The Woman in Black, page 4
“I can’t get her go away, Mis’ Latham,” he said. “She keep hangin’ round, say she invited.”
The woman gave me a wan smile.
“I am invited,” she said quietly. “I’m Bertha Taylor, Mrs. Latham. Mrs. Lawrence Taylor.”
Haste took his list out of his pocket. He was a little nervous, with much to be said on his side. If I hadn’t recognized her voice, I think I would have agreed with him. As it was, I held out my umbrella for her to get under.
“It’s all right, Haste,” I said.
“Oh, thank you!” Mrs. Taylor went up the steps with me. “You’re very kind.”
In the brighter light of the powder room I must say I was more than doubtful. Her rain-spotted black rayon dress had shrunk in wattles. Her face, without benefit of makeup, looked as if she’d been sick a long time, her dry gray hair was straggling down the back of her neck and she made no effort to do anything about it—in fact, she didn’t even glance in the mirror. She stood by the door waiting with her scarf folded in her hands, patiently, and with a curious air—not frightened, I thought, but certainly with something almost like desperation. I began to be worried. After all, I didn’t even know she really was Mrs. Lawrence Taylor, and perhaps Haste’s judgment was better than mine.
From the drawing room upstairs I could hear the gay party cacophony.
“If you’re ready, shall we go up?” I said.
Her soggy shoes made a queer squashing sound on the marble staircase. She moved slowly. I had to wait on every other step.
“I haven’t been very well,” she said. “I hope Mrs. Hallet won’t mind my coming . . .”
Fortunately Mrs. Hallet was at the drawing-room door, and fortunately Mrs. Hallet is a woman of great social presence.
“This is Mrs. Lawrence Taylor . . . Mrs. Hallet,” I said. “I’m afraid we’re both slightly damp.”
Dorothy smiled and put out her hand. “How do you do, Mrs. Taylor? I think you know Mrs. Stubblefield, don’t you, and Mr. Stubblefield?”
If it had been the Queen of Sheba on her golden litter, Dorothy couldn’t have been more gracious as she turned to the small, pallid and astonishingly over-dressed woman standing beside her. I don’t remember having ever seen a picture of Mrs. Stubblefield, but I’d never have thought of her, from hearing Dorothy, as any one so completely colorless. But I’d seen many pictures of the great American standing next to her, and I was disappointed in him too. Mr. Stubblefield was certainly big, but he didn’t tower over everybody. The Southern senator talking to him was just as big and the blond young man behind him was bigger. But he had something they didn’t have. Whether it really was indomitable power, or whether it was just superbly bland self-assurance, I didn’t know. As he turned and I saw the full-face pose, he was older than the pictures, his face more lined, not as ebulliently healthy as the camera showed. And the paternal geniality, while it was there, wasn’t entirely as convincing as the camera and the press always made it.
I say it was there. What I mean is that it was there, as he turned toward us, for the fraction of an instant that it would take a cat to blink its eyes . . . or precisely as long as it took Enoch B. Stubblefield to adjust to the pathetically shoddy figure of the woman with him. His face was just meaningless lines then, the geniality instantaneously wiped out as if somebody had gone over it with a caustic soap and invisible dishrag. It was genuinely frightening. Mrs. Stubblefield seemed to shrink until she was nothing more than a thin quivering line against her own backbone, and she was no longer pallid—she was plain flat gray. Not Mr. Stubblefield. His face was an angry red, the meaningless lines changing to as cold a malignity as I’ve ever seen.
I stood there paralyzed for a moment. He didn’t like Mrs. Lawrence Taylor. I gathered that immediately. Perhaps, having brought her in, I should have stayed and backed her up, some way; but I dare say I’m fairly white-livered. I got out. I quietly retired backwards as far as I could, and then I turned and ducked. And just in time. I heard Mr. Stubblefield say harshly:
“Who brought this woman here, Mrs. Hallet?”
I stopped where I was. I didn’t like the sound of that voice. And where I was was by the great fireplace between the open windows to the balcony, which would have been all right except that Ellery B. Seymour was there too. He may even have been the magnet that drew me there: he had some of that quality the way he was standing, rigid, his eyes fixed across the room.
He turned slowly to me. “You brought her here, Mrs. Latham?”
“Yes,” I said. “I did bring her. I found her outside in the rain, and I knew she’d been invited. Mr. Stubblefield’s secretary called Dorothy at my house this morning. She told her that a Mrs. Lawrence Taylor was to come. This . . . is Mrs. Taylor?”
“She!” he said curtly. “Mr. Stubblefield’s secretary is a he, not a she.”
He bit the words off as if any fool in the country ought to know that. I was a little taken aback. It wasn’t the way I expected any Dreamer-Scientist to act, especially Ellery Seymour, who was normally so polished you could practically see yourself reflected in him. He seemed not to like Mrs. Taylor either, which made it three out of three for the Enoch B. Stubblefield Enterprises present. He was upset and angry, though I thought his anger seemed to have a different quality, somehow, from Mr. Stubblefield’s.
He put his cocktail abruptly down on the fireplace mantel and headed abruptly for the drawing-room door. There was still a general hubbub there. He pushed his way into the middle. I couldn’t see any of the principals. It was, however, none of my business. There was a shaker of cocktails on the console table by the fireplace, and I picked it up and poured myself one.
As I did, a hand came in alongside me, holding an empty glass. I filled it and looked around.
“As I live and breathe,” I said. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. It can’t be . . . or is it?”
5
Milton Minor, author of “New Industrialists for Old,” lifted his left eyebrow, drained his glass and held it back for another. He was fatter and sleeker, his hair line a little farther back, and he was puffish under the eyes. Otherwise, except also for a new black mustache, he hadn’t changed much.
“It is the gifted biographer in person,” he said. He looked quickly back at the group by the drawing-room door. “And let’s get the hell out of here, Grace. You don’t know. She’s supposed to be buried somewhere in Montana.”
We’d taken a few steps when he stopped, returned hastily and picked up the cocktail shaker, and came back.
“It’s nice to see you, lady.”
Things being as they were, it was nice to see him too, and it was certainly nice to get out, if I could, before Mr. Stubblefield decided to call me to account personally. We went through the long windows that open out onto the balcony over the terrace, and sat down on the rail. Through the windows on the other side of the fireplace I could see the drawing room clearing out, suddenly. I’d never been at a night club when it was raided, but I could imagine then what it was like. And Theodore Hallet could easily have been the resident manager, the way he was going around in small circles, everywhere at once, trying, I supposed, to rescue his Presidential white hope . . . except that, in spite of his essential charm, which tots up to an imposing sum even after taxes are paid, Theodore Hallet is a small, ineffectual man with graying reddish hair and a face like a worried dormouse, and hence hardly, I suppose, very much like any night-club impresario.
And I was glad I hadn’t taken Dorothy’s bet, because Freddie Mollinson was there. He was sitting calmly over to one side, sipping his cocktail, ignoring the whole thing in a very well-bred way. And Susan Kent was there too, in a filmy sea-green evening gown, standing in the middle of the room with her back to us, and to all appearances, it seemed to me, remarkably at ease in view of everything. The woman in black was nowhere in sight.
“Where did you pick her up, Grace?” Milton Minor asked.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I ran into her outside, and brought her in because Haste was being such a snob. She was supposed to have been invited. Who is she, and what’s wrong with her?”
Before he could answer, a tall gangly young man came out the other windows, and seeing us came along the balcony. It was Bill Kent. I didn’t recognize him at first. I was only conscious of somebody with a thick shock of dark hair and a pleasantly casual loose-jointed walk approaching us out of the shadows.
“Hello,” he said. “Mrs. Latham, isn’t it? I’m Bill Kent. What the hell goes on? Who’s the dame in the melancholy get-up? She came in with——”
“Oh, hello,” I said. He was grinning, a nice friendly grin that gave me a sharp twinge of something—I don’t know what to call it. He was so entirely unconscious of carrying any aura of storm. He didn’t know there was going to be one. But I hadn’t expected Susan Kent to take my advice. I’d have been more surprised if she had—and of course in that case neither of them would have been here. So I smiled up at him.
“She came with me,” I said, talking about the lady in black. “I haven’t any idea who she is, except——”
Milton gave me a sharp nudge with his elbow. I gathered she was something we weren’t supposed to talk about, so I said, “Do you know Milton Minor? He writes heliotrope portraits of great men who aren’t dead yet. Maybe he’ll give you a cocktail if you’ve got a glass. This is Bill Kent, Milton. He’s with Rubber Reserve.”
They shook hands.
“No more for me,” Bill said. “And I’m with Rubber Reserve now, but I’m getting out next week. I’m heading back to the sticks. I’ve had all the Great World I can take. I’m a country boy.”
“You teach, don’t you,” I said, for Milton.
“Chemical engineering. Ottawan. It’s just a cow college in Nebraska, but boy, will I be glad to get back to it.”
I smiled at Milton.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I know. I’m sunk to my ears in the fleshpots. So what? If a guy wants to pay me to eat caviare, why not?”
“If you’re going to be so touchy, let’s talk about something else,” I said. “Who is that girl in green in there? Her back’s pretty.”
He grinned. “That’s my wife. Her face is even prettier. You’ve met her, Mrs. Latham.”
“Oh, of course,” I said.
I wasn’t very happy about the subterfuge, but I’d found out what I wanted to know. He was obviously in love with her, and very proud of her. It was in his voice and the way he sat with us looking in at her alone by the table. And there was something else that distressed me now. It was the dress she had on. I recognized that too. It was a Copran Frères that I’d seen in a shop on Connecticut Avenue when I was in one day with a friend who was buying an evening dress for her daughter. She didn’t buy that one. It cost two hundred and twenty-five dollars.
“Pretty dress she’s got on,” Milton said.
“I’ll say.” Bill Kent grinned again. His pride was both pleasant and a little sheepish this time. “It ought to be—it set us back seventy-five bucks this month. But I suppose you don’t think that’s much money.”
“I do,” I said. “Doctor Minor probably doesn’t.”
I was thinking “Oh, dear!” as I looked at the dress again. I wasn’t mistaken. It was really a lovely thing, very simple, and something any woman would recognize, seeing it again. Somehow, in spite of the rent and in spite of what she’d said about his trusting her in everything and his being unworldly, I wasn’t quite prepared for this.
“Susan doesn’t want to go back,” Bill said. He’d skipped the dress. “I don’t blame her. She’s had a swell time. Dorothy Hallet’s been a peach. I guess it’s grim for a gal to have to leave all this high-class plush. But what do you do?”
Milton Minor looked at him. “Get another job somewhere else. You could make a hell of a lot of money in industrial chemistry. There’s a demand for you guys, these days.”
“Sure, I know. You sound like Susan. I’m a research guy. I’ve got a good set-up at Ottawan.”
“You’d have a better one in a first-rate plant. You’ve seen some of their laboratories, haven’t you?”
Bill Kent nodded. “I’ve seen a lot of them, and they’re honeys. But I’ve got a different kind of freedom, out at Ottawan. They’ve been swell to me. I said I’d come back, for a couple of years, till we finish the job we’re doing there. Then I can have a look around. But I’ll still be in the teaching end. There are plenty of places I can go if I’m as good as I think I am.”
He grinned to keep it from sounding as it might have sounded if it had been Milton Minor, for example, saying it about himself.
“No, it’s just Susan I’m thinking about. I feel sorry for the kid.”
Milton tossed his cigarette abruptly over the balcony rail.
“Take her back with you, brother. Don’t let her get you down. Do what you want to do, even if you starve.”
He spoke with so much vehemence that Bill Kent smiled.
“That’s what I’m going to do, pal, only I don’t plan to starve.” He got down off the rail. “In fact, I’m doing it right now. If anybody misses me, tell ’em I had to finish some work tonight, will you? So long, friends.”
We watched him go along the balcony.
“Nice guy,” Milton Minor said. “Smart. I just hope he stays smart.—Or is he?”
He looked at me.
“If baby got that little number for seventy-five bucks, somebody used to get a hell of a kick-back out of the bills I paid. But, what the hell.”
He poured himself another drink.
“And you can just lay off me, Grace—lay off and shut up. Cripes, don’t you know I get fed to the teeth with all this stinking hogwash I put out? You know, you’d think the big baboon would gag on it . . . but every time I get a belly laugh thinking, ‘Baby, this tears it’; he loves it. He eats it up. He blinks and says, ‘Hey, this is me!’ And up goes my check a thousand smackeroos. But oh God, Grace, sometimes I sit there thinking, ‘You son of a so-and-so, you self-righteous bastard!’ Some day I’m going to haul off with a blunt instrument, by God I am. And I’m not being funny.”
He got up abruptly. “First, I’m going and get myself a decent drink. I hate all this crap. Want one?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“You stay here. I’ll be back. I’m not through yet.”
I watched him go into the drawing room and across toward the bar at the front of the house. He was weaving a little, which wasn’t surprising. The shaker of Manhattans on the porch, table was solid empty. As he passed Susan Kent he stopped and looked her up and down, which I doubt he’d have been rude enough to do if he’d been reasonably sober. He turned back to me and shook his head derisively before he went on. Susan turned too, a little surprised at first. When she saw me the surprise flamed in her cheeks to a startled brilliant red, and she went quickly across the room out of sight.
I turned around. It was all too bad. No matter how unworldly she thought her husband was—and he seemed to me on the contrary to have his feet set on pretty firm ground—she couldn’t hope to get away with fooling him forever. It wasn’t any unworldliness, it was his faith in her that was blinding him now. But he wouldn’t be totally blind. It wasn’t too long a step from recognizing her infatuation with Washington glamour to a further recognition when he’s finally put his foot down and say, “We’re leaving, baby.” He was a tough-minded young man. It was odd it should have taken her so long to realize it.
On the other hand, nobody could blame her for wanting to stay where the excitement was, or for not wanting to go back to Ottawan and do her own dishes on a college teacher’s pay when she saw the golden hills just over the horizon. It didn’t excuse her, but I did feel sorry for her. The two hundred and twenty-five dollar Copran Frères must be a poor exchange for her peace of mind. She couldn’t help being almost frantic right now.
The lights on the Bridge made a brilliant belt, diffusing a soft misty glow above the trees in the Park. The Cathedral stood out dark and impressive against the sky glow up on Wisconsin Avenue. I’m not sure whether it was a sound I heard or a movement I saw, but I was suddenly aware that there was some one down in the garden below me. It was a stealthy movement. I was just beginning to make out the figure standing with arms raised on the first ledge of the terrace below the level of the house, when some one turned on the outside light in the stable yard where the Kents live. I could see very plainly then.
It was my friend in black. She was binding the scarf she’d worn over her head around it, making a turban of it instead of the peasant’s shawl arrangement it had been when I met her. She tucked the ends in quickly and opened her bag. I saw the glint of a mirror as she drew a lipstick across her mouth. She closed the bag, and then she lit out, with astonishing speed, down the zigzag path. I lost her then, but only for a moment. A car door slammed, headlights came on, a motor started up, the car roared down the road. Mrs. Lawrence Taylor, who was a stranger in Washington and who had hardly been able to make the marble staircase because she hadn’t been very well, had made as neat and rapid a getaway as I will ever hope to witness.
“Stranger, my eye,” I said.
“What did you say?”
I turned quickly. I thought it was going to be the gifted biographer coming back, but it wasn’t. It was Ellery Seymour. He was lowering his hand with a big white handkerchief in it, having obviously come out on the porch in the vulgar act of mopping the sweat off his brow, though it wasn’t any hotter than it had been all day.
