Death of a Tall Man (30 page)

There had been the luncheon, which was pleasant, and the tea at Aunt Flo's, which was not unpleasant. Tea had meant sherry, with an alternative of scotch, and The Benefit had been rather thoroughly discussed, according to democratic procedures. (This meant that Aunt Flo, and the Dowager Admiral, had been duly authorized to do what they would have done anyway: take matters into their firm and capable hands. The meeting had, as was inevitable, been less that of a committee than of a staff. That it even so much as authorized was a pleasant, gently absurd, fiction.)

And then this slow disintegration of the day had set in; this uneasiness had begun. It was, Freddie thought, like one of those morning moments when you awakened, lay contentedly for a little time and then became conscious of a vague dissatisfaction, as if you were already in the shadow of some impending disappointment. Such things meant nothing. The feeling vanished when you remembered some tiny thing—you were committed to an engagement which promised badly; you had undertaken to do something which, now, you did not want to do. This anxiety was hardly sharper than that passing premonition of disappointment, but this, for all its shapelessness, had a center—Bruce. Bruce whom she could not have seen shabby on the lower East Side; Bruce about whom her father's half formed hint, half finished sentences, could mean nothing.

Freddie Haven took the telephone up, found the telephone number of the Waldorf-Astoria in her memory, and dialed. She asked for Senator Bruce Kirkhill and waited.

“Senator Kirkhill is not registered, modom,” a young woman's voice said.

That was wrong; that was merely inefficiency. Freddie said as much, courteously, without emphasis. There was a mistake; Senator Kirkhill was unquestionably registered.

She was passed along. A man's voice was less detached. The man recognized the possibility of error. He went and, after a minute or two, returned. He was sorry; Senator Kirkhill was not registered. A suite was reserved for him, however. He was expected. A message for him would be happily accepted.

“No,” Freddie said. “Thank you. Is there a Mr. Phipps? Howard Phipps?”

The assistant manager checked again. A Mr. Phipps there was. She was asked to wait. A young woman's voice said, “I'm ringing Mr. Phipps.” There was the sound of ringing, continued over-long.

“I'm sorry, modom,” the girl said. “Mr. Phipps's room does not answer. Would you wish—”

“Thanks,” Freddie said. “Don't bother.” She hung up.

What it all amounts to is that he took a later train, she assured herself. There's nothing strange about it. There can't be anything strange.

Her desk clock told her it was almost ten. “Tennish” would not mean ten o'clock to anyone, except possibly Aunt Flo. Still—She looked at herself in a long mirror, nodded, and went out of the room and down the stairs to the lower floor of the duplex. Marta and the new maid were in the foyer, sitting side by side on straight chairs. They stood up as Freddie came down and she grinned at them.

“Carry on,” she said. “As you were.”

Marta giggled without making a sound, her shoulders shaking slightly. The new maid looked politely puzzled.

“Yes'm,” Marta said, and sat down. She pulled at the sleeve of the other maid. “Carry on,” she said. She giggled again, soundlessly. “You're in the Navy now.”

Freddie went on into the living room. Marta, she suspected, would tell the new maid that it was all right to joke with Mrs. Haven; that Admiral Satterbee was another matter. “The admiral don't notice lessen it's wrong,” Freddie once had overheard Marta tell another new maid. It was true enough, Freddie had thought; it applied to the lower ranks, as well as to those who might be identified with the enlisted personnel.

She said good evening to Watkins, who was supervising a waitress, who was polishing already polished glasses. She went on into the kitchen and told cook that everything looked wonderful, and filched a shrimp from an iced plate of shrimps. “Now Miss Freddie,” cook said. “Leaves an empty space.” Freddie shuffled shrimps, filling in the space. Cook had been around a long time; she had been known to be stern, within reason, with the admiral himself. A buzzer sounded faintly.

“There's people, Miss Freddie,” the cook said, and Freddie went out to meet people. She went rather quickly, and only when she heard Aunt Flo's voice did she realize that she had hoped the voice would be Bruce's. She greeted Aunt Flo and Uncle William, not showing that she had wanted them to be Bruce Kirkhill. Tactfully, after the greeting, she enquired about the driver. Uncle William sometimes forgot. “The boy's all right,” Uncle William assured her. “Told him he could take in a movie.” He beamed at his niece by marriage. “You look fine, Freddie,” he said. “How's Johnny Jump-up?”

It was always odd to hear her father called that. The theory was that they had called him that in the Pacific: “Old Johnny Jump-up.” There had been a time when Admiral Satterbee's task force had jumped apparently out of nowhere, disconcerting the Japanese. Freddie, with the best will in the world, had never been able to believe that her father was, widely, known by so irreverent a nickname. As Uncle William used it, she noticed that the term was invisibly bracketed by marks of quotation.

Admiral Satterbee came out of the library, greeted his wife's sister and Admiral William Fensley and, firmly, led everybody to Watkins and the scotch. With glasses filled, Admiral Satterbee drew Admiral Fensley out of the feminine and into the professional circle.

“This new flat-top, Bill,” Freddie heard him say. “What d'y think?”

“Hell of a big target,” Bill, a battleship man to the end, assured him. “Wait till—”

“—of course,” Aunt Flo said, “there's always the question of the reviews. You remember, dear, when the League took over that play that looked so good before it opened, and then all those critics said—”

It was ten minutes before the buzzer sounded again and Freddie, still being invited to worry about the reviews of the play the League was planning to use as a benefit, brought back her wandering mind and—found she was listening again for, but again not hearing, the voice of Bruce Kirkhill.

They came with some rapidity, thereafter, since Navy people are habitually punctual and these were, for the most part, Navy people. They came, they took drinks; the Navy men tended to coagulate and were, by her as hostess, gently, not too obviously, redistributed. There was enough to do as the big living room filled slowly; there were enough small things to think about, details to keep an eye on. But now, as time passed, as tennish became elevenish, it was increasingly difficult to keep her mind on pleasant chat, to shape her lips into a welcoming smile, keep interest in her voice. Because, still, Bruce did not come.

It was a few minutes after eleven when a couple she did not know appeared at the door of the living room and paused there, with the slightly bewildered, rather anxiously amiable expressions of people who know no one present and wait to be, as it were, adopted. That was, at any rate, the expression on the face of the man, who wore glasses and who, as he stood there, absently ran the fingers of his right hand through short hair already faintly pawed. The expression on the face of the slight, trim woman beside him was more difficult to analyze. She appeared to be, above everything else, interested in the room—in the people, in all of the scene—and to have a bright intensity in her interest, as if it were all new, freshly seen and to be taken in gulps. There was nothing appraising about the slight young woman's expression. She merely seemed pleased to see so many things, so many of them alive.

Half smiling, Freddie Haven turned from the group she was hostessing and began to move toward the couple which was waiting to be adopted. Then she realized her father, who was tall enough to see over most people, had seen over a good many, noticed the couple at the door, and was moving toward them. He moved with purpose, as he always moved; he caught his daughter's eyes and, with a movement of his head, asked her to join him. They converged on the couple at the door and the man of the couple began a smile of greeting.

“'Evening, North,” Admiral Satterbee said, in what was inevitably a voice of command, while he was still a stride or two away. He held out his hand. “Glad y'could make it.”

The man with the slightly ruffled hair took the admiral's hand, and Freddie, approaching, hoped he would have no cause to wince. The admiral's hand-shake was frequently firm; it was apt to be particularly so with people he did not know well. It was one of the small things which Freddie Haven knew, tenderly, about her father. He was firm with people he knew only a little. Because, Freddie thought, he had once—oh, long ago—been shy. You would never know it now.

Mr. North did not wince. He released his hand, made polite sounds, and said, just as Freddie reached them, “Pam, this is Admiral Satterbee. My wife, Admiral.”

“How do you do?” Pam North said, in a clear, light voice, and almost as if she were really asking. “Sideboys.”

The tallish man beside her grasped at his hair. He said, “Pam.”

“All I could think of at first was sideboards,” Pam North said. “But that didn't sound right. To pipe you aboard.”

“Oh,” Admiral Satterbee said. “Oh—yes. Yes, of course.”

It did not seem entirely clear to her father, Freddie thought. She had joined them, by then.

“Mrs. North,” the admiral said. “Present my daughter. Freddie, Mrs. North. Mr. North. Told you about them. North's going to bring out this book of mine.”

“Miss Satterbee,” Mr. North said and Mrs. North smiled and Freddie had an odd, vagrant sense of pleasure which was disproportionate to anything in the expression of this slight young woman with the attractively mobile face. But Freddie felt, without being able to explain why she felt so, that she had been approved of, frankly and with pleasure. Freddie felt that she must be looking even better than she had hoped. She also felt that, intangibly, she had been outdistanced.

She shook her head and said that Dad always forgot, never made little things clear. “Mrs. Haven,” she said. She also said she was so glad the Norths could come, and asked if the Norths knew everybody. Mrs. North's eyes widened a little momentarily.

“Oh no,” Mrs. North said. “Nobody, really.” She paused, as if she had just heard herself. “Here, I mean,” she said. “But it's all right, because we do have to go on almost at once.”

Freddie said she hoped not; Admiral Satterbee said, “Nonsense, come and have a drink, North.”

Mr. North went, obediently. Mrs. North looked up at the taller, somewhat younger woman.

“You mustn't bother with us, you know,” Pam North said. “We do have to go on. We're meeting some people. But Jerry said—”

Pam North stopped, then. Freddie Haven waited, suddenly grinned.

“Go on,” she said, feeling that she had known this Mrs. North for much longer than minutes.

“Oh,” Pam said, “that I ought to see a real admiral. That it probably would be educational.” She spoke unhesitatingly, without any indication of embarrassment. “So few authors are admirals,” she added, paused, and said: “Or so few used to be, now it's hard to tell. Like all the people who knew Roosevelt.”

Again, for an instant, Freddie Haven felt outdistanced. It was, she thought, like trying to read a sentence in its entirety, not word by word. But even as she thought this, she realized she had caught up.

“Is it?” she said. “Educational?”

“Probably,” Pam North said. “Was his hair once like yours?”

“Yes,” Freddie said. “Satterbee hair.”

“Look,” Mrs. North said. “You must just park me somewhere, you know. It doesn't have to be another admiral or anything. Because you've got to hostess, of course.”

It was undeniable; Freddie Haven admitted it with a smile, without words. She decided that this Mrs. North probably would enjoy, would really enjoy, the Dowager Admiral. She thought, indeed, that Mrs. North probably would enjoy most things. She took Mrs. North to the Dowager Admiral's group, was pleased to see the slight widening of Mrs. North's eyes and, as she slipped out of the group after a polite moment, realized that she had not, for some minutes, worried about anything. She realized this when the shadow of disappointment returned, for a fraction of a second merely as that, then as more tangible anxiety.

It was well after eleven and Bruce Kirkhill had not come. Now her mind sought little explanations to cling to—he had taken a later train, and the train was late; he had come earlier for a meeting of some sort, and could not get out of it. Not good enough, her mind answered. Not nearly good enough. He would have telephoned. Tonight he would have telephoned, of all nights, because this was their party, because—

She heard a voice she recognized in the foyer, went from the group she was in almost without apology and crossed the room.

“Howdie!” she said. “Howdie! Has something happened?”

The man she spoke to was no taller than she. He was square faced; he had wide-spaced eyes and an expression of candor. Now he looked at Freddie Haven, smiled at her, shook his head and raised trim eyebrows.

“Happened?” he said. “What do you mean, Freddie?”

His voice was low and musical; it seemed, perhaps almost too large for the man. But Freddie Haven, used to it, and to him, did not remember she once had thought that.

“Bruce isn't here,” she said. “He isn't at the hotel.”

The open face opposite her own was momentarily shadowed, as if by perplexity. The shadow vanished quickly.

“A slip-up,” he told her. “Of course he's at the hotel. I—” He broke off.

“Did you see him there?” Freddie said.

The man shook his head, slowly.

“Actually,” he said, “I didn't see him. I got in this morning, you know. I checked on the reservations and checked in myself. I didn't get back to the Waldorf until after ten and just changed and came on, figuring he'd be here already.”