Hollis smiled, fired the engine and pulled away.
The length of the yew hedge that flanked the entrance gates of the Wallace property on Further Lane gave some indication of the scale of the plot, close on a hundred yards wide, while the height of the hedge concealed all else from prying eyes. The white wooden gates, discreet but imposing, were open and Hollis guided the patrol car through them, slowing only to read the name painted in neat black capitals on a board – Oceanview – proof that wealth and imagination didn’t always make for natural bedfellows. All the properties on Further Lane gave directly on to the ocean at the rear.
He always found it strange when he entered the colony, this narrow belt of oceanfront the wealthy had claimed as their own. A mile to the south of Main Street, it was in East Hampton, but not of it. There were no stores, no filling stations, no bars or boarding houses. In fact, there was almost no trade whatsoever, nothing that might remind the residents of how they had amassed their fortunes. There were simply stretches of half-glimpsed residential grandeur, hedged and fenced, pegged out and parceled off.
Hollis had heard that some purchasers would happily pay too much for a house, inflating the value of surrounding real estate, thereby ensuring that the diminishing number of vacant plots would only ever be occupied by those of their kind. Maybe it was just rumor, but he somehow doubted it. There was a chilling simplicity to both the logic and the formula.
All you needed was the money, and for those with less than others there were alternatives – the roads once, twice, three times removed from the waterfront avenues that fronted the ocean and skirted the shores of Georgica Pond.
On the map, Georgica Pond always reminded him of a startled marsupial settled on its haunches, its upturned snout, pointed ears, forelegs and tail formed by the larger creeks and coves which ran into the main body of water. At over a mile and a half in length from top to toe, ‘pond’ was something of a misnomer. It extended from the highway to the ocean, effectively demarcating East Hampton from Wainscott and the other communities further west.
Once open to the sea, a vicious hurricane had ripped through the area in 1938, and in a few brief hours scooped up thousands of tons of sand from the ocean bed, plugging the broad tidal gut as nonchalantly as a man might stop a bottle with a cork.
The summer colony had borne the full brunt of that freakish storm, exposed as the houses were on the high dunes and sandy bluffs that fronted the ocean. Nowhere suffered more than the Maidstone Club. Dozens of its colorful beachside cabanas were reduced to matchwood within minutes and littered across the slope leading up to the clubhouse. Paradoxically, the devastating force of the hurricane ensured the colony’s survival. After all, was this not the very reason the wealthy had come here, to stare Nature in the face, to stand mute with wonder before Her? Besides, many of them had wisely over-insured their properties and duly snatched a tidy profit from the jaws of misfortune. The pioneering spirit rekindled and reinforced, an alarming number of industrialists, financiers, publishers, actors and artists had blown in on the back of that hurricane, despite the advent of war.
Maybe the tide would turn again, as it had during the Depression. It was unlikely. Even in these uncertain times, Hollis had counted no fewer than four houses under construction on Pondview Lane while driving to the Wallace residence, the bearer of bad news.
Assuming the Medical Examiner’s initial prognosis was correct, Lillian Wallace had drowned the previous day, and as he guided the patrol car down the serpentine driveway Hollis wondered why no one had reported her missing. He hated this moment, the nervous shuffle of his feet on a foreign doorstep, the downturned gaze, the mumbled words of comfort for a total stranger – ‘I’m sorry’ – the unavoidable postscript, hopelessly inadequate.
He pulled to a halt a respectable distance from the main entrance, instinctively, as if the area immediately in front of the door were somehow reserved for the exclusive use of the family and their own motor cars. What had Abel said? Lillian Wallace at the wheel of a swanky roadster. There was certainly no sign of the vehicle out front.
Even with his untrained eye Hollis could tell that the house, however imposing, was an ugly affair, uncertain of its identity, overblown, with all the discreet grandeur of a rooster puffing out its chest. It was as if the architect had thrown everything in his repertoire at the building in the hope that something pleasing to his client would stick. Over one hundred feet long, the walls were stuccoed in the English style and swathed in Virginia creeper. The vine-covered pergolas suggested an Italo-American villa, but the hipped and shingled roof was too steeply pitched for the effect to be convincing. The roof was interrupted at the sides by eyelid dormers from another stylistic epoch, and in the middle by twin gables that descended to a wide porticoed entrance. This central section looked as if it had been bolted on later, almost as an afterthought. Apart from its near symmetry, about the only thing the hybrid building had going for it were the exquisite formal gardens that rolled off in all directions.
As Hollis tugged on the bell-pull he spotted an elderly gardener observing him from beside a rose arbor, squinting beneath the brim of his straw hat, water arcing from the hose in his hand. There must be someone at home or he would have approached by now. Sure enough, there was the clatter of shoes on a wooden floor from inside the house, and the front door swung open to reveal a small, trim woman dressed in a maid’s uniform. Her long dark hair, laced with strands of gray, was pulled back tightly off her face. When she spoke, her voice betrayed a faint accent.
‘Good afternoon.’ Almost immediately, her hand went to her mouth. ‘O Dio, no …’ She had read it in his eyes.
‘Is there … I mean, are the Wallaces at home?’
‘Lillian. Where is she? Is she all right?’ Her eyes pleaded with him.
Procedure dictated that he speak to the family first, if they were present. ‘Are they here, the Wallaces?’
‘No,’ she choked.
It was Thursday. Still in the city, probably. Wouldn’t be up till the weekend.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Rosa.’
‘May I come in, Rosa?’
Four
For the third time that day Manfred Wallace inhaled the heady scent of victory. He leaned forward over the backgammon board and stared at the dice. Six and five. The gamble had paid off.
‘God damn it, Manfred.’
‘Language, Peter, I believe the Chairman’s within earshot.’
Peter Carlson arched his long neck. Sure enough, Wheaton Blake, Chairman of the club’s Card and Backgammon Committee, was seated near the bar, observing them from behind a glass of chilled white port. Peter gave a coy smile and received a guarded nod of the head in return from the Chairman: Apology accepted. This time.
‘You lucky bastard,’ muttered Peter under his breath.
Manfred didn’t believe in luck, or if he did, that it was the just reward of the skillful. Behind in the race almost from the first, he had played a faultless bar point holding game, gradually eroding White’s advantage. Still ahead, Peter had been obliged to break his midpoint first, exposing himself to a double hit.
This was the one moment Manfred’s bold stratagem had been geared towards – a pyrrhic victory or certain defeat to be determined by one roll of the dice. Ideally, he required six and five. He not only required them, he deserved them, he had earned them, they were his by right. The dice, it seemed, had agreed with him. Coming off the bar, Peter had tried valiantly to bring his two rear men home; but the game had slipped away from him along with the five hundred dollars riding on it.
‘Whiskey?’ asked Manfred.
‘Why not?’
Manfred caught the eye of a waiter polishing glasses behind the bar and the young man hurried over.
‘Two whiskeys and soda please, George.’
‘Just a needle for me,’ said Peter.
‘Of