I walked up to the front door. There was a note tacked there. It was for me.
Mr. Victor:
Have gone to pick Ingrid up as Phil is using their car tonight. Back in about a half-hour or so. Suggest you wait in the gardens around back as they’re very pleasant at this time of year.
Helen Quentin
So I strolled around to the back of the house where the gardens were. Helen hadn’t been bragging about them. The landscaping really was very pleasant. Every inch of the half-acre of land the house perched on had been carefully manicured. And while the landscaping was colorful and intricate, it was in excellent taste.
From the patio there extended a very green, neatly trimmed lawn bordered by a series of flower beds. High hedges fenced off the flower beds. Three or four flagstone paths led off from them. One of the paths led to a grove of fruit trees, another to a circular area defined by smaller trees blooming with Japanese cherry blossoms. Stately oaks lined a third path which led to still more hedges forming a sort of intricate maze. There were fountains and rock gardens and statuary and still more flower beds—-tulips predominating—sprinkled about the property. More high dense hedges shielded the Quentin land from the street beyond.
I wandered about idly, admiring the artistry, the work and planning, which had been put into the grounds. Reaching the grove of fruit trees, I stopped to admire a particularly tall pear tree. Its branches, ripe fruit hanging from them, were gnarled and twining with an intricate upward sweep. It was a tree just made for climbing.
Feeling a little silly, I pulled myself up to the first criss-crossed bower of branches and reached for a particularly juicy-looking pear. As I stretched for it, my head craned upward and I saw that there was a sort of platform and tree-house in the branches above me. Bemused, I just had to climb up for a closer look at it.
It was even larger and more complex than it had seemed from below. The platform was about eight feet square and extended beyond that area to a sort of little thatched hut. I entered the hut and smiled at the ingenuity of it. Following the line of the tree trunk, it had been built up so that there was a ladder leading to a second level where there was another platform which had been covered to form a sort of turret. This area was large enough for two people to sit side by side comfortably. There was a sort of metal pipe on hinges attached to the outer “wall”-—really an arrangement of fronds and branches. I examined it and found an eyepiece from a telescope attached to it.
Looking through the eyepiece, I found that I had a clear view of the ground below. The metal pipe evidently ran all the way down the tree with mirrors arranged inside it so that it was a sort of periscope in reverse. It could be turned so that it provided a sweeping view of the area beyond the base of the tree. I swiveled it, chuckling to myself with delight, and feeling like Tom Sawyer.
Jiminy Cricket! Or whatever the hell it was those clean-living lads of the Tom Sawyer era used to exclaim when Farmer Brown caught them in the apple orchard. Whatever it was, I substituted a pithier expression as I peered through the upside-down scope and spotted two figures among the fruit trees. They were heading straight for the one I was in, the one with the tree-house. A moment later they were out of sight as they began climbing up the pear tree.
I hugged the shadows of the upper level of the tree-house and peered down through the hole in the flooring which admitted the ladder. After a moment or two I saw them climbing onto the wide lower platform. I shrank even farther back as I saw who it was.
It was Patricia, Helen Quentin’s fifteen-year-old kid sister. She was one of the last people I wanted to run into at the moment. She was convinced I’d killed George. She thought she’d seen me do it. I had no desire to face the hysteria I was sure my presence would evoke from her.
The boy with her was familiar to me. I’d seen him before, that night Helen had given me my French lesson. He was the boy who’d been making out with Patricia while they were ostensibly watching TV. I remembered that Helen had called him “Leonard.”
Leonard was a gangly lad, perhaps a year or two older than Patricia. Brown hair, long in back, cut Beatle-style in front, accentuated an Elvis Presley jawline (or lack of it) that lent his fat-lipped, slack features a feeling of dull-wittedness which fit in with the seeming lack of coordination of his floppy limbs. For all that, though, his arms were bulgy with muscles beneath the short, rolled-up sleeves of the T-shirt he wore. All in all, Leonard looked like a strong, not-too-bright farm boy who’d run into a barber with a penchant for practical jokes.
Just on looks alone, Patricia seemed far more mature than he did. She had the body of a woman-—fully developed breasts, firm, ample hips, filled-out and shapely legs—and when she moved around, she moved them like the body of a woman. Her hair was blonder than her sister’s and she wore it in a ponytail. Her face was heart-shaped, with even features and slanted green eyes that made it look both feminine and feline. There was intuitive knowledge and sexuality in those eyes, a sort of subtle hipness that put her years ahead of Leonard and said she was sure of her ability to wrap him—or any male —around her pinky finger. Her make-up was the only childish thing about her. It was inch-thick and green around the eyes, and her lipstick was a fluorescent shade of greenish gold like tarnished brass. Pound for pound, in the short-shorts and sweater she was wearing, she could have given Lolita a run for her money. Indeed, with her attributes and youthful energy, she looked well able to out-lure any of the more mature love goddesses currently reigning over the silver screen.
They’d settled onto the outside part of the platform below me now. I couldn’t see them too well. But I could hear them clearly. Leonard was strumming a guitar. After a moment he began to sing. At least I think it was meant to be singing. What it sounded like was a tomcat with a bad case of adenoids in the process of being altered. To put it more kindly, as a modern troubadour serenading his lady, Leonard was a bit too nasal for my taste. But then every man (or boy) to his own mating call! His went something like this:
“Nobody understan-an-an-an-an-an-an-an-ands—-
“Me!
“No-no-no-nobody understan-an-ands—
“Me!
“Pop say be a man-an-an-an-an-an-an-an-an—
“Boy!
“Ma say do it if you can-an-an-an-an-an-an—
“Boy!
“Teach say better have a plan-an-an-an-an—
“Boy!
“Else you’ll be duckin’ lead in Vietnam-am-am-
“Boy!
“Nobody, no, nobody understan-an-an-an-an-an-ands-—
“Me!
“Ain’t nobody dig, nor understan-an-ands—
“Me!
“Preacher, he say don’t you kill-ill-ill——
“Boy!
“Ain’t no way to get yourself a thrill~ill-ill»-
“Boy!
“But you gotta go; it’s Lyndon’s ‘will-ill-ill-—
“Boy!
“On’y Godless Reds don’ shoot they fill-ill-ill-
“Boy!
“No-bah-bah-bah-bah-body uuderstan-an-ands-
“Me!