The facts that emerged from his rambling and discursive account became more and more rambling as he made a third trip to the bar.
His sister Monica, he explained, was ten years younger than he. They had been raised in a small town on the eastern shore of Maryland. After high school, Eric had attended the University of Virginia. He dropped out after two years because, as he put it, “I couldn’t stand the boredom of classrooms, professors drilling facts into us.”
Miss Scobey noticed an animation in Griffith’s voice and features when he digressed from linear biographical details and veered to a discussion of theatre classes he’d taken at the university and his work with local drama clubs. He had played Marchbanks in The Doctor’s Dilemma and Professor Higgins in Pygmalion, and read the weather reports on the campus radio station.
Yes, Miss Scobey thought, appraising his obvious but rueful pleasure at these reminiscences. He was an actor all right, using practiced dramatic pauses, and his hands and body to compliment them. It was all a performance, except for the anger, and that emotion seemed like a ground swell supporting everything else, powerful currents independent of external circumstances.
“Actually, a Broadway director — his name was Ira Washburn, you may have heard of him — he also worked with Guthrie in Minneapolis — he was kind enough to say that what I lacked in dedication I might make up for with the odd trick or two, or, who knows, with a bit of natural talent.”
Maud Griffith yawned lightly, then frowned as if an unpleasant thought had occurred to her. She began to massage her knee with the tips of her fingers.
“I think I’m in a draft, Eric.”
“A fat lot Washburn knew—” Griffith went to the bar and refreshed his drink. Then he stared at his wife, and it seemed to Miss Scobey he was returning with some reluctance to present pressures and irritations. “Well, it’s always something, isn’t it, luv?”
With an edge to her voice, his wife said, “I haven’t felt well all morning.”
“Oh, good God!” Eric said. Obviously exasperated, he stared about the room, focused on a small knit afghan on the sofa, scooped it up and dropped it without ceremony across his wife’s slender legs. “I trust that will do until we can helicopter in a team of specialists from Johns Hopkins.”
The narrative continued. Griffith and his sister, Monica, hadn’t been close. After marrying Maud Mercer Saxe, Griffith had moved to Chester County while his sister was in her last year at Bryn Mawr.
“Saxe was, is the name of my first husband,” Maud said with a small smile. “Don’t you think Miss Scobey should know all about that, dear?”
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Griffith said with a curious intensity.
“But shouldn’t an adoption agency want all those gossipy details?”
Without glancing up from her notebook, Miss Scobey said, “Please go on, Mr. Griffith.”
“Of course, Mallory knew a good thing when he saw it. My sister had an adequate job, took care of everything, finances, the house, the child, which left Mallory, the boy genius, free to invent God-knows-what-kind-of mouse-trap to bring the world to his door. Monica came into a few thousand dollars on her twenty-first birthday and that went down the drain, too. Mallory was one of your wild Irish dreamers, head in the clouds, hitching his fortune to any star or crystal ball that came down the pike.”
Maud tucked the afghan about her knees and said, “So naturally, they left nothing for little Jessica.”
Miss Scobey made a question mark in her notebook. How had Maud Griffith known that?
“The least they could have done is take out flight insurance,” Griffith said, and to that comment Miss Scobey added another question mark.
Something occurred to Miss Scobey then — the unpaid loan Monica Griffith had made to someone around her twenty-first birthday.
Miss Scobey had a shrewd idea what particular drain that money had gone down. “It’s not important, but I’m curious, Mr. Griffith. What does your middle initial stand for?”
“Boniface. B for Boniface. I was christened Eric Boniface Griffith.”
“It was his father’s notion,” Maud said with a little laugh. “The original Boniface was the first of the big spenders.”
Miss Scobey closed her notebook. “Thank you, Mr. Griffith. I won’t bother you any further.”
“Tell me, Miss Scobey. Why were you interested in my middle initial?”
“I was just curious,” Miss Scobey said, rising and turning toward the door.
“I don’t believe you,” Eric Griffith said, and his anger was closer to the surface now, raw and ugly in his eyes. “I know why you’re here. You can’t fool me with your talk of Jessica’s welfare.” He mimicked Miss Scobey’s words in a hard, unpleasant voice. “ ‘We just want something loving and stable and permanent—’ ”
“That happens to be the truth, Mr. Griffith.”
“You’re snooping around here for money,” Eric pointed a long, bony finger at Miss Scobey. “Trying to put the squeeze on good old Boniface. Sure, I borrowed two thousand dollars from my sister but only to cut them in on a Daily Double at Belmont Park that would have made us all tens of thousands.”
“Mr. Griffith, believe me. The juvenile court isn’t interested in these details.”
“I did everything I could to help them. She was my sister, practically my baby sister.” There was a sudden glint of tears in his eyes, something lost and forlorn in the sag of his shoulders. Turning, he braced himself with a hand against the mantle, a gesture so mannered that Miss Scobey couldn’t guess whether the tears and emotions were genuine. “I taught her to dance when she went to her first cotillion... she wore little white gloves. But I won’t be pressured this way, I won’t be made responsible for things that don’t concern me!”
Maud Griffith followed Miss Scobey out the front door and down the flagstone walk to her car.
When Miss Scobey was behind the wheel, Maud — Griffith said, “Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Her hands held the car door open and her bright eyes stared coldly down into Miss Scobey’s. “If I wanted a child, I’d make one of my own. Just remember that. So don’t you ever try again to unload Jessica Mallory on this doorstep. Find another warm, stable home for the little dear.”
Miss Scobey hardened her jaw and looked at Maud Griffith with sharp disapproval. “That will be my pleasure, Mrs. Griffith.”
“Good,” Maud said and slammed the door shut.
Miss Scobey put her car in gear and drove with unaccustomed speed down the narrow dirt road that would take her out to the Philadelphia Pike. She was thinking with angry anticipation of Monday morning when she would have the satisfaction of typing out her notes and appraisal of these strange creatures who lived on Black Velvet Lane.
Maud Griffith stood watching the Volkswagen with its “I Found Jesus!” sticker centered on the rear bumper below the license plate. When the car disappeared at the first intersection, she turned and walked briskly up the path to the house.
Her husband stood smiling in the open door looking to where the small blue car had turned out of sight behind a screen of bare poplar trees.
Chapter Four
Jessica Mallory collected her belongings from the bedroom in Mrs. Farr’s home and began to pack them neatly in a red vinyl suitcase. Sweaters and socks and nightgowns, a pair of patent leather shoes with straps, a Raggedy Ann from her bed, a gray flannel coat with a black felt collar — she carried these to the table where the suitcase rested and stacked them beside it, wondering how she could fit them all into one small piece of luggage. Perhaps he could carry the doll and the box with the tea set.