A Fox Inside (9 page)

There were three papers, two tabloids and the
conservative
Chronicle.
There was a big smeared photograph of the house at Bolinas, taken from the beach, with a
diagram
of what one of the scandal sheets called “the death room”. There were dotted lines from the chair to a
Maltese
cross marking the place where the body had been found. There was an old photograph of Maggie, probably taken after her coming-out party, or at college, and one of Charles, looking alive and self-confident. One of the papers called him a prominent socialite, one a society lawyer, and the third a business man. The conservative
Chronicle
had a photograph of the “death room” taken by flash-bulb. They did not call it murder, but they clearly hoped that it was one. Maggie looked down at the papers for a long time, but without touching them.

“What on earth do they mean by ‘socialite’?” she asked.

“They mean you have money.”

“It’s horrible,” she said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

There was no point in telling her that as far as the papers were concerned the truth was anything that would sell and remain unsueable.

“How they must hate us,” she said.

“It’s just policy.” He realized that public opinion was something she had never thought about. He leafed
through the papers. It took him a long time to find what he was looking for, and when he did find it it didn’t tell him much. The obits were skimpy. Apparently only the
Chronicle
had an adequate morgue.

That depressed him. If the newspapers knew no more about Charles than he did, perhaps there wasn’t
anything
else to know. And yet there must be, for someone had been at Bolinas. And if Maggie had been seen, he did not like to think what might come of it. As he re-read the best of the obits one phase caught his eye: “Before
attending
Stanford, Mr. Shannon was educated at the Sacred Heart Academy in San Francisco.” He stared at that thoughtfully, wondering if it was true, and if it was true, if it meant anything. It was not much, but it was the only thing he had seen about Charles that he had not known before. He went hastily through the other two papers, but there was no mention of it in them.

Charles, of course, was Irish. So were the Barnes. He always forgot that, because they all made such a fetish of being respectable. It was not a thing that people usually forgot to boast about, and if Charles had made nothing of it, therefore perhaps it meant something. He stared down at the paper.

Maggie lay back against the sofa and shut her eyes. It was clearly the only way she could hide, so he said nothing to disturb her. Perhaps sitting there quietly with him might do her some good.

They were still sitting like that when they heard the car drive up and its door slam. Maggie opened her eyes and stood up. “I’ll go get my coat and bag,” she said. She gave him a sudden, crooked smile. “I’m all right now. Really.” She looked round the room. “It’s better
to go. I used to love this house, and he made me hate it.” She went out of the room.

He heard Lily come in and the two women speak briefly in the hall. He could not hear what they were saying. Lily came in quietly. Under her veil and under her makeup her face looked unexpectedly severe and old. For a moment it seemed that her eyes no longer dominated her face. He saw that she had at last realized that Charles was really dead. She glanced at the papers, but made no attempt to look at them. She looked genuinely frightened.

“Luke,” she said, “the cat’s gone.”

“What cat?”

“Charles’s. He kept one up there. A Siamese or
something
. Some people took care of it during the week. It’s gone.”

“Cats come and go.”

“You don’t understand. Charles liked it. It had a
bassinet
and a coat, and I don’t know what all. It’s all gone.”

“Oh.”

“You’d better follow us down,” she said, not sitting down. “I’ll get you a room at the hotel in Palo Alto.” He saw that she was badly shaken.

They heard Maggie come down the stairs. They moved towards her in unison and Luke let them out of the door. Just as he held the door open the telephone
began
to ring. It rang insistently and for a long time, and they stood staring at one another, wondering. Through the open doorway he could see the maid settling one of the bags into the rear of the car. With a glance at Luke, Lily went down the path and Maggie followed her.

The preliminaries were over. It wasn’t a private matter
any more. Reluctantly Luke shut the door and went to answer the phone. Before he could reach it it had stopped, but he knew it would ring again. Faintly
perplexed
, he got his hat and left the house. The reporters could wait. 

H
E HAD DECIDED TO TRY THE
seminary. They might know something there. On the way, in the taxi, he found that he did not know how to begin. He knew nothing of Irish Catholic life and did not feel at ease in it. It had not occurred to him before that Charles, despite the name, might have that
background
. It made a great deal of difference. For one thing he was uncomfortably aware of where he stood with the Irish: they were not particularly kind to anybody but themselves.

They ran local government, the way they ran it
everywhere
. Once in a while they threw a bone to the Italians, but that was all. They were not much noticed in the public, or the social, or the cultural life. There were not interested in public or cultural life and they had their own society. They were interested in politics, which had made them rich. With the money they sprinkled the city with convents, seminaries, and churches. Their ideas of taste came out of a shanty, and what they built had a shanty look, but they built anyway.

The taxi deposited him in front of the school. It was an ugly building of yellow cement Byzantine with a
lobby that smelled of Fels-naptha and rubber. Once
inside
and he felt more at his ease.

He finally got himself conducted into the presence of a Father O’Leary, the registrar. Father O’Leary had, if anything, a Lutheran appearance. He had black hair and a prognathous jaw and his eyes were sympathetic. Luke did not think he could have stumbled on a better man.

“Oh, yes. I read about it. It upset me.” O’Leary’s voice was matter of fact. He picked up a penwiper and began to twiddle with it, glancing at the office door, which was half glass. “The point is, why are you here?”

It wasn’t an easy question to answer. There was a green and brown map of the state behind O’Leary’s back and Luke looked at that, wondering how much he should say. “Mrs. Barnes is a client,” he said.

“Yes,” said O’Leary, “I’ve met her.” He smiled at Luke. “It bothered me.”

“It may bother a lot of people.”

“I don’t think so,” said O’Leary. He breathed deeply and pulled out a handkerchief.

“It’s funny. I never realized he was Irish.”

“Or Catholic? Well, he was born Catholic, if that makes him one. And as for being Irish, I’m afraid he was ashamed of that. A lot of people are, and Charles had his eye on things where being Irish isn’t always a help.” O’Leary looked at Luke with amusement. “It doesn’t always help, you know.” He coughed gently. “I remember him well. I looked up his record after I saw the papers. He came to us when he was twelve and left when he was sixteen. He was a good learner, a little too bright, if anything. I taught him logic.” He considered. “That was a mistake, I think. Logic is an excellent
science, but not a way of life. I suppose what bothered me when I read the papers was that I didn’t like him. Nobody liked him; and I don’t think he wanted
anybody
to.”

“And then?”

O’Leary shrugged. “Then he left.”

“A boy of sixteen can’t just leave.”

“That’s what he did, though.”

“What about his family? He must have had some family.”

O’Leary looked uncomfortable. “He didn’t. At least, not so far as we knew. He had a guardian, a woman who brought him here. I never met her.”

“But there must be some record of all that.”

“Oh, yes, there was a record. To-day I looked for it, but it wasn’t there. They’re kept in open files.”

“Somebody took it?”

O’Leary seemed put out. “I imagine he took it
himself
. And recently. You see, I forgot all about him until a few years ago. Then I bumped into him at some
political
rally. It upset him, I think. Later he came here. He came once or twice and said he wanted to do something for us. He said he wanted to make a donation. He even made several. They were anonymous.”

“Why should he want to destroy his record?”

“That’s what I wondered. I think it was because he didn’t want to have any past. And well—the donations were rather large. It seemed better not to say anything.”

Luke understood. He wondered just when O’Leary had discovered that missing file.

“He had a knack of meeting people who were
useful
,” added O’Leary.

“Is that all?”

“Yes and no.” O’Leary looked at Luke more sharply, as though he had just then become interested in him. “Charles was frightened,” he said slowly. “He was badly frightened and he was frightened all the time. He wasn’t frightened of being murdered, if he was murdered. He was afraid of dying. I think he always felt that he was dying and that he had to hurry to catch up. He wasn’t ever really young, and once he was over thirty he
resented
what he’d missed. So everything he wanted he either bought or stole. I don’t mean outright. But he managed to get what he wanted and he always felt cheated once he had it. And yet he didn’t want anything that couldn’t be bought. It couldn’t have been very pleasant for his wife.”

“It wasn’t.”

O’Leary drew his eyebrows together and then sighed. “What is it you have to find out?”

Luke decided to trust him and told him about the beach house.

“That won’t be so easy,” said O’Leary.

“But a boy of sixteen doesn’t bury his own past,” said Luke. “At that age he doesn’t have any past.”

“Charles just wanted to be somebody else,” said O’Leary, and stopped. “It probably was a woman, but I don’t think you’ll find her. She’d be very old by now.”

“He probably forgot her.”

“No, I don’t think so. There must have been some people he couldn’t forget, because they’d have known all about him. He couldn’t get rid of them; so he must have conciliated them in some way. The question is: what way?”

Luke got up to go, but O’Leary waved him back. “I’m not through yet, and you may as well listen to me. That’s what you came to do. The point is, which one of them do you want to save?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do. You see, you don’t have many people to draw on, really, and I gather you don’t have much time, either. And it must have struck you that of the people you do know, Lily Barnes is the only one who could have known anything about Charles at all.”

“She’ll scarcely speak to me.”

“You might think it over, all the same.”

Luke was put out. He didn’t like to have the tables turned on him, particularly when he didn’t know what the tables were. He rose again, and O’Leary examined him candidly, placidly aware of his irritation.

“I wish you luck,” he said.

Luke said good-bye and left. Outside there was no cab in sight and he did not want to wait while somebody phoned for one, so he decided to walk. It was not a
section
of town he knew very well. For one reason it was recent. Formerly it had been the burial district of the city. Now it was jammed with cheap houses which bore an unpleasant likeness to the anonymous white marble jumble of a derelict
campo
santo.
Nothing lived there. He came to a corner and saw that he was on the edge of an old cemetery, so he decided to take a short cut across it. It had been demolished to make way for new housing. Headstones had been flung down on their faces; and here and there a corroded coffin had been cast aside under a bush. The roof of the columbarium had fallen in and the empty chamber was crowded with nettles. He hurried
on. O’Leary had upset him very much indeed. O’Leary had reminded him of Lily, and Lily reminded him of his own past, and he did not find that agreeable.

*

He found it even less agreeable by the time he had taken the one and a half hour trip to Palo Alto on a slow and smelly commutors’ train. The only person he could look up in Palo Alto was Senator Ford, and he did not want to see Senator Ford right now. He read the evening paper, had a tasteless dinner, could settle nowhere, and went for a walk in the campus grounds.

The Stanford campus was large, pretentious, and at night rather eerie. The blue moonlight lent it a hostile glamour, and there was almost no other light. In front of him stretched the Mall, bordered by dishevelled palm trees that rattled in the night air, and by a wood with an underbrush of needles and aromatic leaves. It was a lonely road. Far ahead of him he could see the mosaic façade of the college chapel, glittering in the moonlight. He struck off into the trees and came to the family tombs of the Stanford family, the one a miniature pyramid, the other a small temple guarded by lipsticked lions. He
walked
out across the fields and past the stables towards the golf course. Even from a distance he heard that long
forgotten
but familiar whirring sound. Because the climate was so mercilessly arid there, the golf links were watered only at night. The sprinklers turned in the moonlight, perhaps ten of them, casting sprays of silent water twenty feet into the air, where the moon mirrored the individual drops. Slowly the sprinklers circled on their pivots, their double wings of water like enormous moths, stately, slightly unreal, and silent except for that incessant
metallic 
grinding of bearings that imitated, but did not
reproduce
, the song of absent cicadas.

Luke sat down on a ragged stump, watching the sprinklers, and lit a cigarette. He had been here, but it wasn’t really his Alma Mater, and he did not want to cry. At the same time it was wrong to come full circle, and that was what he had now done. Lily and Maggie had got him back into the same old trap again by a woman’s trick that had nothing to recommend it.