Page 23 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Polished Off

“I was extremely upset after a very unsatisfactory interview with
Ms. Trench in the morning. It had finally dawned on me that she had
no intention of accepting even the most generous offer for Again I’ll
Explain. So I tested her by offering eight hundred dollars, almost
twice the price in the East Coast dealers’ listings. She laughed in that
hideous trombone tenor, and told me that she would destroy the
book rather than sell it for so little. That’s when I stormed out of
there. After I went back to my place of business—which is not far
from here—I began stewing and chewing. Finally I concluded that
she was just crazy enough to take out her perverted anger on a totally
defenseless rare book. So I came back to try to talk her out of it. A
quixotic quest, no doubt, but she was right in knowing how to hurt
me: I couldn’t bear the idea of one of the few remaining copies of
Duchaine’s classic volume suffering destruction in her uncaring
hands.”
Wandisi’s pinched little face had twisted into a yet tinier terrain of
distaste. I noticed that the skin on his fingers had a slightly although
unsightly yellow-orange tinge.
“By the way: what is your profession, Mr. Wandisi?” I asked,
essaying an expression of indifference.
He again turned the weak but concentrated force of his
personality on me. “I do not see why I should be subjected to this
unwarranted inquisition by a member of the bar.”
Labelle, I am sorry to say, sustained this objection.
“Mr. Wandisi, please try to concentrate. What was Mariana
Trench doing while you were in her office this morning?”
“You mean apart from infuriating me? Everything she was doing
could not have been better calculated to unhinge me. She was
drinking coffee, shining her shoes, drying her nails, playing with her
perfumes and powders, all the while paying scant attention to my
carefully crafted explanations. I felt like some ill-favored courtier in
the boudoir of Marie Antoinette. And to top it off, the fumes from
all that war paint were making me dizzy.”
“And how did Ms. Trench appear when you saw her last?”
“About the same as always, I guess. I had stopped looking at her,
afraid that my emotions would be too visible, serving only to fan the
flames of her irrational wrath.”

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