“My wife and I are in the stock business, you see. Not bonds and shares but horse-flesh, which requires that we visit tracks, attend the yearling sales, send reports back to our clients, and so forth. Since we’ve been on the move, we didn’t get to your letters until just a few days ago.”
They sat in the living room of the Griffiths’ small home, Miss Scobey on a settee covered with stained rose damask, her hat and gloves beside her. Griffith had not asked her to remove her coat.
The case worker was curious about Eric Griffith — about his nervousness, his quick smiles, his seemingly careless but, in fact, erratic gestures.
He stood by the fireplace, an elbow resting on the mantlepiece in a practiced manner, fingering a black briar pipe he had taken from his tweed jacket. Under the jacket he wore a yellow vest. The collar of his tattersall shirt was spread by the bulky knot of a red wool-knit tie. He was tall and strongly built with large powerful hands, which he kept twisting in front of him in what seemed to Miss Scobey an oddly defensive gesture, considering his muscular bulk and his easy, patronizing manner. He seemed to have taken out the pipe to control his restless hands. His head was narrow, with high cheekbones reddened by weather. The eyes were blue, pale and arresting, but he was losing his fine, blond hair. A widow’s peak was pronounced and sharp, defined by expanses of pink scalp on either side of it. He was not wearing riding boots or even stout walking shoes, she noticed, but laced brown street shoes that were wrong, she thought, with the bulky tweed coat and yellow vest.
Miss Scobey also noticed that she had lost Eric Griffith’s full attention. He continued to smile at her, but every now and then his eyes went past her to a row of bottles on a table in the corner of the room.
“I called your home several times, Mr. Griffith. The first two times I was cut off. The third time I talked to someone at this number, but I’m afraid I didn’t understand him. And he certainly didn’t understand me.”
Griffith smiled and said, “That was probably Jimmy. He cleans up after parties here, puts a good shine on boots, but I’m afraid he’s not at his best with twentieth-century gadgets like the telephone. How-ever, for what he does, he’s a good old boy.”
Griffith put his pipe on the mantle, went to the table that served as a bar and poured himself a splash of whiskey in a squat glass decorated with daisies.
“Would you like a touch of something? I think there’s sherry...”
“No, thank you. Nothing at all.”
“Perhaps we’d better get down to the point.” Mr. Griffith was still smiling, and nothing in his manner or tone indicated a transition in subject. “I didn’t get in touch with you, Miss Scobey, because there was no point in it. I was shocked by my sister’s death, but my wife and I have nothing to offer the child, nothing at all. We’ve never seen Jessica and she probably doesn’t even know who we are. So I thought it best to just leave it that way.”
Although her professional and personal opinions were not important here, a surge of loyalty to Jessica Mallory compelled Miss Scobey to say, “I think that’s unfortunate, Mr. Griffith. Jessica is a most affectionate and intelligent little girl.”
“That’s quite irrelevant,” Griffith said. “The fact of the matter is, if my sister and Daniel Mallory were so keen to bring a child into this world, then they should have made provisions to take care of it.”
Question, Miss Scobey thought: How did he know they hadn’t?
“I advised them to make sure they could handle things before they—” Griffith shook his head and took a sip of whiskey. “Well, that’s beside the point, too. What is important, Miss Scobey, is that Maud and I refuse to be saddled with responsibilities not of our choosing. Is that clear enough for you?”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Griffith.” Opening her handbag, Miss Scobey took out a leather-bound notebook and unscrewed the top of an old-fashioned fountain pen. Griffith watched warily as she dated and initialed a page of her notebook.
“Mr. Griffith, juvenile court has no authority to suggest who may be responsible for Jessica Mallory’s welfare. The court’s only function is to find a suitable home for children such as Jessica, where they will have a chance to grow up in an atmosphere that is loving and stable and permanent.”
Griffith raised his eyebrows skeptically and said, “Well, if that’s true, Miss Scobey, why did you get in touch with me in the first place?”
“Because there is a way you can help, Mr. Griffith.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Well, simply by telling us about your own family background, your sister’s education, for instance, medical history, where you grew up, your hobbies, just general historical background that will help us to establish and evaluate a profile of Jessica.”
Griffith, she suspected, was making an effort to control his relief. “Well, along those lines, I’d be glad to help.”
He smoothed his fine, carefully combed hair, the pressure of his hands sharpening for an instant the widow’s peak that furled like a blond flag above his forehead. “I’ll ask Mrs. Griffith to join us,” he said.
As he went to the stairs to call up, Miss Scobey decided he was like a child released from school on a fine spring day. The sullenness was gone from his lips, the defensive anger from his gestures. And there was a buoyant expression on his face as he repeated his wife’s name saying, “Maud? Maudie, would you care to join us?”
At the same instant, Miss Scobey heard the click of high heels on the uncarpeted stairs that led down to the small entrance hall. Griffith poured himself another whiskey and raised the glass to the tall, blond woman who joined them, her eyes narrowing in a near-sighted inspection of Miss Scobey.
“Darling, this nice lady is helping to find a suitable home for Jessica. Miss Scobey, my wife — Mrs. Griffith.”
“How nice of her.” Maud Griffith sat gracefully on a spool-backed chair beside the few glowing coals in the fireplace. “Would you bring me something to drink, Eric? And wouldn’t Mrs. Scopey like something?”
“It’s Miss Scobey, Mrs. Griffith. And thank you, no.”
“Probably all for the best, not drinking on duty. Might drop some of the little dearies on the wrong doorstep,” Maud Griffith said.
“We don’t deliver them like newspapers, Mrs. Griffith. We’re very careful that—”
“Thank you, Eric.” Maud Griffith accepted a drink from her husband and ignored Miss Scobey’s statement.
A fine pair, Miss Scobey thought. Maud Griffith, in her early thirties probably, but dressed a good bit younger than that in a tight red turtleneck sweater and swirling black skirt that revealed her slim but muscular legs. Her hair was blond, her cheeks round and shiny and her lips full but tight over a row of fine, white teeth. Her blue eyes were quite lovely — clear, healthy whites dramatizing the darker pupils — but there was nothing innocent about them. They were so watchful and unemotional that they looked like shiny globes of colored glass.
And Eric Griffith. For all the carefully tucked-in stomach and the shoulders held back like a cadet and the fastidiously arranged hair, the country tweeds and plummy weskit, Griffith’s knees gave him away, Miss Scobey decided, indulging herself in an uncharacteristic but nonetheless gratifying prejudice. They weren’t the knees of a young gentleman or horseman. They were an unsteady base for his tall, large frame; essential joints unstrengthened by exercise, walking or hard work; the knees — in fact — of a spectator striving always to wear the colors of a participant, a man more accustomed to the bleachers than the arena.
Miss Scobey raised her pen as a cue, and cleared her throat.
Eric Griffith seemed to savor the role he was playing, pacing slowly in front of the fireplace, pausing occasionally to deliberate over his choice of expression. He spoke with practiced skill, the words and sentences flowing as easily as if he were reading from a script. But while some of his comments were droll and caustically amusing, Miss Scobey had the impression that a corrosive anger may have been simmering just below the surface of his statements.