Act of Darkness(72)

Henry Berman reached the portico, jogged up the steps, and turned to look at the gate himself. Gregor could see that he was tired. Yesterday, Berman had been saggy but springy, with a bounce and energy that seemed to come from his very soul. Today, he looked like he’d been defeated by gravity.

Berman squinted into the sun and then shrugged. “Well,” he said.

“Exactly,” Gregor said. “I take it it was not good down there.”

“It was terrible. That’s a bunch of people who think they’re being cheated out of their holiday by the weather. And I don’t think they like Stephen Whistler Fox.”

“Nobody ever seemed to.”

“Yes,” Berman said. “Well. He was a politician. What can you expect?”

Personally, Gregor thought he ought to be able to expect a lot of things, like the quality of public service the country had gotten from Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Lincoln, and even Taft.

He also thought he ought to give caution one more try. “Isn’t there any way you can get those people out of there?” he asked Berman.

Berman shook his head. “Not without bringing in the National Guard. For that, I’d have to get action out of our esteemed governor, and you know how likely I’d be to get that.”

“If you don’t get it, you might have a riot on your hands.”

“Once I have a riot on my hands, I might get it. Never mind all that, Mr. Demarkian. Tell me what’s going on inside.”

Gregor sighed. Berman was right, but he hated to admit he was right. “I have them all in that living room space again,” he told Berman. “You have no idea how annoying it is trying to get anything organized in a place without walls. At any rate, they’re there. Including Bennis. I think she’s going to be sick.”

“She found the body? Again?”

“I found the body last time, Mr. Berman.”

“She was with you.”

“I know.” The last thing he needed was Bennis as the prime suspect in a murder case. She’d been through that once. He didn’t think she could go through it again. “The room we found him in,” he said, “is in very strange shape. It’s also, at the moment, blocked by a whacking big chest of drawers I found in Janet Harte Fox’s room. I got Dan Chester to drag it down the hall for me. I couldn’t think of any other way to keep people away from the body.”

“People want to get near the body?”

“Some of them do,” Gregor said. “I had to have Dan Chester drag that Patchen Rawls woman down from the balcony by force. She kept insisting she could raise the senator from the dead.”

“Right,” Berman said. “What about Chester? If he could drag it once, he could drag it again.”

“Not without making a lot of noise and taking a lot of time. We’ll get him to drag it away for us if you don’t have—”

“I have two patrolmen trying to get on the pro wrestling circuit.”

“Do they have a hope?”

“One of them does.”

“He’ll do, then,” Gregor said. Then he turned away from the drive and motioned toward the house. “Mr. Berman?”

“I’m coming.”

Gregor had left the great double doors open when he came out. He took Henry Berman’s arm and pushed him through them.





[2]


This time, Victoria Harte’s guests had crowded themselves together on just two of the sofas, managing to cram into the smallest possible space that still allowed them to sit without touching each other. Except for Victoria and Janet Harte Fox, of course. Janet was all but sitting on her mother’s lap. Of the group, she was the only one who was anywhere near composed, and she wasn’t, quite. Victoria was combative. Dan Chester was spooked white. Patchen Rawls was angry, although for the moment she was having the good sense to keep her mouth shut about it. Even Clare Markey had given in to her nerves, holding her hands too firmly in her lap and making them open and close, open and close, compulsively. Janet’s only sign of nervousness was her habitual plucking at her hairpins, and the blank, tense way she sometimes stared at the heart-shaped ruby on her mother’s shoulder.

Gregor caught Bennis’s eye and shook his head a little, pretending he was letting her know she shouldn’t come upstairs. What he was really trying to determine was how she was. The answer was not good. He had seen her look that green around the gills once before.

Two of Berman’s patrolmen had stationed themselves in the foyer. Berman tapped the larger of them on the shoulder and nodded in the direction of the stairs.

“Got something that needs to be moved,” he said. Then he nodded at Gregor and said, “That’s Mr. Demarkian.”