The Glass Flame

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  The elevator was self-service and when Giff pushed a button the open cage started slowly upward. We could look down on the great lighted spaces below, with the lounging area of the lobby, where guests moved about, or stood before the recessed desk where business was transacted. Below us were hanging plants, wall sculptures and mirrors everywhere to give a sense of space and light.

  The number 10 lighted above the door and the car drew to a gentle stop, even with the floor. When the door slid silently aside, Giff motioned me out. At once a uniformed guard came toward us, only to recognize Giff and let us through to a corridor that ran past office after office. Nothing on this floor seemed novel or particularly interesting. Except that I was seeing an office at night, when all the familiar movements of people, the voices and sounds of typewriters and machines were hushed. Instead, there was a heavy, blanketing silence. At least the floor wasn’t dark. Lights burned overhead, some of the cubicles we passed were lighted and in more than one someone sat at a desk working late.

  I glanced at my guide, still questioning why I was here.

  “Wait,” Giff said. “There’s more to see. Vinnie’s office is the heart of the building. We’ve left it alone—since one must respect a shrine. But Dad and I haven’t fared too badly. Dad with reason, myself only in the role of heir apparent.”

  I glanced at him, hearing the faintly bitter note in his voice. But his smile was as open as ever, and if there was cynicism, we both let it pass.

  He showed me his own luxurious suite first and I noted the deep-piled wall-to-wall, the enormous expanse of clean desk, several comfortable chairs and the lurid painting of a tiger lily on the wall.

  “Maggie, of course,” I said, walking over to look at it.

  “Yes. I couldn’t hurt her feelings by refusing to hang it, and it is a beauty. Though sometimes I get the feeling that it might sneak from its frame and take a bite out of me. I’m not at all sure it isn’t carniverous.”

  “What makes her paint like that?” I asked idly, knowing that I already had some of the answers, but wondering what he, as her stepson, might say.

  “All those squirmy things that go on inside her, of course,” he answered readily. “I don’t think she was all that much of a kook before she married Dad. Sometimes I wish I could paint. To let off steam the way she does.”

  “Is he a very difficult man, your father?”

  “Difficult—and complex. Comes of all those years with Vinnie Fromberg, when Dad was held down. He could hardly breathe on his own in the early days. I can remember when I was a kid and the edicts used to come down from on high. Vinnie never accepted the fact that he was getting old, and he certainly wasn’t senile. He never let go of an ounce of power until the end. So now I can’t blame Dad for going whole hog on being the big tycoon. He’s earned it. But he can’t take opposition these days, any more than Vinnie could. That’s why Trevor’s Belle Isle project is giving him an ulcer. But it looks as though all we have to do is wait and let it fall apart on its own.”

  “Only it isn’t falling apart on its own,” I said sharply. “It’s being helped along pretty expertly.”

  “How right you are! And wouldn’t I like to know all the ins and outs of what’s going on!”

  “Are you sure you don’t?” I asked him point-blank.

  “Ouch! You and that tiger lily! Come along and I’ll show you the next exhibit.”

  We went along the hall for a couple of doors. I was feeling more comfortable now, and less uneasy. I had a good pair of lungs, and people on the floor could hear me if anything went wrong. Besides, I couldn’t see Giff actually using physical assault. He would be far more devious than that.

  The door he flung open next showed the largest room I had yet seen. The carpeting was a deep, dark crimson, the paneling walnut. The room looked like a magnificent stage set, and in the center of it stood a vast polished desk with a red leather chair behind it. In the chair a man sat watching us.

  Giff paused beside me in the doorway, and I was aware of his sudden hesitation. “Hello, Dad. Karen and I had dinner downstairs and I was just showing her a bit of the empire.”

  His manner and tone had changed, and I glanced at him in surprise. It was as though his father’s presence had reduced him so that he was no longer the expansive and confident conductor of this tour. Was this why he often seemed more observer than participant?

  Eric showed no annoyance, however. He left his desk and came to take my hand, conveying the impression that he had missed me since we’d last met (yesterday?), and that he was delighted to see me again. A charmer, indeed, as I’d thought before. Even Giff could take lessons from him.

  “I’m glad my son has the sense to take you out to dinner, and I hope this is only the first time,” he said. “How do you like our hotel and offices?”

  I returned the flattery. “They’re magnificent. I imagine you must have played quite a role in their creation.”

  He admitted readily that he’d had a managing hand in the entire project, although the initial plans were, of course, old Vinnie’s.

  “I brought Karen up here to show her Vinnie’s office,” Giff said. “We’ll go along now. I didn’t know you were working tonight.”

  “I don’t suppose you did.” Eric spoke mildly, but I sensed a sting of meaning for Giff, whom his father probably regarded as a playboy.

  We made a somewhat hasty exit and by the time we were out in the corridor, with Eric’s door closed behind us, I was aware that Giff was seething with suppressed rage.

  “One of these days—” he began, and then cut off his own words in self-derision. “That day will never come because I’ll never do one thing about him. I’ve been scared to death of him all my life. If I wanted to, I could destroy him with a flick of my fingers and he knows it. Yet that doesn’t bother him in the least. Vinnie Fromberg was reasonably honest, considering that he belonged to a pirate generation. He’d never approve of the way Dad skates close to the brink in a good many of his ventures. I wonder if that’s the way I’ll operate if I ever step into Dad’s shoes? But then, I’ll never step into them, will I? The corporation will take over. I may have the name, but never the power. Dad will see to that.”

  His hand on my elbow was urging me down the corridor, and I held back. “Please—no more offices tonight, Giff. I’d like to go back to the house now.”

  He made an effort to throw off whatever feelings the encounter with his father had aroused, and once more he glanced quickly at his watch. “No, no, you can’t go home yet. It’s a very young evening. You can’t expect me to give you up so soon. There’s more to see after Vinnie’s office. Something you won’t want to miss.”

  Uneasiness stirred in me again, but there was no harm in seeing what further magnificence Vinnie Fromberg had arranged for himself. Then, when we returned to the elevator, I would insist on going home.

  This time the office was near the end of the corridor. Giff reached in for the light switch and flung the door wide. I stood in the opening and stared in disbelief.

  The room was tiny and almost bare. Against one wall stood a battered roll-top desk, with a swivel chair before it. A glass-doored bookcase stood in the corner, and there were two straight wooden chairs without arms. A smaller desk held an old-fashioned manual typewriter, and the obviously worn rug was a dingy brown and anything but wall-to-wall.

  Giff laughed at my expression. “There you are—the shrine!”

  “You mean he built this entire building—everything!—in order to install this?”

  “He sure did. Got a big kick out of it.”

  “But he could have set this anywhere.”

  “No—because he wanted the two extremes. For himself he liked the plain and unadorned. This is a replica of the office he started with, and I suppose he enjoyed slapping visitors in the face with it. Then, for flaunting, he had all the luxury out there to show what had grown from this. To say nothing of owning Belle Isle, with that octagonal house eccentricity he built over there.”
>
  I remembered the Roman emperor tub of rose-garnet marble that I had seen at Vinnie’s house. That, indeed, belonged to the opposite extreme from this humble office.

  “Look over there on the wall,” Giff said.

  The calendar sported a nymph dipping her toes in a stream, advertising a well-known beverage, for which the ads had changed only a little in later years. The date went back a long while and the month was November.

  “The month of Cecily’s death,” Giff mused. “He kept that calendar all those years. He used to enjoy bringing some mogul across the country to see him, showing off the outer offices, then plunking him down in one of those hard chairs, while he rolled down the top, put his feet on the desk and gave forth with edicts. I’ve seen him do it when I was a kid—while some poor guy in a gray flannel suit with his own posh office in some metropolis squirmed and fidgeted. He was quite a boy, old Vinnie.”

  I was beginning to like him myself, except when I thought of Cecily. On the wall behind the door were a few pictures—a partial record of the family dynasty. Cecily was there, and another beautiful woman who must have been his second wife. Eric as a young man looked out at the world with his same deliberate charm, and Giff and Lori were there as children. Even Maggie, with her sweater askew, smiled determinedly at a camera she probably hated to face.

  “Okay—you’ve seen our Exhibit A,” Giff said. “I won’t bother to show you Vinnie’s apartment next door. It’s not as Spartan as this. Besides, it’s time now for the curtain to go up. Come along, Karen.”

  “To go where? For what?” I asked, as he led me toward the elevators.

  “You’ll see.” The sense of something electric was stirring in him again—that excitement which made me so uncomfortable.

  At the elevator the door of the cage stood open and Giff waved me through and pushed a button on the panel. To my surprise the car went up, not down.

  “We’re going to the roof,” he said in answer to my look.

  That was when I dug in my heels. “No! I hate heights, Giff, and it will be too dark to see anything.”

  I didn’t mind heights at all, except in this case. I simply didn’t want to go with him up to the hotel roof. It seemed unknown and threatening territory, even though I could reason that my alarm was foolish. What was he going to do—throw me off? Certainly not when everyone knew I was with him! Nevertheless, in a way that had nothing to do with reason, I was apprehensive.

  The car stopped and the door slid open before a small enclosure.

  “It may be chilly out there,” he said. “Karen, you’re already shivering! Honey, I didn’t mean to scare you. You know I’m about as harmless as they come. Even if you hadn’t been invited especially, it’s still a good idea to have two of us here for this meeting.”

  “M-m-meeting?” I chattered. “What do you mean—invited?”

  “Yes, sweetie. She wanted you especially. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want you worrying. There’s a lady coming to meet us up here on the roof. A sort of lady. Over the telephone she said her name was Gwen Bruen, and I think she might be someone interesting for us to meet.”

  Thirteen

  I must have stopped shivering out of shock. I couldn’t manage another question until we left the enclosed section before the elevators and stepped through a heavy door into whipping wind.

  At first it seemed so dark outside that I could make out only shadowy outlines. The two castle turrets, one at either end of the roof, rose in black silhouette against a lighter, star-filled sky. In the center was a mass of machinery forming a dark mound and shielded by a metal screen. The rest of the enormous roof was open, free of obstacles, and we walked across it to the nearest parapet. No one seemed to be in sight.

  I managed to recover my voice. “Tell me what this is all about.”

  “In good time. Come along, Karen, and enjoy the view.” His tone was light, airy, but I knew his excitement was growing and I trusted him less than ever.

  The air up here was like the air on a mountaintop, and the wind blew across us, fresh and clear and bracing. As my eyes accustomed themselves I could see all those billions of stars that could never be glimpsed in New York, and among them a sliver of moon cruising the deep blue sky. The night was bright with starlight out here, but Giff turned me toward the neon reds and greens and yellows of the town, with its observation tower standing high and crowned with more light. I tried to relax and watch a scene that was far from static. Traffic moved solidly along the main road through town, with windows of houses shining here and there on the hills around. It was all quite beautiful, but my anxiety hadn’t abated. What if Giff had made all this up about meeting someone named Gwen Bruen? What if this was some trap he hadn’t yet revealed?

  Nevertheless, when he drew me toward the farther end of the roof, there was nothing to do but go with him. From this aspect dark woods and hills closed us in, and the mountains themselves were black and unrelieved by any speckling of light.

  “There’s no one here,” I said.

  “Give her time.” Giff was confident. “She sounded anxious enough to meet us, but of course I can’t be sure she hasn’t changed her mind by now.”

  “She called you on the phone?”

  “Yes. This morning at the office.”

  “But why? Why you, and why me? What does she want?”

  “Perhaps I seemed the most innocuous of the choices she could make. I always try to keep my low and feckless profile intact. When I tried to shunt her over to Dad, she wouldn’t have anything to do with the idea. And the suggestion of meeting Trevor seemed to terrify her. So I was left. And you. She seemed to know a lot about all of us, but she wouldn’t tell me on the phone what she wanted. She just asked me to bring you to meet her in some quiet spot where nobody would see us. So I thought of the Greencastle roof. The perfect place for a secret rendezvous, don’t you think?”

  “Why wouldn’t she expect you to call the police, under the circumstances?”

  “She seemed to believe I wouldn’t.”

  “And she was right?”

  He moved his hands expansively. “As you can see.”

  “Have you any idea what she wants?”

  “I’m not sure, but she sounded as though she might be doing the woman-scorned bit. So it’s possible we may get something out of her. She also sounded scared. However, she accepted my suggestion of a place, so I don’t think she’s frightened of me. She told me she’d be here at eight-thirty. Providing no one else came with us. It’s a little past the time now. So let’s walk around and enjoy while we’re here.”

  I still wondered if this whole thing was a fabrication on Giff’s part, but I moved with him along the roof toward the other turret. As we neared it a shadow separated from the mass and came toward us. She must have been watching all along, perhaps sizing us up and making sure we were alone.

  “Mrs. Bruen?” Giff asked, as though we were meeting at a party.

  She didn’t answer, but came on, walking slowly. In the starlight her face looked white and set, her dark eyes fixed. Her shoulder-length hair, tied back with a scarf, looked dark and she wore slacks of some neutral color and a dark sweater, so that she blended with the background.

  When she reached us she stopped before me. “You’re Mrs. Hallam?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  She began to speak in a rush. “I’m sorry about your husband. I don’t think Joe meant what happened. But that’s what started it all. And then there was that woman—Mr. Andrews’ wife.” The words came in a confused spate, as though she had to hurry, or perhaps not say them at all. Then she ceased abruptly, as though she had run out of all she had come to say.

  “I don’t understand—” I began, but Giff put a hand on my arm.

  “I’m sure you have more you want to tell us, Mrs. Bruen. There’s a bench over there. Let’s go and sit down so you can talk comfortably, and we can listen.”

  He took her by the arm and she didn’t resist. When we had seated ourselves
on the workmen’s bench, with Gwen Bruen between us, Giff spoke to her again, quietly.

  “How did Hallam’s death come about?”

  “I only know what Joe told me.” She glanced anxiously from side to side, as though she might discover someone listening. “I was in New York. I read about it in the papers. So I wrote to him down here—at an address where he got his letters general delivery. And I asked him to phone me.”

  “What town is that?” Giff asked.

  She stopped staring around and gave him an irritable shake of her head. “I’m not telling you. Not yet, anyway.”

  I urged her on. “What happened to David?”

  Her hesitation was longer this time, as though she wondered how much she dared tell us. But again, when she spoke, the words were blunt.

  “David caught Joe over on the island. They were both big men, but maybe Joe was a little bigger. When they fought, Joe hit him with a rock. Harder than he meant, I guess. Joe had already set another house to catch fire, but then he had to get rid of—of the body. So he used some explosives he’d brought in and was saving for the right place. He was in demolition in the army, so he knew all about that kind of thing.”

  “Then Lori found out about him, didn’t she? And she knew too much,” Giff said softly.

  The flood of words dried up. “I don’t want to talk about her,” she said grimly.

  “Then talk about whatever you want,” I said.

  After a moment she went on. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. All that’s over with. But it’s got to stop. Maybe Joe’s gone a little crazy about fires. It used to be a job he’d do and then he’d get out fast. But he’s changed. He wants to watch things burn!” She bent her head and covered her face with her hands.

  “Go on.” Again I urged her. “If you tell us enough, perhaps we can help you.”

  “Nobody can help me. But I’m not going to take anymore. When I came down here he said we were through and I should just go away.”