by Emma Lathen
“Wait until you see the bathroom,” Robichaux advised lugubriously. “There are little steps—and other things.”
“Oh, go away and let me get ready, Tom. I suppose the children were intended to be along this weekend.”
“That’s why the women are so burned up.”
“If they’re burned up now, wait until they hear that Ogilvie has dragooned us all into a dinner party tonight.”
Money was admittedly Robichaux’s chief claim to human intelligence. But the social predisposition of woman ran it a close second.
“Probably be just the thing to cheer ’em up,” he predicted.
An hour later Iris Young, in shimmering emerald green, and Joan Hedstrom, in fawn chiffon, bore his words out. Gone were the sulks which had marred the beginning of the day.
“It’s really a good idea for us to be eating out,” Joan commented. “Veronica is upset enough, having to open the house. This way she can take the evening off.”
Iris leaned forward to the front seat. “Are you sure you’re going the right way, Frank? We don’t want to be late.”
“I’m doing what Thatcher tells me to do,” Hedstrom answered.
John Thatcher, who was navigating, conned the complex directions scrawled by Morgan Ogilvie. “Turn right at the second lane after the house with the yellow barn. Then it’s straight ahead.”
“They ought to hand out radar,” Robichaux grunted as everybody peered into the inky darkness in an attempt to distinguish the color of barns flashing by.
But after the turn had been successfully negotiated, another problem reared its head.
“Do you think this can be it?” Hedstrom asked dubiously.
Before them spread pandemonium. Horses were being walked before a large porticoed building. Grooms strolled about with buckets and brushes. Horse trailers backed perilously out of an immense parking lot, while gangs of men carted white wooden frames to remote destinations.
“This is it, all right.” Robichaux pointed to a sign proclaiming the club’s identity. It was almost obliterated by the more temporary announcement superimposed on it.
“It says they had a horse show today,” said Young. “There’s Ogilvie!”
Their host and hostess were just emerging from a Mercedes-Benz in the parking lot. They pulled alongside, and the party coalesced.
A short question elicited almost too much information about the horse show held at the Calvert Hunt Club.
“Margo was here most of the day,” Ogilvie offered, “and did very well, didn’t you, my dear?”
Margo Ogilvie was a woman who liked to share her triumphs with others. “I knew that bay could be schooled as a jumper. But never did I expect him to develop so quickly. First prize, and the Crowleys were entered with their Tenspot.”
A discussion of Tenspot’s downfall took them past the cloakrooms and into the lounge.
“Mr. Ogilvie and a party of eight,” the headwaiter was confirming when he was interrupted.
“Wait just a moment, Wilson. I may change that.” Morgan Ogilvie turned to his guests. “Look over there. The Pelham Brownes are here tonight. This is lucky.”
He waved vigorously. Pelham Browne and Tony detached themselves from the bar and strolled over. Introductions followed.
“This couldn’t be better,” Ogilvie said enthusiastically. “You’ll join us, won’t you, Pel?”
Pelham Browne did not share Ogilvie’s open pleasure at this encounter.
“Mighty nice of you, Morgan, but we won’t butt in on your party. I expect you people have a lot to talk over. Tony and I don’t want to cramp your style.”
His intentions, whatever they were, were doomed by Ogilvie’s laughing insistence and by the determination shared by Mrs. Browne and Mrs. Ogilvie to rehash the horsy events of the day. Instructions to the headwaiter to enlarge the table were being given while Browne was still protesting.
“Poor bugger!” Robichaux murmured as they trailed behind the others. “Can’t blame him for not wanting to get mixed up with this wake.”
“If he’s a director of Southeastern, he probably doesn’t want to lend public support to this insanity of Ogilvie’s,” Thatcher added.
“You know, Ogilvie did such a thorough job of checking out Chicken Tonight when he didn’t want the merger that he ended up brainwashing himself. I have to hand it to him. He really gave it the works. Looked for any weak spot at all. Hired us, hired accountants, hired all sorts of legmen, even went up there himself. Now he’s a convert. He probably thinks it’ll take him just fifteen minutes to sell Browne on this damfool idea.”
Thatcher shook his head as he stood aside to let a convivial foursome stumble past. “If so, Tom, Ogilvie’s tactics are very strange.”
Almost immediately Morgan Ogilvie’s tactics moved from the strange to the bizarre. As the group settled at the table, with all the difficulties inherent in a party of four women and six men, he gave instructions to the waiter. “We’re in no hurry and you can space out the courses. That will give us plenty of time for dancing.”
Undeniably there was an orchestra. Ogilvie smiled benignly around the table at his paralyzed captives. Thatcher noted appreciatively that Tom’s jaw had actually dropped. Robichaux was staring at his client with outright incredulity. Probably Southeastern Insurance was going to find itself drummed off the Robichaux & Devane roster in very short order. They would be lucky not to have their epaulettes stripped off.
“As soon as we’ve had our first drink,” Morgan Ogilvie was continuing in bland disregard of audience reaction, “I hope Mrs. Young will let me show her what an old man can do on the dance floor.”
Thereafter horror succeeded horror. Ogilvie’s march to the dance floor made it mandatory that the other men choose partners. Thatcher, blind to all other perils in his determination to avoid Margo Ogilvie, was actually on the floor with Joan Hedstrom before he discovered that the orchestra of the Calvert Hunt Club was pandering to the swingers in their midst. He preferred to draw a curtain of amnesia over his subsequent attempts to acquit himself with credit. He returned to the table resolving that nothing would entice him out again until he had first identified the music. If necessary, he could emulate the wallflower at her college prom and spend the evening lurking in the cloakroom.
The table itself offered its own trials. Conversation was dominated by the Mesdames Ogilvie and Browne. First the company learned of the great triumph of Nagrom at the Garden State Race Track.
“It makes me wish Pel and I could take on a racing stable,” Tony said enviously. “What a way to start!”
“All our friends have been so kind about it,” gushed Margo Ogilvie, who specialized in simpering to an extent surprising in so large a woman. “All day Thursday the phone never stopped ringing.”
Then there was an exhaustive recapitulation of today’s horse show at the Calvert Hunt Club. “But, Tony, even if you only took one first yourself, three of the other firsts were bred by you. You’re becoming one of the best breeding stables on the Chesapeake.”
“That’s Roanoke’s Belle,” said Tony happily. “She just goes on dropping winner after winner!”
By clever timing, Thatcher squeezed in two duty dances during the short interval in which the band played something he dimly recognized as dance music. He also suffered the humiliation of seeing Tom Robichaux, a man exactly his own age, lead Tony Browne fearlessly onto the floor in the midst of an incredible caterwauling, and there perform a highly competent version of some tribal erotica. Of course, Thatcher justified himself, that came of Tom’s marital propensities. A man cannot make a habit of marrying women at first ten years, then twenty years, and now, alas, thirty years younger than himself without remaining au courant with courtship ritual. No one could expect the same expertise from a staid widower. Nonetheless, it was all salt in the wound.
With the arrival of after-dinner brandy, formal constraints relaxed. Several people from adjoining tables stopped by to offer congratulations on various equine achieveme
nts. Margo Ogilvie was chaffed, with inebriated freedom, on her submergence under a bushel of roses in the picture featuring Nagrom and her husband. Tony Browne was swept into a dauntingly technical discussion of stud services for the coming season and the resulting virtues of the hypothetical progeny. Frank Hedstrom was identified by several local squires as the man who had bought the “old Tyson place” and was welcomed as a new resident. Partners for the unengaged ladies emerged from nowhere, and Thatcher seized his chance to melt into the background.
But the Calvert Hunt Club, commodious as it was, offered no suitable resting place. The men’s room, it soon developed, was definitely out. Pelham Browne, who was evading either the dancing, his host or his wife, appeared to have established some sort of squatter’s claim. He was inclined to view the approach of another member of the ill-starred Ogilvie party with distinct hostility. The terrace, to which Thatcher subsequently fled, was also under enemy occupation. It offered a first-rate view of the parking lot and the driveway from the stables, where activity was at last subsiding. The view was being ignored by Mr. and Mrs. Young. They were in the midst of one of those fierce whispered marital exchanges.
“What was it, Ted?” Iris pleaded. “Please don’t hide things from me.”
“I’m not hiding things from you, Iris.” Her husband sounded harassed. “I don’t know where you get these ideas.”
“I could feel your arm. You went stiff as a post. You know you did!”
Young’s voice rose. “For God’s sake, Iris. If you must know, I thought I recognized somebody in the parking lot.”
“You’re lying to me! Ted, if something else has gone wrong, I’ve got a right to know.”
Thatcher felt that, under present circumstances, the terrace was unlikely to offer aid and comfort. Sadly he made his way back to the bar. There Morgan Ogilvie was roaming abroad, collaring stray celebrants. By this time Thatcher was ready to ring up Miss Corsa and demand a surreptitious rescue by the Sloan helicopter. Suddenly his thoughts were given a happier turn by a change in the evening’s musical score. A staccato flourish of the mariachi signaled an insinuating change of tempo. Unconsciously Thatcher reacted.
Many years ago—in the thirties, to be precise—a much younger Thatcher and his wife had made an extended stay in South America, bringing together the Sloan and the coffee bean. They had returned home with a new talent. By rights, Thatcher should now have sought out another lady in the party. But it was Joan Hedstrom who had witnessed his earlier mortification. It was only right she should see it expunged.
Joan was alone at the table when he asked her to dance. This deprived her of any excuse to malinger. But five minutes later she was all smiles.
“Mr. Thatcher! Wherever did you learn to rumba this way?”
A few dazzled onlookers applauded.
Emboldened, Thatcher had a few words with the bandleader. He and Joan did a spirited olla podrida of rumbas, tangos and sambas, before duty returned them to a table at which everyone else was waiting to leave.
The usual flurry over coats and hats covered the chill that had settled between the Youngs, the tardy reappearance of Frank Hedstrom, and the total evaporation of the Pelham Brownes. Mrs. Ogilvie led the way to the parking lot as commandingly as she could in view of the fact that she was, undeniably, drunk as a lord.
“Morgan,” she trilled, pausing by the door of the Mercedes, “you’d better be sure that Mr. Hedstrom understands how to get back to his own place.”
While Ogilvie was obeying, Ted Young politely opened the door. Unsteadily sweeping forward, Mrs. Ogilvie began to clamber inside. Seconds later an ear-splitting scream shattered the discussion of shortcuts home.
Everybody swung around.
Clumsily Margo Ogilvie was reemerging from the car. And, terrifyingly, she was still screaming.
“Oh, my God!” said Ted Young in a sick voice, peering over her shoulder.
Thatcher and Hedstrom sprang forward. In the front seat of the Mercedes a man was sprawled, thrown into harsh relief by the strip lighting overhead. Hedstrom reached inside to rouse him.
“What’s wrong with him?” Robichaux asked from the rear.
Hedstrom did not reply. Instead he recoiled. At his touch the body had shifted. Now they could see it more clearly. A colorful silk scarf and a simple wooden peg had been combined to form a lethal tourniquet around the man’s neck. Colorless eyes, bulging in their sockets, stared sightlessly and reproachfully upward.
“Christ!” Hedstrom muttered. “He’s been strangled!”
CHAPTER 12
TEST FOR TENDERNESS
WITH THAT, the nightmare began.
First, Margo Ogilvie slumped heavily backward against Ted Young. He sagged under her dead weight. Hedstrom, thrusting Joan and Iris away, turned to assist Young. In a stupor, Morgan Ogilvie was staring into his car.
Keeping the women shielded, Thatcher moved aside to let Young and Hedstrom support Mrs. Ogilvie to a nearby car. He could hear her spasmodic gasps.
“I’m all right,” Joan Hedstrom murmured, shaking Thatcher’s hand from her elbow. She moved toward her husband.
“Who is it?” Iris Young whispered. “Who . . .?”
Hedstrom and Young left Mrs. Ogilvie for Joan to comfort. They rejoined Ogilvie, still paralyzed.
“Now what do we do?” Tom Robichaux asked almost angrily.
“Among other things,” said Thatcher, “we call the police.”
Behind him, Mrs. Ogilvie’s painful whimpers eased into natural weeping.
From that point forward, the world became a confused kaleidoscope of fear and excitement, of light and dark, of morbid curiosity.
“The police?” somebody repeated almost dreamily.
“You’re right,” said Morgan Ogilvie, breaking his own trance. He turned and went striding back toward the clubhouse.
“What’s the matter?” asked a couple approaching them.
“Better stand back,” Frank Hedstrom advised. His voice was steady, Thatcher observed. “There’s been some kind of accident.”
“Accident? Can I . . . Oh, my God!”
There was a choke of horror.
“Listen,” Robichaux urged in Thatcher’s ear. The sobbing from the next car had abated. An automobile sped down the highway. Insects were chirping in the green darkness around them.
“What is it?” Thatcher asked.
Robichaux was a man who took his symbols as they came. “The orchestra,” he explained. “Stopped playing.”
He was quite right. The festivities had come to an abrupt halt. At one moment the Calvert Hunt Club was middle-aged exuberance, overloud laughter, one more drink. The next moment Morgan Ogilvie stumbled to the phone—and the forest fire started. Already tuxedoed men were hurrying out into the night.
“Hedstrom!” Thatcher called out. “We’d better get the women inside.”
Thereafter he lost all track of time. In its place there was a montage of rapidly shifting scenes: Hedstrom ruthlessly steering Mrs. Ogilvie indoors; Ted Young, arms around both Joan Hedstrom and Iris, marching behind him up the cinder path; the hallway, suddenly filled with spectators, with unanswerable questions, with strange rumors.
And, inevitably, the parking lot again.
Thatcher found himself leaning against the fender of a car, arms crossed, listening to a babble around him. Death, he noted, has a sobering effect. The voices he heard raised were tense, even hysterical; they were not blurred with liquor as they had been earlier in the evening.
“Must have been some junkies who had a fight . . .”
“Always lock the goddam car, that’s what I say.”
“Say, does anybody know who it is?”
“Jesus!” This was from someone who had peered into the car.
“Listen, do you think whoever did it could be hiding around here?” somebody asked nervously.
Beside Thatcher, Robichaux’s cigarette lighter flared.
“Well, Tom?” Thatcher inquired agreeably.
“Knew this was a mistake,” Robichaux remarked in an undertone. “These emergency meetings in crazy places—I’ve always been against them.”
Since Thatcher could not honestly disagree, he turned his attention elsewhere. Not all the members of the Calvert Hunt Club were out here in the parking lot, speculating aloud, commiserating with Ogilvie or simply waiting for developments. From here and there in the parking lot, headlights blazed, ignition keys turned, and cars crept down the cinder driveway past the clubhouse toward the highway. Not everybody was staying to watch the fun.
“Where are the police?” Robichaux muttered irritably. “At this rate, we’re going to have to hang around here all night.”
“Here they are,” said Thatcher as a thin sliver of sound crescendoed into the scream of a siren. A cavalcade of flashing lights sped toward them. “And, Tom, I’d count on a pretty long night if I were you.”
He was right. Soon spotlights were beating down on Morgan Ogilvie’s Mercedes. Instead of portly notables, the parking lot swarmed with uniformed men and a small army of technical specialists. Inside the clubhouse, Captain Stotz took control. His officers were questioning the kitchen staff, the waiters, the orchestra, the boys who normally fetched cars. Two detectives in the dining room were taking statements, which included confused recollections of earlier merry-making, as well as names and addresses. They kept at it for nearly two hours.
Stotz himself, a large man with a soft voice, was heavily reassuring. As well he might be, Thatcher thought, watching him take Iris Young through an account of her movements. He had swiftly cut out the Ogilvie party and carried it off to the library, now bedraggled with overfull ashtrays and half-empty glasses. Its occupants were not happy at this special treatment, nor at Stotz’s patient insistence on re-creating every moment in a long, movement-filled evening.