Washington Whispers Murder. Leslie Ford

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      “That’s Hamilton Vair,” I said.

      The smile went off his face. “Oh,” he said, a little stiffly. He caught himself then and smiled again. “That’s not to be construed as a criticism of my host at all.” He laughed apologetically, but there was nothing he could have said that would have made me feel more warmly toward him.

      “I think I’ll go on down,” I said. I’d intended to wait and follow Vair, but there was an emptying in front of the receiving line just then. Mr. Allerdyce still stood there, looking over at Vair as if a gleaming mother-of-pearl silk suit was something he didn’t often see. It was certainly in contrast with the grey flannels he had on, admirably cut and admirably worn, that with his suntan and whole casual easiness suggested a winter on a yacht in the Bahamas rather than in Washington, D.C. But I was down the garden then.

      “—Darling, you know Mr. Brent, don’t you? This is Mrs. Latham, Mr. Brent.”

      As I looked up at Rufus Brent and felt his warm cordial handclasp, I had the feeling that I had known him, for a long time. It’s the sort of thing that makes a woman describe a man as ravishing, I expect. Actually, he was ugly as sin. His nose certainly had a mole on it, if not a wart as advertised by Hamilton Vair. So did his chin, which also looked as if it had been chopped off square before it got altogether out of hand. His nose had been formed with no pattern to go by and stuck between two deep furrows slanting down to the corners of his wide mouth, and his dark hazel eyes were shrewd and alive and wonderfully twinkling and kind under a pair of shaggy black-and-grey brows. He was a big man, a little stoop-shouldered, with a slight but comfortable embonpoint and a watch chain across it.

      I am glad I did not call Colonel Primrose and tell him. . . . That flashed into my mind, and with it an extraordinary sense of relief. To try to mind this man’s business for him would have been an impertinence as brazen as Hamilton Vair’s. And I don’t mean that he didn’t look perfectly capable of killing somebody. You didn’t have to look twice to see that under all the charm and wisdom of that Gothic ugly face there was something as hard as a keg of old nails. It made me wonder if Ham Vair had any realization of how foolhardy his arrogance was, against the experience and reserved power of the man he was getting ready to insult, if he could. And it seemed to me that Mr. Rufus Brent had an air of cool and watchful waiting. He looked altogether to me like nobody it was wise to push too far.

      “—Lena tells me you’re an old friend of hers, Mrs. Latham.”

      I caught the quick appeal she flashed at me.

      “Yes, indeed,” I said. “It’s so nice to see her again.”

      She had on another print dress, a sort of teal-blue like Sergeant Buck’s Sunday suit, but beautifully cut so she didn’t look as lumpy as she did in the purple blotches she wore to my house. Her hat, trimmed with French lilacs, was a pretty hat, but it had slipped like the pink one, so she looked a little dizzy, with her carrot-red hair. She held my hand almost as if she needed actual physical support, the tension that must have been mounting all the time she’d stood there, waiting for Hamilton Vair to approach her husband, a really quite desperate kind of thing. I felt again the strange quality she had, that made her so different from the assured and lacquered women around her. It was a kind of spiritual thing, almost mystical, as she turned that extraordinary sweetness on and off like a far-away light in some lonely sea deep within herself. I could see why she believed in miracles.

      I was aware then of a sudden silence, sharp and almost breathless, for an instant, over the garden, and I didn’t have to look to know that it was Hamilton Vair’s moment. Mrs. Brent’s hand dropped mine.

      “Hamilton, how nice of you to come!”

      My friend was a lady born and a hostess bred.

      “You know Mr. Rufus Brent, I believe? Mr. Vair, Mr. Brent.”

      Hamilton Vair moved a step toward Rufus Brent, evil glee shining in his face. Mr. Brent seemed to grow bigger. Without seeming to change at all, his face suddenly reminded me, in a very different way, of the granite quality of Sergeant Buck’s. He bowed slightly.

      “Mr. Vair and I have met,” he said. “How do you do sir? This is my wife Mrs. Brent, Mr. Vair.”

      “How do you do, Mr. Vair?”

      Her voice carried a long way in the silence. I was proud of her. I’d wondered if she’d been able to speak at all. Neither of them had put out a hand, but it didn’t seem as if they hadn’t. It only seemed that it was a gaucherie of astonishing proportions that Hamilton Vair had put out his. It looked enormous there, and very empty. I don’t know what particularly made it look that way, but it did, and as if suddenly aware of how it looked, he dropped it abruptly. The grin broadened on his face then, lighted with a sudden malice it hadn’t had before, and he started to speak.

      “Your daughter——”

      But whatever Ham Vair was going to say about Molly Brent is lost to the history of these crowded times. People wouldn’t put out a hand to touch him, but the gods would, and did. At just that moment, a bird flew over. It was a big bird, not the great auk but no sparrow. A sudden howl of mirth, loud, long and completely spontaneous, broke the silence, and the Hot Rod of the Marsh Marigold State instead of joining it made another and far more incredible blunder. A poor misguided waiter, about five feet high and with occupational bunions on both feet, hobbled up to him with an open napkin, and Hamilton Vair knocked his hand down with a furious gesture that sent his tray of Tom Collins winding left and right, all over the astonished little man and half a dozen guests male and female within winding distance. The waiter stumbled and nearly fell. A large “Boo!” rose from somewhere in the crowd, a clear voice called out “For shame!” and boos and laughter mingled until Hamilton Vair jerked abruptly around and left the place.

      The laughter swelled as the little waiter mopped himself off, wet and grinning, a hero for the moment. The Brents had been magnificent. Her face hadn’t changed, her husband’s belly was the absorber that prevented any emotion from more than rippling across his wide mouth and glinting momentarily bright in his eyes.

      V

      I don’t suppose this is what the poet meant by one touch of nature, but it made a whole part of the Washington world spontaneously and delightedly kin. With the exception of Mrs. Brent, I must have been the only person there who wished it hadn’t happened, and not because of the white silk suit Ham Vair could never wear again no matter what the cleaners were able to do. It was his face as he checked his exit, half-way to the garden gate, and looked back. There was blue murder in it. If he’d hated Rufus Brent before, the laughter that echoed in his ears as he left that place must have been utterly intolerable to him.

      For a moment at least, the Brents were in. Mr. Brent was the center of a more than enthusiastic crowd, mostly senators. Nor was Mrs. Brent alone on the sidelines. Her suntanned young friend in the grey flannel suit and steel-rimmed spectacles had got to her at last. That was a break too—it’s surprising how high and dry the middle-aged wife of the man of the moment can be stranded at times. Mrs. Brent was as transformed as everybody else, smiling happily, eager as a girl, and nobody that I heard was making any cracks about her preferring very young and very handsome men. It would have been the moment, because she was genuinely radiant, talking to him.

      “Who is that?”

      I looked around. Marjorie Seaton had moved in beside me. She was cool and lovely, bareheaded in a brown linen dress the shade of her own country tan. “Talking to Mrs. Brent,” she added.

      “His СКАЧАТЬ