I had taken care of Pomeroy. I knew, very likely, more about his relations with the Senator than the police did, thanks to Mrs. Rhodes’ excellent Burgundy of the night before.
I still had certain doubts about Camilla. She was the next logical person to eliminate. Why, I wondered, had she tried to make me think her husband was the murderer? It was an important point, all the more so since she was a beneficiary in the old man’s will, and had known it, too.
I found her off by herself in a corner of the drawing room, studying the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar. She was reading the thin ribbon of text which accompanies the advertisements; this thin ribbon was, I could see, the work of the latest young novelist: it concerned a young boy in Montgomery, Alabama, who killed nine flies in as many minutes on the eve of the Fourth of July … I had read it earlier, being of a literary turn (though I belong to the older literary generation of Carson McCullers and have never quite absorbed the newcomers even though they take mighty nice photographs).
“I just love it,” said Camilla, without enthusiasm, closing the magazine; she was dressed in a very businesslike suit, as though ready for traveling.
“We were going to take the noon train, Roger and I, but since poor Johnson got involved in this terrible mess Roger thought, out of loyalty, we should stay and see him through.”
“I think that’s swell,” I said, earnestly.
“Yes,” she said brightly. We stood looking at one another awkwardly for perhaps a minute. Even in this age of jet-planes and chromium plate, there are certain proprieties which those who occupy the upper echelon of our society insist upon maintaining, regardless of their true feelings. It is usually agreed upon in these circles that when a man has gone to bed with a gentlewoman he has become, up to a point, her cavaliere servente, as they used to say in Venice … the Venetians used to say, that is.
It was apparent to both of us that a certain dignity was lacking in our relationship; neither had spoken of love or duty, and both, in fact, had acted subsequently as though nothing had happened, depriving man’s greatest emotion and most sacred moment of its true splendor; in fact there had been the faintest note of the barnyard in our coupling which, doubtless, worried the hen though the rooster, if I can call myself one even in this analogy, was not much concerned. But there was a game to be played … two games, even … and I had very little time.
“Camilla,” the name sounded rich and husky on my lips.
“Yes?” Her voice squeaked just a little as she turned two dark bright eyes up at me.
“I … I wonder if you’d have lunch with me.”
“Oh, but …” She “butted” for a few moments and then, aware that her position as a lady was at stake, she agreed to a brief lunch at the Mayflower where the food was good in the cocktail lounge and there was a string quartette.
The Mayflower was very grand; I had been there only once before, in the main dining room. This time we went to the cocktail lounge, a dim, marbleized, ferny place full of people dining in the gloom to the sound of soft music; it was a perfect place for an assignation. Unfortunately the customers were mainly ladies who had dropped in after a hard morning of shopping, or five-percenters discussing deals with prospective clients … the Congressional and political figures did not, presumably, lunch here though they could be found, often, in this room at five o’clock.
We were led to a corner table by a distinguished-looking headwaiter who resembled a Bavarian Foreign Minister.
“Here we are,” said Camilla and a high mouse-giggle escaped from behind her ruddy lips; she was very nervous. I could not imagine that this great plain fool was the same woman who had only a few nights before come to my room like a winged furnace, like Lady Potiphar at the end of the first month. Dressed and full of rectitude, she seemed what she was: an ordinary girl from Talisman City.
We ordered cold Virginia ham and mint juleps. I have always hated mint juleps and I don’t think she cared for them either but somehow our proximity to the Old Dominion made us reckless; outside snow was wetly falling.
“I suppose you look forward to getting back home?” I began formally.
“I certainly look forward to leaving this horrid city,” she said sincerely, biting off a piece of mint.
“It hasn’t been a very nice time for any of us,” I said.
“We have aged, Roger and I, a hundred years,” she said looking deep into my eyes. Unfortunately the stately gloom of the place prevented me from experiencing the full power of those shining dark eyes.
“It looks as though his contract is all set, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “I’m told the first orders are being made up now. We couldn’t be more thrilled.”
“I should think so. Do you think you’ll start back tonight?”
She shook her head. “No, not now. Of course it may not be as nice as I think.”
“What may not be?”
“Home. My friends. What on earth will they think when they know? And of course they know now; everyone does.”
“Knows what?”
“That I am Lee’s daughter. I hardly dare face them at the club, assuming we’ll be allowed to keep our membership.” We were approaching by a circuitous route the true soul of Camilla Pomeroy: the club and all that the club meant.
“At least your mother was his common-law wife.” This didn’t sound too good but my intention was kindly.
“As if that will make any difference to them. No, I must face this thing through.” She set her jaw, a sprig of mint clenched between her teeth.
“It’s hardly your fault, your birth.”
“You don’t understand Talisman City,” she said grimly. “The people there live by the book …”
“And have not charity …”
“What?”
“And are difficult,” I said. I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities. I remember one brief stay in a little upstate New York village where I was referred to, behind my back, as “the Jew from New York City,” despite the presence of a Sargeant at that very moment in the Episcopal Council of Bishops … such is the generous feeling of our American peasants for strangers; I didn’t envy Mrs. Pomeroy’s return to her native heath.
“Oh, very. But then we have to have standards after all,” she said, showing she was one of them, fallen or not.
While we lunched, we talked about her early days, about the Senator. “We were very close even though I never dreamed the truth. Mother would never say anything except that she was glad I was seeing him because he was such a distinguished man. She was especially pleased when I organized a platoon of Girl Scouts to work for him on one of his campaigns. Father, that is her husband, hated Lee and used to make very uncivil remarks whenever I came home from one of my visits to the Rhodes’ house but Mother always made him keep still.”
“It must’ve been quite a shock, when you found out.”
She rolled her eyes briefly to heaven. “I’ll say it was. I thought seriously of killing myself, being young and dramatic but then after a while I got used to the idea … and Lee was marvelous with me, called me ‘his own girl.’ ” She seemed, suddenly, very moved, for the first time since the trouble began.
“He must have been very fond of you. He would have to have been to include you in his will, knowing everything would come to light, embarrassing his family.”
“Much he cared about them!” This came out like a small explosion.
“You mean …”
“He hated both of them. Mrs. Rhodes was an ice-cold woman who married him because he was a young man who was going to make his mark, because she was ambitious. He went into politics and ruined his health and got mixed up with all sorts of terrible people and finally was killed by one of them just because she wanted to be a Senator’s wife, a President’s wife. How he used to complain to me about her! And his daughter: well, he understood her altogether too well … everyone did, what she was and is. Of course, he stopped her that once, when she ran off with a weight-lifter on the eve of her wedding to Verbena Pruitt’s nephew …”