The Theban Mysteries (18 page)

But Mr. Jablon was not at home; he had already left for the office. Kate was surprised to discover that an elderly man who could devote days to observing school lobbies should have an office, but she asked for and was given the telephone number and succeeded, with more help from Miss Strikeland, in reaching Mr. Jablon there. He said he would be glad to see her in his office as soon as she could get there. With a wave of thanks to Miss Strikeland, Kate continued what was clearly going to be an exceedingly peripatetic day.

Mr. Jablon’s office turned out to be in a new and elegant building on Park Avenue in the fifties. He occupied a large office with a small entrance hall, the door to which he opened for Kate himself. He had fixed up his office as a rather comfortable living room, and Kate sat in one comfortable chair while he sat in another. Against one wall stood a large desk.

“I do
some
work there,” Mr. Jablon said, following her glance; “investments and so forth. I call my broker, he calls me. I read various stock-market sheets, the
Wall Street Journal
, and the
National Observer
. I could
do all that at home, but this is a place to leave home and come to. It gives a shape to the day.”

Kate nodded. Before she had been asked to take the class at the Theban, she had coped, as all who work at home must cope, with a day not given a shape by the necessity of leaving for work at a specified time, and then returning. It was the old question of freedom and time flapping about one. Unless one structured the day very carefully, and observed schedules with a rigidity which would have done credit to a Trappis monastery, one wasted time and time wasted one.

“You wanted to know the result of last night’s experiment with the dogs,” Kate said, “and Miss Tyringham has given me permission to tell you. The dogs immediately discovered Reed, who made some half-hearted attempts to conceal himself from them. He is convinced no one could hide in the building and remain undetected by the dogs.”

“I see,” Mr. Jablon said. “Then I will have to change my story.”

“I rather thought you might,” Kate said. “What was it going to be—that you had persuaded your daughter-in-law to come with you to the school, that you had lost track of her there and had gone home leaving her to be frightened by the dogs?”

“Something like that. I was afraid, you see, that one of the children … but as it happened, the police suspected me of something, and they looked into my activities and discovered I had an alibi for the entire evening. I hope I am unique in trying to conceal the fact that I
wasn’t
on the scene of the crime, but nothing is new under the sun, is it?”

“Where were you?” Kate asked. “I hope you don’t mind my forthright questions. I’m willing to attempt more circumlocutions if you prefer.”

“I do as a rule,” Mr. Jablon admitted. “I like the social amenities, which oil the wheels of progress. But, under the circumstances, I concede the need for shortcuts. I was home for dinner, with Angelica, a friend of hers from school named Freemond Oliver, my grandson Patrick, and my daughter-in-law.”

“Does Angelica often have friends for dinner?”

“Lately she does. I discovered, not too long ago, that my daughter-in-law was discouraging this by claiming it made too great claims on her time and energy, but I pointed out that the servants were quite able to undertake any additional work, and that I thought children should have a home to which they could bring their friends. The truth of the matter is, however, that Angelica has only recently brought her friends, because she was ashamed of her home.”

“Ashamed of it? I was under the impression …”

“Not of the physical home, which is perfectly acceptable, but of her mother and me. Her mother was as likely as not, I’m afraid, to have some sort of hysterical scene, or embarrass Angelica in some way by some tactless remark, and she was ashamed of me because of my opinions, which she called conservative as though that word were an insult; I look upon it as a compliment. I try to conserve.”

“I see,” Kate said. She felt inclined to credit Mrs. Banister and the encounter groups for Freemond’s presence. If you have shrieked out your hostilities and angers, and your friends know all about your mother
and grandfather, there is no longer any point in concealing your home from them. Indeed, they, as impartial observers, can confirm your right to resentment.

“After dinner,” he continued, “everyone disappeared, as they always do, and I went to my bridge club. I arrived there at nine, and returned home shortly before one. I was playing bridge the entire time. It is a private bridge club, men only; rubber bridge, not duplicate.”

Kate thought of various detective stories she had long ago read in which the murderer had used bridge as an alibi. But careful questioning by the detective had revealed that, while dummy, the suspect had managed to race to wherever it was, kill whoever it was, and reappear in time for the new deal. It seemed unlikely here.

“I was never out of sight of someone while there,” Mr. Jablon offered, dispensing with the bridge-playing murderer of Kate’s fancy. “I always stay around to see how a hand’s going to come out. And once it’s over we discuss it.”

“Was everyone in when you got home?”

“I certainly assumed so. In fact, as I now know, they were, except for my daughter-in-law. Angelica became hysterical on the following morning when the news of her mother’s death was received. I called the family physician, who told me candidly that she ought to be removed to a hospital, since he felt she was in danger of doing harm to herself. He also recommended psychiatric help, but this Angelica adamantly refused, so we did not insist. The one thing everyone seems to agree to about psychiatric help is that it does no good if the patient does not desire it.”

“What about your grandson?”

“Patrick has been in a strange and difficult mood for months; the experience with the dogs at the school did not help this. In his position, despising me for my despising him, I would have cleared out altogether and made my own way. That, however, does not seem the habit of today’s youth. They are perfectly willing to accept shelter and clothing and food from someone whom they consider little better than a criminal.”

“Surely he never actually called you a criminal?”

“He did, many times. For example, his discovery—that is, he asked me and I told him—that I owned stock in companies which made war materials gave him, in his opinion, the right to suspect my entire system of values. I pointed out that he had been educated and was now being fed by those same stocks, but that only added guilt to insurrection.”

“Don’t you feel he had a point at all?”

“No. I will not, for example, own stock in tobacco companies which manufacture cigarettes. I consider their advertising immoral, and the dangers of smoking more than adequately proved. Certainly I wouldn’t own stock in any company that trafficked in addictive drugs if any such were offered on the market. Patrick’s particular complaint was about Dow Chemical. He pleaded with me to sell the stock, since they made napalm, a burning jelly which is dropped on human beings and burns away their skin; it cannot be wiped off. Patrick could not understand how anyone could agree to make such a thing. He also discovered that we use Saran Wrap and various other Dow products and threw them out.”

“But you didn’t sell the stock.”

“I made up my mind to. After all, I object to some
companies for reasons which may be as arbitrary. But just as I was about to sell the stock, Dow lost the government contract for napalm and Patrick agreed there was no longer any reason to sell, since Dow was no more militaristic than many other stocks in my portfolio.”

“But at least you had agreed to something.…”

“I was sorry later that I had. Not only was there a wrong principle involved, but I support this country’s so-called military-industrial complex. Nothing about war is pretty, or humane. It is only necessary.”

Kate found herself troubled in Mr. Jablon’s presence. She did not agree with him, that went without saying and she felt no special impulse to say it. She was too familiar with his attitudes to waste time upon them when other matters were more pressing. What troubled her was that she rather liked Mr. Jablon, whose personal judgments she suspected of being on the whole honorable and defensible. Like many of his generation and his experience, he had lost the connection between his personal morality and the national morality of his beloved country, on whose behalf he was willing to defend offensive practices on the grounds of national necessity that he would never for a moment have endorsed as personal actions. As Matthew Arnold had perceived a century earlier, the double standard had horribly damaged the quality of national life, robbing it of sweetness and light.

“What do you think happened to your daughter-in-law, Mr. Jablon?”

“I don’t know. I accept the word of the police doctors and of her private physician that she was killed by
a shock which brought on a heart attack. She had heart trouble, though none of us took it seriously enough, I’m afraid. On the other hand, I read recently of a four-year-old child who died of fright in the dentist’s chair—too much adrenalin poured into her heart. I don’t know what frightened my daughter-in-law.”

“Did the police say she was necessarily frightened, or was that just assumed because of the dogs?”

“I don’t think they said ‘frightened,’ no. Her doctor said it might have been a frenzy. She was given, that is, inclined toward frenzies.”

The understatement of the month, probably, Kate thought. She did not push Mr. Jablon on the point, admiring his discretion.

“I am interested,” she said, “in discovering what did actually happen that night, and who is responsible for your daughter-in-law’s death. I’d like, in pursuit of the truth, to go to your home and talk to your grandson and granddaughter, if they are willing. Have you any objection?”

“To your going to my home? No. Nor to your questioning my servants, if you find that necessary. I trust you to confine yourself to what is strictly essential. But I haven’t much hope of your finding out what happened, and I think you are deluding yourself if you have hope. As to my grandchildren, they are perfectly capable of telling you to go to blazes.”

“Do you intend to take any action against the school?”

“Because of my daughter-in-law? Certainly not. What would be the purpose of that?”

“They might be accused of negligence.”

“I doubt it. You apparently have plenty of people to testify that the dogs would not have frightened her and left.”

“One can always get people to testify to anything, perfectly sincerely I mean. Nothing is certain. And it might be presumed that her body’s being found there was sufficient evidence of negligence.”

“Are you trying to persuade me to sue?”

“Certainly not. But I don’t know what I may discover. Miss Tyringham has, with extraordinary honor and courage, it seems to me, opted for the truth, if it is discoverable. I happen to think seeking the truth is also the intelligent plan to pursue, but naturally I would. We can’t know what we may discover, and I want to be certain that you do not suppose me to be suggesting collusion.”

“I see. Well, there is no benefit I can discover in suing the school. Not even in suing it for the radical ideas it has inculcated into my granddaughter. After all, I was always free to remove her. You’re suggesting that once you set foot on a road such as this you must follow it to the end, without knowing, before you get there, what the end will be. I understand that. To be frank, if I could have convinced everyone and ended the whole affair with the story of how I had been responsible for my daughter-in-law’s presence in the school, I would have been pleased. But, if that is not possible, one must accept the necessary revelations.”

“This question is none of my business,” Kate said, “but if Patrick had been drafted and gone into the army, would you have taken any steps to keep him away from the fighting in Vietnam?”

“I would have, certainly, using what contacts and influence I had.”

“And that doesn’t strike you as wrong, the way Patrick’s defection strikes you as wrong?”

“Not in the least. What contacts and influence I have I have earned. And, if they had not been sufficient, Patrick would have had to go. I would never have interfered with his country’s decision about him.” Kate shook her head. “Miss Fansler, the police questioned the man who for forty years has made my shirts and sold me my ties. As soon as they left him, he called me up to tell me so. His desire to warn me was based on long knowledge of me and my reputation.”

“That’s quite different, I think. One is a network of personal devotion, which I defend. The other is a network of influence, which I deplore. Oh, I know, we all use influence. But your shirt man did not lie to the police.”

“Of course not.”

“But, if your grandson failed to go to Vietnam, someone with less influence would have gone in his place.”

“I realize that. That is the way of the world, and it doesn’t do to pretend the world is not a jungle.”

“Well,” Kate said rising, “we haven’t time to argue it now. I don’t believe you believe all you’re saying. I don’t believe you would manufacture napalm. Or am I wrong? You would manufacture it, but you would not personally drop it on babies.”

“One has to face the consequences of one’s beliefs. You liberals want all America’s benefits free.”

“I haven’t put a name to
you
,” Kate said.

“I apologize. I ought not to have done so.” And he bowed Kate from the room, urging her to visit his apartment whenever she chose. There would be someone there to let her in.

“I’m going for a walk first,” Kate said, “or a bus ride. I’ll go to your apartment later this afternoon, if that’s all right. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

“I shall be honored,” Mr. Jablon said in his formal way. Kate noticed, with sorrow, the absence of tears or anger. He had found his defenses and taken his position securely behind them.

She decided to stroll about for a look at the houses wherein dwelt the members of her seminar. It was an excuse, really, for Kate loved prowling the streets and riding the buses and subways. Streethaunting, Kate called it, after Virginia Woolf’s phrase, and she had been addicted to it all her life.