by James Brady
She cursed at me then. Like Hannah had cursed on Everest.
I pressed her nonetheless.
“Because Ang’s end of the rope wasn’t frayed but had been cut? By the climber nearest to him and just above?”
“You bastard!”
“I’ve seen the rope, Pam. It was cut by the climber closest to Ang Thwat. By you.”
“She cut it! Hannah cut the…”
“If Hannah cut the rope, both you and Ang would have slid off into space. No, somehow you contrived to cut it to save yourself, and incidentally, Hannah Cutting. And in the doing, you killed a Sherpa named Ang Thwat. No wonder you started a fund for his family and wrote a fat check.”
“Damn you! If I get loose, I’ll kill you too. Both of you. I…”
“You won’t get loose, Pam. Not with your wrists tied with climbing rope…”
Her handsome mouth fell open and she stared at her wrists, wrapped tightly in a length of old rope I’d lifted from Hannah’s place. And for the first time, she fell silent. The first police car rolled up then, its roof lights flashing but no siren. These were, after all, the grounds of the Maidstone Club.
Tom Knowles read Pam her rights. “I’d better do it properly,” he told me out of the corner of his mouth. “She’s a whack job, of course, but she’ll have the best white-shoe law firm in Manhattan representing her. They’ll plead migraine and PMS and everything but Persian Gulf syndrome, and accuse poor Hannah of casting spells. My bet is Pam gets away with community service and a stiff fine. Does the Junior League qualify as ‘community service,’ Beech?”
“Wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
Alix wanted to know how I knew that, about her gardening gloves, the soot and the privet, and all that. “I lied. But she’s got a greenhouse. Where else would you keep gardening gloves? Though I’ve no idea what’s on ’em.…”
“And the rope that wasn’t frayed?”
“That was no lie; that was the real goods. I figured setting up that foundation for Ang the martyr might be inspired by guilt. Because if the rope really broke, it was Ang’s fault as one of their professional guides, and why should Pam blame herself? I’m just guessing as part of her equipment, she had a knife. Hannah suspected it as well and before they got off the mountain, made sure she had the length of rope so that Pam couldn’t somehow doctor or get rid of it in the unlikely situation they might convene a coroner’s jury or whatever it is they have in Nepal.”
“So that was why I had to go ‘into the tank’ at Middle-field, and take poor Mrs. Kroepke off to the loo to bathe my fevered brow, while you sought out the bit of rope to see if it really had frayed or was cut.”
“That’s it, the rope was the maguffin.”
Alix shook her head. And then kissed me lightly on the lips.
“My, you are the clever one.”
THIRTY-SIX
But who was the real villain? Maybe they were both victims …
So Pam Phythian was under arrest (bail would be set; Tom was confident she would make it), Royal Warrender was feeling better and might soon be released from the hospital, he and Claire Cutting were catching up on a quarter century of neglect, and Alix had Hannah’s elusive disk.
Except that one more strange thing happened: two days before the hurricane, which explained the delay in its being publicly made known, Rose Thrall burned to death.
It wasn’t even a police case, certainly no mystery. The papers and, very briefly, local radio reported that a retired secretary and professional typist, who many years ago had won a national stenography contest, 350 words a minute in Gregg shorthand, had died at her home in Hampton Bays. An antique frame house, open fireplaces, smoking in bed (alcohol was not mentioned; no reason to besmirch the memory of a woman who drank a fifth of rye a day), the cause of the fire and the woman’s subsequent death, were patently evident.
As a minor afterthought the papers noted Ms. Thrall had once worked for the late Hannah Cutting, who was killed earlier in the month. No mention that, and why should there have been, Alix and I had gone there to grill Rose Thrall about Hannah’s book.
I told Tom Knowles about it now, asked what he thought about a possible link.
“You’re weaving gossamer, Beech. The old lady was a rummy. Probably fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand. Happens a lot.”
“She didn’t smoke, Tom.”
“Oh?”
You didn’t often surprise a good cop like Knowles. I’d just done so. Tom promised to look more closely into the initial verdict of “misadventure.” And to check if any cigarette butts found at the Thrall place matched the brand smoked by, say, Pam Phythian.
Meanwhile, right next door to my place, there was a constant coming and going of helicopters at Toby Montana’s. An East Hampton Hurricane Relief Gala was being organized. Her music mogul husband was calling in his markers and the stars were rushing to commit. Ms. Montana herself and such other local idols as Paul Simon, Billy Joel and Kim Basinger would also perform (the committee was attempting to find a gracious way of declining Yoko Ono’s generous offer to do a lengthy reading of her own poetry). Alec Baldwin as emcee and fireworks by Grucci with narration by George Plimpton. Even Sting had relaxed his standards somewhat and agreed to stay over a few days to appear. Carl Icahn, not previously noted for charitable works, agreed to serve as a committee co-chair, with the whole thing to be catered by local resident Warner LeRoy, who owned Tavern on the Green in Manhattan. Being auctioned off would be such desirable items as a private consultation with New Age guru Deepak Chopra, a wardrobe of Calvin Klein underwear autographed by the designer, a personally guided tour of Gar-diners Island conducted by Lord of the Manor Robert Lion Gardiner himself, and an hour’s in-line skating along local lanes with JFK Jr. and his bride. “Put me down for two tickets,” I reluctantly told a committee lady who called. Then my father phoned from Oslo:
“The house still standing? You all right?” he inquired.
“Yes, the house is okay. I’m here as well.”
I thought he might have asked first about his only child.
Relieved to learn there was no damage, not even any family casualties, my old man then launched into a spirited and detailed account of the salmon fishing. When he’d hung up I confessed a slight disenchantment.
“Oh, cheer up,” Alix said sensibly. “No one damaged here and he killed some fine salmon. Well played, both Stowes, father and son, I’d say.”
“I suppose so.”
I guess I was still feeling let down about the disk, now firmly in Her Ladyship’s hands, and all for the greater glory and profit of Random House and Harry Evans—Hannah Cutting’s story, the story Walter Anderson assigned me to get. Some start to a new job! I’m this highly touted foreign correspondent with Newsweek and the Boston Globe behind me and a lifelong resident of Further Lane who knew the entire cast of characters. And I get beaten to the story by a slip of an English girl in her twenties who’d never even seen East Hampton before.
Well, I wasn’t going to fight her for it. I’d cobble a story somehow about Hannah’s humble beginnings. And with Royal and Claire talking so openly, the mystery of what happened on Further Lane long ago was there for the taking. But it would have been sweet, being able to read Hannah’s own account of her extraordinary life, even before Random House got hold of it. What the hell! There were winners and there were losers and I had sense enough to recognize the difference.
“Come on,” I said.
She didn’t always argue the toss, and didn’t this time, but climbed into the four-wheel drive with me without question. It was not only the end of the case, the wrap-up of the story, what Alix and I had together was coming down to an end. I drove up the Three Mile Harbor Road in the dusk and turned onto the little old winding beach road to park. “Let’s walk a little.” She wasn’t really wearing walking shoes but she was game and the light was fading but it was nice at sunset to see the old beach pavilion where maybe a dozen people were lighting up grills and opening beers,
talking, laughing, listening to music from a boom box, local people, aware there wouldn’t be many more soft evenings like this with summer gone. On the beach someone had a keg and a lighted grill and a man was grilling hot dogs. You could smell those hot dogs, the greasy smoke rising, from a hundred yards off. A couple of teenagers tossed an old football and three or four men in shorts stood knee-deep in the water, using spinning reels to cast for stripers in the dusk and not getting much. Little kids ran around and girls laughed and a baby wailed. And a mother hushed it soothingly. The sun was down now with millions of stars up, and the water on the incoming tide rushed by dark and swift from the sea.
“Nice,” I said.
Alix reached out and took my hand.
“Yes,” she said.
We walked back to where we’d left the Blazer and got a couple of stools at the bar of Michael’s and ordered drinks. Behind the bar a small sign said, “Next time, bring your wife.”
Tom had filled me in on what Pam was saying now with lawyers present, especially about the death of Leo Brass, and I told Alix.
“Leo was so much bigger and stronger, the cops were curious how she’d killed a man like that with a sharpened stick. Pam said he’d been drinking and was more than ever full of himself, how he’d straightened out the experts and told them they knew nothing, how he was going down to The Gut high up there astride the Cat, ready and willing to bulldoze The Gut to let in the sea. And then he was going back to Claire. That it had been fun with Pam but it was over. Claire was half her age and richer. The Cutting name, the Cutting money, would enable Leo to achieve wonders, ecological, political, and otherwise, that would have been out of reach for a Bonacker. Besides, he grinned lasciviously, ‘Claire’s pretty good in bed. You know these young ones.…’”
Leo knew how to hurt a woman.
So Pam said they ought to have one final fling, that she’d go with him and his bulldozer down to The Gut, fetch along a poncho and a blanket, so with the wind up and the surf pounding and the hurricane coming ashore, they could make exciting and even extraordinary love one last time, right there at The Gut, on the narrow windswept, rain-drenched strand between pond and ocean.
“And they did,” Tom Knowles said, “screwing in a hurricane. And when they finished, Leo was lying there on a blanket, naked, rain-slick, and half drunk, and Pam took out another of her handy privet stakes thoughtfully brought along for the occasion, and just ran him through, cold as January. And when she was sure he was dead, rolled his body into the pond, tidied up, and drove home in her own car, leaving behind the Cat and one dead Bayman. And every clue and track washed away by the grandfather of all wind and rainstorms and a tide washing right across the beach and into the pond. Hell of a woman…”
Alix agreed enthusiastically.
“I’ll say! Make love to the chap during a hurricane and then drive a stake through his gizzard. Wow!”
Detective Knowles said her lawyers had already come up with a unique defense in the matter of the dead Sherpa. “Triage,” he said, “that’s what they’ll argue to get that death thrown out of court. That when one alpinist is inadvertently about to cause the death of two more, the others are perfectly entitled to cut his rope and save themselves. I don’t know if it’ll wash but it hints just how clever Pam’s defense is going to be. They’ll have everything in there on her behalf but depositions from Mark Fuhrman.”
Beyond that, Alix was still chewing over the metaphysical aspects of the case:
“Was Pam the real villain or was it Hannah?”
“Oh, hell, one of them killed two and probably three people, maybe four if you count Rose Thrall; the other was just a pain in the ass. There is a difference.”
“Of course. But in a larger sense, I think they’re both victims. And perhaps both villains, as well. If you consider the backgrounds of the two women, so different and yet so…”
That was Oxford talking, debating the question from two sides at once, and I let her rattle on without offering much. I was more focused on the inescapable fact our glorious adventure was coming to an end, our week and a little was over. That this bright and beautiful and funny young woman would go home to Random House and not to my house. That her laughter would soon be tinkling once again on the city’s East Side and not here on Further Lane. Alix would be vanishing back into the vastness of Manhattan among the ex-pats and the elegant, and this picturesque little episode, this brief encounter by the ocean, would fade and be forgotten, merely a footnote to September.
It was silly of me, I realize, this small melancholy I was indulging, since I would shortly be moving into Manhattan myself, taking an apartment, probably on that same posh East Side, and that all I had to do was to pick up a phone and call her. It was simply I suspected what we had here at a small town in the Hamptons would not travel well nor flourish in great cities. I knew that I would miss Alix in a lot of ways. I confess even to imagining that without her cheerful, frisky carnality, just how vacant my bed was going to be tonight.
We had dinner and drove back to the house. “You’ll be driving back to town then,” I said gloomily.
“Yes,” Alix said, more subdued than I’d have expected her to be, considering her triumphs. No gloating, no smug self-applause.
“Okay.”
She paused briefly. “But not until morning if you don’t mind. I’m rather bushed. May I sleep here tonight, leave early in the morning?”
“Of course.”
Then, not slyly but with a clear conscience and open face, that lovely face, Lady Alix Dunraven said:
“At the hospital, you may recall, when Mr. Warrender asked if I were going to share what was on the computer disk with you, I was rather precise in my response, almost legalistic. I didn’t say yes or no, simply that you were a journalist with your own assignments and responsibilities while I was representing the excellent book publishing firm of Random House. I prefer not to lie, y’know.”
I couldn’t recall her exact words but what did it matter, this splitting of hairs. And, in truth, she lied like a newspaper; I’d heard her lying to Evans, who paid her salary and whose employee pro tern she was. But this was our last night. I wasn’t going to hector her.
“So?”
She smiled, a small, slow smile, and said:
“So I’m going to leave the disk here next to your own laptop on this kitchen table where I know it’ll be safe. And where hardly anyone will notice it or think to scroll through it hurriedly, taking a few crucial notes to be used in an article or two that couldn’t possibly be construed as competitive with Random House and its plans to publish a quality hardcover book that could, in fact, end up on various best-seller lists and even attract Hollywood and the producers of major motion pictures that…”
I guess my mouth was somewhat ajar because when she reached up to kiss me, a very light, flirtatious kiss, my mouth was open, though only briefly, to her tongue.
“I’ll be off now, Beecher,” she said. “You will be coming to bed shortly, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Probably do a little reading first. But I’ll be in, yes.”
“Super,” said Her Ladyship firmly, “that’s quite what I’d hoped you’d say. We don’t have all that much time till morning and there are one or two things we haven’t yet tried.”
On that provocative note, she turned and left. As Zooey once remarked of his mother, you do give yourself the exit lines. I didn’t say it. Instead I growled, but in silence, try to keep me away. You don’t say rude and vulgar things to a proper young woman whose daddy was the fourth (or was it the fifth?) senior Earl in the realm and who had a double first at Oxford, and won the Tony Godwin Award, besides.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Impudent people, who tried to become us …
They set bail at half a million and, as Detective Knowles predicted, Pam made it. Local people, most of them (not the Baymen, however, still mourning Leo as one of theirs), were supportive, sympathetic, even cordial. Pam Phythian was Old East Hampton and
Hannah wasn’t; whatever the crime, that still made a difference out here. The old lineup: WASP vs. anti-WASP; you know who wins that one. The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society got up a subcommittee to study whether a Pam Phythian Defense Fund ought to be raised. A board meeting of the Maidstone Club will convene shortly to determine if her membership should be suspended pending the trial. Sentiment is apparently leaning toward continuing her in good standing. On assumption-of-innocence grounds, of course. She was routinely getting the usual cocktail and dinner invitations and I wasn’t, in that I may have broken the code (by tattling on a fellow member of the Maidstone). I saw Pam a couple more times around East Hampton, once on Further Lane, the other time buying doughnuts at Dreesen’s. She cut me dead. Which was not entirely a shock, considering.
In an interview with Newsday, an interview Sullivan & Cromwell urged her not to grant, Pam sketched out what her defense would be at the murder trial. It wasn’t anything personal, these things she was supposed to have done, but “a matter of class warfare,” the legitimate struggle to protect and preserve the old values. Pam saw it as a Constitutional issue, the right of a society to defend and maintain itself against external or internal dangers. Hannah’s purchase of farmland for development threatened the common weal; Leo’s attempt to blow up The Gut put wetlands at risk. Pam was nuts, of course, but the argument resonated powerfully among some of the East Hampton Establishment; the Old Money people secretly thrilled when Pam spoke of defending them and their class against strivers like Hannah and Leo Brass who, she said, “had gotten above themselves.”
As Pam Phythian viewed it, “These were impudent people. Who tried to become us…”
September was nearly over and I was glad of it. Jesse Maine was still around and we did some fishing and took a haul of late blues off Gardiners Island. Sid Felton actually did offer him some vague situation in Los Angeles but Jesse turned it down.
“I was tempted, Beech, the O’Leary sisters and all, but there are people who belong in Hollywood and people who don’t. I have my little problems here with the Bonackers and the authorities, but they know me and I know them and in ways, we’re like family.”