by Medora Sale
“Oh, really?” said Harriet. Surprise, surprise.
“Do you happen to know—this is so embarrassing, Harriet, to have to ask you this—but do you know where Guy is? Or Jane?” She raised her hand in a forestalling gesture. “Don’t say it— You’re the last person in the world who would want to keep track of Guy Beaumont’s movements. Or Jane’s. I realize that. But you knew both of them so well, you might just know where we could look for them, at least.”
Harriet shook her head. Why should she help Nina Smithson in whatever games she was playing with Guy? “I really wouldn’t know where he is,” she said, making her best attempt to sound convincing. That, at least, was technically true. He could be anywhere in the city, or even the province, although the chances were near perfect that at this very moment he was in his brother’s apartment, fast asleep. Guy didn’t believe in paying for accommodation any more than he believed in getting up early. Harriet was surprised that Nina didn’t know that.
“They didn’t get in touch with you? Neither one of them?”
Stubbornly, but still avoiding the lie direct, Harriet shook her head again.
“I’m surprised,” said Nina, looking hard at Harriet’s swollen eye. “I assumed that Jane at least would have called you. She doesn’t have that many people to turn to in the city, does she? And I know that both of them admired you and trusted you very much, in spite of what happened.” She leaned forward confidingly, infusing her voice with warmth and sincerity. “You are the logical person for them to contact, after all. Or one of the logical people.”
“How about you?” asked Harriet, unimpressed. She had heard Nina con the unwary often enough and knew her techniques. “Isn’t the gallery representing Guy anymore?”
“Of course we are,” said Nina quickly. “But you know how moody and difficult he can be. I think that he thinks that we haven’t been doing enough for him lately, and he’s become terribly upset.” She shrugged. “He hasn’t answered his mail, he hasn’t been home when I’ve phoned—you know what he’s like.”
“Mmm,” said Harriet, even more surprised. She did know what he was like, and she couldn’t imagine Guy ignoring anything that smelled of money.
“Anyway, this is a fabulous commission,” Nina was saying as Harriet tuned back in again. “Exactly the sort of thing he does perfectly. And they want it now—not next year some time. They expect an answer by next week. Early next week.” She paused.
Harriet looked innocently at her hostess and then went back to work on the muffin. It was, of course, excellent. And beautifully spiced by the sight of Nina Smithson on her metaphorical knees.
“It’s for a paper company,” she said, doggedly plowing on in the face of Harriet’s lack of response. “Their head office. They’re redoing it all and they want a huge mural. You know—the sort of thing that Guy does so well.” She paused again for comment. None was forthcoming. “They want something that makes them look more like tree-huggers. They feel that they’ve been getting terribly bad press lately, and they need something to shift the balance a little their way.”
“Oh really?” said Harriet, tempted at last. “Bad press? How surprising. Not because they’ve been laying waste thousands of acres of forest, is it? Riding roughshod over native land claims, perhaps? Poor things.”
“Who knows,” said Nina impatiently. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’re willing to pay a bundle. And if Guy can’t take on this commission I’m just about ready to recommend Peter Bellingham,” she added, with a threatening edge to her voice. “He hasn’t Guy’s flexibility—there’s absolutely no one else around who can switch from medium to medium the way Guy can—but what the hell. He’s a lot easier to deal with and more reliable.”
“You know, Nina, I can’t bring myself to give a sweet god damn whether the commission goes to Guy or to Peter or to the Empress of Russia,” said Harriet. “Or even if the paper company ends up with bare walls. I don’t know what you expected me to do.”
“I didn’t expect you to do anything, Harriet.” Her voice rose in exasperation. “Just to let me know if you had heard from either one of them, that’s all. Guy’s becoming very difficult to handle now that he’s made some money and become so independent—or so he thinks, anyway.”
“Well, there’s nothing I can do to help, I’m afraid,” said Harriet, quite cheerfully now. “And there was no need to go through all this elaborate ceremony to find that out, either—I would have told you on the phone. But allow me to give you my thoughts on the matter, for what they’re worth. If there’s money in it, Guy will turn up pretty smartly. Once he’s made you sweat a little. I shouldn’t worry, if I were you.” On that nicely ironic note, Harriet sprang to her feet to make her farewells; at the same moment, the front door closed with a crash and heavy footsteps crossed the hall.
“You mustn’t go yet, Harriet,” said Nina, sharply. “Stay and have a glass of sherry. Or something else if you prefer. I’m expecting the boys home for lunch. That sounds like Dean now. They’d be crushed if they missed you.”
Harriet had also forgotten Dean Smithson’s habit of lingering in doorways as if reluctant to commit himself to any one room in a house. But suddenly there he stood, blocking her exit, examining her cautiously for signs of hostility. His dark eyes glowed in the firelight; his perpetually stubbly chin made the rest of his face look very white. After a pause that went on too long, he altered his expression slightly, and nodded.
“You remember Harriet Jeffries, don’t you, Dean? The photographer. Why don’t you get us some sherry and help yourself to whatever you’d like.”
Cursing herself for allowing Nina Smithson to outmanoeuvre her one more time, Harriet accepted the crystal glass with pale sherry in it because it seemed easier than turning it down. “What are you doing with yourself these days, Dean?” she asked.
“I’m at the gallery,” he said curtly. “Looking after the business side of things.”
“Yes,” said Nina, sounding almost fluttery. “I don’t know how I’d manage if he didn’t keep track of the money and details and shipments and things like that.”
“You’d hire someone else to do it,” her son replied. It had a dampening effect on the conversation. “Has Christopher made it back yet?”
“Not yet,” Nina replied warily. “Isn’t that the car?”
The last time Harriet had seen Christopher Smithson he had been a gangly youth of sixteen with a spotty face and a grubby exterior. He hadn’t changed much. The young man who walked into the room was a little taller, almost as thin, and not quite as grubby. His fair hair still hung in strands around his neck; his face was pale, weak-chinned, and still rather spotty. On the other hand, he no longer looked as if he were about to knock over all the furniture, and his voice, when he greeted them, was soft, deep, and pleasant. His mother gave him an anxious look, as if she feared for his life every time he left the house. He grinned easily at her, shaking his head ruefully. He acknowledged having lively memories of Harriet and grasped her hand. Clearly he was developing a certain gallantry that would always elude his older brother.
There are individual parents who seem to leave almost no genetic imprint, physically, on their children, no matter how deeply they may influence mind and soul. Nina appeared to be one of these; she had passed on none of her beauty, and little of her gracefulness of manner to her sons. Neither one of her children resembled her in the least. Dean was clearly a taller copy of his raw, uncouth, powerful father. Pictures of Marco—short, broad, smoldering, angry-looking—that Harriet had seen around the house offered abundant proof of that. The mystery for Harriet had always been who the father of Christopher was. Because he looked no more like Nina than Dean did, and yet the village in Albania where Marco sprang to existence had never in its entire history produced a child to resemble him. As he grew older, Christopher would, no doubt, be able to look perfectly at home in the British Cabinet, if he wante
d; at the moment he appeared to be an effete and overbred English schoolboy, younger than his eighteen years.
A sharp ringing of the doorbell interrupted their desultory chat, and the rumbling of annoyed voices filled the hall, dropping a curtain of silence over the room. Everyone in the little party, filled with aimless curiosity, and drawn inescapably to the unexpected, turned toward the door. “It’s the professor, Mrs. Smithson,” said Bernice, who had drifted, ghostlike, into the room once more. “He says that he has some important business to discuss.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” said Harriet quickly, and scooted out of the house, pausing a millisecond to nod politely to the distinguished-looking man standing in the front hall.
“My goodness.” John’s voice floated down from his six foot plus height. “I expected dark glasses and a hat pulled low over your brow at the very least.”
“Listen, Inspector,” said Harriet, her face completely deadpan, “if you’re going to throw people around and punch them about you can’t expect them to cover for you afterward.”
“For the sake of my reputation, you might keep your voice down just a decibel or two,” he replied, slipping into the booth. “There are several of my colleagues well within earshot. Soaking all of this up.”
Harriet took a sip of her coffee and then burst into laughter. “I saw them. And they’re prepared to believe every word, too, I’ll bet. I couldn’t resist it,” she said. “I have been the recipient of so many pitying looks today I couldn’t stand it any longer.”
“What’s new?” John asked, touching her cheekbone delicately. “How is it?”
“Not beautiful, and rather tender, but it could be worse, as you can see. And I’m sorry for having been so prickly and ungracious yesterday. It was a shock having Guy burst in like that and start yelling at me. I’m not used to it anymore. It took me a while to recover.”
“Not to say pop you one,” said John gravely.
Harriet nodded. “Not to say. Well—in one way, though, it’s just as well. I needed to get him out of my system in some more efficient way than just trying to pretend he never existed. And now I have.”
“In—” Sanders looked at his watch. “Eighteen hours? Don’t count on it. Was that your news?” he added, as he turned and ordered two corned beef sandwiches. “I’m not trying to run your life, by the way. It’s the only thing on the menu that’s edible, believe me,” he explained.
“Partly. And it’s not exactly news, I suppose. I really lured you away from your desk because when I called I was feeling low—somewhere down around the bottom layer of the sewer system I would say—and I wanted to see you. There. That’s more a confession than news.” She glanced up. “And because a couple of strange things have happened. Or maybe,” she emended after looking at his face, “two additional strange things. Something very peculiar is going on. And Jane is mixed up in it. I mean more than just walking out on Guy. The whole world seems to be looking for her for the flimsiest and oddest of reasons. I’m getting worried about her.” And in between bites of her greasy, mustard-soaked, lovely corned beef sandwich Harriet told John about Peter and Nina.
John heard her out in silence and then said nothing for a perceptible length of time. “They could have been telling the truth, you know. Both of them,” he said at last. “I realize it doesn’t happen that often, but it is a possibility you might consider, O cynical one.”
“I know these people,” said Harriet. “They get a pale, strained, dreadful look on their deeply sensitive artistic faces when confronted with the truth—either speaking it or hearing it.”
“Harriet, you’re destroying my faith in mankind,” said John, reaching over and touching the tip of her nose. “And I’m very sorry that I can’t stay to have it ruined completely, but I am in the middle of a case and people who see me here, chatting with a beautiful woman, will think I have lost my dedication to my profession. Let me consider your tale,” he added. “But in the meantime, please keep the chain on your door. If there is something funny going on, I don’t like the way everyone assumes you are in the middle of it. I’ll call you as soon as I have a minute. Watch out for yourself, will you?” he repeated, rose, and picked up the check. “My restaurant, my treat. Next time you can take me to Cibo’s for a sixty-dollar lunch.” And he dropped a hasty kiss on her glossy dark hair.
“There you go, overprotective to the last. You watch out for yourself, John Sanders. You need it more than I do.”
Jane left her suitcase in the car, picked up the attaché case, and walked confidently up the broad steps into the hotel. A couple were planted in front of the registration desk, expostulating with the clerk. She paused discreetly to admire a display of local crafts and to allow them to finish their business.
“Nothing at all?” the man was saying despairingly.
“Sorry, not even a broom closet,” said the pleasant-looking man behind the counter. “We’ve been booked through Sunday for a couple of months now.”
“Damn it,” she swore softly and turned away. Now what? She couldn’t just stand here in the hotel lobby in Skaneateles, New York, staring at dolls and waiting for inspiration. A party of six dressed in silk and linen drifted by her into the dining room. She glanced down with slight amusement at her jeans and comfortable cotton sweater. Not for the first time in her life, she was seriously under-dressed. The place reeked of white linen and polished silver. But on the other side of the room was a very discreetly carved sign intimating that beyond the door it was attached to was a bar. No one was going to throw her out of a bar, and she turned abruptly away from her intense study of a display of dolls, all clad most suitably in silks and satins as well.
As she walked in, a welcoming burst of noise and laughter greeted her; she had stepped across a magic threshold, out of the world of polished antiques and elegant carpets and into one of warm, noisy familiarity.
She was in an annex to the hotel, a large dark room, constructed of wood stained a mellow whiskey colour with panels painted dark green, like a broad comfortable porch on a cottage. The booths were all filled, mostly with men in working clothes—from accountant’s pinstripe to mechanic’s coveralls. Two wall-mounted television sets blared commentary on a baseball game. “A Scotch,” she said to the bartender, as she slipped onto an empty stool in front of him. “Any kind. With water.”
The man sitting sideways at the next stool let his eyes drift away from the game and fix themselves on her. After she had been under close and constant study for a good thirty seconds, all the frustrations of the day burst out of her in an enormous sense of grievance; she turned her head and glared, full force. “Something wrong with drinking Scotch?” she snapped.
“Not at all,” he said politely and turned back to the game. “But most of the local girls drink Coke and something and the tourists all drink white wine. That makes you strange, that’s all. And interesting.”
“I see.” She slipped some bills over the bar. “That’s about right. I’m not local, and I’m sure as hell not a tourist.”
“And of course you talk funny,” he added in the same flat voice, keeping his eyes on the game all the time he was talking, as if her responses were of no importance to him at all.
“That’s because I’m a Canadian.”
He shook his head. “No it isn’t. Lots of Canadians around here. I can spot them.”
“I am a Canadian, but I just spent a year in England. You can’t help it—you pick up the way they talk after a while,” she protested defensively. Now she turned and studied him. He was a significantly good-looking man, she decided. And quite possibly in possession of a sense of humor. A little taller than she was, quick-moving and muscular under his plaid shirt and jeans, with dark red hair and a rakish face.
He flashed a crooked smile in her direction. “You staying here?”
“Not a chance. There isn’t even room in the lobby. You wouldn’t know of any place else to
stay, would you? I have business to look after around here. I’m in something of a bind.”
“There’s a cheap motel about five—ten miles away,” he said, lying helpfully. “I can’t say I’d stay there if I had a choice, though. Or you can go into Syracuse. Should be a lot of places to stay in Syracuse.”
“Great,” she muttered, draining her glass. She pivoted on her stool until she was facing the lake, stretched her long legs out in front of her, and subsided into grim silence.
His voice broke through her unpleasant revery. “Join me in another round before you throw yourself in? At your height, by the way, you’ll have to go out some distance. The lake is pretty shallow at this end. My name is Amos, by the way. Like in the Bible. In case you don’t drink with strangers.”
She turned slowly around again. “Really? And mine’s Delilah. But,” she said, “you can call me Jane. Sure. One drink. Then I have to find a place to stay. Too chilly for the lake tonight.”
He waited, silent, his eyes on the game, until their drinks were in front of them. “How do you feel about sleeping bags?” His voice was still casual, but his eyes strayed more often from the television set.
“I’ve slept in enough of them. Why? You have a piece of floor you’re offering? Seriously?”
“Not my floor. A floor in an empty house—nice and private, all to yourself. All I’m offering is my old sleeping bag. Unless you brought your own.”
“And where will you be?” she snapped back, her eyes challenging.
“Oh, I don’t come with the house. Not necessarily anyway.” He grinned, a beautiful, slightly lopsided grin. “Pickings ain’t that slim around here,” he said, and laughed.