Act of Darkness (24 page)

“You’ve got to come in here,” she repeated. “I—it’s not like the other time, Gregor—it’s not—”

He took two quick strides to the door, pushed her out of the way, and pushed himself in.

And stopped.

Bennis was absolutely right. This one was not like the other one, but not because of the condition of the body. Stephen Fox lay dead on his own bed, and from what Gregor could see there was no more obvious cause here than there had been in the case of Kevin Debrett.

The difference was in the state of the room. The maids, quite obviously, had not been in. But somebody else had.

The room was strewn end to end with pieces of women’s underwear.

O
YSTER BAY HAD BEEN
a rich town for so long, nobody really remembered what it had been like before—but it had always been the right kind of rich. Old money, quiet money, family money: these had enough in common with the ordinary lives of ordinary people to ensure that there was very little friction between rich and poor—or rather rich and middle class—on this small section of the North Shore. Unlike Greenwich, over there in Connecticut, Oyster Bay had never developed a fortress mentality. There were gates at the road ends of the drives that led to the great estates, but they were more ornamental than functional. There were electronic security systems wired into the front doors and kitchen windows of the great houses, but they were no more sophisticated than the ones wired into the houses of the local general practitioner and the local real estate lawyer. In fact, they were less. It was the nouveau comfortable who were afraid for their possessions and nervous about burglary. The solid, habitual rich put their trust in a maxim they had developed during the Depression and never thought to question since: There are no revolutionaries on the North Shore.

Of course, Gregor thought, Victoria Harte was not solidly, habitually rich. Her behavior in the matter of security systems had to be either bravado or egoism. Whatever it had been, it was turning out to be a mistake. Maybe it was because the town was full of tourists. Maybe it was because the rain had made everyone, local and tourist alike, a little crazy. Maybe it was simple bad manners. It could have been anything, but it was definitely frightening. And it was getting worse.

Earlier, when the first police car had arrived and the trouble was just starting, Victoria had come out onto the portico to stand beside Gregor and look the situation over. He had expected her to be annoyed, or angry, or fearful, or maybe even saddened because her son-in-law was dead. She had been none of these things. Standing there with her jade green caftan blowing opulently in the wind, with her hair on top of her head and her hands covered with rings, with that great ruby heart like a splash of blood high on her left shoulder, she had looked like herself playing the Queen Mother in a movie about Eleanor of Aquitaine. She had certainly looked like the Victoria Harte the magazines called The Last of the Movie Stars.

“Well,” she had told him, pointing up the drive, “there they are. Sometimes I wonder if there are people like that everywhere in the country, or if there’s just that one small crowd of them, and they happen to follow me around.”

“Do you have any men on this estate who could be used to beef up the security at the gate?” Gregor asked.

“No.”

“You ought to call some in if you know where to get them,” he said gently. “That’s a bad situation out there. It’s going to get ugly in no time at all.”

“The ugly situation is back in there.” Victoria tossed her head in the direction of the house. “All of them sitting around sniping at each other, trying to implicate each other, trying to do anything but make sense. Except for Janet, of course. Janet is a saint.”

“She does keep her head better than most of them.”

“She always has. Even when I was the one who was getting crazy and she was the one who was being a child. Don’t you think it’s strange that Dan Chester hasn’t kept his head at all?”

“I don’t know that he hasn’t.”

“I do. I’ve known him for many years, Mr. Demarkian, and I know he’s panicking. And I think it’s funny.”

“Ms. Harte, right now I don’t think anything is funny.”

Victoria pulled her caftan closer to her, holding it across her body with an arm Gregor saw was also covered with jewelry, this time an endless column of narrow bangle bracelets studded with stones. Gregor hadn’t seen them before because they were on the arm away from him and hidden by the caftan’s sleeve. He watched her look down on them and shake them, making them rattle.

“Well,” she said, “I never did think you had much of a sense of humor.”

Then she turned around, marched back through the doors, and disappeared.

Now it was twenty minutes later, and Gregor was still standing under the portico, looking down the drive and across the great front lawn to the gate. The sky had begun to clear. The faint light of the emerging sun made the hoods of the police cars parked in the drive, five in all, look shiny. Down by the road, there was a scene from a different movie: the poor people of Paris storming the Bastille. It was remarkable how many of them had managed to show up in such a short time. Another police car was parked there, blocking the entrance. The two officers who belonged in it were out on the road, trying to reason with anybody they could get to listen to them, which was probably no one at all. The crowd was getting restless. They wanted to get onto the lawn and see what was happening for themselves. Any minute now, they were going to realize that the walls that flanked the gate were useless. Even an out-of-shape middle-aged man could get up and over them.

Gregor pushed hair out of his face—the sun might be coming up, but the temperature wasn’t rising; there was a hard wind blowing and he was cold—and cursed himself for not being the kind of man who watched the evening news. He had no idea how the death of Kevin Debrett had been reported. He had no idea how much had leaked out about who was here this weekend or what was going on. All he did know was what had caused this mess they were stuck with now, and that was CB radios. Some half-wit of a dispatcher must have sent an all-too-explicit call out on the police band.

Henry Berman had gotten out of his car and started for the portico. Gregor looked first at the police chief and then back at the gate again. There were people down there, he saw, who were carrying small American flags, and others who seemed to be wearing party hats. It made him feel as cold as he’d ever felt looking into the eyes of Theodore Robert Bundy.

Henry Berman reached the portico, jogged up the steps, and turned to look at the gate himself. Gregor could see that he was tired. Yesterday, Berman had been saggy but springy, with a bounce and energy that seemed to come from his very soul. Today, he looked like he’d been defeated by gravity.

Berman squinted into the sun and then shrugged. “Well,” he said.

“Exactly,” Gregor said. “I take it it was not good down there.”

“It was terrible. That’s a bunch of people who think they’re being cheated out of their holiday by the weather. And I don’t think they like Stephen Whistler Fox.”

“Nobody ever seemed to.”

“Yes,” Berman said. “Well. He was a politician. What can you expect?”

Personally, Gregor thought he ought to be able to expect a lot of things, like the quality of public service the country had gotten from Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Lincoln, and even Taft.

He also thought he ought to give caution one more try. “Isn’t there any way you can get those people out of there?” he asked Berman.

Berman shook his head. “Not without bringing in the National Guard. For that, I’d have to get action out of our esteemed governor, and you know how likely I’d be to get that.”

“If you don’t get it, you might have a riot on your hands.”

“Once I have a riot on my hands, I might get it. Never mind all that, Mr. Demarkian. Tell me what’s going on inside.”

Gregor sighed. Berman was right, but he hated to admit he was right. “I have them all in that living room space again,” he told Berman. “You have no idea how annoying it is trying to get anything organized in a place without walls. At any rate, they’re there. Including Bennis. I think she’s going to be sick.”

“She found the body? Again?”

“I found the body last time, Mr. Berman.”

“She was with you.”

“I know.” The last thing he needed was Bennis as the prime suspect in a murder case. She’d been through that once. He didn’t think she could go through it again. “The room we found him in,” he said, “is in very strange shape. It’s also, at the moment, blocked by a whacking big chest of drawers I found in Janet Harte Fox’s room. I got Dan Chester to drag it down the hall for me. I couldn’t think of any other way to keep people away from the body.”

“People want to get near the body?”

“Some of them do,” Gregor said. “I had to have Dan Chester drag that Patchen Rawls woman down from the balcony by force. She kept insisting she could raise the senator from the dead.”

“Right,” Berman said. “What about Chester? If he could drag it once, he could drag it again.”

“Not without making a lot of noise and taking a lot of time. We’ll get him to drag it away for us if you don’t have—”

“I have two patrolmen trying to get on the pro wrestling circuit.”

“Do they have a hope?”

“One of them does.”

“He’ll do, then,” Gregor said. Then he turned away from the drive and motioned toward the house. “Mr. Berman?”

“I’m coming.”

Gregor had left the great double doors open when he came out. He took Henry Berman’s arm and pushed him through them.

This time, Victoria Harte’s guests had crowded themselves together on just two of the sofas, managing to cram into the smallest possible space that still allowed them to sit without touching each other. Except for Victoria and Janet Harte Fox, of course. Janet was all but sitting on her mother’s lap. Of the group, she was the only one who was anywhere near composed, and she wasn’t, quite. Victoria was combative. Dan Chester was spooked white. Patchen Rawls was angry, although for the moment she was having the good sense to keep her mouth shut about it. Even Clare Markey had given in to her nerves, holding her hands too firmly in her lap and making them open and close, open and close, compulsively. Janet’s only sign of nervousness was her habitual plucking at her hairpins, and the blank, tense way she sometimes stared at the heart-shaped ruby on her mother’s shoulder.

Gregor caught Bennis’s eye and shook his head a little, pretending he was letting her know she shouldn’t come upstairs. What he was really trying to determine was how she was. The answer was not good. He had seen her look that green around the gills once before.

Two of Berman’s patrolmen had stationed themselves in the foyer. Berman tapped the larger of them on the shoulder and nodded in the direction of the stairs.

“Got something that needs to be moved,” he said. Then he nodded at Gregor and said, “That’s Mr. Demarkian.”

“Walter Pulaski,” the patrolman said.

Gregor was in such a hurry to get upstairs—anything, as long as he was away from these people—he almost asked an idiotic question about whether the patrolman was a descendant of the highway. Instead, he headed up to the balcony and the second-floor guest wing faster than he’d intended to go.

He reached the gunmetal gray chest of drawers and tapped his feet impatiently until the others caught up with him. Then he waved Pulaski toward it and said, “I’ve got that blocking a door.”

“You mean you want it out of the way,” Pulaski corrected. He leaned forward, gave a single great push, and slid the piece half a dozen feet along the carpet. He made it look like he was pushing a box of styrofoam.

“I told you he was good,” Berman said complacently.

“He’s incredible,” Gregor admitted. He’d tried to move the chest himself earlier in the day and hardly managed to make it budge. He watched the patrolman walk away down the balcony with something like fascination. Then he turned to the police chief. “Get ready for a shock,” he told Berman. “This is a mess.”

Berman looked interested. “You mean there’s blood? He wasn’t killed the way Debrett was killed?”

Gregor would have thought it was significant that Berman was so positive about saying that Debrett “was killed,” except that he’d done the same thing himself. In the case of a suspicious death, you assumed murder until it was proven otherwise. Gregor just wished he didn’t have to disappoint the man.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “that Fox was killed just the way Debrett was killed. The way he was killed is not the problem.” Gregor pushed open the door and stepped back.

Berman stepped forward, stuck his head through the door, and whistled. “Dear sweet Lord. What is this?”

“Underwear,” Gregor said shortly.

Berman made a face so juvenile, he might as well have been sticking out his tongue. “I can see that, Mr. Demarkian. I can see it’s underwear. I can see it’s women’s underwear. What did he think he was doing?”

Gregor sighed. “If you mean what did Senator Fox think he was doing,” he said, “the answer is nothing. If you mean the murderer, the answer is also nothing. The murderer didn’t do this, either.”

“No? Then who did?”

“My guess would be Miss Patchen Rawls. She’s been very, very anxious to get into this room. And I don’t think it’s because she thinks she can bring the senator back from the dead.”

Berman cocked his head. “The mistress scorned? A kind of revenge? I could see that.”

“I could see that, too,” Gregor said, “but unfortunately, it’s not the way Miss Rawls operates. Fox wanted her out. Chester wanted her out. I think this may have been part of a campaign to change their minds.”

“This was supposed to change their minds?”

“I think it was supposed to change Janet’s. Present her with a situation she could not ignore.”

Berman scratched his chin. “You mean Janet Harte Fox killed her husband over Patchen Rawls?”

“No,” Gregor said. “In the first place, that wouldn’t account for the death of Kevin Debrett, so I can’t see that we could seriously consider it. But beyond that, I don’t think Janet Harte Fox cares about Patchen Rawls. There have been a lot of Patchen Rawlses in the senator’s life.”