“If you are about to say that I am the third—”
“Heavens no, Lawrence.” She glared at him. “You are far too greedy to risk the considerable rewards of your position and far too indictable to be anything but loyal. The third is Mr. Burke, who seems considerably less competent than you represented him to be. He has also seen Jonathan Corbin’s face, both in the photograph you gave him and in person.”
Ballanchine did not understand. “He was sent to destroy Corbin. How was he to do that without seeing him?”
“The point, dear Lawrence, is that he's probably made the connection. If your Raymond Lesko made it during one chance visit to the Beckwith Regency's lobby, do you not think that Mr. Burke, who has passed that portrait hundreds of times, might also have noticed?”
“You don't even know that Lesko saw the portrait,” Ballanchine argued. “All you know is that he followed your brother and he.saw me when I came in. As for Burke, I gave him a photograph which Lesko had taken through falling snow and through a pane of wet glass. He never even got a good look at Corbin outside the Sturdevant town house because Lesko got in between. And his man Garvey, incidentally, never had more than the Leamas woman's address.”
“Where was Lesko standing, Lawrence, when you looked out from the elevator? Was it in front of Tilden Beckwith's portrait?”
“You still can't be sure.”
“Then why don't we ask him, Lawrence? Please go let him in.”
”I certainly will not. Not until you tell me what you intend.”
“To reduce my concerns, Lawrence,” she told him.
“And why, by the way, did you tell Burke to arm himself and wait? You can't possibly mean to shoot Lesko in this house. There are servants just out over the garage.”
“The house is quite soundproof, Lawrence. But never fear. I will try to avoid any extravagant behavior in your presence.”
“What then?”
“The man is clearly here to bargain. I intend bargaining with him. He does so resemble Mr. Bigelow.”
The Bloody Mary was good. Just the right thing. As a rule, Corbin didn't like drinking before evening, let alone before lunch, not even drinks that were invented for the purpose. They tended to put his afternoons in soft focus. But at least, he noted, he felt no preference for any more arcane drink such as hot buttered rum or peppered ale. Maybe that meant he was back in full control. Maybe it meant only that the Victorians hadn't figured out any excuses for boozing in the morning yet. Whichever. There were better things to think about.
Bigelow.
So now he had a name. And it seemed to Corbin that he'd known it all along. But he didn't really want to think about Bigelow, either. Or why Bigelow and Bigelow’s still nameless friend jumped him in the Drake garage and did what they did to him. Corbin would only start fantasizing, as always, about what he would do to them—what he did do to them—but those fantasies would not make him feel better for very long. He'd just end up ashamed that he couldn't give as good an account of himself in real life as he does in his dream world.
Tilden could have handled them.
Tilden would have ground them into hamburger.
“I'm sorry, sweetheart.” Corbin touched Gwen Leamas's hair.
She was sitting at his feet in front of the Morris chair where she had sat him down. Her cheek rested against his knee as she watched the fire.
“Forget it.” She squeezed his leg. “You didn't mean it.”
“You could never ruin anything for me,” he told her. “If anything, you could make it even better.”
“How is that?”
“You could live here with me. You could marry me.”
She looked up at him.
“I'm serious.” Corbin forced a smile.
“You mean live here? In this house?”
“For a while, I guess, until we find a place we both like better.”
Gwen took a long sip of her drink. She'd added no vodka to hers. “Are you sure there is such a place, Jonathan?”
”I don't get you.”
“If.this is a place where you feel so at peace ...”
Corbin shook his head. ”I told you. This is just a house I visited. One of Margaret's friends lived here.”
“You've tried to find the house where Tilden and Margaret actually lived?”
“That's not what I had in mind. For us, I mean.”
“But what if you find it?”
“It's gone, sweetheart.” Corbin was certain of that. If it still stood, he would have found it. “I've spent all kinds of hours just walking the roads. I'd see a house that seemed familiar, or that stirred some kind of feeling in me, and I'd stand there staring at it, trying to see through the walls.” Corbin chuckled. ”I think a couple of those people got nervous and called the police. Police cars have stopped me twice to make sure I live around here.”
“It could have been remodeled.”
Corbin shrugged. “There's not a whole lot you can do to remodel a turreted Victorian. Anyway, for every Victorian still standing, there must be five that have burned down or been bulldozed down to make room for Cape Cods and colonials. The fact is, I think I know where it was. Right up the road here”—he used his thumb—“on North Street. There's a split ranch there now and all the landscaping has changed, so it doesn't even begin to move me. But from the street outside, the shape of the land and the view down the hill toward town were so right that I could look back and actually see the house the way it was. I'd see it in summer when everything was green. Summers were the best times.”
“Finish your drink, Jonathan.” Gwen touched his glass. “I'll make you a fresh one.” He was getting into that dreamy and talkative state. Which was better than dreamy and silent, as he'd been all morning.
“You know when all this started, don't you?” he asked. ”I mean, looking at houses and getting good feelings? It started with the Homestead. I knew that house from the front. The inside didn't really do anything for me, maybe because of all the changes to make it a restaurant, but when you and I played croquet on the lawn it seemed as though I'd done that there before. I could taste pink lemonade and little finger sandwiches with watercress and minced ham. It might have been at a lawn party there back when it was a private house. I can't envision the owners. When I try I just see them as shapes way up on a dark porch while Margaret and I—Margaret and Tilden—are”—Corbin paused to clear his throat—“passing it on the road.”
He'd almost said sneaking past it. Corbin had had a glimpse of a hot summer night, and felt there were more than one, when Tilden and Margaret would make their way down to a little sandy cove where they'd swim Indian style. Gwen didn't need to hear about Margaret and him being nude. Nor was Tilden giving Corbin much of a look anyway, it seemed. But it must have been delightful. To reach the end of an August day, the kind you spend trying not to move except in slow motion, sitting on a porch in a rattan rocker, the only breeze coming from the fan you keep in front of your face, waiting till the sun was almost down and then getting a cold bird and a bottle from the cooler and wrapping them in a blanket and driving down to a little wooded area where you hide the horse and rig before going the rest of the way on foot. It wouldn't do to drive all the way. People like the Culbertsons, the family that lived in the Homestead, would be out on their sleeping porch and know where you were headed and the children would follow you down there and peek. Or the adults might see you and tongues would wag. Better to play Union spy and slip down there through the gathering darkness with Tilden trying to get Margaret to step quietly and to stop giggling. Then to peel off all those layers of cotton and hold each other's hand as they waded out neck-deep in cool salt water that had a layer of mist across its surface. They'd just sit there, soaking, Margaret at first trying to keep her hair dry and then not caring, making more mist as the steam rose from their bodies, cooling until they knew that the night air would chill their skin deliciously, and then wading back ashore to wrap themselves in their blanket and sip their wine as they watch
ed the moon and the distant flickering lights of Long Island.
The dark mass a few hundred yards offshore was Great Captain's Island, another favorite place for Indian bathing. But not at night. Too many other young blades had row-boats. The island was best on foggy days when no summer visitors were abroad, when you could barely see your rowboat's wake, and Tilden and Margaret would grope their way to a stretch of empty beach and pretend they were Adam and Eve. Tilden would never quite pretend all the way. He would talk in whispers or in hand signals, but Margaret would run laughing through the surf, sometimes chasing crabs, sometimes picking them up and chasing Tilden with them. It was such fun. So much better than going to the beach in daytime and dressing up in those ghastly bathing costumes which, for the women at least, had nearly the fabric they wore on land and in which it was impossible to swim freely and gracefully. Women who tried looked like bobbing corks for all the air their baggy costumes trapped. Thick, shapeless corks because now there were no corsets to hide a soft or spreading waist. Margaret could swim like a seal as long as she was equally unencumbered. And she was pleased with her own waist, returned or nearly so to the size it was before young Jonathan swelled it and hardly marked at all save for a few shining lines where her skin had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity. These saddened her at first, and she tried to hide them from Tilden until he told her of his relief that she finally had a woman's body and not that of a silly girl and that he loved her all the more for them.
At the end of such an outing to their fog-shrouded Eden, Tilden would hand Margaret his compass and she would pilot as he rowed back through the fog to his waiting buggy and then they would drive back to her house where they would play in the freshwater shower a while longer. The shower was a godsend in summer, especially for bodies crusted with salt, and a convenience to be envied at all other times. Tilden was sure there were no more than a half dozen showers, indoors at least, in all of Greenwich. Still, for all its pleasures, it could not compare with the forbidden delights of sneaking off on one of their bathing adventures.
Lucy Stone, the large and laughing black nurse who had assisted in Jonathan's delivery, was there almost full time now except when Dr. Palmer needed her for special assistance. More, she was fast becoming Margaret's friend. And she seemed to have an almost mystical talent, Tilden noted appreciatively, of making herself invisible and unheard whenever Tilden and Margaret wished to be quietly alone, or of discovering some urgent errand whenever Tilden looked into Margaret's eyes in a certain way and then Margaret took Tilden’s hand and led him to the stairs.
Corbin rubbed a hand across Gwen's shoulders. “You know, I don't think Tilden ever spent the night there.”
She arched catlike at his touch. “Never?” she asked. “You don't mean they stopped being lovers after the baby was born.”
“No, they were very definitely lovers. But you had to be very careful of a woman's reputation in those days. Given Margaret's background, Tilden was probably more sensitive than most.” Corbin tickled his fingers down her back. “While I think of it, how about taking a shower together before your uncle gets here?’'
“What?” she laughed.
“It just seemed a nice idea.”
“Well, I have my own reputation to think about. At least until after dinner.” She put her mouth to his knee and bit it. “Where would he stay?”
“Who? Tilden?”
“He didn't go back to New York every evening, did he?”
“He usually stayed down at the Lenox House. Or sometimes at the Indian Harbor Hotel.” Corbin grinned on saying that and shook his head. The feel of Gwen's cheek against his knee told him she was smiling, too, with the same degree of bemusement. Odd, how they were both getting so used to it. A question would come out of the blue whose answer he should not have known, but the question was asked and the answer was there. Corbin could see both hotels in his mind. The Indian Harbor Hotel was a rambling mansard-roofed affair down on the water near where the Indian Harbor Yacht Club is now. And the Lenox House was on the Post Road at the top of Greenwich Avenue. Funny. Now that he thought of it, the red brick office building standing there had always seemed out of place and here, suddenly, is the reason.
There were hops at the Lenox House every Saturday night. And tea dances on Sunday afternoons. And Margaret's club met there Wednesdays. Margaret's club. There was something, Corbin thought, something troubling about Margaret's club that he wished she'd told him about before the damage was done, but Corbin couldn't think what that damage was. Anyway, he didn't want to dwell on troubling thoughts. He wanted to remember roller-skating down at Ray's Hall for the first time in his life. Margaret coaxing him onto the polished skating surface, swearing she'd stay at his arm to steady him, and then treacherously shoving him and sending him flailing the length of the rink. He wanted to remember walking barefoot with her along the beach, digging for clams and collecting fresh mussels by the bucket. And canoeing with her down the Mianus River. And band conceits under the stars. And yachting on the Sound, carrying Jonathan along in a hamper if the seas were calm enough. There was so much to do.
Greenwich was booming like a frontier mining town that year. A number of New York families had long kept summer homes there, but now, with reliable train or packet boat service that could have them in the city within an hour and a half, many were staying in Greenwich year round, and they began telling their friends about the many advantages of life in Connecticut. Almost no crime, no street ruffians, no foul-smelling mixture of soot and powdered horse droppings coating every garment, to say nothing of every throat. And the friends came. By the dozen, it seemed, every summer month. Building fine homes within easy reach of the station or of the pier at the Indian Harbor Hotel. Forming clubs to replace those they'd left in New York. Athletic clubs, yacht clubs, riding clubs, shooting clubs, and, of course, the full assortment of gardening, sewing, literary, and civic betterment clubs for the ladies. Tilden considered joining a new tennis and archery club, mostly for Margaret's sake, because these sports were now considered suitable exercise for ladies of fashion. At a luncheon given for prospective members, all went well enough until one of the founders rose to assure Tilden that he could safely embrace the sport of tennis because it, unlike baseball and boxing, for example, was not a game that would offer any attractions to the lower orders. Tilden glanced across the table at Margaret, who was crossing her eyes at him, a certain sign that a giggling fit would soon follow. His own face aching, he made his excuses and tried to get her to the carriage park before she erupted. Neither of them made it.
The Riverside Yacht Club and the Indian Harbor Yacht Club had each opened during their first summer in Greenwich. Members of both clubs, men well known to Tilden in New York business and social circles, had invited him to join their number. He chose the Riverside. It was a bit farther away, closer to the original Greenwich settlement now called Sound Beach, but the charming little clubhouse was on the mainland while that of the Indian Harbor Club was on an island offshore, the better, he'd heard it said, to discourage women from hanging about. That was enough for Tilden. He surprised Margaret with the purchase of a twenty-foot naphtha launch, which he named Mad Meg in honor of an infamous tickler he once knew. In his mind, Corbin could see Margaret at the helm of that launch, its throttle turned on full, slashing through waves, her clothing soaked through, her face split in a happy grin as Tilden muttered silent prayers that rocks and lobster buoys would have the good sense to stay out of her way.
Corbin smiled for Tilden. He was having a good time. He deserved it. They .both did. Gwen Leamas, who was hearing a bit more than the usual bits and pieces this time, smiled with him.
“You'd think he would have been nervous,” Corbin said to her, “about all these new people coming out from New York at the same time.”
“What new people?”
“People like him. Businessmen. Men who might have been clients at Georgiana Hastings's house and who might have seen Margaret there.”
&
nbsp; ”I suppose.” She shrugged. “But according to you, she didn't sleep with any of them.”
“She just played the piano, I'm pretty sure.”
“Then she probably wouldn't be recognized. Remembering a woman from a profile bent over a keyboard is not the same as seeing a face you've slobbered over while pumping away at her body.”
Corbin frowned.
“Sorry. That was a bit tacky.”
“What's wrong, sweetheart?” He touched her.
“It's nothing to do with Margaret, I guess. It's just that lying under boozy rich men for money is not my favorite vision of a woman.”
“Well, I wouldn't like to think of you that way, either. But you could have done it, for all I know. You could be just as terrific as you are and still have spent two or three years as a hooker building a bank account before you came over from England to start fresh.”
“That doesn't happen to be a male fantasy of yours, does it?” she asked.
Corbin let out a sigh. “I'm just saying it wouldn't necessarily have changed you. If those pilots who spent six or seven years in North Vietnamese prison camps could get through all the beatings and degradation by managing to put their minds in neutral, I don't know why a prostitute couldn't do the same thing and then put it all behind her. Everyone has something that they have to try to put behind them.”
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