The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (9 page)

Henry Jernigan, who had set down his briefcase on the sidewalk, was still smiling as he stared up through the misting rain at their evening’s accommodations. The Martha Washington Inn, an architect’s rendition of a wedding cake, was an antebellum mansion of rosy brick with a mansard roof and a one-story wooden porch, topped with ornate white gingerbread trim stretching across the front of the
building. The two red-brick buildings flanking the main house each sported soaring white columns capped by Doric capitals, putting one in mind of Greek temples.

“It looks pricey,” said Rose, surveying the sprawling inn with a critical eye. “Thank God for expense accounts. But I don’t suppose it will cost a fortune, after all, since we’re out here in the boondocks.”

“You are indeed in the boondocks, my dear,” said Henry, “although I know you meant that term figuratively. ‘Boondocks’ is simply the Tagalog word for mountains. So you were more right than you knew. Here we are in the mountains. An interesting tongue, Tagalog. I recall a time in Manila when I—”

“I’m picturing Shirley Temple dancing down those wide front steps with Bojangles Robinson,” said Shade Baker hastily, hoping to forestall any further reminiscences from Henry. His blond hair was slicked across his forehead by the rain, and he looked younger than ever.

Rose snuggled into her brown lamb coat, and started up the brick walk toward the entrance. “Come on! It’s freezing out here. Anyhow, I hope this place is as comfortable as it is fancy. You can’t tell me that this is a new building.”

“They didn’t say it was a new building,” said Shade. “Just a new
hotel
. This place started out as the personal mansion of some colonial tycoon, then it served as a hospital during the Late Unpleasantness, and after that it was a school for young ladies. I think the place is at least a hundred years old. But it only opened for business as an inn last summer.”

Rose looked up at him with a wry smile. “Since when did you start writing high-class travel pieces, Shade?”

He reddened. “I asked the porter at the depot, when I was helping him load your trunk into the car. The way he trotted out that spiel, he must get asked that question six times a day.”

Rose considered it. “I didn’t expect to find an old plantation up
here,” she said. “It’s a stroke of luck, though, isn’t it? I was afraid we’d have to stay in some godforsaken log cabin next to a pigsty. Straw and bedbugs.” She stopped on the hotel porch, and turned back to look at the little Main Street from this higher vantage point. “So, did your local source tell you what there is to do in this moldy little burg?”

“Look over there.” He pointed a gloved forefinger at a churchlike brick building on the corner across the street. “That’s the Barter Theatre. Ever heard of it? It’s a repertory playhouse, been open a year and a half now. Costs forty cents to see a play—or the management will allow you to pay for your seat with food. A few vegetables, eggs. Or maybe a chicken.”

Rose laughed. “I’ll bet there’s as much truth to that as there is in one of our news stories, Shade.”

“Hand on heart,” he told her. “I did my homework. That’s why the place is called the Barter. Because they’ll take admission in trade. In these hard times, it’s probably the only thing that keeps them in business. I reckon it’s just like Broadway—only not.”

“Well, a theatre. That’s almost counts as civilization,” said Henry Jernigan, peering through the mist at the twinkling lights of the Barter. “A night at the theatre might be a pleasant diversion.”

“And when they say that admission costs only
half a buck
, they’re not kidding,” said Rose.

Henry, still musing on the promise of a cultured evening, missed the jest. “I don’t suppose formal evening dress is required.”

“We have shoes,” said Rose. “I wonder what’s playing?”

Shade Baker cleared his throat. “According to my source, the company is currently performing something called
The Pursuit of Happiness.”

Rose groaned. “I know that one. Rowland Stebbins wrote it under a pen name, which ought to tell you that it’s no
Green Pastures.
Besides, I’ve already been forced to see it in repertory. Summer before
last I was covering a story out in Denver, and while I was in town I thought I’d interview Dorothy Parker. She was trapped there for weeks while that second-rate thespian Alan Campbell was doing summer stock at the Elitch Theatre.
The Pursuit of Happiness
. Campbell was playing the minor character part of the Virginia colonel, and Dorothy insisted that we go that night and cheer him on. Then in New Mexico a few weeks later, she up and married him, so I don’t suppose she thought he was as bad as I did.”

“Well, at least Mr. Campbell seems to have given up acting for the nonce,” said Shade. “The happy couple is out in Hollywood now, writing screenplays for Paramount, aren’t they?”

“For her sins,” said Rose darkly. “Did you see that picture she worked on for Bing Crosby that came out last winter? With Kitty Carlisle playing a princess, yet.
Here is My Heart
. Ugh. Here is my
lunch
. But maybe you’re right. Maybe
I
should have married Alan Campbell. It sounds better than being stuck here.”

THEY WENT INSIDE,
to a wide carpeted hallway, flanked on either side by white paneled parlors with chintz-covered sofas and armchairs and crackling wood fires. At the back of the right-hand parlor, facing the front windows, was the registration desk, manned by a mournful-looking youth. He wore a black suit that managed to look like a uniform, and his funereal smile was tinged with nervousness.

“Y’all must be the folks from New York,” he said, opening the leather register and holding up a fountain pen. He seemed uncertain about whom to hand it to.
Ladies first
was a dangerous assumption in the hotel business. The lady in question might be the missus of one of the gentlemen. Or worse. She didn’t look like anybody’s idea of a fancy piece, a plump little red-faced lady like her. Still, you never knew. His outstretched arm hung in the air.

Henry Jernigan cut through this Gordian knot by stepping aside
and ushering Rose to the register with a courtly bow. “This is Miss Hanelon,” he told the clerk. “She will require the best accommodation that you can provide for a maiden lady.”

“He means I’m traveling alone,” said Rose, “in case you were thinking of requiring a doctor’s certificate.”

The clerk looked doubtfully at the dumpy little woman who was smiling archly.
You never knew.
“Will y’all be wanting rooms . . .” He paused, struggling for a carefully nuanced phrasing. “
In proximity
to one another?”

“That will do nicely,” said Henry, ignoring the implication. “No doubt the three of us shall be taking some of our meals together. But I should like to be in a ground-floor room, please. No fireplace necessary. You do have other means of heat, I presume?”

The clerk nodded. “Steam radiators, sir.” As he fumbled for the keys to the requisite ground-floor rooms, Henry took out his gold fountain pen and signed the register with a copperplate flourish.

Shade Baker propped himself against the counter, leaving a puddle of raindrops from his coat. In confidential tones he murmured “Is it possible to hire a car?”

The clerk considered it. “We don’t get many requests for it,” he said, “but there is a garage in town that might be able to oblige. I can call over there and see. When would you be wanting to use it?”

“Tonight,” said Shade, with a meaningful glance at the clock. “We have somewhere to be.”

Rose and Henry looked at each other in surprise, but, honoring their unspoken agreement to present a united front before the laity, they did not dispute the statement. They could ask him later what he was up to. If he had meant to exclude them from his plans, he would not have allowed them to overhear.

“I’ll phone the garage directly,” said the clerk, as he handed out the room keys. “The dinner service will begin in half an hour, folks. I’ll have y’alls’ bags sent up to your rooms. Will there be anything else?”

Henry Jernigan hesitated. “There is a little matter of supplies that I shall need to procure.” He sized up the timid clerk with a penetrating stare. “But I fear that you are not the man for the job, my boy. I shall direct my inquiries to the distinguished-looking colored gentleman manning the front door. He looks to be a man of the world. Good evening to you.”

He swept out, shepherding Rose and Shade into the unoccupied parlor on the other side of the hall, and motioning them to sit down.

“A fireside chat,” said Rose.

“I judge that there’s plenty of time to change before dinner,” said Henry as if she had not spoken.

“I hadn’t planned to,” said Shade. He pulled off his gloves, and held his hands out toward the fire. Shade Baker hated the cold. Every year he kept gloves in his jacket pocket and a scarf looped around his neck until the middle of July, but he still got more attacks of the grippe than anybody. Henry took the seat farthest from the hearth, angling his body so that he would not be looking directly into the flames.

Rose winked at him. “Before too long I spec’
y’awl
will be wanting to find out how you can get a supply of hooch in this town.”

Henry nodded gravely, in accord with the seriousness of the matter. “It is my first order of business,” he said. “The one thing I have heard in praise of this locale is that its denizens are skilled, if unlicensed, practitioners of the art of distillery. I plan to judge their talents firsthand. It is unfortunate that their grain of choice is not barley, but corn.”

“It’s probably more necessity than choice,” said Shade. “But their skill is probably first-rate. These folks are Scotch-Irish, judging from the looks of them, and they probably brought the whiskey recipes over on the boat.”

“Any potable in a storm,” said Henry. “Although, preferably not port. I could make do with bourbon, though. Now, about the play, Rose.
The Pursuit of Happiness.
I don’t suppose you could bear to sit through it again?”

Rose shuddered. “It was a farce about bundling in colonial New England, Henry. It features a hellfire preacher, a bumbling sheriff, and a cast of assorted rustics. If we don’t watch our steps here, boys, we’re going to be living it.”

“Point taken, Rose,” said Shade Baker. “The play is hereby ruled out. But if you two are up for an excursion tonight, my loquacious seatmate on the train provided me with an alternate suggestion. How about a concert?”

Rose frowned. “I suppose they have a symphony orchestra here in town, as well?”

“Even better. Here we are in the fertile crescent of hillbilly music. I propose that we broaden our horizons by listening to the locals play those high lonesome tunes.”

“That would hardly be broadening
your
horizons, would it, Shade?” said Henry with raised eyebrows. “Surely your bucolic youth on the prairie was accompanied by the rustic twang of yodeling and git-fiddles.”

“I lived up to the light I had back then, Henry,” said Shade easily. No one had ever seen him angry. “But wasn’t it you who said that only a true sophisticate can appreciate artistry in a culture other than his own?”

Jernigan inclined his head. “I believe I was referring to the Noh drama when I made that statement. Or possibly I said that when I was trying—in vain, I might add—to teach you to play
kai-awase.
Still, I concede your point, Shade. I am not averse to broadening my horizons. I would even argue that we could consider such a musical excursion to be work, because we are here to garner local color, are we not? A musical evening will help us understand these quaint and charming people.”

Rose, who was inspecting her makeup in a silver compact mirror, looked up with an expression of notable indifference. “Well, it beats watching a farce about bundling,” she said. “I’m game for it, Shade. Is
there a jamboree—or whatever they call those things—here tonight?”

He shook his head. “Not here, per se. That’s why I asked young Werther over there about the possibility of hiring a car. Apparently, the best place around to hear first-class hillbilly music is the live performance at the radio station over in Bristol.”

“I thought that was in Tennessee,” said Henry.

“You’re half right, Henry. The main drag is called State Street, because the Tennessee/Virginia line goes right down the middle of it. That’s where we want to go, too. The station is on the corner of—” He pushed up the sleeve of his jacket and glanced at a penciled notation on the white cuff of his shirt. “WOPI Radio. Corner of State Street and Twenty-second. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“How long will it take us to get there, Shade? I promised my Danny I’d call tonight, let him know I got in safely. He’s probably been at the airfield all day, tinkering with that plane of his.”

The room fell silent. Henry Jernigan stared into the fire, affecting not to hear, and Shade Baker eased a cloth bag of tobacco out of his coat pocket and began to roll a cigarette with every appearance of rapt concentration. Finally, he said, “I think Bristol is less than twenty miles from here, Rose. Say an hour, allowing for bad roads. We should eat soon if we’re going, though. No leisurely repast with the cigars and brandy, Henry.”

“I shall try to bear up.”

“Good. Well, if we’re all agreed, I’ll go back over and see if the desk jockey has managed to find us a car. I hope it will come with a working heater and a decent motor. I’d hate to break down in the middle of nowhere on a night like this.”

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER
Rose entered the red-carpeted dining room to find Shade Baker, still in his rumpled suit, already seated at
a table, with his open pocket watch set prominently on the starched linen tablecloth, beside a candle in a glass holder and an open bottle of red wine.

“I’m not late,” said Rose, easing into the chair beside him. “At least, I’m not the last to arrive.”

“You are, though,” said Shade, nodding toward the door to the kitchen. “Henry came down with me, took a long look at the menu—which I’d hoped he was going to translate for me—and then he toddled off into the inner sanctum to confer with the high priest.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “That was ten minutes ago. They’ve probably progressed from side dishes to sauces by now. Or else the chef has taken a cleaver to him.”