“You’re keyed up.”
“I mean,” she said, speaking with difficulty, “about the marriage. I guess it hurt you.”
“Tell me about it some other time. You’d better finish your drink and have another.” It seemed better to shut her off.
“I had to go somewhere. I couldn’t stand the house. This was the only place that meant anything.”
“It’s a nice place,” he agreed, and pretended to look around, as though to see just how nice a place it was. And it was a nice place. It was hidden away from the world, which he guessed was the reason he had always brought her here. It hadn’t been so easy then. It wasn’t, when he came right down to it, any easier now.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.” He did not know whether she was still talking about the marriage or about Charles. He was surprised to find that her hand was completely dry, like the hand of an observant child.
“I’m frightened,” she said. “I guess I always have been. And I wonder if he knows I didn’t kill him.” She watched the waiter bringing the second round.
“He’s dead, Maggie.”
“Is he?” She did not sound as though she believed it. “I don’t think Lily thinks so.”
“Lily’s nuts.”
It was the wrong thing to say. She looked at him out of some wide-eyed pit that he couldn’t see to the bottom of. She looked as though she had been slapped.
“Drink your dacquiri”, he said, “and have another.”
In the end they had four apiece. It was nice to sit there for a little while. When he thought she had had enough to drink he told her they would have to go back.
“I know.” She was watchfully still and her smile faded.
“It won’t be for long. I can at least promise you that.”
She put her glass down, touched his hand, and then stood up, slim and troubled. She was no more troubled than he, for they could not seem to establish any contact at all. “Very well,” she said, “take me back.” Her passivity was alarming.
He took her back in a cab. He could not tell whether she was really calmer or not, but he hoped for all their sakes, and especially for hers, that she was.
They found Lily’s car drawn up in front of the house and when they got inside the hall there was a chaos of baggage. It was not only Lily’s. As soon as they entered Lily appeared on the landing at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a black seal-skin coat and had her hat on, a trim hat with a veil, which she pulled down and tucked under her chin. She gazed directly down at Luke.
“Is it all right?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s all right.” He wondered uneasily why she was being so dramatic. “We went to Chinatown and had a drink.”
Lily was taken aback. She put her hands on the balustrade, as though being above them gave her an advantage she badly needed. He had the sneaking feeling that whatever her other emotions were, she was also enjoying herself enormously.
“Foster phoned,” she said. “They phoned him first. So now officially we know. I told the maid to go out and buy every newspaper she could lay her hands on. She’ll be back soon.” She avoided catching Maggie’s eye. “They want someone to identify the body. You can’t do it and Maggie can’t do it. I said she was prostrate. So I’ll go. They’ve got him at Sausolito.” She made an odd gesture and started down the stairs. Then, pausing, as though not wanting to come too close, she once more leaned on the balustrade. For some reason he felt profoundly sorry for her.
“What are you planning to do?” he asked.
She began to come down the stairs again, very slowly, fiddling with her gloves. She spoke to him and not to Maggie.
“I’ll be about an hour and a half,” she said crisply. “When I get back I’m taking Maggie down to Atherton.”
“No,” said Maggie. She had been watching her mother closely and now she stood away from Luke, in the centre of the black and white marble floor, and looked up.
Lily shrugged. “We can’t have any more irresponsible outbursts like this. The papers will be out soon and that means the reporters will be here. The whole city will be watching us and somebody has to take care of you. You can’t be trusted.”
“I won’t go.”
Lily was annoyed. “Of course you’ll go. There will be reporters, the police, and phone calls day and night. People you haven’t heard of in years will be offering their sympathy and hoping for a little inside gossip. Who’s to know what you might say?”
Luke thought that she was right. “It might be better,” he said. He took Maggie’s arm to stop her from shaking.
“You don’t understand,” said Maggie, as though her mother were not even there. “I can’t be alone with her.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t,” she repeated, and watched her mother come on down the stairs. Lily was in no hurry. She paused on the fourth step, looking at both of them with what was supposed to be composure. She gave a short grunt.
“Who would help you but me?” she asked softly. “And I don’t have to help you, you know.”
“Oh, yes, you do.”
Lily’s manner was that of a trainer with a dog. “Do I? Suppose I washed my hands of it? Suppose I did?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Lily waved her hand irritably and came down the rest of the stairs. “Luke, you’d better stay with her until I get back.” She didn’t bother to wait for an answer, but marched firmly out of the door. For once decision seemed to be an effort for her, and her eyes were sad. They heard her drive off with an irritated authoritarian clash of gears.
Maggie stood irresolute and then walked briskly into the living-room. He shut the front door and when he joined her found her sitting by the fireplace, smoking and looking thoughtfully into space. The clock seemed both very loud and very slow.
“It’s probably the best thing to do,” he said uncomfortably. “She’s right about that.”
She glanced at him but did not speak.
“What is it, really?” he asked.
“What is what?”
“This is no time to play games,” he said. “You might lose one. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a lot of things,” she said. “It always has been a lot of things. I guess it’s always going to be.”
“That isn’t very helpful. I only came to help you, Maggie. You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what I know,” she said.
“It’s not Charles. I know it’s not Charles.”
She looked up at him. “I can’t be alone with her. You don’t know what she’s like.”
“You don’t know what a scandal can be like, either,” he told her.
“What scandal?” she asked sharply.
The obliviousness of it made him blink. “Charles.”
“I don’t want her to do anything else to me, Luke. I daren’t be alone with her. She isn’t the way she looks at all.” She seemed somehow relieved.
“I can’t stay in the house, Maggie.”
“No, I suppose not.”
He did not like the way she said it. He had no intention of abandoning her. He did not want her to feel that she had been abandoned. He stared at her, baffled. It occurred to him that he did not know her very well, after all.
There was a tap on the door and the maid came in with the papers. She was bright-eyed and avid, and she tried to peer over his shoulder at Maggie. He soon got rid of her, but it made him realize how right Lily was. Maggie was in no condition to face up to that kind of scrutiny.
He spread the papers out on the coffee table. They were extras and the ink was still wet on them. At first she sat hunched up away from them, not saying anything. But then she edged closer to him on the sofa and took his hand. He squeezed hers, but it was impersonal and tense.
There were three papers, two tabloids and the conservative Chronicle. There was a
big smeared photograph of the house at Bolinas, taken from the beach, with a diagram of what one of the scandal sheets called “the death room”. There were dotted lines from the chair to a Maltese cross marking the place where the body had been found. There was an old photograph of Maggie, probably taken after her coming-out party, or at college, and one of Charles, looking alive and self-confident. One of the papers called him a prominent socialite, one a society lawyer, and the third a business man. The conservative Chronicle had a photograph of the “death room” taken by flash-bulb. They did not call it murder, but they clearly hoped that it was one. Maggie looked down at the papers for a long time, but without touching them.
“What on earth do they mean by ‘socialite’?” she asked.
“They mean you have money.”
“It’s horrible,” she said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
There was no point in telling her that as far as the papers were concerned the truth was anything that would sell and remain unsueable.
“How they must hate us,” she said.
“It’s just policy.” He realized that public opinion was something she had never thought about. He leafed through the papers. It took him a long time to find what he was looking for, and when he did find it it didn’t tell him much. The obits were skimpy. Apparently only the Chronicle had an adequate morgue.
That depressed him. If the newspapers knew no more about Charles than he did, perhaps there wasn’t anything else to know. And yet there must be, for someone had been at Bolinas. And if Maggie had been seen, he did not like to think what might come of it. As he re-read the best of the obits one phase caught his eye: “Before attending Stanford, Mr. Shannon was educated at the Sacred Heart Academy in San Francisco.” He stared at that thoughtfully, wondering if it was true, and if it was true, if it meant anything. It was not much, but it was the only thing he had seen about Charles that he had not known before. He went hastily through the other two papers, but there was no mention of it in them.
Charles, of course, was Irish. So were the Barnes. He always forgot that, because they all made such a fetish of being respectable. It was not a thing that people usually forgot to boast about, and if Charles had made nothing of it, therefore perhaps it meant something. He stared down at the paper.
Maggie lay back against the sofa and shut her eyes. It was clearly the only way she could hide, so he said nothing to disturb her. Perhaps sitting there quietly with him might do her some good.
They were still sitting like that when they heard the car drive up and its door slam. Maggie opened her eyes and stood up. “I’ll go get my coat and bag,” she said. She gave him a sudden, crooked smile. “I’m all right now. Really.” She looked round the room. “It’s better to go. I used to love this house, and he made me hate it.” She went out of the room.
He heard Lily come in and the two women speak briefly in the hall. He could not hear what they were saying. Lily came in quietly. Under her veil and under her makeup her face looked unexpectedly severe and old. For a moment it seemed that her eyes no longer dominated her face. He saw that she had at last realized that Charles was really dead. She glanced at the papers, but made no attempt to look at them. She looked genuinely frightened.
“Luke,” she said, “the cat’s gone.”
“What cat?”
“Charles’s. He kept one up there. A Siamese or something. Some people took care of it during the week. It’s gone.”
“Cats come and go.”
“You don’t understand. Charles liked it. It had a bassinet and a coat, and I don’t know what all. It’s all gone.”
“Oh.”
“You’d better follow us down,” she said, not sitting down. “I’ll get you a room at the hotel in Palo Alto.” He saw that she was badly shaken.
They heard Maggie come down the stairs. They moved towards her in unison and Luke let them out of the door. Just as he held the door open the telephone began to ring. It rang insistently and for a long time, and they stood staring at one another, wondering. Through the open doorway he could see the maid settling one of the bags into the rear of the car. With a glance at Luke, Lily went down the path and Maggie followed her.
The preliminaries were over. It wasn’t a private matter any more. Reluctantly Luke shut the door and went to answer the phone. Before he could reach it it had stopped, but he knew it would ring again. Faintly perplexed, he got his hat and left the house. The reporters could wait.
IX
HE HAD DECIDED TO TRY THE seminary. They might know something there. On the way, in the taxi, he found that he did not know how to begin. He knew nothing of Irish Catholic life and did not feel at ease in it. It had not occurred to him before that Charles, despite the name, might have that background. It made a great deal of difference. For one thing he was uncomfortably aware of where he stood with the Irish: they were not particularly kind to anybody but themselves.
They ran local government, the way they ran it everywhere. Once in a while they threw a bone to the Italians, but that was all. They were not much noticed in the public, or the social, or the cultural life. There were not interested in public or cultural life and they had their own society. They were interested in politics, which had made them rich. With the money they sprinkled the city with convents, seminaries, and churches. Their ideas of taste came out of a shanty, and what they built had a shanty look, but they built anyway.
The taxi deposited him in front of the school. It was an ugly building of yellow cement Byzantine with a lobby that smelled of Fels-naptha and rubber. Once inside and he felt more at his ease.
He finally got himself conducted into the presence of a Father O’Leary, the registrar. Father O’Leary had, if anything, a Lutheran appearance. He had black hair and a prognathous jaw and his eyes were sympathetic. Luke did not think he could have stumbled on a better man.
“Oh, yes. I read about it. It upset me.” O’Leary’s voice was matter of fact. He picked up a penwiper and began to twiddle with it, glancing at the office door, which was half glass. “The point is, why are you here?”
It wasn’t an easy question to answer. There was a green and brown map of the state behind O’Leary’s back and Luke looked at that, wondering how much he should say. “Mrs. Barnes is a client,” he said.
“Yes,” said O’Leary, “I’ve met her.” He smiled at Luke. “It bothered me.”
“It may bother a lot of people.”
“I don’t think so,” said O’Leary. He breathed deeply and pulled out a handkerchief.
“It’s funny. I never realized he was Irish.”
“Or Catholic? Well, he was born Catholic, if that makes him one. And as for being Irish, I’m afraid he was ashamed of that. A lot of people are, and Charles had his eye on things where being Irish isn’t always a help.” O’Leary looked at Luke with amusement. “It doesn’t always help, you know.” He coughed gently. “I remember him well. I looked up his record after I saw the papers. He came to us when he was twelve and left when he was sixteen. He was a good learner, a little too bright, if anything. I taught him logic.” He considered. “That was a mistake, I think. Logic is an excellent science, but not a way of life. I suppose what bothered me when I read the papers was that I didn’t like him. Nobody liked him; and I don’t think he wanted anybody to.”
“And then?”
O’Leary shrugged. “Then he left.”
“A boy of sixteen can’t just leave.”
“That’s what he did, though.”
“What about his family? He must have had some family.”
O’Leary looked uncomfortable. “He didn’t. At least, not so far as we knew. He had a guardian, a woman who brought him here. I never met her.”
“But there must be some record of all that.”
“Oh, yes, there was a record. To-day I looked for it, but it wasn’t there. They’re kept in open files.”
“Somebody took it?”
O’Leary seemed put out. “I imagine he took it himself. And recen
tly. You see, I forgot all about him until a few years ago. Then I bumped into him at some political rally. It upset him, I think. Later he came here. He came once or twice and said he wanted to do something for us. He said he wanted to make a donation. He even made several. They were anonymous.”
“Why should he want to destroy his record?”
“That’s what I wondered. I think it was because he didn’t want to have any past. And well—the donations were rather large. It seemed better not to say anything.”
Luke understood. He wondered just when O’Leary had discovered that missing file.
“He had a knack of meeting people who were useful,” added O’Leary.
“Is that all?”
“Yes and no.” O’Leary looked at Luke more sharply, as though he had just then become interested in him. “Charles was frightened,” he said slowly. “He was badly frightened and he was frightened all the time. He wasn’t frightened of being murdered, if he was murdered. He was afraid of dying. I think he always felt that he was dying and that he had to hurry to catch up. He wasn’t ever really young, and once he was over thirty he resented what he’d missed. So everything he wanted he either bought or stole. I don’t mean outright. But he managed to get what he wanted and he always felt cheated once he had it. And yet he didn’t want anything that couldn’t be bought. It couldn’t have been very pleasant for his wife.”
“It wasn’t.”
O’Leary drew his eyebrows together and then sighed. “What is it you have to find out?”
Luke decided to trust him and told him about the beach house.
“That won’t be so easy,” said O’Leary.
“But a boy of sixteen doesn’t bury his own past,” said Luke. “At that age he doesn’t have any past.”
“Charles just wanted to be somebody else,” said O’Leary, and stopped. “It probably was a woman, but I don’t think you’ll find her. She’d be very old by now.”
“He probably forgot her.”
“No, I don’t think so. There must have been some people he couldn’t forget, because they’d have known all about him. He couldn’t get rid of them; so he must have conciliated them in some way. The question is: what way?”
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