Washington Whispers Murder. Leslie Ford
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her brothers make her grin and spoil the picture.
“She’s sweet,” I said.
“That’s . . . that’s Molly. She’s all—” She bent her head, the radiant joy gone from her face. “Oh, I don’t know what happens to people!” she said suddenly, and with such naked poignancy that it made my spine quiver. “You do everything you can for your children, but there’s nothing you can do to help them. They still have to suffer, you can’t ever do anything to save them!”
She took the folder quickly from my hand. “Oh, forgive me, please!” she said. “I didn’t mean to distress you, talking about my children. That’s not why I came. Marjorie Seaton’s been begging me to come, but I . . . I was’ afraid. Then I heard some people talking about you, and I saw your name on the list they sent us of the garden party tomorrow. It’s being given for us, you know.”
I didn’t know, and what’s more I didn’t know there was anybody left in Washington who could keep that kind of secret, with all the people who’d give their right arm to meet the head man of the Industrial Techniques Commission.
“—Gate crashers,” she added, no doubt at the look on my face. It sounded so strange in that incredibly gentle voice of hers that I blinked as if she’d used one of Sergeant Buck’s favorite outdoor words. “We haven’t been going out,” she said. “But they thought we should, just to . . . to let people see we aren’t really peculiar. And I thought you wouldn’t mind, perhaps, if I came before I met you.” Her look was an appeal as well as an apology. “I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind. . . .”
“Not at all, Mrs. Brent,” I said. It was difficult for me too.
“You see, Marjorie says you know a Colonel Primrose she thinks you could persuade to . . . to help me, Mrs. Latham. And I do need help. I need it desperately.”
She didn’t have to tell me, though I didn’t know how desperately she did need it, even then, when I could see what she was going through, trying to control herself.
“You can’t know what it’s been like, these last months,” she said. “I didn’t want my husband to come to Washington, and he didn’t want to come. They persuaded him it was his duty. He knew he’d be attacked, of course. But he didn’t expect all the personal vilification Mr. Vair is heaping on him—But it isn’t only that.”
She said that hurriedly, as if I’d get up and ask her to leave if she didn’t explain.
“It’s the time it wastes, and the lack of confidence that other men in the industrial fields who don’t know him are bound to have, whether they realize it or not. And my husband’s a hard man, Mrs. Latham, but he can be hurt. He doesn’t mind about the wart on his nose.” The little smile she gave me lasted only for that instant. “He is upset when Mr. Vair says his father died alone in a state institution. It wasn’t an insane hospital, as Mr. Vair implies. It was consumption he had, and the family paid everything they could, when he was moved there for special care. My husband was just eleven years old then . . . and everybody dies alone, Mrs. Latham.
“And he’s terribly upset about the Brentool Plant out in Taber City. I don’t know whether you know that’s where Mr. Vair comes from. You see, my husband didn’t want to take that plant either, but friends in the Air Force were terribly worried, the way the Congress was closing everything down. They knew the war wasn’t really over. When Mr. Vair attacks them as well as him, as thieves and traitors, it’s not easy. And the men at the plant stop work, and their children throw rocks and mud at the superintendent’s car.”
She fumbled at her bag to get her handkerchief out.
“But it’s not even that that frightens me Mrs. Latham,” she said simply. “It’s. . . . Molly, our daughter, that I’m frightened about.” She hesitated painfully. “She had a . . . a very serious accident, a terrible accident, really, and she hasn’t got over it. That’s why she isn’t here with us. And you can’t know what it’s like, Mrs. Latham, having people around, prying and snooping. It’s been worse since we’ve been here. My husband doesn’t know . . . about all that, and about the anonymous letters. I burn them so he won’t see them. And the telephone calls. I try to keep all that away from him. Because . . . that’s what terrifies me. My husband adores Molly. He worships her. She’s all he lives for, really. And now, there’s some photograph of her. . . .”
That, I remembered, had been the final unbearable thing, at the beauty shop, and I’d wondered whether she’d even be able to bring it up.
“I can’t imagine Molly being in any . . . dreadful place, but she may have been out with other people, when her brothers weren’t at home. I don’t know what it was, and I can’t ask her, now. But you see, if they’re passing such a photograph around, they’re just doing it to hurt my husband, they’re hurting Molly to hurt him. I know Mr. Vair’s trying to make it look as if my husband is an enemy of the people, and I thought at first it was just to help get himself elected to the Senate. But I think now he really hates my husband and enjoys trying to destroy him. And if he’s trying to do it by hurting Molly . . . my husband has great patience, too, Mrs. Latham—but that’s the one thing he wouldn’t stand.”
She got up and stood opening and closing her hands on the green straw bag. “That’s why I hoped you . . . you’d get Colonel Primrose to help me. I hoped, some way, he could make them let Molly alone. Because, if they don’t. . . . Will you get him, Mrs. Latham?”
“I’ll try, Mrs. Brent,” I said. I forgot all about never going to try to get him for anybody ever again. “But . . . I don’t know what he could do. To stop Vair from saying these things would be a miracle, and even Colonel Primrose—”
“Oh, but I believe in miracles, Mrs. Latham.” Her blue eyes widened like a child’s. “I believe they do happen,” she said, and I knew she meant it, and literally meant it. “I see them constantly in other people’s lives. I couldn’t go on if I didn’t know that.”
I got up too. “I can see what he says, Mrs. Brent. But he’s out of town right now.”
Her face and body seemed to sag with such utter hopelessness that it startled me. I hadn’t realized how much hope she’d built up, in Colonel Primrose’s ability really to perform some miracle for her.
“I wish I weren’t so . . . so desperately afraid.” She steadied herself against the chair. “I’m so frightened I can’t bear to think about it. Surely there . . . there must be somebody who can save him.”
I wasn’t quite sure I’d heard what she said. I hadn’t realized that fear was such a part of what she was suffering. I saw it then, so naked and real it was almost tangible.
“You don’t believe Mr. Brent is . . .” I stopped, too confused to go on. She couldn’t really mean she thought her husband’s life was threatened. But still the idea was there . . . of death, in the room, pallid fingers tapping their frightening code. It was unmistakable, what was there in her mind.
“Mrs. Brent,” I said, “it’s . . . it’s not . . . murder, you’re talking about, is it? You’re surely not afraid——”
She raised her head and looked at me, not startled, and not shocked at all. Her face cleared and the normal color came slowly back into it.
“Murder?” It was the word she seemed to question as she repeated it. Then she shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said quietly. “I don’t believe he’d ever think of it that way, Mrs. Latham. You don’t call it murder when you kill a rattlesnake that’s striking someone you love very dearly, do you? That’s the way he’d look at it, Mrs. Latham. That’s the way my husband would think about it. And that’s why I’ve got to have somebody to help me. Somebody’s got to save him from killing Hamilton Vair.”
IV
But this is Washington. What made my spine stiffen, in that appalled instant, had nothing to do with the proposed murder—or call it killing—of Congressman Hamilton Vair. What appalled me was