Act of Darkness(76)
TWO
[1]
BENNIS HANNAFORD COULD NEVER remember being so uncomfortable—not grieving, not frightened, not angry, but uncomfortable. There was something about them all sitting there in a little semicircle, each of them staring at their own feet, that made her feel as if she’d wandered into somebody else’s argument. And then there was the atmosphere, if you could call it that. Bennis didn’t want to, because she thought it made her sound like Patchen Rawls. Still, there had to be some word for it. It was odd how the timing had worked out. Yesterday, it had almost been possible to believe that this was no special weekend at all. Whatever preparations were going on down in the town didn’t touch them at Great Expectations, and what preparations were going on at Great Expectations didn’t involve the guests of Victoria Harte. Last night, of course, there had been the fireworks—a crazy, schizophrenic explosion of color that seemed to celebrate the death of Kevin Debrett—but they hadn’t lasted long. Then the rain had started, and the cold, and it might as well have been early March. Now the weather had cleared, and the weekend had gotten back into gear. Bennis was a little shocked to discover how much of it there was, and close. Even here, facing away from the sea and into the dense tangle of incoherent roads that marked out the “private” part of Oyster Bay, she could hear the tinny brass leadenness of marching bands and the sharp reediness of a fife and drum corps. Every once in a while she caught the guttural rhythms of quasi-military grunts. She supposed she was hearing what constituted practice for a drill team.
Across the room, Janet Harte Fox was curled onto the arm of her mother’s chair, one arm draped across Victoria’s heart-shaped ruby. She reached up and tugged at her hair pins, and Bennis looked away from her. The last thing Bennis wanted was to make eye contact with Janet.
At the end of the larger couch, Dan Chester stirred into life. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “what are they doing up there?”
“They’re dusting for fingerprints, of course,” Victoria said, “and doing all that other nonsense policemen do. What kind of fingerprints they expect to find, I don’t know.”
“Ours,” Clare Markey said.
“Well, that wouldn’t be surprising, would it?” Victoria said. “Janet’s and Dan’s and mine will be all over the house, and so will Stephen’s. They might even find Kevin’s up there. Kevin and Stephen were so close. What would it prove? Of course,” she swung toward Patchen Rawls and smiled, “they might find somebody else’s, somebody’s that didn’t belong there—”
“I never go where I don’t belong,” Patchen Rawls said angrily.
“As far as I can tell,” Victoria shot back, “you never go anywhere else.”
Bennis Hannaford winced. Janet was pulling at those pins again, pulling them all the way out sometimes, so that the thin points of their needle ends glinted in the overhead light. Bennis didn’t blame her. Victoria seemed to be verging on mania, out of control, as if she’d had more than enough a million years ago and now decided to do something about it. She was concentrating her full attention on Patchen Rawls, and there was a light of triumph in her eyes, as if she knew something the rest of them didn’t.
Under other circumstances, Bennis might have tried to diffuse the situation. Her mother had trained her well in the ways of hospitality. That was what Main Line mothers did. But Bennis was afraid that if she moved, Victoria would notice her, and that if Victoria noticed her, she would spring. If Victoria was intent on carving Stephen’s mistresses into shark meat, there was more than one mistress for her to use her knives on.
On the arm of Victoria’s chair, Janet was getting more and more nervous. The rest of them, Bennis herself included, had gone deathly still. Suddenly, Janet jumped up and started to run from the room. Her jumping made Bennis jump too, with just a second’s time lag.
“I’m going to go to the kitchen,” Janet said, not stopping, heading full speed for the foyer. “I’m going to make some tea. Does anybody else want some?”
Victoria turned on her. “What are you going to make tea for? If you want tea, we have maids.”
“I know we have maids, Mother. I just want something to do.”
“Maybe she does just want something to do,” Clare Markey said. “Can you really blame her?”
“Yes.” Victoria stood up too, her heels making her a good three inches taller than Janet. Janet looked unnerved, and Bennis was unnerved along with her. It was a kind of Freudian nightmare. There was the overadequate mother. There was the underadequate daughter.