A Fox Inside (6 page)

At first he found only the slightly too expensive but unmonogrammed shirts and underwear that Charles had affected. Then, under some pyjamas, he found a roll of ten dollar bills shoved into a handkerchief case, and under the case a picture frame. It was small, of brown leather, and when he opened it he saw that there was a fresh tear on the leather and that the celluloid protector was cracked. There was no picture in it, but if it had been hidden, then it must have been something that had some meaning for Charles. And there were so few things that had any meaning for Charles. Thoughtfully Luke slipped the frame into his pocket. It seemed safe to do so, for he did not think that many people could know that it even existed. He put everything else back as carefully
as he could and let himself out of the house. He did not close the front door. He superstitiously left it open, as though closing it confirmed Maggie’s guilt.

Certainly she was guilty by intent.

He hurried down the drive with the obscure sensation that they must leave as soon as possible. He found
Maggie
sitting blankly in the car. She asked no questions.

Neither did he. Maggie probably knew as little of Charles as he did, and nothing about this house. Maybe there was nothing to know. He turned on to the
highway
, relieved when they had passed the indicative
crossroads
unobserved, and so might have come from
anywhere
. It was a clear morning now. The sea was a
blue-grey
mirror and the world had an innocent look. The air was still enough for them to hear a bird call three pastures away, in the salt marshes by the sea.

The police car passed them on the upgrade to
Tamalpais
, its siren uselessly blaring. Maggie flinched, but Luke had seen it coming and his touch did not alter on the wheel.

“They’ve found out,” she whispered.

“The house was searched.”

“That means somebody knows,” she said. He saw that she was beginning to realize that she was in a trap, but he could not help her there, except to try to get her out of it. And Charles’s death had locked her away from him far more than her marriage to Charles had done. “But who?” she asked.

“You haven’t any idea?”

“I don’t know anything,” she said. “That was what was so horrible. He wouldn’t let me know anything at all.”

He felt the picture frame in his pocket. “Did Charles have a picture of you?” he asked.

She was surprised. “No,” she said. “Not that I know of. He never wanted one.”

He felt, somehow, that this was true and that Charles never had wanted one. He turned the car towards San Francisco and was silent, trying to think. Far more than of the police he was afraid of the newspapers.
Friendliness
did not go with righteousness, and at the moment the papers were being righteous. They had exhausted the sex scare, the bomb scare, and the Russians, and that left them righteousness.

T
HE SHANNON HOUSE WAS NEAR
Alta Plaza, but nobody called it that. They called it the Barnes house, for it had belonged to Jerome Barnes, Maggie’s father. Luke did not know anything about Jerome Barnes. Of Alta Plaza he knew slightly more.

It was that residential section of the city that lay along a ridge of hills which rose from the yachted Marina, running between that once fashionable Van Ness
Avenue
on one side and the sombre promontory of the old Spanish Presidio on the other. It had a fine view of Alcatraz, the island prison in the bay.

In the old days, before the city expanded, Alta Plaza had been a pleasant wild place, from whose heights one could watch the four-masted ships clogging the bay. Later, until the fire of 1906, it had been on the fringes of fashion. But a city is always restless. It moves ceaselessly from one side of itself to the other; and its social life inexplicably takes off in a swarm, after its regnant bee, for no other reason than that it is the season for
swarming
.

So that was Alta Plaza, a quiet, steep neighbourhood with too few trees, except for its fogbound and
mysterious
hill-side parks. Here you could see an old wooden mansion, its windows shuttered, its rococo plaster
peeling 
from a pediment. And here and there, in a vacant lot thick with nettles, a stone stairway rose up into nothing, blackened with soot and cracked with heat, last memorial of the earthquake and the fire of 1906. Once, as a girl, he supposed, Lily must have gone up stairs like that. Now she went to other houses, but the stairs remained, still leading nowhere. Not for nothing did the city fathers, after that holocaust, remove the Ionic portico of some gutted house and set it in a quiet corner of the public park, on the other side of a shallow, scummy lake, and call it The Portals of the Past.

Here, on a still street that never got enough light, Jerome Barnes, or his father, had built the Barnes house. Lily had given it not to Maggie, but to Charles. Which was typical of Lily. It was a two-storied house in the Normandy style, with mullioned downstairs windows of yellow sandstone, but the facing of pale pink brick. The house stood back from the street, across a small city lawn trimmed with privet. It was a solid house.

Luke drew up before it reluctantly. It was part of a San Francisco he had never been allowed to enter, and now he did not think he wanted to enter it at all.

Though some effort had been made to make the house appear classical from the front, the land at the rear of the lot sloped so steeply that the floor plan was irregular. There was a large oval hall, with at the far end windows giving on the bay towards Alcatraz and down to a
disused
garden fifty feet below. The staircase not only rose to the second floor, but also descended through the hall paving to the floor below, which had been fitted up as a rumpus room, never used. The panelling of the hall had been stripped down to a fake Georgian simplicity,
enamelled white in the style of some advanced House and Garden magazine of the first World War. It was a spacious hall but shadowy. At night the stairs seemed endlessly to wind up and down through space.

Now the hall was piled with luggage. That stopped them both as soon as they saw it. Luke closed the front door slowly, knowing that at this wrong of all moments there was going to be a scene. It was Lily’s luggage, of course. It was indigo cowhide roughly stitched with white, and she had brought far too much of it. There was a two-suiter, because men’s luggage was more capacious than women’s; a vanity; a large hat box; and a small rectangular box that could contain almost
anything
. These were ranged neatly in order of size by the console to the right of the door. Lily, of course, would have had the taxi driver so arrange them, vigilant to see that he scratched nothing, and waiting calmly to
under-tip
him. Lily’s ideas of service and expense had not changed in thirty years. It was her own way of saving money, though she never thought of it like that. She always called it “keeping up standards”.

“I can’t face this,” said Maggie. “I can’t.” She leaned back against Luke. “I’ve
got
to be alone for a while.”

“She certainly didn’t waste much time.”

They found her in the living-room and she had not wasted any time at all. She had even brought her own magazines to read while waiting.

Luke had been in this house only once. He had never come back. He had only been allowed to know the Barnes at Atherton, or, to be more accurate, to know Maggie at college. He found the house, which had then seemed unattainable, now merely large and slightly
displeasing
.
The living-room was too long for its width. The chairs and sofas were agreeable, but seemed to have been moved there from some other house. There were no flowers. The light came half-way across the rug from the windows, but the centre of the room was always shadowy. Lily was sitting on one of the sofas, her legs sleekly crossed, her fur thrown down on the seat beside her, pretending to read a copy of
Vogue.
She had not bothered to take off her hat, but when she saw them come in she reached up and removed it, as though she had only just arrived, and put it on top of the furs, which were slightly ratty stone marten.

“Where have you been?” she asked amiably, but there was always something insolent in that amiability and he did not miss it. Her attitude was that they had
inconvenienced
her by not being there to receive her. She had changed since early morning. There was no longer
anything
soft or uncertain about her.

Maggie sat down in a chair slightly away from her mother. There was a sudden heavy calm about her that Luke did not like the look of. He stood by the
mantelpiece
, waiting to arbitrate.

“We went to Bolinas,” he said. “I thought we’d better check up.”

“That was foolish,” said Lily mildly. “She didn’t
forget
anything. She brought it in a bag. And as for the bag, we’ll say I burnt it, if it ever existed in the first place.” She glanced coldly at both of them.

Luke caught her eye and saw very well that she knew exactly what she was doing. It seldom took her long to get back the upper hand.

“I shouldn’t have come until it hit the papers,” she
went on. “But I thought you wouldn’t want to face the reporters alone.”

“You shouldn’t have come at all,” said Maggie. Luke was startled. He had not known that she was as afraid of her mother as she sounded now. He tried to look
reassuring
, but he thought probably she was scared of him, too.

“Somebody had to protect you,” said Lily.

“Or you?” asked Maggie sharply.

“If you wish it that way.” Lily smiled blandly, and though the rest of her face showed nothing, her eyes looked tight and observant and maybe a little hurt. She was good at getting people not to notice her eyes, unless she wanted to look angry. Luke always noticed them. That was no doubt one of many reasons why she didn’t like him. “We can’t afford publicity.”

Luke thought, watching her, that she was apt to
overdo
the publicity. He wondered how she had come to think of herself as so important.

“Luke can help me.” Maggie did not sound too
convinced
of it.

Lily snorted.

“I just want to be alone, Mother. Can’t you
understand
that?”

Lily stopped playing with her hat and looked directly at her daughter. “It isn’t safe,” she said. “How am I to know what you might do?” Luke was not astute at the psychology of women, but he thought she was acting. She leaned forward, as though she did not want to have Luke see or hear her. It was a planned gesture. “I don’t
like
to have to watch you,” she said. “You know that.”

“I know nothing of the sort.”

“Yes, you do,” said Lily. Luke had heard that tone of utter sincerity before and had himself been tricked by it. For the moment Lily always believed what she was
saying
. That was what made her trickery so efficient, for there was self-deception in it, too, and it was that that took you off your guard.

“Besides, you can be alone in your room, if you want to be alone. The house is big enough, God knows.” Lily looked round the room in search of some familiar object she apparently did not find. “I could never understand why Charles didn’t like flowers,” she said. “They’re so good for the nerves.”

“Charles didn’t like anything,” said Maggie. It was said to annoy Lily, and Luke wondered why. It wasn’t the time to annoy anybody.

Lily looked round the room again, perhaps hoping to find something of Charles in it. There wasn’t anything of Charles in it. “Luke can’t stay here, you know,” she said.

“I’ll stay at the Fairmont and come over,” said Luke firmly. He wasn’t going to be beaten at whatever game it was she was playing.

Lily smiled apologetically, which was her technique. “It wouldn’t look right with Charles scarcely dead.”

“He isn’t buried yet,” said Luke. “I thought you got me up here to help bury him.” He was angry with
himself
. He had been pushed around by Lily before.

Maggie looked pale. That state of auto-intoxication that had kept her under control was beginning to wear off.

“It’s bound to look odd if he comes here too much,” said Lily.

“You just want things your own way. You can’t always do that,” said Maggie. “I want him here.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t the point.”

The three of them stared at each other. Luke was
uneasy
. He had himself to think of, as well as Maggie. The thought that Lily knew that and was counting on it
decided
him to fall on Maggie’s side.

“In that case you can pay my retainer,” he told Lily. “And it’s steeper than it used to be.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Lily coolly. Despite her weight she was still a pretty woman, not with a prettiness of feature, but with something she had deliberately
invented
that suited her very well. She thought it made her invincible.

“You had to phone him,” said Maggie. “There was nothing else to do.”

“And he came,” said Lily, and chuckled. He did not want them to quarrel. It made them ugly and he did not like to see Maggie ugly. Her eyes had the rabbit anxiety of an animal that would like to be stroked but is afraid of being eaten. But they were not really quarrelling over him, but over something else. He did not care to be their symbol.

“There’s something you’d better know before you go on with this,” he said. “We went to the beach house. It had been searched. As we left the police car was coming down. Whoever searched the house probably called the police. And if I know Charles, whoever searched the house wasn’t there casually.”

Lily thought that over. “What did they find?” she asked.

He felt the picture-case in his pocket but saw no
reason to mention it. He needed something on his side. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s not the point. The point is, what were they looking for?”

Lily looked considerably less at ease. Maggie merely looked blank. Whatever it was either of them knew, it was Lily who knew it. He was pleased.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Lily. “Charles never kept anything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” But she did not look sure.

“You’ve no idea what it could have been?”

Lily hesitated. “No,” she said. “Nobody ever went up there. Even I’ve never been up there.”

Maggie got up and made for the door. Lily half rose and then sank down again, with a glance at Luke. She folded her hands, thinking, and pretended to examine the cover of
Vogue
on the sofa beside her. Luke followed Maggie outside.

He found her standing in the hall. He took her arm and led her up the stairs. She was walking compulsively, and he tried to slow her down. He had never been
upstairs
in this house before, but he gathered that she would make for her room.

In the upstairs hall she stopped. The arrangement of this part of the house was odd. The oval of the stairs touched the wall. Closets were set on either side of a door, and the door itself led to a dark corridor that was much too narrow, so that the light was dim, coming from either end of the house and never meeting in the middle. The upstairs corridor had a shut-up look that suggested that Charles had not precisely encouraged guests, but it was spotlessly clean.

Maggie turned to the left and stopped again.

“Which room?” he prompted gently.

“I don’t know.” She stared at the closed doors. “I don’t want to go in alone. You’d better come in with me.” She opened a door and let him step in first. It was a small bedroom furnished in a decorator’s idea of what a woman’s room should be, and hence offensively feminine, with a sly masculine touch that only brought out the flounces. It contained a chair, a bureau, a bed, and a dressing-table. It gave the impression that people did not live in this house, but camped out in it. She looked round the room nervously, eyeing the far door. He thought he understood.

“Would you like me to take a look round?” he asked. She nodded and he went over to the door. It led to a large dressing-room, lined with drawers and sliding panels, and lit by a skylight. Half out of curiosity, half to reassure himself as well as her, he pulled open the drawers and slid back the panels.

To his surprise he saw that Charles’s clothes occupied almost as much space as her own. Charles appeared to have had a passion for buying things in sets of two and five. Everything was of the best quality, but everything was smartly nondescript. His clothes were like uniforms. The shoes, for so tall a man, were absurdly small. The jewellery, in a neat blue box, was of silver, not gold.

His clothes were much better kept than Maggie’s. Maggie’s seemed to be crowded in grudgingly, in any loose corner. Luke closed the drawers and closets,
wondering
if he should go through the pockets of the suits, but sure that he would have found nothing there. He opened the door of the bathroom. It was finished in turquoise
tile with chrome plate, and it told him nothing. Charles’s toiletries were in the cabinet above the wash basin. He had used almost anonymous cosmetics, neither cheap nor well known, but he had also used a straight razor. There was a worn and obviously old case of them, carefully placed on the bottom shelf of the cabinet. They were in beautiful condition. There was also a stick of lavender pomatum. He was puzzled by it until he
remembered
that, of course, it was for Charles’s beard. He put it back and went into Charles’s bedroom, which was closed up and thick with shadows.