FRANCIS THOUGHT HE HAD already seen the Binghams’ best car, but he was mistaken. The car that had conveyed him to the Plaza on Monday was apparently used for short excursions and the ferrying of minor nobles traveling without retinue. The Pierce-Arrow that delivered Francis, Mrs. Bingham, Anisette, and Félicité from Fifth Avenue to Flushing was a men’s grill on wheels, a mobile Union League Club. The interior was done in burled walnut and red leather and fitted in lustrous brass. A hinged cabinet concealed crystal tumblers and a decanter of bourbon beside an ice bucket that had apparently been filled just before departure. The Bingham women fell into familiar roles: gracious, glowing, glowering. Félicité had arched one eyebrow when Francis arrived that morning, no doubt surprised that he had kept the commitment. To her, his appearance would mean that he was either a faithful suitor or twice the con man she’d figured him for, someone willing to stomach a little scandal if it meant a life of luxury.
Crossing the East River, Mrs. Bingham asked after Sir Malcolm, and whether Sir Angus had yet conveyed news of his brother’s progress to his parents. “A mother worries,” she said. “Especially when her babies are so far from home.”
Francis assured her that his brother had spent the week in splendid leisure—if anything, he said, young Malcolm was growing bored at the Plaza—but he hadn’t the energy to concoct for her any stories about their dear, sweet mother, Lady MacFarquhar. For her part, Anisette seemed positively serene, and communicated with him mostly through smiles and glances.
As they neared the fairgrounds, Félicité peered out the window and commented on the dreariness of Queens: “Bad enough we have to drive through it,” she said. “But can you imagine living here?”
Francis aimed for the easy bonhomie that had carried him through dinner on the Britannic and at Bingham Castle, but he felt the effort showing through the frayed spots in his Angus MacFarquhar costume. The fear and dread boiling in him couldn’t possibly be contained by the calm, clubby charm that Angus affected. He expected that, if he failed, men with guns would be roaming the city by nightfall to make good on Gavigan’s promises. If there was a lesson that Cronin was trying to impart by telling him the name of the man who had outfoxed him, Francis wouldn’t live long enough to learn it. For now, it only gave him someone to curse.
THE GUESTS WERE asked to arrive by noon, and by eleven o’clock an armada of Rolls-Royces, Duesenbergs, Regents, and Cadillacs jostled for berths along the curb. Automobile parking near the fair was limited, and the chauffeurs engaged in a more decorous version of a Midtown taxi bullfight, their engines purring and surging, their black flanks shining in the midday sun. The guest list had swollen, a cattle call of the city’s elite, but each was aware of who had made the cut and who had opted for exile in Westchester, or Greenwich, or Newport on this sun-blasted Saturday.
Just as they were to exit the limousine, he caught Anisette’s eye and gave her a wistful half-smile, an empty gesture that could not carry the weight of what he would take from her when he fired the shot. Of course she would be standing next to him. She would see it all. He thought for a moment that if she preceded him to the dais, he could use her to shield himself from view as he reached for the—and he realized with shame just how quickly he had turned her into not merely a pawn but a prop.
Once outside the car, the party passed through a cluster of boxy white pavilions celebrating advances in pharmacy, electric shavers, and wristwatches. These buildings lined the Street of Wings, which gave way to the Court of Power, the Plaza of Light, and Commerce Circle. The Bingham party was led to Perylon Hall, which resembled a midmarket beach resort during the off-season: two white slabs stacked one on the other, with curved balconies supported by slender pipes that called to mind rain gutters.
The interior of the hall, however, had been reimagined as a fantasy of Merrie Olde England. Every room and corridor had been gauded up in carpets and tapestries, altar screens and bishop’s chairs and portraits of minor nobles. Honestly, the place looked like a jumble sale at a bankrupt monastery. One entire wall of the banquet room where the guests were asked to wait was decorated with a tapestry depicting a medieval pilgrimage. Its weavers may have begun with a vague notion of The Canterbury Tales, but there were too few nuns and priests and too many rose-petal-lipped youths sporting beneath a canopy of ivy. Women in conical fairy-princess hats demurely eyed curly-headed squires in muscle-packed tights. Banners decked in chevrons, rampant lions, and stout towers suggested allegiances that divided this happy pack into factions indistinguishable to outside observers.
Against the opposite wall, a broad window overlooked a spiral garden and offered a picture-postcard view of the fair’s signature pieces: the Trylon and Perisphere. A long line of fairgoers stretched up a sinuous ramp that cut through the tower and into the belly of the giant white orb.
“Now what do you suppose is in there?” Francis said.
“It’s Democracity,” Anisette said. “The city of the future. I read about it in Life magazine.”
“How ridiculous,” Félicité sniffed.
Anisette exchanged a knowing look with Sir Angus—hadn’t they shared a laugh about her sister’s foul temperament during their walk? It was just the sort of inside joke that would set Félicité’s teeth on edge.