“It’s wonderful, Dodo.”
She was silent a moment. He saw the tired lines deepen in her face.
“I suppose it is,” she said gravely. “It doesn’t have a lot of happy memories for me. Bob Linton and I used it for a playroom. You can still smell juniper in the bathroom, I expect. Sometimes I think if it hadn’t been for prohibition, Bob Linton and I . . . maybe we wouldn’t have made such a mess of things.”
She looked at the circular staircase in the corner. “That goes to the clock tower. Actually, all this is the gardeners’ domain, not mine. They graciously permit me to use it sometimes. It was sweet of Caxey to ask me if you could have it, instead of asking Jan Vranek. The tower’s still boarded—even when I promised Vranek you wouldn’t climb after a few drinks. And don’t go down to the Rock at night, drunk or sober. A friend of ours tried it.” She shivered a little. “That was the end of our parties here.”
She went over to the sofa in front of the dark paneled fireplace and sat down wearily. “It’s funny, you know. It didn’t depress me this way when Moulton was getting it ready for you, with old Vranek standing guard to keep us from committing sacrilege.” She opened her bag aimlessly and let it slide off her lap onto the cushions. “Caxey said you needed a rest. I don’t often think kindly of my father . . . but I thought he’d be rather pleased to have you here. He always felt so bitterly about not having any son of his own to go to war. And about my not having any.”
She shook her head quickly. “But this is stupid. I guess the doctor depressed me.”
“The doctor?”
“Didn’t Nikki tell you that’s why I wasn’t home?”
Fish shook his head, watching her gravely, with rising concern.
“It’s absurd, of course.” She put her head back against the slip cover and closed her eyes. “It’s maddening, actually. I just can’t sleep any more. I can’t eat. I’m so jumpy I can’t sit still five minutes. I drink decaffeinized coffee and smoke hay with all the nicotine out of it. If I get to sleep, I have such nightmares poor Nikki’s had to move out in self-defense. It’s horrible.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“Not a damned thing. Is my marriage successful? It’s divine. How long has this been going on? Good grief, how do I know? it started in Europe, I guess, but I never had time to go to bed, anyway, so it didn’t seem to matter. Then old Caxey started calling me up every other day, and I guess that worried me. All he was doing was waiting to hear me say my marriage was going sour, which it wasn’t and isn’t. Caxey’s a ghoul.”
She got up and moved impatiently around. “I guess it’s my mother,” she said abruptly. “She died of cancer. The doctor said if I was scared, I ought to go to a hospital for a checkup. But that really scares me. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to know it. Or have Nikki know it. I don’t want him to see a death’s-head every time he takes me in his arms.”
She jerked around to the mirror over the telephone table. “Just look at me, Fish! I’m horrible. This afternoon, I was crossing the street to my car, and right where I’d parked there was a chalk cross on the curb and ‘Death’ printed under it. I’m not superstitious, but—”
“Oh, nuts, Dodo,” Fish said. “It was just some kid—”
“I know, but why was it right where I parked?” she asked sharply. “But it isn’t that. It’s my conscience, I guess. I’ve never told Nikki he won’t have a penny if I die . . . and Jennifer’ll be glad to see him starve. . . .”
She came back to him and gripped his arm. “What’ll I do? Shall I tell him, Fish?”
He felt his arm stiffen under her grip. If she told de Gradoff, the death’s-head would move to Jennifer Linton.
He stood there rigidly, not knowing how to answer her, when her hand relaxed abruptly. She was looking past him, her eyes widened, out of the window and across the courtyard at her own house. He turned. The stable loft was level with the second story of the house. Through the windows between its shingled turrets, flooded with sunlight, the master bedroom was like a lighted stage, and across it was the open door of de Gradoff’s dressing-room. Or the room he was dressing in, fairly from scratch. With him was the lovely Alla Emlyn, in a black bra and black pantie girdle, pausing occasionally to talk to him as she brushed her long black hair.
Dodo’s hand dropped from his arm.
“Well, bless me.” She turned away, brows arched. “What was I saying? Let’s skip it, shall we? I dare say he’ll manage.” She moved over to the door, not taking it as lightly as she pretended. “I’ll go along. I ought to be there when—” She glanced at her watch. “Good heavens, I wonder what’s happened to her? She promised to be here by four.”
“Who?” Fish asked.
“Jennifer. You knew she was coming, didn’t you?”
“Next week, I—”
“She changed her plans. She was going to stay with some South American friends in Washington, but she decided to drive Anne Linton and her new husband to New York instead to catch their boat to Europe. Anne’s husband gave her the car for graduation. You knew Anne had copped herself a gold mine, I guess.”
“Jennifer wrote Mr. Reeves.”
“I should be pleased, I suppose, but I’m not.” There was a waspish edge to her voice. “Now Anne can afford to keep my daughter, I won’t have any control over her. She’s only coming here to get out of Anne’s way. Not because I want her to. You said not to make her come, so I began to feel like a dirty dog and say, darling, you can stay in Virginia. But not at all. She’s coming, and will I lend her the money to pay off the mortgage on Dawn Hill Farm as a wedding present for Anne Linton, for the love of heaven. I could have killed her.”
She laughed irritably. “I suppose, of course, I should have given her the car, instead of letting Anne’s husband do it. But that thing of Nikki’s cost all I’ve got to put in cars this year. He was so crazy to have it. Cars are the one thing he knows all about. He sat around New York three days getting a touring permit so he could drive it up here himself.”
So he could look up the story of James V. Maloney, is what you mean, lady.
“Alla was in New York,” Dodo went on. “He was going to bring her, but she decided to fly straight up with me and Peter. She adores Peter. I felt so rotten I didn’t want to stay myself. And I don’t know why I thought I’d feel better here. I hate the place. Sometimes I think I just come back to spite those two old monsters out there in the greenhouses. But then I think it’s because I’ve lost something, and maybe it’s here I’ll find it. I don’t know. But I was showing you the drains, wasn’t I?”
She reached for the door next to the hall door, making a brittle attempt to be gay again. “This is your kitchen. I thought you’d like to get your own breakfast.”
“Don’t bother, Dodo. I’ll find things.”
He stayed where he was over by the fireplace while she went inside. Then, as she didn’t answer, he waited a moment before an odd feeling of alarm made him start to go to her. As he did she came quickly out of the kitchen and closed the door sharply behind her. Her face was chalk-white under her makeup.
“Dodo . . . what’s the matter?”
“Nothing, darling. I . . . I’m just losing my mind, I guess. But I . . . I’ve got to go now.”
She opened the hall door. “If I could go to sleep! Just once!” Her voice rose hysterically. “It’s driving me crazy. And that stupid doctor. He just looked at me as if I was lying to him. All he did was give me some sleeping pills. And I told