She remembered now why she loved him, which cushioned her at once from her own feeling of strain, and she returned his smile, saying, “I know that, Bradford. I’m sorry I was irritable. Tell me what they said.”
“We’re going to Paris,” he told her. “They’ve decided it will be easier for me to slip away if I start from there.”
Paris? She hadn’t been told anything about this. Had the Chinese managed to re-establish contact after all? Was it the Chinese and not Wellington’s men he’d seen today?
No, it couldn’t be, they would surely have told him the truth about her own feelings and how much the family knew and all the attempts to stop him from going. Or would he be playing his own double game now, pretending to be in ignorance so he could get away from them after all?
She had to see Robert, she had to find out what was going on.
Bradford was saying, “Edward’s gone back, hasn’t he?” Meaning Edward Lockridge, Sterling’s son, Howard’s brother, who had come home from his diplomatic post in Paris for Elizabeth’s funeral, where he had seemed a much older and sadder man than the one who had so endlessly and comically subdivided Paris at Carrie Gillespie’s last June.
“I think so,” Evelyn said. “They’d left Eddie, Jr., at Carrie’s place, I think they wanted to get him off her hands as soon as possible.”
“Why didn’t they bring him home for his grandmother’s funeral?”
There is comedy somewhere in any situation, no matter how grim. Straight-faced, Evelyn said, “He refuses to set foot on American soil till we change our foreign policy.”
Bradford snorted. “I can hardly wait to talk to that young man.”
Evelyn said, “Are you sure they want you to go to Paris? Do they speak English very well?”
“Perfectly. Why would they send agents here who didn’t speak the language?”
“Still—” She was trying to understand it, and failing. “Did they say it was tentative?”
“Not at all. Definite. They wanted to know if I could be ready in a week. I told them I could be ready this afternoon.”
“You’ll have to have approval, won’t you? From the State Department or somebody?”
“Approval?” The word seemed to offend him, returned to him that touch of aloof arrogance that was a recent character trait. “They like me to check in with them,” he said, “to keep them informed of my movements, but I wouldn’t exactly call it approval.”
“Still, you should do it this time, shouldn’t you? To keep them from getting suspicious.” And to give somebody an opportunity to keep it from happening. Paris? How could the family protect him in Paris?
“Oh, of course I will,” he said. “I’ll go through all the usual formality. Right up till the moment I disappear.” And he beamed, like a man who knows a wonderful joke.
“That’s good.”
“See, the idea is, I’m taking a winter vacation, a family trip. I’ll be visiting my nephew and my old friend Carrie Gillespie.”
“Your old friend? You hate Carrie.”
Bradford smiled his admission during his denial: “I don’t hate Carrie, I don’t hate any registered voter, never have. She’s a little sloppy for my taste, that’s all.”
“She’s happy,” Evelyn said, and at once regretted it.
But again Bradford put his own interpretation on her words, saying gently, “I know, Evelyn. You’re thinking of Dinah. But you’re right to leave her here, and it doesn’t really have to be forever.”
“I know. That’s all right now, I’m used to that.”
A maid came quietly into the room. “Excuse me. Mr. Lockridge? There’s a reporter on the telephone.”
Bradford frowned. “Did he say what it was about?”
“Yes, sir. He wanted a statement about Mr. Chatham’s death.”
Frown deepening, Bradford shook his head. “Tell him I’ve already made my statement, and that’s it. I have nothing further to say.”
“Yes, sir.” She departed, as quietly.
Grumbling at the interruption, Bradford said, “I’ll talk all day about politics, but not for thirty seconds about murder. Where are they when I have something germane to say about the world around us? I’m no Philo Vance.”
“They’ll listen soon,” Evelyn said, knowing her words were cruel beneath the surface kindness but unable to find anything else to encourage him with.
“Yes, they will,” he said grimly. “Excuse me, Evelyn, I have phone calls to make and letters to write. If we’re going to leave here a week from today, I have to get things organized.”
Was it a game they were playing with him, to keep him content a while longer? It would be like Wellington—who had turned the killing of Earl Chatham into the complication of a burglary done by people who expected the house to be empty during the funeral—to come up with this sort of scheme. Get Bradford excited about Paris for a few days, then start postponing that until he got irritable and impatient again. Then come up with another plan, another definite date, to be followed by another series of postponements.
Why did all these kindnesses have to be so cruel beneath the surface?
She said, “You go on, then. I believe I’ll take a drive.”
“Fine,” he said, already distracted by thought of the preparations to be made.
ii
BY NOW, EVELYN THOUGHT of Robert’s apartment as an extension of her own home, so she didn’t knock on the door, but simply opened it and stepped in, just in time to see Robert pacing across the open middle of the floor, and to hear him say, “. . . tell Evelyn—” before he caught sight of her and abruptly stopped both his pacing and his sentence. He stood flatfooted, looking for just a second bewildered, as though he hadn’t expected her to come to this place.
Tell Evelyn about this Paris business. She took it for granted that was the way the sentence would have ended, and thought no more about it, mostly because her mind was distracted by the other people she now saw in the room.
There were four of them, and they were all looking at her. Two, Howard and Gregory, she’d half-expected to find here, but the other two were a complete surprise. Joe Holt, sitting on one of the wooden chairs over by the kitchen-closet, was looking as grim and troubled as she’d ever seen him. By contrast, Wellington, standing in the far corner, looked even more uninvolved and remote than usual.
It was Joe’s expression that made her leap to the conclusion that Bradford was going to die. The idea entered her mind complete with all its circumstantial evidence intact; Joe’s presence here and his long face, the business about a trip to Paris, even Wellington being here. If Joe had made a new diagnosis, if it seemed to him now that Bradford was going to deteriorate very rapidly and die quite soon, he would want to be the one to tell her about it himself. And if it were true, then why not give Bradford a nonexistent trip to occupy his mind during his last days (One week! Could it be that soon?) And Wellington would be here to see to it that Bradford’s final days passed with no break in the ring of secrecy and security surrounding him.
She was so immediately convinced that her guess was right that she hesitated to ask any questions, wanting to hold off confirmation as long as she possibly could. She backed against the door, to close it and then to help support her (her legs felt strange, uncertain), and she kept looking at Joe because she knew he would be the first to speak.
But he wasn’t. Robert spoke first, coming toward her with one hand out, concern on his face, saying, “Evelyn? What’s the matter?”
He was asking her the question she should be asking him (except that she’d guessed), and the reversal confused her and kept her from saying anything. She merely frowned at him, trying to understand.
He touched her arm. “Are you going to faint?”
“He isn’t going to die?”
Did people look at each other in the background? Robert, still frowning at her, said, “Who? Bradford? Of course not. What gives you the idea Bradford’s going to die?”
“I saw Joe . . . I th
ought . . .”
Joe at once got to his feet, a contrived smile spreading across his face. “Evelyn, no, not at all.” As he came toward her, the smile seemed to grow more natural. “Bradford’s still the healthiest one of us all. Healthier than you right now, from the look of you. Come sit down.”
She allowed herself to be led to the room’s only comfortable chair, which Howard had hastily vacated. Sitting down in it, she said, “I’m sorry. But this thing about Paris . . .”
From his corner, Wellington said, “That was my fault, Evelyn. I’m sorry. I hoped to find you here and tell you it was going to happen, but you didn’t come down this morning. And there was no safe way to get in touch with you at the estate.”
“I spent the morning with Dinah,” Evelyn said.
“The fact of the matter is,” Joe said, a surprisingly savage undertone of anger in his voice, “Wellington prefers to keep his decisions a secret until they’ve already been acted on. Saves a lot of argument, doesn’t it, Wellington?”
Howard said, heavily, “That won’t do any good, Joe,” while at the same time Wellington was saying, “It frequently does, yes. Saves a great deal of argument. As well as a great deal of agony for the people involved. This time, however . . .” he came forward from the corner toward Evelyn, “. . . the truth is, my habit of secrecy tripped me up. I should have gotten the word to you so you could be prepared for it, and I’m sorry I failed to do so. I take it you didn’t let anything slip.”
“Of course not,” Evelyn said, too impatient with the question even to be irritated by it. “But why tell him he’s going to Paris?”
“Because he is going to Paris,” Wellington said.
“He is? For God’s sake, why?”
“Because,” Wellington said, “he was getting too impatient. He was reaching the point where he was starting to be suspicious of my men. It was absolutely imperative that we give him something to do, to occupy his mind and let him believe some progress was being made.”
“But then what? How long can you keep him in Paris, and what do you do after that?”
“We’ll decide that when we come to it,” Wellington said. Everyone else was looking at Wellington, their expressions absorbed. “For the moment,” Wellington went on, “it gives us more time to try to come up with a more permanent solution. In any case, we couldn’t hold him in Eustace any longer, he was champing at the bit, you’ve seen that yourself.”
“But why Paris? Won’t it be easier for the Chinese to get hold of him there, away from home?”
“On the contrary,” Wellington said. “That was another argument in favor of the move. Here in this country Bradford is a retired former great, put out to pasture, so all we can expect from the government is minimal surveillance and protection for him. But in France, even as a private citizen on a simple vacation trip, he comes under the heading of a distinguished foreign visitor. That, plus the suggestion that there might be an assassination attempt in the works on French soil, and I guarantee you the French government will do a better job of keeping Bradford out of the clutches of the Chinese than the family could ever do at home.”
Evelyn glanced at Robert, but he was still looking at Wellington, his expression intense, as though he were trying to look through the skin and bone down into Wellington’s brain. Evelyn said, “How many of us will be going?”
“Just the two of you,” Wellington said, but she kept looking at Robert, who finally did meet her eyes. He answered her unspoken question with a helpless shake of his head; no, there was nothing to be done about it. But his regretful expression almost made up for it.’
Wellington was saying, “We can’t afford to have Bradford see a familiar face in Paris. We don’t want him questioning anything.”
Robert said, “I might be able to get over for a day or two.”
Wellington frowned at him, strongly disapproving, but then shrugged and said, “I suppose it’s possible. If everyone exercises a good deal of care.”
“In any case,” Robert said, “we have a week before you go.”
“And someone might come up with a better idea before then,” she said.
Was that pessimism he was covering? “Let’s hope so,” he said.
iii
WEDNESDAY NIGHT SHE SAW the light flickering in the woods. It was nearly one o’clock, she was on the way home from Robert’s place, and shortly after she’d passed the gate on the private road she caught a glimpse of the light out of the corner of her eye, far away to the right through the woods.
She stopped the car at once, astonished at the idea of a light off there at this hour, but when she looked for it it was gone. She backed the car slowly, searching for it, and all at once there it was again, so pale and small as to be the reflection of a reflection. Moonlight glinting from a piece of glass? No, it wasn’t that kind of light, it was definitely electric illumination, a light bulb or flashlight.
And now it was gone again, it just winked out. She stayed where she was a minute or two longer, but it was gone for good.
What could it have been? Some guard of Wellington’s, maybe, sparingly using a flashlight to pick his way through the woods. Or perhaps someone from the other side?
She drove on to the house, frowning over the light, and it figured in her dreams after she went to sleep. In the morning, she went down to the stables and took out Jester and went riding off into the area where she’d seen the light, just to see if there was anything there.
The lost town was up this way, in the middle of the woods, the place where she’d brought Robert the first time they’d gone riding together. Now, failing to find anything to explain the light in the area where she thought she’d seen it, she followed an impulse and rode on through the woods toward the site of the town.
She was nearly to it, Jester moving at a comfortable walk through the woods, when a man dressed as a hunter, and with a rifle tucked under his arm, appeared from behind a tree and called, “Excuse me, Miss.”
Evelyn stopped, and frowned at him. He was a stocky man, perhaps forty, with a blue shadow of beard on a heavy jaw. His red hunting cap and red-and-black hunting jacket seemed vaguely frivolous on him. There was no feeling of menace in any way; in fact, she only felt from him the natural irritation of a landowner meeting a trespasser; the reverse of the facts. She said, “What do you want?”
“I’m lost, Miss. Could you—”
“You certainly are. This is private property.” She pointed off to the left. “If you go that way, you’ll come to a dirt road. The public land is on the other side of it.”
Instead of thanking her, or moving off, he looked up and said, “Are you Mrs. Canby?”
She still thought of him as only a trespasser. “Yes, I am.”
“Well, Ma’am, I work for Mr. Lockridge, and the thing—”
“For Bradford Lockridge?” She knew he was lying, of course.
But he said, “No, Ma’am. For Mr. Wellington Lockridge. We’re putting up a little construction back up in here, and—”
“Construction? What kind of construction?”
“I’d rather Mr. Lockridge told you about that, Ma’am.”
“Well, I’ll just see it for myself,” she said, but before she could move he’d grabbed Jester’s reins and was holding them, and for the first time she realized just how cold his eyes were. He said, “My orders are to keep everyone away, Ma’am. If Mr. Lockridge tells me to make an exception in your case, I’ll be happy to let you through.”
“And if I go through anyway?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“What will you do? Shoot me?”
“I think it would be better if you’d talk to Mr. Lockridge first, Ma’am, before doing anything.”
Looking down at him where he was standing beside Jester, holding the reins clasped in one large hand, she believed that he would stop her from going any farther, no matter who she was, no matter what the situation, no matter how extreme his actions had to become. “I’ll talk to him,” she said threatenin
gly. “You can believe I’ll talk to him. Let go of my horse.”
He released the reins at once, and stepped back. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I have to do what I’m told.”
A hundred angry answers rose to her mind, but she knew none of them would penetrate that closed cold face of his, so she harshly spun Jester around and rode back to the house.
She didn’t know whether it was all right to use the phones in the house now or not, and at the moment she didn’t care. She was furious, and she wanted to get to Wellington before her fury cooled.
He had given her a phone number where he could usually be reached in Washington, and had told her to expect to have to let it ring for a while. She did, and at last a woman came on, identifying herself only by announcing the last four digits of the number Evelyn had dialed. Evelyn asked for Wellington, was asked to hold on, and waited over three minutes by her watch before Wellington’s voice suddenly said in her ear, “I understand someone was rude to you.”
How did he know about it so soon? But this time his ubiquitousness was itself a source of annoyance and only fired the flames. “He certainly was! And what’s going on up there anyway, what are you doing that you can’t—”
“Are you calling from home?”
“Yes! And I don’t care! To be treated like that on my own property—”
“Evelyn, I understand, and I apologize. My man should have handled it differently. The fact is, we need a more secure base of operations than the one we took over from those other people. You know the ones I mean?”
His circumspection reminded her that she too should be circumspect, which cut at once into her anger. She shouldn’t have used this phone, and that awareness removed the purity of self-righteousness from her rage; she answered only, “Yes, I know who you mean.”
“All right. We’re building something more stable, in a better location. But the people working on it, naturally, aren’t completely in our confidence. That’s why it would be better if you didn’t talk to them. Do you follow me?”
“Yes, I follow you. But if you wanted to avoid that sort of thing, why not tell me about it? Why let me stumble on it, and cause a big scene?”
Ex Officio Page 45