“Your old friend? You hate Carrie.”
Bradford smiled his admission during his deniaclass="underline" “I don’t hate Carrie, I don’t hate any registered voter, never have. She’s a little sloppy for my taste, that’s all.”
“She’s happy,” Evelyn said, and at once regretted it.
But again Bradford put his own interpretation on her words, saying gently, “I know, Evelyn. You’re thinking of Dinah. But you’re right to leave her here, and it doesn’t really have to be forever.”
“I know. That’s all right now, I’m used to that.”
A maid came quietly into the room. “Excuse me. Mr. Lockridge? There’s a reporter on the telephone.”
Bradford frowned. “Did he say what it was about?”
“Yes, sir. He wanted a statement about Mr. Chatham’s death.”
Frown deepening, Bradford shook his head. “Tell him I’ve already made my statement, and that’s it. I have nothing further to say.”
“Yes, sir.” She departed, as quietly.
Grumbling at the interruption, Bradford said, “I’ll talk all day about politics, but not for thirty seconds about murder. Where are they when I have something germane to say about the world around us? I’m no Philo Vance.”
“They’ll listen soon,” Evelyn said, knowing her words were cruel beneath the surface kindness but unable to find anything else to encourage him with.
“Yes, they will,” he said grimly. “Excuse me, Evelyn, I have phone calls to make and letters to write. If we’re going to leave here a week from today, I have to get things organized.”
Was it a game they were playing with him, to keep him content a while longer? It would be like Wellington — who had turned the killing of Earl Chatham into the complication of a burglary done by people who expected the house to be empty during the funeral — to come up with this sort of scheme. Get Bradford excited about Paris for a few days, then start postponing that until he got irritable and impatient again. Then come up with another plan, another definite date, to be followed by another series of postponements.
Why did all these kindnesses have to be so cruel beneath the surface?
She said, “You go on, then. I believe I’ll take a drive.”
“Fine,” he said, already distracted by thought of the preparations to be made.
ii
By now, Evelyn thought of Robert’s apartment as an extension of her own home, so she didn’t knock on the door, but simply opened it and stepped in, just in time to see Robert pacing across the open middle of the floor, and to hear him say, “... tell Evelyn—” before he caught sight of her and abruptly stopped both his pacing and his sentence. He stood flatfooted, looking for just a second bewildered, as though he hadn’t expected her to come to this place.
Tell Evelyn about this Paris business. She took it for granted that was the way the sentence would have ended, and thought no more about it, mostly because her mind was distracted by the other people she now saw in the room.
There were four of them, and they were all looking at her. Two, Howard and Gregory, she’d half-expected to find here, but the other two were a complete surprise. Joe Holt, sitting on one of the wooden chairs over by the kitchen-closet, was looking as grim and troubled as she’d ever seen him. By contrast, Wellington, standing in the far corner, looked even more uninvolved and remote than usual.
It was Joe’s expression that made her leap to the conclusion that Bradford was going to die. The idea entered her mind complete with all its circumstantial evidence intact; Joe’s presence here and his long face, the business about a trip to Paris, even Wellington being here. If Joe had made a new diagnosis, if it seemed to him now that Bradford was going to deteriorate very rapidly and die quite soon, he would want to be the one to tell her about it himself. And if it were true, then why not give Bradford a nonexistent trip to occupy his mind during his last days (One week! Could it be that soon?) And Wellington would be here to see to it that Bradford’s final days passed with no break in the ring of secrecy and security surrounding him.
She was so immediately convinced that her guess was right that she hesitated to ask any questions, wanting to hold off confirmation as long as she possibly could. She backed against the door, to close it and then to help support her (her legs felt strange, uncertain), and she kept looking at Joe because she knew he would be the first to speak.
But he wasn’t. Robert spoke first, coming toward her with one hand out, concern on his face, saying, “Evelyn? What’s the matter?”
He was asking her the question she should be asking him (except that she’d guessed), and the reversal confused her and kept her from saying anything. She merely frowned at him, trying to understand.
He touched her arm. “Are you going to faint?”
“He isn’t going to die?”
Did people look at each other in the background? Robert, still frowning at her, said, “Who? Bradford? Of course not. What gives you the idea Bradford’s going to die?”
“I saw Joe... I thought...”
Joe at once got to his feet, a contrived smile spreading across his face. “Evelyn, no, not at all.” As he came toward her, the smile seemed to grow more natural. “Bradford’s still the healthiest one of us all. Healthier than you right now, from the look of you. Come sit down.”
She allowed herself to be led to the room’s only comfortable chair, which Howard had hastily vacated. Sitting down in it, she said, “I’m sorry. But this thing about Paris...”
From his corner, Wellington said, “That was my fault, Evelyn. I’m sorry. I hoped to find you here and tell you it was going to happen, but you didn’t come down this morning. And there was no safe way to get in touch with you at the estate.”
“I spent the morning with Dinah,” Evelyn said.
“The fact of the matter is,” Joe said, a surprisingly savage undertone of anger in his voice, “Wellington prefers to keep his decisions a secret until they’ve already been acted on. Saves a lot of argument, doesn’t it, Wellington?”
Howard said, heavily, “That won’t do any good, Joe,” while at the same time Wellington was saying, “It frequently does, yes. Saves a great deal of argument. As well as a great deal of agony for the people involved. This time, however...” he came forward from the corner toward Evelyn, “... the truth is, my habit of secrecy tripped me up. I should have gotten the word to you so you could be prepared for it, and I’m sorry I failed to do so. I take it you didn’t let anything slip.”
“Of course not,” Evelyn said, too impatient with the question even to be irritated by it. “But why tell him he’s going to Paris?”
“Because he is going to Paris,” Wellington said.
“He is? For God’s sake, why?”
“Because,” Wellington said, “he was getting too impatient. He was reaching the point where he was starting to be suspicious of my men. It was absolutely imperative that we give him something to do, to occupy his mind and let him believe some progress was being made.”
“But then what? How long can you keep him in Paris, and what do you do after that?”
“We’ll decide that when we come to it,” Wellington said. Everyone else was looking at Wellington, their expressions absorbed. “For the moment,” Wellington went on, “it gives us more time to try to come up with a more permanent solution. In any case, we couldn’t hold him in Eustace any longer, he was champing at the bit, you’ve seen that yourself.”
“But why Paris? Won’t it be easier for the Chinese to get hold of him there, away from home?”
“On the contrary,” Wellington said. “That was another argument in favor of the move. Here in this country Bradford is a retired former great, put out to pasture, so all we can expect from the government is minimal surveillance and protection for him. But in France, even as a private citizen on a simple vacation trip, he comes under the heading of a distinguished foreign visitor. That, plus the suggestion that there might be an assassination attempt in the works on French soil, and I guarantee you the French government will do a better job of keeping Bradford out of the clutches of the Chinese than the family could ever do at home.”