A Trick of the Eye

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  I did the best I could getting it hooked up properly. Although it fit perfectly—even the length was right—it was still the dress of youth on the body of middle age. Its regal stiffness and smiling neckline only served to highlight the slackness of my features. In the end, the dress did little to transform me.

  I wondered if Cassandra had stood staring at herself in the mirror the night of her debut, taking all the promise in front of her for granted, like a view she’d grown up with? Or if she had looked out on black waves of uncertainty, never truly feeling the privilege of her position, or perhaps not wanting it?

  I took off the dress, put it away once and for all, and went to bed. I was fast asleep when I heard a persistent alarm sounding through my dreams. In my stupor, it took me a while to realize what it was. I grappled for the receiver in the dark, nearly knocking the phone off my night table.

  “Hello?”

  “You’re there,” said a familiar but unplaceable male voice on the other end of the line.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Speak of the devil, I thought, now recognizing those low, husky tones.

  “John? John Noland!”

  “How’ve you been?”

  “What time is it?” I groaned.

  “Late.”

  “In more ways than one. What the hell are you doing calling me at this hour? Or at all for that matter?”

  “You’re never home. I tried you several times today.”

  “Why didn’t you leave a message?”

  “You know me. I hate messages,” he said.

  I waited for him to continue with the conversation.

  “So . . . how’ve you been?”

  “Fine, thanks,” I replied curtly.

  “Good.”

  Another interminable pause. This time I broke the silence.

  “What do you want, John?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about you.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  I felt myself being pulled back into that net of his.

  “Was that you a couple of weeks ago?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Coming out of my building?”

  So he’d seen me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Thought so.”

  “You saw me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why didn’t you say hello?”

  “I’m saying hello now. Hello.”

  “Hello,” I replied.

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was in the neighborhood and curiosity got the better of me,” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “I wondered if you still lived there.”

  “Why didn’t you ring up?”

  “How do you know I didn’t?”

  “Because I was home,” he said.

  “You were in your apartment?”

  “I saw you from the window.”

  “Oh. Why didn’t you yell down?” I said.

  “Why didn’t you ring up?”

  We were back where we started from.

  “Okay, John, why are you calling me?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I miss you.”

  He said this as casually as if we hadn’t seen one another for a couple of days.

  “Uh, John, it’s been twelve years since we’ve spoken to one another.”

  “Do you miss me?” he continued, ignoring my statement.

  I was damned if I was going to give him the satisfaction of saying I missed him, or any satisfaction at all, for that matter.

  “So . . . what have you been up to all these years?” I said.

  “Writing, traveling. Same stuff.”

  “I heard you got married.”

  “Uh-huh,” he replied.

  “To whom?”

  “Someone you don’t know.”

  “Who is she?” I inquired.

  “We’re separated.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Just a woman. A painter, as a matter of fact.”

  “Really?” This interested me.

  “I have a weakness for painters, as you know.”

  “What kind of a painter was she?”

  “A bad one.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said, somewhat exasperated by his evasions. “What sort of painting did she do?”

  “Abstract.”

  “Abstract, eh?”

  Another brief pause.

  “So, when am I going to see you?”

  “You’re not,” I said firmly.

  “Why?”

  “John, I repeat—what do you want?”

  “To see you. Catch up. Give you a copy of my new book.”

  “Why? Did you dedicate it to me?”

  “No.”

  “Who did you dedicate it to?”

  “ ‘Vanishing species,’ ” he said.

  “To me, in other words.”

  He laughed. “Still have your humor, I see.”

  “I’d be dead if I didn’t,” I said.

  “So . . . come out and have some dinner with me next week.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, John. I really don’t.”

  “Have dinner with me,” he urged.

  I was sorely tempted. His voice was still alluring. I suppose I have nothing to lose, I thought. It’s just a dinner, after all. I felt myself wanting to do it, wanting to see him again, even though I’d felt nothing for him on that strange sojourn to his house. I couldn’t believe he’d actually been watching me. It was intriguing.

  As he continued to cajole me, I began to reason faultily, as people do in self-destructive situations. I told myself that not having dinner with him was a sign of greater weakness than having it.

  “When?” I said softly.

  “Tuesday. I’ll pick you up.”

  I hesitated for one last self-preserving moment.

  “All right,” I sighed, giving in.

  “See you.”

  He hung up.

  Well now, I thought, it’s going to be interesting to see if I’ve changed. Accepting the dinner invitation to begin with was proof that I hadn’t changed all that much. Well, the die was cast. I found myself unexpectedly elated. For the first time in a long while, I had something to look forward to which didn’t involve work. I lay awake in the dark. Tuesday suddenly seemed very far away.

  Chapter 7

  “Tell me more, tell me more!” squawked Harry Pitt from his wheelchair, bobbing his large bald head up and down excitedly.

  I was wheeling Harry around the Goya exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, regaling him with tales of Frances Griffin and her house—the theme rooms, the extraordinary paintings and furniture, the regal but septic isolation of the old dowager herself. Harry didn’t really need a wheelchair but he always requested one, finding it an effective tool for cutting in lines, which, that day, were enormous. Even though I was growing impatient playing Scheherazade to his King Schariar, I wanted to wait our turn. But Harry, anxious to see the pictures, went into his act.

  “Let us through! Let us through!” he cried.

  Shuddering with vague annoyance at being interrupted during their contemplation, several viewers turned around and looked at Harry, who was staring up at them, doe-eyed, from the confines of his wheelchair.

  “Please let a sick old gentleman pass,” he said sweetly. “I’m an invalid. Would you be so kind as to let us through?”

  Their expressions immediately changed from irritated to embarrassed as they stepped aside to accommodate us.

  “Theater of Guilt,” Harry whispered to me cynically as I wheeled him up to the front of the line.

  Though I was mortified at Harry’s performance
, I had to admit it was effective.

  “You’re impossible!” I hissed into his ear.

  He paid no attention, feeling, I’m sure, that such rights of precedence were the due of persons as knowledgeable as himself. To Harry, most people were Philistines beneath his consideration.

  “Knowledge of taste is as rare as knowledge of Latin these days,” he lamented. “I often feel as if I were one of those monks in the Middle Ages who guarded the ancient texts from the heathen and kept learning alive despite all efforts to destroy it. We have a grave responsibility to preserve what is left of a past that this hideous century is bent on eradicating . . . Have you noticed that most people nowadays don’t have the patience to look at any picture that isn’t moving?”

  “That’s not quite true, Harry. Look at all the people here at this exhibition.”

  “Yes, but they haven’t a clue what they’re looking at,” he said dismissively. “They’re just here because some art critic told them to go.”

  “I disagree,” I said, noting the rapt faces on several of the viewers.

  “Of course you disagree, my dear. You’re still young.”

  I wheeled him over to Goya’s great painting of the lovely Countess of Chinchón.

  “Ah, look at her,” Harry sighed. “Isn’t she magnificent?”

  We both stood transfixed in front of the haunting portrait of the young countess, swathed in white, sitting in a void, an ethereal creature whose soft features and dreamy expression were filled with the sadness of a half-lived life.

  “The poor countess,” Harry went on. “All that promise and beauty come a cropper. You know her story, of course?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well,” he went on, relishing his knowledge, “she was very grand and she married an awful sadist. Some ghastly upstart general who beat her and squandered her money, then ran off with another woman. Typical. She never recovered. Died young.

  “Look how sympathetic Goya is to her in this picture. He isolates her so she appears distant, yet he makes her vulnerable and appealing to the viewer. One just wants to reach out and put one’s arms around her, don’t you think? Yet one fears for her fragility. She looks as if she’s about to evaporate, doesn’t she? It’s as if the artist were saying that beauty and sadness are somehow linked in this fleeting life.” He paused for a moment, obviously moved. “He didn’t miss much, old Goya.”

  “She reminds me of Cassandra Griffin,” I said, looking at the countess’s haunted face.

  “Really?” He seemed intrigued.

  We moved on, chatting away as we made cursory stops at some of the other paintings.

  “Tell me more about Frances Griffin,” Harry said.

  “Well, the general feeling I have is that she doesn’t live life, she stages it.”

  “Oh, but that’s true of so many of those ladies. The tacky ones do it through publicity, of course. I used to walk a lot of them, when I still could walk,” he said with a sneer. “And I noticed that they really weren’t happy with an evening unless they read about it the next day in the columns and saw pictures of themselves plastered all over the newspapers, sort of like reviews.”

  “Don’t tell me Frances Griffin ever courted publicity. I can’t believe it. She’s a complete and total recluse.”

  “No, she never did,” Harry said. “She was far too elegant, far too grand. I remember when she walked into my shop that day I hadn’t a clue who she was. But I could tell from the way she was dressed and the way she conducted herself that she was someone. She didn’t have to announce it.”

  “Yes, she’s very regal for a person who came from nothing, as you say she did.”

  “Don’t forget,” Harry warned, “people who invent themselves that successfully can be the most regal of all. They’re usually very good at revising the script to fit the character. Frances Griffin has an infallible sense of story line. She always managed to maintain her mystery, which is, of course, vital for any woman, but de rigueur for the true grand dame.”

  “Don’t you think everyone invents themselves somehow?” I asked him.

  “To a degree. Especially in this country,” he replied. “Certainly people who make great lives for themselves out of sheer will or talent are self-invented. But there are a few who are given a clear distinction at birth that’s recognized by society—like, for example, great wealth or a great name or even great beauty. And those people don’t invent themselves so much as they spend their lives either living up to what was expected of them, or failing to do so.”

  “I wonder what was expected of Cassandra Griffin,” I said.

  “Depends on whom you ask. I’m sure most people would expect a great deal from someone with those kinds of opportunities. But what they don’t know is that too much can be as damaging as too little,” Harry observed. “Great wealth, great poverty—flip sides of the same coin. The poor thing probably never had a chance, not with that background.”

  “No. She would have had to overcome all her advantages!”

  Harry and I both laughed.

  “God, we’re a pair of cynics, aren’t we?” I said.

  “Well, let’s say we’re cautious . . . and experienced. Don’t forget, Frances Griffin just appeared on the scene one day. I don’t think anyone knew what to expect from her.”

  “What’s your point, Harry?”

  “My point is that by the time anybody checked on her, it was too late. She’d swept the path clean. And anyone who wanted to be in her good graces had to swallow whatever story she gave them. So that became the official story. People have short memories around money and power. Tell me, Faith,” he said, changing his tone somewhat, “do you like her?”

  It was odd but I hadn’t really thought about it before. I considered for a moment.

  “You know, I do, sort of.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

  “Well, it’s complicated,” I began. “I get the feeling she’s playing all sorts of games with me and I can’t figure out why.”

  “Games? What sorts of games?” he inquired.

  “Oh, just little things. She had me followed for example. And I think she was watching me for the first week I was in the ballroom. Then we had a very strange lunch where she mistook me for her daughter.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “Well, you really had to have been there, but she sort of apologized to me as if I were Cassandra. And that leads me to what I really want to talk to you about, Harry.”

  I leaned down to speak to him confidentially.

  “I think I know who killed her daughter,” I whispered. “And it was no intruder.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Roberto Madi. Her husband.”

  I expected the revelation of this theory to have as startling an impact on Harry as its formulation had on me.

  “Oh yes, the son-in-law,” he said dryly. “I seem to remember something about that now. Yes, yes, he was the one.”

  I was taken aback.

  “What do you mean he was the one?” I said.

  “Well, of course, everyone assumed he did it.”

  Harry’s dismissive pronouncement was incredibly annoying so I gave his wheelchair an extra little push to let him know I was still in charge. He reacted to the jolt.

  “Now, now, temper—.”

  “What do you mean everyone assumed he did it?”

  “I don’t know. They just did. That was the rumor anyway.”

  “Why didn’t they do anything?”

  “What could they do?”

  “I don’t know. Prosecute him,” I said angrily. “Isn’t that what one usually does with murderers?”

  “Faith, dear, what a silly question. Your naiveté is so unexpected sometimes.”

  “Didn’t they have any proof?”

  “There might have been pr
oof, who knows?” Harry shrugged.

  “Do you think there was a cover-up?”

  “This is Society, dear. Well, soi-disant Society. Society is nothing but a cover-up,” he snorted.

  “You know what I mean, Harry. I would have thought they’d have loved to pin it on the son-in-law. Mrs. Griffin hates him. He was an interloper.”

  Harry reacted to the mild exasperation in my voice by speaking with exaggerated calm.

  “Whatever their reasons, they didn’t want him prosecuted,” he said.

  “You keep saying they didn’t want him prosecuted, as if they had a choice!” I cried.

  I heard my voice above the din. People were looking at me.

  “Calm down,” Harry admonished me. “Listen, dear,” he went on, “when you’re as grand and rich as the Griffins, you have nothing but choices. That’s what your life is: one big choice. Don’t forget, Holt Griffin belonged to the old rich. They still have tentacles in high places, which means to some degree, they’re immune to the ordinary rules of life—and death.”

  “Harry, listen to me, will you? Have you ever read those newspaper accounts of the murder?”

  “I certainly did at the time,” he said. “It was all anyone could talk about.”

  “But not recently.”

  “I don’t keep them by my bed like a Bible, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, when you do read them, it’s so glaringly obvious that he did it. I just don’t understand why they couldn’t prove it.”

  “Because they didn’t want to,” he said.

  “God, how depressing. You know who murdered your daughter and you don’t want to prove it.”

  “Well, contemplate the scandal if they had proved it. It was a huge scandal the way it was, but at least it died down after a while. Just imagine what would have happened if they’d been able to prove that the son-in-law had done it. The mind boggles. The arrest, the trial—it would have gone on for years and years! Can you see Frances Griffin enduring that kind of publicity? And as for old Holt Griffin, he wouldn’t have survived. He would have just plain keeled over and died.”