Fletch’s Fortune

Twenty-four

7:30 P.M. Dinner

Main Dining Room

“Frankly, I think you’re all being dreadfully unfair.” Eleanor Earles put her napkin next to her coffee cup. “I’ve never heard so many spiteful, vicious remarks about one man in all my life as I’ve heard about Walter March since coming here to Hendricks Plantation.”

Fletch was at the round table for six with three women—Eleanor Earles, Crystal Faoni, and, of course, Freddie Arbuthnot. No Robert McConnell. No Lewis Graham.

“You all act and talk like a bunch of nasty children in a reformatory, gloating because the biggest boy among you got knifed, rather than like responsible, concerned journalists and human beings.”

Crystal burped.

“What have we said?” asked Freddie.

In fact, their conversation had been fairly neutral, mostly concerning the arrival of the Vice-President of the United States the next afternoon, discussing who would play golf with him (Tom Lockhart, Richard Baldridge, and Sheldon Levi; Oscar Perlman had invited him to a strip poker party to prove he had nothing to hide) and whether his most attractive wife would accompany him.

Freddie had just mentioned the memorial service for Walter March to be held in Hendricks the next morning.

“Oh, it’s not you.” Eleanor looked resentfully around the dining room. “It’s all these other twerps.”

Eleanor Earles was a highly paid network newsperson, attractive enough, but resented by many because she had done commercials while working for another network—which most journalists refused to do—and, despite that, now had one of the best jobs in the industry.

Many felt she would not have been able to overcome her background and be so elevated if she had not been seized upon by the networks as their token woman.

Nevertheless, she was extremely able.

“Walter March,” she said, “was an extraordinary journalist, an extraordinary publisher, and an extraordinary human being.”

“He was extraordinary all right,” Crystal said into her parfait.

“He had a great sense of news, of the human story, of trends, how to handle a story. His editorial sense was almost flawless. And when March Newspapers came out for or against something, it was seldom wrong. I doubt Walter March was ever wrong.”

“Oh, come now,” Fletch said.

“What about the way he handled people?” Crystal asked. “What about the way he treated his own employees?”

“Let me tell you,” Eleanor said “I would have considered it a privilege to work for Walter March. Any time, any place, under any circumstances.”

“You never worked for him,” Crystal said.

Eleanor said, “You know about the time I was stuck in Albania—when I was working for the other network?”

Fletch remembered, vaguely, an incident several years before—one of those three-day wonder stories—concerning Eleanor Earles in a foreign land. He was a teenager when it happened. It was the first he had ever heard of Eleanor Earles.

“It was just one of those terribly frightening things.” Eleanor sat forward, her hands folded slightly below her chin. “I and a producer, Sarah Pulling, had spent five days in Albania, shooting one of those in-country, documentary-type features for the network. Needless to say, we’d had to use an Albanian film crew, and, needless to say, we could film only what they wanted us to, when they wanted us to, and how they wanted us to. However, getting any film, any story out of Albania was considered a coup; it had taken months of diplomatic back-and-forth. Of course they had to accept me as an on-camera person, and I figured if I kept my eyes and ears open I’d be able to add plenty of material and additional comments to the sound track once we got back to New York.

“Despite their ordering us this way and that and putting us up in their best hotel, which had the ambience of a chicken coop, I think they tried to be kind to us. They offered us so much food and drink so continuously, Sarah said she was sure it was their way of preventing us from doing any work at all.

“So things went along fairly well, under the circumstances. We hadn’t much control over what we had on film, but we knew we had something.

“The night we were leaving, we packed up and were driven to the airport by some of the people who had been assigned to be our hosts and work with us. It was all very jolly. There were even hugs and kisses at the airport before they left us to wait for the plane.

“Then we were arrested.

“After we had gone through all the formalities of leaving Albania, most of which we didn’t even understand, and were actually at the gate, ready to board, two men approached us, took us out of the line, said nothing until everyone else had passed us boarding the plane, until all the airlines personnel had gone about other business—all those eyes carefully averted from the two American women standing silent and somewhat scared with two Albanian bulldogs.

“After everyone had left, they took us by our elbows, marched us through the airport, and into a waiting car.

“We were brought back into the city, stripped, searched, dressed in sort of short, loose cotton house-dress kinds of things that allowed us to freeze, and put in individual, rank, filthy jail cells. Fed those things that look like whole wheat biscuits in pans of cold water, three a day, for three days. No one official ever saw us. No one spoke to us. We were never questioned. Our protests and efforts to get help, get something official happening, got us nowhere. The people who brought us our biscuits and removed our pails just shrugged and smiled sweetly.

“Three days of this. Have you ever been in such circumstances? It’s an unreasonable thing. And you find yourself reasoning if they can do it for a day, they can do it for a month. Two days, why not a year? Three days, why not keep you in jail the rest of your life?

“I was sure the network would be yelling at the State Department, and the State Department doing whatever one does under such circumstances and, yes, all that was happening. It was a big news item in the United States and Europe. The network made plenty of hay out of it. They pulled their hair and gnashed their teeth on camera; they made life miserable for several people at the State Department. However, they didn’t do whatever was necessary under the circumstances to get us out of jail.

“The afternoon of the fourth day, two men showed up in the corridor between Sarah’s and my cells. One of them was an Albanian national. The other was the chief of the Rome bureau of March Newspapers. You know what he said? He said, ‘How’re ya doin’?’

“Someone unlocked our cells. The two men walked us out of the building, without a word to anyone, and put us, shivering, filthy, stinking into the backseat of a car.

“At the airport the two men shook hands.

“The March Newspapers bureau chief sat in the seat behind us, on the way to Rome, never saying a word.

“At the airport in Rome, all the other passengers were steered into Customs. An Italian policeman took the three of us through a different door, into a reception area, and there, seated in one chair, working from an open briefcase in another chair, was Walter March.

“I had never met him before.

“He glanced up when we came in, got up slowly, closed his briefcase, took it in one hand, and said, ‘All right?’

“He drove us into a hotel in Rome, made sure we were checked in, saw us to a suite, and then left us.

“An hour later, we were overcome by our own network people.

“He must have called them, and told them where we were.

“I didn’t see Walter March again for years. I sent him many full messages of gratitude, I can tell you, but I was never sure if any got through to him. I never had a response.

“When I finally did meet him, at a reception in Berlin, you know what he said? He said, ‘What? Someone was impersonating me in Rome? That happens.’”

Freddie said, “Nice story.”

Crystal said, “It brings a tear to my eye.”

“Saintly old Walter March,” Fletch said. “I’ve got to go, if you’ll all excuse me.”

During dinner he had received a note, delivered by a bellman, written on hotel stationery, with Mr. I. Fletcher on the envelope, which read: “Dear Fletch—Didn’t realize you were here until I saw your name in McConnell’s piece in today’s Washington paper. Please come see me as soon after dinner as you can—Suite 12. Lydia March.”

He had shown the note to no one. (Crystal had expressed curiosity by saying, “For someone unemployed, you sure get interrupted at meals a lot. No wonder you’re slim. When you’re working, you must never get to eat.”)

Eleanor Earles said, “I take it you’ve worked for Walter March?”

“I have,” said Crystal.

“I have,” said Fletch.

Freddie smiled, and said, “No.”

“And he was tough on you?” Eleanor asked.

“No,” said Crystal. “He was rotten to me.”

Fletch said nothing.

Eleanor said, to both of them, “I suspect you deserved it.”