No Word From Winifred

by Amanda Cross

  “Well, Kate,” he said, perching perilously on a nearby table. “How are things with you these days?” So, many years ago, Kate recalled, in that flash of memory so characteristic of middle age, he, home from Harvard, had tried to question her, a schoolgirl. “Fine, Larry,” she had said then, and said now.

  “Glad you could come,” he added, rising to his feet and patting her on the arm. “You seem to get on with the young better than I do,” he added, making an insult of what might have been a compliment. “Well, at least the last presidential election showed they are coming to their senses. Not like that sixties generation. Quite a relief, isn’t it?”

  Kate nodded idiotically as he walked off. Somewhere, at some moment in their relationship, she had decided that Larry, that all her brothers, were not worth arguing with, a realization that filled her with sadness, and them, she did not doubt, with relief. To have realized the purposelessness of conversation was, for Kate, to have abandoned a relationship. Sometimes she wondered what, since she had no sisters, it might have been like to have a nice brother who offered her the kind of companionship she shared with Leo and Leighton. Count your blessings, she admonished herself. The young make better friends, and have the added advantage of surviving longer, so that we need not wait for their deaths to break our hearts. I knew I shouldn’t have come, she told herself. Reed, it seemed, was making those connections so essential to the world of law in which he now moved. One had to know people; one had to appear one of them, even if one was not. Only then could one operate effectively.

  But she had a pleasant surprise at dinner. She was seated next to Toby. “My manipulations, Kate,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I like to cheer Larry on through these capers of his for the benefit of the young, but when I heard you were coming I looked forward to tonight with more than my usual anticipation.”

  “It’s good to see you,” Kate said, “and I don’t mind saying, a great relief. I thought I would have to talk to someone from bonds, on his way to being head of development for New London: uphill work all the way.”

  “You seem well informed on the doings of lawyers.”

  “My destiny, it appears. Brothers, husbands, now the next generation. I wonder when the eager young will go back to getting doctorates in the humanities. It’s a different climate now, there’s no question of that. But if I must talk to a lawyer, and that certainly seems inevitable tonight, I’m glad it’s you.”

  Kate had met Toby when they were both youngish and still malleable, more malleable, it seemed to Kate, than the young were now. She mentioned this to Toby: “Or is that what everyone thinks as she grows old and disillusioned?”

  “No,” Toby said. “I think you’re right. We knew the world we were living in wasn’t much good, but that didn’t stop us trying to change it. These young think that ‘making it’ is all there is. Perhaps because their doubts, if they had any, would be too profound to bear. I suspect that’s it, don’t you?”

  “Probably. But they will put up with my brother for what it gets them. You put up with him out of a combination of loyalty and charity; I do think there’s a difference there. How, if it’s not too madly tactless to ask, do you put up with him?”

  But Toby was not to answer, not that evening. The woman on his other side demanded his attention, and Kate, as the result of some sort of signal inaudible to her, was simultaneously addressed by the man on her left. But before she and Toby parted at the end of dinner, they agreed to meet soon for lunch. Leighton’s worries aside, Kate thought it would be nice to talk to Toby again. She rather wondered what he had on his mind, besides the disappearance of Charlotte Lucas and some nameless English author.

  Chapter Two

  Early the next week Kate was surprised to discover Leighton waiting for her at the conclusion of her office hours. “Interesting bunch,” Leighton said, as Kate let her into the office and shut the door. “I asked them what they thought of you, posing as another student. Opinions varied.”

  “Don’t you think that was dishonest?”

  “Probably. I am amoral and incurably curious. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “I’ve noticed that you’re given to extravagant statements arising, I assume, from the dissatisfactions of your professional life.”

  “How do you know it’s not the dissatisfactions of my personal life?”

  “Elementary, my dear Watson. You are unlikely to consult me about your personal life: one’s peers are the natural counselors for that, not aunts. Secondly, I very much doubt you have problems with your personal life. You might have had, had you been young when I was. These days, I’d say you are one of those fortunate persons made for the time and place in which you live.”

  “Marvelous. I’ve always thought Holmes’s deductions overrated, by the way. People who come to him always have scratched watches or ill health, or a habit of looking over their shoulders. He’d have made nothing of me. But I’m glad you mentioned Watson, because that’s why I’m here.”

  “Leighton, what good news. They’re doing a new play about Holmes, and have decided to make Watson a woman, casting you in the part. Or are you playing it in drag?”

  “Kate, you are funny. It’s not a play; I could have written a note about that. But I am about to play Watson, I hope. To your Holmes.”

  Kate stared at her niece. “My dear,” she finally said when she had found her voice, “I know one’s later twenties are a hard time of life. But many of the most accomplished people turn out, in their youths, to have had long periods of indecision. Have you read Erikson? Think of Luther, William James, Shaw, Yeats. There is no way you can cast me in the part of Holmes. We have nothing in common except height and leanness. I haven’t an aquiline nose, do not play the violin, have never tried cocaine or any other drug, drugs being the only part of modern life’s revolution of which I heartily disapprove, am not English, and can’t tell one cigarette ash from another, just for starters.”

  “You seem to know a lot about him.”

  “On the contrary, any Sherlockian would tell you I know nothing about him, except what I picked up as a child reading. Why in the world are we discussing Sherlock Holmes?”

  “You’re a woman; you’re a detective, at least from time to time. You teach between cases—all Holmes did was play the violin and shoot up. It’s not an important difference. What you lack, apart from fog, a wonderful landlady, and an ability at disguises, is Watson. Me. Now don’t say something clever, just listen. You are at the beginning of a case; I can feel it. The disappearance of Charlotte Lucas. I shall chronicle it all. And, if my account catches on, as Watson’s did, I’ll write up your past cases. Have you ever noticed how many women came to see Holmes, and how good he was about getting them their rights?”

  “Do you think Charlotte Lucas sleeps below a false vent, and is visited nightly by a dangerous snake who responds to whistles?”

  “What a memory you have.”

  “Everyone remembers that. I suggest you attend a convention of Sherlockians, or Baker Street Irregulars, or whatever they call themselves, and really learn about memory and details. I was the merest idle peruser, and that eons ago. Leighton, hadn’t we better talk about you?”

  “What’s to talk about? I appear in an occasional play, off-off-Broadway, sometimes just the work of apprentice playwrights. Have you ever wondered why the actors are always so much better than the plays? I do, all the time. As I already told you, to support myself I do word processing for legal firms. Tedium, and no fringe benefits, but the pay is good, and you can set your own schedule. I will say for the fancy law firms, they’re always glad to have you. But working in the firm with Toby is preferable to working just anywhere. He’s a nice man. I have the feeling he’s in trouble; deep trouble.”

  “I have the feeling that you’re writing a play, with Toby and me and you as the main characters. Why not run off and do it?”

  “What about Charlotte Luca
s and the English author? Kate, promise to have lunch with Toby, and get him to confide in you. Then you can tell me all about it.”

  “That is a thoroughly immoral suggestion.”

  “Nonsense. He’s not going to tell you he’s murdered anyone. I only mean, let me in on the beginning of the case.”

  “Leighton, I’m tired and I’m going home. There is no case, and if there were, the last thing I need is a Watson.”

  “Everyone needs a Watson. If we each had a Watson, none of us would need a therapist, psychiatrist, or confessor. Had you thought of that?”

  “That’s probably a profound observation. As it happens, however, I need none of the above.”

  “Exactly why I chose you. Kate, do please cooperate. Let’s just start with Toby. If after you see him, you want to tell me to go away and play, I’ll go. But let’s wait till then. Okay?”

  And Kate, torn between bewilderment, annoyance, and amusement, agreed. After all, what could Toby possibly tell her?

  Toby, offering her lunch at the Harvard Club, made Kate wonder, before they were well past their appetizer, whether Leighton ought not to be Holmes. For Toby was very troubled indeed. Kate, searching for a light note of diversion, asked why the Harvard Club had the head of a dead elephant nailed to the wall of the lounge. “Not enough leather on the chairs?” she asked.

  “You haven’t seen the portraits: presidents of the United States who went to Harvard, presidents of Harvard, presidents of the Harvard Club. Is there anyone else in the world? If that had been the last head of the last elephant in the world, what better destiny than to adorn the high walls of the Harvard Club?”

  “I don’t know what to say, Toby; you’re stealing my lines.”

  “How is Reed liking his new job?”

  “Very much, I think. He says the academic life, in its higher reaches, is the most relaxed and satisfying he knows, and he was right to want to taste it before the old order changeth.”

  “The old order has changed in law firms. Even in litigation, they work for big companies warding off suits by individuals they’ve injured; not that the big corporations are wrong to defend themselves, but some of the suits like DES or asbestos are so repugnant not even the most ambitious associates want to work on them. Or the law firms are involved in one company’s taking over another company to no one else’s particular benefit, perhaps with greenmail, golden parachutes, who knows what. It just doesn’t seem worth the sixteen-hour days of marvelously intelligent men and women.”

  “My dear, you sound like Leo.”

  “Of course I do; Leo is right.”

  “Why don’t the big companies just settle the suits?”

  “Because it might encourage millions of others to make small suits of the same kind. That can run into money.”

  “Surely, Toby, this isn’t getting you down after all these years.” Kate, looking at him, was worried. Toby was one of those people who had always been around. He had been to Harvard with one of her brothers, not Larry, and somehow had stayed part of the family, rather, she thought, like that chap in Brideshead Revisited who was always present when anything happened. Kate had loved the beginning of that BBC series, and hated the end, as she had hated the end of the book. But Toby, unlike his Brideshead counterpart, had stayed attractive to the end. Perhaps, Kate thought, watching the waiter change plates, and taking one of the popovers, which were, Toby had told her, very good, he had never got over his wife’s death. She had been killed on New Year’s Eve returning from a party Toby had cut because he had the flu. She was hit by a drunken driver going eighty in the wrong lane. Kate had not known much about his marriage, had never particularly warmed to his wife; it occurred to her now that she had seen remarkably little of him in the past few years.

  “I’ve grown in the habit of talking about things that don’t matter, even with great animation,” he said. “Because it seems too long since I’ve talked to anyone about anything that mattered. I don’t mean the law, of course. And, egoist that I am, I don’t mean other people’s problems. Since the younger partners and the associates can hardly talk to Larry about anything, they tend to talk to me—I come next on the letterhead.”

  “And you’re damn good at being talked to. I know the syndrome,” Kate said. “It all comes in, and nothing goes out. And if I hadn’t Reed to talk to . . . You never thought of marrying again?”

  “Kate, that’s what I want to talk to you about. And don’t ask, ‘Why me?’ When Larry spoke to me about inviting you to his blasted party, I suddenly realized: Of course, I shall talk to Kate. Why didn’t I think of it? I used to chat with Leighton, and thought of you often, but it took Larry’s bumbling remarks to make me realize you were just what I needed. Of course I thought of marrying again. But at the moment, I’m living with Charlotte Lucas.”

  “The one who’s disappeared?”

  “The same. Except she hasn’t disappeared. That was a little plan that went awry.” Toby moved the food on his plate, and then put his fork down. “You can’t imagine what it was like after Patricia was killed. I mean, she was gone. I won’t say we had one of the great marriages in the world, if there are any great marriages, but it worked, as they say, and we jogged along. I labored long hours; she played the cello and studied languages after the children were grown. You know the sort of thing, though how you escaped it was always one of the wonders to me. Suddenly, she was gone. There was no one there when I came home. There was no one who knew who Larry was, who could make a fuss about going to a party for the associates. My God, Kate, you must know what I mean. My sons, and especially their wives, were nice enough, and kept inviting me over on Sundays, but it was perfectly clear I would have to get married again. I know it’s supposed to be very easy for men. And perhaps it is, if you’re the least bit of a swinger. I’m not. It isn’t as though, at fifty-five, I was out on the prowl for someone to go to bed with. It would have been nice to have someone in my bed on a regular basis, but what I needed was a leisurely, established relationship. I’ve found in the last year that everything takes more time, including sex, which isn’t bad. I wonder sometimes why I was always rushing, always impatient. I like to get there now, but if I get there a half-hour later, fine.”

  “You didn’t feel like playing the dating, mating game?”

  “I didn’t. And I was lonely as hell. There used to be times when Patricia was away, and I rather enjoyed them, to tell you the truth. But how long were they? A couple of weeks, at most. I hadn’t thought, of course, how much I just wanted someone being part of the place where I lived. It wasn’t, as people used to suggest, the laundry, or the dishes, or arranging things with the cleaning woman. It was calling out to say something when there was no one there to hear it.” Kate nodded.

  “Then Charlie came into the office. Charlotte Lucas, to you. She came in originally to inquire about an author whose will I made up years ago, not the one whose will I still have, though they are connected: they were friends—not the wills, the authors.” Toby smiled. “The wills were too, I guess.”

  “Toby, you’re becoming more elliptical with the years. I didn’t pause over those golden parachutes, but you’d better run the bit about how Charlotte Lucas came to the office past me once more, slowly.”

  “All Charlie’s life she has wanted to write a biography of Charlotte Stanton—the writer, you know—and the first woman whose will I drew up, years ago. Good biographers are good detectives, as Charlie says, and when she found out about that will, she came to the office to see me. She’s still working on the biography, by the way, and she’s still seeing me.”

  “Why did an English author make a will in America?”

  “Ah now you’re the detective at work. Not worrying about my sad love life; on to a clue.”

  “It is a rather obvious question,” Kate said.

  “With a rather obvious answer: she was in America, lecturing, and learned she was ill. She d
idn’t want to chance dying here, leaving only the will she had made a long time ago. May I go on with the story of my love life?”

  Kate smiled. “I can see,” Toby said, “you’re still pondering the will, but I’ll come back to it, I promise. It’s part of why I wanted to see you, in fact, but only part. And as far as I’m concerned, we’re talking about me, or I am, and that hasn’t happened for a very long time. I was thinking of hiring someone to listen as I told my story. Not a psychiatrist or anything, just another human being. But one who might understand. That’s when I thought of you. Look duly flattered. Anyway, Charlie and I went out to dinner to continue talking about her author, and it was the first time I’d been relaxed with a woman who really seemed to want to talk about a subject, and not take part in a mating dance whose steps I had forgotten. Oh, there are very attractive women lawyers at Dar and Dar. But they’re part of the firm, and I felt too senior for that. I did think of cultivating some woman lawyer in another firm, but I hadn’t got around to it. Charlie came along. Are you in a hurry? We could have some coffee in the lounge, under the elephant’s head.”

  Once in the lounge, Kate sank into a deep leather chair; had she been an inch shorter, she thought, her legs would not have reached the ground unless she sat forward. She pictured generations of women guests, on the rare occasions when they were welcomed in the old days, perched on the edge of huge chairs, regarding a stuffed elephant head. “Go on,” she said.