Death Before Bedtime

by Gore Vidal

  “ ‘For who would fardels bear.…’ ” boomed Miss Pruitt, recognizing my allusion to him whom they call “the bard” in political circles. She fardeled on for a moment or two; then, her soliloquy done, “It’s possible you’re right,” she said. “Since it is the police view I am perfectly willing to subscribe to it. I will follow them down the line one hundred per cent.”

  It took me several moments to get her off the subject of Rufus Hollister and onto Mrs. Rhodes. The closer I got to what interested me, though, the more reticent the states-woman became.

  “Yes, she is taking all this bravely, isn’t she? Of course she has character. Women of our generation do have character though I am some years younger than she. Of course living with Lee was not the easiest experience. He was a difficult man; that type is. I think to be the wife of a politician is the worst fate in the world, and I should know because I’m both a woman and a politician.”

  “But they were fond of each other?”

  She paused just long enough to confirm my suspicions. “They were very close,” she said, without conviction.

  “Did she have much to do with his official life … elections and all that?”

  “Not much. She handled the finances, though. I believe they owned everything jointly. I think she wanted him to retire this year but then all political wives are the same: she opposed his going after the nomination, which was good sense because he had no chance of getting it.” She looked craftily into the middle distance, implying that she knew who would be the peerless standard-bearer.

  “Would you say that she had a vindictive nature?”

  If I had slapped the great woman, I could not’ve got a more startled reaction. “What makes you ask that?” she blustered.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It had occurred to me that she might have been the one who threatened Rufus, forced him to confess.”

  “Nonsense!” Alarm rippled through the Pruitt, like a revolution in an African anthill; her face turned dark and I was afraid she might have a stroke; but then the odd convulsions ceased and she added, quietly, “Charity could be her middle name. Her life has been one long martyrdom, endured without complaint. She hated politics; she hated the idea of Camilla Pomeroy … as well she might; she almost died when Ellen ran off with a gymnast and the marriage had to be annulled …”

  “I thought she married him in a church, properly.” I recalled the photograph of Ellen in wedding veil which the Senator kept in his study.

  “No, she was supposed to marry an eligible young man, a fine upstanding lad who might have made something out of her. Two days before the wedding, a wedding which her parents approved of even though she was only seventeen, she ran off with this muscular animal. Her father caught her in Elkton, Maryland and the marriage was duly annulled. Yet in spite of the scandal, her mother took her back without a reproach. Her father …” The butler crept into the room to inform Miss Pruitt that there was a telephone call for her.

  She disappeared into the hall. I sat drowsily by the fire. A moment later, she appeared, very pale, and asked me for brandy. I got some for her.

  She gulped it sloppily, spilling half of it on her majestic front. I looked about the room to see if the others had noticed anything; they had not; they were deep in their own problems.

  “Has anything happened?” I asked.

  She dabbed at her dress with a piece of Kleenex; she was, for her, pale … her face mottled pink-gray. “That was Governor Ledbetter. It seems that the papers have got hold of some business deal he and Lee were involved in; something which involved Rufus: the thing he referred to in that confession. A terrible scandal.…”

  CHAPTER SIX

  1

  “Moral turpitude,” said the Senate and they refused to seat the Senator-designate until a committee had checked him out.

  The morning was full of meetings and reports in the house. Mrs. Rhodes and Miss Pruitt were especially upset. Langdon was remarkably interested (at last having found a suitable theme for his magazine) and even the Pomeroys delayed their trip back to Talisman City to find out what would happen. To what extent Pomeroy himself was involved in the Senator’s numerous deals, I did not know. As far as I could tell, not at all: in this one at least.

  After breakfast, I conferred with Winters who, under the ruse of taking some last photographs of the Senator’s study and of Rufus Hollister’s bedroom had returned to the house where he was largely ignored, in marked contrast to his earlier visits.

  I found him alone in the study. The wall which had been blown away was now repaired, as far as the brick went. The plastering had not been done, however, so the room had a raw look to it: half paneled and half new-laid brick.

  Winters was glancing idly at some of the scrapbooks when I came in.

  “Oh, it’s you.” He sounded neutral, to say the least. He looked calmer and happier than usual … with good reason considering that he was now off the hot seat, his case successfully concluded.

  “Did you ever go through these?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at a yellowed clipping, dated 1927: a photograph of the Senator shaking hands with a slim woman in a cloche hat.

  “Oh yes.”

  I tried to read the caption of the picture, Winters tried to turn the page; I deliberately lifted his hand off the page and read the caption: “Senator Rhodes being congratulated on his recent victory in the primaries by Verbena Pruitt, National Committeewoman.”

  “Who would’ve thought she ever looked like that?” I was impressed. It was impossible to tell what her face was like in this old picture … but she had had a good figure.

  “I don’t think she was ever much,” said Winters; if he was irritated with the abrupt way I had pushed him aside, he didn’t show it.

  “What do you think about this new development?”

  “What new development?” He looked at me blandly.

  “You know what I mean. The business which Hollister was to take the rap for, it’s come out in the papers.”

  “The case is finished,” said Winters, opening the 1936 scrapbook.

  “Who got the word to the papers?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  “According to the Times the Government has been investigating the Senator’s company for two years.”

  “I think that’s right.” Winters sounded bored.

  “According to the papers this morning the Senator was just as much implicated as Hollister.”

  “Yes?”

  “In other words, it doesn’t look as if Hollister was to have taken the rap for the Senator’s misdeeds … in other words, the confession was a phony.”

  “Very logical,” said Winters, admiring a Berryman cartoon of Lee Rhodes in the Washington Star.

  “I’ll say it’s logical.” I was growing irritated. “Is there any real evidence that Hollister was to take the rap for the Governor and Rhodes? According to the newspaper account, they were all in it equally.”

  “What about the papers you got in the mail from your anonymous admirer? What about them? They proved that the Senator had fixed it for Hollister to be the front man. Hollister killed him before he could finish the arrangements … that’s simple enough, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t really believe that?”

  “Why not?” And that was the most that I could get out of Winters. The thought that someone might have bought him occurred to me again with some force. More than ever was I determined to meddle in this affair.

  While he looked at the old clippings, I wandered about the study, looking at the bomb-scarred desk, the books on the shelves. Then, aware that I was going to get no satisfaction out of Winters, I left the study, without a word of farewell. I had about twenty-four hours, I knew, in which to produce the murderer and since I had almost nothing to go on it was a little difficult to determine what to do next. I had several ideas, none very good.

  It occurred to me, being of a logical disposition, that I might come to a solution more quickly than not if I were to proceed in an ord
erly way to examine each of the suspects and then, by collating their stories, arrive at a solution. It sounded remarkably easy; in fact, just the thought of being logical so delighted me that for several minutes I enjoyed the sensation of having solved the murder successfully.

  I had taken care of Pomeroy. I knew, very likely, more about his relations with the Senator than the police did, thanks to Mrs. Rhodes’ excellent Burgundy of the night before.

  I still had certain doubts about Camilla. She was the next logical person to eliminate. Why, I wondered, had she tried to make me think her husband was the murderer? It was an important point, all the more so since she was a beneficiary in the old man’s will, and had known it, too.

  I found her off by herself in a corner of the drawing room, studying the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar. She was reading the thin ribbon of text which accompanies the advertisements; this thin ribbon was, I could see, the work of the latest young novelist: it concerned a young boy in Montgomery, Alabama, who killed nine flies in as many minutes on the eve of the Fourth of July … I had read it earlier, being of a literary turn (though I belong to the older literary generation of Carson McCullers and have never quite absorbed the newcomers even though they take mighty nice photographs).

  “I just love it,” said Camilla, without enthusiasm, closing the magazine; she was dressed in a very businesslike suit, as though ready for traveling.

  “We were going to take the noon train, Roger and I, but since poor Johnson got involved in this terrible mess Roger thought, out of loyalty, we should stay and see him through.”

  “I think that’s swell,” I said, earnestly.

  “Yes,” she said brightly. We stood looking at one another awkwardly for perhaps a minute. Even in this age of jet-planes and chromium plate, there are certain proprieties which those who occupy the upper echelon of our society insist upon maintaining, regardless of their true feelings. It is usually agreed upon in these circles that when a man has gone to bed with a gentlewoman he has become, up to a point, her cavaliere servente, as they used to say in Venice … the Venetians used to say, that is.

  It was apparent to both of us that a certain dignity was lacking in our relationship; neither had spoken of love or duty, and both, in fact, had acted subsequently as though nothing had happened, depriving man’s greatest emotion and most sacred moment of its true splendor; in fact there had been the faintest note of the barnyard in our coupling which, doubtless, worried the hen though the rooster, if I can call myself one even in this analogy, was not much concerned. But there was a game to be played … two games, even … and I had very little time.

  “Camilla,” the name sounded rich and husky on my lips.

  “Yes?” Her voice squeaked just a little as she turned two dark bright eyes up at me.

  “I … I wonder if you’d have lunch with me.”

  “Oh, but …” She “butted” for a few moments and then, aware that her position as a lady was at stake, she agreed to a brief lunch at the Mayflower where the food was good in the cocktail lounge and there was a string quartette.

  The Mayflower was very grand; I had been there only once before, in the main dining room. This time we went to the cocktail lounge, a dim, marbleized, ferny place full of people dining in the gloom to the sound of soft music; it was a perfect place for an assignation. Unfortunately the customers were mainly ladies who had dropped in after a hard morning of shopping, or five-percenters discussing deals with prospective clients … the Congressional and political figures did not, presumably, lunch here though they could be found, often, in this room at five o’clock.

  We were led to a corner table by a distinguished-looking headwaiter who resembled a Bavarian Foreign Minister.

  “Here we are,” said Camilla and a high mouse-giggle escaped from behind her ruddy lips; she was very nervous. I could not imagine that this great plain fool was the same woman who had only a few nights before come to my room like a winged furnace, like Lady Potiphar at the end of the first month. Dressed and full of rectitude, she seemed what she was: an ordinary girl from Talisman City.

  We ordered cold Virginia ham and mint juleps. I have always hated mint juleps and I don’t think she cared for them either but somehow our proximity to the Old Dominion made us reckless; outside snow was wetly falling.

  “I suppose you look forward to getting back home?” I began formally.

  “I certainly look forward to leaving this horrid city,” she said sincerely, biting off a piece of mint.

  “It hasn’t been a very nice time for any of us,” I said.

  “We have aged, Roger and I, a hundred years,” she said looking deep into my eyes. Unfortunately the stately gloom of the place prevented me from experiencing the full power of those shining dark eyes.

  “It looks as though his contract is all set, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I’m told the first orders are being made up now. We couldn’t be more thrilled.”

  “I should think so. Do you think you’ll start back tonight?”

  She shook her head. “No, not now. Of course it may not be as nice as I think.”

  “What may not be?”

  “Home. My friends. What on earth will they think when they know? And of course they know now; everyone does.”

  “Knows what?”

  “That I am Lee’s daughter. I hardly dare face them at the club, assuming we’ll be allowed to keep our membership.” We were approaching by a circuitous route the true soul of Camilla Pomeroy: the club and all that the club meant.

  “At least your mother was his common-law wife.” This didn’t sound too good but my intention was kindly.

  “As if that will make any difference to them. No, I must face this thing through.” She set her jaw, a sprig of mint clenched between her teeth.

  “It’s hardly your fault, your birth.”

  “You don’t understand Talisman City,” she said grimly. “The people there live by the book …”

  “And have not charity …”

  “What?”

  “And are difficult,” I said. I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities. I remember one brief stay in a little upstate New York village where I was referred to, behind my back, as “the Jew from New York City,” despite the presence of a Sargeant at that very moment in the Episcopal Council of Bishops … such is the generous feeling of our American peasants for strangers; I didn’t envy Mrs. Pomeroy’s return to her native heath.

  “Oh, very. But then we have to have standards after all,” she said, showing she was one of them, fallen or not.

  While we lunched, we talked about her early days, about the Senator. “We were very close even though I never dreamed the truth. Mother would never say anything except that she was glad I was seeing him because he was such a distinguished man. She was especially pleased when I organized a platoon of Girl Scouts to work for him on one of his campaigns. Father, that is her husband, hated Lee and used to make very uncivil remarks whenever I came home from one of my visits to the Rhodes’ house but Mother always made him keep still.”

  “It must’ve been quite a shock, when you found out.”

  She rolled her eyes briefly to heaven. “I’ll say it was. I thought seriously of killing myself, being young and dramatic but then after a while I got used to the idea … and Lee was marvelous with me, called me ‘his own girl.’ ” She seemed, suddenly, very moved, for the first time since the trouble began.

  “He must have been very fond of you. He would have to have been to include you in his will, knowing everything would come to light, embarrassing his family.”

  “Much he cared about them!” This came out like a small explosion.

  “You mean …”

  “He hated both of them. Mrs. Rhodes was an ice-cold woman who married him because he was a young man who was going to make
his mark, because she was ambitious. He went into politics and ruined his health and got mixed up with all sorts of terrible people and finally was killed by one of them just because she wanted to be a Senator’s wife, a President’s wife. How he used to complain to me about her! And his daughter: well, he understood her altogether too well … everyone did, what she was and is. Of course, he stopped her that once, when she ran off with a weight-lifter on the eve of her wedding to Verbena Pruitt’s nephew …”

  “She was supposed to marry Verbena’s nephew?” I had not heard this before.

  “That was the plan, only at the last minute, after the wedding dress was made and the reception already planned, she left home with this man. Lee brought her back and annulled the marriage but that didn’t change her.” I was rather proud of Ellen’s character; she would not be controlled by anyone.

  “How did Verbena’s nephew turn out?”

  Camilla frowned. “He became an alcoholic and later died in an accident. Even so, he was the catch of the season and everyone thought he had a great future ahead of him. He was rich and in the Foreign Service, his father had been Ambassador to Italy and what with Verbena’s influence and so on he could have risen to great heights.”

  “But he did take to drink.”

  “Even so, no one knew it at the time. Ellen had no business walking out.”

  “Perhaps she suspected what his future might be; it looks as though she had better sense than her father.”

  Camilla shook her head stubbornly; then, with woman’s logic, “Besides, he might not have been an alcoholic if she had married him. Well, her parents never forgave her for that particular scandal and then after she began to have men friends of all sorts they sent her away to New York where that sort of thing isn’t so noticeable.” Talisman City suddenly showed its bleak intolerant head, besprinkled with hayseed and moral rectitude. I saw no reason to defend Ellen who is a bit of a madwoman about sex; on the other hand, Camilla’s high and mighty line did not accord with her own behavior. It was obvious she hated Ellen and would use any stick to beat her with and Ellen always proffered a formidable mace for this purpose to anyone hostilely minded.