Time Out of Mind (62 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
He usually stayed down at the Lenox House. Or some
times at the Indian Harbor Hotel.” Corbin grinned on say
ing that and shook his head. The feel of Gwen's cheek
against his knee told him she was smiling, too, with the
same degree of bemusement. Odd, how they were both get
ting so used to it. A question would come out of the blue whose answer he should not have known, but the question
was asked and the answer was there. Corbin could see both hotels in his mind. The Indian Harbor Hotel was a rambling
mansard-roofed affair down on the water near where the
Indian Harbor Yacht Club is now. And the Lenox House
was on the Post Road at the top of Greenwich Avenue.
Funny. Now that he thought of it, the red brick office build
ing standing there had always seemed out of place and here,
suddenly, is the reason.
There were hops at the Lenox House every Saturday
night. And tea dances on Sunday afternoons. And Mar
garet's club met there Wednesdays. Margaret's club. There
was something, Corbin thought, something troubling about
Margaret's club that he wished she'd told him about before
the damage was done, but Corbin couldn't think what that
damage was. Anyway, he didn't want to dwell on troubling
thoughts. He wanted to remember roller-skating down at
Ray's Hall for the first time in his life. Margaret coaxing him onto the polished skating surface, swearing she'd stay at his arm to steady him, and then treacherously shoving
him and sending him flailing the length of the rink. He
wanted to remember walking barefoot with her along the
beach, digging for clams and collecting fresh mussels by
the bucket. And canoeing with her down the Mianus River.
And band conceits under the stars. And yachting on the
Sound, carrying Jonathan along in a hamper if the seas were
calm enough. There was so much to do.
Greenwich was booming like a frontier mining town that
year. A number of New York families had long kept sum
mer homes there, but now, with reliable train or packet boat
service that could have them in the city within an hour and
a half, many were staying in Greenwich year round, and
they began telling their friends about the many advantages
of life in Connecticut. Almost no crime, no street ruffians,
no foul-smelling mixture of soot and powdered horse drop
pings coating every garment, to say nothing of every throat.
And the friends came. By the dozen, it seemed, every summer month. Building fine homes within easy reach of the station or of the pier at the Indian Harbor Hotel. Forming
clubs to replace those they'd left in New York. Athletic clubs, yacht clubs, riding clubs, shooting clubs, and, of
course, the full assortment of gardening, sewing, literary,
and civic betterment clubs for the ladies. Tilden considered
joining a new tennis and archery club, mostly for Mar
garet's sake, because these sports were now considered
suitable exercise for ladies of fashion. At a luncheon given for prospective members, all went well enough until one of
the founders rose to assure Tilden that he could safely em
brace the sport of tennis because it, unlike baseball and
boxing, for example, was not a game that would offer any
attractions to the lower orders. Tilden glanced across the
table at Margaret, who was crossing her eyes at him, a
certain sign that a giggling fit would soon follow. His own face aching, he made his excuses and tried to get her to the
carriage park before she erupted. Neither of them made it.
The Riverside Yacht Club and the Indian Harbor Yacht Club had each opened during their first summer in Green
wich. Members of both clubs, men well
known to Tilden
in New York business and social circles, had invited him
to join their number. He chose the Riverside. It was a bit
farther away, closer to the original Greenwich settlement
now called Sound Beach, but the charming little clubhouse was on the mainland while that of the Indian Harbor Club
was on an island offshore, the better, he'd heard it said, to
discourage women from hanging about. That was enough
for Tilden. He surprised Margaret with the purchase of a
twenty-foot naphtha launch, which he named Mad Meg in
honor of an infamous tickler he once knew. In his mind,
Corbin could see Margaret at the helm of that launch, its
throttle turned on full, slashing through waves, her clothing
soaked through, her face split in a happy grin as Tilden
muttered silent prayers that rocks and lobster buoys would
have the good sense to stay out of her way.
Corbin smiled for Tilden. He was having a good time.
He deserved it. They .both did. Gwen Leamas, who was
hearing a bit more than the usual bits and pieces this time,
smiled with him.
“
You'd think he would have been nervous,” Corbin said
to her, “about all these new people coming out from New
York at the same time.”
“
What new people?”
“
People like him. Businessmen. Men who might have
been clients at Georgiana Hastings's house and who might
have seen Margaret there.”
”
I suppose.” She shrugged. “But according to you, she
didn't sleep with any of them.”
“
She just played the piano, I'm pretty sure.”
“
Then she probably wouldn't be recognized. Remem
bering a woman from a profile bent over a keyboard is not
the same as seeing a face you've slobbered over while
pumping away at her body.”
Corbin frowned.
“
Sorry. That was a bit tacky.”
“
What's wrong, sweetheart?” He touched her.
“
It's nothing to do with Margaret, I guess. It's just that
lying under boozy rich men for money is not my favorite
vision of a woman.”
“
Well, I wouldn't like to think of you that way, either. But you could have done it, for all I know. You could be
just as terrific as you are and still have spent two or three
years as a hooker building a bank account before you came
over from England to start fresh.”
“
That doesn't happen to be a male fantasy of yours, does
it?” she asked.
Corbin let out a sigh. “I'm just saying it wouldn't nec
essarily have changed you. If those pilots who spent six or
seven years in North Vietnamese prison camps could get
through all the beatings and degradation by managing to
put their minds in neutral, I don't know why a prostitute couldn't do the same thing and then put it all behind her.
Everyone has something that they have to try to put behind
them.”
Like Bigelow, Corbin thought darkly, and what Bigelow
had done to him.
“
Okay, so I've been a high-class London whore. What are your black secrets?”
”
I didn't say high class. That's your story.”
“
Don't be a smart-ass.” She took his drink. “While I'm
refilling this you can prepare to make a full confession and
it better be juicy.”
Corbin watched her leave the room by the door where
Laura Hemmings had stood. And hugged Margaret. And
was her friend. But was ruining everything. What was it
about Laura Hemmings? High-class whore. Those words
popped into Corbin’s mind when he thought about Aunt
Laura, but that was impossible. Out of the question. She
was so small and dainty. And nice. She would sit on this
floor rolling a rubber ball to him, a white one with red stars,
or she would crawl after him, making buzzing sounds like
a bee, and try to sting him on his leg with her finger, or
she would sit him on her lap at her piano and help him
pick out tunes. No, Aunt Laura could never have been a
whore. But she must have known about Margaret because
she was trying to protect her. From what, though? Expo
sure, maybe, or the fear of it. Yet Margaret had been happily out in public with Tilden all that spring and summer.
What happened?
More names.
Gould.
Colonel Mann and his scandal sheet. Carling. The cop,
Clubber Williams. And Bigelow. Always Bigelow. A name
that has nothing to do with any of this.
the reason for Margaret's new name in the first place. They
wouldn't just have gone away. But as many as three years must have gone by since those items first began turning up
in
Town Topics.
Corbin knew that because he had a clear
memory of himself, out on the front lawn, trying to swing
a cut-down bat at that same white rubber ball. There's Tilden, lobbing it. He's wearing a striped shirt, no collar, and an open vest. See? I've got to be at least two in that scene,
but much younger when I'm looking up at Aunt Laura. All
these scenes, all these names, keep jumping around.
Sequence.
Maybe the problem is sequence.
up. They come in disconnected flashes. Random sparks,
Sturdevant says, from genetic imprints. Everybody gets
them. But they come so out of context that almost everybody brushes them off and decides they don't mean any
thing.
Go back. Pick up with Colonel Mann. Or with Jay Gould. Tilden wouldn't just have let that lie. Gould
wouldn't have, either.
Sequence. Try Mann first.
Corbin closed his eyes and called up the Santa Claus face
of William D' Alton Mann as he'd seen it that day in the
publisher's hack. It came, but it would not focus. Just bits
and pieces. Words and facial expressions. Corbin tried to
concentrate harder, but a part of him became impatient with
the effort and said it didn't matter. The colonel was a minor
player. Gould, then. Try Jay Gould. Corbin erased the scene
in the hack and replaced it with the melancholy face of
Mephistopheles. That's what they called him—the Mephi
stopheles of Wall Street. And he heard Gould's high-pitched voice ... Hold it. Gould didn't have a high voice.
It was low and soft, very measured, because if he took in
too much air he'd risk a coughing fit. The high voice
sounded more like Teddy. Teddy Roosevelt. Corbin wiped
Gould aside to look for Teddy's face, but all he could see was a door with smoked glass. The voice seemed to be behind it, shouting, not angry but shouting. Don't waste
time trying to make sense of this. Teddy's always shouting about something. It seems like his normal voice some days.
Talk about fragments!
Let's try this one more time; he decided. Chronologi
cally.
What do we know?
know that Mann would not agree to lay off in return for a mere lifetime subscription because it was Jay Gould's wish
that the heat be kept on. Mann was very open about that. But a dollar was a dollar, and he did sell Tilden that in
formation about Carting. What would Tilden have done
with it? Wouldn't he have gone to Gould to make some
kind of a deal? If Gould stayed out of his personal life,
Tilden would not reveal what he knew about Carting.
Gould just might have folded, at least until he had some
new cards. The last thing Gould needed, as Mann pointed
out, was for his business enemies to know he'd been
plucked. That he'd hired a total fraud, a confidence man, a convict. Worse, he'd hired a Jew who had denied his Jew
ishness, just as Gould was suspected of adding an extra
vowel to his name in order to grease his way into the Prot
estant business community.