He looked around at her. “Do you have any film we can try?”
Babe had converted this room into her special library, and it was here that she planned to learn her way back to the present. Seven years of back issues of U.S. News and World Report occupied a half wall of shelves, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and W another. The New York Times on microfilm took up two entire bookcases that had had to be placed free-standing, like library stacks.
Babe handed the man a microfilm box.
He threaded a roll of film into the machine and demonstrated on-off, focus, and forward and reverse. Babe carefully absorbed the instructions.
When the workman had gone, she closed the door. After three minutes’ search she found the box of microfilm she wanted.
She switched the viewer on. The cooling fan hummed faintly and a cold milky light fell onto the angled screen. She carefully threaded her tape in and fitted the sprockets to the guidewheels.
Behind her the wall of the old house creaked.
Turning the knob carefully, she scrolled to the report in The New York Times, seven years ago, on the fashion page, of her party at the Casino in the Park.
Babe stretched a hand up from her wheelchair and pushed Gordon Dobbs’s buzzer.
A manservant admitted her.
Gordon Dobbs was sitting in the livingroom at an old cherrywood table that served as a desk. A telephone receiver was cradled between his shoulder and his ear and he was scribbling furiously on a pad. He was wearing a jade silk robe over his slacks and shirt, and he turned to acknowledge Babe with a cheery wave.
He silently mouthed the words just a minute and pointed to the receiver, indicating that he was trapped with an intolerable bore.
Babe wheeled into the room. Her eyes took in the framed pictures on the wall. Gray birch logs waited for winter in a fieldstone fireplace flanked by neatly loaded bookshelves.
“Aha—exactly on time,” Dobbsie said, hanging up the phone. “And in that contraption. How do you manage?”
“I hired a car and driver.”
“The only way to do things nowadays. Would you like an armchair?”
“Thanks, but I’m comfortable.”
“Coffee?”
“Please. With lots of sugar and cream.”
Dobbsie rang a small enameled bell and told the manservant to fetch two coffees.
Babe had noticed that over a third of the books in the shelves were English and foreign-language editions of Dobbsie’s books. “I see you’re very successful with your readers,” she said.
“Yes indeed. Folks in Kansas and Osaka can’t get enough of the private lives of society’s public people.”
“Tell me something: do you honestly believe Scottie did it?”
Gordon Dobbs lit a thin brown cigarette with a gold lighter. “My dearest darling, I know he did it.”
“I’m not so certain as you.”
“Naturally not. You weren’t at the trials.”
“Tell me about those trials.”
For a half hour Dobbsie described the trials. He had an excellent memory for who had been wearing what. He did not know why the second trial had been closed, and he didn’t even have gossip as to why the record had been sealed.
“There are too many gaps,” Babe said.
Dobbsie poured fresh coffee. “If you have any doubts, I suggest you read my book.”
“I’ve read your book. And I don’t like it.”
Gordon Dobbs smiled. “I do enjoy candor. Tell me what you don’t like.”
“To begin with, the tone.”
A thoughtful look touched the corners of Dobbsie’s mouth. “I felt the tone was appropriate. I was describing money, influence, power—all the things that make people marry and murder one another.”
“Your research was slanted.”
He took off his glasses and spent a moment thoughtfully regarding her. “Give me an example.”
“The insulin in the stud box. In all the years we were married, Scottie never had a stud box. He used a ceramic bowl.”
Dobbsie frowned. “I got that detail from an article by Dina Alstetter, published in SoHo magazine. Second serial rights were picked up by newspapers and magazines across the country. The same as with my book. Except I had a national TV tour and Dina didn’t.”
“Scottie couldn’t have put the box there. Mama made him move into the Princeton Club the day I went to the hospital.”
“Who else could have put a box of insulin on your bedside table?”
“I don’t know who, but it’s absurd to think Scottie would incriminate himself so carelessly, so stupidly. That box was planted so that Dina would find it.”
“I happen to know Dina pretty damned well. We’ve worked professionally together and we toured the Sid Vicious book. She’s a totally sweet gal—and she would not print a lie.”
“Maybe not knowingly.”
“Babe, even if Dina was careless—which I find highly unlikely—magazines check their facts. People who tell fibs in print get slapped with big fat libel suits.”
“After the second verdict I’m surprised Scottie didn’t sue you.”
“Not bloody likely. He’s a crook—as well as a liar and a murderer manqué. The civil rules of evidence are far more relaxed than the criminal. He’d have lost. Unlike Oscar Wilde, he knows when to stop.”
“Then what’s to keep me from suing you?”
Dobbsie glanced up at her. “What in the world for?”
“Libel.”
“I never libeled you.”
“What do you call that tan alligator bag in the closet? Scottie never owned a bag like that. So the implication is that it was mine. And whose drugs were in it? The state never proved that Scottie used drugs. So the implication is that the liquid Valium was mine too.”
“I never said that.”
“But you published it. The implication’s right there in print, with your name on the book. And now I’m back from the dead, civil rights restored.”
A hint of hesitation flickered in Gordon Dobbs’s handsome face. “What would you hope to gain in a lawsuit?”
“Answers to questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like why you wrote that book the way you did. What did you stand to gain by prejudicing Scottie’s appeal?”
Gordon Dobbs was looking at Babe carefully now, and she knew he was estimating her power to hurt him, weighing it against her usefulness to him, calculating what sort of fresh tack to take with her.
“You’re right to be suspicious of the book,” he sighed. “I signed an agreement with your parents’ lawyer. Bill Frothingham set up the interviews and gave me the information.”
Babe heard Dobbsie out in silence, fighting to control her growing anger.
He explained how Lucia Vanderwalk had hired an ex-police detective who had extremely good connections and wasn’t bound by the law. He explained how the detective had reconstructed the crime. He explained how the reconstruction had formed the basis of the book.
“In return I let Bill Frothingham see the manuscript. He vetted it for errors. There was no obligation to change anything, just to consider your family’s suggestions. They allowed a great deal to stand that wasn’t at all favorable to your great-grandfather.”
“Did my family pay you?”
“Yes, I received a consideration.”
“Naturally they let you publish old family scandal—no one would think they were behind the book. But how could you have put your name to someone else’s accusations?”
“Frankly,” Dobbsie said, “I believe Scottie was guilty. The book was published after the first trial, so it certainly didn’t harm him. He got his appeal. He got his reduced plea. He got everything.”
“Of course it harmed him. Coming from my parents it would have been revenge and no one would have paid attention. Coming from you it was news and hundreds of thousands of people believed it. Why else do you think my parents paid you?”
Dobbsie took Babe’s hands in his. “I’m a bad person, Babe, but I’m not an unusually bad person. I lay no claim to your respect, but I do hope for your friendship.”