Читать книгу Washington Whispers Murder - Leslie Ford - Страница 6

But this is Washington. What made my spine stiffen, in that appalled instant, had nothing to do with the proposed murder—or call it killing—of Congressman Hamilton Vair. What appalled me was Mrs. Rufus Brent’s making, out loud and in words nobody would have to misquote or distort, the deliberate statement that her husband Rufus Brent was going to kill Hamilton Vair, and with no more compunction than he’d have if he killed a rattlesnake. Maybe knowing Colonel Primrose has conditioned me to murder, but nothing I’ve ever known has conditioned me to the incredible speed with which the merest and most private whisper leaks into public amplifiers these last few years in Washington. There’s a sonic osmosis in Washington walls that makes a paralyzed deaf mute the only absolute security risk here any more. And what Ham Vair could do with a calm statement that Rufus Brent was going to kill him, I shuddered to think.

But there was no time for me to tell Mrs. Brent what a ghastly thing she’d done. My luncheon guests were arriving and the man who helps Lilac when we have people in was already on his way up the basement stairs to answer the doorbell. I only hoped he was as blank as he looked, because there’s a great deal of loose money around Washington for loose-tongued servants. I think even Mrs. Brent was startled at seeing him. She was certainly startled at the idea of meeting other people in the hall, and anybody who knew who she was must have been very startled a minute later, if they’d seen her plodding up the area steps among the garbage cans, to get out without having to speak to the front door arrivals.

All through cocktails and lunch I found myself quaking all over again at the monstrous indiscretion I’d just been a party to. Fortunately the guests were friends of friends from out of town, and one of them was a man who had a simple if long-winded solution for the world’s bumble-headed ills. Just drop a load of atomic bombs, he said, with infinite variation. All I had to do was sit with a fixed smile, thinking of the one Mrs. Brent had dropped, that the slightest leak would detonate to the lasting glory of Hamilton Vair and the ruinous embarrassment of her husband, who might just as well resign from ITC and close Brentool, Taber City, that instant for all the Chinaman’s chance he had to survive it. In a city where the Capitol Dome, perforated like a kitchen colander, is the symbol of how secrets are kept, it was a shocking piece of information she’d made me responsible for. Creeping out through the garbage cans wasn’t going to help anything if Vair’s spies were on P Street at the moment.

It was the only meal I’d eaten for some time that Rufus Brent’s name wasn’t even mentioned at, except as it kept shouting itself in my own inner ear. I’d have called Colonel Primrose when my guests left, except that it was some kind of hush-hush job he was on and I’d have to work an involved relay system through the Treasury. I also didn’t dare risk a leak of my own. So I did nothing, except keep my mouth shut. I didn’t mention the Brents’ name to anyone, and I even shut my eyes when I saw in the next morning’s paper that Ham Vair had made a rip-roaring speech on the floor of the House daring Rufus Brent to make good his dastardly threat to close down Brentool, Taber City and starve the women and children—I don’t know why they’re always the ones to starve, but presumably their husbands and fathers eat out on those occasions. I wanted nothing at all to do with any dastardly threat Rufus Brent might make, even to speaking the five letters of his name. Until I went over to Wisconsin Avenue to go to the bank the next morning.

I was passing the service station on the corner of Beall Street when I heard a rap on the window glass of the flower shop next door to it. Inside, her white-gloved gyrations indicating she’d come out and would I wait, was the friend who was giving the garden party.

“—You’re coming this afternoon, darling, aren’t you?”

“Why didn’t you say it was for the Rufus Brents?” My tongue got out before I could stop it.

“Oh, sssh . . . sssh, my dear!” She looked hastily around at the baskets of daffodils and lilacs banking the steps behind her. “Whoever told you? But it must have been Marge Seaton, I’ve only told her and one other. And I only told her so she’d get that wretched brother-in-law of hers back in town today. Is he back, do you know? I’ve promised at least half a dozen girls I’d have him there. What they see in him I’ve no idea, except his money, and he’s not as rich as all that.”

It is a problem. Sandy-red-haired, with a face nobody could call handsome except a chimpanzee interested in the evolutionary process in reverse, Tom Seaton’s younger brother Archie certainly has something the young female of the species can’t resist. His own resistance approaches the magnificent. He has a finesse in evading natural and social consequences that makes Sergeant Buck’s efforts on his Colonel’s behalf look like mere inept blundering. He’s an older friend of my older son—he’s twenty-eight—and I’ve been putting up with his engaging deviltries for a long time now.

“I don’t know whether he’s back or not,” I said. I didn’t know he was out of town for that matter, and since he also has a real gift for finding the most likely girls in the most unlikely places, he was the last person I knew to hurry back to a party anywhere. “And it wasn’t Marge who told me anyway,” I said.

“Well, don’t breathe it. And that woman, my dear . . . have you seen her? She’s ominous, truly. Every prominent man who married the girl next door ought to be allowed one tablet of cyanide in case he comes to Washington some day. And Rufus Brent’s ravishing.”

“I thought she was nice,” I said.

“I’ve never heard you so malicious, Grace. I’m ashamed of you.”

“Are her sons coming?” I asked. “They look better than Archie Seaton to me.”

That was deliberate. You may recall from the beauty shop what a couple of presentable sons will do to make their mother worth knowing in Washington.

She brightened instantly. “Darling, I didn’t know they had any sons. The daughter’s all I’ve heard about.” She raised her brows. No doubt she’d seen the picture too. “Ham Vair says she’s really quite shocking.”

“Ham Vair?”

She looked at me quickly. “Grace, you know I wouldn’t have asked him if I hadn’t had to. I just couldn’t leave him out, dear. And he’s the only other person I told the party was for the Brents . . . so it has to be him or Marge or the Brents themselves who told you. I told him so he wouldn’t have to be embarrassed——”

“Did you tell the Brents? Or is it all right to embarrass them?”

She did have the grace to laugh a little. “How could I, darling? No, I’m afraid his name never got on the list I sent them.” She looked worried nevertheless. “Do help me, won’t you? I’m afraid he’s coming, . . . he really hasn’t any manners, you know. I do hope he wears a coat and tie—you should have seen him in the newsreel the other day. But he’ll be in the Senate next year as sure as you’re born. That’s why I had to ask him. My husband’s livid, he thinks Ham’s a real menace.”

“So do I,” I said.

“So does everybody, darling, but it’s better to have a menace for a friend than for a menace.” She laughed at that, as she’d done before, I gathered. “It’s simply a fact of life, dear. You’d be surprised the people who think he’s going a lot farther than the Senate. You’d be appalled at the support he’s gathering even among the kind of people we know.—Do help me, won’t you? Old Washington impresses the pants off him, just now. Unless he decides to be homespun and very rude. . . .”

I hadn’t realized up to that point what a successful menace Ham Vair had become so quick. Congressmen are socially a dime a dozen in Washington. A senator is something else again, especially a young and handsome senator who isn’t married. If this woman, with the ex-Wall Street husband she had, felt Vair had to be stayed with flagons of Scotch and placated with martinis and shrimp on toothpicks, it meant a great deal. Especially if after the jockeying she must have done to snare the Brents for their first social appearance, she’d risk offending them not to offend Ham Vair. It was disturbing. I wondered whether I shouldn’t call Mrs. Brent up and warn her Vair was going to be there, or get Marjorie Seaton to do it for me. Still, Mr. Brent would hardly choose a garden party to kill off a rattlesnake—or would he?—and anyway, I decided there was no use for Mrs. Brent to worry herself into a state of collapse before the ordeal began. It was going to be ordeal enough even without Vair. Too many people feel that way about cyanide and great men’s wives in Washington.

And if Congressman Vair felt any embarrassment about coming to the party for the man he’d accused in that morning’s paper of “battening on defense contracts while our sons are being killed in Korea,” he was managing to conceal it, when I saw him. And he hadn’t come in home-spun. In comparison with him, all the men there, from the justices and the Cabinet straight down the Capital hierarchy, looked like fugitives from the Try-It-On-And-Take-It Barrel at the Jostle Mart on Wisconsin Avenue. He had on a white raw silk suit, gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the late afternoon sunshine, that must have cost three times the price of the decent banker’s-grey worn by his host, whom he was just shaking hands with and clapping on the back when I got there. I glanced down at the receiving line, in front of a lattice that had the loveliest shower of white wisteria on it I’ve ever seen. The day itself was as lovely, one of those perfect things Washington comes up with in May to seduce you into forgetting what stinkers it’s going to hand out in June, July and August. It was cool, clear and brilliant as blue crystal. The Brents were shaking hands with one of the Cabinet and his wife and daughter, and if they were aware of Hamilton Vair they weren’t showing it from where I stood.

They could hardly not have been, however for Ham Vair was obviously just waiting for the proper moment to do something or other in the most spectacular manner he could achieve. He made no move to go down to them, but stayed where he was at the top of the garden, nobody except his unfortunate host anywhere near him. Nobody could miss him there, in his pearly shining new silk suit, spotting his friends with a fine flourish of his hand and what I believe is called the big hello. His blond Nordic countenance shone, and so nobody could miss the true and real flavor of the situation, he’d give an occasional big wink too. It was a kind of cynically arrogant clowning that was clearly embarrassing to everybody but Hamilton Vair. He reminded me of a cocky too-big boy in short pants about to write a bad word on the frosting of his sister’s birthday cake.

As I stood there, I heard a man’s voice behind me. It wasn’t the first man’s voice I’d ever heard, nor was the name, as he spoke it at the gate there, a name that had any meaning to me, so I’d automatically turn, as if for example a man’s voice had said “Marshall Tito,” or “Mr. Lucky Luciano.” And it wasn’t the voice itself, pleasant as it was, casual, a little too cultivated possibly but not offensively so. I suppose I’d like now to be able to say that what did make me turn, as Ham Vair did too, so that both of us looked around at the same moment, was a profound and far-seeing intuition. But whatever intuitions I have I’d left home that day.

“Mr. Forbes Allerdyce. I’m a friend of Mrs. Brent’s. She arranged for me to come.”

I thought, if I thought at all, that Vair had turned because of that. It was reasonable he’d take a dim view of any friend of the Rufus Brents. Mr. Forbes Allerdyce was tall, with crisp sun-bleached brown hair, cut like my sons’ and Archie Seaton’s, good-looking but not sleekly handsome, and his spectacles gave him a kind of air that if not scholarly was thoughtful anyway. He was certainly at home in the world around him.

“I don’t believe I’ve met my host,” he said. “Which is he?”

“Right over there, sir.” The attendant whose job was obviously to look out for the unknown and uninvited had reacted with instant decorum.

I was glad there was another friend of the Brents’, besides me, to help absorb the shock of Ham Vair. My hostess would be glad too, I thought, as I saw her look around, and saw the signal of distress she was hoisting with her arched brows. She wanted to break up the line before Vair got to it, but it was far too pointed a thing to do. She was stuck and she knew it, and I didn’t doubt she was wishing she’d settled for the lion and left the jackal at home.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” Mr. Forbes Allerdyce was there at my side. I hadn’t realized it till he spoke. He smiled at me. “I’m a stranger here” he said. “Who is the lily of the field in white silk? Or is there a gents’ fashion show in conjunction?”

He was glancing toward the wide open space on the upper lawn.

“That’s Hamilton Vair,” I said.

The smile went off his face. “Oh,” he said, a little stiffly. He caught himself then and smiled again. “That’s not to be construed as a criticism of my host at all.” He laughed apologetically, but there was nothing he could have said that would have made me feel more warmly toward him.

“I think I’ll go on down,” I said. I’d intended to wait and follow Vair, but there was an emptying in front of the receiving line just then. Mr. Allerdyce still stood there, looking over at Vair as if a gleaming mother-of-pearl silk suit was something he didn’t often see. It was certainly in contrast with the grey flannels he had on, admirably cut and admirably worn, that with his suntan and whole casual easiness suggested a winter on a yacht in the Bahamas rather than in Washington, D.C. But I was down the garden then.

“—Darling, you know Mr. Brent, don’t you? This is Mrs. Latham, Mr. Brent.”

As I looked up at Rufus Brent and felt his warm cordial handclasp, I had the feeling that I had known him, for a long time. It’s the sort of thing that makes a woman describe a man as ravishing, I expect. Actually, he was ugly as sin. His nose certainly had a mole on it, if not a wart as advertised by Hamilton Vair. So did his chin, which also looked as if it had been chopped off square before it got altogether out of hand. His nose had been formed with no pattern to go by and stuck between two deep furrows slanting down to the corners of his wide mouth, and his dark hazel eyes were shrewd and alive and wonderfully twinkling and kind under a pair of shaggy black-and-grey brows. He was a big man, a little stoop-shouldered, with a slight but comfortable embonpoint and a watch chain across it.

I am glad I did not call Colonel Primrose and tell him. . . . That flashed into my mind, and with it an extraordinary sense of relief. To try to mind this man’s business for him would have been an impertinence as brazen as Hamilton Vair’s. And I don’t mean that he didn’t look perfectly capable of killing somebody. You didn’t have to look twice to see that under all the charm and wisdom of that Gothic ugly face there was something as hard as a keg of old nails. It made me wonder if Ham Vair had any realization of how foolhardy his arrogance was, against the experience and reserved power of the man he was getting ready to insult, if he could. And it seemed to me that Mr. Rufus Brent had an air of cool and watchful waiting. He looked altogether to me like nobody it was wise to push too far.

“—Lena tells me you’re an old friend of hers, Mrs. Latham.”

I caught the quick appeal she flashed at me.

“Yes, indeed,” I said. “It’s so nice to see her again.”

She had on another print dress, a sort of teal-blue like Sergeant Buck’s Sunday suit, but beautifully cut so she didn’t look as lumpy as she did in the purple blotches she wore to my house. Her hat, trimmed with French lilacs, was a pretty hat, but it had slipped like the pink one, so she looked a little dizzy, with her carrot-red hair. She held my hand almost as if she needed actual physical support, the tension that must have been mounting all the time she’d stood there, waiting for Hamilton Vair to approach her husband, a really quite desperate kind of thing. I felt again the strange quality she had, that made her so different from the assured and lacquered women around her. It was a kind of spiritual thing, almost mystical, as she turned that extraordinary sweetness on and off like a far-away light in some lonely sea deep within herself. I could see why she believed in miracles.

I was aware then of a sudden silence, sharp and almost breathless, for an instant, over the garden, and I didn’t have to look to know that it was Hamilton Vair’s moment. Mrs. Brent’s hand dropped mine.

“Hamilton, how nice of you to come!”

My friend was a lady born and a hostess bred.

“You know Mr. Rufus Brent, I believe? Mr. Vair, Mr. Brent.”

Hamilton Vair moved a step toward Rufus Brent, evil glee shining in his face. Mr. Brent seemed to grow bigger. Without seeming to change at all, his face suddenly reminded me, in a very different way, of the granite quality of Sergeant Buck’s. He bowed slightly.

“Mr. Vair and I have met,” he said. “How do you do sir? This is my wife Mrs. Brent, Mr. Vair.”

“How do you do, Mr. Vair?”

Her voice carried a long way in the silence. I was proud of her. I’d wondered if she’d been able to speak at all. Neither of them had put out a hand, but it didn’t seem as if they hadn’t. It only seemed that it was a gaucherie of astonishing proportions that Hamilton Vair had put out his. It looked enormous there, and very empty. I don’t know what particularly made it look that way, but it did, and as if suddenly aware of how it looked, he dropped it abruptly. The grin broadened on his face then, lighted with a sudden malice it hadn’t had before, and he started to speak.

“Your daughter——”

But whatever Ham Vair was going to say about Molly Brent is lost to the history of these crowded times. People wouldn’t put out a hand to touch him, but the gods would, and did. At just that moment, a bird flew over. It was a big bird, not the great auk but no sparrow. A sudden howl of mirth, loud, long and completely spontaneous, broke the silence, and the Hot Rod of the Marsh Marigold State instead of joining it made another and far more incredible blunder. A poor misguided waiter, about five feet high and with occupational bunions on both feet, hobbled up to him with an open napkin, and Hamilton Vair knocked his hand down with a furious gesture that sent his tray of Tom Collins winding left and right, all over the astonished little man and half a dozen guests male and female within winding distance. The waiter stumbled and nearly fell. A large “Boo!” rose from somewhere in the crowd, a clear voice called out “For shame!” and boos and laughter mingled until Hamilton Vair jerked abruptly around and left the place.

The laughter swelled as the little waiter mopped himself off, wet and grinning, a hero for the moment. The Brents had been magnificent. Her face hadn’t changed, her husband’s belly was the absorber that prevented any emotion from more than rippling across his wide mouth and glinting momentarily bright in his eyes.