The dining-room was very warm, and odorous from the scent of massed violets in the centerpiece. On the twelve-foot table, shrouded in pink damask with an Irish lace throw over it, there were no bare spaces; each gilded and monogrammed service plate was surrounded by an archipelago of nut, celery, and relish dishes, of bonbonnières, a diminishing file of wineglasses, and ten massive silver knives, forks, and spoons. And six inches above each plate, coquettishly lurking in a bower of violets, were small handpainted porcelain slabs where the guests might read the menu of the evening.
Fey saw McAllister consult his, squinting with his far-sighted eyes through a concentrated appraisal of each of the seven courses from the consommé à la Sévigné through the terrapin à la Maryland, the filet of beef Renaissance, the salmi of pheasant, the roast saddle of lamb accompanied by rum sherbets, the asparagus mousse, to the profiterolles au chocolat garnis de fraises, the ices and the cheese.
Fey saw him nod, and surreptitiously unfasten the lower buttons on his waistcoat before turning to his neighbor, Mrs. Colefax.
The chef had surpassed himself. The wines were perfect, the dry Montilla sherry, the Haut Brion ’65, the Romanee Conti, the champagne of ’57.
The stately process of consumption flowed on. During the filet of beef, Fey asked Mr. Van Vrandt what he knew of Mrs. Colefax, her interest in the young widow was keen. There was a similarity between them of age and looks, besides that flash of sympathetic awareness.
Van Vrandt ate a truffle, washed it down with the Haut Brion, and said: ‘One of the very best old Virginia families, but left quite destitute after the war. I believe she supports herself and her little boy.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I’ve heard that she writes, under another name, of course.’
‘Oh,’ said Fey. She watched Mrs. Colefax for a moment. ‘I wonder she hasn’t married again,’ she added.
‘Oh, she’s had plenty of chances.’ Van Vrandt poked under the remains of his filet in the hope of finding more truffles. ‘ They say young William Waldorf Astor proposed to her, but she won’t marry for money.’
‘I should think for the sake of her child——’ Fey’s voice had sharpened into a sudden intensity. She bit off the rest of the sentence, painfully aware that she had been refuting a criticism never dreamed by the placid masticating gentleman on her right. What’s the matter with me, tonight? she thought. She looked down the table to Simeon. He was telling Sophie Bull a Negro dialect story about ’Rastus in the chicken roost which Sophie received with twitters of polite laughter. Simeon looked happy. He felt Fey’s gaze and their eyes met for a moment in affectionate marital signal. The dinner was going off beautifully.
Fey sighed, smiled, and upon the arrival of the pheasant salmi turned to Sylvester Bull. ‘Haven’t we had an unusual amount of snow this winter? Your family must have made great use of your pretty new cutter.’
Which launched Mr. Bull on his favorite topic—his stable.
At ten-thirty, having demolished the saddle of lamb and enjoyed the prescribed digestive pause furnished by the sherbets, they were well into the asparagus mousse, and Fey was listening to Mr. Van Vrandt’s impressions of Paris when she heard, muffled by the swinging door to the butler’s pantry, the ring of the front-doorbell.
She saw Stone glide out of the dining-room to answer it, decided that it must be someone’s carriage arrived early by mistake, and continued to look brightly receptive for Van Vrandt’s minute-by-minute account of a soiree where he had met the Count de Chambord.
When the butler reappeared, he seemed ruffled, and his cleanshaven cheeks were dully red. Puzzled, Fey watched him walk down to Simeon and whisper something, at the same time giving Simeon a folded paper. Simeon excused himself and stared down at the note in his hand. Fey gave up all pretense of listening to Van Vrandt as she saw the change in her husband. He started to his feet as though on violent impulse, looked at Sophie Bull, sank back in his chair again. He sat staring at his asparagus mousse, and as Sophie stopped speaking, gave a loud off-key laugh which made the nearest heads turn while Sophie, who was not observant, wondered if she had really said anything quite that witty.
Fey saw him lift his champagne glass, sip from it, and put it down. His hands had a controlled tremor. He continued to talk to Mrs. Van Vrandt and Sophie Bull, swaying his whole body jerkily from one woman to the other and apparently making little sense to judge from their expressions of well-bred perplexity. He lifted his glass several times, put it down before it touched his mouth. He stood up again, this time slowly. ‘Will you be so very kind as to excuse me? Important message. Please go on with dinner. I won’t be long.’ He did not look at Fey, though she tried hard to catch his eye. He gave them all a vague smile and walked out of the dining-room.
The slight pause was immediately filled by accelerated murmurs of conversation, while everybody politely ignored this deviation from etiquette. Van Vrandt went on precisely where he had left off—‘Paid Mrs. Van Vrandt and me marked attention, asking questions about America, very democratic, considering he’s heir to the Bourbon throne.’
‘Indeed, he must be charming,’ said Fey, clenching her hands under the enormous pink damask napkin and watching the two footmen, who took an interminable time to crumb the table and change the plates. At last Stone bent over her with the platter of chocolate profiterolles.
‘Who was it came?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know, madam. Very forward young man, insisted on my taking a message to Mr. Tower. I put him in the library.’
Fey said ‘Thank you,’ and inclined her head once more toward Van Vrandt. The violet centerpiece, the littered table, the hissing lights in the gasolier, the six faces, all wavered and combined into a slow circling spiral. It can’t be—she thought. It is something about business. There are many young men. There’d be no reason for him to come here like this and ask for Simeon. No reason. The words repeated themselves with a mechanical monotony like the sound of train wheels. No reason. No reason. No reason.
‘He most kindly invited us down to his château upon our next visit to La Belle France——’ Van Vrandt was saying, and it occurred to him that Mrs. Tower looked a bit strange. She was very pale and those big gray eyes of hers were fixed on his face with a sort of intensity of listening that made you feel she didn’t hear a word. What’s the matter with these people tonight? he thought irritably. Host rushing off like that in the middle of dinner. Hostess looking— well, you’d say frightened— if that wasn’t so ridiculous.
‘These mints are delicious, Mrs. Tower/ said Sylvester Bull.
Yes, thought Fey, turning, now I must listen to you. I can’t leave. I can’t find out. Simeon would never forgive me if I left.
‘I’m so glad you like them, Mr. Bull. Maillard’s makes them for us specially.’ When we get up, I’ll go to the library. I’ll make an excuse. But it will be some man from the office.
‘Dear lady,' said McAllister, leaning forward across Mrs. Colefax and Sylvester Bull, ‘this delicious dinner will positively make history. With your permission I shall mention it in the little book on Society I am writing.’
Fey smiled. ‘On condition that we may have an autographed copy to keep on our drawing-room table, Mr. McAllister.’ Madre de Dios, will they never finish eating ! Why doesn’t Simeon come back! It isn’t Terry, it can’t be. But with the actual inward voicing of his name, she knew that it was.
She stood up. ‘ Forgive me—I won’t be a minute/ she said to them.
Only Penelope Colefax heard the note of fear, for only she was qualified to recognize it, and she sent Fey a look of concern. The others shared Van Vrandt’s annoyance. One simply did not flit off from the table without explanation, and the ices, cheese, and dessert not yet served, either.
They watched Fey go out. Mrs. Van Vrandt shrugged her fat shoulders, a gesture repeated by her husband. They sat back and waited.
When Simeon entered the library, Terry had been standing by the desk examining a carved carnelian paperweight. His bade had be
en turned to the door, the long broad-shouldered back, which even in that position gave the impression of swagger. His bright head with its close curls was bent possessively over the paperweight.
Simeon, whose whole being had been concentrated on control, rushed across the room and snatched it from Terry’s hand. ‘ How d-dare you touch my things! ’
Terry grinned with perfect good nature. He had been drinking all day since arriving in New York. It hadn’t seemed easy this morning, this new plan, but it did now. Easy and a magnificent joke, too. They were giving a swell dinner party, he’d seen it through the window. Tease the stuffy old codger, give him fits, while Fey and the nabobs sat across the hall in the dining-room.
‘You signed an agreement that you were never to bother me again. You went to Chicago,’ said Simeon, more quietly. He walked behind his desk and stood there, holding the little paperweight.
‘Sure I went to Chicago. But I came back again—by way of Danbury. I spent the last few days in Danbury looking up your folks.’ Still grinning, Terry cocked his head and watched.
Simeon’s breath made a sound; otherwise he didn’t move. A short heavy man in black-and-white evening dress bulwarked by the wide rosewood desk.
‘I found lots of things in Danbury that people don’t seem to know,’ said Terry. ‘ I laughed myself silly. Maybe they would, too.’
The library gathered itself into a listening stillness. The gas fire sputtered softly. From across the hall came the sound of Sophie Bull’s high laugh.
‘So it occurred to me,’ said Terry, ‘that for that two thousand you held out on me, and maybe a few extra thrown in, I might sign another agreement.’
For the first time a faint unease penetrated Terry’s alcoholic euphoria. The little man didn’t move at all; not even his lids, and the eyes behind them looked like black pits.
‘Come on, don’t take it like that,’ said Terry, making a placatory gesture. ‘You’re a rich man. You can afford to keep things quiet. And think of Fey.’
‘Have you seen Fey?’
Terry relaxed. So now the old boy was coming off his high horse. Why not tell him the truth? thought Terry, with a muddled spurt of irritation. Why should he think he had everything, money, Fey, Lucita——
‘Sure I’ve seen Fey,’ he said. ‘Lots of times. And she was mighty glad to see me, too. Just as loving as in the old days.’
‘I d-don’t believe you.’ Simeon put down the paperweight. His right hand moved slowly to the brass knob of the desk drawer.
Terry threw back his head. ‘You don’t believe me!’ He showed his teeth and his laugh rang out. ‘Why, what have you got besides money to hold a woman with—little t-t-t-Tombstone?’
Simeon opened the desk drawer and, taking out a small loaded revolver, aimed it deliberately at Terry's chest and pulled the trigger.
Fey had reached the hall when the sound of the shot hurtled through the house. ‘ No! ’ she whispered; ‘ no—no! No! ’ She opened the library door.
On the carpet Terry lay, his hand clutching at his breast, and a foolish, astonished smile on his face.
Simeon still stood behind the desk, holding the revolver, from its muzzle floated a pendant of acrid blue smoke. He looked at Fey.
‘Is he dead?’ he said. ‘You’d better find out if he’s dead.’
She did not move. She stood beside Terry’s body, looking at Simeon, and behind her in the doorway crowded the appalled faces of the dinner guests.
Chapter Twenty
RACHEL MORETON had finished her morning rounds through the Infirmary wards before she retired to her own room to eat a late breakfast and glance over the Chronicle.
She saw the name Tower in the headlines. ‘Frightful Tragedy at Tower Mansion. Simeon Tower Under Arrest.’
Rachel gathered up the paper and carried it to the light, grimly straining her farsighted eyes on the column of small type. The paper obviously had imperfect knowledge of the facts, and even these were reported cautiously with due regard to the financial and social importance of the Tower name. It was plain, however, that an unknown young man had been shot in the Tower library, and that Simeon Tower had been held.
Rachel folded the paper and put it on the bed. She went to her cupboard, took out her brown satin bonnet and thick woolen cloak. She hurried down to the dispensary and found Doctor Daniel pounding camphor in a mortar.
‘I’m going out, Annie,’ she said. ‘I don’t know for how long. Can you manage the wards? ’
Doctor Daniel nodded. ‘You’re upset?’ she asked, in surprise. In all these years of association, she had seldom seen Rachel’s serenity ruffled, and then only by the loss of a patient.
‘Yes,’ said Rachel, and did not explain. She knew that Doctor Daniel had long ago forgotten all about the strange girl who had lived with them at the Infirmary for some months eight years back. Nor would she connect Fey with Simeon Tower if she did remember. As far as the Infirmary went, Fey had vanished forever on the day she and the baby had moved to Eighteenth Street.
Rachel hailed a passing hack and drove to Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Ninth Street. Several people stood on the sidewalk before the brownstone house, gaping up at the shuttered windows. A bewhiskered policeman lounged against the iron railing at the foot of the steps. He straightened up as Doctor Moreton approached him, saying, ‘Ts Mrs. Tower inside? I should like to see her.’
‘Guess she’s there all right,’ said the policeman, fingering his badge. ‘But I don’t know—I’ve got orders not to——’
‘I am a physician,’ said Rachel. ‘And also her friend.’
‘You don’t say sc—a lady doctor! Was one of those helped my Maggie last year and——’
Rachel gave him her kind smile and mounted the steps to the front door. It was opened at the third ring by a frowzy and terrified little kitchenmaid who was the only servant left in the great house. The rest of them, infected by mass hysteria, had bolted like rabbits at the termination of their formal questionings by the police. Molly, the little kitchenmaid, would have bolted too, but this was her first job since landing and she had no place to go.
‘I would like to see Mrs. Tower,’ said Rachel.
‘Oh, mum—ain’t it ’orrible——’ cried the girl, gulping. The ’earse just took ’im away, the poor young gentleman. ’E was that ’andsome. To think of Mr. Tower doing an orful thing like that! I can’t stop me teeth chattering, I’m that frightened.’
‘Go make yourself a cup of tea and lie down for a while,’ said Rachel, in a soothing voice. ‘Where is Mrs. Tower?’
Molly pointed a shaking finger. ‘Upstairs in ’er room. She ain’t seen nobody since the perlice went.’
Rachel went upstairs, noticing even in her distress the magnificence of the marble balustrade, the gold leather-embossed wallpaper, the imported stained-glass skylight, and the silver-gilt gasolier which hung down three stories in the stair well. She reached the second-floor landing and stood uncertainly, confronted by a row of shut mahogany doors. ‘ Fey——’ she called. There was no answer, but from the comer of her eye she saw something small and white move in the darkness at the end of the hallway.
She investigated and discovered a little figure with red-gold curls huddled on the back-stairs landing. Rachel’s heart contracted, but she said, in a brisk matter-of-fact tone, ‘Why, hello! You must be Lucy. What in the world are you doing here in your nightie, dear?’
The child looked up at her dully. Her mouth was pinched and bluish, her pupils enormous.
Shock! thought Rachel. Can she have seen something? ‘ Come, dear, get up and show me your room. I’m going to put you to bed.’
Lucita got up and walked to a door across the passageway. ‘Miss Pringle’s gone,’ she said. ‘She packed all her things in a box and went. She said she was going to take the first boat back to a decent country.’
‘Well,’ said Rachel, straightening the unmade bed and lifting the child into it, ‘ I expect that was sensible of her, if she’s that kind of person.??
? She smiled at Lucita, at the same time feeling the little girl’s pulse. ‘I want you to drink this.’ She poured a few drops of ammonia spirits into a glass of water. It had not occurred to her to bring her medicine bag, but she kept a small emergency kit in her old-fashioned reticule.
The child drank docilely. She lay back on the pillow, looking up at Rachel. ‘Why did Papa hurt my real papa?’ she said.
Rachel, for all her self-control, could not hide her dismay. ‘What do you mean! ’
‘I saw it,’ said the child. ‘Last night there was a terrible lot of shouting and people running. I got out of bed and went downstairs. There wasn’t anybody seemed to see me, not even Mama. I saw Cousin Terry, my real papa, lying on the floor in the library. There was blood on him. And everybody was saying Papa had shot him.’
Rachel took Lucita’s hand in her strong warm grip, and she shut her eyes for a moment.
‘Lucy,’ she said, ‘did you ever have a bad dream? A nightmare?’ When the child nodded, she went on, ‘Do you remember how it’s only real for a second after you wake up, and then it fades away into nothing?’
Lucita nodded again earnestly.
‘I want you to think of everything that happened last night as a bad dream. It will fade away. You’re going to sleep now. And when you wake up, I want you to think hard about the thing you like best in the world to do. What is that, dear?’
‘Swimming—I guess,’ said the little girl. ‘Playing on the beach.’
‘Exactly. Think about sand castles, the golden sunshine and the sea.’
Rachel poured a sedative into the glass and held it to the child’s lips. ‘I’ll leave the door open and keep an eye on you,’ she said. ‘I want to find your mother. Do you remember what I told you to think about?’
‘The sea and the sand/ said Lucita. ‘I'll try. But——’ She turned her head away, and whispered, ‘I hate Papa for hurting my real papa.’
Rachel pulled up the bedclothes and drew the curtains. How could this horrible thing have happened, and how was it that the child knew?