“I cannot. To explain would involve breaking a trust and I am not willing to do that, not even for you.”
“How many times have you lied to me?” Lainie asks, rising from her chair.
“I have never lied,” Mr. Barris counters, standing as well. “I do not share what I am not at liberty to say. I gave my word and I intend to keep it but I have never lied to you. You never even asked me, you assumed I knew nothing.”
“Tara asked you,” Lainie says.
“Indirectly,” Mr. Barris says. “I do not think she knew what to ask and I would not have answered if she did. I was concerned about her and I suggested that she speak with Alexander if she wanted answers. I assume that was why she was at the station. I do not know if she ever spoke to him. I have not asked.”
“Alexander knows as well?” Lainie asks.
“I believe there is little, if anything, that he is ignorant about.”
Lainie sighs and returns to her chair. She picks up her cup of tea and then without taking a sip puts it down again.
Mr. Barris crosses to the other side of the desk and takes her hands in his, making sure she looks him in the eye before he speaks.
“I would tell you if I could,” he says.
“I know that, Ethan,” she says. “I do.”
She squeezes his hands softly to reassure him.
“I don’t mind this, Lainie,” Mr. Barris says. “I move my office every few years, I hire a new staff. I keep up with projects through correspondence, it is not a difficult thing to manage considering what I receive in return.”
“I understand,” she says. “Where is the circus now?”
“I’m not certain. I believe it recently left Budapest, though I do not know where it is en route to. I can find out; Friedrick will know and I owe him a telegram.”
“And how will Herr Thiessen know where the circus is headed?”
“Because Celia Bowen tells him.”
Lainie does not ask him any further questions.
Mr. Barris is relieved when she accepts the invitation to join him for dinner, and even more so when she agrees to extend her stay in Switzerland before catching up with the circus.
*
LAINIE INVITES CELIA to join her at the Pera Palace Hotel in Constantinople as soon as she reaches the city. She waits in the tea lounge, two lightly steaming, tulip-shaped glasses with matching saucers resting upon the tile table in front of her.
When Celia arrives, they greet each other warmly. Celia inquires about Lainie’s journey before they discuss the city and the hotel, including the sweeping height of the room they sit within.
“It’s like being in the acrobat tent,” Lainie remarks, looking up at the domes that line the ceiling, each one dotted with circles of turquoise-tinted glass.
“You have not been to the circus in far too long,” Celia says. “We have your costumes, if you would like to join the statues this evening.”
“Thank you, but no,” Lainie says. “I am not in the mood to stand so still.”
“You are welcome at any time,” Celia says.
“I know,” Lainie says. “Though truthfully, I am not here for the circus. I am here to speak with you.”
“What is it you would like to speak about?” Celia asks, a look of concern falling over her face.
“My sister was killed at St. Pancras Station, after a visit to the Midland Grand Hotel,” Lainie says. “Do you know why she went there?”
Celia’s grip on her tea glass tightens.