Amagansett

‘But you are late,’ said his wife.

‘I meant any later,’ he replied sweetly, pecking her on the cheek, ruffling the children’s hair, then taking his place at the head of the table.

He had barely finished saying Grace when there was a knock at the door. His wife went to answer it. From where he was seated he had no view of the entrance hall, but he could hear the exchange with the gentleman.

‘Is Mr Scarlett in?’

‘What’s it regarding?’

‘It’s a private matter.’

‘We’re having supper, I’m afraid—’

That was as far as she got. He heard a scuffle, a little yelp, and then the man appeared in the dining room, steering Walter’s wife by the elbow. Walter pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

‘Sit the hell down,’ snapped the man. ‘You too,’ he added, forcing Walter’s wife towards her chair.

‘Who do you think you are, barging in here?’ said Walter, reaching for the phone on the sideboard.

The man dropped to one knee at the baseboard, pulled a knife from somewhere around his ankle and cut the telephone cable. Rising to his feet, he said, ‘I’m the man who’s going to mess you and your family up unless you put your ass in that chair this second.’

He pointed with the knife, its slender blade flashing in the sunlight slanting through the window.

Walter’s daughter began to sob. He glanced at his wife, her eyes wide with fear, and they both sat down.

‘That’s better.’

The man circled the table, examining the food.

‘Looks good.’ He leaned over and speared a shard of ham just sliced from the bone. ‘You want some, son?’

The ham hovered in front of Walter Jr’s face, the tip of the blade inches from his eyes.

‘Go on, I insist.’

Walter Jr’s bottom lip began to tremble. The man shrugged, then ate the ham off the tip of the knife.

‘What do you want?’ asked Walter, wishing there was more authority in his voice.

‘Conrad Labarde.’

Labarde—his four o’clock appointment—the tall man who’d come to see him with the interesting legal conundrum.

‘What about him?’

‘He came to see you. I want to know why.’

Walter was about to plead the sanctity of an individual’s relationship with his lawyer, when the man said, ‘And don’t give me any crap about client-attorney confidentiality.’

It was a principle Walter prided himself on upholding. And he abandoned it without hesitation. The man listened closely to his account of the discussion with Labarde, interrupting every so often to ask a question. Finally, he seemed satisfied.

‘Enjoy your meal,’ he said, making for the entrance hall. ‘Oh.’ He stopped and turned. ‘If you tell anyone about this conversation I’ll cut out your daughter’s lips and feed them to your wife.’

Later that evening, while discussing with his wife which real estate agent should handle the sale of their house, it occurred to Walter J. Scarlett that even if he had ignored the threat and gone straight to the police, he would have struggled to give them an accurate physical description of the man.

Thirty-Two

Manfred lay on his back in the darkness, torn between leaving and sliding into alcoholic slumber. He glanced to his right and the matter settled itself.

It was as though the moonlight washing through the window had melted her face. Her mouth sagged open, the flesh was slack and loose around her jaw, gathered in folds. She had lied about her age, he’d guessed that at the time, mentally topping up the tally by four or five years. Looking at her lying there, laid bare by sleep, he revised that estimate by another five years.

Where was she from? Savannah? Charleston? Somewhere down South. They had hardly spoken over dinner at the Maidstone Club, just enough to establish that she was staying with the Van Allens; not in their ghastly new house—the one that looked like the bridge of an ocean liner—but in the old guest cottage at the end of the garden. Manfred had taken the information as an invitation, and he’d been right to do so. But now it was time to leave.

He eased himself out of the bed, his head throbbing as he stooped to recover his clothes. He carried them into the living room, dressing there so as not to wake her, already working through the consequences of his actions.

He could rely on his friends’ discretion, he knew that. Not that it really mattered. It wasn’t as if his relationship with Helen was set in stone. Not yet, anyway. What would Senator Dale really do if he got wind of a one-night tryst?

Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. That was the truth.

Beneath the puff and the posturing, the Senator was a pragmatist. He knew better than anyone that his daughter’s union with Manfred was little short of a business deal: the Senator’s considerable political muscle in exchange for his daughter’s elevated status, one which would see the Dale name etched into the history