I lit a cigarette and thought idly of my session with Mrs. Pomeroy the night before. There had been a faint air of the preposterous about everything she’d said, if not done. The one thing she could do well was hardly preposterous: she was even better geared, as they say, than her half-sister … though Ellen would have been furious to know this. Ellen, like all ladies of love, thought there was something terribly special about her performances when, in fact, they were just about par. But I am not faintly interested in such things early in the morning and despite the vividness of Camilla’s production I was more concerned, at eight in the morning, with what she had said.
I have a theory that I think best shortly after I wake up in the morning. Since no very remarkable idea has ever come to me at any time, to prove or disprove my theory, I can happily believe that this is so and my usual plodding seems almost inspired to me in these hours between waking and the clutter and confusion of lunchtime.
I had a lot to think about. Lying on the bed in my bathrobe, arms crossed on my chest like a monument, I meditated. Camilla Pomeroy is the daughter of Leander Rhodes. She has inherited a million dollars from her father, despite the bar sinister. She married a man who disliked Rhodes. Rhodes disliked him … why? (The first new question that had occurred to me; jealous of his daughter? Not likely. Why then did Rhodes dislike his son-in-law to such an extent he would queer his chances of staying in business? Today’s problem.) And why did Pomeroy not like Rhodes? Political enemies … Senator uncoöperative about business matters … a deal, somewhere? a deal which fell through? Someone crossed up someone else? A profitable line of inquiry.
And Camilla Pomeroy? What was she trying to do? There was no doubt that she genuinely believed her husband killed her father, but why then had she come to me instead of to the police? Well, that was easily answered. She knew that I was in touch with Winters. That I was writing about the case for the Globe … anything she planted with me would get to the attention of the police, not to mention the public, very quickly. But she had asked me to help her. How? Help her do what? Now, there was a puzzle. The thought that she might not like her husband, might in fact like to see him come to grief for the murder of her father, occurred to me forcibly. If she did not care for Pomeroy and had cared for her father; if she believed Pomeroy killed the Senator, then the plot became crystal clear. She could not testify against her husband, either legally or morally (socially, that is), but she could take care of him in another way. She could spill the beans to someone who would then spill them to the police, saving her the humiliation and danger of going to the police herself. That was it, I decided.
Of course she could have killed her father to get the money and then, in an excess of Renaissance high spirits, implicated her husband. But that was too much like grand opera. I preferred not to become enmeshed in any new theory. I was perfectly willing to follow the party line that Pomeroy did it. After all, what I had learned from Camilla corroborated what everyone suspected. Yet why had absolutely no evidence turned up to cinch the case?
I was the first down to breakfast. Even before the ill-starred house party the family evidently breakfasted when they felt like it, not depressing one another with their early morning faces.
I whistled cheerily as I entered the dining room. Through the window I could just glimpse a plain-clothes man at the door. “An armed camp,” I murmured to myself, in Bold Roman. The butler, hearing my whistled version of “Cry” complete with a special cadenza guaranteed to make even the heartiest stomach uneasy, took my order for breakfast, placed a newspaper in front of me and stated the hope, somewhat formally, that the morning would be good for one and all.
The murder was on page two, moving slowly backwards until a Sudden Revelation or Murder Suspect Indicted brought it back to its proper place between the Korean war and the steel strike. There was a blurred photograph of the widow and daughter in their weeds at the cemetery … also a few hints that an arrest would presently be made. As yet there was no mention of the will … that would be the plum for the afternoon papers, and my own New York Globe would have the fullest story of them all (“pale but unshaken Camilla Pomeroy heard the extraordinary news in the dining room.…”). I was disagreeably struck, as I often am, with my elected role in life: official liar to our society. My lifework is making people who are one thing seem like something very different … manufacturers are jailed for adulterating products but press agents make fortunes doing the same thing to public characters. Then, to add to all this infamy, I was now using for my own advantage a number of people I knew more or less well … all for a story for the New York Globe, for money, for publicity. Mea Culpa!
Fortunately what promised to be an orgy of guilt and self-loathing was cut short by the arrival of ham, eggs, coffee and Ellen, dashing in black.
“Oh, how good it smells! I could eat the whole hog,” said that dainty girl, dropping into the chair opposite me. She looked as though she could, too, ruddy and well-rested.
“Did you sleep well?” I asked maliciously.
“Don’t be a pry,” said Ellen, giving her order to the butler and grabbing the newspaper from me at the same time. I noticed with amusement that she only glanced at the story of the murder, that she quickly turned to society gossip and began to read, drinking coffee slowly, her eyes myopically narrowed. She would never wear glasses. “Oh, there’s going to be a big party tonight at Chevy Chase … for … oh, for Heaven’s sake, for Alma Edderdale! I wonder what she’s doing in Washington.”
I said that I didn’t know, adding, however, that whenever there was a great party Alma, Lady Edderdale—the meat-king’s daughter and a one-time Marchioness—was sure to be on hand. I had been to several of her parties in New York the preceding season, and very grand they were, too.
“Let’s go,” said Ellen suddenly.
“Go where?”
“To Chevy Chase, tonight.”
“If I remember my English literature Chevy Chase was the title of a celebrated poem by …”
“The Chevy Chase Club,” said Ellen, picking up the paper again and studying the Edderdale item. “Everyone goes there … ah, Mrs. Goldmountain is giving the party. We must go.”
“But we can’t.”
“And why not?” She arranged the newspaper on a silver rack to the right of her plate. “You know perfectly well why not.” I was irritated, not by her lack of feeling but by her want of good sense. “It would be a real scandal … murdered Senator’s daughter attends party.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Besides, people don’t go into mourning like they used to. Anyway I’m going.” And that was that. I agreed finally to escort her, if she wore black and didn’t make herself conspicuous. She promised.
Just as I was having my second cup of coffee, Walter Langdon appeared in the dining room, wearing a blazer and uncreased flannels, giving one the impression that he was very gently born … some time during the last century. His freckled face and red hair slicked down with water, provided an American country-boy look, however.
“Hi,” said the journalist of the Left Wing, taking his place beside Ellen. She smiled at him seraphically … how well I knew that expression: you are the one. Despite all the others, experienced and cynical as I am, my pilgrim soul has been touched at last … lover come back to me … this is it. That look which had appeared over more breakfast tables after more premières than I or any decent man could calculate. It, as Ellen euphemistically would say, had happened.