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Act of Darkness(89)

By:Jane Haddam


“Tibor would talk to it,” Bennis said dismissively, “and somehow or the other it would understand. Gregor, what killed Kevin Debrett and Stephen Whistler Fox? I heard you say something to Berman about curare—”

“No. Forget about the curare for a moment. I knew about your affair with Stephen Whistler Fox because Victoria Harte hinted at it when we got here, and because of that convoluted moral discussion Tibor said you had with Donna. I knew it must have been ten years ago because that’s when you spent significant time in Washington, D.C. You told me that yourself months ago. As far as I can figure out, the senator spent most of his time either there or in Connecticut, and you’ve never said anything about Connecticut.”

“I went to a wedding there once,” Bennis said. “Gregor, listen, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know he was married when all that started. I really didn’t. I would never have—”

“Bennis, it’s all right.”

“It’s not all right to deliberately have affairs with married men,” Bennis flared. “I’m no Patchen Rawls.”

“I never said you were.”

“And I had no reason to know he was married. He wasn’t wearing a ring. Janet wasn’t anywhere in evidence. Although, I can tell you, when I found out she existed and where she was I nearly killed him—”

“Wait,” Gregor said. He grabbed the chair, dragged it up close to where Bennis was sitting, and sat down in it himself. “Here’s what I want to talk to you about. Janet and where she was then and what else was going on in the senator’s life.”

“I’m not sure I know what was going on. He wasn’t exactly truthful. And then, when I got up here this weekend, he didn’t even remember he’d ever met me. Ever. He—”

“Bennis.”

“All right.”

“Think,” Gregor told her. “How did you find out that Janet existed? How did you find out where she was and what she was doing? For that matter, where was she and what was she doing?”

“Well,” Bennis said. “As to finding out he was married, I’d been seeing him for about a month. I was staying with a friend, you know, but my friend was something of a social maniac, so I didn’t see much of her, and she’d light out for the territories and not get back for days at a time. Stephen would come to the house to see me, but she was never there. Except that finally, after a month, the way I said, she was.”

“And she told you Stephen Fox was married.”

“That’s right.”

“Did she also tell you that Janet Harte Fox had had a baby?”

“No. Actually, Janet didn’t have the baby until another six weeks or so after that. I think there was something wrong with her pregnancy. She was spending full time in bed. That was why I never saw her. She was in some clinic up in Connecticut—”

“Kevin Debrett’s clinic?”

“I don’t know,” Bennis said slowly. “But I think maybe it must have been, because I know Debrett was her obstetrician. And then later—can I get to later later? Can I tell it in order?”

“Of course.”

“Well,” Bennis said. “The first I heard about any pregnancy or any baby was in an item in the Washington Post. It didn’t say much, just that Janet Harte Fox had had a child and that the child had been born with Down syndrome. I was—I can’t tell you what I was. I was a little crazy at the time, or I would have broken off with Stephen when I first found out he was married, but I hadn’t done that. And now I had a pregnant wife and a retarded child on my conscience and I was furious. So I went to see him.”

“And?”

“Gregor, it was the oddest thing. I asked him what he was doing still in the District, with his wife up in Connecticut going through God only knew what on her own, and he literally didn’t understand what I was talking about. He said he’d gone up for the day—just that. It must have been the day the baby was born, I figured that out from the details, but he didn’t say that. Just that he’d gone up to see her. And then he said he was going to go up to see her again, at the end of the week.”

“Then what?”

“Well,” Bennis swallowed hard. “I asked him about the baby. Didn’t he want to be with the baby? Didn’t he want to see the baby? Didn’t he want to—I don’t know. He listened to me like I was speaking Urdu and then he said, ‘the baby. The baby is mentally retarded.’ Dead flat. Like that. As if he were talking about a car with a rod through its engine block. Gregor, I thought he’d go on from there, but he didn’t. He started talking about politics instead. About how smart Dan Chester was. About how careful politicians had to be, in what they voted for and in their personal lives. I thought he was talking about me. Gregor, I was damned if he was going to be the one to get rid of me. I wasn’t going to allow it. Not under those circumstances.”