Читать книгу Washington Whispers Murder - Leslie Ford - Страница 7

I don’t suppose this is what the poet meant by one touch of nature, but it made a whole part of the Washington world spontaneously and delightedly kin. With the exception of Mrs. Brent, I must have been the only person there who wished it hadn’t happened, and not because of the white silk suit Ham Vair could never wear again no matter what the cleaners were able to do. It was his face as he checked his exit, half-way to the garden gate, and looked back. There was blue murder in it. If he’d hated Rufus Brent before, the laughter that echoed in his ears as he left that place must have been utterly intolerable to him.

For a moment at least, the Brents were in. Mr. Brent was the center of a more than enthusiastic crowd, mostly senators. Nor was Mrs. Brent alone on the sidelines. Her suntanned young friend in the grey flannel suit and steel-rimmed spectacles had got to her at last. That was a break too—it’s surprising how high and dry the middle-aged wife of the man of the moment can be stranded at times. Mrs. Brent was as transformed as everybody else, smiling happily, eager as a girl, and nobody that I heard was making any cracks about her preferring very young and very handsome men. It would have been the moment, because she was genuinely radiant, talking to him.

“Who is that?”

I looked around. Marjorie Seaton had moved in beside me. She was cool and lovely, bareheaded in a brown linen dress the shade of her own country tan. “Talking to Mrs. Brent,” she added.

“His name is Forbes Allerdyce,” I said. “He’s a friend of theirs.”

“Really? I didn’t know they had any friends here.”

“He called Vair a lily of the field,” I said. “He can’t be an enemy.”

She laughed. “Okay. Are you going home after this?”

She’d stopped laughing abruptly and her brown eyes kindled. “I’ve got something I want you to see.”

There wasn’t much doubt what it was. “Okay,” I said. I looked at my watch. Whatever my duties to Sergeant Buck’s high-class little lady would be, I ought at least to be home at some point during her early arrival. It took me about fifteen minutes, however to work my way back to Mrs. Brent. Her young friend had gone, but the trailing clouds were still there. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks flushed. She’d pulled her hat into place and for a moment she looked as young and lovely as it did.

“Oh, Mrs. Latham, I want you to meet Forbes Allerdyce. He’s a friend of my son’s. A friend of Rufie’s. I’m so happy. You must meet him.”

She looked around eagerly. I saw him then, but two or three of the girls Archie Seaton had avoided by not coming had managed to surround him on his progress to the gate. And he had some of Archie’s finesse, I thought, because he was gone when I looked next. And I think I must unconsciously have seen there was some kind of discrepancy between Forbes Allerdyce’s saying Mrs. Brent had arranged for him to come and the quality of her delight at seeing him. If you arrange for someone to come to a party, you’re not as starry-eyed as all that when they arrive. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have inquired about him when my hostess dropped the hand of a diplomat from this side of the iron curtain and held hers out to me.

“Who is Forbes Allerdyce? The young man in the grey flannels?”

She looked very blank. “But darling, I was going to ask you. You brought him, I distinctly saw you, at the gate . . . oh, Mr. Secretary, so nice of you to come. . . .”

So I just assumed the unfortunate contretemps of the lily of the field and the bird of the air had broken things up before Mrs. Brent had a chance to present him, and let it go at that. All that mattered was that Mr. Forbes Allerdyce had made the afternoon a lovely thing for her, and it was very smart of her to have had him there. I saw him again as I drove down Foxhall Road. He was at the wheel of a large maroon convertible, bareheaded, waiting for a break in the traffic. But I had other things on my mind, Georgetown traffic being one of them and Sergeant Buck’s Miss Virginia Dolan the other, or I might possibly have examined what Mrs. Brent had said a little more closely.

I put my car away in its alley corrugated-iron garage and walked down P Street toward home. It was the moment in Georgetown when the dusk, still more rose than amethyst, sifts through the trees softening the outlines of the old painted brick houses, making the place what it used to be, a simple unemotional village on the Potomac, with no fanfare and no political connotations, left, right, or center. The day’s-end traffic across the bridges from Washington was abruptly over. The street was empty except for a man waiting for a spotted dog to resume his walk and a sedate cat crossing to the other side, her mind on her own affairs. At least that’s all I saw till I got past the next tree and saw the taxi unloading at the curb in front of my house . . . and got my first glimpse of Sergeant Buck’s yellow chick.

She was pure enchantment. I slowed practically to a standstill looking at her. The driver was lugging her bags up the steps, and the yellow chick was still at the curb, leaning in at the cab window, talking to someone inside. She was slender and graceful as a flower, and had one foot back like a dancer’s, lightly tiptoe on the bricks, poised for a last laughing word. The driver came back, she stepped away, waving her hand, and skimmed feather-light across the sidewalk up the steps. The taxi came by me at that moment, and a head grinning at me from ear to ear poked itself out the window. It had been a surprising afternoon and still was. We have group riding in taxicabs in Washington still, especially to and from the Union Station, and the one person who’d never get stuck with any of the characters most of us draw was right there, his hand up, thumb and forefinger describing the quick circle as eloquent as his grinning face. If there was a yellow chick within a mile of the Station, Archie Seaton would always be the guy to draw her.

And she was okay. I got that, from the happy circle he pushed through the window at me. I didn’t get any more, but I was as delighted as I had been relieved, by the one look I’d got of her myself.

She heard me coming and turned.

“Hello,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m Grace Latham.”

“Oh!” Her eyes bloomed into a smile blue and fresh as a new morning glory opening into the sunshine. “Hello!” she said. “I’m Ginny Dolan.”

“Hello, Ginny.” I smiled again. “It’s nice you’re here.”

I could see a dozen reasons, just offhand, why Archie Seaton had put so much feeling into that signal of his. She was a darling, cute as a kitten and very, very pretty. Her hair was like spun sugar under her little off-the-face blue straw hat with a white rose nestled at the back of her right ear. Her skin was petal fresh, she had a moist, not too brilliant mouth and just a suspicion of a dimple at either end, perfect teeth, a voice that was nicely modulated and rather diffidently shy, with only a touch of an accent that wasn’t Washington but wasn’t any place else in particular. At least it wasn’t Southern. And what Buck had said was entirely true. She was a very high-class little lady indeed, as charming and simple as the neatly fitting navy faille summer suit she wore, dainty and young and as fresh as her lawn blouse with its tiny turned-down collar and fetching blue velvet bow.

I pushed the door open and picked up one of her bags. “Come in,” I said. I thought she hesitated for a moment, picking up the other two, but I could have been wrong.

“Would you like to go up to your room now?”

“Maybe we’d better talk things over first,” she said, a little primly. I said “All right,” a little surprised but more amused, and led the way into my living room. I switched on the light. The dusk was deepening in the garden, painting the old brick wall a soft lovely purple. I pushed Sheila, my Irish setter, off the sofa. She knows better than to be there but she’s getting too deaf to hear the front door open any more. I gave the cushions a perfunctory brush.

“Mother never allows dogs on the furniture,” Ginny Dolan said. “She says they get hair all over people.”

Perhaps that was why she didn’t at once sit down. She stood just inside the door looking around her, not rudely but with a kind of objective interest that certainly included the works. Then she took a chair, not the sofa, and sat down, her feet in tailored blue leather pumps crossed in front of her.

“You’re a friend of Mr. Buck’s, aren’t you?” she asked.

I hated to start lying to the girl right off the bat, but then I remembered things had changed. She was being so polite and so very nice about it that I’d have had to pervert the truth in any case. I nodded.

“He said you had a very nice house,” she said.

“Home, surely.” I corrected her I thought with considerable urbanity. I know Sergeant Buck’s semantics too well to believe he’d ever confuse those two terms.

She looked a little surprised, but not much. “That’s right, he did say that,” she said. “I guess you read his letter. Anyway, I’m new in Washington, of course, but Mother said it was important for me to live in the right place and not to take it for more than one night if I didn’t like it.”

I saw it was too bad I hadn’t read Mr. Buck’s letter. I might even have been a little annoyed, if Miss Ginny Dolan hadn’t been so patently in earnest and so totally without malice of any kind.

“And it seems very nice.” She looked around the room again. “Of course, we have all modern furniture, in Taber City.”

It was my plain stupidity that made my jaw drop at that point. I like to think I’ve become pretty inured to minor shocks. That one wasn’t minor. How I’d missed the connection between the yellow chick’s home town and the Brent-Vair locus of contention seems hard to understand. Buck had certainly made it clear. She’d never been out of Taber City more than once or twice. I could hear him saying it. Looking at her, beautifully poised and as perfectly dressed as a teen-model for a first-rate Fifth Avenue specialty shop, it was hard to believe—unless I’d underestimated Taber City. I hadn’t made the connection in any way.

But, of course, it didn’t necessarily mean she knew Taber City’s Hot Rod representative on Capitol Hill. It must be a fairly good-sized place—it had a newspaper anyway. I could see “—TY GAZ—” on the center fold of the paper she had under the bag in her lap. At least, I hoped she didn’t know Hamilton Vair. I’d had plenty of him that day to last me indefinitely.

She’d seen my jaw drop. She could hardly have helped it. “I don’t mean this isn’t all right,” she said gently. “Only, Mother says you only live once and you might as well have a little comfort while you’re at it.—But a boy in the taxi said this was a good neighborhod,” she added then, with a small tinge of complacency. “I met him on the train. He’s very nice, Eastern, sort of, but very friendly. I told him a friend of Daddy’s had got me a room here.”

She turned her blue eyes from the picture of my sons on the table. She’d been examining them with enough interest to make me glad—even at this point—that they were safely out of Washington.

“He said it was a very nice place. He said he used to know a boy who lived here once and he got along all right. He thought I’d get along okay if I didn’t stay out too late. You’re very strict, he said.”

I could see now why Archie Seaton had thought it was all so funny.

“Now, about how much I’m supposed to pay,” she said, really getting down to some small but solid brass tacks. “Mother said I wasn’t to let myself be gypp—be overcharged. She said Mr. Buck oughtn’t to get anything—you know, any commission because he’s supposed to be a friend of Daddy’s. Daddy’ll take care of him. Now, how much do you think it ought to be, Mrs. Latham? Of course, I’ve got a job, and I’d like to live on it.—But I don’t really have to. Money doesn’t make any difference to Daddy. He’s the sheriff of Taber County.”

She brightened again and went on without giving me the chance to answer her.

“You didn’t know I got my job in a contest, did you? a talent show? You had to know how to type, of course. That was one of the entrance requirements. But you had to have talent. I danced.”

She gave me an incredibly lovely flower-like smile. “Of course”—she didn’t exactly shrug but the effect was the same—“I’d have gotten it anyway. We all knew that. It was all set when I graduated from High School in February. Daddy didn’t like it very much, but you know Mother. She thought I’d have a better chance of meeting people in Washington than I would in Taber. She doesn’t go for my boy friend. He’s all right, but . . . you know.” She smiled again. “His father’s a big oil man in Taber. He’s very rich. But Mother says a girl has to look around. Daddy says he’d rather be a big frog in a little pond, but that’s not the way Mother looks at it.”

She took one glove off and was starting on the other when she caught herself and became seriously business-like a second time. “Oh,” she said. “Mother told me I wasn’t to take the room unless it had kitchen and laundry privileges with it. She says if I paid a quarter to use the washing machine. . . .”

“I’ll see what we can manage, Ginny,” I said hastily.

She took the other glove off. “But you haven’t told me how much.”

I got up. “Sergeant Buck has taken care of that,” I said. I was about to add I didn’t think she’d really be there for very long, but she interrupted me with a peal of laughter, as merry and tinkling as the prisms on the mantel lustres when they’re moved by the evening breeze.

“Won’t Daddy and Mother simply die!” she said. “They haven’t seen Mr. Buck for ever so long, and Daddy was sure the kind of lady he’d know is the kind of lady I shouldn’t. But you know Mother, she made him write the letter just the same. She said Mr. Buck would probably own half a dozen boarding houses himself now, and we’d get ever so much better rates. And she didn’t like what Daddy said, because Mr. Buck was a boyfriend of hers once. She’d have married him if she hadn’t met Daddy.”

I’d heard Colonel Primrose say Sergeant Buck has led a charmed life.

Ginny stopped laughing, her face suddenly full of apology and real compassion. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said quickly. “Mother told me to be terribly careful. But you’re not the jealous type, are you? Mother said if she was a widow——”

The telephone rang then, fortunately. All I hoped was that Sergeant Buck would never, never have to hear what I’d just heard. Ginny Dolan’s mother was rapidly becoming Number One on my list. In fact, at the moment she’d quite taken the place recently vacated by Sergeant Buck. As I picked up the phone and answered it, I wasn’t sure that third place wasn’t held by the young man whose cheerful voice was there in my ear.

“Hi, Mrs. Latham.” It was Archie Seaton. “Got a room for rent, Mrs. L.? Oh boy, oh boy, is she a honey! Oh, man! What’s she doing here? How long’s she staying?”

“Not long,” I said firmly. “But she’s here now. Would you like to talk to her?”

“No, no,” he said. “I’m coming over. I’m taking her to a movie in half an hour. Okay?”

“It’s okay with me,” I said.

His voice was abruptly serious then, which is unusual for Archie. “Have you seen Marge any place, Mrs. Latham?”

“She’s coming here this evening. Why?”

“She left me a note asking if I know anybody named Forbes Allerdyce. Who is he, do you know?”

“He’s a friend of the Brents,” I said.

“Oh. I wish she’d quit stewing about those people. Tell your dreamboat I’ll be right over.”

Whoever had taught Ginny Dolan her manners had said you pretended not to hear what anybody said on the telephone. She turned to me with innocent wide-open eyes.

“Where’s your television set?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Oh,” she said. “Everybody in Taber City has one. We have three.”

“Well,” I said, “in Washington, we have Archie Seaton. He’s coming over. You’d probably like to go to your room now. You can leave the big bag. I’ll have that carried up for you later.”

She went blithely ahead of me toward the stairs. “Oh, I’ll just leave this down here.” She went back and put the Taber City Gazette on the coffee table, smiling at me with a sort of demure but happy pride. “It’s got my picture in it. I thought you’d like to look at it maybe.”

“I’d love to,” I said. “Thanks.”

She went along into the hall. “How many other roomers do you have right now?”

“None,” I said.

“Well, I can probably find somebody for you. There’ll probably be some other girls in Hamilton Vair’s office.”

She stopped on the second step and turned back to me, smiling that shy, delighted smile. “You didn’t know it was Hamilton Vair I was coming to work for, did you? It’s his staff I’m on.”

For the second time she misinterpreted the I dare say stunned look on my unfortunate face.

“You know who he is, don’t you?”

“Oh yes.” I said it quickly.

She laughed then. “I don’t wonder you’re surprised,” she said kindly. “But Ham Vair isn’t as terribly important out in Taber as he is in Washington. Anyway, he has to do anything Daddy says. Daddy’s the best friend he’s got out there. He wouldn’t have got to first base without Daddy. That’s why I didn’t have to worry about getting the job in Washington. I’m going to be his receptionist. I thought I’d meet more people, that way.”

Of course, I should have guessed. Who else would have a talent contest to pick his best friend’s daughter for a job in Washington?

She started on up the stairs. “Mother says Daddy and Ham Vair are hand in glove.” The musical rippling laughter came down toward me. “Daddy’s the hand, Ham’s the glove. I guess people in Washington would be surprised if they knew that. So I just laughed when that boy asked me if I wasn’t scared coming to the Capital.”

The idea was so deliciously preposterous to Ginny Dolan that she laughed all the rest of the way up stairs. It was such complacent laughter, so full of confident assurance, so empty of any possible idea of moral compunction or just plain ordinary everyday ethics, that I was really shocked.

She stopped at the top of the stairs. “You didn’t know—” she began, and I stopped involuntarily, waiting to hear what I didn’t know this time.

“You didn’t know I went to a charm school, did you? They teach you poise, and things like that. It was a wonderful place. I was only there two months, but the lady said I didn’t have to stay any longer. I was ready for anything, she said. I could hold my own anywhere. That’s when I first decided to come to Washington.”

By golly, the lady was right, I thought. Or at least I hoped she was . . . for as I turned on the light in my front guest room and opened the bathroom door, I had a curious little catch in my throat suddenly. Her confident figure in the mirror on the back of the door seemed to me infinitely pathetic. Her slender body was as fragile as if her bones were made of spun glass. I remembered that look on Ham Vair’s face as he turned back on his way out at the garden party.