Janet ran toward Elizabeth Scarlatti and leaned across the desk, her eyes wide with fright. “Ulster left me for almost two weeks! I didn’t know where he was. I was petrified!”
“You were seen going into the strangest places, my dear. You even committed one of the gravest international crimes. You bought another human being. You purchased a slave.”
“No! No, I didn’t! That’s not true!”
“Oh, yes, it is. You bought a thirteen-year-old Arab girl who was being sold into prostitution. As an American citizen there are specific laws …”
“It’s a lie!” broke in Janet. “They told me that if I paid the money, the Arab could tell me where Ulster was! That’s all I did!”
“No, it wasn’t. You gave him a present. A little thirteen-year-old girl was your present to him and you know it. I wonder if you’ve ever thought about her.”
“I just wanted to find Ulster! I was sick when I found out. I didn’t understand! I didn’t even know what they were talking about! All I wanted to do was find Ulster and get out of that awful place!”
“I wouldn’t pretend to dispute you. Nevertheless, others would.”
“Who?” The girl was shaking.
“The courts, for one. Newspapers, for another.” Elizabeth stared at the frightened girl. “My friends.… Even your own friends.”
“And you would allow … someone to use those lies against me?”
Elizabeth shrugged.
“And against your own grandchild?”
“I doubt that he would be your child, legally, that is, for very long. I’m sure he’d be declared a ward of the court until it was determined that Chancellor was the proper guardian for him.”
Janet slowly sat down on the edge of the chair. Lips parted, she began to cry.
“Please, Janet. I’m not asking you to enroll in a nunnery. I’m not even asking you to do without the normal satisfactions of a woman of your age and appetites. You’ve hardly restricted yourself during the past several months, and I don’t expect you to now. I’m only asking a fair amount of discretion, perhaps a bit more than you’ve been exercising, and a healthy degree of physical caution. In the absence of the latter, immediate remedy.”
Janet Saxon Scarlett turned her head away, her eyes tightly shut. “You’re horrible,” she whispered.
“I imagine I appear that way to you now. Someday I hope you may reconsider.”
Janet sprang from the chair.
“Let me out of this house!”
“For heaven’s sake try to understand. Chancellor and Allison will be here soon. I need you, my dear.”
The girl raced to the door, forgetting the lock. She could not open it. Her voice was low in her panic. “What more could you possibly want?”
And Elizabeth knew she had won.
CHAPTER 16
Matthew Canfield leaned against the building on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue at Sixty-third Street, about forty yards from the imposing entrance to the Scarlatti residence. He pulled his raincoat tightly around him to ward off the chill brought by the autumn rain and glanced at his watch: ten minutes to six. He had been at his post for over an hour. The girl had gone in at a quarter to five; and for all he knew, she would be there until midnight or, God forbid, until morning. He had arranged for a relief at two o’clock if nothing had happened by then. There was no particular reason for him to feel that something would happen by then, but his instincts told him otherwise. After five weeks of familiarizing himself with his subjects, he let his imagination fill in what observation precluded. The old lady was boarding ship the day after tomorrow, and not taking anyone with her. Her lament for her missing or dead son was international knowledge. Her grief was the subject of countless newspaper stories. However, the old woman hid her grief well and went about her business.
Scarlett’s wife was different. If she mourned her missing husband, it was not apparent. But what was obvious was her disbelief in Ulster Scarlett’s death. What was it she had said in the bar at the Oyster Bay Country Club? Although her voice was thick from whiskey, her pronouncement was clear.
“My dear mother-in-law thinks she’s so smart. I hope the boat sinks! She’ll find him.”
Tonight there was a confrontation between the two women, and Matthew Canfield wished he could be a witness.
The drizzle was letting up. Canfield decided to walk across Fifth Avenue to the park side of the street. He took a newspaper out of his raincoat pocket, spread it on the slatted bench in front of the Central Park wall, and sat down. A man and a woman stopped before the old lady’s steps. It was fairly dark now, and he couldn’t see who they were. The woman was animatedly explaining something, while the man seemed not to listen, more intent on pulling out his pocket watch and checking the time. Canfield looked again at his own watch and noted that it was two minutes to six. He slowly got up and began to saunter back across the avenue. The man turned toward the curb to get the spill of the streetlight on his watch. The woman kept talking.