“Hardly necessary,” said Wilkes. “Cigarettes have started thousands of fires. Most of them have a chemical added to keep them burning when the smoker isn’t inhaling. If you’ve ever rolled your own without any chemical additive, you’ll remember how easily they go out.”
“Then what is bothering you if it isn’t the cigarette?” demanded Bill. “And don’t fob me off with vague stuff about Gestalt insight.”
“All right, I’ll tell if you won’t print it. Scout’s honor?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“Why the hell didn’t that fire alarm go off sooner? It was heard first at three A.M. Our chemists think that the fire in this room had been burning then for at least a half an hour. It’s not the most modern fire alarm system in the world but it’s adequate, and we did check it once a week. We checked it three days before the fire, and it was in good working order then. It’s detectors don’t wait for flames. They are sensitive to heat and smoke. There was a lot of heat and smoke here before three o’clock. Why didn’t the alarm go off?”
“Have you checked the detectors since the fire?”
“They’re too badly burned for us to check them now. Arson has a way of destroying most of the evidence that it ever occurred. So what it all boils down to is a verdict of not proven.”
“What it all boils down to is no story I can print.” Bill sighed. “I’m used to that. When I retire I’m going to write a book called The Unprinted History of the Twentieth Century.”
“A better title would be The Unprintable History of the Twentieth Century,” said Tash.
“I’ll tell you what you can print,” said Wilkes. “An editorial article saying that Leafy Way must have the most modern and efficient fire alarm system in the world before any governor lives here again.”
When they were in the car once more on their way back to town, Bill said, “Tash, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you for some time. I know you liked Jeremy Playfair, but people who are not used to heights can get dizzy up there where the air is pretty rarefied. I’m glad you’re out of it now. You are out of it, aren’t you?”
Tash laughed aloud. “You, too?”
“Who else has broached the subject?”
“Gordon Freese. Did you really think I would stop seeing Jeremy now after all he’s been through? He probably won’t need me anymore when he comes back, but if he does, I’m not going to ignore him.”
“If he comes back,” said Bill. “There is a persistent rumor that he will resign now. After all, Job Jackman is doing a pretty good job as a governor pro tern.”
Tash was the first out of the car. Bill followed her into her vestibule. She looking into her mailbox.
“There’s a letter. No, it’s a cable. I’ve been out so much they couldn’t reach me by telephone.”
She took it in at one glance, and then handed it to Bill.
GOVERNOR RETURNING FRIDAY RESUMING RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN STOP CAN YOU TAKE SAME JOB STOP WOULD BE APPRECIATED REGARDS CARLOS
Reply prepaid: Carlos de Miranda, Cayo Siesta, Sotavento.
“How will you answer this?” asked Bill.
“In just two words: DELIGHTED TASH.”
Next morning Hilary telephoned.
“I’ve persuaded Job to turn over his place, Fox Run, to Jeremy until Leafy Way can be occupied again. Job and Jo Beth are moving to a hotel in town. I thought it might be a good idea to go out to Fox Run today and see what needs to be done before Jeremy gets here, but I have a problem. My car’s is in the garage for a check up. Could you drive me in your car? . . . I’ll be ready and waiting for you in half an hour.”
In spite of the sultry August day, Hilary looked as cool and neat as usual in ice-green linen with dark green shoes and smoothly immaculate hair. Tash herself could never attain that each-hair-in-its-place grooming. Just looking at Hilary made her feel blowzy.
Hilary told her to take an interstate highway and go toward the eastern part of the state where there was seacoast and sandy beaches.
The end-of-summer feeling was everywhere in the dusty leaves, the breathless heat, the late-blooming goldenrod and asters and loosestrife edging ditches along the road. Most of all it was in a single branch of sumac that had already turned bright scarlet, looking weirdly unnatural in a world where everything else was green.
“Why Fox Run?” asked Tash.
“This used to be fox-hunting country. Have you ever read Bayard Taylor’s novel The Story of Kennett? It’s about fox hunting in Kennett Square long ago, and that’s just across the border in Pennsylvania. Job says his house is surrounded by a little wilderness, where foxes often went to earth. Fox Run is actually the name of a road.”
They left the highway for a rougher road winding through the woods. Suddenly, they came out into the sunlight, where trees had been cut away on both sides of the road. On their left a private road led through meadows and paddocks to a tall angular Victorian house, standing in a sweep of lawn about half a mile away. A few shade trees clustered around the lawn. Beyond, stood a stone barn bigger than the house itself.
“Fox Run used to be a working farm,” said Hilary.
Tash followed the road to a front door under a porte-cochère. Hilary got out looking around as critically as if she were going to take a long lease on the house for herself.
“It’s not Leafy Way,” she sighed. “But I suppose it will do. Jo Beth says the barn is a guest house now. We can put executive offices there.”
Hilary rang the bell.
The door was opened by the chief usher from Leafy Way. He smiled broadly when he saw them.
“Settling down all right?” asked Hilary.
“Everything unpacked and under control, ma’am. Shall I show you round?”
“Please do.”
The furniture was Job’s, good, solid reproductions of old pieces that would have passed for originals if they had been a little shabbier. The only Playfair things were linen, table silver, and a few books and pictures, all rescued from Leafy Way. Tash was pleased to see Dragon Playing with a Pearl among the pictures.
“Let’s see the garden,” said Hilary.
The usher opened a glass door and they stepped outside.
“No terrace,” muttered Hilary.
“But a beautiful lawn,” said Tash. “And comfortable garden furniture.”
The open space was surrounded by the woods as by a wall, but looking west, you could see hills far in the distance above the treetops. Today there was a heat haze and the hills looked insubstantial as folds of soft, gray chiffon against the hot, blue sky.
“I like this place,” said Tash. “I could be happy here.”
As they strolled back toward the house, Tash saw a flash of movement through an open French window on the ground floor.
“Tash! Hilary!” Carlos stepped through the window with a brilliant smile. His teeth were stark white against the deep tan he had acquired in Sotavento.
“What a surprise to find you both here!” He clasped Tash’s hand in his right and Hilary’s in his left. “We’re only just off the plane.”
“We?” said Hilary.
“Yes.” Carlos raised his voice. “Jerry, I’ve got a surprise for you. A nice surprise!”
“But you said you were coming back Friday.”
“This morning we found we could get a plane today, so we took it.”
Jeremy came out of the house, smiling, too, but not quite as broadly as Carlos. His fair skin had tanned pinkish rather than brown. He looked thinner. He seemed quieter.
“It’s good to find you both here,” he said. “I didn’t expect a welcome like this.”
“We just came to look the place over today,” said Hilary. “We could probably move in tomorrow. At least, Tash and the secretariat could. I don’t have a job any more.”
“Oh, yes, you do, if you want one. I’ve never had a social secretary, but I am going to need someone for that job now.”
“Are you still going to open your campaign out west?”
They were the first words Tash had spoken since Jeremy appeared.
“Yes,” he answered pleasantly, but impersonally. “Job is convinced it will help with the western vote.”
The chief usher was coming over the grass, his smile even broader now that Jeremy and Carlos were here. Would they like to have dinner served here tonight?
“Dinner?” repeated Jeremy. “Nothing so elaborate. Just a buffet supper out here al fresco. I suppose there is food in the house?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Mrs. Jackman saw to that. What time would you like supper?”
“In about an hour, and bring us some mint juleps now.”
As the sun was setting, they ate cold poached salmon with green mayonnaise. It seemed to Tash that Jeremy had changed in many ways. He didn’t talk so much. He didn’t smile so often. When he wasn’t smiling, he looked older than she had ever seen him.
When Hilary was talking to him, Tash took the opportunity to speak to Carlos in a low voice. “Is he all right?”
“Much better than he was,” answered Carlos in a voice as low. “For a long time he didn’t read newspapers or write letters or do anything but swim and sleep.”
“I wondered why he didn’t write.”
“He was like a man in a trance. For weeks. The physical scars of the fire healed quickly enough, but there were times when I thought the psychic scar of Vivian’s death would never heal at all. He felt himself responsible for everything that had happened to her.”
“How could he?”
“That’s the way we all feel when someone we love dies. You’re too young to know about that. Fortunately, it passes, like everything else. I knew it had passed for Jeremy when he began looking at newspaper headlines again. That was when I first urged him to come back to all the problems he has here. I think that’s what he needs now.”
Hilary was not lowering her voice. “Oh, this is a nice enough place in its way, but there’s no swimming pool.” Jeremy laughed for the first time.
“You haven’t looked at a map. If you had, you’d know that we don’t need a swimming pool here. We’re within a mile of the sea. Job has his own ocean beach, and that’s something I’ve always envied him.”
“What about pollution?”
“I don’t think it’s got this far yet. Even if it has, I’d rather have a polluted sea than a chlorinated pool. When I got your letter about Fox Run, Hilary, my first thought was the beach.”
“Oh, I forgot, I’ve got some mail for you at home,” said Hilary. “Job has been handling all state business, but he turned the personal stuff over to me. I only forwarded the ones that were really important, but you ought to see the others now.”
“Fan letters?”
“Lots.”
“I’d like to see a sampling of those. They are a useful barometer when an election’s pending.”
“Then I’d better be getting home, so I can sort them out tonight and bring all the personal files over here the first thing tomorrow morning. Tash, we came in your car, so if you’re ready now . . . ?”
Carlos intervened. “I’m going back to town myself this evening, so I can drive you, Hilary, if Tash would like to stay a little longer.”
It was done smoothly without a ripple on the surface, but the net result was to leave Tash alone with Jeremy, and she could not help realizing that Carlos was aware of this.
She stood with Jeremy under the porte-cochère while Carlos and Hilary drove away.
“I’d like to show you that beach now,” said Jeremy. “Do you have time?”
“Oh, yes, all the time in the world.”
“I’ll have to borrow your car. Carlos drove off with mine.”
It was strange to be a passenger in her own car with Jeremy driving, and yet it was pleasant.
They drove through the woods for only a few minutes before she heard the mutter of surf.
“I had no idea we were so near the sea!”
“A little uncanny, isn’t it? Woods always make you feel that you’re inland. This road is called Further Lane, and that’s uncanny, too. Farther is the word you use for distance in space, but further really means distance in time. I’m always expecting to drive into the eighteenth century on this road.”
The car shot out of the trees. Now there were sand dunes on either side, with wild grass streaming in the wind from their crests like long hair.
The road ended in a turnaround at the top of a steep rise in its gradient, probably to accommodate one of the dunes.
There was no one else there at this hour of the night. Jeremy halted the car at the very edge of the macadam and switched off the headlights.
There was only starlight now. All they could see of the ocean was the foamy, white edge of waves creaming on the sand. Beyond, there was only a black void, without any sign of an horizon, that seemed to go on forever. Without surf, there would have been no sea; without stars, no sky.
Jeremy switched off the engine and began to speak in the sudden stillness. “Tash, there are some things you ought to know now. I loved Vivian, but she did not love me. She knew a divorce would hurt my future, and she cared enough about me not to want that. So she hesitated, feeling trapped, bored and unhappy. A generation ago she might have taken to drink. In this generation, she took to drugs.
“For a long time I knew she was unhappy, but I didn’t know why. I suppose she was trying to spare me as long as she could. I didn’t even think of divorce. How could I when she was so obviously in some kind of trouble?”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I don’t want you to feel guilty. You must not get the idea that you came between Vivian and me. That would be too heavy a burden of guilt for anyone like you.
“Vivian and I had been divorced emotionally before you and I ever met. She and I were trapped. Sooner or later, one of us was bound to fall in love with someone else. It was chance or Fate that I was the one, and that I fell in love with you.
“Nothing you said or did made me do it. I just did. And now, I must know if you fell in love with me. I’ve never been sure. Did you?”
He waited for an answer in words, but the only answer she could give him was in her eyes.
Swiftly he bowed his head to kiss her lips. She had never known a kiss like that before. Her arms lifted to draw him closer to her heart, and everything else was forgotten in mutual surrender.
PART III
Desolation Bend
14
EVERYONE AT FOX RUN knew they were lovers, and that they would marry after a decent interval, but no one in the household ever showed the slightest awareness of this. The lovers were cosseted in a snug cocoon of discreet silence. The only exceptions were occasional glances in their direction tinged with envy. There are few people, however cynical, who do not hanker a little after the rare experience of happiness in love which passes so many by. This envy was wistful, quite without jealousy or malice.
The conspiracy of forebearance included the press. No hint of the truth appeared in any newspaper. Even the most intrusive gossip columnists left this story alone. After all, Tash had no enemies in public life, and Jeremy, who did, had won the sympathy of most people by his ordeal on the night of the fire. Everyone who knew them seemed glad that the Governor had found a way to mend his broken life.
But what about the invisible multitude out there beyond the newspapers and television screens? What was being said by people who didn’t know them?
There was one clue: the letters addressed to Jeremy or Tash that came pouring into the mailing department of the secretariat at Fox Run, some signed, some anonymous, and about thirty-five percent abusive. The largest number of these came from the western counties, where Jeremy was going to open his re-election campaign in the next few days.
The minds behind these letters were as inflexible as muscles in spasm and locked onto a few archetypal ideas with the tenacity of rigor mortis. Once they got hold of an idea they seemed almost physically incapable of letting it go, the way a steel needle is
physically incapable of separating itself from a magnet.
They were now denouncing Jeremy as “soft on communism” because his strike settlement had led to renewed trade with Barlovento, which had a government they considered leftist. Egged on by Barloventan political exiles, they wanted to believe anything nasty they heard about the “traitor” as they called him. So they seized upon rumors of the role Tash played in his life with gleeful avidity.
She was not just the Whore of Babylon. She was Lady MacBeth. One letter even quoted: Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. . . .
Job was the one who first showed Tash a sampling of the letters. He did it one afternoon in her own office in the stone barn. He gave her a little time to recover while he clipped and lighted a fresh cigar.
“Does Jerry know you’re showing me these?”
“No, I’d like to keep this between you and me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Would you be willing to give up Jeremy and not marry him?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I was never more serious in my life. These letters don’t just accuse you of carrying on with Jeremy before Vivian died. They accuse you of murdering her. They all imply that you set the fire at Leafy Way, so that she would be killed and you could then marry Jeremy without his having to go through the politically damaging process of a contested divorce.”
“Job, you know that’s all absurd.”
“I know it, but the people who write these letters don’t, and that’s what counts. If you marry Jeremy now, you are giving yourself the motive for murder they have already assigned to you.”
“There’s no evidence the fire was arson.”
“That’s what the insurance company says now, but Wilkes is still working on it. If he turns up something, and you are the only person with a motive for killing Vivian, the police are going to question you very closely indeed. Headlines, television commentators, gossip columnists, the works. Why marry him? Aren’t you happy enough as you are now?”
Tash managed to keep her temper and said quietly: “We want to have children.”
Helen McCloy Page 13