“I shall not set foot outside this apartment,” she said, in tears. “Nothing, nothing can make me!”
So stately Mahomet came to the mountain; and indeed it was almost as traumatic an experience for Richard M. Heaton as it would have been for Lutetia. For Heaton was the very portrait of the trusted family lawyer — elderly, florid, with the dignity of a retired major-general, and as horror-struck by the notion of publicity as Lutetia herself. He gained entry to the McKell building in a slightly disheveled condition after running the gauntlet of newsmen, and from his distress he might have been stripped by their waving hands to his under-clothing.
“Foul beasts,” he muttered, accepting a glass of sherry and a biscuit from Lutetia in great agitation. He wore a resentful look, as if he had been tricked. It took Dane five minutes to calm him.
“This is quite beyond my depth, Lutetia,” he said at last. “I have had no occasion to practice criminal law — haven’t appeared in court for any reason in fifteen years. What a dreadful business! A dressmaker!” Dane was tempted to ask him if he would have felt better about the whole mess if Sheila Grey’s name had been Van Spuyten, the end result of a long line of patroons. But he did not, for he suspected that his mother felt very much the same way.
“Tell Mother what you told me, Mr. Heaton.”
“Why I haven’t been able to pry your father out of the hands of the police? Well, Lutetia, Ashton cannot prove an alibi. He has told the authorities where he was at the time of the — of the event, but they’re unable to corroborate it. Therefore, they are continuing to hold him. Now. Although the charge is the most serious one under the law — with the possible exception of treason, of course, and the last treason indictment I can remember anywhere is that against John Brown by the State of Virginia—”
“Mr. Heaton,” said Dane politely, but firmly. He could see that his mother was holding herself together by sheer heroism.
“I’m rambling, forgive me, Lutetia. This has upset me more than I can say. However, even though murder is among the gravest of charges, an accused is presumed innocent until proved guilty, thank God, and I do not for one moment suppose such proof can be obtained in this case.”
“Then why haven’t you been able to get Ashton’s release on bond?” Lutetia asked timidly. “Dane tells me you said that New York State allows bond even in a charge of first — in a first-degree charge.”
“It’s complicated,” sighed Richard M. Heaton. “We have fallen afoul of a very poor climate, politically speaking, on the bail question, I mean here in the city. Of course, you don’t follow such things, but only a few months ago there was the case of another, ah, of a very prominent man who shot his wife to death. He was released on $100,000 bail, and he promptly fled the country. It has made the courts and the district attorney’s office extremely shy where bond in capital cases is concerned, especially since the newspapers have raked up the other case and are asking quite maliciously if this will prove a repetition.”
“But Ashton wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Lutetia moaned. “Richard, he’s innocent. Only guilty men flee. It isn’t fair.”
“I’m afraid we don’t live in as ideal a democracy as we sometimes boast,” the old lawyer said sadly. “The rich and socially prominent are very often discriminated against in our society. We could probably force the issue in the courts, but the trouble is...” He hesitated.
“The trouble is what, Mr. Heaton?” Dane asked sharply.
“Your father seems reluctant to battle it out legally. In fact, he’s all but forbidden me to.”
“What!”
“But why?” asked Lutetia blankly.
“Why indeed? In view of the state of public opinion, he seems to feel that it would be wiser not to press for bail. He actually told me, ‘Perhaps the public is right. If I were a poor man I wouldn’t be able to raise the kind of bail that would be set in a case like this. Let it go.’ I must confess I hadn’t expected such a thoroughly unrealistic attitude from Ashton McKell, and I told him so. A martyr’s attitude will avail him nothing, nothing at all.”
Lutetia sniffed into her tiny bit of cambric. “Ashton has always been so principled. But I do wish...” Then she cried quietly.
Dane comforted her, thinking that neither she nor the lawyer had caught the point. Perhaps Ashton himself was not aware of it. Though his father continued to insist quite rationally on his innocence of the murder charge, he was carrying a heavy load of guilt around for another crime; and of this one he was guilty as hell — consorting, as Lutetia would have termed it, with another woman. It was not as if he despised his wife and, in despising her, sought a more loving pair of arms, bought or offered gratis. Ashton did not despise Lutetia; he loved her. It was like loving a piece of fragile chinaware, the slightest jar to which would crack it. He had been responsible for cracking the delicate image, and he must be feeling the same sort of shame and guilt as if, in fact, he had been contemptuous of it.
Dane went to see his father. The elder McKell looked like a hollow reproduction of himself — as if he had had his stuffing scooped out. Dane could hardly bear to look at him.
Ashton asked, in tones softer than Dane could remember, “Son, how are you? How is your mother?”
“We’re fine. The question is, Dad, how are you?”
“This is all a dream, and I’ll soon wake up. But then I know I’m awake — that the past was the dream. It’s something like that, son.”
They chatted awkwardly for a while, about Lutetia chiefly, how she was reacting to her overturned world. Finally Dane got around to the object of his visit. “Dad, I want you to tell me all about that night — what you did, where you went. In detail. Just as you told the police.”
“If you want me to, Dane.” The elder man considered for a moment, sighing. “I got to the penthouse just before ten o’clock — the cab was held up by an accident on the highway, or it would have been sooner. The traffic from the airport isn’t very heavy at that hour.”
About ten o’clock. It would have been mere minutes after he himself had left her alive in the penthouse.
“I didn’t stay long. She was terribly upset. By what she wouldn’t say.”
Dane bent over the pad, on which he was taking notes, to cover his wince. “How long were you there, Dad? As exactly as you can recall.”
“She asked me to leave almost at once, so I did. I couldn’t have been there more than several minutes. I’d say I left at 10:03 at the latest.”
“Where did you go from there?”
Ashton said quietly, “I was rather upset myself. I walked.”
“Where? For how long?” And why didn’t I ask him why he was upset? Dane thought. Because I know, that’s why...
“I just don’t remember. It couldn’t have been too long, I suppose. I do remember being in a bar—”
“What bar?”
“I don’t know. I had a drink and talked to the bartender, I remember that.”
“You’re sure you don’t know where the bar is?”
“Not even approximately, although for some reason First Avenue sticks in my head. But I can’t honestly say it was there. Somewhere in the Sixties — I think. A side street, I seem to recall that, anyway. I was simply not paying any attention to things like that.” A ghost of a smile touched the rocky face. “I certainly wish now that I had.”
“And you didn’t notice the name of the bar?”
“Or I’ve forgotten. You know, a lot of those little places have no names. Just Bar.”
“Have you an idea how long you were in there?”
“Quite a while. More than a few minutes. I do remember leaving the place and walking some more. Finally I took a cab—”