“When are you going back?” she asked, examining her nails in the light, a critical, distracted expression on her face.
“I hope tomorrow,” I said. “It depends on Winters.”
“I’m going to go tomorrow, too,” she said flatly. “I’m tired of all this. I’m sick of the reporters and the police, even though that Winters is something of a dear … and on top of all that I have, ever since I can remember, loathed Washington. I wonder if we could get out of here tonight?” She put down her piece of chamois or whatever it was she was polishing her nails with and looked at me.
“I doubt it,” I said. “For one thing Winters will be here.”
“Oh damn!”
“And for another thing I don’t think those detectives would let us go without permission from him.”
“We could duck them; there’s a side door off the small drawing room nobody ever uses. We could get out there; there’s no guard on that side of the house.…” As she spoke she sounded, for the first time since I’d known her, nervous and upset.
“Why do you want to leave so badly?”
“Peter, I’m scared to death.” And she was, too; her face was drawn beneath the skillful make-up and her hands shook as she drank her Martini.
“Why? There’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?”
“I.…” Then she stopped, as though changing her mind about something. “Peter, let’s go back tonight, after Winters leaves.”
“It wouldn’t look right; on top of that we might be in contempt of court or something.” I was very curious, but it was up to her to tell me why she wanted, so suddenly, to get out of Washington.
She lit her cigarette with that abrupt masculine gesture of hers, quite unlike any other girls I had known. This seemed to soothe her. “I suppose I’m just getting jittery, that’s all, delayed reaction.”
“I will say you’ve been unnaturally calm through everything; in fact I’ve never seen anything like the way you and your mother both managed to be so clear-headed and unemotional about everything.” This was a direct shot and it hit home; a flicker of emotion went across her face, like a bird’s shadow in the sun. But she told me nothing.
“We’re a cold-blooded family, I guess.”
“I can understand you,” I said. “I mean you’d lived away from home so long and you didn’t care much about your father, but Mrs. Rhodes … well, it’s quite something the way she’s taken all this.”
“Ah,” said Ellen distractedly. She stood up. “I think I’ll go mix us another Martini. I keep the stuff in the bathroom … force of habit. In the old days I always had a mouthwash bottle full of gin.” She disappeared. I stood up and stretched. I could hear Ellen rattling around in the bathroom … somewhere in the house a door slammed, a toilet was flushed: life went on, regardless of crisis. In a pleasantly elegiac mood, brought on by the first Martini and increased by the knowledge that soon there would be a second, I wandered about the room, examining the girlhood books of my one-time fiancée. It was an odd group. The Bobbsie Twins were next to Fanny Hill and Lady Chatterley nestled the Rover Boys, as she might well have done in life. It was obvious that Ellen’s girlhood interests had changed abruptly with puberty. Only a bound volume of the Congressional Record attested to her birth and position in life, and it looked unopened.
“Here you are, love.” She looked somewhat rosier and I decided that she had very likely had herself a large dividend, if not a capital gain, while she was preparing my drink. I toasted her again and we discussed the merits of Fanny Hill until dinnertime.
For the first time since I had arrived in Washington nearly a week before, the company at table could have been described as hearty. It was not clever nor amusing, the guests were too solid for that, but it was at least not gloomy and everyone drank Burgundy with the roast and even Mrs. Rhodes smiled over her black lace and jet, like the moon in its last quarter.
I watched her carefully for some sign of guilt, some bloody ensign like Lady Macbeth’s spotted hand, but she was as serene as ever and if she were a murderess she wore her crimes with an easy air.
I sat beside Roger Pomeroy and we talked to one another for the first time in some days; he was most cheery. “Had a most profitable visit with the Defense Department today,” he said, drying his lips after a mouthful of wine, staining the napkin dark red … I was full of blood-images that night.
“About your new explosive?”
“That’s right. I gather it’s been checked out favorably by their engineers and chemists and it looks as though they’ll be placing an order with us soon.”
“All this without the Senator’s help?”
Pomeroy smiled grimly. “There’s a new Senator … as of tomorrow anyway. We made it very clear that Talisman City was a pretty important place come next November and that the Administration would do well to keep us happy.”
“And it worked?”
“Seems to’ve. Tomorrow Cam and I are flying back home. I’ll be glad to get out of this goddamned town, you may be sure.”
“Do you think they’d really have been able to convict you?” It was the first time I had ever mentioned the murder directly to him, out of sympathy for a “murderer’s” feelings.
“Hell no!” He set his glass down with a thump. “In the first place that young fool Winters went off half-cocked. He assumed that since the explosive was mine and I was angry at Lee for his behavior about the new contract and I knew that my wife stood to inherit a lot of money, that I went ahead and killed him. How dumb can you get? I was perfectly willing to kill Lee if I’d thought I could get away with it. But not in his own house and under suspicious circumstances; besides, in business you never kill anybody, as much as you’d like to.” He chuckled.
“Even so, they felt they had enough evidence to convict you with.”
“All circumstantial … every last bit of it.”
“How did you plan to get out of it, though? A lot of people have been ruined on much less evidence than Winters had on you.”
“Oh, I had a way.” He grinned craftily. He was a little tight and in an expansive mood.
“An alibi?”
“In a way.” He paused. “Now this is in absolute confidence … if you repeat it I’ll call you a liar.” He beamed at me, full of self-esteem. “I didn’t need Lee. Before I even got to Washington I had contacted someone else, someone very highly placed who promised to help me get the contract. That person was able to do it … had, in fact, told me that the contract would be forthcoming in the next ten days, told me in a letter sent the day before Lee was killed, special delivery, too, which I am pleased to say would have proven that I knew before I talked to Lee that the contract was set.”
“Why did you talk to him then?”
Pomeroy frowned. “Because Lee and I had been involved in a number of other deals before we quarreled. He was a vindictive man, like a devil when he thought that he was right about something, or rather that something was right for him … a bit of a difference, if you get what I mean. He was the boss of the state and it’s a good idea to clear anything which has to do with patronage and government contracts with the boss … that’s a simple rule of politics.”