A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Insane

The directions he'd been given by the man at the rental car office at Ridgemont's small airport, Harry had no trouble finding Zayn's boyhood home. Perched high on a hill overlooking the picturesque little valley, the Tudor mansion where Margaret Stanhope still lived was, according to the man at the rental car office, "practically a landmark hereabouts." Watching for the fancy brick pillars that he'd been told would mark the driveway, Harry saw them on his left and turned off the highway. As he wended his way up the long wide drive that climbed through the trees to the top of the hill, he remembered what Zayn had told him about the day he'd left this place. "I was permanently disowned as of that moment. I handed over my car keys and walked down the driveway and down the hill to the highway." He'd had a very long walk, Harry realized with a pang of sad nostalgia, looking around him, trying to imagine what Zayn had felt and seen that day.

At the top of the hill as he made the last turn, the drive widened and swept in a wide arc through manicured lawns and giant trees, barren now in winter. There was a harsh austerity about the sprawling stone house that made him oddly uneasy as he pulled to a stop on the brick-paved entry in front of the steps. Harry hadn't called in advance because he hadn't wanted to explain the purpose for his visit on a telephone, nor had he wanted to give Zayn's grandmother an easy opportunity to refuse to see him. In Harry's experience, delicate personal matters were always better handled in person. Gathering up his gloves, he got out of the car and stopped, looking around at the house and its setting, delaying the moment of reckoning. Zayn had grown up here, and it seemed to him this place had left its mark on Zayn's personality; it was like him in a way—formidable, proud, solid, impressive.

That made Harry feel better, braver, as he walked up the steps toward the wide arched door. Firmly suppressing the inexplicable premonition of doom that was trying to steal over him, he reminded himself that he had come on a long-overdue "peace mission" and he lifted the heavy brass door knocker.

An ancient butler with stooped shoulders answered the door wearing a dark suit and bow tie. "I'm Harry Mathison," he told him. "I'd like to see Mrs. Stanhope if she's at home."

His shaggy white brows shot up over widened brown eyes when Harry gave his name, but he recovered his composure and stepped back into a cavernous, gloomy foyer with a green slate floor. "I will see if Mrs. Stanhope will see you. You may wait there," he added, gesturing to a straight-backed, uncomfortable-looking antique chair positioned beside a drum table at the left end of the foyer.

Harry sat down, feeling a little like a supplicant in the stifling, unwelcoming formality of the foyer, and he had a hunch that unexpected guests were intended to feel this way. Concentrating on what he needed to say, he gazed at a German landscape hanging in an ornate dark frame on the opposite wall, then he turned nervously when the butler shuffled into the foyer.

"Madam will spare you exactly five minutes," he announced.

Refusing to be daunted by that unpromising beginning, Harry followed him down a wide hall and then passed in front of him as he opened a door and gestured Harry into a large room with a fire burning in a massive stone fireplace and an Oriental carpet spread across a polished dark wood floor. A pair of high-backed chairs upholstered in a faded tapestry were positioned facing the fireplace, and since no one was sitting on the sofa or any of the other furniture in the room, Harry erroneously assumed he was alone. He wandered over to a table covered with silver-framed photographs, intending to study the faces of what he presumed were Zayn's relatives and ancestors, then he saw that the wall on the left was covered with large portraits. With a fascinated smile, he started toward them, realizing that Zayn hadn't exaggerated—there was a startling resemblance between himself and many of the Stanhope men. Behind him a sharp voice snapped, "You've just wasted one of your five minutes, Mr. Mathison."