Spearfield's Daughter

by Jon Cleary

  She had paused by the phone on her way out, wondering if she should ring Dr. Guilfoyle. But he could do nothing about the despair in which she was drowning; nor, she reasoned with a sort of fuzzy lucidity, did she want him to. There is a depth of depression like that of a sea, where drowning suddenly becomes welcome. Love pities, she had once read, and pities most when it loves most. She would kill Roger with pity, taking him with her.

  She headed the car south and drove in a semi-trance; somehow she caused no accidents to others, did not run herself off the road. She hurried as she always had: some habits can never be changed. She did not think of friends to whom she might have turned for help: she had closed the door on them, too. She thought only of Roger and herself, her world. Though it did not occur to her to analyse her feelings, she felt no rage or hatred.

  V

  Cleo had left the Courier, for that day, to Carl Fishburg. She had called Roger Brisson at the Pentagon and told him she would be in Washington that evening and wanted to see him.

  “Come to the apartment,” he had said and, since she did not want to show him the photograph in a public place such as a restaurant, she had agreed. After what she intended saying to him, she knew she would be safe from him.

  When she arrived at Watergate and he opened his apartment door to her, he was in dress uniform. “I’m sorry about this. I’ve just come from a reception at the White House and I haven’t had time to change.”

  She wondered if what he said was true or whether he was trying to impress her; or intimidate her. She was neither impressed nor intimidated: she was impervious to uniforms. “Perhaps it’s appropriate, General.”

  He looked at her quizzically. “General?”

  She took the drink he offered her and followed him out on to the terrace that overlooked the Potomac. The apartment was large and luxurious, just the bunker for a rich beleaguered general. Though, of course, he didn’t yet know that he was to be attacked.

  She wasted no time. She opened the large envelope she carried, gave him George Hurlstone’s photograph. “Have you ever seen that?”

  She saw no reaction at all on his handsome face. “No. I dimly remember the occasion. I’d had a little too much to drink.”

  “Representative Tripp looks as if she may also have had a little too much.”

  “Are you going to run it in the Courier?”

  “Roger, you misunderstand why I’ve come down here. I’m not here to blackmail you.”

  He had put down his drink and was holding the photograph in both hands, looking at it as if it were a picture of a military rout. “This was well over a year ago. What’s its significance now?”

  “The rumour is you’re in the running to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Is it true?” He said nothing, face still blank, and she added impatiently, “Come on, Roger—I’m trying to help you!”

  He nodded. “Yes, I’ve been told I’m the favourite to get the post.”

  “If you do, then you’d better watch out. Every newspaperman in this town, so I’m told, knows all about you and Mrs. Tripp and your other women. One or two of them also know that Mr. Tripp, wherever he happens to be, is seriously considering suing his wife for divorce.”

  His expression did change then. “Where did you get that bit of garbage? Mrs. Tripp and her husband haven’t lived together since she came to Washington.”

  “She’s still married to him. Or he to her, whichever way you like to put it. You’re a rich man, Roger and a prominent one. Mr. Tripp is not rich—his wife is the one with money.”

  She had had Joe Hamlyn do a lot of legwork and he had done it well. He had sent her a sealed dossier on the Tripps that contained information that she was sure Roger did not know and, up till now, would probably have not been interested in. Only she and Joe knew what was in the dossier.

  “Are you implying that Tripp might sue me for damages?”

  “Possibly. You could well afford the money. I don’t think you could afford the damage to your reputation. That fancy uniform would look pretty soiled after a day or two in court.”

  He smiled: he still had some humour left in him. “I don’t think the Army would consider a divorce court a dress occasion. You still haven’t told me why you’ve come down here with this warning. Did Claudine send you?” Then he shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t deny herself the chance to put me in my place. Was it Louise?”

  “I haven’t seen Louise in over a year. I came down here as a newspaperwoman. If any of the other papers run a story about you and Mrs. Tripp and your other women, then I’ll have to run it, too.”

  “What are you suggesting I do?”

  “That you let the White House know you don’t want the job on the Chiefs of Staff. Maybe you can put yourself forward for it in a couple of years—”

  “You don’t put yourself forward for a post like that. You may work towards it, but you don’t volunteer for it.” He looked out across the Potomac. Below him traffic was moving towards the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; the people in the cars were heading for an evening’s entertainment of synthetic drama. He had always had a sense of the dramatic, but only in his own head; he had never indulged himself in public. He had the feeling that he was now in a drama building to a climax that he had avoided contemplating. “Is this connected in your mind with what happened at An Bai?”

  She was not surprised by the question: sooner or later An Bai would have been mentioned. “No, it isn’t. I’ll be honest with you—I haven’t forgotten that. But this is a more personal matter. I don’t want my paper beaten on a story that, in a way, belongs to it more than it does to any other paper.”

  “So you really care about my reputation? Or the President’s, if he appointed me? He’s already made one or two poor judgements.”

  “If you accepted the post, would you care about his reputation? You should have thought about all that before you started playing around.”

  “Don’t start moralizing—”

  “Don’t pull rank on me, General. I came down here to do you a favour as much as look after my paper—”

  “You keep calling it your paper. It’s always been looked on as the Brisson paper—”

  Suddenly she was angry and lost patience with him. It was a mistake to think one could help the arrogant: it would be a weakness on his part to admit that he needed help. “Oh, get stuffed! Forget it!”

  She started back in off the terrace and was halfway across the big living-room before he caught her and grabbed her by the arm. “Cleo, forgive me! Please stay—”

  Then they were both aware of the woman standing in the open front doorway. Louise held a gun in both hands and, like a good army wife, was taking careful aim.

  VI

  She had parked the car in the garage below. There was a new attendant on duty and she had had to produce her driving licence to prove that she was Mrs. Louise Brisson, wife of General Brisson and co-owner of the apartment on one of the top floors.

  “I’ll have to call up and check, Mrs. Brisson.”

  “You do and I shall report you.” She had lived in the shadow of Brisson and army authority for years; now she used some of it, acted like a general’s wife. “I want to surprise my husband—I’ve just come back from abroad. You won’t call him, understand?”

  The attendant was young, black and it was his first job in two years. “Ma’am, we have to be careful—”

  She relented. It hurt her to ride roughshod over anyone; killing a husband was a different matter. “I’m sorry I was sharp. I’m a little tired—it’s been a long journey—”

  “You look a little pooped, ma’am.”

  She left the car with him and went up in the elevator. She was planning no perfect crime; it was as imperfect as it could possibly be, except that the victim would be dead. And herself, too. Which would make it a complete crime, if not a perfect one.

  She had read once (she also collected the bric-a-brac of information) that the mind was divided into two sections, the logical a
nd the emotional. So far the logical side of the brain had got her here safely from Long Island; as she rose in the elevator emotion took over. By the time she stepped out of the elevator, took her key and the gun out of the handbag and had opened the apartment door, her mind was nothing but a dark whirling cloud of emotion. She felt as if she were about to blow up, as if she had been mined for years and now she was about to be triggered.

  She saw Roger with his hand on the woman’s arm, heard him say, “—forgive me! Please stay—”

  She had the gun raised, held with both hands as she had seen men trained to do on the practice range. She sighted along the barrel, aiming first at Roger: she would kill him before she killed the woman. Then her finger on the trigger turned into dead bone; she could not bend it. She let out a sob of frustration; she stared at the two lovers, hating them. Up till that moment only Roger had been clear in her vision; the woman had been a faceless shape, a stranger. Now she saw who the woman was: Cleo Spearfield.

  The shock was like a cold wind storming through her mind: the dark cloud was gone. She whimpered like a child, then abruptly she turned and ran blindly back towards the elevator. But the elevator was several floors below her. She banged at the call-button; then she stumbled towards the door to the emergency stairs. She dragged it open, almost fell down the stairs in her haste to get away. She had no idea where she was running to. If the stairs went down far enough she would run into the bowels of the earth, into Hell itself.

  Then she heard the footsteps running down the stairs after her. She ran faster, stumbled and crashed headlong on to a landing. She was stunned, lay there just wanting to die. Then Roger was trying to lift her up, uttering words of comfort; even in her dazed mind they sounded hypocritical. She fought him, striking at him with both hands. She had dropped the gun and her handbag; if she had still had the gun, she would indeed have killed him. Her fingers were no longer dead bone, they clawed at him with a venom that was utterly foreign to her.

  Then Cleo, carrying the gun and the handbag, was squatting beside the struggling husband and wife. “Roger, go back upstairs. Leave me with Louise.”

  “No, no!” Louise thought she was shouting, but her voice was only a hoarse whisper magnified in the funnel of the narrow stairwell. “Both of you—leave me alone! Go—I don’t want you to touch me—”

  Roger let her go, sat back on the steps. There was a red mark and bloody scratches on his face; somehow Louise’s fingers had even clawed the ribbons from the chest of his uniform. His hair hung down and he looked so distraught as to be unrecognizable. He had lost command of the situation and of her.

  Cleo was in command: she had been in this situation before. She felt far from calm, but on the surface she looked more matter-of-fact than Louise or Roger. She tapped him on the shoulder and nodded back up the stairs. He sat for a moment staring at Louise; he could not believe what she had tried to do. He had been affronted as well as threatened. Then he stood up and, noticing the gun in Cleo’s hand, reached for it.

  “No, I’ll keep it.”

  “It’s mine.” It was army issue, so his.

  “Go upstairs, Roger.” Cleo spoke as if she were his wife, while his wife still lay like a drunk on the landing. “Don’t argue.”

  He looked for a moment as if he would take command again; then he went meekly. When the door, two landings above, had closed behind him, Cleo sat down on the steps and put out a hand, the one without the gun, to Louise.

  “It’s not what you think, Louise. I’m not one of his women.”

  Louise lay on her back staring at her; then, becoming aware of the indignity of her position, she sat up. She was returning to normal: caring about appearances was part of being normal. She was still an army wife, no matter how much she might want to desert. Cleo handed her her handbag, but kept the gun.

  “Freshen up. How did you come here?”

  Louise did not want to look at herself; she kept her mirror in the closed handbag. “I drove down.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Downstairs, in the garage.” She was like a child answering a teacher, one she was wary of. But she recognized that Cleo was trying to help her and, after all, there was no one else who would. She looked down through the railings into the deep hole of the stairwell. Far below was a concrete floor waiting for her like a morgue slab.

  “That’s not the answer, Louise, so don’t think about it.”

  Louise looked at her; then abruptly she started to weep. Cleo drew her head into her lap, stroked the disordered hair. She said nothing till Louise had cried all her tears out of herself: the tears ran out but the bitter shame was still there.

  “Oh God—” Louise began to shiver and she crumpled against Cleo’s legs. But she was no longer drowning nor wanting to drown; she came back up to the ugly, futureless surface of the world she had to go on living in. She struggled within herself for a moment, not wanting to stay afloat, but it was useless. “Save me, Cleo—please—”

  “Let’s go back to New York,” said Cleo. “I’ll drive.”

  Like a good editor she wondered how the Courier would have handled the story if Louise had shot both her and Roger. But she could never debate it, not even with Jack. He would not want to be reminded of another murder attempt.

  She drove Louise back to Sands Point. She stayed the night with her, insisting that she take a sleeping pill. In the morning, while Louise was still asleep, she went downstairs and introduced herself to Lena Jinks. The elderly housekeeper gave her a warm smile.

  “You welcome here, Miss Spearfield. Miz Brisson, she had nobody stay here for too long. She all right? I got scared I come back yesterday and she ain’t here, no note, nothing. She ain’t looked well lately.”

  “She’s fine. A little tired, that’s all. Where is a phone I can use?”

  She called Roger at Watergate, told him where she was. “Louise is not awake yet, but I think she’ll be all right. We talked on the way back last night. She’s had a lot cooped up inside her for far too long.”

  “Why didn’t she talk to me?”

  “Oh Roger—!” Men, even the most intelligent of them, could be so bloody dumb. “Call her later this morning. I don’t know if you want to get back together—I don’t even know if she wants to. That’s between the two of you. But call her and ask her how she is. And don’t bugger up things by trying to put yourself in the right. She’s been through far more than you have.”

  “Jesus—” He was silent for a moment, then he said, “I’ll recommend to the President that he make you Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

  “Just so long as he doesn’t give the job to you. Goodbye, Roger. Be kind to her when you call. That won’t cost you any pride.”

  She hung up before he could reply, then called Carl Fishburg at his home. “Any problems at the office last night?”

  “No more than usual. There’s some male chauvinism in the editorials, but we had to grab our opportunity while you were away. How was Washington?” He was the only one in New York who knew why she had gone to see Roger, though he didn’t know all the story.

  “Amenable.”

  “A pity. It would have made a great story.”

  You don’t know, mate, the story you might have had. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  She had breakfast, glanced through the Courier that had been delivered to the front porch, then went up to see Louise. She was sitting up in bed, her hair done, a breakfast tray across her lap. She looked pale, almost gaunt, but she managed a smile.

  “I was pleased when Lena said you were still downstairs. I’ll never be able to thank you, Cleo.”

  “I’ve talked to Roger. If he calls you, don’t apologize or say you’re sorry for what you tried to do. I’m glad it didn’t happen, but he had it coming to him.”

  Louise shook her head. “Not murder! I just don’t know how I could have—”

  “Don’t get yourself upset again. It’ll take time, but eventually you’ll put it behind you. I once co
vered a story like this,” she lied. “It all worked out okay in the end.”

  “I get so depressed—”

  She guessed Louise was going through the menopause: at least Jack hadn’t been going through that. “Call me any time you feel depressed. Any time.”

  “You’re busy. I envy you. Perhaps if I were busy I wouldn’t have time to feel the way I do.”

  There’s always time to feel low. “I’ll call you this evening from the office. And remember—don’t apologize to Roger. He’s a general. They never apologize for starting wars. And he started this one.”

  Louise smiled, the gauntness slipping out of her face. “I’m glad I didn’t shoot you.”

  “So am I. Incidentally, this is between you, me and Roger. Claudine is never to know.”

  17

  I

  CLAUDINE DID ask Roger why he had been passed over as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I thought you were favourite for it.”

  “You better ask the President.”

  There were levels to which decent Republicans did not descend. She let the matter drop; she had other things on her mind. Alain was still in Europe, still at what seemed to her a loose end: she liked people to be tied up, preferably to herself. She had gone across twice to see him, travelling once by TWA and once by Air France to show what she liked to think of as her dual nationality. Neither airline quite met her standards, but one couldn’t ask for the QE2 to be airborne.

  Alain told her he would come home when he had his personal affairs sorted out. It was on her second visit that she discovered his personal affairs were in the singular: he was having an affair with the wife of Tom Border. He had tried to explain to her that he was not breaking up a marriage; Tom and Simone had been separated for six months and originally, as a family friend, he had been interested only in consoling Simone. Tom, who did not need consoling, was wandering around Europe and the Middle East writing freelance pieces for the Courier and several magazines.

  “If Simone divorces Tom, I want to marry her.”

  “If? That sounds as if she’s hoping he will come back to her.”