“Then you had to have his O.K.?”
“No, but it would have helped. I was angry with him but that was all. I was a long way from being the ‘desperate and ruined man’ which the papers and the police thought I was.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police right off that you had already got the contract and that consequently there was no real motive for killing Lee Rhodes?”
Pomeroy smiled at me pityingly, as though unaware anyone could have reached the age of twenty-nine in a state of ignorance of business and politics comparable to my own. He spoke slowly, as though to a child. “If I had told the police that I had already fixed the contract, they would have asked for proof. I would have had to show them the letter. They would have got in touch with the author of the letter who would have been embarrassed and possibly ruined by the publicity. This country is run on one set of principles while pretending to another. Contracts are supposed to go to the best and the most economical company. Pomeroy, Inc. is a perfectly good company but so are a hundred others; to get a contract I must use influence … if I had exposed my benefactor I would have lost the contract, the friendship of a powerful person, my business …”
“But you would have saved your life.”
“My life was never in any danger. If things had got bad I would have told the whole story but I knew damn well they wouldn’t be able to indict me … though I suppose they came pretty close.”
One thing still bothered me. “Why did you and the Senator fall out in the first place? Why wouldn’t he back you up with the Defense Department?”
Pomeroy chuckled. “Lee always got the best price possible for his services. I was outbid, after ten years. A rival company bought him and he stayed bought, like they say. A big outfit from the North which has been expanding all over the country started up in Talisman City a year ago and since they’re real professionals they went to Lee right off and underwrote his campaign for the nomination. You probably know who I mean if you were handling his publicity.”
I knew indeed … one of the biggest cartels in the country. I had known they were contributors; I had no idea they were buyers as well.
“There wasn’t much I could do against them. Lee wanted to help me, you know, but he couldn’t. At least not until after the nominating convention was over, by which time I’d have been out of business. So I managed the deal without him. I only came to see him to find out about the future, to find out how long they had him tied up. I never did find that out. Lee was a devil, never think he wasn’t. He was cold and shrewd and he would’ve sacrificed his own mother for his career. He didn’t care about anybody except my wife. I don’t know why, but Cam and he were awfully close and he liked her better than Ellen, better than his wife, too. If only because of that, we could’ve proven that I’d not’ve been likely to kill him … in spite of the inheritance. He never liked me much but he would never have hurt her if he could have helped it. In time he would’ve made it up to us. I’m sure of that. Anyway, I was never in much danger.”
The pieces fell gradually into place. It was like a picture puzzle. I was now at the point where I had filled in the sky, got the frame of the picture all put together: now all that I had to do was fit the central pieces in, numerous tiny pieces, many of them the color of blood.
Winters had attended the dinner but not once did he speak to me or look in my direction. He spoke mostly to Camilla Pomeroy and Walter Langdon. After dinner we went into the drawing room. By the time I was seated, coffee in hand, the minion of the law had disappeared. His departure was noticed by no one, as far as I could tell.
I tried to maneuver toward Mrs. Rhodes but she, as though divining my plot, excused herself and went off to bed.
Langdon and Ellen played backgammon at the far end of the room; I noticed they no longer seemed to enjoy one another’s company as much as formerly and it looked as though Ellen would soon be in the market again for another fiancé. This shouldn’t be difficult, I thought, recalling that not only was she a handsome uninhibited piece but that she was now worth close to a million dollars, before taxes.
The Pomeroys conversed contentedly by the fire and Verbena Pruitt and I, the couple left over, fell into conversation.
“You have had quite an introduction to Washington,” said the lady of state, her face creasing amiably.
“It’s not what I’d expected.”
“I should think not. It’s lucky for all of us that everything worked out as neatly as it did. It could’ve been one of those cases where nothing was ever proved and everyone would have remained under suspicion for years … and that, young man, is grist for political enemies.”
“Grist,” I repeated sagely.
“Rufus didn’t use his head,” said Miss Pruitt thoughtfully, fondling a cluster of wax red cherries which a malicious dress designer had sewed in strategic places to her coffee-colored gown. “If I’d been he I wouldn’t have given up that easy. Suppose those papers had come to light and he was involved in a business scandal … who could have proven that he killed Lee? The worst that would’ve happened was a jail sentence for larceny, or whatever the crime was. Besides, how did he know that all this was going to come to light anyway?”
“I suppose that someone had threatened to expose him … someone who knew about the plot, the business deals, and also knew about the murder …” Miss Pruitt had obviously thought about this more carefully than one might have suspected.
“Piffle!” said Miss Pruitt in a voice which made the others start. Then, lowering her voice and looking at me significantly, she said, “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Revenge?”
“Not very likely … to avenge Lee? Perhaps, but it seems far-fetched.”
“On the other hand, assuming Hollister was murdered by the Senator’s murderer, that would make no sense either since Pomeroy was obviously going to be indicted for the murder and since he was to take the rap there was hardly any reason to confuse matters further by killing Hollister and making him seem like the murderer.”
“I have not of course allowed myself to think that Rufus was killed. Yet, if he had been it might’ve been by someone who wanted to get Pomeroy off.”
“The only two people who were interested in that were both at the police station when Rufus was shot.”
“Who can tell?” said Miss Pruitt mysteriously, detaching a wax cherry by mistake; she looked at it unhappily for a moment; then she plunged it between her melonish breasts.
“It could be,” I said, trying to divert my morbid attention from her well-packed bodice, “that we are being much too subtle about all this. Hollister might have been remorseful; he might have known that his business dealings were going to be found out anyway and he might’ve thought: what the hell, I’m going to jail anyway, I might as well confess, save Pomeroy and get out of this mess ‘with a bare bodkin.’ ”
“ ‘For who would fardels bear.…’ ” boomed Miss Pruitt, recognizing my allusion to him whom they call “the bard” in political circles. She fardeled on for a moment or two; then, her soliloquy done, “It’s possible you’re right,” she said. “Since it is the police view I am perfectly willing to subscribe to it. I will follow them down the line one hundred per cent.”
It took me several moments to get her off the subject of Rufus Hollister and onto Mrs. Rhodes. The closer I got to what interested me, though, the more reticent the states-woman became.
“Yes, she is taking all this bravely, isn’t she? Of course she has character. Women of our generation do have character though I am some years younger than she. Of course living with Lee was not the easiest experience. He was a difficult man; that type is. I think to be the wife of a politician is the worst fate in the world, and I should know because I’m both a woman and a politician.”