"Masterton, Graham - The Djinn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

THE DJINN

Chapter 1



It was a sweltering hot day in mid-August, and we all gathered at Restful Lawns Cemetery in our heavy black suits and stiff collars, looking like a party of overdressed lobsters. In movies, funerals are invariably held in a steady downpour, with black umbrellas and tears mingling with the rain. If there were any tears at this gathering-which I didn't notice-they were thoroughly mingled with unsentimental sweat.

The deceased was probably the most comfortable person there. He lay in an expensive casket of polished light oak with rather attractive shell-pattern handles, its lid laden with lilies and roses and orchids. It was more like a dismal flower show than a funeral, and regardless of our somber faces, all anybody could think about was getting our late friend buried and going back for a cool can of beer.

The priest stood over the open grave and said his bit. The widow dabbed her eyes with a little lace handkerchief. Then the coffin was lowered into the hard-baked soil, and we all self-consciously threw lumps of mud on the lid. I didn't like to throw mine too hard, in case it disturbed him. He was better off where he was.

We walked away through the gleaming white forest of immobile angels and marble headstones. There was a strange hot stillness that made me feel we were all going to suffocate. The black limousines were waiting for us, with discreet purple drapes at their windows; we climbed in and sat facing each other, trying not to smile.

We drove at a sedate speed along the Array Highway and on to Cape Cod. It was just past eleven when we arrived at Winter Sails, the deceased's rambling white wooden house on the deserted south shore. The limousines rolled up the weedy gravel driveway, and we all got out and stood in the mild sea breeze, waiting for the widow to invite us inside.

I was surprised to see how dilapidated Winter Sails had become. It was a Colonial-style house, built around 1800, with an elegant pillared verandah all the way around. Sometime in the early part of the twentieth century, the owners had added a Gothic turret overlooking the grassy beach and topped it with a weathervane in the shape of a scimitar; it squeaked mournfully every time the wind changed, which was often. The house was screened from the Hyannisport road by a row of twisted trees, all leaning away from the sea like a gaggle of frightened old ladies. But the once elegantly secluded estate looked distinctly shabby these days, with peeling paint and broken gutters, missing tiles, weed-riddled pathways, and overgrown lawns. There was a sundial on the wide west lawn, which had always intrigued me when I came to Winter Sails as a boy; but it was barely visible now through the long waving grass.

Marjorie Greaves stepped out of the last limousine in her black suit and black-veiled hat. She was a small, faded woman in her mid-fifties, with a prominent beaklike nose and dark, close-set eyes. She had always reminded me of a shrimp, and shrimps had always reminded me of her, which was why I rarely ate them. It is not nice to consume one's godparents, even by proxy.

"Hello, Harry," she said wanly, taking my hands in her own black-gloved fingers and looking up at me with those two little black eyes. If she had been weeping, it didn't show,

I nodded and smiled. "It was a very dignified service," I said. "Most dignified."

She smiled and looked away as if she were thinking about something else altogether. "Yes," she said. "I suppose it was,"

We stood there for a moment holding hands as if we were about to dance. Someone took a photograph of us. Then Marjorie smiled again and went off to talk to some of the other funeral guests. There were nearly thirty people there, none of whom I knew very well, and I was looking forward to being introduced. There were some elderly ladies, who were always good for business; a few prosperous-looking men; and a particularly tasty young lady in a tailored black suit and a black turban hat whose startling red lips and wide green eyes made me think she might be worth knowing. Socially, of course.

Marjorie Greaves ushered us all into the house. It was as run-down inside as it was out. The wallpaper was stained with dampness, and the carpets were worn right through to the gray string. There was a square hallway with a black-and-white tiled floor, which led through to the largest room in the house, a long drawing room with tall windows facing the sea, I remembered that this room had once been filled with flowers and expensive antique furniture, but now it had nothing more than two chintz-covered settees which looked as if they ought to be put out in the field with retired horses, and a few rigid little rush-bottomed chairs. Even the oil paintings were gone from the walls, leaving dark rectangular marks all along the light green wallpaper.

Marjorie's companion, an absent-minded young woman with spectacles, very prominent teeth, and an unfailing loyalty to long baby-pink cardigans, had made some small sponge cakes with cherries on top as well as a tuna fish flan, which she served with three bottles of sherry.

"In death even as in life," muttered one of the prosperous-looking men. "A goddamned tightwad."

"George!" said his wife reprovingly.

"Well," said George, whom I instantly disliked, "that guy was so mean he used to stuff his Thanksgiving turkey with newspaper."

Over in the corner, another couple were discussing the state of the house in stage whispers.

"He must have been down to his last dime," said an intense woman with ginger hair. "I never saw this place look so bad."

"I always used to think he was a millionaire," sniffed her husband, who was bald and paunchy. "I thought the guy had money to burn, but he certainly didn't burn any around here."

Marjorie herself got into conversation with a tall glum man, who said he couldn't keep his sherry down and stood drinking tapwater out of a teacup.

Miserable though it was, for me this funeral was something of a vacation. Usually, I work in New York, in the less-than-salubrious environs of Tenth Avenue, but when I received my black-edged invitation to bury my godfather, I was only too glad to get out of the sweaty city and head for the Cape. I don't usually have the money or the excuse to take a break, and this one, though morbid, was ready-made.