Pursued by Shadows (6 page)

“Am I supposed to deduce something very clever from this?” asked Sanders. “Like—the person who wrote this has long hair, a tooth missing, and plays the piano?”

“Don't be silly. Look at it. Look at the difference between the first and second half of the letter.”

“You mean that the first half sounds like a suicide note and the second half like a shopping list?” asked John.

“Precisely.”

“What about the handwriting?”

“Oh—it's hers, all right. Or looks very much like it to me. You can see for yourself.” She took the airmail letter out of the top drawer of her desk and waved it in his direction.

“She doesn't seem concerned about her relationship with your friend Peter,” John remarked.

“That's something else. I'd have said the really bizarre thing in this whole affair is Peter Bellingham claiming to be Jane's lover.”

“Claiming?”

Harriet shook her head. “Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm getting old and my antennae are getting rusty, but Peter strikes me as essentially sexless, and believe me that's not Jane's type. I cannot see her putting up with that sweet, helpless, take-care-of-me-Mummy sort of male. But who knows? People change and I'm probably completely off-base. Pay no attention to me. Still, the more I think about it, the less I believe it,” she added.

John took the two letters and wandered out to the deck to examine them in the subdued light of evening. There was softness in the air; the cold of the weekend had given way to a promise of summer. Harriet had planted herbs and flowers in large pots out here, rendering this sterile, urban space warm and alive. At the moment he would like to tear up these two letters and let them drift on the slight spring breeze until they were far out of his life—and Harriet's. But he couldn't. This whole business might be confused and impossible, but it is important to her, he said to himself firmly, and began to examine the paper in front of him.

“I'm not an expert,” he started.

“Forget the speech,” said Harriet impatiently. “What do you think?”

“My gut reaction is that they're both by the same person, but I'm not sure,” he said. “Honestly not sure. We'd have to check them out with someone at forensic. One of them seems to have been written in a hurry and the other one with great care. That makes it more difficult to tell.”

“Of course it does,” said Harriet, frowning with worry. “Anyone can see that. That's why I needed your opinion.” She paused, wrapping her arms around her body for warmth. “I see it this way. Either Jane wrote both letters or the second one is a forgery. But can you think of any reason why someone would send me a forged letter purporting to be from Jane trying to get me down to Skaneateles?”

Harriet was shivering in her thin silk. “Come in before your freeze,” said John, steering her inside and closing the sliding door. “No—I can't. But I don't know how significant that is. What would you like me to do? See if we can get some sort of response from the locals in Skaneateles? It's easy enough.”

Harriet shook her head. “No. That won't help. I have to go down there. There's something unpleasant going on and for some reason Jane wants my help. Don't look at me like that. When I arrive, I'll get in touch with the local police, saying I had a suicidal letter from my friend and I'm worried about her. They'll come along with me to her house, won't they? So if there's anything—” She paused to look up at Sanders. “I can't get away until after three tomorrow, but that doesn't matter. It really isn't very far.” By now, her voice had dropped to a calculating mutter. “Four hours, maybe a little longer. I'll be there before the sun goes down. There's a nice inn—there should be a room available in the middle of the week. And if it's just a tempest in a teapot, as my mother used to say, then there really are some good buildings there to photograph. It won't be a wasted trip. For God's sake, John, say something. Don't just stand there looking at me.”

“I was waiting for you to finish,” he said, shaking his head. “Harriet, you are incorrigible. You get this letter saying, ‘Dear fly—I'm caught here in the middle of this awful web. Do you think you could come up and help me out of it? Your pal, spider.' I have no idea why your old pal, Jane, or whoever it is, wants you to visit her in some small town—”

“Village, I'd call it,” said Harriet.

“—village, but I doubt if it's for your benefit. Harriet, for chrissake, there you go again, walking straight into the stupidest things.”

“Thanks,” she said coldly. “For the vote of confidence. What are you trying to do? Convince me that I can't look after myself? I had enough of that from Beaumont.”

“Harriet, I know you can look after yourself as much as anyone can—all I'm asking is that you stop trying to prove to the entire world that you're invulnerable.”

“Then stop treating me as if I was made of glass, nagging me every time I set foot outside alone.”

“I know you're not made of glass. But you live in the middle of an area where some maniac has been attacking women; you wander around as if you were untouchable; and then you complain that Beaumont destroyed your nerve. If he did, I see no signs of it. You pay no attention to the real dangers in the world and get all upset over one stupid bastard's bullying.”

“I don't.” Harriet began pacing back and forth, pausing to pick up books and put them back in the bookcase. “And besides, it has to do with trust and betrayal, not courage. That bastard who's out there stalking women—he's not a friend of mine. I never liked him. I never thought he was a nice man, who would treat me as an equal. I did believe in Guy—for a while, anyway. It was a—a shock.”

“So it was a shock. You're a tough woman. Tough and courageous. That's why I fell in love with you. And I am not Guy Beaumont. I don't like women who turn out to be marshmallows and I don't have any desire to turn any woman into a marshmallow. I wish you would remember that.”

“A marshmallow?” said Harriet, in an odd voice, and sat down suddenly on the chesterfield.

He crouched in front of her, his hands on her knees. “Harriet, please don't go down there. I'm begging you, all right? Write her, telephone her, find out what the problem is, but please don't go down there alone.” He looked intently into her face. “Say something, will you?” he said. “You're driving me crazy.”

“I don't understand what's worrying you,” said Harriet, at last. “The worst thing that can happen is that I'll end up furious at Jane—but I'll survive that.” And she started to laugh.

“And don't laugh, dammit,” said Sanders. “Listen to me. This is serious. Both Jane and your friend, Peter, believe that Beaumont is capable of killing her in a rage. And I'm inclined to agree with them. She wants you down there to protect her from Beaumont and I don't like that idea very much.”

“I can't help laughing,” she said. “No one's ever called me a marshmallow before. And if you feel that strongly about it, why don't you come with me? Can't you take two days off?”

“Me? Harriet,” he said, clenching his hands with exasperation, “I don't give a damn what happens to your friend Jane. She sounds to me like a first-class bitch and a con artist to boot. Let her get someone in Skaneateles to protect her. Or she can send for your sexless friend Peter. It beats me why you don't toss her letters in the garbage and forget her.”

“She worked for me for a long time,” said Harriet sadly. “And she's not the first person in the world to behave badly because she fell in love. Maybe I'm grateful to her because she solved the problem of Guy Beaumont for me. A bit drastically, maybe, but she did get him out of my life. Permanently. Which you have to admit was a good thing.”

“Well—I refuse to get mixed up in all this. Look what happened to me Thursday. I learned my lesson. Come on, we're going out for dinner.” He stood up and pulled her to her feet, and then brushed his lips very gently over her cheek. “Harriet,” he murmured, “what is going to happen to us?”

“I don't know,” she answered unhappily. “I just don't know.” In one sudden movement, she pulled his head down and kissed him, a soft, lingering kiss that left him breathless and dizzy. “The trouble is that I find myself wanting you,” she whispered, “and that makes it so hard to think clearly. It muddles everything up. I lose track of my motives.”

He pulled her closer, ran his hands down her thighs and realized that she had nothing on under her silky robe. Desire swept clear his mind, leaving no room for anything else. “You don't expect me to help cure you of it, do you?” he said, pulling her back toward the couch. She began undoing a zipper under her chin; impatiently he caught it from her and pulled. The silk robe tumbled in an emerald heap on the polished floor and Harriet's skin glowed in the golden rays of the setting sun. He dropped a kiss on her forehead and set himself to getting rid of his own clothes. “I'm still not letting you drag me to Skaneateles.”

Harriet pulled up in front of police headquarters seconds before the three-thirty deadline turned the street into a No Stopping zone and reached over to fling open the door on the passenger side. Sanders picked up his suitcase and raced across the sidewalk. “You're late,” he said. “I've been standing there like a bloody doorman for twenty minutes.”

“I was just double checking the security arrangements,” said Harriet demurely.

“No need for sarcasm,” he muttered. “And Skaneateles better be pretty damn spectacular, that's all I can say.”

“You'll like the inn. We have a gorgeous room and the food should be good. The rest—well. That's in the lap of the gods, as they say.” And Harriet plunged with dexterity into a string of cars heading west.

“I don't understand why you're so damned interested in Guy Beaumont. I'd have thought he'd be the last person you'd want to talk about,” said Harriet, as she settled into the passenger's seat and opened a flask of coffee.

John paused to ease the car back into the traffic stream pouring away from the bridge at Lewiston. “It's a question of knowing you. I want to find out why you, of all people, got mixed up with someone like Beaumont. And then stuck with him for so long. It didn't seem like you to put up with treatment like that. I was surprised at it,” he said, mildly.

“But I didn't,” said Harriet, stung at the description. “It only happened once, really. Well, twice, sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“I mean sort of,” said Harriet. “Have some coffee and let me bore you with explanations. Guy was convinced that I was cheating on him, which made sense when I found out about Jane. He figured if he was doing it, so was I. Not a very original mind. So, one night he came home drunk and we had a fight. It ended in him throwing me across the room and kicking me a few times.” Her voice was flat and unemotional. “I was surprised, too,” she added sardonically. “We'd had a fair number of screamers but they hadn't finished up like that.”

“What did you do?” asked Sanders, sounding politely interested.

“I went into the bedroom and started throwing his clothes in his suitcase. Then he went all remorseful—I know, don't say it,” she added wryly. “That's what they all do. Anyway, I said any more of that and I'd have the cops on him.”

“But that wasn't the end of it.”

“No, of course not. A couple of weeks later he came home pissed again, tried to clip me on the ear—and missed—and then made a futile attempt to throw me down the stairs. I think he was too drunk to focus on where I was. Anyway, I locked myself in the bedroom and waited until he passed out. Then I packed everything he owned—clothes, paintings, everything—and dumped them on the sidewalk. By God, did I enjoy that. I called his brother to come and get them or I was going to have a bonfire on the lawn. When he arrived, I suggested that he might like to remove Guy as well, before I called the cops. He wasn't exactly thrilled, but he did drag him off with the rest of the trash. So you see, we're not talking about years of broken noses and missing teeth. Anyway, a couple of weeks later Jane told me about the baby, the mystery was solved, and they left for Montreal.”

There was a pause as Sanders negotiated yet another construction site. “What in hell do they live on?” he asked finally.

“Live on?” said Harriet, slightly puzzled. “Oh—I see. You're assuming the starving artist, free-loading on sweet, generous, softhearted me. Well—the free-loading part is true enough. He's incredibly cheap. Pathologically cheap, actually. He's one of those ‘your money is for us to live on and mine is for me to keep' types who can't stand laying out cash no matter how much he has. He squirrels away just about every penny he earns.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. It has nothing to do with youthful deprivation. His father's a gynecologist. Makes pots of money. And Guy's very successful.”

“You told me he was a lousy artist,” said John, suspiciously.

“That's true too. He is a lousy artist. That's not the same thing, as you should realize, John Sanders. He has no eye. He can't
see
things,” she said in exasperation. “It's maddening. But he can do almost anything on a small scale.”

“You mean miniatures?” asked Sanders incredulously.

“No, that's not what I mean, you idiot,” said Harriet and laughed. “I mean,” she went on earnestly, “that he could paint a corner of a great work of art if only someone would tell him what a great work of art was. He has no vision. No soul. You've got this terrific craftsman who can etch, work in clay, pen and ink, oils, watercolours, acrylic, scraps of cloth and garbage—you name it—a man with miracle hands and no brain. But as soon as he tied up with Nina Smithson—do you know the Smithson Gallery? On Scollard, very successful—she figured him out like that, told him exactly what to do and got him into the big league. He began to do very well financially. That, by the way, was when I discovered what a miser he is. Extracting his share of the rent out of him was absolute agony,” she added.

“And Jane? Since you've dragged me all this way for her.”

“Jane. Jane isn't what she seems—ever. She's always startling you. Am I boring you with all this?”

“Not at all.”

“You're just being polite. I can tell. Anyway she's tall, or at least, taller than I am—maybe five nine or so—and thin. She's twenty-seven, or maybe twenty-six. But she has this round, baby face with huge blue eyes, super-bleached hair in a spiky do and she looks about seventeen. And a prize airhead. She isn't. She's a whiz around a darkroom; incredibly quick on the uptake. I suppose, in a way, it was a waste of her brainpower to have her working as my assistant.”

“Then why was she working as your assistant?”

“Well—she just drifted into my life. I found her at a party, crying, because she'd had a fight with her boyfriend and he'd thrown her out. She said she had nowhere to go. I thought she was fifteen—I was ready to call in the child welfare people—but she turned out to be twenty-two. She'd run away from home five or six years before—she's from Lindsay—and she'd been drifting ever since. Very waiflike—the kind people keep taking in. I imagine that's how she'd existed. At that point she had no discernible skills. She'd been working off and on in hamburger joints and she wanted to do something with her life. Something artistic. So I took her home and taught her the basics of photography and turned her into a first-class assistant. She found herself a room and another boyfriend and everything was perfect,” said Harriet with a sardonic grimace, “until bloody Beaumont suddenly noticed her.”

“And you didn't hire another assistant?”

“I couldn't afford her on a steady basis,” said Harriet thoughtfully. “Not without building the business up to a crazy extent, and taking a lot of jobs I didn't want. I had some bad months there when all the money seemed to be going out instead of coming in. There was Jane's salary, and then most days I was feeding Guy and Jane and even Jane's boyfriend, sometimes. She always seemed to be going out with very large people on the edge of starvation. I felt like some ragged, mythic Mother figure, trudging uphill through life, dragging them all behind me. Too much responsibility. I couldn't stand it. Work's easier with an assistant, but life is simpler without one.” She paused to look out the window again. They had passed from industrial tangle to green fields and trees and hills. “I'm much happier now, I think.”

The sun angled over the lake as they stood looking out the window of their room in the inn. After their headlong rush to arrive before sunset, now, with dinner reservations made, any action seemed excessive. “We have an hour. Do you want to look for the house?” asked John.

“It ought to be over there,” said Harriet, pointing to the right. “Five minutes away at most.” She yawned and stretched. “I suppose we'd better go.”

“She was right about the house,” said Harriet. “It's gorgeous.” They were standing in front of an exquisitely restored frame house, its every line balanced and elegant and harmonious. “Look at those windows.”

“It looks pretty deserted too,” said John skeptically, pointing at the “For Sale” sign decorating the lawn. “But what the hell, give it a try.” He strode up to the front door and rang the bell, long and hard. Nothing happened. He rang again, this time peering in the long windows on either side of the door. He could see a graceful staircase, a fireplace, wood floors that glowed in the light of the setting sun, but absolutely no sign of human occupation. “If your friend is living here,” he said, “she has austere tastes. There's no furniture in there that I can see.”

Harriet glowered at him and started to walk around the building, peering through each window as she came to it. “It's lovely inside,” she said, rounding the last corner. “Gorgeous tile work in the conservatory. But you're right. It's empty. Nothing but a few dust balls. Damn.” Her shoulders drooped. “I dragged you all the way out here for nothing.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said John. “The inn's good, and I've got you to myself until Thursday afternoon. That's not nothing. Let's go back and get ready for dinner. I'm starved.”

“Tomorrow we shall make inquiries,” said John cheerfully, carefully dividing the end of a bottle of excellent red between their two glasses. “Check with the police, the real estate company, the fire department—anybody and everybody. In a town this size, it should be a piece of cake to track her down if she's been here. At any rate, someone was here, or the letter wouldn't have been postmarked from the village.”

“You don't mind?”

“Not at all, lady,” he said, raising his glass. “All in a day's work. And then we'll take a cruise on the lake steamer and look at all the scenery and you can take pretty pictures of it.”

“I didn't know there was a steamer,” said Harriet.

“That, lady,” he replied solemnly, “is because you're not a detective.” And he pointed out the window at the pier, where a motor vessel was pulling gently up to its moorings. “The steamer.”

When Jane awoke on Wednesday morning, Amos was standing over her, looking down. “It's late,” he said. “After nine. There's someone in town looking for you. I thought perhaps you'd like to know.”

The last vestiges of drowsiness fled. “Really? Who could be looking for me?” she said, with a weak attempt at airy indifference.

“I don't know,” he said, crouching down so that his eyes were on a level with hers. “But I thought you might. He's an odd-looking guy, with dark hair, medium to tall, heavy build, and he's real anxious to find you. He turned up at Dick Harmon's antique store a good fifteen minutes before it opened, asking about you.”

“Are you sure? Did you get a good look at him?” Jane was now bolt upright.

Amos nodded.

“Dark hair,” muttered Jane, her eyes glazed with panic as she considered possibilities. “Really dark, slicked-down, and greasy-looking? With an English accent? Or brown—I don't know—and shaggy?”

“Harmon's store isn't exactly lit up like a supermarket, you know,” said Amos. “But if I had to choose, I would pick shaggy. It looked pretty dark to me though. But definitely not slicked-down. And nothing like an English accent.”

“Thank God,” murmured Jane, as the specter of the razor faded to the back of her mind again.

“Anyway, since you were in there yesterday—”

“What do you mean? I never—”

“Jane, this is a tiny place and you're a noticeable woman.” He picked up one of her hands and bounced it a little as if he were weighing it. “I know you were there talking to Harmon, okay? Lying makes everything so complicated. You don't have to tell me your life story; just don't lie to me. I don't think you have a whole lot of time for games. So whoever this guy is, he'll track you down pretty soon if you stick around.” He rolled over on one hip and stiffly rearranged his legs until they were stretched out more comfortably in front of him. “And it would be a hell of a lot easier to decide what to do at this point if you'd let me know what it's all about.”

“I can't,” said Jane bleakly. “I'd love to dump all my problems on someone else's shoulders, but I can't. It wouldn't be fair. And besides, I have—well—responsibilities. I know I've been acting like some kind of criminal—but, honestly, I'm not. Can you believe me?”

He shrugged the question away. “The way I see it, you've got two choices: you can find someplace else around here that's a bit more secure or you can get out of the area altogether. Not that I'm trying to kick you out. Personally, I'd just as soon you stayed, but at the moment I don't see how you can manage it.” He looked at his watch. “He's with Harmon now. I'd give the guy fifteen minutes at most to find out you're in town and another hour to figure out you're with me. Believe me, Jane, you can't trust Harmon. Do you hear me? He is not to be trusted. He'd sell his grandmother for five bucks if there was a market for her. Everyone in town knows that and always has.”

She frowned in concentration, partly because of the predicament she was in, partly to cover her surprise at how stupidly obvious her behavior must have been. “I don't want to go,” she said, and was startled to realize that she was telling the truth. “I like it here.”

“Well—we couldn't stay in this house much longer, anyway. It's almost finished and it's up for sale. The men'll be back to work on it Thursday or Friday.” He frowned in concentration. “Right now I have a room in my sister's house but you can't stay there. It's too small and Rebecca's mouth is too big. In two hours the whole town would know your shoe size, along with everything else.” He gazed critically at her, like an assessor valuing an asset. “We might be able to get you a job and a place to stay in Syracuse—that way you wouldn't stand out so much. Can you do anything? Useful I mean.”