“It’ll have to wait,” said Thorpe brusquely. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Good gracious, it’s eleven o’clock. I only called you in now to get that letter. Colonel Brissenden of the state police is here and he’ll want to see it. I’ll get rid of him as soon as possible, but then I must have to talk with some of my business associates who have come up from New York. This thing is making a lot of trouble and causing a lot of foolish rumors. You’ll have to wait till I’m through. If you get hungry, find my daughter and tell her to give you some lunch.”
“It’s only a thirty-minute drive to my place. I’ll go there and you can phone—”
“I’d rather you’d wait here. I may be through sooner than I expect. Take a dip in the pool or something. Vaughn, bring Colonel Brissenden.”
Fox returned to the outdoors by the way he had come. Two men were standing talking in the living room as he passed through, one large and fat and florid, the other angular and hollow-cheeked, with a nose whose bridge took all the space between his eyes. They looked worried and ill-humored and stopped talking when Fox appeared. He continued on to the flagged terrace at the side of the house and found that its only remaining occupant was Henry Jordan, still in his chair. He got his glass from the table where he had left it and finished the drink before inquiring:
“Did they go off and leave you?”
Jordan nodded. “The young lady jumped up and went, and young Thorpe followed her.”
“Which way did they go?”
“Down that path.”
A glance showed that the path was deserted up to a bend where it disappeared around a rose trellis. Fox shrugged and informed Jordan, “I’m sorry, but we’re held up here. Thorpe has to see a policeman and then have a business talk first. It may be a couple of hours or more. Did you have any breakfast?”
Jordan looked morose. “I’m all right. My daughter gave me a biscuit and tea. I wouldn’t eat anything at this place. I’d just as soon not see Thorpe. Is there any chance of him coming out here?”
“No, I don’t think so. He’s in the library on the other side of the house, busy dominating. I don’t like him much either. Want to walk around a little?”
Jordan said he was all right where he was, and Fox left him and strolled on to the lawn. Some scale on a limb of dogwood caught his eye and he stopped to examine it with a frown. It was a shame, he reflected, that with millions of dollars a man couldn’t keep scale off his dogwood. Going on, he found himself skirting the border of an elaborate series of trellises covered with climbing roses. As he neared its farther end there was a halt in his step, as of a momentary inclination to turn towards a gap in the trellis; then he resumed his course. Another vast expanse of lawn, punctuated with trees and shrubbery, opened to his view; and there were two moving figures at a distance. Nancy Grant was strolling along the straggling edge of a planting of junipers and fifty paces behind her, now sidling forward, now pausing as if for a reinforcement of resolution, was Jeffrey Thorpe. Fox stood there watching them, then suddenly burst into laughter, turned and entered the central path between the trellises, marched down it for ten yards, stopped abruptly and said aloud:
“Hello, when did you get here?” Then he started laughing again.
The bulk of a broad-shouldered man emerged from the luxuriant thorniness of a golden climber and Dan Pavey’s rumble announced aggressively, “Something is funny.”
“Yes,” Fox agreed.
“You saw me as you went by.”
“Yes. I wondered what you were watching from ambush. I went on and saw them. It struck me as funny. It also struck me as funny when I saw you were blushing. I never saw you blush before. So that’s why you volunteered that advice to Miss Grant last night; you were covering up. I didn’t get it at the time.”
Dan, scowling, uttered a sound that was half growl and half grunt. “What do you mean, covering up?” he demanded. “Covering what up?”
“Nothing.” Fox waved a hand. “I apologize. None of my business. How long have you been here?”
“I got here at 10:47,” said Dan stiffly. “Jordan wasn’t around his boat. Nobody was. I phoned Thorpe’s office and got your message to come here, and I came. They told me you were in with Thorpe. The first thing I see is Jordan sitting on a terrace. I didn’t know whether you knew he was here, so I—”
“You’re going to tell me it was him you were watching?”
“I am.”
“Don’t do it. I’d have to laugh again. The first time I ever saw you blush. I have to stick around here for a talk with Thorpe. You might as well go on home.”
“You mean now?”
“Yes. There are enough complications as it is. Go home and look at yourself in a mirror. If I need you I’ll let you know.”
Dan, with his jaw set square, with no protest or comment, without even any attempt to propose a superior alternative, tramped off down the trellis path. Fox, watching the broad back receding through the bower of roses, waited till it had disappeared at the far end before muttering to himself, “I shouldn’t have laughed, I handled that wrong.”
Leaving the trellis by a transverse path, he wandered across the lawn, back past the scale-infested dogwood in the direction of the east side terrace. Jordan was still there, with his chin gloomily on his chest, and Fox veered to the left. Continuing, he heard voices and, proceeding around a corner of the house, he came to a much larger and more elaborate terrace and saw two people standing at the edge of it, talking. He approached.
“Good morning, Mrs. Pemberton. Hello, Andy.”
They returned his greeting. Miranda looked slim, cool and informally impeccable in a white blouse and yellow slacks. Grant asked Fox, “Have you seen my niece around anywhere?”
Fox waved a hand. “Off in that direction being stalked by young Mr. Thorpe. Mrs. Pemberton, I may have to ask you to change that dinner invitation to a lunch. I’m waiting around for a talk with your father and it may be a long wait.”
“I’ll be glad to feed you,” she declared, “but it won’t cancel the dinner. I’m trying to persuade Mr. Grant to stay.”
“And I interrupted. I apologize. May I wander around a little and look at things?”
She said yes but didn’t offer to accompany him, so he strolled off. Around on the third side of the home he chatted a little with a man who was removing the unsightly tops of oriental poppies and learned, among other things, that they did not use miscible oil as a dormant spray on dogwoods. Stopping to inspect various objects on the way, such as a mole trap of a construction he had not seen and a new kind of border sprinkler, he came to a drive which headed in the direction of a group of outbuildings and followed it. In front of a stone garage which would have held at least six cars, with living quarters above, a man was jacking up a wheel of a limousine. Fox passed the time of day and wandered on. On the other side of an extensive plot of grass was a large greenhouse and he gave that thirty minutes or more. He always found a greenhouse fascinating, but of course there were very few things that he did not find fascinating. There seemed to be no one around, but as he emerged at the far end he heard a voice and, circling a bed of asparagus, he saw whose it was. A little girl sat on the steps of the porch of a little stone cottage, talking to Mrs. Simmons. He saw her affected gestures with her hands and heard her affected mincing tones:
“You know, Mrs. Simmons, it’s really frightful! Would you believe it, they go to the movies every day! Oh, Mrs. Simmons, I don’t know what to do! My children say to me and my husband, they say if they can go to the movies every day, why can’t they go too and my nerves just get all out of my control— Ooh! Who are you?”