“No, he won’t.”
“That’s the way I read it, too, given all the circumstances. Were you looking for a little company?”
Victoria nodded. Then she closed the door and locked it and came in to sit on the sofa.
“Do you think she’ll leave? I did everything but threaten to poison her food, but I couldn’t convince her not to come.”
“I don’t know, Mother. I don’t think things like that would have convinced her not to come. I’m not sure anything would have. It’s like I told you. She’s a very strange woman.”
“All Stephen’s women are strange.”
“She’s stranger than most. Sometimes I think she might not be quite sane. She was in my room this morning, you know.”
“What?”
Janet smiled again, a thin wintry smile. Victoria bit her lip. It hurt her to see Janet like this, hurt her to see Janet in so much pain. And that’s all Janet had had, for years now, with Stephen Whistler Fox.
“She went in just after I came down this morning. I was in the foyer and I saw her. And heard her. You know how you can see all the way to that end if you’re over by the Braque etching—”
“Yes, yes.”
“Well, I was there. I’d come down intending to go out to the beach, but then I remembered I’d forgotten something. So I came back in, and I was just standing near the Braque when I saw her come out, humming to herself. I’ve been wondering ever since what she was doing up there.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Janet shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d get a straight answer. Nobody ever does. I suppose she was looking through my things. It was wretched even to think about.”
“I don’t think you ought to take this so cavalierly,” Victoria said slowly. “Dan Chester thinks she’s responsible for Stephen’s attacks, you know.”
“Who told you that? Melissa?”
“Melissa is very good at what she does, Janet. And for once, I don’t blame Dan. That woman’s got some very strange friends. I’ve met a few of them. I think some of them may be involved in organized crime.”
“And Patchen Rawls knows it?”
Victoria snorted. “Patchen Rawls wouldn’t know Armageddon if it happened in her backyard. But she doesn’t have to know what they are, Janet. She only has to know what they can do for her.”
“I’m not worried about Patchen Rawls, Mother. I don’t think she’s trying to kill Stephen. If she’s going to try to kill anybody, it’s going to be me.” Janet considered it. “Or Dan Chester,” she added.
Victoria cocked her head. “I take it Ms. Rawls thinks Dan Chester is the principal reason Stephen won’t divorce you?”
“Something like that.”
“It’s the kind of thing she would think. Janet, what are you going to do about all this? You can’t go on the way you’ve been. Don’t you ever think about divorcing him?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“I’ve never thought about divorcing him, Mother. Not even for a day. I just wish—”
“What?”
Janet sighed and rested her head on the back of her chair and closed her eyes. “I wish it had worked out differently. I wish Stephen hadn’t been in politics. I wish Stephanie had lived. I wish, I wish, I wish. Sometimes that’s all I do. I lie in bed and think it all through. I make it all different.”
“That’s not a very healthy way to live, Janet.”
“I know. I don’t think I care.”
“Do you care about this other thing? About Stephen being president, and you being First Lady?”
“No. It isn’t going to happen. No matter what Dan thinks.”
“You’ve got a better opinion of the American electorate than I do.”
Janet smiled again, fondly and indulgently this time. Victoria felt herself tense. Since the death of Stephanie, Janet had gone through moods like this often, drifting in and out of desolation like a cork being sucked from one bottleneck pool to another by a gentle tide. While Janet was lost in desolation, Victoria was always afraid. There was a breaking point in her daughter’s head somewhere—everybody had a breaking point—and over the past month Victoria had begun to think Janet had reached it. She was playing with those hairpins too much. She was saying too little. Especially about the Act in Aid of Exceptional Children.
That act was a deliberate, cynical fraud, and Victoria Harte knew her daughter.
Janet hated frauds even more than she hated Dan Chester.
SEVEN
[1]
GREGOR DEMARKIAN WAS USED to dealing with trouble on a professional basis. It was an attitude he wasn’t often aware of, but it was there: the expectation that, if something went wrong, the machinery to rectify it would already be in place. Procedures, authority, technical support: for most of his adult life, he had counted on these things the way most people counted on the use of their hands. He didn’t think about them. He simply took command and forged ahead and got the job done—or usually got the job done. There had been one terrible period in his life, during the days of Elizabeth’s last crisis, when he had not gotten the job done, and the job had been important enough to need doing. But he tried not to think about that.