Spearfield's Daughter (56 page)

He stared at her through the thick glasses, then he stood up. “I've never seen you excited before. I'm seeing a new side to you.”

“No, Joe, it's always been there. Not the excitable bit, the standing up for what I think is right. You men just never let yourselves notice it.”

“
I feel sorry for Jake.”

“Don't. I've never yet cut the balls off a man.” She had never spoken as crudely as that to him before, but it was the best way of saying it. It sometimes paid not to be a lady. “If and when Jake goes, I'll be fairer to him than he's been to me.”

Hal Rainer went out to Kansas City and rang Cleo after three days. “I'll need more time. But there's a story here.”

“Call me at the end of the week and I'll see Jake then. I'll see you get the extra time.”

When she came into the newsroom next afternoon Jake Lintas was waiting at the door of his office. He gestured to her as soon as he saw her come in at the far end of the huge room. Cleo walked down between the long rows of desks, aware at once that everyone had stopped work and was watching her. She felt a sudden apprehension and she thought at once of Jack Cruze. Had something happened to him, was Jake Lintas about to take advantage of it and put her in her place? It was not common knowledge that Jack was a real, if not nominal, stockholder in the
Courier,
but she knew that Jake Lintas knew who had put her on the board and in the room next to his own.

She went into his office and he nodded. “Shut the door.” She did so, then sat down across from him at his desk. “The
Kansas City Star
has just called me. Hal Rainer's body has been fished out of the Missouri River. He had two bullets in his head.”

She thought for a moment that she was going to vomit. Then the queasiness passed and she felt faint. She leaned back in her chair and then Jake Lintas did the first considerate thing he had done since she had joined the paper. He pushed his water jug and a glass towards her.

She drank some water, waited till she felt a little better. “Any details on who killed him?”

“None.”

She waited a little longer, then said, “We should follow it up. We can't let whoever did it get away with it. He told me yesterday he was on to something.”

“It's the Kansas City police's job. Let them do it.”

“It's the
Courier's
story, for God's sake! We owe it to Hal—”

“We've lost Hal. I'm not going to let the same thing happen to another of our men.”

“I'll go out there myself—”

“
You'll do nothing of the sort. I'm sorry Hal has been murdered—I'll miss him as much as you. I'm not going to risk anyone else from the
Courier,
and that includes you. I'll tell A.P. and the
Star
why he was out there and they can follow it up if they want to. From now on we'll stick to New York and Washington stories. We'll run an obit, on Hal. I'll write it.”

“Has anyone told his wife yet?”

“I thought you could do that. A woman would do it better.”

You bastard.
“Naturally.”

She went out of his office hating him, convinced now that the time could not come soon enough for him to retire or be retired. She went to the personnel office, got Hal Rainer's home address and rang down to the garage for one of the office cars to meet her at the front door. Then she was driven out to Long Island, to a tree-lined street in Great Neck. She told the driver of the car why she was making the journey and he, a young black, sensed she was upset and kept his remarks to a minimum.

The Rainer house was an old one, built before World War One but still in good repair. A big elm stood in the yard at the side and Cleo remembered Hal's telling her that he liked to spend his summer weekends beneath it, reading all the books he could find on the Twenties, a golden decade, as he called it, that he had been too young to know. She rang the front doorbell and a pretty grey-haired woman opened it.

She was smiling and friendly, the sort of trusting woman who opened doors to salesmen, evangelists, muggers and rapists: she still trusted the world. Oh God, thought Cleo; and dealt her a far worse blow than any mugger or rapist could have. Liz Rainer retreated into her home weeping, shaking her head at the one news story she had never wanted to hear.

“I shouldn't be shocked,” she said when she had regained some control of herself. “I was always telling him to be careful. He knew some dreadful characters, he'd been threatened half a dozen times—”

“I sent him on the story, Mrs. Rainer. I'll never forgive myself for that. I was the one who started this whole chain of events.”

“Hal would never let you say that, if he could hear you. He believed that so long as a reporter was on a story, it was
his
story. Where is his—his body?”

“Still out in Kansas City. We'll bring it home. If you could let me know where you'd like it taken to—I mean, what undertaker—”

Liz
Rainer smiled and it struck Cleo that there was something of Hal in the smile. This couple had been very close. “We call them funeral homes here. Hal used to say that anyone who worked in a funeral home had never known what a real home was.”

Cleo stayed till the Rainers' elder daughter, on a phone call from her mother, came over from Roslyn. Then she left, taking a last look back at the old house and the elm tree that would never throw its shade over Hal Rainer again.

“Back to the office, Miss Spearfield?”

“Please, Henry.” She would work late tonight, putting off going home to the apartment on Second Avenue. She often felt lonely there and, though Hal had never been her closest friend, she knew she would feel lonely tonight. In his own cynical way he had been her only supporter on the
Courier.

II

Claudine was troubled. She was still adjusting herself to Alain's abrupt departure for Europe when she was given the news of Hal Rainer's murder. Then, a little later, that man Carter was elected President. To cap it all Louise had left Roger in Washington and moved back to their home at Sands Point. She was not accustomed to her well-ordered mind being jolted off its tracks so often in such a short period. A crisis, preferably a small one, a year was enough test for anyone.

Uninvited, a breach of manners she would never expect anyone to inflict on her, she went out to see Louise. The dark blue Rolls-Royce went over the Queensboro Bridge and out along Queens Boulevard to pick up the Long Island Expressway. Her chauffeur, a black man as old as herself, drove cautiously; like his mistress, he was not a regular traveller on Long Island. Claudine sat upright in the back and glanced out at the shabby stores and apartment buildings in Long Island City; but her imagination did not run to impressions of what lay behind the windows and walls that bordered the streets through which she was being driven. She was travelling through a foreign country only a few miles from her home; she knew that most of the population had to struggle to live and she was generous with her donations to charities, but all her life she had been insulated against the reality of other people's deprivation. She looked at people standing at bus queues, staring resentfully at her as she was driven past them, and she knew that neither she nor they would ever understand each other. She was not heartless, just rich.

Roger
and Louise's house had been built at the beginning of the century by Louise's grandfather. Teddy Roosevelt and his family had come across here from Sagamore Hill for tea on Sunday afternoons; it suggested a world of slower motion than today's. It was a big white-painted timber house that sat on a slope looking out towards the Sound; it reminded Claudine of photographs of stout matrons of the period who looked as if they could never rise from the chairs in which they lolled. It had a dignity of its own and she always looked for that in houses as well as people.

Louise was not surprised to see her sister-in-law. “I wondered how long it would take you to come out here.”

There was an independent note in Louise's voice that surprised Claudine. “I did wait to be invited, but nothing was forthcoming.”

“Forthcoming? I must see in future that all my invitations are forthgoing. That is, when I send them.”

“Are you telling me this is none of my business, you and Roger separating?”

“Well, is it, Claudine?”

She led the way into a sitting-room that, to Claudine's eye, looked like a junk store about to have a jumble sale. She wondered how a person could live in such disorder. It was no wonder Louise's life was such a mess.

“I came to help, Louise, not to interfere.” It was the same thing, since her helping meant her taking over.

“How can you help? Would you like tea or coffee or what?”

“Tea. Perhaps I can bring Roger to his senses. I presume the blame is his and not yours?”

“What do you think?” There was a calm resignation about Louise that Claudine had not expected; she had come anticipating tears and hand-wringing. Perhaps even the hurling of some of the bric-a-brac. “He's always had his affairs, I've known of them for years. But he never flaunted his women, not like he is now.”

“I don't believe he would
flaunt
them. He has more discretion and breeding than that.”

“Oh Claudine—” It was the first time in her life Louise had ever sounded patronizing; it shocked even herself that she should sound that way towards Claudine of all people. “The world has changed.
Shacking
up is a way of life now.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Roger is—is shacking up with some woman?”

“He might just as well be. He spends every weekend with her. Maybe every night with her, now that I've left him. Her name is Mary Tripp. She's a Congresswoman.”

“Does she have a husband?” As if having a spouse was a necessary qualification for being a Member of Congress. “Where is he?”

Louise shrugged. “Not in Washington, certainly. Ah, here is the tea.”

Claudine smiled at the old black woman who had brought in the tray. “Hello, Lena. You're looking well.”

“It's very peaceful out here, Miz Roux.” Lena Jinks had worked for the family since she had come to them as a girl straight out of school. For the past ten years she had been part-caretaker, part-housekeeper here at Sands Point. “I never want to come back to Manhattan to live. I dunno how you still live there, all that noise and stuff.”

“I'm still young, Lena.” The two old ladies smiled at each other. “Take care of yourself.”

Lena shuffled out of the room and Louise said, “She's a comfort to have around. Not to talk to, just to have her here in the house.”

Claudine all at once felt sorry for her sister-in-law, reduced to needing the presence of an old servant as comfort. “I think you'd do better to get away from here, go somewhere you can have distraction. Paris, for instance.”

Louise had poured tea for Claudine, but was having a gin and tonic herself. “I've been thinking of shooting Roger. That would be a distraction.”

“That sort of thing is no solution at all.” Claudine did not take the threat seriously. It was not civilized, shooting was something done by mobsters out in Kansas City.

They sat there in the museum of a room looking out at the autumn light reflected from the waters of the Sound. Gulls glimmered in the air like drifting stars and a sail-boat sliced the breeze with a white scythe. A small dry kernel was forming in Claudine's breast, as if her life itself was shrinking, putting itself away inside her just as Louise had put away in this room the reminders of the nomadic life she had led.

“Why did Alain go off so suddenly?” said Louise, sipping her gin, forgetting about murder.

“
I'm not sure. He never was one to confide in me,” Claudine admitted. She had never exchanged any intimacies with Louise, but today she felt she owed her one or two. Otherwise she was not going to learn enough about the trouble with Roger and thus be able to help. “It has something to do with Cleo Spearfield.”

“He is sweet on her, one could see that. Have they broken up?”

“I never really understood their relationship. But I do believe he wanted to marry her.”

“Would you have accepted that?”

“No.” It was safe to say it, now the danger had passed.

“Did she want to marry him? No, obviously not, otherwise he wouldn't have gone off to Paris. Perhaps I should go over there and keep an eye on him. Comfort him.”

“I think that would be a very good idea,” said Claudine, though she could not imagine Louise with a watchful eye. She had been blind for so long towards Roger, or at least turned her gaze away. “I'll have Mr. Nevin at our Paris bureau look for an apartment for you.”

“Perhaps I could move in with Alain.”

“You'll do no such thing!” What had got into Louise? I'll see Mr. Nevin gets you a good apartment—”

“Don't organize me, Claudine. I'll go in my own good time and in my own way.” She put down her empty glass. “I'm not going to donate Roger to that Congresswoman, like some campaign contribution.”

This Louise was a stranger. Abruptly the talk of shooting looked real. “You're not going to do something foolish?”

“What's foolish?” Louise grinned slyly, as a madwoman might; but Claudine had only seen actresses playing madwomen. She was uncertain whether Louise was acting or not. “I think Roger is the one who's being foolish.”

“Stupid is the word I'd use. I'll tell him so.”

“No!” Louise stood up quickly and for a moment Claudine thought she was going to throw a fit, she looked so angry and distraught. “For Christ's sake, Claudine, stay out of our lives! Stop being the fucking
Empress
!”

The
language hit Claudine as hard as the dismissal. She pulled on her gloves, gathered up her handbag and stood up. She knew how to beat a retreat, though she had never had to do it before. “I shall wait for you to call me when your language and your mood are more temperate.”