Читать книгу Imajica - Clive Barker, Clive Barker - Страница 22

He needed a drink before he spoke to McGann, and Dowd, ever the anticipator, had already mixed him a whisky and soda, but he forsook it for fear it would loosen his tongue. Paradoxically, what had been half-revealed by the Boston Bowl helped him in his exchange. In extreme circumstances he responded with almost pathological detachment: it was one of his most English traits. He had thus seldom been cooler or more controlled than now, as he told McGann that yes indeed he had been travelling, and no, it was none of the Society’s business where or about what pursuit. He would of course be delighted to attend a gathering at the Tower the following day, but was McGann aware (indeed did he care?) that tomorrow was Christmas Eve?

‘I never miss Midnight Mass at St Martin’s-in-the-Field,’ Oscar told him, ‘so I’d appreciate it greatly if the meeting could be concluded quickly enough to allow me time to get there and find a pew with a good view.’

He delivered all of this without a tremor in his voice. McGann attempted to press him as to his whereabouts in the last few days, to which Oscar asked why the hell it mattered.

‘I don’t ask about your private affairs, now do I?’ he said, in a mildly affronted tone. ‘Nor, by the way, do I spy on your comings and goings. Don’t splutter, McGann. You don’t trust me and I don’t trust you. I will take tomorrow’s meeting as a forum to debate the privacy of the Society’s members, and a chance to remind the gathering that the name of Godolphin is one of the cornerstones of the Society.’

‘All the more reason you be forthright,’ McGann said.

‘I’ll be perfectly forthright,’ was Oscar’s reply. ‘You’ll have ample evidence of my innocence.’ Only now, with the war of wits won, did he accept the whisky and soda Dowd had mixed for him. ‘Ample and definitive.’

He silently toasted Dowd as he talked, knowing as he sipped it that there’d be bloodshed before Christmas Day dawned. Grim as that prospect was, there was no avoiding it now.

When he put the phone down he said to Dowd: ‘I think I’ll wear the herringbone suit tomorrow. And a plain shirt. White. Starched collar.’

‘And the tie?’ Dowd asked, replacing Oscar’s drained glass with a fresh one.

‘I’ll be going straight on to Midnight Mass,’ Oscar said.

‘Black, then.’

‘Black.’