In the study, Val Sutton was leafing through a stack of sympathy cards. She wore a loose black sweater dress belted with a gold chain, and a pot of vivid yellow chrysanthemums brightened the cold hearth.
"I don't mind 'Our thoughts are with you' or 'in your time of sorrow,' but I'll be damned if I'll look at 'God has a purpose!'" she said, kiting the offensive message towards the fireplace. "How can they drivel that disgusting pap? Laying John's murder on God!"
A pudgy rumpled man in baggy corduroy pants and even baggier rust-color sweater rescued the cards from the sooty hearth. "A little more charity, Val," he admonished mildly. "They mean well."
"When the world has reduced itself to a polluted ball of rubble, the last man will probably erect a stone that reads 'They meant well,'" she replied; yet the shadow of a sardonic smile softened the bitter words and her smile widened as
Nauman appeared in the doorway with Sigrid and Alan Knight.
She greeted Sigrid warmly and was introduced to Knight, but Sigrid immediately noticed how tired she looked. Something about her face had hardened. She was still exotic, still resembled a sleek expensive cat, but something was gone, thought Sigrid. Youth? No, not youth exactly, nor confidence either… Vulnerability, she decided. Val Sutton was in the process of growing a chip-proof shell and unless something intervened, it would slowly harden around her like the chrysalis of one of Jill Gill's butterflies, smooth and beautiful and utterly impervious to rain or sun.
And the man knew it, she thought, extending her hand to the one Val was introducing as Sam Naismith.
"We met by phone Saturday night," Sigrid reminded them.
"Sam's going to act as John's literary executor," said Val. "Finish John's book."
"Won't that be rather difficult?"
"Val's rounding up all his notes for me," said Naismith, with a gentle smile. "And don't forget that John and I roomedt ogether at McClellan, so we shared a lot of the same experiences."
"Sam spent the weekend phoning all over the country to locate Tris Yorke," said Val, motioning them to take chairs.
"I'm sorry you went to that trouble," said Sigrid. "We learned this morning that Ted Flythe's definitely not Fred Hamilton. The fingerprints are completely different."
"But Hamilton 's really alive!" said Naismith. "I finally tracked Tris down at a wilderness camp he's running for terminally ill kids near Niagara Falls. Back in 1970, when he was working at a country hospital as a C.O.-"
"C.O.?" asked Alan Knight, wondering how a war protester became a hospital's commanding officer.
"Conscientious objector," explained Naismith. As a college professor, he had grown inured to the realization that his recent history was terra incognita to a younger generation. "Those who could prove that they objected to the war on long-held conscientious grounds were allowed to perform alternate service. Tris worked as an orderly in a littleh ospital in upstate New York."
Resuming the main thread of his story, he said, "Two days after the explosion at Cayuga Lake, Fred Hamilton and the Farr girl showed up at his place looking like a couple of singed chickens. Tris said at first he didn't want to help them because of the draft board bomb that killed the kids, but Fred talked him around. Told Tris it wasn't his fault, that it was all a miscalculation on someone else's part. Tris finally bought it. He got them clothes and papers and drove them up to Montreal himself."
" Montreal?"
"Yeah. Fred spoke fluent French-he'd worked in French Guiana with the Peace Corps-and he figured he could blend in there. That was Tris Yorke's last sight of Fred."
Sigrid leaned back in the leather armchair, her fingertips lightly touching across her lap. "It's interesting, but I'm afraid it doesn't really get us any closer to who booby-trapped that cribbage board. Flythe's fingerprints were compared with all known Red Snow members and there's no match. We brought pictures-"
Alan Knight extracted them from his briefcase. The police photographer had done an excellent job. Her black-and-white eight-by-tens showed Ted Flythe both full-faced and in profile; his hooded eyes, sensuous lips, and pointed beard were sharply detailed.
"Red Snow aside, have you seen this man elsewhere?" Sigrid asked. "We're running a background check, but nothing's come in yet. Remember, Val? He said he graduated from a small college in Michigan. Carlyle Union. He says he's done a little of everything, including guiding European tours."
Val studied the prints minutely, but finally frowned and shook her head. Naismith was no more successful.
"I can see why he reminded you of Tris, though," he told Val, covering the lower half of the photo with his broad hand. "Same sort of eyes."
He handed the pictures back to Alan Knight. "If you've ruled out Red Snow, I guess you aren't interested in Victor Earle."
"Who?" asked Sigrid.
"Victor Earle. He's the guy I mentionedo n Saturday who was out of the country when Red Snow self-destructed. Served a couple of years for drugs and illegal arms. Tris saw him when he first came back to the States; said he'd run into Fred in Europe. Tris did some calling, too. Earle's out on Long island now. Mantausic."
"This Victor Earle was an active member of Red Snow? He'd know everyone on sight?"
"He should."
Naismith took a handful of paper scraps from his pocket and dug through them till he found one with a Mantausic address scrawled on it.
"Why don't you; show him Nydut pictures?"
"Thanks,"d md Sigrid.r i "Perhaps? WE will.",
Nauman followed them from the apartment. As Knight went on down the steps to find Petty Officer Schmitt, Oscar and Sigrid lingered at the top in the thin sunlight. There was a damp feel tot he air. It would rain before nightfall. Brown and gold leaves fell from the few trees which stood in little circles of dirt encased by concrete. Across the street, a well-dressed matron swept leaves from her steps with jerky stabs of the broom, watched by a tiny poodle.
"Sleep well last night?" Nauman inquired mildly, leaning back against the wall to light his meerschaum pipe. The sweet smoke smelled vaguely autumnal.
"Sorry about that. I hope you don't think it's because of the wine?"
"Never crossed my mind," he teased. "Or that I was bored?"
"Nope. I decided it was because you felt at ease with me. Unthreatened." He checked his watch. "It's early and I have to see some students at six, but why don't you send Ralph Rackstraw home and let's go have a drink."
"I'm a working woman," she said. "With miles to go before I drink. But I haven't forgotten that Piers Leyden opening tomorrow night."
Alan Knight had collected Schmitt, and the car was now parked in front of the apartment with the motor running.
"I have to go," Sigrid said, starting down the steps.
"How much longer are you going to keep this naval escort?" Naurnan asked irritably.
"You'd prefer the army?" She smiled back up at him from street level.
"I'd prefer somebody who didn't look like a young David and make me feel like old King Saul," muttered Nauman.
But Sigrid was already crossing the sidewalk and if she heard, she didn't respond.
27
IT had taken several phone calls the previous afternoon to locate Victor Earle. Or rather, to locate someone who knew him, since he did not seem to own a telephone. The landlady at his boarding-house sounded reliable and she had promised Sigrid to tell Earle to expect her the next morning, Tuesday, around ten.
"You don't have to come," she'd told Alan Knight, but he pointed out that she could hardly drive herself the length of Long Island with one arm in a sling and besides, he wanted to see this thing to the end.
Mantausic, on South Oyster Bay, was a scruffy little sea town, the kind that could be found all up and down the Atlantic coast. Unlike the towns that serviced Fire Island a little further east, Mantausic had never drawn a white-wine-and-brie crowd, and it did not pull down the shades or roll up its waterfront after