chapter 23

She was gone for some time. When she returned, she had changed her riding costume for a dress and was carrying a book in her hand.

“I gave him a tranquilizer,” she said, “and got him to lie down. These grim realities are very hard on William. He lives in dreams, he always has. He came out here after the first war with the dream of founding an empire and a dynasty. All he had to start with was a few thousand dollars which he’d saved and some experience in the Pennsylvania oil fields. And he made the dream come true.” Her eyes swept the room, which looked very much like a dream that had solidified around the dreamer. “Now it’s breaking up around him, and he can’t stand it.”

“You put it to him pretty strongly about Laurel.”

“I have to, or he’ll go on dreaming about her. Men are so unrealistic where women are concerned. It’s been obvious for at least fifteen years that Laurel Lennox is a schizoid personality. But her family go on treating her as if she were perfectly normal, and being surprised and dumfounded when she turns out not to be.”

“Are you a psychiatrist?”

“No, I am not a psychiatrist.” But she gave me a look which conveyed the idea that where Laurel was concerned I was just another dreaming man. “I have studied some psychology, and I know Laurel.”

“You’ve known her for fifteen years?”

“Longer than that. I started teaching at River Valley School eighteen years ago. I’ve known Laurel since she was eleven or twelve. And she’s always lived in a world of her own, a not very happy world where not very nice things happen.”

“That’s true of a lot of children. Ordinarily, though, we don’t blame them.”

“I’m not blaming her, for heaven’s sake. I’m trying to inject a little realism into this situation. It would be a poor bargain for all of us if Laurel picked up a little money or a little loving at the expense of breaking her grandfather’s heart. I mean that literally. He’s old enough, and vulnerable enough, and enough involved with her to be killed by it.”

“We don’t want that to happen,” I said, thinking of the powerful reasons the woman had for keeping him alive.

Her dark gaze probed at my face. “You’re not taking me quite seriously, are you?”

“I take you very seriously, Mrs. Hapgood. I always will,” I added half seriously.

She smiled, and her whole appearance changed, the way a young girl’s will when her feelings are touched. “Then I’ll show you something that may interest you.”

It was in the book in her hands, a large thin volume with the title River Valley Annual printed across the front of the green cloth binding. She opened it on a refectory table which stood against the wall, and leafed through the pages as I looked over her shoulder.

There were some stories and poems by the River Valley students, reports on soccer and girls’ hockey and the debating season, a message from the headmaster, and a double-page spread of photographs of teachers. Among them I recognized Connie Hapgood herself, a girl in her twenties, with shaggy hair, wearing a bright appealing unfinished look.

She lingered over her picture for a moment, as if the girl she had been had taken her by surprise. “I forgot I was in this book.”

“You haven’t changed much.”

“Liar. That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen long years.”

With visibly nervous fingers, she turned some more pages to the photographs of the graduating seniors. The pictures were captioned with the students’ names and predictions of their futures, evidently written by their classmates. Connie pointed out a rather fat-faced boy with an uneasy smile and dark angry dubious eyes. His name was Harold Sherry, and his prediction was: “World’s greatest gourmet. Seriously, when Harold discovers himself, it will be a major discovery!”

Connie read it aloud in a meditative tone, and added, “I wonder if Harold ever did discover himself.”

“Is this the Harold who ran off to Vegas with Laurel?”

“This is the Harold. The school expelled him, of course, in addition to what the court did, and he never did graduate. But it was too late to take his name and picture out of the yearbook.”

“What did the court do?”

“Put him on probation for six years.”

“That’s fairly stiff.”

“I agree. All he did, after all, was run off with a girl who was perfectly willing to go along. Who may have instigated the Las Vegas trip, in fact. But nothing was done to Laurel, because she was two or three years younger than Harold. And things got worse for him. He broke probation and ran away, and they brought him back and put him in jail for a while. His father turned his back on him, which did him no good with the court.”

“Who is his father?”

“Roger Sherry. He was an engineer, and he lived here in El Rancho at the time. His wife still does. Mr. Sherry and his wife split up, I think over Harold. That little escapade in Las Vegas was really the end of the family.”

I picked up the book and carried it to the window. Harold Sherry’s unformed face seemed vaguely familiar, and it grew more familiar as I studied it. Under the thick flesh which the boy had worn like a mask, I thought I could make out the facial structure of the broad-shouldered man I had seen at Blanche’s last night, and again at Sandhill Lake this afternoon. Both the boy and the man had the eyes of an angry dreamer.

The woman came up behind me, so close that I could feel the movement of her breath in the still air:

“Is Harold involved in this present mess?”

“He may be.”

“You can speak frankly,” she said. “I’m on Laurel’s side, whatever you may think. The split in the family isn’t of my making.”

“I assumed you were on her side. Anybody in his right mind would want to get her back.”

“Are Harold and Laurel together, Mr. Archer?”

“I don’t know. They may be.”

“Does that mean that the kidnapping—the alleged kidnapping—is a put-up job, as it was the other time?”

“It’s possible,” I said. “But events never repeat themselves exactly, especially in crime. There are too many variables, and the world has changed in the last fifteen years. It’s a good deal more dangerous. Harold may be, too.”

“Did he shoot Jack?”

“Someone who looked like him did.”

“You’re hedging, aren’t you?”

“I saw the man who shot Jack from a long way off. I can’t be sure of the identification on the basis of that and a fifteen-year-old picture.” I closed the book and gave it back to her.

“Don’t you want to know where his mother lives?”

“That was going to be my next question.”

“Her house is on Lorenzo Drive.” She took me to the front door and pointed across the valley. “It’s a pink stucco house standing by itself on a knoll. I think the poor woman lives there alone. There are quite a few lonely women in this place. They move out here with their husbands and think they’ll be taken care of forever and ever. But then something happens and the whole illusion breaks down.”

Her voice was full of feeling; she might have been talking about herself. I couldn’t tell if she was a hard woman who had moments of softness, or a soft woman who could be hard on occasion. It wasn’t easy to tell, about any woman.

I thanked her for her trouble and went out to the Cadillac. William Lennox was sitting behind the wheel out of sight of the front door, where Connie Hapgood lingered. He had changed his dude clothes for a dark suit and a homburg in which he looked very old and formal, like somebody getting ready for a funeral.

He regarded me truculently, but I got the impression that a light breeze would blow him over and that any kind of blow, physical or mental, would shatter him.

“I want you to drive me into town,” he said. “Somebody has to pick up the pieces, and it looks as if I’m elected. Jack’s out of the picture, and Ben Somerville isn’t worth the powder to blow him to hell. He’s a born loser. He started out by blowing up his ship and he’s ending up by blowing up my oil business.”

His speech was sibilant and a little slurred, and his voice hurried as though he wanted to get it all out before he forgot what he intended to say. I wondered if it was the tranquilizer he had taken, or if there had been some deep internal change in him.

“Let’s get started,” he said. “I don’t have bloody all day. I want to see my son. Is he badly hurt?”

“I don’t believe so, Mr. Lennox. But he probably won’t be needing any visitors. You better stay here with Mrs. Hapgood.”

“But there are decisions to make.”

“You can make them here.”

His face reddened. “If you won’t drive me, I’ll drive myself. This is my son’s car.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to drive.”

He took off his homburg and punched it with his frail bony fist. “Dammit, don’t tell me what to do. I don’t allow it. Get out and I’ll drive myself.”

His words were bold and angry, but his voice was uncertain. His white hair clung like smoke to his spotted scalp. His eyes kept moving, like water under wind. He seemed to be caught in an old man’s uncertainty, too weak to go but not content to stay.

He looked both angry and grateful when Connie approached the car and spoke to him:

“Mr. Archer isn’t going into town. He has some investigative work to do out here. Anyway, you need a rest now.”

“Who needs a rest?”

“You need a rest. So do I. We both do. Come on, William, or I’ll get Dr. Langdale after you.”

Her voice was maternal and seductive. He got out of the car and put his crumpled homburg on his head. She laughed at him and pushed it down so that his ears stuck out. He laughed, too, pleased and flattered by her horseplay. They walked back toward the house together, a pair of ill-matched comedians making the best of it.

I thought as I drove downhill across the valley that there was something real there after all. No doubt they had made a kind of bargain: that she would stay with him and look after him until he died; then his money would look after her until she died.