by Gore Vidal
“Tell me,” I said, a little maliciously, “why do you think Rufus killed your father?”
She was startled. “Why Rufus … but obviously because of that business deal, the one Johnson’s involved in, too. At least that’s what Winters said. Rufus was to cover up for the others; he was to take the blame.”
“But now it’s all in the newspapers and Rufus is not taking the blame.”
“Then why did he say he was going to in his confession?”
“Perhaps because someone else wrote it for him, after killing him.”
Her eyes grew round. “You’re not suggesting that Rufus was killed, too?”
“It’s possible.”
“But who would want to kill him?”
“The same man who murdered your father.”
“But that man was Rufus.”
“There was a time when you weren’t so sure.”
Even in the gloom, I could see her flush. “That’s not fair,” she said in a small voice.
“Why did you think your husband killed the Senator?” I closed in, aware of my advantage.
“I told you. I was upset, hysterical.…”
“Why did you think he did it?”
“For … for the same reason everyone else did, because of the contracts running out, because Lee wouldn’t help him.”
“Yet you knew that the contract had already been secured through someone else.”
“Verbena told you that, didn’t she?” Out it shot, before she could stop herself. She bit her lip.
I was slowly getting the picture, all the background was in a last: now for the foreground, to fill in the shadowy outline at the puzzle’s center, to construct the murderer. I was growing nervous with excitement.
I controlled my voice, though, sounded offhand. “Yes, as a matter of fact Verbena did mention to me that she had helped Pomeroy get his government contract before he came to Washington to see Lee.…”
“That wasn’t wise of her at all. These things are so delicate; it could affect our whole business. That was why Roger said nothing about it even after they arrested him.”
“If you knew that he had no real quarrel with the Senator, that he wasn’t ruined, why did you tell me that night that he was the murderer?”
“Because,” she had regained control of herself now, “because I didn’t know until the next day that his contract was set. He told me when it looked as if he might be arrested any minute. He knew that I adored my father more than anyone else in the world. He knew that I had lost my head when he was murdered and I think he knew, also, though he never mentioned it, that I suspected him of the murder, to get even with Lee, to get my inheritance … so he broke an old rule of his and told me about his business, about how he had gone to Verbena and she had helped him, despite the Senator. Then I knew how absurd the whole case against him really was.…”
“But you had come to me and told me you thought he was the murderer.”
“I thought he was, yes. I thought he’d gone mad. I thought he’d kill me next to get the inheritance. I thought he was desperate and so I went off my head for twenty-four hours. It was just too much, having everybody know I was Lee’s daughter; everything was so awful that I … I came to your room. I don’t know why but I did. For some reason I was afraid Roger might kill me that night. I … was terribly ashamed afterwards.”
There seemed nothing more to clear up here. Her story was accurate, as far as I could tell. It was also revelatory. Verbena Pruitt began to loom large in the background. What was her role in all this? I had never suspected that she would ever seem mysterious to me. I had underestimated her.
I was ready now to end the session with Camilla Pomeroy; unfortunately we had to go through a number of gyrations which propriety, at least in Talisman City, demands of those who have known one another’s bodies.
I told her that knowing her had been one of the most wonderful events of my life and that I hoped we should meet again, soon.
She told me that I had helped her more than she could say, at a desperate moment. She asked me to forgive her for what she had done. Not entirely sure for which of her treacheries she desired forgiveness, I delivered myself of a blanket absolution. Then, our love affair put on ice as it were, each with a beautiful memory, she pressed my hand and left me to pay the check.
When I got to the lobby she was gone. I was about to call a cab when I saw two familiar figures in serious talk, half-hidden by a potted tree. I went over and said hello to Elmer Bush and Johnson Ledbetter, the Senator-Designate and perhaps never-to-be.
They both looked as though I was the last person in the world they wanted to see at this moment. The falling statesman looked puffy-eyed and tired. The journalist looked eager, like an opportunistic tiger courting a lost sheep. They were cooking up some scheme.
“How are you today, ‘Senator’?” I said brightly; even the falling statesman got the quotes.
“Very well, Sargeant.” I was surprised he remembered my name.
“This is a grave crisis,” said Elmer Bush in his best doom-voice.
“A misunderstanding,” said Ledbetter in a strangled voice.
“We hope, however, to have the truth before the public tonight, on my program,” said Elmer tightly.
“I hope, sir, that you will be vindicated.”
“Thank you, my boy,” said Ledbetter in a husky voice. At that moment the famous newspaperman’s cry, “There he is!” was heard in the lobby, somewhat muffled out of deference to the Mayflower’s dignity; and a journalist and photographer came pounding toward us, their rimless spectacles gleaming, their faces red from cold and pleasure as they cornered the falling star.
“It has all been,” intoned Johnson Ledbetter, “a fantastic mistake.”
2
Fantastic mistake or not, it was the main conversation in Washington these days and, to read the newspapers, everywhere else, too. Corruption when it stains senatorial togas, always ceases to become squalid and becomes tragical, as Mr. Ledbetter would say.
After leaving the Mayflower, I went to the house of Mrs. Goldmountain, knowing that she was to be at home this afternoon. She was, I had discovered, a good source of information, having spent the better part of her fifty years climbing upwards socially; along the way she had investigated nearly every eminent closet in Washington society, she was also proving to be a source of revenue to me as far as the Heigh-Ho Dogfood Company went.
I was led to the yellow room where I found her in deep conversation with that Vice-President of Heigh-Ho to whom I had spoken the day before.
As I entered, she was saying, “Hermione has a range of four octaves, of which three are usable.”
“But that’s marvelous,” said the official, a doggish-looking man, constructed on the order of a chow.
“Mr. Sargeant, I’m so happy you came by, and just at this moment, too. I’m sure your ears must’ve been burning.”
“Pete, here, knows what we think of him at Heigh-Ho,” said the chow, beaming, handing me his damp squashy paw to shake; I shook it quickly and let it drop. I bowed a moment over Mrs. G’s hand, the way diplomats are supposed to do.
“In many ways,” said the chow, “this will be the most novel public relations stunt of the age. You realize that?”
“That’s what I’m paid for,” I said modestly, making a mental note to arrange to take a percentage of the gross on Hermione’s various activities; I was wondering whether an agent’s fee, as well, would be too exorbitant, when Mrs. Goldmountain recalled me from my greed.
“Although I am, in principle, opposed to Self-Exploitation, I couldn’t, in all conscience, allow my girl not to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity, nor could I be so cruel as to keep her talent under a bushel.”
I refrained from commenting that that was probably just where it belonged, under the biggest heaviest bushel there was.
“You’ve taken the right line,” said the official gravely, impressed by Mrs. Goldmountain’s wealth and hard-earned socia
l position, and excellent press relations; all that glitters is not a gold-mountain, I felt like telling him, but then it was to my interest to keep the farce going.
“Have you made arrangements about engaging Town Hall?”
He nodded. “It’s all being prepared now. I’m lining up the press. We’ll have a full coverage.”
“I can do all that,” I said quickly. “That’s my job, after all.”
“There’ll be a lot for you to do; don’t worry. Heigh-Ho, however, is getting behind this campaign with everything it’s got. We may even take radio time.” The noise of money coming my way, lulled me for a moment, like the sirens singing; but then, before I knew it, Hermione and not the sirens was singing.
She had been brought into the large drawing room next to the yellow room and her accompanist had begun to play.
A long yowl chilled my blood, more chilling was the fact that, despite the unmistakable canine quality of the voice, Hermione had perfect pitch. She was not, however, a trained musician.
Mrs. Goldmountain looked dreamily toward the open door through which floated, or rather raced, the poodle’s voice. “She practices every day … not too long, though. I don’t want her to strain her voice.”
“Maybe we ought to insure it,” said the dog-food purveyor anxiously, “wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. Lloyd’s would be only too glad to oblige us.”
“If you like … though I’m sure nothing will happen; she is always under the closest supervision.”
Hermione screamed her way through the “Bell Song” from Lakmé and, my nerves in tatters, my ears vibrating like beaten drums, I applauded loudly, along with the official from Heigh-Ho. Mrs. Goldmountain only smiled.
Then, after several points of business had been cleared up, Mrs. Goldmountain and I were left alone: the official gone back to New York to make an announcement to the news services, Hermione gone back to her quarters and the tin of fois gras to which she was often treated after singing.
It took me some time to get the subject off Hermione and back to the Rhodes family or rather to Ledbetter who now occupied my hostess’s thoughts.
“Johnson called me on the phone this morning (we’re very close, you know); he sounded simply awful.”
“I know, I saw him at the Mayflower this afternoon. He was with Elmer Bush.”
“At least Elmer will stand by him through thick and thin. Johnson will need friends.” I allowed that this was probably the case.
“This morning I telephoned the Vice-President to tell him that I was confident Johnson had done nothing wrong.”
“What did the Vice-President say?”
“Oh, he was on the floor. I didn’t get him but his secretary said she would give him my message.”
“Well, according to all accounts he seems guilty of fraud, along with the other two.”
“I doubt it but then I must confess I never read the newspapers … at least the political sections; those people are always writing lies about personal friends of mine, and then they never know what’s going on until it’s already happened.” She smiled sphinx-like, implying she did know; and perhaps she did.
“In any case, he probably won’t be allowed to take his seat.”
“I’m sure they’ll be able to arrange it,” she said confidently. “They need him, you know.”
I didn’t pursue this point.
“I blame that dreadful little man, the secretary, the one who killed himself, for everything. I’m sure he did it deliberately … made up all sorts of documents just to implicate Johnson. He was a nasty creature, I always thought, killing Lee like that and then purposely framing poor Johnson.” This was a novel twist.
“Did you know him at all?”
“Who? The secretary? Hardly, but I never liked his looks those few times I saw him. Johnson is building his case on the little man’s dishonesty, however. He swears to me that it’s a deliberate plot and I believe him. He quarreled with him the night he died.”
“Who quarreled with whom?”
“Johnson and that little man, you know, Hollister.”
“How do you know?”
“Johnson told me. He tells me everything, not that it’s any particular secret; soon everyone will know it.”
“But where did this take place?” Veils were trembling before my eyes; the figure at the puzzle’s center grew more distinct.
“Johnson spent the evening at the Rhodes’, with Mrs. Rhodes, the evening Hollister killed himself. Didn’t you see him? But of course not, you were at my party and Johnson should have been there, too, except he rightly decided that his first evening in Washington as a Senator should be spent with his predecessor’s widow, a very, very nice thing to do, but then Johnson is a nice man.”
“You mean he was in the house when Hollister died?”
“But of course and he had, he tells me, a private conversation with Hollister of the most unpleasant kind.”
“Without witnesses?”
“There would hardly be witnesses if the conversation was private.”
“I wonder why the papers didn’t mention that he was in the house when the murder took place.”
“Perhaps no one thought to tell them … they never know anything.”
3
For a while I entertained the mad fantasy that Verbena Pruitt, Mrs. Rhodes and the Senator-Designate (the only three in the house at the time, other than servants) might have got together and killed Rufus on their own. Each had a motive, except perhaps Verbena. The vision, however, of these three elderly political figures tiptoeing upstairs to shoot Rufus Hollister was much too ludicrous.
I arrived at the house shortly before dinner. It was already dark outside and the curtains were drawn against the night. The plain-clothes man who usually stood guard was nowhere in sight.
In the drawing room I found Mrs. Rhodes, quite alone, playing solitaire at a tiny Queen Anne desk. She greeted me with her usual neutrality.
“I suppose,” I said, “you’ll be glad to see the last of us.”
“The last of you under these circumstances,” she replied courteously, motioning me to sit beside her.
“What do you plan to do when all this is over, when the estate is settled and everything is taken care of?”
“Do?” she looked at me blankly for a moment, as though she had not, until now, conceived there would be a future.
“I mean do you intend to go back to Talisman City, or live here?”
She gave me a long look, as though I had asked her a nearly impossible question. Finally she said, “I shall stay here of course. All my friends are here,” she added mechanically.
“Like Mrs. Goldmountain?”
She smiled suddenly, for the first time since I met her, like sun on the snow. “No, not like Mrs. Goldmountain. Others … my old friends from the early days. We had no very close friends back home, the old ones died off and we made no new ones, except politically. I haven’t lived there since we came to Washington.”
“I saw Mrs. Goldmountain today.”
“Yes?” She was clearly not interested.
“I understand she’s a great friend of Governor Ledbetter’s.”
“I believe so.”
“She is certainly taking his side in this business.”
“As she should. I’m sure that Johnson did nothing dishonest, nor did Lee.” But this came out automatically; she seemed to be making a series of prepared responses, her mind on something else.
“I didn’t know the Governor was here the night Rufus died.”
“Oh yes, we had a nice chat. He is a good friend, you know, as well as our lawyer.”
“He told Mrs. Goldmountain that he and Rufus quarreled that night, about the business of those companies.”
Mrs. Rhodes frowned, “Ida Goldmountain should show better sense,” she said sharply. “Yes, they had a disagreement. Over what I don’t know; it took place upstairs, in Rufus’s room.”
“Did the police know this?”
“That J
ohnson was here? Oh yes, both Verbena and I told them when we were questioned as to who was in the house.”
“Did they know that the Governor went upstairs to talk to Rufus, alone? That they quarreled?”
She looked at me coldly, with sudden dislike. “Why, I don’t know,” she said. “The police didn’t ask me and I don’t remember having volunteered any information. I am so used to having things misunderstood,” she said and her voice was hard.
“I’m sure they must know,” I said thoughtfully, trying to figure out Winters: why had he kept this piece of information secret? Not only from me but from the official report given to the newspapers.
“Besides,” she said, “the case ended when Rufus killed himself. There was no need to involve one’s friends any more than was necessary. I appreciated Johnson’s kindness in coming to see me his first night in Washington, before he was to take his seat. If I were you,” and she looked at me with her clear onyx eyes, unmarked by age or disaster, “I would say nothing about Johnson’s exchange with Rufus.”
“I’ll have no occasion to, yet,” I said, quite as cool as the old lady. “In any case, I’m not the person to silence. Mrs. Goldmountain is. She’s the informer.”
“That fool!” Mrs. Rhodes exploded.
“Fool or not, she’s given us a new angle on the case.”
“Case? what case?”
“On who killed your husband, Mrs. Rhodes, and who killed Rufus Hollister.”
She sat back in her chair, “You’re mad,” she said in a low voice. “It’s all over. The police are satisfied. Leave it alone,” her voice was harshly urgent.
“But the police aren’t satisfied,” I said, and this was a big and dangerous guess. “They know as well as you and I that Rufus was killed; they are waiting for the real murderer to make some move. So am I.”