Seen and Not Heard (Maggie Bennett 4)

Not that he’d been any better born than the rest of them, Rocco thought, sneering and staring at him. He’d just been an excellent mimic, picking up the accent and manners of his betters, using them to charm and infuriate Grand-mère Estelle and Georges, the gardener, using them to charm and intimidate the others.

He must have felt Rocco’s inimical gaze on him. He turned his head, his dark, fathomless eyes meeting Rocco’s across the rain-swept park, and his beautiful mouth curved up in a smile. And Rocco, fearless Rocco, a man who could cut the throat of a nun without flinching, shivered in the cold spring rain.

Nicole was asleep on the damask sofa, her dark eyes closed, purple shadows lurking underneath, staining her sallow skin. Claire sat there, watching her, ignoring the babbling of the television set with its dubbed sit-com. Nicole would usually disappear into her room at nine o’clock and reappear the next morning at seven. During those long hours the lights were off and no sounds issued forth, but it was clear by the shadows beneath her solemn brown eyes that she wasn’t sleeping soundly.

Who could blame her? Madame Langlois probably fed her fears, turning the tension between stepfather and stepdaughter into something more sinister. Damn the woman with her paranoia! Claire could no more entrust Nicole to her than she could to Jack the Ripper, even if Harriette had been willing to take her.

The television blared at her, the light and darkness shifting over the room. Marc would never have approved of its arrival, but Claire had ignored that during her defiant stage. Now she wished she hadn’t. The constant noise drove her crazy, as American television never had, but Nicole was entranced by it, preferring to keep it on all evening rather than suffer the silent apartment and Claire’s nervous chatter.

Claire sighed, leaning back and stretching her feet out in front of her. At least the dubbed French drowned out the sound of the rain outside. If only the apartment would warm up. But she knew from icy experience that there was no way to warm up the old barn of a place. She and Marc would usually just retire to bed, filling the long hours with pleasuring each other.

No, that wasn’t true. He would pleasure her, torment her, excite and arouse her. She was given very little chance to participate. He usually kept her so busy, so overwrought, that she had little to do but lie there and react.

Brian had been the other way around, expecting to be serviced when the mood struck him. Claire sat there, an expression of distaste marring her face. Surely there was something in between the two extremes? Surely sex should be give-and-take, a sharing of pleasure.

Her thoughts started to drift toward what it would be like to share, who would be likely to do so, and she pulled them back. The last thing she should do was sit there having erotic fantasies with Marc’s stepdaughter asleep at her feet. She had to make plans, for her and for Nicole, for the self-possessed child who wouldn’t let her in, but for the life of her she couldn’t think what.

Claire heard the phone ring, but she didn’t move. It wouldn’t be anyone she wanted to talk to. She would let it ring, try to make sense out of the sit-com on TV, try to make sense out of her life.

Nicole stirred, opening her eyes and blinking up at Claire. “Aren’t you going to answer the phone?” she inquired sleepily.

Claire sighed. It was easier getting up than explaining her reservations. With a weary sigh she pulled herself from the sofa, hoping the ringing would stop before she reached it.

The large, old-fashioned black phone in the hallway kept up its shrill, incessant tone. She picked it up, steeling herself for the spate of French that would greet her cautious “Hello.”

Silence. The same, absolute silence that had greeted her the night before. She’d almost forgotten about those calls, but now the memory came flooding back. No heavy breathing, no muttered obscenities, no background noise. Just complete, utter silence.

The vision came unbidden, eerie, sudden, unavoidable. Marc was on the other end of the line, in whiteface, miming desperately, communicating with her in breathless silence.

She slammed the phone down, her hands trembling. She stood there for a long moment, trying to compose herself before facing Nicole’s too-observant eyes, when the phone began to ring once more.

Without thinking she yanked the phone from the wall, the long black cord snaking free. In the distance she could hear the extensions still ringing, in the kitchen, in the bedroom. And in the doorway stood Nicole, watching her.

“Was it Marc?” she questioned calmly.

“Of course not.” Claire marveled at her own self-possession. “A wrong number.”

“Then why did you rip the phone out of the wall?”

Damn the child. “All right, it wasn’t a wrong number. It was a crank call.”

Nicole’s face whitened in the dim light. Suddenly she was no longer a distant, precocious stranger, she was a frightened child. “Did someone talk to you, Claire? Or was it silent?”

Claire could feel her own blood drain away from her skin. “Silent. How did you know? Have you had the same thing happen?”

Nicole shook her head slowly, painfully. “No,” she said. “Just before my mother died she began receiving phone calls like that. When Marc said he was out of town.”

Claire just stared at her, fighting the nausea that was rising from the pit of her stomach. And for the first time she wondered if Madame Langlois was a bitter, paranoid old woman, or wise even beyond her years.

For a large, graceless man Gilles Sahut could move silently enough. He walked down the street, his heavy boots quiet on the pavement, heading toward Belleville. The rain was coming down heavily now, pouring over his bare head and running down his face. His hair was cut so short one could see the skull beneath it, and the short stubbly growth did nothing to slow the descent of the rain. He shook his head to clear the water from his eyes, like a large, evil dog, and continued on, single-minded in his purpose.

He’d had a few bad moments tonight. He’d been inside the apartment of the old one, moving through the clutter of furniture, when he realized the rain had stopped. He’d halted, motionless, not even daring to breathe, as he listened for the sound of rain against the window of the apartment. Nothing.

She’d been asleep. She was a plump one, her black stockings rolled down below her knees, crumbs and food dribbled on her massive bosom, an impressive mustache above her pursed and wrinkled mouth. She wore a wig, an elaborate, blue white affair, and it had slipped to one side, revealing the thin strands of yellow gray beneath it.

She was snoring, her head drooping, her plump hands resting in her capacious lap. The rooms smelled of cabbage and rose

s, and he remembered the roses in the garden at the orphanage, Georges’s pride. He remembered the thorns, and how they’d been embedded in his young boy’s flesh.