The Whaleboat House. Mark Mills

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СКАЧАТЬ gentleman was a member of the Maidstone Club, the son of the club Treasurer no less. Hollis didn’t need to summon the full force of his detective’s training to piece together the events of the evening in question: a drunken dinner following the Maidstone’s annual tennis tournament; the member’s dress-shoe; further sets of footprints in the flowerbeds; a property defaced with white paint that washed off easily – as easily, in fact, as the thin whitewash used to mark the lines on a lawn tennis court. Hardly the stuff of departmental legend.

      Hollis had stalked the shoe’s owner for a few days until the opportunity presented itself for a word in private. When confronted with the evidence, the culprit pleaded high jinks. When Hollis informed him that a court of law would only accept a plea of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, he broke down in tears, right there in the changing rooms of a gentlemen’s outfitters on Newtown Lane.

      Two hours later, Jacob Rosen answered his door to a blond, redeyed young man in a brand-new blazer who handed him an envelope. Inside was a banker’s draft to the order of five hundred dollars made payable to the Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor. The young man then asked for, and received, Jacob Rosen’s forgiveness. He politely declined the invitation to take tea and cake with the family.

      To Hollis’ mind the debt was only part-paid. Almost a year on, he still kept the shoe in a box beneath his bed along with a photo of the incriminating article, taken in situ by Abel Cole in his official capacity as the Police Department’s photographer.

      It was the first time the two men had met, but the signs of a fast friendship were there from the start. Hollis’ plan for an unofficial settlement of the matter had required Abel’s discretion and collusion. Indeed, it was Abel who suggested the outrageous sum of five hundred dollars by way of a penalty. He knew the family by reputation, knew the boy was good for the money but that it would pinch him hard enough to hurt. That very same week Abel Cole had added ‘And Bar Mitzvahs’ to the sign in his window.

      Hollis entered the shop to find Abel photographing a sternfaced, middle-aged woman seated in a chair set against a mottled backdrop. A Persian cat lay curled on her lap, looking quite as unhappy and mistrustful as its owner. As ever, the sickly smell of darkroom chemicals hung heavy in the air.

      Abel was stooped behind a tripod, peering through the viewfinder of his camera – a Graflex Speed Graphic. Hollis had seen hundreds, if not thousands, of the machines over the years – in front of precincts and courthouses, at crime scenes, bulbs popping on their side-mounted flashing units – but Abel’s was different, trimmed in olive drab, witness to his time as a wartime photographer in Europe.

      ‘She’s got beautiful eyes,’ said Abel.

      There was no reaction from the woman.

      ‘And a fine, pert little nose.’

      ‘Yes, she has, hasn’t she?’ conceded the woman matter-of-factly.

      Abel looked up. ‘I was talking to the cat.’

      Despite herself, the woman broke into a smile. Abel tripped the front shutter.

      ‘Gotcha,’ he said.

      ‘Edith Harper,’ explained Abel as soon as the door had swung shut behind the woman. ‘Lost her only boy in the Pacific, but she was a sour-faced old trout long before.’

      He took a pack of cigarettes from beneath the counter and offered one to Hollis. Six months back, Hollis would have glanced outside through the window to check no one was watching before accepting. He was way beyond that now.

      Abel lit the cigarettes and pushed his long fringe out of his eyes. ‘Any luck?’ he asked.

      ‘No.’ After dropping off the film holders with Abel for developing, Hollis had returned to police headquarters to run a missing persons check through the neighboring force at Southampton, but had turned up nothing. ‘I was hoping you might know her.’

      ‘Seen her around,’ said Abel, reaching for a buff envelope on the counter. ‘Who could forget, face like that? But I don’t know her name. City girl. Drives a swanky roadster. Ten bucks says someone’ll know over at the coven.’

      ‘The coven?’

      ‘You know … the Ladies’ Vaginal Insertion Society.’

      The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society was an organization of local women devoted to preserving and beautifying ‘the village’, as they insisted on calling it. They had first come together to campaign and raise funds for the regular watering down of Main Street when it was little more than a dusty track at the mercy of the brisk summer winds. But they soon expanded their activities to include a program for the sweeping of the sidewalks and crosswalks, the installation of oil lamps, and the pruning of the huge elms that flanked the thoroughfare.

      And so it had continued, their self-proclaimed remit extending beyond the main artery of the town like a river bursting its banks, swamping all in its path. Fifty years on, there was almost no aspect of life within East Hampton that lay beyond the scrutiny of the LVIS.

      Abel was right, it was as good a place as any to start. Their numbers swelled in the summer months with the influx of wealthy New York worthies. More than likely, one of them would recognize the dead girl.

      ‘Crying shame,’ said Abel, handing over the envelope. ‘Face like a Botticelli angel.’

      ‘Yeah,’ said Hollis, unsure what his friend was talking about.

      He decided to leave the patrol car and walk down Main Street. Up ahead, two young girls pattered along behind a squat woman, their hair done in tight, stiff braids, faces scrubbed clean enough to shine.

      Hollis wondered why he hadn’t shared the news of the girl’s earrings with Abel. It wasn’t professional discretion on his part; there was little the two men kept from each other. Maybe he was getting ahead of himself, maybe she had simply forgotten to remove the items before going swimming. He had done a similar thing himself a month back, ruining a perfectly good wristwatch in the process, a gift from his wife.

      Yes, that was why he had hesitated, for fear of looking foolish when it proved to be a blind alley. And yet the tightening in his stomach told him otherwise.

      The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society was based in the old Clinton Academy, beside the library on the north side of Main Street. The former school was now home to the East Hampton Historical Society, which, for a nominal sum, subleased the annex to the women.

      Hollis paused before entering the old brick-and-wood building. From the apex of its gambrel roof rose a tall, pointed cupola, the bell it once housed for summoning the students long gone. The odor from an unruly clump of honeysuckle was almost unbearably sweet in the searing afternoon heat. Hollis wiped his brow before stepping into the shaded sanctuary of the covered porch.

      The LVIS occupied two small, low offices at the rear of the building. They were a hive of activity, with women hurrying to and fro as if being blown by the black electric fans which adorned almost all the desks.

      Hollis felt like a student entering the teachers’ common room, summoned there for some misdemeanor then deliberately ignored to stew in his guilt and the anticipation of his punishment. Maybe it was the early history of the building somehow exerting its presence; whatever, no one paid him a blind bit of notice.

      ‘Excuse me,’ he said to a woman in a floral cotton dress as she hurried by purposefully, a stack of papers under her СКАЧАТЬ