“Ruth Lantner,” Geraldine Graham said. “She’s what I had in mind when I said I didn’t want a staff managing me. She and her husband run Calvin and Renee Bayard, oh, they do it well, they’ve been with Calvin since the boy was born. Edwards. One of those old family names people like to give their children. No odder, I daresay, than Darraugh calling his own boy MacKenzie, although Mother tried to change his mind at the time. I remember Mrs. Edwards Bayard-she and my mother had famous feuds. My mother thought she was a hypocrite, with her extraordinary causes and habits-she didn’t allow any alcohol or tobacco in her house, although her husband’s behavior was an open secret in our milieu. Mrs. Edwards thought Mother was an odalisque. Whereas Mother was something far more dangerous.”
I was tempted to follow this historical byway: What had Mr. Edwards Bayard’s behavior been? But I kept to the main topic. “Would Ruth Lantner lie about Whitby coming to the house?”
“Oh, don’t ask me about servants’ characters. I don’t know her well. I daresay she would lie to protect Calvin, probably Renee as well.”
So she expected Lisa to lie to protect her. Which meant if Geraldine Graham was hiding something about Whitby, or Bayard, Lisa would back her up. How nice and feudal.
“I met the Bayards’ granddaughter the other day,” I said.
“Catherine? That’s a sad story, the mother dying when the baby wasn’t a year old. The boy, Edwards, fell apart for a time under the blow. I will say in Renee’s favor that she took on raising her granddaughter without a murmur. What kind of job has she made of it?”
I smiled. “Catherine’s a lively, ardent young person-who so far has run rings around me. And she’s extremely close to her grandmother. Catherine says Calvin wanders over to Larchmont at night.”
“He does; How astonishing.” She gave a dry laugh. “Perhaps in the secret recesses of his mind he is trying to escape Renee.”
“Catherine says her grandfather has a key to Larchmont Hall, that he uses it to let himself in there at night. Is that possible? When I asked Darraugh, he became angry and hung up on me. Why?”
Ms. Graham put her down cup, her jaw working. “Do you have children, young woman? No? They are a mystery. You bear them in your body, you watch over them, but they grow up as strangers. Darraugh’s anger is one of those mysteries to me.”
Once again she danced away from talking about Darraugh and Larchmont. I reverted to the key: Would Calvin Bayard have one?
“I should be most surprised. But we live in a very odd world. Are they looking after him properly? How did he seem?”
“The nurse seems competent. He looks physically fit. He thought I was
his wife. He clung to me and called me `Deenie.’ I always admired himthat was hard.”
Ms. Graham’s hands shook as she picked up her cup. Coffee slopped over the edge and onto her aqua silk skirt. “So clumsy,” she murmured. “The thought of Calvin with his wits wandering is truly unsettling. Send Lisa to me on your way out, young woman.”
My exit cue. I didn’t need to summon Lisa: the maid continued to hover within earshot. As I let myself out, I could hear her clucking soothingly to Geraldine Graham, mother calming infant. The smell on Mr. Bayard’s clothes, urine and talc, came back over me in a shuddering wave. That we all come to this, no matter how far or fast we run, we come to this, not away from it.
CHAPTER 20
Lair of a Star Chamber Man
The emotions of the afternoon left me limp. I didn’t go to my car, but walked aimlessly along the paths that wound through Anodyne Park. Night had fallen while I was in with Geraldine, but the paths were well dotted with fake gas lamps and I found my way easily. Not that I exactly knew what my way was, right now.
It was that time of evening when people were out with their dogs, or heading over to the bar on the shopping strip for a drink. I thought about following a dour couple into the bar, but I’d had too much company the last few hours. I kept walking.
I was too tired to try to make sense of everything I’d heard this afternoon, but the image of Geraldine and her mother kept floating in my mind, Geraldine’s futile rebellions culminating in her unhappy marriage. Culminating, really, in her son Darraugh’s wintry personality. I imagined scenes at the breakfast table, Laura Drummond giving her son-in-law his coffee with a barbed comment on his character, Geraldine slamming out of the house to do-what? I couldn’t imagine her wasting time over bridge or shopping. I didn’t know how she’d spent the years from 1937 until her mother died.
Beyond the bar, the path made a gentle descent. By and by, I found myself going under Powell Road and rising again onto the Anodyne Park golf course. The course itself was dark, but the occasional lamppost let me see
the path. A late golfing foursome passed, going the other way in their cart. At the top of a rise, I came on the clubhouse, a well-lighted, sprawling building with a rack of golf carts at the far end and a couple of valets moving cars at the other. A wave of laughter rolled toward me. I shuddered away from the jollity.