On the Run (17 page)

“Well … the Perndells are sort of odd about such things, and the Kipps won’t be back until the day after tomorrow. And old Tom Brower is very very ill. He’s dying. Ninety-two years old. And the Stockhams live in such a terrible clutter, you might have problems getting the interior pictures. But … I think everything can be managed. After all, it will be a wonderful thing for Bolton. So many old houses just seem to … disappear.”

“In my experience, if we start at the easiest one, then the rest will fall in line. That would be the Ormand place, I assume?”

“Young Mary Ormand will be delighted. Do we start tomorrow?”

“We could start now, Mrs. Pettingill. The light is perfect for exteriors. And do the interiors tomorrow morning. Perhaps by that time, seeing that they are next door, you might have permission from the people in the Brower house. I wouldn’t disturb the old man, of course.”

Sid waited on the side porch with increasing nervousness and irritation. Paula seemed to be gone far too long. Suddenly she came around the corner of the house, smiling.

“Who is he?” Sid demanded.

“Relax, darling. He’s just a fussy little man who works for the state, going around and taking pictures of historic old houses. See? Here’s his card. What took so long was trying to get away from Deborah Pettingill. She’s helping him. She’s probably the only person in Bolton who knows more about the history of it than Tom does, but she’s a truly tiresome old woman. Mr. Hefton really works at his trade, darting about with light meters, moving his tripod here and there, putting gadgets on his camera and taking them off again. He makes little notes all the time and mumbles to himself.”

“Does he seem to know what he’s doing?”

“I’m not a photographer, but he acts like other photographers I’ve seen working. Next he wants to do this house, outside and inside. Mrs. Pettingill told him about the staircase. He’s all heated up about the staircase and about the mantel in the living room.”

“But you can’t let him come in here with Tom so sick?”

“I promised to ask Tom. I couldn’t get away from Mrs. Pettingill without promising that much. Mr. Hefton said he wouldn’t bother Tom at all. It’s his choice, I guess. It’s his house. And, after all, it might amuse him.”

“Are you going to ask him now?”

“Yes. I promised to go back and tell Mr. Hefton. They’ll be through over there in a little while. He’s staying at the Inn.”

“I … I want to talk to my grandfather.”

She moved a step closer to him and looked at him inquisitively. “You’ve decided to leave?”

“Yes.”

Her mouth seemed to tremble but she did not object. “When?”

“Tomorrow night, probably. It should be tonight, but your ex-husband shows up tomorrow.”

“Thank you for wanting to stay, darling. It will be good to … have you here.”

“When I leave, I’ll take George with me. It’s a warm season. I’ll drop him off, dressed like a bum, without a dime on him, in the wildest country I can find. That will give me all the time I need.”

“And I know where to write you and where to find you, and I’ll be very very careful, darling.” She looked at
her watch. “Tom’s had a good nap. You can go in when I come out.”

When Sid went into the study it was a little after five o’clock. As he sat on the window seat he could see Paula heading next door to give the message to Mrs. Pettingill and Mr. Hefton.

“Paula says you approve of the pictures, sir.”

Tom Brower smiled faintly. “It pleases me to think of pictures being taken for their historical importance, with a historic monument like me still in residence. Maybe there will be a footnote to that effect. It never hurts to let the little people pursue their narrow enthusiasms, Sidney, as long as they don’t get underfoot. But in deference to your problem brother, I stipulated that all photography of the interior would be limited to the ground floor.”

“Tomorrow night I’m taking him away.”

“So Paula told me. A reasonable temporary solution.”

“That’s my specialty. Temporary solutions.”

“Do you have to leave so soon?”

“What can I prove by staying? All I can do is increase the risk. Maybe somebody is on his way, to find out if he forgot to follow orders. But there’s one strange thing, sir. I don’t understand it myself. But I think if it weren’t for Paula, I would stay. They have a word for it when a bull picks one place in the ring and decides to do all his fighting right there.”

“Querencia.”

“That’s the word. This is the nearest thing to a home place, I guess. It’s a place where I could fight and lose—if it came to that. But … for Paula’s sake, I can’t risk losing. Do I make any sense?”

“Quite a lot, Sidney. But I don’t see much of you, do I? Four or five talks.”

“I’ll say goodby tomorrow, sir.”

“And go somewhere and wait with a vulgar impatience for me to die so your woman can join you there, in hiding.”

“It won’t be quite like that.”

“Why not? Perhaps that’s the way I’d prefer to think of it. She’s one of the rare ones, Sidney. You two are not children, though you seem that to me. Cherish her. I always seemed to love the sick ones. Paula is quick,
suicidally honest, forlornly loyal, fastidious and lusty as a brood mare. Use her well, grandson, and she’ll reward you.”

“On the run?”

“Stay hidden for two years, then buy safety somewhere. It’s far better than nothing. I’ve had years of nothing. I’m an expert in the art of living with nothing.”

“After she’s seen Heiler and settled that, I’ll say goodby to you. I’ll leave after dark tomorrow.”

“I can last through tomorrow,” the old man said. He held out a frail hand. Sid took it, like holding twigs. On a child’s impulse he bent and kissed the dry cheek.

“Forgiven?” the old man said with a sour irony.

“Of course.”

“You might do at that. You just might. But I was the man for her, really. I was just born sixty years early—a half hiccup in geological time. If she’s back now, tell her I dreamed of steak and will settle for chicken broth.”

Sid started out, paused in the doorway and turned. “Just for the hell of it, sir, why does George get half?”

“You want it all?”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“He absorbed half the rejection and half the neglect. And it damaged him more than you.”

“Conscience money?”

“All money is conscience money, my boy.”

“Especially what you’ve given Paula.”

The old man gave a cackle of pleasure. “Especially that.”

By noon on Thursday Mr. Hefton and Mrs. Pettingill arrived at the Brower house, having finished the Ormand house, impressing everyone with his dedication and meticulous care. At Tom Brower’s request, Paula brought them to the bedside.

“Just wanted a look at you,” Tom said. “Not you, Deborah. The good Lord knows I’ve seen enough of you in an excessive lifetime.”

“Tom Brower!”

“Fifty years ago we ran each other’s gamut from A to B, as the critic said, and haven’t had a new word or new idea for each other since, and on my deathbed I’m unlikely to give you another chance to bore me. Let me look at this wizard of yours, who, through the magic of a silver nitrate emulsion, optical glass, and some little springs and latches will turn what was a living, breathing house into a set of sterile symbols in a dull book.”

“It is our duty,” Hefton said, “to record the past for the sake of future generations.”

“I suppose,” Tom Brower said wearily. “You are talking to the past, you know. And I am told that Mrs. Pettingill here will contribute the text. God knows what she will find to say about this house, but she has always had a febrile imagination.”

“Tom!”

“Plus the blessed and mystic ability to take herself seriously, even as you, Mr. Hefton. And me. And Miss Lettinger. All of us made endurable to ourselves by that philosophical myopia which blinds us to our meager worth. I regret I won’t be here to examine your book, Mr. Hefton. There are so few amusing things left in the world.”

“The New York State Historical Commission believes that …”

“Excuse me, Mr. Hefton, but you may now go putter and click at will. I am a rude old man, and it has been many years since I gave a damn what any commission, committee, association or foundation believes in. One man is a significant entity. A partnership halves that value. Three or more men, working together, diminish themselves to zero. Team effort is the stagnation of the race. Thank you for giving me a look at you.”

“I must say …”

“Run along with the nice man, Deborah. We can all guess what you must say, so there is no need to say it.”

When they were alone Tom Brower gave Paula a rather shamefaced smile.

“You
were
rude, you know,” she said.

“It sluices out the glands, my dear, relieves tensions. And one cannot leave any lasting mark on such dim little people. Did I hear him bringing equipment in?”

“Quite a lot of lights and things. Mrs. Pettingill helped him.”

“Speaking of tensions, you have more than your share today.”

“How not?”

“When do you expect him?”

“I think about two o’clock would be right.”

“Where are you going to talk to him?”

“On the porch, I think.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I’m going to tell him I’m sorry. I’m going to wish him luck.”

“What if that isn’t enough? What if he gets difficult?”

“Sid will be behind the door to the back hallway. He can hear everything from there.”

“How is George today?”

“Surly but docile. He plays solitaire, one hand right after the other. He has a little radio, and he plays it all the time.”

“Locked in?”

“Sid thinks it’s better that way.”

“Sidney is a cautious man.”

“George was … willing to betray his own brother, Tom.”

“Why the troubled expression? Do you want me to say something significant about all men being brothers? Or condemn George? Or sympathize with Sidney, or with you? I betrayed my daughter.”

“But that was …”

“Less honest than what George was willing to do. For God’s sake, stop fumbling with that needle and give me the shot and get out of here. Your sad, anguished face is giving me the pip.”

“Don’t you have any damned heart left?”

He smiled at her. “Excuse me, my dear. Some days the mere act of dying seems to depress me. It takes too long.”

“I’m sorry, Tom.”

“You are quick with the needle when you keep your mind on it. If I should forget to tell you, keep absolutely nothing in reserve with that young man. Love him totally, Paula. Totally, obviously, plausibly—and eventually he may come to believe it.”

Bertold-Jones-Hefton had given the old house careful study while taking the exterior shots. Yet he faked no part of his procedure. He used slow, fine-grained film, tripod, wide angle lens, a light red filter, and composed each shot carefully. Now that he was inside the house he realized the front windows of the dining room afforded his best opportunity. One, in particular, had maximum screening by the outside shrubbery. After a full hour of work on the living room and the staircase, he carried his floods into the dining room and set them up, telling Mrs. Pettingill that the detail of the paneling was worth recording. She was in complete agreement. After he had a chance to examine the window and plan his moves, he sent her out to his car to search for a non-existent photo-flood bulb and bring it to him.

The moment she left the room he opened the case and took out the little plastic squirt-bottle of graphite, the small screwdriver and the small pair of nippers. Moving with a practiced economy of motion, he slid the window up, squirted graphite in both sides of the frame, then slid it down and up and down again, satisfied with the new silence of it. He nipped the hook of the outside screen until but a tiny thread of metal held it in place. With the window closed, he unscrewed the
two wood screws which held the old-fashioned window latch in place. He nipped the heads off the screws and saw Mrs. Pettingill walking toward the front door. He put the latch and screw heads back in place and dropped the severed threaded portions into his pocket, put the tools and graphite back into his case and was studying his ground glass screen as she walked in to tell him she couldn’t find it anywhere in the car.

The window satisfied him. It looked locked and secure. But the smallest tug on the screen would snap the remaining thread of metal. And when the lower sash was raised it would go up silently, lifting both portions of the brass latch with it. He was satisfied that the rest of the job would go just as well, that death would look natural enough, and the doctored window would be discovered long after any routine investigation had been completed.

As he was taking his sixth careful photograph of the carved paneling, he heard Mrs. Pettingill say, “Why you must be the young one! Sidney, isn’t it? I saw you once in this very house when you were a little boy! I’m Deborah Pettingill. I guess you’ve heard your grandfather mention me.”

The man murmured something. Bertold-Jones-Hefton turned casually and looked toward the man. But he was beyond the floodlight, in the doorway, a vague figure. He turned and left.

As Hefton changed his setup to get the final wall, he said casually, “Does that man live here too?”

“Oh, no. Don’t you remember? I told you about the two of them, Sidney and George. The grandsons. It took Tom a long time to have them found. It’s wonderful they could get here before he passed on. Tom disowned his own daughter, his only child. Those are her two children. They say Tom is leaving everything to them.”

“Very fortunate for them.”

“But Paula is getting a very nice trust fund. Very nice.”

“That’s the nurse?”

“Paula Lettinger. She comes from here, you know. Odd girl. Hard to understand. She made a very bad marriage, and it was annulled and her husband has been in prison for five years, and he’s coming here to see her today, I think. At least, that’s what they say.”

“I wish I could do some of the rooms upstairs.”

“So do I, but Tom said no.”

“I guess they’re all occupied.”

“Oh, no! This house is larger than it looks. Jane Weese is in the back and there’s two more empty servant’s rooms. And even with Paula and the two grandsons up there, there would still be three empty rooms at least. I know Paula has the front corner room on the west. And I don’t imagine Jane would put either grandson in the master bedroom. To her way of thinking it would still be Tom’s room, even though he’ll probably never see the inside of it again, poor soul. But they’d be toward the front of the house, handiest to the staircase. Jane likes to save steps, at her age.”