“This is all quite difficult, isn’t it?” said Bess with an air of candor. “Talking business like this—but then it does have to be talked about. What do you think about the price for the place?”
Two could play at candor, and Sarah, at the agency, had learned to smile when she was bubbling with rage, look enthralled while smothered yawns were forcing tears to her eyes, use, straight-facedly, the terms to which advertising conversation had been reduced. She said, “I’m being foolish, I know, but it’s just that Charles loved this place so . . . I’m all for things going on just as they have been, but if you won’t have that, couldn’t we arrive at a rent?”
“Charles did love the farm, yes. As—if I can say this without being offensive—a visitor. It was always very comfortable for him when he came here, and I don’t imagine it occurred to him how many wheels went around to make it that way. Under normal circumstances he would have outlived me, and so the question never came up, but I’m quite sure he would have wanted me to have the farm.”
Was it the total arrogance it seemed? Perhaps not. Sarah said with a rueful air, “When I make my will I’m going to have everything perfectly clear in it, to cover all eventualities.”
Bess was far too self-controlled to react to that. “I only broach it at all because, of course, you would never want to live here.”
“Probably not. Somehow or other I haven’t been able to make plans yet.”
“You’ll marry again,” said Bess in a tone of certainty. “Perhaps that sounds shocking now but you’re only— twenty-four, twenty-five? Of course you will. But after all you only got here last night, so let’s shelve all this until you’ve had a little more time to get your bearings. Oh, and wasn’t there something else you wanted to talk to me about?”
Sarah had had time to think about this answer. She looked at her hands for a long moment of silence before she said, “Charles was going to a psychiatrist before he died.” (Odd that Hunter was the only one who had ever said bluntly, “killed himself.” The rest of them skirted the issue, as though Charles had had a respectable disease and the very best of attention at the end.)
“A psychiatrist?” Bess sounded and looked aghast. “What for—what happened?”
“I only found out a few days ago myself,” said Sarah steadily. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me.”
Bess got abruptly off the bed where she had been sitting and walked to the window, presenting her back to Sarah. “I can’t imagine Charles . . . didn’t he give you any clue? Didn’t the psychiatrist?”
“None.”
“But it doesn’t seem possible. Not with Charles. Of course, he grew up without a mother, and his father’s death —heart, as you probably know, although none of us had suspected it—was a considerable shock. But even so . . .”
“He was quite fond of his stepmother, wasn’t he?”
“Nina. Oh, very. We all were. Still . . . Sarah, this is terribly upsetting. To think that Charles might have had some frightful problem his family didn’t know about. . .”
Touche, thought Sarah wryly, and rose on cue. “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” said Bess gravely; the implication was that while Sarah might be cool about it she herself needed time to absorb this fresh shock. As well she may, thought Sarah, trying to be fair, but just then Bess opened the door so abruptly that the draught acted on the door opposite, releasing the catch and showing a slice of the bedroom inside.
Sarah knew instinctively that it was Milo and Evelyn’s; Hunter could never have lived in the clutter she only remembered later. At the moment, all she saw was an easel, holding a very bad portrait of a seated woman preparing to wash her hair. There was a basin, and something in the background, but what caught the eye hypnotically was the loosed and tumbled-down hair, a crude beautiful red-yellow. The perspective was bad, the body lines stiff; the hair seemed glowingly alive.
Bess drew an audible breath, which might have been surprise—the portrait looked new and unfinished—or anger, or chagrin at her own suddenness. She said evenly enough, “Milo isn’t much of an artist, but that’s supposed to be Nina. She did have lovely hair. Watch the stair carpet, Sarah, it slides in spots, and I live in fear that somebody will trip.”
Mechanically, Sarah had given Charles’s stepmother a comforting bosom, a lot of sensible understanding, perhaps even a whiff of lavendar sachet. According to Milo’s portrait —she would not have been more surprised to come upon Milo himself in a sarong—Nina Trafton could not have been much older than Charles, her bosom had not been designed for stepsons, and she was probably more attuned to Lanvin than to lavendar.
Evelyn had been gotten to; she avoided Sarah’s eye when Sarah found her in the kitchen. “Do you like tuna fish?”
“Yes,” said Sarah unwisely and then, with craft, “I’ve just been talking to Bess. It must have been awfully sad about Mrs. Trafton—Charles’s stepmother, I mean.”
“Yes, it was quite . . . I have noodles,” said Evelyn nervously to herself, “and I have pineapple.”
“Was she sick long?” asked Sarah, ignoring the frightful implication of what Evelyn was saying, and Evelyn looked at her almost with relief. “No, but she wasn’t very strong, and the doctor warned us right away when pneumonia set in. There was a history of lung weakness, and I think
