Mystery

“Don’t upset yourself, Gloria. And you won’t be all alone. Victor will be with you. His main job, as far as I am concerned, has always been to look after your welfare.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much. Thank you above all for saying that in front of Tom.”

“Tom is a young man.”

“You mean he’s old enough to think—”

“I mean he is of an age when he may go off and enjoy himself with other people of his own age. In the proper surroundings. Right, Tom?”

“I guess,” Tom said, but the expression of gathering misery on his mother’s face made him wish to retract the lukewarm agreement. He tingled with shame. As soon as his grandfather had spoken, Tom had known that he was hearing the truth—his father’s real job was taking care of his mother. Tom felt slightly sickened.

“I’ll stay home, Mom,” he said.

She gave him a black look. “Don’t say that to please me, because it doesn’t please me. It just makes me angry.”

“Are you sure?” Tom asked across the table.

His mother did not look up. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“Six weeks would be good,” said Upshaw. “Long enough to have a real experience. And when you’re out on your own, those times when business leaves you free, it’ll be there for you.”

“Say thank you,” his mother said in a flat voice.

“Thank you,” Tom said.

PART SIX

HEAVEN

On the first day of his summer vacation, a troubled Tom Pasmore left his house and began moving aimlessly down Eastern Shore Road toward An Die Blumen.

The last days of school had been accompanied by a round of parties at which Tom had walked through one lavish room after another without seeing Sarah Spence in any of them. He had wondered why so many of these rooms had been painted varying shades of pink until he overheard Posy Tuttle’s mother telling Moonie Firestone’s mother that Katinka Redwing had found the best young decorator in New York, who was a genius with pink: “A genius—it’s the only word! And of course Katinka found him first. Every evening at six I look out at the sea, you know, our beach, and it’s the most beautiful thing—the sky is the same color as my walls!” In the next room, one of his classmates was throwing up into a champagne bucket in a room with walls the color of a pink sky, and several hours later another had passed out on the beach, the legs of his tuxedo trousers rolled up to his knees. But by then the sky was as black as Tom’s mood.

He had danced clumsy tangos with Sarah at Miss Ellinghausen’s last two classes of the year, but when he had asked her if Ralph Redwing picked her up after every class she had sulked and denied that he ever picked her up. “Sometimes he sends the carriage,” she finally said. “They’re possessive people, you know. Don’t make a big deal out of it.” She had smiled when he told her that he would be coming to Eagle Lake, but after that she had seemed nervous and quiet, not nearly as talkative as during their first day together; after class she had excused herself quickly and walked to Calle Berghofstrasse by herself—she still looked beautiful to Tom, but almost forlorn, a secret he would never know.

When Tom had come to the commencement exercises held behind Brooks-Lowood’s main building in an atmosphere of striped tents and summery dresses, Sarah turned around to smile at him from her place in the front row with the other graduating seniors. Ralph Redwing, the speaker at one of every three Brooks-Lowood commencements, addressed the topic “Civic Responsibilities of Civic Leaders” by announcing that he was overseeing the publication of a book entitled Historic Island Domiciles which would feature full-page plates and floor plans of every house on Mill Walk in which members of the Redwing family had lived (gasps, rustles of anticipation from the Brooks-Lowood mothers). And after the diplomas had been handed out and the awards distributed, Tom had wandered out of the tea tent, stepped onto the soccer field, and looked across at the visitors’ parking lot, where Sarah Spence and her parents were just climbing into Ralph Redwing’s gleaming carriage.

Tom reached the corner of An Die Blumen and stood for a moment looking between the houses at the blue dazzle of the bay. The night before the commencement he had visited Lamont von Heilitz and felt as if he were returning to his true home—he loved both the vast eccentric crowded room and its extraordinary inhabitant—but the evening had felt tentative and inconclusive. The Shadow had seemed upset at the news of Tom’s visit to Eagle Lake, and what had been more distressing to Tom was that for most of the evening the old man had denied his reluctance to have Tom make the trip.

“You don’t think I should go to Eagle Lake,” Tom had said. “I know you don’t. Do you want me to stay here and work with you?”

“I suppose you’ll do what you want to do,” von Heilitz said. “It’s a matter of timing, really.”

“You mean you don’t want me to go now?”

The Shadow answered him with another question. “Are you planning to go alone? Glen didn’t include your mother in the invitation?”

Tom shook his head.

For the first time, the reclusive detective struck Tom as intensely lonely, in a way that illuminated Tom’s own loneliness. If Tom spent six weeks away from Mill Walk, he would be depriving the old man of his only companionship. But Tom could not speak of this, and von Heilitz merely continued to look distressed and uncomfortable and as if he had things to do that Tom could not witness. So Tom felt excluded, as uncomfortable as his friend—it was the first real coolness between them. Tom had thought of asking von Heilitz if he knew of any trouble at Shady Mount Hospital, but the old man had moved across the room and put on a record. “Mahler,” he said, and an instant later sounds like pistol shots and battlefield moans filled the room. The old man collapsed into a chair, put his feet up on his table, and closed his eyes. Tom let himself out. It was like his grandfather, he supposed—you couldn’t expect a man like that to behave like an ordinary person.

Now he looked up from the sidewalk and saw the front door of an enormous Spanish mansion on The Sevens swing open. He immediately wished that he were invisible, then that he were right in front of the house. A small brown and white dog appeared first, tugging at a leash and bouncing on his forefeet. Tom gave in to his desire for invisibility, and moved to the side of the red booth. In a blue shirt with rolled sleeves, white shorts, and white tennis shoes, Sarah Spence appeared at the other end of the leash. Laughing, she said something to the dog and closed the door behind her.

Sarah followed the eager dog down the red brick steps, her hair swinging, and began moving down the wide stone walk to the sidewalk. Her free arm swung, her tanned slender legs swung, even her neat white feet swung. Her back was very straight, and her hair gathered and released with every step. The dog trotted out on the sidewalk and pulled Sarah down the block.

He stepped away from the telephone booth and watched her moving away from him. Then he crossed An Die Blumen and began walking down The Sevens, half a block behind her. The day, which he had hardly noticed earlier, now seemed astonishingly clean and fresh: limpid sunlight fell directly on Sarah’s glowing hair and the straight line of her shoulders. He realized that he took pleasure simply in the eloquent way she walked, her golden legs almost striding and her feet skimming above the sidewalk as if they were winged.

Tom quickened his pace. He could not imagine why he had wanted to hide from Sarah Spence, nor what he would say to her when he finally caught up.