The Marbled Swarm Read Online Free PDF

periods of time. Instead, I wandered in the chateau’s secret passages for months on end, hoping to get lucky.
    “I did in fact write and quite voraciously, as you might have gathered from the overflowing trash can in the small observatory next to Serge’s room, but, in that unusual case, words proved to be a mere emasculation of reality.
    “When Claude and Serge did nothing more vituperative throughout those months than stare each other down, I decided to kill them both. The reason for that is very complicated.
    “I eased through Serge’s secret door one night and suffocated him with a pillow. I’m certain he was dead because . . . well, in the confusion of my feelings, I sodomized his cadaver with a violence that would have coaxed a pterodactyl from its fossil, be assured. But, to a horror I was scarcely able to conceal, he came downstairs for breakfast in the morning with nothing more unpleasant than a headache.
    “For a time, we had a gardener whose relentless gifts to Serge, even on the most infinitesimal of holidays, must have worn away his salary. I invited him to share a beer at this very table, and, after a bit of yard talk, let’s call it, I suggested he could tamper with my son so long as Serge died inexplicably while on their date and by some odd coincidence.
    “I unforgivably neglected to insist the encounter must transpire in Serge’s bedroom. I felt so stupid. They did their business in the tool shed, and, to worsen matters, Serge was such a “hottie,” by this gardener’s estimate, that accidentally killing him would be impractical. I fired this gardener, and he blackmailed me. He’s still blackmailing me.
    “One night, an inebriated Claude mistook our backyard for a pretty park. I followed him until I knew our yells would fray against the chateau’s windows, then grabbed a rock and, waving it in upraised hands, confronted him. Had he raped Serge? I bellowed. ‘Only in the mouth, and once, and he raped me if anything, and hardly even, but you . . . Serge told me you’ve been raping him for years. So, cut the motherfucking—’
    “This charge so aggrieved my mind that it seems I used the rock to answer him. The head blow didn’t kill Claude, but it left the things he tried to say incomprehensible, and his legs could not support his weight or even crawl. I dragged his slurring, flapping body to the river and laid it facedown in the water. And, to be fair, I somehow viewed myself as an avenging angel and raped him as well.
    “Strangely, Claire thought Claude was partying in Paris, and Serge and he weren’t speaking, and we were in between groundskeepers at the time, so when someone finally breached that distant part of the estate, Claude’s body was so waterlogged and bloated, it might as well have been Amelia Earhart’s plane.
    “Obviously, Serge had to die for, well, there are millions of compelling reasons, trust me. He had an expiration date, but, between the game of selling the chateau and hosting buyers day and night, coordinating the two schedules has proven difficult. So, are you going to kill him, or what are you going to do with him?”
    The flock of birds had spiraled elsewhere, and Jean-Paul was gazing at the empty sky, which had nothing left to hint about itself unless blue air knows something I don’t know. Naturally, I’d been balancing my intake of his words with their presumptive trust and strangely smooth delivery.
    I don’t believe in honesty, or not in fecklessness so thorough as to wipe a liar clean. There’s a reason why the recent drip-drip-drip of missing French boys has made the headlines without a single gendarme, worried parent, or gutter journalist showing signs of having given me a thought.
    Granted, when people disappear in bulk and every one inspires a Facebook tribute page whose friends are under twenty-one and gay or female—and not to staunch this story’s flow to compliment my tastes, but the unsolved spree has not been tagged “la