Eva's Sins.

LXXIX

  „The sky cries because of betrayal. Will we be fine eventually?"

  „Get lost for a while," Lyre told his helper Patrick, throwing the yellow envelope to his feet, the same envelope the young man took from Bardain's room, for he was who Sophie saw before her death, an envelope that had nothing important inside, actually.

  Patrick, a young man about 25, quickly bowed and, after picking the envelope up, he rushed toward the door. Toward the door instead, he measured noses with Lorenne with whom he exchanged some glances. After that, he rushed to vanish when she motioned him to go.

  „I'm not in the mood for useless talks," Lyre hissed through his teeth seeing Lorenne stopped only a few steps from his desk. „Not after tonight when everything went damn bad."

  „Do you mean Sophie Anderson Bell's death?" said Lorenne calmly, at all bothered by the 75 years old man's glances of hatred and anger, who eventually grabbed the whisky bottle forgotten on the table, which he brought there to pour something more in his glass. But when he found out about what happened in Sophie's house, he forgot about drink and everything."

  „You and your bad habit of listening at doors," the old man hissed through his teeth and he threw the bottle toward her, and the bottle passed by Lorenne, breaking after hitting the wooden edge of the armchair next to her.

  „You know me very well if you act like this each time you see me, but even so you are so amazed as if you see me for the first time," Lorenne said confidently and in an absolutely familiar tone as if the two were husband and wife or two lovers, and not two simple members of an organization, which they were trying to make even more profitable than it was at that moment. „Yet, I didn't come here to listen to your boring conversation with Patrick."

  „Then?" Lyre mumbled, staring at her.

  „You have guests and... even if you don't have the pleasure to listen to someone else tonight, there are others that want to do this."

  „Others? Like?" murmured Lyre, understandably upset by that insolence of a guest that came to his house at that late hour.

  „Keen. Vincent Keen," said Lorenne, hissing the words, spoken like that as if she tried to provoke the old man to set by the ears. „I don't know the reason why he's here, even if I can guess it."

  „I don't think he's here because of Sophie Anderson Bell's death. It's too early for the police to be here for this."

  „And I didn't say this, Lyre," said Lorenne, approaching the same armchair of whose wooden edge the bottle broke after hitting it. Then, after she cleaned the shivers off it with a kerchief which she took off her sleeve, and sat down on the armchair, crossing her legs and while caressing her dress to unrumple the material, she continued her thought: „actually Keen is a damn cunning police dog. A smart one, who could bring the police here in seconds... if... he had still worked for the police. But... while he's only a private detective, he came here only because he's representing Brian Beneath."

  Hearing Brian's name, Lyre gnashed his teeth and, grabbing the ground ash cane, beautifully painted and wrought that was laid on his chair, he supported his hand on it, heading toward the door and mumbling: „let's see that dog and we'll check now who's smarter, for... I hate the dogs that poke their nose in someone else's businesses."

  Yet, even if the old man's words have resounded like an invitation to follow him, Lorenne didn't do that, for she knew very well that if she shows up in front of Keen, more after she found out that Christine opened her mouth and told him about Emily's death, he could have figured out that she had something to do with Eva's decision of abandoning Brian, and this could have been really dangerous, for... even if she and Lyre went to Image in great secret to „propose" a pact to Eva, yet, she was aware that her presence in that house should have remained a secret in the end.