she could only tell me the story as she’d memorized it.
“It was all on account of the Committee for Social Thought and justice’s legal defense fund. Olin had learned that Calvin supported it, and he was on Calvin like a dog to a rabbit. They’d despised each other for so many years, you see.”
“You gave the fund money so Calvin’s name didn’t appear?” I prompted her, trying to curb my impatience.
She smiled sadly. “Yes. Those were the days when I would do very nearly anything Calvin demanded. He told me that if he gave to the fund directly, Bayard Publishing couldn’t operate freely during those bleak blacklist days.
“Since then, I’ve come to see-Calvin was generous, and handsome, and spoiled, and cowardly. He couldn’t face hardship-but I only realized that later. What mattered at the time to me was that my mother found I had written checks for him to the legal defense fund.” Once again she turned to look at the portrait.
“When I told Calvin that she was going to give her shares in the press to Olin if I donated more money to the fund, Calvin turned to Augustus Llewellyn. Llewellyn was a fellow traveler back then, I knew that from my months with Armand. When I withdrew, Calvin got Llewellyn to donate a great deal of money into the fund. But it was money Calvin actually contributed himself by creating loans for Llewellyn to start his business. Calvin was quite pleased with his own cleverness. We lay in my great bed at Larchmont one night while he laughed and told me about it.”
She shut her eyes, holding her breath for a long moment. “I’ve never known exactly what happened between Olin and Calvin after that first committee hearing. No one ever talked. We live by secrets in New Solway, they are our meat and breath. I assumed that Olin went to Llewellyn because his name was on the checks, you see, the checks written to the legal defense fund. And I supposed that Llewellyn told Olin he would give him the name of the ringleader, if he didn’t have to go to prison himself, and if his name never appeared. But Augustus Llewellyn must have reported Calvin’s involvement to Olin. Who else could have known?
“When Olin confronted him, Calvin in turn revealed Kylie’s and Armand’s names-they were prominent in the Committee for Social Thought and justice, back when we met so often at Flora’s bar. Calvin would have turned them in, perhaps he would have turned even me in, to avoid public disgrace himself. A part of me knew that. The part that wasn’t still painfully in love.”
“Did Renee know this about Calvin when they married?” I ventured. “I think Renee suggested that Calvin trade Kylie and Armand for his own safety,” she said with surprising calm. “She would never have seen it as a betrayal of principle, you see, but as an organizational necessity. I think that now; at the time, I only saw that she was twenty and I was fortyfive, and I made one last effort to bind Calvin to me. I told him about-Olin and MacKenzie. I left a note in his club on my way to the train station.
“I went up to New York City so that I could be alone for a time, away from Mother’s eyes. And also so I wouldn’t have to face MacKenzie. He was a good man, MacKenzie, and I knew I had done a terrible thing in betraying him to Calvin.” Her mouth worked.
“The committee halted their investigation into Calvin that afternoon, while I was sleeping in my suite at the Plaza. I assumed Calvin and Olin came to a `gentleman’s agreement.”’ She gave the phrase a savage inflection.
“Olin would cease and desist, Armand would go to prison, Kylie would lose her job and Calvin would keep Olin’s affair with MacKenzie to himself-that would have ruined Olin in the fifties, you see. I made all of these assumptions because MacKenzie returned to Larchmont and hanged himself. Neither of us knew that Darraugh was sent home unexpectedly from Exeter.”
She looked at me bleakly. “Of course-Renee knew everything. About me and Calvin, about Olin and MacKenzie. And she flaunted her knowledge to me, in those subtle ways one can in a closed community. I was never more thankful for anything than when she and Calvin bought that apartment in town.”
I went to the kitchen and brought her a glass of water. “Ma’am, I didn’t mean for you to tell me so much, or to have it be so upsetting for you. But you see, I think Olin told this story to Marcus Whitby. And I think Marc went to Renee for her version. Marc was working on a long project on Kylie Ballantine, and he was a careful journalist; he wouldn’t print such a story without hearing the Bayards’ side. Renee killed him, in an efficient way. She gave him bourbon dosed with phenobarbital, and when he fell into a coma, she drove here to Anodyne Park, where she borrowed a golf cart, and drove him to your old pond. Now-I’m afraid she’ll kill the Egyptian boy if she gets to him before I do.”
Geraldine drank the water. “And you think I can stop her? I showed no capacity for that when I was younger and more vital.”
“I’m wondering if Catherine ran away to some place that was important to her and her grandfather. I desperately need to know-it may be too late already now-but-was there some private special place that you and Calvin cherished?”
Her mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “Many special places, all by necessity private. But-I suppose-his family used to own a hunting lodge near Eagle River, up in northern Wisconsin. When the North Woods became a national forest in the thirties, the family had to give up their land, but Calvin’s father worked out an agreement where the family could keep
the lodge for private use for twentyfive years. The agreement must have expired about the time Calvin married Renee.
“The lodge is where we held the committee benefit that caused so much questioning in Congress. And it’s where Calvin and I used to go sometimes in the fall. Besides the great lodge, which would sleep thirty people, there was a cottage in the woods behind it. We were happy there, in a place where we could-be intimate without wondering who was outside the bedroom door. I think Calvin took the girl up there when she was younger.,,
It was a long shot, but it was my only shot. I got to my feet and braced myself for the long drive north.
CHAPTER 51
In Portage, fifty miles north of Madison, the rain changed to snow. I pulled over for gas and hamburgers. Geraldine woke, used the gas station toilet without comment, although it hadn’t seen soap for a few decades, and ate one of the cardboard burgers.
“I drove up here through the snow with Calvin one December,” she said. “I told Mother I was going to St. Augustine to ride; I often did that in the winter, to get away from New Solway. Even in daylight it was a difficult passage. It was still a two-lane road then, with stop signs every so often. Of course the war was on, with gas rationing and rubber rationing; only the wealthy, like Calvin and me, could afford to be driving such distances. We didn’t pass many other vehicles.”
I wondered if she would remember the route to the lodge, but I would worry about that when we got to Eagle River: right now, keeping the car on the road was taking all my energy. That, and staying awake.
“I dredged the pond out at Larchmont on Friday” I said. “I found a ring-I forgot to tell you when I saw you on Sunday. Something that looked like a beehive of diamonds with ruby and emerald chips along the base.”
She made a sound that might have been a laugh. “So it was in the pond all those years. It belonged to Mother. She actually fired one of the maids
for stealing it, although I always thought Darraugh must have taken it. It was a terribly ugly thing, that ring, but Mother prized it because her father gave it to her at her coming-out party. It disappeared soon after MacKenzie died, when Mother was in her element, holding the press at bay, publicly flaunting herself in black crepe, privately gloating. Darraugh turned on her in an almost violent way.
“He turned on me, too, but I felt I had earned it and did nothing to try to deflect his rage. Everything was gray for me then, losing Calvin, losing MacKenzie, losing Darraugh, all in one short spring. My daughter, Laura, was away at Vassar. And anyway, she shared my mother’s attitude towardme, toward her father. She held herself disapprovingly aloof from all of us and our turmoil. She’s a wonderful matron now; her grandmother would be proud of her for upholding the ancien regime.”
“Does Darraugh know that your husband wasn’t his father?” I asked.
