackness that moments ago had caused the skin there to droop so that the lines along his chin had deepened. “They had a cure for the disease when we arrived,” he said abruptly.

      It was not the beginning Mumsford wanted, but it was a beginning closer to the present.

      “The nuns had left,” Gardner said, “but there were still a few patients. The doctor here was old and tired.”

      “Is that why you came, sir?” Mumsford encouraged him.

      “What?” Gardner seemed momentarily perplexed.

      “Why you came, sir?”

      “Yes. It was why I came.”

      “And why you stayed, sir?”

      “Yes, yes. I came for the lepers and I stayed for the ones who were still here.”

      “But I understand, sir, you no longer take care of them.”

      “And your understanding is accurate, Inspector,” he said angrily.

      The glare from the cold light that shone from Gardner’s eyes forced Mumsford to look down. His remark to Gardner had not been benign. He wanted to know why Gardner was still on the island; why, since he no longer took care of the lepers.

      “When you came here,” he began, trying another approach, “did you find Carlos here, sir?”

      Gardner pushed back a thin lock of hair that had gotten loose from the elastic band on his ponytail. “He was six,” he said without emotion. “His mother had just died.”

      “And his father?” Mumsford fumbled through his notes. “She was a blue-eyed hag.”

      “Sir?”

      “His mother. Sylvia. Carlos’s mother. She was a blue-eyed hag,” he repeated.

      “Blue-eyed?”

      “And that whelp she gave birth to was freckled.”

      “She was white, his mother?”

      “I said blue-eyed, Inspector.”

      “So Carlos is white?”

      “Freckled,” Gardner said.

      “Half white?” Mumsford asked, straining forward in his chair.

      “She didn’t know the father, that hag. But he was a black man.”

      “There was more than one?” Mumsford fought the anger rising in him. Damn mixing of the bloods—the impurities.

      “She screwed them all on the island,” Gardner said.

      “The lepers?”

      Gardner narrowed his eyes. “She birthed a misshapen bastard,” he said.

      “Because of the disease?”

      “Because of his father’s black blood,” Gardner said.

      “So he is deformed?”

      “Freckled,” Gardner said again.

      Mumsford looked puzzled and then, as if finally making sense of what Gardner had said, he drew in his breath. “Ah,” he said knowingly.

      “Freckles all over his body,” Gardner said.

      “I’ve heard that happens,” Mumsford said.

      Gardner raised his eyebrows.

      “When the two bloods meet.”

      Gardner’s eyebrows arched higher.

      “Sometimes it makes black and brown dots on the white,” Mumsford said.

      At first Gardner’s jaw simply dropped and his mouth gaped open. No sound came out of it, and then he was choking, laughing uproariously, kicking up his feet and making scissorlike movements with his legs in the air. “I say, I say . . .” The words came sputtering out of his mouth. “Black and brown dots on the white.” He was fighting for breath. “When the two bloods meet.” Tears streamed down his face. “When the . . .”

      Mumsford fiddled with his collar, adjusted the buckle on his belt, and tried to look dignified.

      “I mean . . .” Gardner swallowed the cough rising in his throat. “I mean, didn’t СКАЧАТЬ