Chapter Twelve

Phyllis said so, loudly, clearly, in no uncertain terms, when she had heard Kate through to the end of what she called the most preposterous story since Ian Fleming’s unfortunate demise. “You’re wandering, dear,” she announced, not unkindly.

Kate found her attitude a relief, in a way. It really had been looking all too clear-cut and obvious, which nothing in life ever is.

“Put your objections to one side a moment, nonetheless,” she said, “and listen to two more aspects of the problem. One of these is Max’s writing and public image; the other is the personality of the young woman who was Dorothy Whitmore. As to Max. I copied down out of Who’s Who a list of his publications. The titles, and the books themselves, if it comes to that—I’ve read most of them; he’s a friend, God help me—are all aimed at setting right the inevitable decline from proper standards, whether in art or daily life, usually both. About daily life he’s not quite so outspoken in print, if you’ll forgive the phrase. But at a time, I can assure you, when most faculty and administration were, if not exactly happy about student revolutions, and so on, at least aware that some dislocation of power had taken place in our society, Max was being his old authoritarian self, with an extraordinary blindness to the realities of the Vietnam war. All right, nod away, you agree and I ought to make my point, if any. My point is: here is the last man who wants to set forth into the maelstrom of rediscovered feminist writers and women’s studies the story of his birth to a woman who resembles all too closely the radicals he loathes today and, far worse, his having been fathered not by some tall, beautifully arrogant creature who resembled, from all I can gather, Lord Riddlesdale in the Sargent portrait, but a lower-class out-of-job nobody without a spot of culture or breeding.”

“All right, I take your point, I really do, believe me, Kate. When you’re discussing Max’s horror at everything from the modern world to the discovery of this terrible secret, all set down among Cecily’s papers up in Maine for anyone to read, yes, I follow you, and even pant enthusiastically behind. But face what you’re saying. That he discovered that Marston child, that student of yours, in among the papers, enticed her out to the rocks, and murdered her. All to keep the story of his shameful birth from the world. Too nineteenth-century, dear, not to say eighteenth. And it isn’t as though some marvelous inheritance stood in the balance. If there was anything to inherit, and we don’t know that there was, you can be sure with a family like the Restons that it went, firmly entailed, to the oldest son, who was not Max. I’ve always disapproved of primogeniture, by the way, since the only possible attitude toward one’s children is share and share alike, but one does have to admit that if it’s not good for the children, it’s great for the property, which stays in one piece through the generations.”

“And sends the younger sons out to marry with the newly rich middle classes and enrich not only their pockets but their gene bank.”

“No doubt. But the point is that there is no question of inheritance here. I realize that Max is a snob, perhaps the original and authentic snob, after which they threw away the mold, but I can’t see him killing anyone to preserve his reputation for impeccable birth. And,” she finished up, with a certain air of having exhausted the subject, “all Max had to do was destroy the papers, or waft them out of sight. It would be his word against the girl’s, guilty of breaking and entering anyway, and who would listen to her? Will you have beer or Scotch?”

“Beer,” Kate said. “I’ve become addicted, as you said I would. Perhaps you are right,” she added, reverting to Max. “But I don’t think you are. I shall have to consider a course of action. What do you suppose the papers consisted in?”

“What papers? The papers that don’t exist, except in your girlish imagination?” She handed Kate a beer.

“There must have been letters,” said Kate, accepting the beer and ignoring the comment. “Letters from Whitmore to Frederica, which were sent to Cecily at Whitmore’s death.”

“If Whitmore was such a bloody socialist, flinging herself into the arms of a workingman, like Helen into the arms of Leonard Bast, out of sheer pity, why on earth did she call him Max? The last name on earth for a lower-class love child.”

“Precisely. Frederica’s choice, I have no doubt. To distract attention from his origins. Phyllis, think! How many brothers do you know who resemble each other as little as Max and Herbert Reston? One short, one tall, one fat, one thin—all that is possible, but there’s always some resemblance. My brothers have each grown middle-aged in his own gruesome way, but once you know they’re brothers, there’s no discounting the resemblance. Even I can be seen to look a bit like them, in the dusk with a lamp behind me.”

“Have you ever wondered who your father was, you late child, you? Of course, the difference is, if your father turned out to be a sheet-metal worker from Skaneateles and your mother someone who had chained herself to the White House in the Hoover administration, you’d be gladder than glad.”

“People didn’t chain themselves to the White House in the Hoover administration; they camped along the Potomac.”

“You haven’t even seen Max and Herbert together.”

“They feel different, if you take my meaning.”

“So do you and your brothers. Kate, Kate, what is to be the end of all this?”

“You didn’t know Gerry Marston. She was a lovable child. Her parents were sheet-metal workers, or as near as makes no matter. And she would have made a name for herself—would, at any rate, have had the joy of writing a biography, which is a great joy, in its perverse way. The only person Max ought to write a biography of is Metternich. Or Talleyrand.”

“Suggestion. From Phyllis to Kate, for the use of. Read all you can on this and shut, otherwise, up. When you get back to New York, you can tell Reed all about it or even, if absolutely necessary, Max. But do tell him in a crowded dining room somewhere, not on some rocks in Maine. And don’t drink anything that smells or tastes peculiar.”

“I don’t believe,” Kate said, “that you’re half as skeptical as you make out. But it’s good advice, and I shall take it.”

“That’s a wonder,” Phyllis said.

Kate had some mail, just at the end of her visit.

Reed wrote a note to say there had been fascinating developments in the St. Anthony’s bit; Finlay and Ricardo had finally gone to the headmaster and admitted the whole thing. The faculty insisted that the headmaster write to Harvard with the facts, or what continued to be called the alleged facts. Leo and his friends were being talked about in a way that Reed thought rather worried Leo, but that Leo would probably survive. Reed said that he thought all would be looking up from now on for Leo, and that he, Reed, would be rather glad when she came home.

Mr. Sparrow wrote from the library of the Wallingford about his new exhibition, and how well Max Reston was doing with the papers. He added his regret that Kate, being a woman, would miss the inside of All Souls.

Phyllis and Hugh made plans for a continental tour, after which they would return, in the fall, to the States. It was clear that Phyllis was so eager to get back into harness that she contemplated even the wonders of Greece, which she had always longed to see, with a lackluster eye.

At the end of her two weeks, then, Kate hired a car to drive her to Heathrow, and found herself upon a 747 headed home. She had, in the compartment above her head, a particularly beautiful sweater for Reed, an old brass hunting horn for Leo, which required much breath to blow, and notes on all the Whitmore papers.

She also had by now a theory which no amount of caution could convince her was not, in its essence, true. Max had committed murder to hide the shame of his birth, and what in the world was she to do about it?