Mystery

Redwing put a white, hairy arm around her waist. “There’s no telling what Frank would do, if you showed up on his jet in that dress. Hah! Isn’t that right!” He kept his arm around Mrs. Spence’s waist another couple of beats, and his wife tilted a glass filled with transparent liquid and ice into her mouth.

“Have a good first day?” asked Mr. Spence. “Have any fun?”

“I didn’t do much,” Tom said. “I went to the village and met Chet Hamilton.”

Redwing’s face stopped moving, and his wife stepped back to the bar.

“Tom had a little excitement,” Sarah said. “He thinks somebody pushed him off the sidewalk into the traffic. A car went right over him.”

The lively black eyes had turned depthless. “Should have happened to Chet Hamilton. We don’t talk about the Hamiltons, around here.” He forced a smile. “We leave them alone, and they leave us alone. Word to the wise.”

“What happened? What was that?” This came from a man on the outside of the Redwing group, who had been talking with two other people while glancing occasionally at Tom and had overheard Sarah’s remark. He was about Redwing’s age, and had crisp dark hair and a lightly suntanned, handsome face. In a striped shirt, with the arms of a blue cotton sweater loosely tied around his neck, he looked like every actor who had ever starred in a romantic comedy with Doris Day agreeably mixed together. “Somebody pushed you off the sidewalk into traffic? Were you injured at all?”

“Not really,” Tom said.

Sarah said, “Tom, this is Roddy Deepdale. And Buzz.”

A blond man in his mid-thirties with a blue scarf around his neck had moved up beside Roddy Deepdale to look at Tom with the same mixture of concern and fascination as the older man. He, too, was remarkably handsome. His bright yellow cotton sweater had been tied about his waist. Both men seemed more alarmed by what had happened to Tom than anyone in the Redwing party.

“Well, what happened, exactly?” Roddy said, and sipped a drink while Tom told the story. An old woman with a chinless, toadlike face peered at him between the broad, well-set-up figures of the two men. Except for Sarah, the others had turned back to the bar.

“My God, you could have been killed,” Roddy Deepdale said. “You nearly were!”

Buzz asked if he had seen who pushed him.

“Well, that’s just it. There were so many people on the sidewalk that it must have been an accident.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“I didn’t really have anything to tell them.”

“You were probably right. Last summer, a week or two before we got here, someone broke every window in our lodge. Stole half of our things, even a double portrait by Don Bachardy which is sorely missed, let me tell you, but the physical damage was almost as bad. The squirrels got in, and a lot of birds, and the police couldn’t do a thing.”

“Everybody felt so bad about it, Roddy,” Sarah said.

“Some people did,” said Buzz.

“I did,” interjected the old woman, who thrust her arm between Roddy and Buzz and laughed at the awkwardness of her position. Roddy and Buzz moved aside to admit her, and Roddy placed his hand on her hunched shoulder. “I felt terrible about it, I promise! And I’m distressed about what happened to you, Tom Pasmore, and I congratulate you on your survival!” Tom had taken her hand, which was surprisingly solid and long—longer than his own—in his. The impression of her ugliness had entirely disappeared. She had sagging dewlaps and prominent teeth and no chin, but now Tom saw the intelligence in her eyes, the soft wave of her white hair, and the calm width of her forehead. “I’m Kate Redwing,” she said. “You’ve never heard of me, but I knew your mother when she was just a little girl.”

“I was hoping I’d meet you,” Tom said, “and now that I have, I’m delighted.”

“And I’m delighted to meet you. Sit next to me at dinner, and we’ll have a good long talk.”

“Sarah said to give you this.” Roddy Deepdale passed Tom a tall flute glass filled with a bubbling liquid tinged a pale pink. “I assume it’s a reward for having survived your experience.”

“If Sarah Spence is looking after you, you’re going to be looked after very well,” said Kate Redwing. “Do you suppose someone could look after me? I’ve had only one martini, and it was a very small one, and since my grand-nephew is still primping …”

Buzz smiled and went up to the empty half of the bar.

“You said a double portrait was stolen from your lodge. A double portrait of whom?”

“Of Buzz and me,” Roddy Deepdale said. “It’s still a terrible loss. I hated telling Don about it, but he was very civilized. He said that it would probably turn up one day, and he sent us a little drawing to compensate. Christopher said something very wicked and funny, but I’d better not repeat it.”

Sarah, surrounded by her parents and Ralph and Katinka Redwing at the bar, winked at Tom and raised her glass.