“I’m not going to tell you. Let’s just leave it at that.” Tash expected him to finish his drink and walk out of the room, but he didn’t. He sat quietly looking through the open window at the arch of stars above the dark treetops. At last he spoke.
“Is it because of something you found out?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I am asking you if you found out the truth about Vivian.”
Until now it had all seemed a simple matter of an employer irritated because he was losing an employee at an inconvenient moment. Even this unconventional visit to her rooms late at night was just the informal Playfair charm being used to paper over a crack in staff organization.
Now she saw that it must be more than that.
“All I know about Vivian is what you and others have told me.”
He looked at her steadily. “I’m not sure I believe you.”
“There’s only one thing I know about her that you may not know.”
“And that is?”
“The first time I saw her here she asked me to mail a letter for her, and the letter was stolen before I could mail it, but that has nothing to do with my resignation.”
“Tell me all about the letter.”
He listened without any sign of surprise.
“And even then it didn’t occur to you what was wrong?”
“No.”
“Then I think I shall have to tell you.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. I might let it slip to someone else without meaning to.”
“No. You wouldn’t.”
“But why tell me at all?”
“I have to protect Vivian. The mystery about her must be the reason for your resignation. What else could there be? Since you already know enough to suspect her, you might as well know the whole truth. Then you may feel less like resigning.
“Suppose I let you go without another word, what happens? I have to get someone else, someone who is sure to suspect something is wrong with Vivian just as you did, but who may be so much less understanding than you that I could never confide in him or her as I am confiding in you now. Don’t you see how much more difficult everything would be for me then?”
“I don’t want to make things difficult for you. What is it you want to tell me?”
“Like everything else that seems complex when you don’t know what it’s about, this is really simple when you do. It can be expressed in five or six words.”
He lifted his eyes and looked her full in the face. “Vivian takes drugs. Hard drugs.”
Everything fell into place.
The sudden change in Vivian’s spirits and appearance? A common symptom of cocaine addiction. Her loss of memory? Partial amnesia was another symptom associated with several drugs. The nursing home where she was going tomorrow? A clinic for the cure of addicts where Jeremy was sending her now he knew the truth. The absence of children in her marriage? Some drugs were said to affect fertility, especially when more than one was taken at a time.
The letter smuggled out of Leafy Way through Tash herself? An attempt to communicate secretly with a drug supplier. She couldn’t send or receive many letters on her own without drawing attention to what she was doing. All her personal mail, incoming and outgoing, was filtered through the office of her social secretary, Hilary. If she bypassed that office more than once or twice, Hilary would want to know why.
She couldn’t use the telephone at Leafy Way for such purposes. There were a dozen lines, but they all went through the switchboard manned by operators from the state police guard.
Her periodic disappearances without her own car? Times when she had to make contact with a drug supplier in person. She couldn’t go just anywhere in her own car. Its license number was known to every policeman in the state, and her face was known to every reader of news magazines. She couldn’t take a taxi. A driver who recognized her might talk. A driver who suspected her might blackmail her.
Any contacts with a drug supplier she had to make in person would have to be made alone and after dark, slipping out a French window, walking down the neglected right of way to the nearest public transportation.
If she wanted to stay away for several days, there would be no search for her as long as she telephoned Jeremy or Hilary that she was staying with friends. If any reporters asked Jeremy about her mysterious disappearances, he would in all good faith, deny there was any mystery about her absences.
All these things were commonplaces of drug addiction. Only one thing made Vivian’s case uncommon: She was the wife of the governor of the state.
“She must have felt Hilary was more like a jailer than a social secretary,” said Tash.
“Guards can become jailers overnight,” responded Jeremy. “It all depends on your point of view.”
“How long have you known?”
“Only since that night she came home alone in her car, almost unconscious. I sent for my own doctor and he told me what was wrong. Do you think I would have announced my candidacy at the dinner that very night if I had known what was going on? Until then I thought she was going through some kind of mental illness. I kept trying to get her to see a psychiatrist, but she wouldn’t. How could she? He would have seen what was wrong immediately.”
Tash remembered his concern for her. Viv, are you sure you are not overdoing things? . . . Take care of yourself Viv. Promise. . . .
“Now I understand why my resignation made you angry. It must have seemed like desertion.”
“Not angry.” He smiled with rue. “Just scared. I was afraid you had discovered the truth, and I didn’t know what you might do about it after
