“No harm done, Delia,” said Ellery. “This sort of thing is all in the eye of the beholder.”
She glanced at him quickly. A frown appeared between her heavy brows.
“Is something wrong, Ellery?”
He looked at her.
The color left her face. Her hands went to her naked shoulders and she hurried past them into a dressing room, slamming the door.
“Bitch,” said Keats pleasantly. He took a cigaret out of his pocket and jammed it between his lips. The end tore and he spat it out, turning away.
Ellery looked around.
The room was overpowering, with dark Spanish furniture and wallpaper and drapes which flaunted masses of great tropical flowers. The rug was a sullen Polynesian red with a two-inch pile. There were cushions and hassocks of unusual shapes and colors. Huge majolicas stood about filled with lilies. On the wall hung heroic Gauguin reproductions and above the bed a large black iron crucifix that looked very old. Niches were crowded with ceramics, woodcarvings, metal sculptures of exotic subjects, chiefly modern in style and many of them male nudes. There was an odd book-shelf hanging by an iron chain, and Ellery strolled over to it, his legs brushing the bed. Thomas Aquinas, Kinsey, Bishop Berkeley, Pierre Loti, Havelock Ellis. Lives of the Saints and Fanny Hill in a Paris edition. The rest were mystery stories; there was one of his, his latest. The bed was a wide and herculean piece set low to the floor, covered with a cloth-of-gold spread appliqued, in brilliant colors of metallic thread, with a vast tree of life. In the ceiling, directly above the bed and of identical dimensions, glittered a mirror framed in fluorescent tubing.
“For some reason,” remarked Lieutenant Keats in the silence, “this reminds me of that movie actor, What’s-His-Name, of the old silent days. In the wall next to his john he had a perforated roll of rabbit fur.” The dressing room door opened and Keats said, “Now that’s a relief, Mrs. Priam. Thanks a lot. Where’s this box?”
She went to a trunk-sized teak chest covered with brasswork chased intricately in the East Indian manner, which stood at the foot of the bed, and she opened it. She had put on a severe brown linen dress and stockings as well as flat-heeled shoes; she had combed her hair back in a knot. She was pale and frigid, and she looked at neither man.