“Another reason?”
Hart hesitated, wondering how far he should go. Then he started to laugh, which produced a puzzled reaction, which made him explain.
“Half the country-more than that, for all I know-probably thinks I should be lynched, and I’m worried whether something I say might get someone else in trouble!” A grim, determined expression twisted slowly across his mouth. “I’m going to tell you everything I know, Philip Carlyle, but Quentin knew something and I still don’t know what it is. The night he died, we talked on the phone. It was late, but he wanted me to meet him at his place right away. He said he had discovered something-he had just gotten back from Washington, so it must have been there-and that it ‘changed everything.’ I don’t know what he meant.”
For the next hour, Hart described in detail everything that had happened, from that first conversation with Hillary Constable in her study at home, to the meeting in the embassy with Aaron Wolfe.
“It was probably a mistake, that I agreed to find out what I could, but then, when she told me that I should forget everything, that it was better if everyone was left to believe that her husband had died of a heart attack, I knew something dangerous was going on. I just was not smart enough to know what it was. But Austin was. He thought I had been sent to find out what could be discovered about the president’s death so that it could not be discovered again.”
Jean Valette had sat in silence listening intently to everything Hart said, but now he had a question.
“But why were you chosen, Mr. Hart? The head of the Secret Service, this Clarence Atwood, should have been able to conduct that kind of investigation. Instead of starting at the beginning, start at the end: start with what you know now. You’re being blamed for the murder. Isn’t it just possible that this was always the intention?”
“But why?” asked Carlyle, riveted by the possibility that Hart was the subject of an elaborate conspiracy, a plan that had been in place from the beginning. “What would be the point of doing this to you?”
Before Hart could answer, Jean Valette offered a suggestion.
“What other reason than to get rid of a competitor, someone who might take away the thing you most wanted in your life? The presidency, Mr. Carlyle. The White House. Isn’t that what it was about from the beginning?”
Jean Valette leaned back and with a pensive expression tapped his thin, tapered fingers together. His eyes grew hard and distant. A shrewd, death-like smile made a fugitive appearance at the corners of his mouth. He had no illusions about the dark side of human nature.
“The president is dead, and someone else takes his place. Fate, chance, the inscrutable workings of providence, God’s will? Is that what we believe, that someone murdered, someone planned the death, of Robert Constable, and it had nothing to do with-as you Americans would put it-the biggest prize of all?” Gesturing toward Hart, he challenged the reporter. “Don’t you think it more than strange-is it not a new record in mass stupidity-that an enormously popular United States senator-a man, from what I’m told, a great many people hoped would run for the presidency himself-is accused of murder because the man he murdered supposedly slept with his wife? These things happen. I don’t need to be told that. A crime of passion has a certain appeal. But hire a professional assassin? Where is the passion-where is the honor-in that? You feel so strongly about a wife’s infidelity that you want the man she slept with dead, but you don’t want to do anything about it yourself? Where is the passion in that, Mr. Carlyle? There isn’t any. This was no crime of passion; this was passion of a different kind: the passion for power, the desire to take control, to seize an office, in perhaps the only way you could ever have it.”
Jean Valette tapped his fingers together once more, and then dropped his hands onto the table and sat straight up.
“Tell me, Mr. Carlyle, you cover American politics-that is the reason we invited you-what were the chances, if Robert Constable was still alive, that Irwin Russell would ever become president?”
Carlyle’s eyes almost popped out of his head. He looked immediately at Hart, but Hart was still staring at Jean Valette, wondering what he was going to say next. Inspector Dumont, for his part, sat with folded arms, gently rocking back and forth, listening with the slightly bored expression of a man who had heard and seen too much to ever be very much surprised at anything.
“Everything leads to The Four Sisters,” said Carlyle. His eyes were cold, immediate. “You confirmed what Quentin Burdick said. How does this tie into that? What is the connection between The Four Sisters and the possibility that the president had something to do with Constable’s murder?”
His elbow on the arm of his chair, Jean Valette stretched two fingers along the side of his face and placed his thumb against his chin. He sat there, in that attitude of repose, moving his head side to side, keeping rhythm with his thoughts; debating, as it seemed, how best to answer.
“When you leave here today, Mr. Carlyle,” he said finally, “you will take with you a collection of documents assembled from some of the companies in which The Four Sisters has an interest. Copies of checks, bank transfers, financial transactions-some of them quite complex-that in some cases go back more than ten years.”
“What do they explain about the murder?” demanded Carlyle, who wanted a more immediate answer than a series of old bank statements. “Our president was murdered and you’re telling me that another president killed him?”
To Hart’s astonishment, Jean Valette denied it.
“That’s not what I said, Mr. Carlyle. I did not accuse Russell, or anyone else, of anything.”
He said this with a calm, almost playful gaze. He was enjoying it, this game of words; enjoying it as if the question who murdered the president, a political assassination, was nothing more than an intellectual exercise, a method by which to sharpen one’s wits.
“I only raised the question whether Irwin Russell could have become president in any other way. The same question could be asked about the president’s widow, couldn’t it? Would she have had any chance to become president if her husband had lived?”
“Good God!” cried Carlyle. “Now you’re suggesting… You really think she could have done it: arranged to have her husband murdered?”
He seemed more interested in this possibility than in the other, perhaps because it seemed to fit better the known facts of the former first lady’s ambition, not to mention the known facts of her husband’s rampant infidelity.
“The answer to your question,” said Hart, turning to Jean Valette, “is that you made a mistake in your assumption.”
Jean Valette cocked his head. A thin, knowing smile threaded its way across his mouth.
“A mistake?”
“Irwin Russell probably could not have become president if Constable had lived, but Hillary Constable could have. She would have run as her husband’s successor; the nomination would have been hers. It’s doubtful anyone could have beaten her; it’s doubtful anyone would have tried. That was one of the reasons he was picked to run with Constable in the last election: so there would not be a vice president who would try to run against her.”
The smile on the face of Jean Valette deepened and became more profound.
“Are you sure that was the reason they wanted Irwin Russell on the ticket, Mr. Hart? Are you sure it was really their decision?”
“Russell helped him carry Ohio,” insisted Carlyle. “With Constable, everything was a political calculation.”
But Hart and Jean Valette were still looking at each other, measuring, or trying to measure, what the other one knew, or thought he knew.
“It doesn’t really matter why he was chosen,” observed Hart. “It doesn’t affect the fact that Russell could not have won the presidency on his own and that Hillary Constable could have, and still might. What motive could she have had to want her husband dead? You seem to think she had one. Why don’t you just tell us what you think it was?”