“But why question the name?”
“Because Ryall is a family name. It’s a New York family name, not a Philadelphia one, but still. We all know each other. If he was really a Ryall, I would have heard of him.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “He paid a prostitute and then he drove out to your brother’s party and you followed him there. Which means he must have had an invitation to your brother’s party. Or am I being dense? Was he going to gate-crash?”
“No,” Anne said. “He definitely had an invitation. Charlotte wouldn’t leave him out. He’s a social columnist. He writes a column once a week, invoking the spirit of The Philadelphia Story.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” Anne said. “He went through the gates and I didn’t. I could have. The guard was Tony’s regular one, with some reinforcements in the background. He would have known who I was. I just, I don’t know. I didn’t want to be part of the fuss. When Ryall went through, the place was pretty close to deserted except for the guards, but then I sat there for a while and all sorts of people started showing up. There were a lot of cars on their way in. It was a huge ball. Charlotte was fund-raising for the UN. And then something odd happened. The guards closed the gates, even though there were cars there. Later on, I thought that that must have been when Tony was shot. At the time, I thought it might just be the first lady. I’ve been through security lockdowns like that, in my former life. I didn’t see any point to being part of it, so I took off. I came back to Adelphos House, and Father Kasparian had just left.”
“This Ryall Wyndham. Was he driving himself, or was he being driven?”
“Oh, he was driving himself. I don’t think anybody would let his driver take him to a prostitute. Or maybe they would. To me, it’s like asking to get convicted. You’re giving the prosecution an eyewitness.”
“I see what you mean,” Gregor said. He hadn’t touched his coffee. By now, it was probably cold. “Do you think this is connected? Ryall Wyndham’s encounter with a prostitute and your brother’s murder?”
“I have no idea. At first, I wondered if Wyndham was what Hemingway called a pilot fish, one of those people who scope out the territory so that the rich people won’t have to take too many risks. That maybe one of the people in that group was looking for fresh meat, so to speak. And maybe that’s it.”
“Do you think it was your brother Tony?”
“Good Lord, no. It’s not sisterly affection, Mr. Demarkian, it’s just that I knew Tony. He channeled his sex drive into his work. He was one of those people. Charlotte used to complain about it, but always in code. God, all those people talk in code.”
“You’re one of those people.”
“True,” Anne said. “But I made my escape. Anyway, I just wanted to tell somebody this, and I’ll tell the police if you want me to. I really don’t understand the relevance it has. I’m only sorry I didn’t get better pictures. The police won’t arrest the johns, and as long as they don’t, the prostitution will continue. Sometimes, if you get evidence against somebody prominent enough, you can get it into the media and then the police have to pay attention, at least for a little while. My Holy Grail is a crackdown on the johns only. I’m not going to find it.”
She gathered the pictures up in a stack again. Gregor looked at the face of Patsy Lennon, who was supposed to be thirteen years old. She didn’t look thirteen years old. She looked forty-two. Anne put the pictures back in the manila envelope.
“They get old fast,” she said. “Patsy will have to move on to rougher trade in another year. I’m not kidding myself that I’m somehow going to save her. Most of them don’t get saved.”
“Then why do you do what you do?”
“Because it called to me,” Anne said. “And don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. I just woke up one morning next to my husband, who was a perfectly nice investment banker who’d become completely convinced that poor people were delinquent adolescents who had nobody to blame for their misery but themselves, and my entire life suddenly seemed completely ridiculous. Then about two days later, I found myself paying twenty-thousand dollars for an evening gown to wear to the April in Paris Ball in New York, and the whole thing was so asinine, I couldn’t keep a straight face. I had to have them messenger the damned dress to me, because I couldn’t stand to touch it. So I hacked around for a little while and landed back in Philadelphia and started Adelphos House. You can do a lot of things with trust funds.”