I Am Pilgrim(80)

She could just vanish. All she needed was a place to stay, and to make certain that nobody ever recognized her. Then she could commit the murder whenever it suited her.

I mean, there’s no better alibi than being dead, is there?





Chapter Twenty-seven


ALTHOUGH I MET Ben and Marcie for dinner the following night, I said nothing to Ben about my newly minted theory – I wanted to keep turning it over in my mind like some complex architectural model to see if it held together.

In return for Marcie’s home-cooked meals I had invited them to Nobu and, somewhere between the shrimp tempura and the yellowtail, I did, however, mention that I had changed my mind – I would be happy to take part in the seminar.

They both stared at me. It was Marcie who spoke first. ‘Let me guess, you’ve found Jesus too?’

I smiled, but – men being men – there was no way I was going to embarrass either myself or Bradley by talking about the shrine I had seen at Ground Zero and the emotions I had experienced when I read about his bravery.

‘Maybe it’s being home again,’ I said. ‘But I think it’s time to give something back to the community.’

Bradley almost choked on his sake. He and Marcie exchanged a glance. ‘That’s wonderful,’ Bradley said. ‘Why not join Neighbourhood Watch too? Just out of curiosity – any chance of telling us the real reason?’

‘Not really,’ I replied, smiling back, thinking quietly about the sixty-seven floors and the fact that the man in the wheelchair, to judge by his photo, was a heavy-set guy.

The silence stretched on, and at last Marcie realized I had no intention of explaining any more and she launched into a new subject. ‘Have you thought about going back to your childhood home?’ she asked.

Surprise changed sides. I stared at her like she was crazy. ‘Greenwich, you mean? What – press the intercom and ask the corporate raider if I could take a look around?’

‘You can try that if you like, but having met him, I don’t think it’ll work,’ she said. ‘I just thought you might have seen the bit in New York magazine.’

I lowered my glass of water and looked a question at her.

‘A local garden society is showing the grounds to raise money for charity,’ she explained. ‘If you’re interested, Ben and I would be happy to go with you.’

My mind was spinning – go back to Greenwich? – but I didn’t pause. ‘No, but thanks. It’s just a house, Marcie – it doesn’t mean anything to me. It was all a long time ago.’

Naturally, as soon as we had separated after dinner, I bought a copy of the magazine and, the next day, I called the Connecticut Horticultural Society and purchased a ticket.

Bill would have loved it. ‘Two hundred dollars to see a few trees? What’s wrong with Central Park?’

It was a glorious Saturday morning, the sun climbing in a cloudless sky, as I wound through Connecticut’s leafy avenues. I could have told the cab to take me up the drive to the front of the house, but I wanted to walk – I figured it would be best to give the memories a chance to breathe. The huge wrought-iron gates were open and I gave my ticket to an old lady with a rosette and stepped into the past.

It was amazing how little had changed in twenty years. The sycamores still formed a canopy over the pea-gravel drive, the European beeches continued to add depth to the hillsides and in their cool glades the rhododendrons were as beautiful as ever. Halfway up the drive there was a break in the foliage, designed to give visitors their first view of the house. If it was meant to shock, it never failed.

I paused and looked again at Avalon. It stood in the distance, its facade reflected in the broad waters of the ornamental lake. Bill’s grandfather had gone to England in the 1920s and stayed with the Astors at Cliveden, their stunning Italianate pile on the Thames. He returned with dozens of photos, showed them to his architect, and told him to ‘build something like that, only more beautiful’.

The house was finished six months before the Crash. Along with Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, it was the last of the great American mansions of the twentieth century.

My eye tracked along its walls of Indiana limestone, aglow in the morning light, and found the three tall windows at the northern end. It was my bedroom and maybe you can imagine how a room like that felt to a kid from my part of Detroit. The memory of those frightening days carried my eyes down to the lake where I had spent so much time walking alone.

Under a row of pin oaks I saw the grass promontory from which, years later, Bill taught me to sail. As a child he had spent his summers in Newport and fell in love with the twelve-metre yachts which competed for the America’s Cup. One day he came home with scale models of two of the greatest boats ever to have had keels laid down. Australia II and Stars and Stripes were over five feet long, their sails and rudders remote-controlled, driven only by the wind and the skill of the operator. God knows how much they cost.