Come to Dust

by Emma Lathen

  Thatcher hardened his heart. “George, I don’t know Patterson of course, but certain aspects of this whole episode have struck me as rather unusual.”

  Lancer could not deny it.

  Thatcher continued: “Here, I take it, is a perfectly commonplace businessman who first disappears, which is odd enough. Then last Monday he gets involved in a hit and run accident, kills two teenagers, and is now trying to escape a police dragnet, which is odd too. Then, as you yourself have pointed out, he seems to be pulling it off, which may be the oddest part of all.”

  Lancer said cautiously that the whole thing was very strange indeed.

  “Now George,” Thatcher went on, “in addition to everything else it appears that Patterson just happened to have a $50,000 bearer bond with him when all of this occurred.” He broke off to direct a shrewd glance at Lancer. “To be quite frank, George, I feel that when Patterson is located, the answers to several questions may come out in a way to stimulate the very public interest you are trying to avoid. It may well prove far more damaging to Dartmouth than anything you have contemplated.”

  The pencil twirled faster.

  Thatcher steeled himself. “In the interests of completeness I should add another item to this unfortunate hopper, something else you may want to prepare for. You recall that on our return from Rye I took Dunlop off with me. Well, I pumped him.”

  Lancer was intrigued. “And you found out why he’s been looking so darn sheepish? My God, you don’t mean he’s got anything to do with all this?”

  “No, no,” Thatcher assured him. “No, Dunlop is simply embarrassed I think.”

  “Embarrassed?”

  “George, you know that one of the duties of the Committee at this time of year is interviewing candidates who are applying for admission.”

  George did.

  “From what Dunlop said, and I confess that the martinis may have led him to speak more frankly than he had intended, most members of the Committee regard this as a boring chore. But not Patterson. I gather he has been conspicuous by his deep interest in the candidates. He spends hours with them, hours of his own time, apart from Committee meetings. He has long talks with them. He phones them to follow up interviews. Dunlop says it is quite striking.”

  Rather blankly Lancer spoke of Patterson’s widely known interest in young people, education and character molding. Thatcher saw that he would have to be more explicit. He took a deep breath.

  “Dunlop, it appears, is a native of Putnam County. His parents live in Carmel and he knows the entire area very well. Until a year ago it was his home.”

  Thatcher was investing even these innocent words with sinister significance. Keeping the gas pedal down, he continued, “In particular Dunlop knows the reputation of this tavern where the hit and run took place. It is extremely unsavory.”

  Lancer searched his experience for something relevant and rightly concluded that he must fall back on imagination. “I thought it was some kind of teenage hangout. Good God, if the books they publish these days are anything to go by, all those girls in miniskirts and those boys in long hair are carrying on like Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.”

  Lancer, Thatcher decided, read the wrong kind of book. And he honored him for it.

  “No that is not what I mean. This tavern is not frequented by girls, George. It is quite shabby and run down and has no music. No one spends an evening there. But the boys do drop in for a beer and pizza on the way home. This in turn has attracted another element. Known perverts stop by in hope of making contacts with some of the boys. The tavern is regarded as a blot on the county by the residents, but it hasn’t been closed down, not yet. They maintain that the undesirables it attracts come from far and wide.”

  “Comprehension speedily followed by other reactions produced an expression that nearly upset Thatcher’s carefully preserved sense of gravity.

  Lancer was choking, “You mean …?”

  “That’s it, George,” Thatcher told him. He cast about for consolation. “Now Dunlop was very quick to say that there’s never been a hint that Patterson lives the … er … gay life. Nor has Dunlop ever witnessed any trace of impropriety with by Elliot with one of the Dartmouth boys.”

  He was grateful that Lancer was capable only of strangled protest. It spared them both discussion of the dutiful wife, the three lovely daughters, and the beautiful home in Rye. With the worst behind him, Thatcher pushed on.

  “Dunlop’s discretion has been praiseworthy. You can follow his increasing disturbance. Patterson was last seen, before the accident, that is, deep in conversation with one of the boys the Committee was interviewing. Everybody else left, you recall, and Patterson remained behind to talk with a Carter Sprague.” Thatcher broke off, recalling Dunlop’s heated description of young Sprague. There was nothing in it to make Lancer feel better. Thatcher went on: “There was that. Then it developed that Patterson turned up, in the most unfortunate way, I grant you, outside this place in Putnam County, hours after he should have been home for dinner. You recall the accident actually occurred in the driveway. To top it all off, Patterson decamps after a collision that must have left the place looking like Omaha Beach. Naturally one thinks he may have been in such a compromising position because of his companion, say, that he could not afford to remain. In any event, Dunlop has seen all sorts of interpretations in this, all of them, I regret to say, bad.”

  Lancer struggled back to the surface, “I took Dunlop for a clean mind young man.”

  “Oh he is George, he is,” Thatcher assured him with a smile. “In fact he seems excessively clean minded. I understood that today’s young people were all liberated souls. Dunlop sounded positively Victorian the other night.”

  Lancer, as nearly agitated as he ever got, wasted no time reflecting on modern youth. “Good God, if it turns out that Patterson is homosexual, and he is on the Admission Committee. Oh Lord, do you realize what this means? Do you suppose it is possible…? I mean …”

  Not unkindly, Thatcher pointed out that Lancer was sputtering. Then, in an equally helpful kindly spirit, he sought to relieve George’s mental strain with concrete facts.

  “It scarcely matters what kind of man Patterson is,” John said, “although I confess I am beginning to wonder. The fact is, he’s in a mess, and that’s that. No matter what he turns out to be, he won’t look good when, and if, he turns up.”

  Lancer pounced. “But this is the worst possible thing that could happen to a men’s college. Hit and run, what’s that? It is nothing, I tell you. Even stealing a bond, but this would be a crippling blow. That boy, I wonder …”

  Thatcher pointed out that the police had no doubt already approached the last person to have seen Patterson, young Carter Sprague. Unknowingly he sounded a call to action.

  Praying aloud that the only thing on the police mind was the hit and run killing, Lancer remembered that the newspapers would not be that high minded, not if given any choice.

  “I’d better have a look at this kid,” George said resolutely. “I can always tell him I’m part of the interview process. The Club will back me up.” He stabbed for his secretary, carefully avoiding Thatcher’s eyes.

  John signed, “You feel you have to, George?” “I do.”

  And that was that.

  Thatcher feared as much. Grounds for his fear were all too real; this was no time to abandon George Charles Lancer.

  Two hours later, their host was trying hard to exude an alien wholesomeness.

  “It’s impressive, it really is. Two busy men like you from the Sloan, giving up your time this way. That’s what makes Dartmouth the college it is.”

  His wife agreed. “You are right Andy. And, Mr. Lancer, Lucy has told me how hard you work for dear old Dartmouth.”

  George, inspite of his intimate knowledge of Dartmouth’s capital needs and building programs, was behind the times when it came to college placement. These days the parents of a potential freshman rally behind him or her. They know the names of college trustee
s. If possible they get to know their wives. What’s more they regard themselves as under even severer examination than their offspring. Sprague’s parents were giving their all to the cause. For 30 minutes they had been exchanging artificial chitchat which suggested that two hard bitten middle aged New Yorkers had just been snatched from a Brownie troop.

  It was not well toward 5 PM, but neither Thatcher nor Lancer had been offered cocktails. Everybody dutifully ignored the large bar in the corner. Furthermore, Mrs. West was not smoking. For of course Carter’s mother was no longer Mrs. Sprague. It was Willard Sprague, the Hawaii pineapple millionaire and a loyal Dartmouth alum, who was making himself felt over 6,000 miles away. Andrew West was a shipping magnate, but both of the Wests were going along.

  The air of unreality hovering over the assembly was accentuated by their surroundings. They sat in the living room of a large co-op high in the sky of the East 70s. Mrs. West had not been content to summon an interior decorator; she had called in an architect as well and had indulged in massive construction work. Either she or the architect had been to North Africa; the co-op abounded in Moorish arches, cool tiles, slim colonnades, and carved Spanish chests. On a raised platform, a fountain supplied the background tinkle of falling water. No doubt thought Thatcher fair mindedly, it was a pleasant sound in the desert. Unfortunately the fine September weather had taken a turn for the worse, and now rain was beating against the wide glass doors overlooking the windswept terrace. The combination of tiles, gale winds, and dripping water everywhere made the natural man year for Scotch.

  Since it was obvious that he wasn’t going to get any here, Thatcher was happy to see the Wests make winsome goodbyes and take their innocence elsewhere.

  This left George with young Sprague at last. Thatcher eyed the boy. He was of course in a difficult position. While his parents were projecting virginal purity, he was playing the blasé man of the world. Now he roused himself from his Byronic silence he had been maintaining and exerted himself to put his visitors at their ease.

  “Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to meet Mrs. Lancer,” he said with a delicate wave of the hand betokening distant places. “I’m away so much.”

  Lancer had done his homework. “St. Mark’s isn’t it?”

  Carter stiffened slightly. “Only in the winter,” he said repressively. “Summers I’m abroad. Usually Paris. And I take in Chamonix on for the skiing.”

  Lancer was inclined to grasp at straws. “You like the skiing do you?” he asked, interpreting Sprague’s comments as an offering of athletic interests.

  “It is the thing to do,” Carter told him gently. “One meets one’s friends.”

  Clearly one didn’t meet them at St. Mark’s.

  “Our Admission Committee is always busy at this time of year,” Lancer said doggedly. “That’s why we’ve been called in as extra help.”

  Carter inspected him and then Thatcher.

  “The fall is a bad time of the year,” he agreed. “I can’t imagine why these tiresome interviews are scheduled just when everybody is away. Normally I wouldn’t get back to New York for another two weeks.”

  Lancer, breathing hard, resisted the temptation to apologize for interrupting a busy social calendar. He was noticeably short.

  “It is the most convenient time for the college. Now, if you’ll just go over your last meeting with the Committee, we won’t duplicate their efforts.”

  Carter crossed his legs, leaned back, and blew a contemplative smoke ring.

  “Let’s see. It was the usual sort of thing you know. They had four of us in for this session. We had to wait a good bit, I’m sorry to say,” he said, kindly drawing Lancer’s attention to the shortcoming of underlings. “The Committee was meeting on its own across the hall and they kept dashing through our waiting room to that inner office. Finally they had all four of us in for a general pep talk about Dartmouth. Then we went back to the waiting room and they called us in, one by one, for our interviews. I explained that I’ve never been too interested in math or science, which accounts for my lower marks there. I told them the kind of education and environment I want. I dare say you can tell I’m interested in a humanistic, liberal approach to the arts. The kind of thing I could get at Harvard, but that’s neither here nor there with Father insisting. At any rate, Mr. Marsden was quite helpful about the Dartmouth artist in residence program.”

  Thatcher feared for George’s blood pressure. “Did you talk with Mr. Patterson much?” John asked. “I understand he’s very interested in this sort of problem.”

  Carter was gripped by internal struggle. “Patterson? Oh you mean the one the police came asking about?”

  A charitable interpretation would be that Carter was suppressing a boy’s perfectly normal excitement at police inquiries. There was something about him, however, that did not encourage charitable interpretations.

  “The police wanted to know if he seemed abnormal,” said Carter, resuming superiority. “He didn’t. He seemed like all the others.”

  Thatcher was moved to sternness. “You spoke with Patterson after the others left, didn’t you? What was that? What did he want?”

  Carter scored a point, “He didn’t want anything. I asked to speak to him.”

  “Why?” Lancer demanded.

  Carter was now perfectly at ease. He tapped ashes delicately. “I’ll confess to you that I was doing a little conniving,” inviting appreciation of his adroitness. “Things will be a lot more comfortable for me if I am admitted to Dartmouth. Father, my real father, that is, is insane on the subject. In fact my allowance from him hinges on it. So it’s worth my while to go along, although I’d prefer … well I took a long look at the Committee while I was there. I could predict their reactions quite well. Marsden was a civilized human being. We understand each other. He’ll recommend that Dartmouth accept me. Then there’s Mr. Armitage. He might not care for my type though he might. But he’s the kind who is impressed by Sprague pineapples and West Steamship lines. That’s the kind of background he likes to see at Dartmouth. Dunlop? Well he is still immature. He’s hostile to me. He’ll get more tolerant when he gets older.”

  This cool analysis floored Lancer, who saw it as almost obscene, which in many ways was fortunate as it deflected his attention from other problems. For the first time, however, Thatcher was amused. Carter was quite accurate John suspected.

  “And Patterson,” Thatcher followed up.

  “Now there’s where I really played the right cards,” Carter said with a sudden brilliant smile. “Patterson’s the type who wants to be a father figure. I knew it wouldn’t make any difference to him what I was like. He’d eat out of my hand if I asked his advice. So I decided it would be a good move to ask him to stay and talk with me for a few minutes. Then, all I had to do was have a big problem deciding on the right kind of college. And the right sort of program. Should I deepen the interests I already have or should I broaden out to other interests? It is simple and foolproof. In no time, Patterson was arguing that I really should go to Dartmouth. Even though he was in a hurry to get somewhere, he couldn’t resist playing up to my questions.”

  “A hurry?” Thatcher asked, to draw attention from Lancer, who was rigid with outrage.

  “So he said,” Carter replied, “when I asked to talk to him. He said he could only give me a few minutes. I caught him in the hallway, when they were all on the way out. But he came back into the waiting room and sat down with me for about 10 minutes. Then he said it again and started to shove everything into his briefcase. Half the stuff fell on the floor, and I did my helpful boy act and helped him pick things up. He left at a trot. Oh yes, he was in a hurry all right. But I managed to make an impression.”

  “I’ll bet you did,” Lancer said grimly. “Where did you leave Patterson?”

  “The corner,” said Carter, indicating he had lost interest. “WE walked half a block together to Fifth. Then he turned south and I turned north. I gather from what that cop said, that’s where Patterson d
ropped out of sight. Does anybody know …?”

  “Where were you going?”

  Carter was surprised but smoothly produced the Librairie Francaise as his next appointment.

  “And then?”

  For the second time during the interview Carter was rattled. Only after a moment’s thought did he say, “Some friends and I were driving out to the country for dinner.” His vagueness was almost defiant.

  Thatcher wondered if the police had elicited further information. At any rate this inquiry was at an end. Lancer could not control himself enough to continue. Indeed, he could barely restrain himself until they were out of the apartment.

  “Have you ever heard anything like it?” he exploded at last. “So that’s what St. Mark’s is producing these days.”

  “It was pretty bad, George,” Thatcher agreed, “but for your purposes it could be a lot worse.”

  “I suppose you mean because he’s not an outright pervert?”

  “More precisely, he doesn’t give the impression of being one. On the contrary he sounds like a precocious satyr.”

  “Bah,” said Lancer. “And let me tell you those friends of his and that dinner in the country …” Words failed him at this point.

  It was true. There was no hard evidence that Carter could not be involved with teenagers and vice in Putnam County. On the other hand, it seemed hardly likely. Even more unlikely was any connection, healthy or otherwise, between Patterson and Sprague.

  “I am prepared to believe that Elliot is a killer. I am prepared to believe he is a thief.” George said heatedly. But no what you say about him, I cannot believe he would have spoken to Carter Sprague for 10 minutes except for the strong call of duty and loyalty to Dartmouth.”

  Thatcher reached for the door of the taxi that pulled up.

  “Unless George,” he said as gently as he could “Patterson was too stupid to notice.”