The procession left the house at twelve-twenty, the church ceremony being planned for one o’clock. Slowly the mourners filed out of the house into cold November sunlight and entered the cars.
The first car took Sterling, and Elizabeth’s two banker brothers, Albert and Edward Bloor, and their wives, Rosemary and Elaine. Albert had what looked like a flesh-colored hearing aid in his left ear; his number was seven.
Beginning with the second car, the order of passengers differed wildly from the usual. The second car contained Bradford, his brother Harrison, Meredith Fanshaw, Howard Lockridge and Gregory Holt. Fanshaw wore the hearing aid, and his number was one. The seating arrangement was: Bradford in the middle of the rear seat, Senator Fanshaw on his left, Harrison on his right, Howard and Gregory in two jump seats in front of him. With all four around him that way, he couldn’t see outside very well, but there was no reason for him to want to see outside. He had, in any case, been moody since hearing of Elizabeth’s death, probably because it reminded him of the shortness of the time he also had left.
The third car contained the same four young men who had escorted Bradford up from Eustace: Thomas Wellington, Albert Bloor, Jr., Robert Pratt, George Holt. Robert Pratt had the hearing aid, and his number was two. With the four young men was Evelyn, there against Wellington’s wishes, but determined to be no more than one car away from Bradford.
In the fourth car rode Wellington, with his transmitter and his wife Carol. John Bloor, Boston attorney, also rode in that car, haying been unseated from the car in front by Evelyn, and Edward and Janet Lockridge from Paris completed the group.
The last three cars were full of wives. In car five, Harrison’s wife Patricia; Howard’s wife Grace; Joe Holt’s wife Margaret; William Wellington’s wife Sara; and Walter Wellington’s wife Milicent. In car six, Earl Chatham’s wife Patricia; Eugene White’s wife Sandra; James Fanshaw’s wife Rita; Mortimer Wellington’s wife Mavis; and a young widow, Katherine White, Elizabeth’s niece and John Bloor’s sister. And in the last car, Albert Bloor Jr.’s wife Jane; George Holt’s wife Marie; John Bloor’s wife Deborah; Gregory Holt’s wife Audrey; and the only teenager present, Wellington’s seventeen-year-old daughter, no longer a virgin, Deborah.
The cars moved off, headlights burning. Earl Chatham watched them leave from an upstairs window, hearing the undertaker’s men dismantling the platform and other equipment in the living room. By the time everyone got back, the undertaker’s men would have cleaned up and departed, and the caterer’s men would have laid out coffee and drinks and sandwiches.
At the first turn, Wellington looked to his left, and saw, parked where it should be, the car containing Walter and William Wellington. Its presence there meant they’d seen nothing alarming along their route.
Wellington spoke into his transmitter: “Four. Precede us by a minimum of a block. If anything bothers you, develop horn trouble.” He had shown them, early this morning, how to rig their car simply so as to wind up with a stuck horn at will.
The cortege was moving slowly, so the Wellington brothers had no trouble passing them and moving out in front. Wellington watched them go by, and said into his transmitter: “Three.” That was James Fanshaw and Joseph Holt, in the church. “We are en route.”
In the church, Fanshaw wordlessly got to his feet and walked outside. Holt waited a moment, then stood and began to walk around the perimeter aisles of the church, strolling slowly along as though interested in nothing but the stained glass windows. Outside, Fanshaw strolled back and forth on the sidewalk, studying the faces of the people who passed and the looks of the automobiles parked across the way.
Their route formed the two sides of a triangle of which the river was the base. From Sterling’s house to the cemetery was the base line, more or less straight, following the river. The church stood in about the middle of town; to get to it, the funeral procession had to travel northwest, at an angle away from the river. Afterward, it would travel northeast to the cemetery, at an angle in toward the river again. And finally it would return to Sterling’s house down the base line of the triangle.
The first leg of the triangle, from house to church, was a distance of twelve blocks, including two right turns and one left turn. In the seventh block, a tan Mercury suddenly bolted from a side street and rammed the flower car broadside. Two young men, upright-looking and neatly dressed, jumped from the tan Mercury and began to shout at the driver of the flower car, blaming him for cutting them off. They seemed unaware of the funeral procession, which had of necessity come to a stop.
Wellington, four cars back, had seen the accident unclearly, but he knew about it. Though he had nothing so obvious as a hearing aid in his ear, a small tinny voice was speaking in it, describing the accident in fast monosyllables. This was a second line of defense, about which the family knew nothing, a thin line of men, sprinkled along the sides of the triangle, in communication with Wellington and with one another: professionals, ready to step in if needed.
Wellington, into the transmitter: “One.” That was Meredith Fanshaw, in the second car beside Bradford. “Cover.”
Fanshaw leaned forward in the seat, saying, “Interruptions?” That was the word he was to use in giving the others Wellington’s instruction to cover.
At once, the four men around Bradford were all leaning forward, moving back and forth, pointing this way and that, discussing the reason for having stopped, so surrounding Bradford with gestures and bodies and talk that he couldn’t possibly see or hear anything that was going on outside.
Ten seconds had passed since the accident. A green Chevrolet was passing the stopped cortege on the left. Wellington said, “Two. Shield.”
The doors of the third car, behind Bradford’s, opened, and out spilled the four young men who had been tailing him all day. Robert Pratt and the spectacled, balding-at-twenty-eight-but-handball-enthusiast young banker, Albert Bloor Jr., trotted forward to stand on the left side of Bradford’s car. George Holt and twenty-one-year-old Thomas Wellington hurried to stand on the right.
The green Chevrolet stopped beside Bradford’s car, arriving at the same time as Robert Pratt and Albert Bloor Jr. The Chevrolet’s right-side doors opened, and three young men climbed out, one from the front, two from the back, leaving the driver. At the same time, the two young men from the Mercury began to move down from the flower car on the other side.
Robert held one of the young men against the side of the Chevrolet, so he wouldn’t be able to roll with it, and hit him three times in the face. Meanwhile, Albert was holding the other two off with weaving jabs.
Across the car, George Holt and Thomas Wellington stepped forward to greet the pair from the Mercury.
Wellington, into the transmitter: “Four.” Walter and William Wellington. “Return. Block green Chewy.”
Bradford, trying to see past everyone, said, “What’s going on out there?” Vague confused movement, that’s all he could see.
Gregory, purposely misunderstanding as they all crowded even closer to Bradford, “Some sort of accident. I sure hope it doesn’t hold us up long.” Everyone else agreed, at length.
In Wellington’s car, John Bloor said, “I better get up there with them.” He got out of the car, and trotted forward.
The young man Robert had held against the car was now on the ground. Robert and Albert Jr. were struggling with the other two, no one able to get an advantage in the narrow space between the Chevrolet and Bradford’s car. On the other side, Thomas Wellington had one of the young men from the Mercury down and was straddling him and hitting him. The other one from the Mercury had George Holt down, but George was refusing to let go, and the two were rolling on the pavement. Thirty seconds had passed since the accident.