“Old Haywain Road, right past Locust Valley, Lloyd. Follow it to the gates there. Now let’s move it.”
But unlike her cousin, she was not inclined to be chatty en route. As soon as the car was on the move she opened the attaché case and drew from it what appeared to be yards of computer printout. Pencil in hand, she worked at them with total absorption. What is this world coming to, Mike marveled after a couple of furtive glances at the rearview mirror. A Barbie doll with brains. Anyhow, business brains.
That oddity digested, he turned his thoughts to his own intriguing business. The book. The work eventually in progress. He was at the point now—the best part of writing—where just considering the project gave him a charge. But it was a shapeless project so far, the Duries, individually and collectively. And the way they remained under one roof—even granting the size of the roof—when they could easily live separate lives. It would be ironic if concern for Margaret Durie, the eldest, bound them to this way of life, because she herself so detested that concern.
And there seemed to be another force operating here, the shade of the Jovian, long-dead James Hamilton Durie himself. The book could begin with this generation, then flash back to him. Or, tempting thought, could it be a massive generational story starting way back with those colonial Duries and Cheathams, real-estate hustlers and rum distillers? And following that grim Scotch Calvinist drive—there had to be fascinating bends in it here and there—to its three billion.
A generational novel, solidly grounded, vividly colored. The trouble lay in the amount of research required, because the catch to chauffeuring like this was that you couldn’t schedule library time. For that matter, according to the rules the chauffeur couldn’t even do sight-seeing around that museum like ground floor. Amy’s description of it had been sketchy at best. Which was hardly her fault. It was hard to examine the scenery closely when you had to keep on eye on the boss every instant. Still, if all went well Mrs. Mac might soften the rule a bit.
No, not Mrs. Mac. Margaret Durie had taken to Amy, no question there. And, not too subtly, had also made her chauffeur her co-conspirator. Given some time …
Concentration on this was abruptly broken as they rolled into Nassau County. “You can make better time than this, Lloyd.”
That ringing soprano in throbbing recitative, Mike thought, was really wasted on an audience of one. He didn’t need to check the speedometer but made a show of doing so. “We’re right on the speed limit now, Miss Durie.”
“What of it?”
Well, Mike thought, like for instance speeding fines come out of the chauffeur’s pocket and speeding violations entered on the chauffeur’s license. The trouble was that she had to know this and obviously didn’t give a damn. Make an issue of it, and next thing the case would be adjudicated by Judge McEye, who knew which side her bread was buttered on.
He compromised by speeding up a notch beyond the limit, but that didn’t serve very long.
“You’re a lousy driver, Lloyd.”
“Sorry, Miss Durie.”
“No sorrier than I am, considering I’m stuck with you. But then”—the tone became reflective—“you’re not really a professional, are you, Lloyd? Do you know what I think? I think you’re a middle-aged chorus boy who found there wasn’t any more career left for him on the stage. Not even in road companies. So here you are.”
Mike glanced at the mirror. Printouts in hand, she was actually leaning back and smiling. He smiled into the mirror. “If you say so, Miss Durie.”
“I do. Now try to get me where I’m going this week. And arrange for someone else to pick me up for the trip home tomorrow.”
Where she was going turned out to be a Georgian mansion at the end of a lane that wound through picture-book landscaping. As soon as the car pulled up before the portico of the house, a white-haired little woman came out to greet Camilla warmly, so warmly, in fact, that the pair of them appeared to melt into each other’s arms.
“Camilla, my dear.”
“Laura, darling.”
Really wasted, Mike thought. Given those looks, that voice, and that temperament, there was an opera star manqué here. Utterly phoney, utterly convincing.
Away from the estate, he pulled the car off the road and drew out the small notebook kept for this purpose in the breast pocket of his jacket. The notebook was already well filled, but there was still room in it to enter the Camilla episode in his own makeshift shorthand. The dialogue verbatim, then impressions and reflections. Therapeutic too, he had advised himself from the start, to get things down on paper rather than let them stew in the gut. This time, however, the therapy didn’t quite work.
Back at the garage he phoned the office, and his wife took the call.
“Reporting in,” Mike said. “Hey, aren’t you putting in an awfully long day?”
“Well, I have to make out everybody’s schedule for tomorrow and post it. When you get back here stop in the office.”
“Sure. What about supper?”
“I just had mine here,” Amy said. “You’d better have yours in the staff hall. But first stop in here.”
“Trouble?”
“Not exactly. Just something strange.”
“See you in ten minutes, ma’am.”
He found her standing at the desk and, as if laying out a hand of solitaire, arranging schedule slips in a row. “No errors allowed,” she explained, “and I have to take into account who’ll be off duty tomorrow. You know, I’m starting to get corrupted.”
“How?”
“Well, when the McEye complained there were only sixteen people for staff I thought it was funny. I mean, only sixteen. Now I’m beginning to think she was right. Those two housemen are also valets for Craig and Walter when there’s heavy dressing-up, and those two junior maids are nice kids but slow, slow, slow—”
“Then for Christmas,” Mike said, “I’ll buy you another houseman and two fast maids. But this isn’t what you meant about something strange, is it?”
“No. It’s that money Ma’am took out of the bank. The three thousand dollars. It’s gone.”
“Hell, if she’s holding you responsible—”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. I don’t think she even wants me to know it’s gone.”
“Sit down,” Mike said, and when she held up the handful of schedule slips to show why not he said firmly, “Sit. Then start at the beginning.”
Amy sat down. “When we were in the bank she got that three thousand in an envelope. She put the envelope into her purse. Then we went to the Plaza, and then we came back here. Hegnauer wasn’t in, so she asked me into the bedroom to help her out of her dress. Before that, she opened the purse on the dresser and took out a couple of used tissues she told me to throw away. I did. But that envelope with the money was not in that purse.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Mike, I was standing right next to her. And it isn’t that big a purse. You saw it.”
“All right then, how about somewhere along the way she put the envelope into a pocket?”
“No pockets. None in the dress or the coat. And when I helped take her dress off, no envelope underneath.”
“Then obviously,” Mike said, “she gave it to someone at the Plaza. Whoever she had lunch with.”
“And you really think she had lunch?” Amy asked. “Going, eating, and coming, all in twenty minutes? That was the Palm Court, Michael, not McDonald’s.”
“Look, you’ve had more time to ponder this than you’ve allowed me to have, so maybe you’re right. We assumed lunch. We took the dear old lady at her word. We did not assume she was setting up a rendezvous with someone to hand three thousand dollars to him. Or her. But she probably did just that. Which, darling, is her privilege. Going by her relationship with that Mrs. Upshur whoever, she does have her charitable side.”
“Mike, that was the Institute’s own money. And it takes charity, it doesn’t give it.” Her voice became intense. “There’s something else too. That w
as cash. Now what kind of institution—?”
“Whoa, baby,” Mike said.
Amy drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t get so emotional about it.”
“Well, I can think of two reasons for that. One is that your sense of proportion is slightly skewed. Three thousand dollars would rate about two cents in Ma’am scale of values. If she wants to play games with her two cents, that’s her business. The other reason is—and this is what bothers me—you’re being grossly exploited by Ma’am and Mrs. Mac. They may have divided you up, but each of them is laying a full workload on you. Has it struck you that you are now into a twelve-hour day?”
“I don’t mind.”
“I do. So as soon as you tack those schedules on the board we retire to our own private quarters and watch something trivial on TV. That’s an order.”
“Even so, I still have to type up all the pay envelopes for tomorrow. It’s Friday payday.”
“And when do I ever get to see you again?”
“Soon as I’m done here. Anyhow, we’re off Sunday. Sleep late, go over to Abe and Audie—”
“Ah, yes,” Mike said. “That day off.”
“What about it?”
“Well, I was about to add my name to your list of exploiters. Library duty. Get into those stacks to do some research for the book.”
“I’ll be glad to help. You know that.”
“I do. You are a very special case.”
“We are,” Amy corrected. “Which reminds me. How’d you make out chauffeuring Camilla?”
“Ah, Camilla. All business, that girl. When the time comes to take over daddy’s business interests she’ll be ready.”
“I’m sure. Now go have supper. It’s very good. Pot au feu.”
“Leftovers again,” Mike said. “And to think that’s what we bartered our souls for.”
He woke in pitch darkness, tried to get back to sleep before the brain started whirling, and found the whirling headed into high gear. After a few minutes of this he lifted Amy’s arm from his chest, went into the sitting room, carefully closing the door behind him, turned on the desk lamp and sat down at the typewriter. He rolled a sheet of paper into the machine and sat squinting at it with one bleary eye. Finally he typed Friday: pick up washing and cleaning.
He laid the paper beside the typewriter and rolled in a fresh sheet. One advantage of this domicile, he told himself encouragingly, was that since its walls were constructed as solidly as those of the stony Chateau d’If, the clatter of the machine never penetrated them. Bang these keys here with creative fervor all night, and no one would come knocking to complain.
It was the creative fervor, muzzled and handcuffed, that had cause to complain. You knew that the first lines you wrote would be all wrong, destined for the wastebasket, so why write them? Yet something clamored to be written.
He heard Amy open the door, and then—he realized it was to make sure he wasn’t startled—she knocked on it twice. That double knock must be habitual to her by now. The servant’s password in Castle Durie. And yet, wasn’t that a nitpicking view of it? Born out of frustration because this damn blank page confronted him so defiantly?
“Come in, love,” he said, and when Amy crossed the room he patted his knee in invitation. She perched on it and draped an arm around his neck. It felt good, and to make it even better, where any other wife would now have asked, however gently, “Are you going to be at it again all night?” this one didn’t. She looked at the page in the typewriter, then at the one on the desk. “‘Pick up washing and cleaning,’” she read. “That’s right. I forgot about it.”
“You’ve got other things on your mind.”
“Perhaps. And from the way you look, so do you. Such as?”
Mike sighed. “Three thousand missing dollars. You’ve infected me.”
“I’m sorry. As you said, it really isn’t my business.”
“I’m not so sure anymore. I don’t know whether I dreamed it or not, but I suddenly woke up with a theory that won’t let go.”
“About what happened to that money?”
“Partly,” Mike said, “but it goes way beyond it. I have a feeling that Ma’am is using the Upshur Institute to wash her private funds. Know what that means?”
“Yes. It means concealing the source and disposition of money. Usually cash, I suppose.”
“Henry James couldn’t have phrased it prettier. And I believe that Ma’am, a sort of Jamesian character, is washing her money through Mrs. Upshur’s Institute.”
Amy shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any secret about her giving the Institute a lot of money.”
“True. But she certainly is hush-hush about drawing out chunks of it, courtesy of Mrs. Upshur, who sends checks to be cashed. Blank checks. Get the picture? They go through the bank and right back into Mrs. Upshur’s files. Since she’s boss of the Institute and Ma’am is treasurer, those canceled checks are nobody else’s business. All the family can know is that dear Margaret seems to be excessively generous to the Institute. But then why not? She’s deeply grateful to it for bringing her braille.”
“She really does seem to be,” Amy said. “And you keeping saying checks. As far as we know, there’s only been one of them.”
“Even one makes a case. And there’s been a structure set up to take care of more than one. Look how you were suddenly ordered to attend to her mail delivery personally. Making you the only one to know she got that little package from Mrs. Upshur. And the way you described the making out of the check and the cashing of it. And her arranging for the car without any destination entered. And the lunch at the Plaza, which doesn’t seem to have been any lunch at all. Where—and this is what it led up to—that cash could be handed over to some person unknown. Anything to dispute there?”
Amy thought it over. “No. I suppose that’s what’s been troubling me. I’ve been seeing all this without wanting to. But it could be just well-meant game-playing, couldn’t it? Her way of proving to herself that she can function apart from the family.”
“That would depend on who got the cash. Harmless or harmful is the question.”
“Harmful?” Amy said apprehensively. “In what way?”
“Blackmail.”
Amy stood up. “That is ridiculous. Margaret Durie? After hiding away from the world all those years. Who could possibly blackmail her? And for what?”
“Darling, if we could answer that we’d be having a heart-to-heart talk with Craig Durie about it right now.”
“Well, we won’t because it can’t be blackmail. Look at her mood all day. Contentment. Does anyone paying blackmail go around feeling contented about it?”
“I guess not,” Mike admitted. “She was in a sunshiny mood, wasn’t she?”
“Don’t knock it,” Amy said. “I’ve seen her other moods close up.”
Pay time, according to both their schedules, took place in the office at noon, so by prearrangement they met in the corridor outside the office and entered together. If not hand in hand, Mike thought, still most definitely a couple-in-service.
The office was a fog of cigarette smoke, Mrs. McEye at her desk the center of it. She handed each a pay envelope and saw to the signing of the payroll sheet.
“There is time to go to the bank now?” Amy asked. “I mentioned to you we’d like to open an account there.”
“Very sensible. Just inform any bank officer there that you’re on the staff, and they’ll attend to you most cordially.”
And, Mike took notice, Mrs. McEye herself appeared to be brimming over with cordiality. She raised eyebrows at Amy. “Any difficulties in the office yesterday?”
“Not really.”
“So it seems. You did very well indeed.”
“Thank you. But you did make everthing so clear there couldn’t be any serious problems.”
My wife, the fledgling sycophant, Mike thought fondly.
Mrs. McEye turned her attention to him. “Miss Margaret ordered the car for yesterday morning. She
did use it?”
Oho, Mike thought. “Yes, she did,” he said.
“I’m glad to hear that. It’s good for her to get out, so to speak. But it can be fatiguing. Were there any signs of that?”
Mike opened his mouth, but it was Amy who said, “No. None at all.”
The chair swiveled back toward her. “You were with her then, Mrs. Lloyd?”
“Yes, I was.”
Mrs. McEye did not seem to be displeased by this revelation. “Most encouraging. That would be a first for her, if you didn’t know. Inviting company on a drive. And where did she want to go?”
“The park,” Amy said. “Just all around Central Park. She seemed to enjoy it very much.”
There were unexpected depths to this woman, Mike thought. Prevarication with trimmings, for example. Cool as the proverbial cucumber too, although she had to know she was now in the process of burning her bridges behind her. His, too, for that matter.
“Just a drive around the park?” said Mrs. McEye. “No stops anywhere? I mention it only because it was so near lunch hour. Last time, she did stop at the Plaza for lunch.”
And, Mike calculated, Wilson, despite orders from his passenger, then brought this information right back to the office for transmission to the brothers Durie. Who, on broaching it to sister Margaret, carelessly let her know that she was under surveillance and had damn well better turn on the guile full force if she wanted to get around it.
Last chance to come clean, he thought, as his wife—that tall, well-bred Bostonian in whose mouth butter would obviously not melt—said, “No, there wasn’t any stop for lunch. I’m sorry. I should have suggested it to her.”
There go the bridges, Mike thought.
“Well,” said Mrs. McEye, “the suggestion would be kindly, if you know what I mean, but Miss Margaret is extremely sensitive to what she regards as—well—nagging on her behalf. Now you’ll want to be about your business, I’m sure. You’ll take over the desk when you return, Mrs. Lloyd. And, Lloyd, Mrs. Jocelyn is entertaining friends at lunch. She wants the car here at two so that one of them may be driven home. And yes, I must say both of you have been doing very well.”
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