I laughed. “I guess it would have been hard to suggest that her boyfriend was your father's illegitimate son without actually coming out and saying it, but how in the world did you know he was Cordwainer Hatch?"
"Why, that was Joy," said May. "You know how she sits in that window day after day. One evening, she called up and said, 'May, I just saw that scalawag Cordwainer Hatch waltz into our sister's house with Star hanging on his arm.' That was the one and only time Star had him over to meet her family. I put on my best coat and hat and hurried across the street quick as a bug. Right after they left, I called Joy and said, 'Joy, that young man must have fallen off our family tree, but his name was not Cordwainer Hatch.' And Joy said to me, 'Honey, you're wrong as you can be. He must be passing under an assumed name by reason of his scandalous reputation.' "
"How did Joy know he was Cordwainer?" I asked.
"Joy spent three whole months working in that house," Nettie said. "She was eighteen years old. It was the Depression, you know, and while we were still comfortable from the sale of our land out of town, it was all you could do to get a job. Carpenter Hatch advertised for a girl of good character willing to do household work, and Joy interviewed for the position. She said she wanted to get out of the house, can you imagine? To think of her now, you can hardly believe it."
"Carpenter Hatch hired her?" I asked. "Didn't he know who she was?"
“If you ask me, he liked the idea of a Dunstan girl changing his sheets and cleaning his bathroom. Joy started at the end of October. Cordwainer was in boarding school at the time. His parents were forced to send him away, you know." Nettie nodded in a beautiful imitation of sympathetic sorrow. "One day while rearranging the contents of Mrs. Hatch's dresser drawers, Joy came across some photographs the lady had hidden from view. She noticed the resemblance between the boy and our late father. It was not long after that she was let go."
"Hatch fired her because of something she said?" Then I understood what Nettie had told me. "No, Joy wasn't rearranging Mrs. Hatch's dresser drawers, she was redistributing their contents. She was a magpie, like Queenie and May."
"Though not up to our standard," May said. "All the same, Mr. Hatch could never prove anything, but his suspicions settled on her, and then it was farewell, job."
"She told you what she had seen, and you saved it up. When did you have these helpful discussions with Stewart Hatch?"
"When was that, Clark?" Nettie asked.
"Around 1984 or '85. Mr. Reagan was in the Oval Office. Like the man said, it was morning in America."
“I suppose you had gone through the money Carpenter Hatch paid for the property on New Providence Road."
Nettie said, "Clark put a large sum into cranberries."
Clark informed me that the cranberry was a fruit of remarkable versatility. Its juice, health-giving and enjoyable by itself, appeared in several popular cocktails. Rendered into sauce, the cranberry appeared on every table in the country, come Thanksgiving. A note of regret accompanied this recital of the cranberry's virtues.
"Unfortunately," Nettie said, "the cranberry did not render us into millionaires."
"The man I dealt with could be called a common criminal," Clark said. "Though he was as smooth as silk."
"So you had a talk with Stewart Hatch."
"For the purpose of presenting him with a real estate opportunity," Clark said.
"And one of the terms of your agreement was never to divulge what you knew about Edward Rinehart."
"Which is what makes us so happy to be frank and open now," Nettie said. "You came along and hit us with that name Rinehart, that was ashock. We had no choice, son, we gave you the best advice we could."
“I am completely impressed. You blackmailed Stewart Hatch into giving you a fortune."
" 'Blackmail' is not a pretty word," Nettie said. "We reached a business agreement. All of us walked away happy, including Mr. Hatch."
"How much did you squeeze out of that crook?"
For once, Clark's smile bore no resemblance to a sneer. "A handsome sum."
“I bet it was." In spite of everything, I was delighted with these three old hoodlums. "You've been living off Hatch money for years and years, haven't you? First you sold the land, and then you sold them a secret. I'm proud of you. The Dunstans have never exactly been law-abiding citizens, but the Hatches were a lot worse."
"Neddie?" May set down her knife and fork on a plate that looked as though it had been steam-cleaned. "Now that we can be frank and open, I want to ask you a question. Mr. Rinehart, as he was called then, perished while in prison. I can't quite see how you came upon his real name."
"Now it's my turn to make a confession," I said. “I had to borrow those photographs Aunt Nettie was storing in her closet."
“Isn't that interesting?" May said. “I have to say, I never did understand why Mrs. Hatch asked me to magpie them out of the library. It was a piece of cake, though. Those people wouldn't notice if you took the clothes right off their backs, especially Mr. Covington."
"You remember, May," Nettie said. "Mrs. Hatch told us that Ned had remarked upon your talents, and deep in her heart she had the feeling that those pictures would help us to get back our own precious photographs."
"Why, that's right," May said. "She did. We never did get them back, though. Maybe we should visit the library again."
"Both sets of pictures are in my car," I said. “I'll give them to you in a minute. If you send them back to Hugh Coventry, they'll be perfectly safe."
“Isn't that nice?" Nettie said. "Mrs. Hatch is a veryattractive person. She reminds me of those girls on the news who look straight into the camera and say, 'Earlier today, three children were ripped to pieces by tigers during an excursion to the county zoo. Details after these messages.' And I liked her little boy."
"Me, too," I said.
Nettie turned to May. “I met Mrs. Hatch's son when we were comforting Star at St. Ann's. He was so comical! That little boy leaned over the front of his stroller and told me, 'I ain't jumped to any conclusions, Mrs. Rutledge.' I could hardly believe my ears."
"You could put a boy like that on television, along with his momma," Clark said.
"He said to me, 'I ain't jumped to ...' No, it was, 'I ain't concluded, and ...' What was it, Neddie?"
" 'I ain't concluded, and so far I ain't jumped,' " I said. “I'll go out and get the photographs, and then I want to drop in on Joy. I'm going back to New York later today."
"So soon?" May said. "Goodness, it seems like you only got here five minutes ago."
Clark gave me a roguish sneer and pushed himself away from the table. “I'll walk out with you."
•132
• On our way down the steps,Clark gave me a worldly glance Maurice Chevalier could not have surpassed. The fog had coalesced into a thin gray veil that made everything seem further away than it was. When I handed Clark the folders, he cocked his head in a show of confidentiality that implied the presence of unseen eyes and ears. “I guess you had something going with Mrs. Hatch."
"Only a little something," I said.
Fatherly pride warmed his red-rimmed eyes. “I believe you could bea real Dunstan, after all."
“I believe you're right." Then I remembered the unseen eyes and ears and looked across the street. "Do you know if Joy called Mount Baldwin?"