The Scarlatti Inheritance (19 page)

Canfield followed her into the extraordinarily ornate living room. It was the size of five squash courts, and the number of settees, sofas, and armchairs was staggering. Fringed lamps were silhouetted atop numerous tables placed conveniently by the seating places. The arrangement of the furniture was unrelated except for a semicircle of divans facing an enormous fireplace. In the dim light of the single lamp, Canfield’s eyes were immediately drawn to a panoply of dull reflections above the
mantel. They were photographs. Dozens of photographs of varying sizes placed in thin black frames. They were arranged as a floral spray, the focal point being a scroll encased in gold borders at the center of the mantel.

The girl noticed Canfield’s stare but did not acknowledge it.

“There’re drinks and ice over there,” she said, pointing to a dry bar. “Just help yourself. Will you pardon me for a minute? I’ll change my stockings.” She disappeared into the main hall.”

Canfield crossed to the glass-topped wheel cart and poured two small tumblers of Scotch. He withdrew a clean handkerchief from his trousers, doused it in ice water, and wrapped it around his slightly bleeding hand. Then he turned on another lamp to illuminate the display above the mantel. For the briefest of moments, he was shocked.

It was incredible. Over the mantel was a photographic presentation of Ulster Stewart Scarlett’s army career. From officer’s candidate school to embarkation; from his arrival in France to his assignments to the trenches. In some frames there were maps with heavy red and blue lines indicating positions. In a score of pictures Ulster was the energetic center of attraction.

He had seen photographs of Scarlett before, but they were generally snapshots taken at society parties or single shots of the socialite in his various athletic endeavors—polo, tennis, sailing—and he had looked precisely the way Brooks Brothers expected their clients to look. However, here he was among soldiers, and it annoyed Can-field to see that he was nearly a half a head taller than the largest soldier near him. And there were soldiers everywhere, of every rank and every degree of military bearing. Awkward citizen corporals having their weapons inspected, weary sergeants lining up wearier men, experienced-looking field officers listening intently—all were doing what they were doing for the benefit of the vigorous, lean lieutenant who somehow commanded their attention. In many pictures the young officer had his arms slung around half-smiling companions as if assuring them that happy days would soon be here again.

Judging by the expressions of those around him, Scarlett was not notably successful. However, his own countenance radiated optimism itself. Cool, and intensely self-satisfied
as well, thought Canfield. The centerpiece was, indeed, a scroll. It was the Silver Star citation for gallantry at the Meuse-Argonne. To judge from the exhibition, Ulster Scarlett was the best-adjusted hero ever to have the good fortune to go to war. The disturbing aspect was the spectacle itself. It was grotesquely out of place. It belonged in the study of some celebrated warrior whose campaigns spanned half a century, not here on Fifty-fourth Street in the ornate living room of a pleasure-seeker.

“Interesting, aren’t they?” Janet had reentered the room.

“Impressive, to say the least. He’s quite a guy.”

“You have no argument there. If anyone forgot, he just had to walk into this room to be reminded.”

“I gather that this … this pictorial history of how the war was won wasn’t your idea.” He handed Janet her drink, which, he noted, she firmly clasped and brought immediately to her lips.

“It most certainly was not.” She nearly finished the short, straight Scotch. “Sit down, won’t you?”

Canfield quickly downed most of his own drink. “First let me freshen these.” He took her glass. She sat on the large sofa facing the mantel while he crossed to the bar.

“I never thought your husband was subject to this kind of”—he paused and nodded to the fireplace—“hangover.”

“That’s an accurate analogy. Aftermath of a big binge. You’re a philosopher.”

“Don’t mean to be. Just never thought of him as the type.” He brought over the two drinks, handed one to her, and remained standing.

“Didn’t you read his accounts of what happened? I thought the newspapers did a splendid job of making it perfectly clear who was really responsible for the Kaiser’s defeat.” She drank again.

“Oh, hell, that’s the publishing boys. They have to sell papers. I read thorn but I didn’t take them seriously. Never thought he did either.”

“You talk as if you knew my husband.”

Canfield purposely looked startled and took his glass away from his lips. “Didn’t you know?”

“What?”

“Well, of course, I knew him. I knew him quite well. I just took it for granted that you knew. I’m sorry.”

Janet concealed her surprise. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Ulster had a large circle of friends. I couldn’t possibly know them all. Were you a New York friend of Ulster’s? I don’t remember his mentioning you.”

“No, not really. Oh, we met now and then when I came east.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’re from Chicago. It is Chicago?”

“It is. But to be honest with you, my job takes me all over the place.” And certainly, he was honest about that.

“What do you do?”

Canfield returned with the drinks and sat down.

“Stripped of its frills, I’m a salesman. But we never strip the frills that obviously.”

“What do you sell? I know lots of people who sell things. They don’t worry about frills.”

“Well, I don’t sell stocks or bonds or buildings or even bridges. I sell tennis courts.”

Janet laughed. It was a nice laugh. “You’re joking!”

“No, seriously, I sell tennis courts.”

He put his drink down and pretended to look in his pockets. “Let’s see if I’ve got one on me. They’re really very nice. Perfect bounce. Wimbledon standards except for the grass. That’s the name of our company. Wimbledon. For your information, they’re excellent courts. You’ve probably played on dozens of them and never knew who to give the credit to.”

“I think that’s fascinating. Why do people buy your tennis courts? Can’t they just build their own?”

“Sure. We encourage them to. We make more money when we rip one out and replace it with ours.”

“You’re teasing me. A tennis court’s a tennis court.”

“Only the grass ones, my dear. And they’re never quite ready by spring and they’re always brown in the fall. Ours are year-round.”

She laughed again.

“It’s really very simple. My company’s developed an asphalt composition that duplicates the bounce of a grass court. Never melts in heat. Never expands when frozen. Would you like the full sales pitch? Our trucks will be here in three days and during that time we’ll contract for the first layer of gravel. We’ll do that locally. Before you know it, you’ll have a beautiful court right out there on Fifty-fourth Street.”

They both laughed.

“And I assume you’re a champion tennis player.”

“No. I play. Not well. I don’t particularly like the game. Naturally we have several internationally known whizzes on the payroll to vouch for the courts. Incidentally, we guarantee an exhibition match on yours the day we complete the job. You can ask your friends over and have a party. Some magnificent parties have been held on our courts. Now, that’s generally the close that sells the job!”

“Very impressive.”

“From Atlanta to Bar Harbor. Best courts, best parties.” He raised his glass.

“Oh, so you sold Ulster a tennis court?”

“Never tried. I imagine I could have. He bought a dirigible once, and after all, what’s a tennis court compared to that?”

“It’s flatter.” She giggled and held her glass out to him. He rose and went to the bar, unwrapping the handkerchief from his hand and putting it in his pocket. She slowly extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray in front of her.

“If you’re not in the New York crowd, where did you know my husband?”

“We first met in college. Briefly, very briefly. I left in the middle of my first year.” Canfield wondered if Washington had placed the proper records of a long-forgotten freshman down at Princeton University.

“Aversion to books?”

“Aversion to money. The wrong branch of the family had it. Then we met later in the army, again briefly.”

“The army?”

“Yes. But in no way like that, I repeat, no way like that!” He gestured toward the mantel and returned to the sofa.

“Oh?”

“We parted company after training in New Jersey. He to France and glory. Me to Washington and boredom. But we had a helluva time before that.” Canfield leaned ever so slightly toward her, permitting his voice the minor intimacy usually accompanying the second effects of alcohol. “All prior to his nuptials, of course.”

“Not so prior, Matthew Canfield.”

He looked at her closely, noting that the anticipated
response was positive but not necessarily liking the fact. “If that’s the case, he was a bigger fool than I thought he was.”

She looked into his eyes as one scans a letter, trying to read, not between the lines, but instead, beyond the words.

“You’re a very attractive man.” And then she rose quickly, a bit unsteadily, and put her drink down on the small table in front of the settee. “I haven’t had dinner and if I don’t eat soon I’ll be incoherent. I don’t like being incoherent.”

“Let me take you out.”

“And have you bleed all over some poor unsuspecting waiter?”

“No more blood.” Canfield held out his hand. “I would like to have dinner with you.”

“Yes, I’m sure you would.” She picked up her drink and walked with ever so slight a list to the left side of the fireplace, “Do you know what I was about to do?”

“No.” He remained seated, slouched deeply into the sofa.

“I was about to ask you to leave.”

Canfield began to protest.

“No, wait. I wanted to be all by myself and nibble something all by myself and perhaps that’s not such a good idea.”

“I think that’s a terrible idea.”

“So I won’t.”

“Good.”

“But I don’t want to go out. Will you have, as they say, potluck with me here?”

“Won’t that be a lot of trouble?”

Janet Scarlett yanked at a pull cord, which hung on the wall at the side of the mantel. “Only for the housekeeper, And she hasn’t been overworked in the least since my husband—left.”

The housekeeper answered her summons with such speed that the field accountant wondered if she were listening at the door. She was about the homeliest woman Matthew Canfield had ever seen. Her hands were huge.

“Yes, madame? We did not expect you home this evening. You did tell us you were dining with Madame Scarlatti.”

“It seems I’ve changed my mind, doesn’t it, Hannah? Mr. Canfield and I will dine here. I’ve told him potluck, so serve us whatever luck the pot holds.”

“Very well, madame.”

Her accent had a trace of Middle Europe, perhaps Swiss or German, thought Canfield. Her jowled face framed by her pulled-back gray hair should have been friendly. But it wasn’t. It was somehow hard, masculine.

Nevertheless, she made sure the cook prepared an excellent meal.

“When that old bitch wants something, she makes them all quiver and quake until she gets it,” said Janet. They had gone back to the living room and sat sipping brandy on the pillow-fluffed sofa, their shoulders touching.

“That’s natural. From everything I’ve heard, she runs the whole show. They’ve got to cater to her. I know I would.”

“My husband never thought so,” the girl said quietly. “She’d get furious with him.”

Canfield pretended disinterest. “Really? I never knew there was any trouble between them.”

“Oh, not trouble. Ulster never cared enough about anything or anybody to cause trouble. That’s why she’d get so angry. He wouldn’t fight. He’d just do what he wanted to. He was the only person she couldn’t control and she hated that.”

“She could stop the money, couldn’t she?” Canfield asked naively.

“He had his own.”

“God knows that’s exasperating. He probably drove her crazy.”

The young wife was looking at the mantel. “He drove me crazy, too. She’s no different.”

“Well, she’s his mother.…”

“And I’m his wife.” She was now drunk and she stared with hatred at the photographs. “She has no right caging me up like an animal! Threatening me with stupid gossip! Lies! Millions of lies! My husband’s friends, not mine! Though they might as well be mine, they’re no God damn better!”

“Ulster’s pals were always a little weird, I agree with you there. If they’re being louses to you, ignore them. You don’t need them.”

Janet laughed “That’s what I’ll do! I’ll travel to Paris, Cairo, and wherever the hell else, and take ads in the papers. All you friends of that bastard Ulster Scarlett, I ignore you! Signed, J. Saxon Scarlett, widow. I hope!”

The field accountant pressed his luck. “She’s got information about you from … places like that?”

“Oh, she doesn’t miss a trick. You’re nobody if the illustrious Madame Scarlatti hasn’t got a dossier on you. Didn’t you know that?”

And then almost as rapidly as she had flown into rage, she receded into calm reflection. “But it’s not important. Let her go to hell.”

“Why is she going to Europe?”

“Why do you care?”

Canfield shrugged. “I don’t. I just read it in the columns.”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

“Has it anything to do with all that gossip, those lies she collected from Paris … and those places?” He tried, and it wasn’t difficult, to slur his words.

“Ask her. Do you know, this brandy’s good.” She finished the remainder in her glass and set it down. The field accountant had most of his left. He held his breath and drank it.

“You’re right. She’s a bitch.”

“She’s a bitch.” The girl pressed into Canfield’s shoulder and arm, turning her face to his. “You’re not a bitch, are you?”

“No, and the gender is wrong, anyway. Why is she going to Europe?”

“I’ve asked myself that lots of times and I can’t think of an answer. And I don’t care. Are you really a nice person?”

“The nicest, I think.”