“I’m no such fool.” A wave of anger—fury, actually—whirled through her, buffetted her, so that she felt swept and battered by a tide. “I don’t think anyone came in. I think the money went out.”
Miss Vonn was trying to type and listen at the same time; she was making mistakes; the effort of concentration had made her frown and stick out the tip of her tongue.
To hell with Miss Vonn again.
“I guess I’m not listening right,” Tom said in a quiet, reasonable tone. “I keep getting the impression you’re trying to tell me something and it’s something I can’t believe you want to say. And I’m damned sure it’s not anything I want to hear.”
“The cops are coming about Mr. Shima,” she told him, surprising herself. “He’s the man who had the fit in the lobby Friday night, only it wasn’t a fit, he was stabbed and he died in the hospital, and Mr. Keeley says the police will be there today—and maybe you’d better ask Mr. Fallon when you call him, how he’s fixed for insurance.”
There was silence for a few moments and then Tom said, “Jeff, baby, you sound kind of upset and incoherent. Is there any place you can go and lie down? A ladies’ room? And take a couple of aspirin.”
She wanted to shout, You gave the fifty dollars to Sean. He bummed you for it, and you’re so everlastingly grateful to him for talking to you about your play, for listening, for sitting there with his damned pipe in his beard, nodding, talking about the cadence of words and subconscious imagery and starkness and force….
She was crying, dammit.
Miss Vonn, the kindly old witch, was handing her a facial tissue with which to blot the tears.
Someone else was standing not too far away, watching too, a man—and oh for God’s sake, it was Mr. Dunavan!
She squeezed her eyes shut, hard, to dry them. “I can’t talk any more right now,” she gasped into the phone.
“I hope not,” Tom agreed. “I hope you take time to go somewhere quiet and get control of yourself. I’ve never heard you like this. You sound like something squawking from a tree. I’ll call Fallon later—a lot later—and when I call you there at the office about him, I want you to be the girl I know. The one I fell in love with.”
“Goodbye.”
Mr. Dunavan took her arm and tactfully hurried her away from staring eyes into his office. He didn’t ask her what had happened nor what the tears were all about. He gave her a glass of water and a pale-blue tablet, which he assured her was quite mild and wouldn’t hurt her, and left her alone by the window while he pretended to be engrossed with something at his desk.
Something squawking from a tree….
A country freak in its native state—
“Mr. Dunavan—”
“Yes, Miss Hamilton.”
“Could I talk to you about something?”
A funny expression tightened across his face, a kind of unwilling flinching, and his hands on the papers grew quite still. And she thought, he thinks I’m going to turn down the offer to be his secretary, and the idea was the only warming, reassuring one she’d had so far that day that he really did want her so much that he hated to hear her refusal.
“I have an uncle named Baxter,” she began, and now there was another change, after a flash of surprise, and the unwillingness-to-hear went away, and there was a calm look in his eyes, a friendly look, and he said, “Sure, tell me about him.”
So she sketched in the story of Uncle Bax, starting with his history of being the black sheep of her mother’s family, a wanderer since his early youth, and she told Mr. Dunavan about Bax’s visit of nearly a year ago, when she had been so new and green in the city, and of his leaving the box. She described her meeting with Mr. Shima, the delivery of the letter; she related her encounter with Mr. Keeley that morning.
Only nowhere in this story was she Mrs. Burch. She was Miss Hamilton. She left Tom out of it entirely. She couldn’t, for some reason, explain to Mr. Dunavan how she was one person here and another person on West End Avenue. Not that he wouldn’t understand—
Mr. Dunavan laid down the papers he had been holding; his gaze grew fixed and thoughtful. “I see that you’re worried because something happened to Mr. Shima after you gave him the letter. But it seems to me—I mean, as an outsider—that if the letter had been to blame, if receiving it had brought about his terrible end, it should have happened right away. If the letter was all that dangerous and fatal. It seems Mr. Shima had time to run you down, to make inquiries of the super. Making no secret of who he was, either—it seems as if your super might be right, and it was a street mugging without any connection to the letter.”
She sat there trying to control the shivers, the trembling, trying to feel reassured by what Mr. Dunavan was telling her. I got upset, she told herself, when I found out that fifty-dollar bill was gone. I was thinking about the money, the bills I’d meant to pay on, a kind of wild dream of not worrying any more.
And then she wondered, for an instant, if Sean could have taken the money without Tom’s knowing. Tom could have interrupted the tape session to go to the kitchen to mix them a drink. Sean couldn’t have missed seeing her purse where she had forgotten it, the shabby monstrosity on the table by the couch where he would have to sit.
Would Sean take money like that? Steal it from a friend?
She thought wearily, her head aching, I don’t know. I just don’t know.
“If you’re still going to worry, I can make some inquiries,” Mr. Dunavan told her. “I have a few friends I can contact. One is a newspaper man, and I even know a police detective. We went to school together.”
She wanted to ask where, but shyness held her tongue. “I guess I would like for you to do that,” she decided. “I would like to know more about Mr. Shima. And what the police know of him. And why they think he was killed. I don’t suppose the police will tell Mr. Keeley much.”
“I don’t suppose they will.”
She tried to think of a way to bring in this new part of the story, Mr. Fallon and the letter that might be delivered today. But how could she explain that she was waiting for a phone call to tell her whether Mr. Fallon still lived at his old address and was going to be at home? How could she explain without mentioning Tom?
She rose to her feet and smoothed her skirt. “I’m all right now. I can’t imagine why I got so upset, why it suddenly seemed so frightening—”
“We all have days like that. By the way, don’t be afraid I’ll bring you into it when I ask questions about Mr. Shima. I’ll keep your name entirely out of it.” He was standing too. “Have you thought about what I mentioned last Friday?”
“Yes. And I haven’t changed my mind. I’ll do my very best, in every way I can, I’ll try to prove that you were right in asking me.”
“That’s a very refreshing attitude,” he said dryly, but smiling, “and I might add, a little out of the ordinary in these times.”
She was embarrassed. Was the hick from hicksville showing again? “Did I sound …” She stopped to search for a word.
“You sounded fine,” he told her quietly.
Chapter 6
The building in which Mr. Fallon had his apartment was not new, but it was big and solid and inside it was glossy with scrupulous good care. The lobby was carpeted with velvety mixed-brown wool, the mirrors shone, the plants were perky in their pots, obviously well-watered and fertilized. The doorman was impeccably uniformed in a shade that matched the gray walls, and the woman at the switchboard wore an orchid on her snowwhite blouse. You didn’t come much more subduedly highclass than this.
She stepped from the silent, faintly-perfumed elevator into a vestibule on the sixteenth floor. The vestibule was also carpeted, a silky yellow that reminded her of a bottle of wine she’d seen somewhere in a display, a light behind it turning it to clear gold. There were also a couple of gilt chairs and a big copy of a Van Gogh landscape, one of the lonely ones, and a mirror. The mirror showed her herself, and she thought in despair, I look awful. I don’t belong here. My hair
all scatty from the wind, nose turning pink, actually kind of drunk-pink, and the collar coming lose from my jumper.
And I’m not pretty.
I never was.
Out on those prairie farms I had a dream, and the dream was that I would escape to the city, and that the city would change me in some way, I would … well, I was going to become beautiful.
What an idiot I’ve always been.
She touched herself up as best she could with a comb and lipstick. She couldn’t fool around too long; the woman at the switchboard had told Mr. Fallon she was coming.
She touched the button on the wall, and the door opened, and there stood the biggest dog she had ever seen in her life, a lean tan monster with craggy rises about his eyes, with dewlaps that sagged to show tiger’s teeth. A woman’s voice spoke softly, “Stay, Baron,” and then the woman came into view, a small slim person with mousy hair pulled back into a bun. Green dress, dowdily cut, and plain black shoes. No makeup whatever. But what you finally noticed were the eyes, the great watchful dark eyes under the sootline of lashes.
“You are Miss Hamilton?”
“Yes.”
“Come this way, please. Mr. Fallon will see you in his study.”
Jennifer had glimpses of the rooms they passed—an enormous living room that stretched away toward a bank of windows that looked east, a formal dining room where drapes were drawn, where you only dimly saw the massive Spanish table and tall carved chairs and a wallsized cabinet all glassed-in, giving back a flicker of reflection as they passed. A third room, quite different, not at all impressive, small, cozy. A woman’s parlor. The parlor of a woman who wanted to live in the past with tufted velvet and Tiffany lamps and hung handpainted plates—
They were at the study door now, because the woman with the bun was rapping softly, her ear to the panel, and saying, “Miss Hamilton is here.”
A man’s voice spoke inside, and the woman opened the door.
This was man country indeed. A library-den. Navajo rugs on oak floors. Mounted heads of animals on the walls. Shelves and shelves of uniformly-bound books. A smell of pipe tobacco, with undertones of paper and ink, fresh floor polish, glue. Jennifer, passing in, looked back the way they’d come. The dog was there at the entrance to the hall, just standing, relaxed, the gleam of tiger’s teeth taking care of his job.
The man was coming around the end of the big oak desk that sat backside to the windows. On first impression, with the gray light behind him, he was tall, thin to the point of frailty, stooped. He wore a baggy tweed suit and an almost-handlebar mustache, shaggy hair, brown-rimmed spectacles. He must be English—he looked like every typecast actor who had ever played the aging English country squire.
He took Jennifer’s outstretched hand briefly; palm and fingers rubbed dry and bony, cool to her own touch; the craggy lips smiled to show knockkneed teeth. “How do you do, Miss Hamilton? You’ve chosen a lucky day for your call. I have time to talk. I admit I rarely see strangers. Your friend on the phone made this sound important. I hope it is.”
She wanted to say, “I have no idea whether it’s important or not—” but changed it to, “I hope so, too.”
“Come in and sit down.”
He brought a chair for her, set it to face the desk. He went back around the desk, waited for her to be seated, since she had hesitated. It had struck her just then, there was none of Mr. Shima’s wary foot-work here. Mr. Shima had not invited her to his living quarters; he had met her in the open, in the plaza at the Lincoln Center, and his attitude, thinking back about it, had been one of enigmatic wariness. This old man was courteously at ease.
Mr. Fallon glanced toward the door where the woman waited. “Sara, do you suppose we could have some tea, offer some to Miss Hamilton? Or sherry, perhaps?” He glanced at Jennifer.
“Really, I won’t be here long enough—”
“Tea,” he decided. “I’m ready for a break, I’ve done about all I’m going to do today with this—” He shuffled a heap of what looked like manuscript together as he sat down, turned his brown-rimmed gaze on her. “Now—”
She took from her purse the plain white envelope with his name typed on its face. “I’m awfully sorry, but I have to—” It was going to sound terribly silly, here in his own house. “—I’m supposed to ask for some identification. Personal identification.”
“Oh?” Salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose, then knitted in a frown. “Well, let’s see. A passport?” He opened the top drawer of the big desk.
“Do you have a driver’s license?”
“Afraid not. Since I’ve lived so long in New York …” He was turning things over inside the drawer. “… everything like that has expired. One doesn’t need to drive here. How about credit cards? Would they do?” He shut the drawer and took a wallet from his jacket pocket, extracted a Diner’s Club card, tossed it across to her.
“This should be enough.” She handed him the long white envelope with the shorter, fatter letter inside it.
He didn’t rip the end and peep in as Mr. Shima had done. He explored the contents between his fingers, his gaze on her, unblinking. But, like Mr. Shima, he didn’t say anything about the unusualness of having his mail delivered in this way.
The silence stretched taut as a wire, a pulled wire that twanged on an inaudible note of suspense. “Do you know what is inside this letter, Miss Hamilton?”
Was his tone telling her, she’d better not?
“Another envelope.” He was going to find that out right away, anyway.
“And the contents of that other envelope?”
“I have no idea what is in it.”
He searched her face, the eyes behind their lenses intent with suspicion. “You are either entirely truthful and innocent, or a most competent actress. But then, I shouldn’t have expected Baxter to have chosen anyone else.”
“You know? Without even opening—”
“I have expected this letter. Sooner or later.” A halfsmile tipped up one corner of his mouth. “But I am not psychic, my dear. Bax’s thick black lettering shows, albeit dimly, through this plain envelope. He was always a heavy man with a pen. Here I think he’s used one of the new felt markers. Is he your father, by any chance?”
“No.” She was startled by the question. “It’s kind of—well, ridiculous. Excuse me for being amused. I can’t picture Uncle Bax as having ever been married—”
“Your uncle.” He mused over this, his eyes dropping from hers. After a moment he picked up a brass letter-opener and slid it through and across, splitting the top of the envelope. He took out Bax’s letter; she saw how carefully he examined the tape across the back. “Yes. Up to his old tricks. The rascal. Has he been in New York lately?”
“I don’t think so. I saw him almost a year ago—”
“Here?”
“Yes. It was quite a short visit.” She realized that she didn’t really know whether Uncle Bax had left New York, once they had separated in the subway in Greenwich Village. She had taken for granted that he had gone away, off into that wild blue yonder, the improbable countries where he must love to roam; actually, he could have stayed right in town and she wouldn’t have known the difference. New York wasn’t a farm town.
There was a faint rattle of china from the hall; the door was pushed open and the woman called Sara was there with a teacart. It was quite a splendid affair, maple, and with a remarkable display of gleaming white linen, silver, fine china and small plates of cakes and appetizers. With even, Jennifer noted, a pink rosebud in a crystal goblet.
“It’s beautiful!” she cried involuntarily.
“Thank you,” Sara answered in her soft, anonymous voice. She rolled the cart close to the desk, pulled up a chair for herself, fussed for a few moments getting everything arranged, cups into saucers and a spoon for each. “Do you take sugar, Miss Hamilton?”
“And cream too, please.”
The flowery odor of the brewed tea wafted to Jennifer. She felt her mouth water; she was suddenly quite
empty-feeling. No lunch at all … she’d spent most of the lunch hour waiting for Tom’s call, fooling around at her desk. Mr. Dunavan had passed through, had offered to have something sent up for her. He was having lunch with his police detective friend and would report to her when he came back.
She had refused the offer, thanking him for it, confident that Tom would call right away, that she would be able to leave, snatch a bite somewhere on her way to Mr. Fallon’s.
Tom’s call had come at last, when the lunch hour was almost over. She had begged extra time from Miss Vonn to get a prescription filled during lunch time, an imaginary prescription at an imaginary crosstown drugstore, and now she would have to rush like mad because of Tom’s delay.
Miss Vonn had looked knowing and sympathetic over Jennifer’s request, obviously believing that the need for medical bolstering was connected to the tearful interlude of that morning—a tranquilizer was called for. But now Jennifer was suddenly aware that she had been foodless since early morning.
Sara had risen, handed Jennifer the cup of tea. The china cup was translucent; light glowed golden in the steaming tea. Sara returned to the teacart for cream and sugar. She offered the sugar first. Not lumps, to Jennifer’s mild surprise—it was granulated sugar with an old-fashioned silver shell-spoon to dip it with.
Jennifer lifted the cup toward her face, inhaled the fragrance of the tea. “It’s wonderful—too good to mix anything into it. I’m going to drink it as it is!”
For an amazingly long moment Sara stood there with the silver bowl. She inched it closer to the cup, made some half-hearted sound of urging. She seemed at a loss, disconcerted; there seemed for a moment almost a touch of fright in the pale placid eyes.
Jennifer apologized in the face of that strangeness. “I’m sorry. The tea just smells so good I want to keep it the way it is. Undiluted by anything.”
It was Mr. Fallon who filled the odd pause. “Sara, don’t look so put out. It’s rare that we have a visitor as perceptive as Miss Hamilton. She has the true discrimination of the epicure.”
The Baxter Letters Page 5
