The Fourth Side of the Triangle (3 page)

“He's cheated on you, Mother. How can you go on living with him?”

“I'm surprised at you, Dane. Your own father.”

She was ready to forgive adultery. Did the drowning woman refuse the life preserver because it was filthy with oil scum?

Lutetia sat patiently on a chair which a young male favorite of
le roi soleil's
brother had given to his own female favorite—sat patiently and unaware of this aspect of the chair's history—and stared without seeing it at a painting of the Fontainebleau school in which rusty nymphs languished under dark trees … a painting hanging where the portrait had hung of her Grandmother Phillipse, dressed in the gown she had worn on being presented to “Baron Renfrew” a century ago.

“I would give your father a divorce, of course,” she went on in her “sensible” voice, “if he wanted it. But I'm sure the thought has never crossed his mind. No McKell has ever been divorced.”

“Then why in God's name did he tell you about this at all?” demanded Dane, exasperated.

Again the faintly reproving look. “Please don't take the name of the Lord in vain, darling.”

“I'm sorry, Mother. Why did he?”

“Your father has never kept secrets from me.”

He resisted an impulse to fling up his hands, and instead walked over to the big window to stare out at Park Avenue.

Dane was not fooled by his mother's assertion of faith. His father had kept plenty of secrets from her. If he really didn't want a divorce, it was because he wasn't in love with the woman. And this made Dane even angrier. It meant that it was a cheap passing affair, a meaningless tumble in bed, for the sake of which the old bull was ready to give infinite pain to his wife and face the possibility of a dirty little scandal in the sensational press if the story should leak out.

Poor Mother! Dane thought. Up to now the nearest she's come to scandal has been at fifth or sixth remove; now here it is just around the corner.
A lady's name appears in a newspaper three times in her life: when she is born, when she marries, and when she dies
. To this quaint credo Lutetia subscribed completely. Didn't she realize what she was facing? He turned from the window and said something to this effect.

“I had naturally thought about that,” Lutetia said, nodding. Was there a flicker of something in the depths of those blue eyes? “And I mentioned it to your father. He assures me that there is no chance anyone will ever find out. He is apparently being very discreet. Taking special precautions of some sort, I believe.”

I
am
awake, Dane said to himself, this is
not
a dream. They had discussed the cheating husband's precautions against being found out, and let it go at that! It made his father almost as unbelievable as his mother. Or had Ash McKell become so accustomed to twisting her to his every whim that he now had nothing but contempt for her? Have I ever understood my mother and father? Dane wondered; and he was struck by the predicament of modern man, not merely unable to communicate but, oftener than not, ignorant of the fact.

Talk about faithful Griselda! The heroine of the Clerk's Tale was flaming with rebellion compared to his mother. She had devoted her life so single-mindedly to the happiness of her husband that she even went along with his betrayal of her as a woman! Or does that make me some sort of Buster Brown-haired prig? Dane thought. Considered as a feat of character, there was actually something sublime in Lutetia's meekness. Maybe it's I who haven't grown up.

“Mother.” His tone was gentle. “Who is she? Do you know? Did he tell you?”

Again she surprised him. This descendant of a hundred Knickerbockers smiled her sweet and self-effacing smile. “I shouldn't have told you any of this, darling. I'm sorry I did. You have your own problems. By the way, have you settled the question that was bothering you? I mean in your third chapter? I've been worrying about that all day,” and on and on she went in this vein, the subject of her husband's unfaithfulness laid aside, as if she had put by her needlework for a more urgent activity.

I'll have to find out myself who the woman is, Dane decided. It's a cinch she'll never tell me, even if she knows. Probably took some typical Victorian vow against ever allowing her lips to be “sullied” by the creature's name.

“Never mind my third chapter, Mother. I'll say one thing more, and then I'll stop talking about this: Do you want to come live with me? Under the circumstances?” Even in broaching the possibility Dane felt like one of Nature's noblemen. The most rewarding act of his life so far had been to take an apartment of his own.

His mother looked at him. “Thank you, dear, but no.”

“You're going to go on here with Father, as if nothing had happened?”

“I don't know what she is,” Lutetia McKell said, “but I'm my husband's wife, and my place is with him. No, I'm not going to leave him. For one thing, it would make him unhappy …”

You, said Dane silently, are magnificence incarnate. You're also either telling me a lie, which ladies do not do, or telling yourself one, which is far likelier, and more in accord with modern psychology. By God, the old girl had some iron in her after all! She was going to put up a fight.

Dane kissed her devotedly and left.

He had to find out who his father's mistress was.

Exactly why he must unveil the other woman, Dane did not pause to puzzle over, beyond wondering mildly at his compulsive need and overhastily discarding the notion that it had something to do with Freud.

It actually had to do with his mother. The mere thought of that pale and fragile creature setting out to do battle with the forces of cynicism aroused all his pity. It was an uneven fight. Somehow he had to find a way to help her. (And hurt his father? But to that point Dane did not go.)

He considered for only one horrid moment taking the direct route, confronting his father with his knowledge, demanding, “Who is she?” The whole scene was too embarrassing to contemplate. His father would either grasp him by the neck and the seat of the pants and hurl him bodily from the premises (and isn't the fear of physical punishment at those great father-hands deeply hidden inside you, Dane?) or, worse, he might break down and weep. Dane did not think he could stand either eventuality. (Or even a third possibility, which Dane did not consider: that his father might simply say, “It's none of your business, son,” and change the subject.)

In any event, as Dane saw it, subterfuge was called for.

Ashton McKell's movements were generally predictable. He had fairly fixed times for getting to his office and coming home, for going to his club, for reading his newspaper, his magazines, his Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling. Home at seven, dinner at eight, five days a week. It was on weekends that the elder McKell did his personal brand of carousing; but at those times he caroused in the open.

Except …

Except, Dane suddenly realized, that for weeks now—or was it months?—his father had not got home until far past his usual hour on one night of the week, Wednesday. Dane could not recall his mother's ever commenting on this phenomenon; and all that his father had said, on the single occasion when Dane brought the subject up, was the one word: “Business.”

What “business” was it that recurred Wednesday nights regularly? It seemed an easy leap to the conclusion that on Wednesday nights Ashton McKell made rendezvous with his mistress.

Nothing could be done about it today, which was Tuesday. But tomorrow … His weekend plans would have to be scrapped, Dane told himself, nursing the hunch that it would be a busy time.

He turned to the mumble-sheet in his typewriter.

Jerry at the old stone quarry. Ellen comes, rest as noted. Okay, but. WHY does Jerry go there? To swim? April—too early. Maybe to fish. Check: fish in stone quarries?

He pulled at his lower lip. Then he cocked his head and his fingers raced over the keys.

The elder McKell left his office promptly at noon as marked on Taylor McKell's old Seth Thomas clock in the inner sanctum. Judy would quit her desk at 12:10, return at 12:55. Ashton would be back at 1
P.M
. sharp.

August 17th, 12:05
P.M
.:

“Judy? Dane McKell. My father there?”

“He's left, Dane. Is your watch slow?”

A rueful laugh. “Damn it, it is.” Then, in a rush: “Look, Judy, I've got to see him this afternoon, but I can't make it till after five. Do you suppose—?”

“That's far too late, Dane. Today is Wednesday, and on Wednesdays Mr. McKell now leaves his office at four. Can't you make it before then?”

“Never mind, I'll catch him later, at home. Don't even bother mentioning my call. How are you, Judykins? But I'm keeping you from your lunch.”

Judy thought as she hung up: That was an odd conversation. But then she shrugged and went off to lunch. She had long ago given up trying to figure out Dane McKell; too much thought about him was no good for her, anyway. The secretary married the boss's son only in the movies.

Out into the August sun went Dane. He rented a car, a two-year-old Ford. His own little red MG might be spotted.

He picked up the Ford at a quarter past three, and by 3:45 he was parked outside the McKell Building. He thought it unlikely that his father would sneak out through the boiler-room exit or one of the side doors. Sure enough, a few minutes later up drove the big Bentley with Ramon, his father's chauffeur, at the wheel.

Dane pulled away and circled the block. Now he parked at an observation post across the street, some distance behind the Bentley, and settled down to wait.

Ramon was reading a racing form.

What am I doing here? thought Dane. What in God's name do I think I'm doing? Suppose I find out who the woman is, “unmask” her? Then what? How would that help Mother?

There was one possibility. Suppose the woman did not know her sugar-daddy was a married man. Suppose he had filled her full of a lot of hop about making an honest woman of her. One flea in her ear, and she might give him his hat.

And what does that make me? the McKell son and heir ruminated. A first-class heel is what!

Still … Dane shrugged. The compulsion was powerful. He had to find out the woman's name. He would take it—somewhere—from there.

At 4:10 he stiffened. The massive figure of his father came striding through the revolving doors of the McKell Building. Ramon dropped his racing form, jumped out, and held the rear door open. Ashton McKell got in, Ramon ran around to the front, started the Bentley, and the big car swished off into the traffic.

Rather frantically, Dane followed.

The Bentley headed for the West Side Highway. It went north past Washington Market, past the old Sapolio Building, past the docks where the Atlantic liners berthed like comic book monsters, Dane in the hired Ford keeping several lengths behind. Where were they going? Over the George Washington Bridge to some ghastly New Jersey suburb, where Ashton McKell was keeping the widow of some insurance salesman in bourgeois splendor? Or up to 72nd Street and a doxy's teddy-bear-filled flat?

But the Bentley turned off at a midtown exit, crept east over to Fifth Avenue, and headed north again. Dane had no opportunity to trim his speculations to the wind—he was too busy trying not to lose the other car.

Suddenly the chauffeur-driven car pulled up before a stout stone building of three stories which Dane knew well enough. He was puzzled. If there was one building in New York where his father could not possibly be holding an assignation, it was at this, the Metropolitan Cricket Club, that arch-bastion of ultra-respectable aristocrats.

Cricket itself no longer occupied the energies of the club, which had been founded in 1803 (Dane found himself thinking of Robert Benchley's
After 1903, What?—
a good question). For who was left for the Metropolitan Cricketeers to play? The puberts of the Riverdale Country School? No British team would stoop to play them; and if the club membership could have brought themselves to step out onto a bowling pitch against the supple West Indian immigrants who still played cricket up in Van Cortlandt Park, the result would have been mayhem … It was a club, like other exclusive clubs, whose principal virtue was exclusivity. And indeed Dane gazed up at his elderly cousin twice removed, Colonel Adolphus Phillipse, who sat, seemingly growing out of the floor, in his window, with the
New York Times
, doubtless growling over the dangerous radicalism of Senator Barry Goldwater.

The Bentley drove off; Dane snapped around in time to see his father walking briskly up the worn front steps as if it were Tuesday or Friday, his club days. What was he going to do? Have a drink? Write a letter? Make a phone call?… Dane settled himself.

At the other side of the window, separated from Colonel Phillipse, sat white-whiskered Dr. MacAnderson, immersed in one of the bearded tomes from which for fifty years he had been culling information to support his theory that “the mixed multitude” which accompanied the children of Israel out of Egypt was in fact the ancestral horde of the Gypsy nation. Colonel Phillipse slowly turned a page of his newspaper, intent on not missing a semicolon of the latest transgression of the Federal Reserve Bank. And Dane wondered how long his father was going to remain inside.

He sat up quickly. The heat and the sluggard reveries of the two old men in the window had made him forget …
He's being very discreet
, his mother had said.
Taking special precautions
.

What if this stop at the club was a “special precaution”?

Dane hustled the rented Ford around the corner and—sure enough!—there, at the rear entrance of the club, outside a public garage, sat the empty Bentley—Ramon had disappeared, apparently dismissed—and just coming out was Dane's father.

Ashton McKell was no longer wearing the light linen suit made for him by Sarcy, his London tailor, nor the shoes (fitted to his lasts) from Motherthwaite's, also of London, nor the hat of jipijapa fibers specially woven for him in Ecuador. The rather startling clothes he was now wearing Dane had never seen before. He also carried a walking stick and a small black leather satchel, like a medical bag.