McBride smiled. Mamie was beginning to look a bit cross-eyed, and her words were beginning to slur. Probably the woman had told them all that she knew.
Adrienne noticed it, too. Mamie was down to the olive in her second martini, which suggested the conversation was about to deteriorate. So it would be best to get to the point. She picked up her glass by the stem, swirled it, and watched the oily bands of liquid curl. Out on the water, a Jet Ski whined, dopplering across the bay, as irritating as a mosquito. McBride was telling Mamie about his fellowship.
What if this was a legal case? she asked herself. What would she ask?
“Did Mr. Crane leave any papers?”
The question took Mamie by surprise. “Excuse me?”
“I know his belongings were sold,” Adrienne said, “but sometimes—”
“Well, you’re not the first to ask,” Mamie told her, covering a tiny hiccup. “After he died, a man from the government came, and asked the same thing. Awful little man!” She tossed her head like a teenager. “I told him Cal was always quoting some dead Legionnaire. ‘Pas des cartes, pas des fotos, et pas des souvenirs.’”
Adrienne gave her a hapless look. “I took Spanish.”
McBride translated. “‘No letters, no pictures, and no souvenirs.’“ He smiled regretfully. “Which is not so great for us. Anyway,” he decided, “we’ve taken enough of your time.”
“You’ve been very kind,” Adrienne agreed and, standing, extended her hand to the old woman.
Mamie took the hand and held it for what seemed a long while, scrutinizing Adrienne as if she were a Vermeer. “You have such an aura,” she told her. Then she laughed. “Maybe you’d better sit back down.” Turning to McBride, she added, “Cal was such a bullshitter—pas des cartes, indeed!”
Chapter 37
She returned a few minutes later, lipstick refreshed, hair newly combed, carrying a battered briefcase and a small photo album. Raising the briefcase, she said, “He liked to do his correspondence here.” Glancing out to the window, she said, “I think we’re going to have some weather. Maybe the Florida room would be a better choice.” Beckoning, she led them down a long hall to a low-ceilinged room with large expanses of old-fashioned, jalousied windows, and a ceiling fan that turned, ever so slowly, overhead.
Beyond the windows, behind a stand of thrashing palms, the Gulf of Mexico trembled with whitecaps, its surface black-and-blue. McBride imagined he could feel the electricity in the air. Nearby, the crimson and green leaf of a croton bush skittered across the tiled floor, pushed by the wind.
The room itself was a comfortable one, furnished with a scattering of old rattan furniture and a profusion of plants: fiddleleaf figs, ferns, hibiscus. Citrus trees in huge glazed pots. Gardenias bloomed by the door, filling the air with their dense perfume.
Mamie sat down between them on a little couch, with the album resting on her lap. Opening the cover, she began to turn the pages, one at a time, never lingering for long on any one. “My parents’ house,” she said, “in Amstelveen.”
“It’s beautiful,” Adrienne remarked, and so it was.
“They worked for the bank,” Mamie confessed. “Mother, too. A real Dolle Mina!” She turned another page, and another, musing over the photos. “My brother, Roel.” She sighed. “So handsome!”
“Is he… ?”
Mamie shook her head. “No. He died during the war.”
“A soldier?” McBride asked.
She shook her head. “Tuberculosis.” Another picture, this time of a young woman at a café table in a European city. “Can you guess who that is?” she asked coyly.
McBride smiled. “Of course,” he replied, “it’s Greta Garbo. I’d recognize her anywhere.”
Mamie guffawed—a big, uncompromising Ha! “Such a darling man! And what a liar!”
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Adrienne asked. “But you’re so beautiful!”
“And you’re very kind,” Mamie replied. Then she turned another page and stopped. Her forefinger stabbed at a 5 by 7 snapshot of half a dozen men posing for a photo on an elegant terrace in what could only be the Alps. “There!” she told them. “That’s what I wanted to show you.”
It was a sepia-toned picture, with the men in ranks—three, standing at the back; and the same number, kneeling in front. They wore old-fashioned hiking clothes—knickers, kneesocks, heavy boots, and patterned wool sweaters. Behind them were some of the world’s most recognizable mountains.
“That’s Cal in the front—at the very center of things, as always.”
Adrienne peered at the picture, which showed Crane and his friends, back from a hike in the Alps. She could see at a glance that Crane had once been young and handsome, with dark eyes, broad shoulders, and an aquiline nose that pointed the way to a cleft chin. To his left was a big Scandinavian with a broad face, apple cheeks, and spiky blond hair. His pale eyes were slightly hooded and stared directly at the camera.
“Who’s that,” McBride asked, “next to Mr. Crane?” The man seemed strangely familiar.
“That’s Ralf,” Mamie told him. “He and Cal worked together.”
“At the Institute?” Adrienne asked.
“Of course,” the old woman replied. “Gunnar is his son.”
She removed the photograph from the little slats that held each of its corners to the page, and turned it over. Written on the back in fading blue ink were the words:
Eiger Monch & Jungfrau
L—R: W Colby, J. DeMenil, F. Nagy
Kneeling: T. Barnes, C. Crane, R. Opdahl
September 8, ‘52: Palace Hotel Eiger (Murren)
Back from the Schilthorn!!!
“And these other men?” McBride asked.
Mamie smiled. “Spies,” she said.
“Did they hike together often?” Adrienne asked.
Mamie shook her head. “No, I think just that once. There was some business.” She thought for a moment, then nodded decisively at the recollection. “I know! They’d just opened the clinic,” she said.
“The Prudhomme Clinic,” Adrienne suggested.
Mamie nodded. “Yes. So there was a little celebration.”
“How did you get the picture?” McBride asked.
“Get it? I took it,” she told him. “That’s my handwriting, not Cal’s. And there aren’t many pictures of him in those days.” She quickly turned a couple of pages in the album until she found what she was after. “This is the only other one that I know of—though maybe Thea has some.”
The picture had been taken in the summer. It showed a mansion on a residential block in the suburbs of a European city. The building reminded Adrienne of one of the legations along Massachusetts Avenue in Washington. Huge stone urns, spilling over with luxuriant vegetation, flanked a massive front door. And at the door, posing with one hand on the lion’s head knocker and the other held up in a wave toward the camera was Crane. On the page beside the picture, in the same spidery hand as its predecessor, was the inscription:
Herr Direktor Arrives!
The Institute (Kussnacht)
3 July, 1949
“Well,” Mamie said, as she got slowly to her feet, “I’ll leave you to it. Me—I think I’ll have a little lie-down. If you need anything…”
“Oh, we’ll be fine,” Adrienne told her.
It was raining now, thick drops slapping at the slatted glass of the windows. Thunder rolling over the Gulf. Opening the briefcase, McBride removed some folders and envelopes, a yellow legal pad, two or three kraft-colored folders, an antique Hermés diary and a copy of the AARP Bulletin. There was also, he saw, a thick packet of letters, held together with a rubber band.
It was, in other words, a mess—but promising. Both of them reached for the diary first, but Adrienne was the quicker. Leaning back against the couch, she began to read, while McBride went through the other material.