The 1st Deadly Sin Read Online Free PDF Page B

chilled Concord grapes, listening to the Mortons’ chatter, watching Celia Montfort silently and intently devour an immense amount of food.
    Afterward they had small, warmed Portuguese brandies. Daniel and the Mortons carried on a desultory conversation about Art Deco, a current fad. Celia’s opinion was asked, but she shook her head. “I know nothing about it.” After that she sat quietly, brandy glass clasped in both hands, eyes brooding. She had no talent for small talk. Complain of bad weather and she might, he thought, deliver you a sermon on humility. Strange woman. What was it Sam had said—“She scares you.” Why on earth should he have said that—unless he was referring to her disturbing silences, her alienation: which might be nothing more than egoism and bad manners.
    She rose suddenly to her feet and, for the first time, Blank saw her body clearly. As he had guessed, she was tall, but thinner and harder than he had suspected. She carried herself well, moved with a sinuous grace, and her infrequent gestures were small and controlled.
    She said she must go, giving Flo and Sam a bleak smile. She thanked them politely for their hospitality. Flo brought her coat: a cape of weighted silk brocade, as dazzling as a matador’s jacket. Blank was now convinced she had not been home to that East End Avenue townhouse since Saturday evening, nor slept at all the previous night.
    She moved to the door. Flo and Sam looked at him expectantly.
    “May I see you home?” he asked.
    She looked at him thoughtfully.
    “Yes,” she said finally. “You may.”
    The Mortons exchanged a rapid glance of triumph. They waited in the hallway, in their studded jumpsuits, grinning like idiots, until the elevator door shut them away.
    In the elevator, unexpectedly, she asked: “You live in this building, don’t you?”
    “Yes. The twenty-first floor.”
    “Let’s go there.”
    Ten minutes later she was in his bedroom, brocaded cape dropped to the floor, and fast asleep atop the covers of his bed, fully clothed. He picked up her cape, hung it away, slipped off her shoes and placed them neatly alongside the bed. Then he closed the door softly, went back into the living room to read the Sunday New York Times , and tried not to think of the strange woman sleeping in his bed.
    At 4:30, finished with his paper, he looked in upon her. She was lying face up on the pillows, her great mass of black hair fanned out. He was stirred. From the shoulders down she had turned onto her side and slept holding her bare arms. He took a light wool blanket from the linen closet and covered her gently. Then he went into the kitchen to eat a peeled apple and swallow a yeast tablet.
    An hour later he was seated in the dim living room, trying to recall her features and understand why he was so intrigued by her sufficiency. The look of the sorceress, the mysterious wizard, could be due, he decided, to the way she wore her long, straight hair and the fact, as he suddenly realized, that she wore no make-up at all: no powder, no lipstick, no eyeshadow. Her face was naked.
    He heard her moving about. The bathroom door closed; the toilet was flushed. He switched on lamps. When she came into the living room he noted that she had put on her shoes and combed her hair smooth.
    “Don’t you ever wear any make-up?” he asked her.
    She stared at him a long moment.
    “Occasionally I rouge my nipples.”
    He gave her a sardonic smile. “Isn’t that in poor taste?”
    She caught his lewd meaning at once. “Witty man,” she said in her toneless voice. “Might I have a vodka? Straight. Lots of ice, please. And a wedge of lime, if you have it.” When he came back with identical drinks for both, she was curled up on his Tobia Scarpa sofa, her face softly illuminated by a Marc Lepage inflatable lamp. He saw at once her weariness had vanished with sleep; she was serene. But with a shock he saw something he had not noticed before: a fist-sized bruise on the bicep of her