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‘and pursue this inquiry further.’
    The big green Marmon ‘8’ going up Alderwood’s main street in the deepening snow was having a hard time of it. The tyres were chainless, and the rather erratic driving of the girl at the wheel kept her companion on the edge of his seat.
    â€˜For God’s sake, Valentina, watch the road!’
    â€˜Compose a tone-poem, Marius,’ the girl said. ‘I’ll get you there in one piece.’
    â€˜The least you could do, in the name of common sense, is to stop at a garage and have the chains put on.’
    â€˜Relax, we’re almost there.’
    Valentina Warren was a passionate and volatile girl with a theatrical background of large roles in summer stock and small ones on Broadway. She secretly modelled her appearance and style on Joan Crawford; she had seen Untamed five times. To get to Hollywood was Valentina’s great crusade; to become a famous movie star was her Holy Grail.
    For the drive upcountry she had dressed in the latest in winter sportswear according to Vogue – a skiing costume of braided Norwegian trousers, with a forest green broadcloth vest and matching beret. Over this she had draped, cape fashion, a heavy green wool coat with black fox collar and cuffs. Valentina inclined to the colour green because, in combination with her airy gold hair and ground-chalk complexion, it gave her what she considered ‘a Greek tragedy look’. One of the few things that made Valentina angry was to be called ‘a lot of fun’. She equated fame with solemnity.
    If epic gloom was not in the Warren girl, it filled young Marius Carlo to the brim. He was of mixed Spanish and Italian descent, with a dash of Black Irish, and his soul was as dark and pitted as his skin. He had a positive flair for self-depreciation; romantic and imaginative, painfully aware of his physical shortcomings, he made less of himself than he was. He defended himself with sarcasms.
    Carlo was a composer of solid talent if no great originality, with his musical roots in Stravinsky and Hindemith. Recently he had come under the spell of the Austrian modernist Arnold Schönberg, and he had begun to compose prodigiously in the Schönbergian idiom – terse atonal works which no one heard but the adoring clique of Greenwich Village poets, artists and musicians who had attached themselves to him like a fungus. For his daily bread he played the viola in Walter Damrosch’s symphony orchestra, heard coast-to-coast each Saturday night at nine over NBC. This was his cross; and when he had been invited to spend the holiday in Alderwood he had seized the opportunity to report himself to the Damrosch business office as stricken with double lobar pneumonia.
    â€˜Let them play their goddam Tchaikovsky without me,’ he had snarled to his friends. Then he had added with characteristic hopefulness, ‘Maybe they’ll fire me.’
    He had been born with undeveloped arches in both feet, and he still had to wear heavy supports in his shoes. They gave him a laboured walk which, when he hurried, turned into a sort of scuttle. ‘Marius the Crab, that’s me,’ he would say bitterly.
    Valentina negotiated the glassy main street of Alderwood safely and headed her Marmon toward the north end of town.
    â€˜Marius, do you know what’s up?’ she asked abruptly.
    â€˜What’s up where?’
    â€˜Up here. What’s this house party all about?’
    â€˜How should I know? The days when I was in John’s confidence are footnotes in the sands of Time.’
    â€˜Oh, stop being so Oedipean. You know what I mean. John’s up to something, but what?’
    â€˜Ask him.’ Marius glowered at the snowy road. ‘I hope the hooch is good.’
    â€˜He’s been dropping awfully mysterious hints,’ Valentina said thoughtfully. ‘About something big coming off around New Year’s. I wonder what it is.’
    The young