With gestures, Conway was talking golf. Hibbs nodded morosely; he had had a miserable time of it, from the first tee.
They glanced up as Vallancourt approached the table. Conway lifted his drink. “The old girl inveigle you into addressing the Thursday Literary Society?”
“Not quite.”
“Buffoon like that, calling you across the terrace. It would bug me.” A robust man whose awkward appearance was misleading, Conway finished his drink and eyed his glass thoughtfully.
“Oh, she probably has her points,” Ralph Hibbs said. “If it was a feather in her cap to introduce John to her friends, I’m sure John didn’t mind.”
“For you, Ralph, everybody’s got points,” Conway said with a sigh. “What are you drinking, John?”
“A short Scotch will do it.”
“I owe you five bucks,” Hibbs said. “Let me add a drink for interest.” He turned to order from the trim waitress who had come to the table. He was a big, placid, very likable man, in Vallancourt’s opinion. He golfed as he did everything else, with sweating, honest effort.
“I might as well shell out, too,” Conway said. “You trimmed us today, John.”
“Playing over my head,” Vallancourt smiled. “Keith was pressuring me. The boy is good.”
“If he’d let himself be.” For the benefit of the waitress, Conway jiggled his glass. He and Hibbs had a common heartiness of physique, bone and flesh. But otherwise the two men differed. There was a kind of fagged-out quality in Ralph Hibbs, a softening at the edges, a sagging of the jowls, an under-pallor in the full cheeks. His hair had grayed, thinned, and all but vanished. An ophthalmologist had put bifocals on him; an internist had prescribed pills, which Hibbs carried about with him and took faithfully.
Howard Conway’s large, firm face, thick hair, quietly clear eyes made Ralph Hibbs seem bumbling by contrast. Vallancourt wasn’t at all sure.
“By the way,” Hibbs said, “where’d Keith get to? I thought he was waiting for you, John.”
“He was. He had to leave.”
“Burned off in that sport car, I bet,” Conway said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hibbs said. “He’s conservative behind the wheel, considering his age. Good with cars. If I add a European make at the agency, I may ask Keith to go to work for me. I think he could sell cars.”
“What do you know about the boy, Howard?” Vallancourt asked Conway.
“Not much.”
“You’re married to one of his aunts.”
“But it wasn’t Ivy who brought him here to live, John.”
“Then he didn’t arrive at Dorcas Ferguson’s on a casual visit?” Dorcas Ferguson was Ivy Conway’s sister.
“No,” Conway said, “he’s here for good, from what I understand.”
“Early today, Keith made a casual reference about his father’s being in town.”
“Yes, Sam Rollins got rid of that two-bit business of his downstate. Maggie — Keith’s mother, the sister between Dorcas and Ivy — died last fall. The Rollinses have no more ties or connections in their old home town.”
“Is Sam Rollins staying with Dorcas, too?”
“No,” Howard Conway said, “he’s living in a small apartment on the north side.”
“I’d like to meet him.” Vallancourt nodded to the waitress and tasted the mellow Scotch.
Light glinted on Hibbs’s glasses as he leaned forward. “You think Nancy is really serious about Keith Rollins, John?”
“Knowing my daughter, I wouldn’t be surprised if she decided to marry him. And it’s happened quickly, you know. Very quickly.”
“I’m sure he’s a fine boy. If there’s a... well, a hint of strain in his personality...”
“You noticed it, too?” Vallancourt said slowly.
Ralph Hibbs shrugged. “It hasn’t been long since he lost his mother, you know.”
“I was in Europe,” Vallancourt said. “I’d never met Maggie Rollins or her husband or son. But I was sorry I could do nothing more than cable a word of sympathy to Dorcas.”
“Dorcas managed,” Conway grunted.
“Doesn’t she always?” Hibbs laughed.
2
John Vallancourt’s Continental whispered its way up the elm-shaded driveway the next day, stopping in the Normandy shadow of Dorcas Ferguson’s castle-like home.
Vallancourt was acquainted with the history of the mansion. Dorcas Ferguson’s grandfather had built it. Her parents, social gadflies on the fringes of the international set, had lost the estate to mortgage holders in the process of squandering the modest fortune handed down to them. Years later, Dorcas had returned to native soil, paid cash for the place, and restored the house to its original condition.
The heavy oaken door swung open and Dorcas’s matronly housekeeper, Mildred Morgan, smiled out at him. “Good morning, Mr. Vallancourt. Miss Ferguson is expecting you.”
The housekeeper ushered him into the spacious entry hall and took his hat.
Vallancourt liked this house, for all its size. It was sound and solid, qualities which Dorcas, like her grandfather, esteemed. She had put a great deal of herself into the house, Vallancourt thought, in the décor and furnishings. The lack of pretentiousness appealed to him. It was the home of a woman of character.
“Miss Ferguson will be right down,” Miss Morgan said. “Mrs. Conway is waiting, too. Would you care to join her?”
Vallancourt nodded.
“May I get you something, Mr. Vallancourt? A cup of coffee?”
“Thanks, no.”
He stepped into a long, friendly living room. Ivy Ferguson Conway was at the grand piano, playing a sentimental melody badly.
“Morning, John.” Ivy swung herself around on the bench. Vallancourt detected a nervousness in her manner. “Do you have a cigarette?”
He offered her the thin, engraved gold case Nancy had given him on his last birthday, and held a light for her, thinking that if Dorcas was a throwback to her grandfather, Ivy, her younger sister, was the orthodox product of her parents.
Ivy’s life was a continuity of cocktail and bridge parties, fashion shows, country club gossip, and shallow squabbles with Howard, her husband. Occasionally, she and Howard went abroad, and when Ivy referred to these trips it was always with an accent of condescension for foreign places and foreigners.
She gave a first impression of prettiness, being delicately made, with a fragility of feature. She had small eyes and mousy hair worn in a casual trim. Although she was in her thirties, girlishness clung to her.
“Oh, damn!” She coughed, her hand fluttering to her throat. “John, must you smoke these unfiltered weeds?”
“Don’t inhale,” Vallancourt suggested.
“Then what’s the use of smoking?” Her glance kept going beyond him, to the living room entryway.
“Are you expecting someone, Ivy?”
“No,” she said quickly. “You’re Dorcas’s only caller. I dropped in while she was phoning you this morning.”
Vallancourt waited.
Her eyes pinched at the corners. “Aren’t you going to ask me what she has on her mind?”
“I assume Dorcas will explain the call.”
“Sure. The way she wants it explained.” Ivy’s nervousness was suddenly gone. She snubbed out her cigarette as if she were pressing the hot coal against something more animate than an ashtray.
“John, you’re right in suspecting him,” Ivy said.
He made no pretense of not understanding to whom she was referring.
“Howard told me,” she said, “how you were sizing him up yesterday, during and after the round of golf.”
Vallancourt lit a cigarette.