"Barker, Clive - Books of Blood 06" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

'We were only over for three months, while his show
ran. We were going back in September . . .'
'Back?'
'To Hamburg,' she said, 'I don't like this city. It's too
hot. And too cruel.'
'Don't blame New York,' he said. 'It can't help
itself.'
'Maybe,' she replied, nodding. 'Perhaps what hap-
pened to Swann would have happened anyway, wherever
we'd been. People keep telling me: it was an accident.
That's all. Just an accident.'
'But you don't believe it?'
Valentin had appeared with a glass of milk. He set it
down on the table in front of Harry. As he made to leave,
she said: 'Valentin. The letter?'
He looked at her strangely, almost as though she'd
said something obscene.
'The letter,' she repeated.
He exited.
'You were saying -'
She frowned. 'What?'
'About it being an accident.'
'Oh yes. I lived with Swann seven and a half years,
and I got to understand him as well as anybody ever
could. I learned to sense when he wanted me around,
and when he didn't. When he didn't, I'd take myself off
somewhere and let him have his privacy. Genius needs
privacy. And he was a genius, you know. The greatest
illusionist since Houdini.'
'Is that so?'
'I'd think sometimes - it was a kind of miracle that he
let me into his life . . .'
Harry wanted to say Swann would have been mad not
to have done so, but the comment was inappropriate.
She didn't want blandishments; didn't need them.
Didn't need anything, perhaps, but her husband alive
again.
'Now I think I didn't know him at all,' she went on,
'didn't understand him. I think maybe it was another
trick. Another part of his magic.'
'I called him a magician a while back,' Harry said.
'You corrected me.'
'So I did,' she said, conceding his point with an
apologetic look. 'Forgive me. That was Swann talking.
He hated to be called a magician. He said that was a word
that had to be kept for miracle-workers.'
'And he was no miracle-worker?'
'He used to call himself the Great Pretender,' she said.
The thought made her smile.
Valentin had re-appeared, his lugubrious features rife