The Brass Rainbow

27

There was light downstairs in the Radford house, and the Jaguar was parked in front. I walked up the front steps with my pistol in my hand. The front door stood open. MacLeod was not in sight. The living room was deserted. I went along to the library.

George Ames sat in a leather wing-back chair. He held a glass, and an almost empty bottle stood on the table beside the chair. His quick eyes were numb with whisky, or numb with something else. He was not drunk.

“Have a drink,” he said.

“Where are they?”

He drank, licked his lips. “I think I’ll sell the apartment, go and live at the club. I never was much good at this kind of reality. I’ve been sitting trying to think of what I can do, but there isn’t anything. I don’t want to do anything.” He drank again. “Our fault, I suppose. Jonathan and Gertrude mostly, but the whole family. Something missing in Walter. No control, no judgment, just his desires.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How much did you know?”

“Nothing, but I had wondered. Vaguely. About the marriage. The idea of marriage had never come up, as far as I knew. I’d not heard it mentioned. Walter wanted Deirdre, yes, but I hadn’t thought that she wanted him. She seemed so uninvolved, toying with him. I would have said that marriage had never crossed her mind. She seemed too, well, mature for Walter. Too cool.”

“Until Monday.”

“Yes, Monday. You know, Jonathan did like her, but marriage is another matter. Deirdre is modern, free. She made no secret of her, shall we say, independence. I don’t think Jonathan would have liked the marriage. I’m not sure Gertrude would have before it… happened.”

“But it looked like a neat way out of trouble, and maybe Deirdre would have been a good wife for Walter,” I said. “Where are they, Ames?”

“In her cottage. Have one drink. I’m waiting for a taxi. I really can’t do anything here. I need my routine.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

I went out and along the hall to the front door. Outside, I looked into the Jaguar. The front seat next to the driver’s seat was a mess of blood. I walked around the house. Morgana’s cottage was dark. The other cottage showed low, muted light. I walked toward it through the snow. The wind had dropped, and a deep silence filled the cold vacuum of the night.

Music came to meet me from the cottage, the massive tones of a symphony. I knew it: Sibelius’s Second Symphony. The last movement, the theme that always carries for me the vision of a solitary horseman riding from far off across a frozen wasteland. A man alone in the universe.

Inside, the cottage was identical to Morgana’s cottage. The music came from a stereo in the far corner. One light burned in the elegant living room. Deirdre Fallon lay on a couch, her eyes closed, and her delicate face intent on the music. She wore the long sable coat, and no shoes or stockings.

She opened her eyes. “I had a feeling you would cause trouble. Paul should have killed you.”

“I didn’t do much.”

“Just enough to unbalance it,” she said. Her finishing-school voice was speculative. “It’s odd, but I’d still like you to tell me about your arm. We never change, do we?”

“Where’s Walter?”

She closed her eyes and lay back. “In the bedroom.”

I walked into the bedroom. A lush bedroom not at all like Morgana’s monkish cell. She was there, Morgana, slumped on the floor with her head on the bed. She was crying. Mrs. Radford was not crying. She sat erect in a chair, her smooth face calm under the perfect white hair.

Walter lay on the bed. He was dead. He looked like a boy, but he did not look golden. There was terror in his eyes, and pain. He had been shot in the stomach, and he lay curled up like a punished infant. There was a lot of blood, even with all he had left in the Jaguar.

“A job well done, Mr. Fortune?” Gertrude Radford said.

“No,” I said. “I wanted him alive. He’s no help dead.”

Her pale eyes moved to look at Walter. “I couldn’t protect him from his own stupidity. No mother can.”

“Your deal killed him,” I said.

She shook her head. “I’m not responsible for my son being a fool over a woman. I made a logical arrangement, and he ruined it. I’ll make you an offer. I’ll pay for your silence, and for any evidence you may have. I’d rather Walter’s mistakes remained as unknown as possible.”

“Don’t waste money on me,” I said. “With a little pressure, the police will keep it quiet for free. Everyone’s dead.”

I thought I saw a tear trickle down her face, but I wasn’t sure. She’d have a lot to bury in routine and coffee. She’d bury it. She’d bind her wounds, and blame everyone but herself. I wasn’t so sure about Morgana. The girl had not moved. She knew more about pain, and she had lost more. In her crusade to save Walter, she had been right. She had opened the eyes of her golden boy, and had killed him by it. Coffee would not help her.

I went back to the living room. Deirdre Fallon had not moved. The music was building to its conclusion. The solitary horseman rode toward his destiny.

“Answer some questions?” I said.

“Quiet, please,” she said, her eyes closed.

I waited. I like Sibelius. It’s hard music, austere, like a man alone on a giant rock asking questions of the sky. There are no answers, but the questions make us men.

The music faded away in a long, hovering note. She opened her eyes. “What questions?”

“You and Baron planned to blackmail Jonathan all along. Walter never knew. He thought you were his girl, not Baron’s partner. Baron made his pitch on Sunday, and on Monday you and Walter went to Jonathan to get the money. He had it there. What happened? He changed his mind? He refused the money?”

It was hard to think of blackmail and murder when I listened to her soft voice, watched her beautiful face.

“He said Walter could rot in jail. He called Walter a corrupt infant. He pushed Walter, he slapped him. Walter picked up the knife. It was over in seconds. Poor Walter.”

I waited, but she didn’t go on. She wasn’t going to give me much. Why should she? I said, “It was about eleven-thirty. You got Walter and Ames out. At first you probably just planned to cover Walter, give him an alibi. You called Baron. He came in the back. He had the idea of Weiss and an impostor to make it look like Jonathan was still alive long after Walter was on the train. Then one of you saw the bigger deal, probably you. You’ve got the brains.”

She said nothing. I wasn’t sure she heard me. “The two of you made a list of the serial numbers of the $25,000, and wrote Weiss’s name on the pad. You took the knife, and you had Walter cold. That night you called Mrs. Radford to tell her. It was you she came in to meet at Baron’s penthouse. She made her offer: drop the blackmail and marry Walter. He wanted you. Everybody wins if you can handle Baron.”

On the couch she reached for a cigarette. She seemed to be seeing a vision.

“The brass ring,” I said. “She handed it to you. You never thought you had a chance with the Radfords, and Walter didn’t move you much, but there it was. I guess she knew you. Maybe you’d shown her something in the months with Walter: hunger for all the Radfords had. For all they are. You could be a Radford. Walter would have money, position, even power. She had to play it fair all the way, you had the knife, and Walter wanted you.”

Maybe it’s an inevitable story in a country that makes the many want what only the few can have. For most the big dream can never happen, but the trying for it is supposed to make the world move. Maybe it does, I don’t know. If I knew I’d be writing important books no one would read. What I do know is that every now and then there are some who, like a cheap gambler, want it now and easy and without work, and that ends in violence.

“So Baron had to go,” I said. “He was no match for you, and he trusted you. He sent Leo away because he was only meeting you, his partner, that night. He met Strega and his. 45 instead. Carla Devine almost queered it, but Strega spotted her. You should have killed her then, not warned her. Maybe you liked her.”

She had closed her eyes again. I suppose I was right, Carla had reminded her of herself, and she wanted to forget that part.

“When did you marry Paul Baron?” I said.

She opened her eyes and turned, but she said nothing.

“You had a husband,” I said. “You couldn’t buy him off, or divorce him, because you couldn’t even tell him about the deal. He would have owned you for life. He could tell Walter you’d been his partner. He knew Walter had killed Jonathan. And he’d have bigamy on you. He’d never have let you alone. No one seemed to know you were married to him, or that he was married at all. Who would look for an old marriage? So, kill him. Strega was there to do it for you, and Weiss would take that fall, too.”

She spoke up to the ceiling, “I was fifteen when I met Paul. What I told you earlier was mostly true. The well-bred girl with no present and no future. Paul showed me how to live high and easy. I liked it. We were a good team. I never had an arrest. Then I married him. It was wrong; we were too different once the bloom was off. So we went our private ways, but we still worked together sometimes. A divorce didn’t seem important. Not until Monday, and then it was too late. Mrs. Radford handed me the big chance. I had to have it. No one knew about Paul.”

“Leo Zar knew. Maybe Paul told him, or maybe he had found out.”

“We all make mistakes.”

“You didn’t make many. Did you plan to kill Strega, too?”

She raised herself on her elbow, and both blue eyes were straight toward me. “I killed no one. Remember that. There’s nothing you can do to me.”

She didn’t blink, or look grim, or do anything but let her words sink in. Then she lay back again. “Strega was in love with me. He had wanted me ever since Walter first took me to Costa’s place. I don’t think it would have lasted long, though. Once I was married, he wouldn’t be hard to ease away from, and after all, he had killed Paul, hadn’t he?”

“Strega was a rough man.”

“Rough men can be handled,” she said, “only…”

“Only?” I said.

She sat up, and I had a flash of long, pale leg. She looked toward the record player. “We don’t make the same mistake twice, we make it a hundred times. Rough men, strong men, that’s my weakness. I can handle them, but I can’t stay away from them. Walter was a boy. Tonight I went to tell Strega we’d have to stay apart for a time, to start the brushoff. But he wanted me. So, first him, and then the brushoff. Once more, you see?”

She drew on her cigarette, but it had gone out. She dropped it into an ashtray. “Walter was at the window. He shot Strega. Then he stood out there in the snow crying. He stood, and Strega shot him. I brought him home. I had it, the big rainbow, but it all turned to brass.”

She stood up and went to put a record on the player. It was Brahms, his Fourth Symphony. I could hear Morgana Radford crying in the bedroom. There was no sound from Mrs. Radford. She was probably planning the funeral.

“What happened to the man who posed as Jonathan for you?”

“He ran with his money. Does it matter?”

“Who was the sandy-haired man looking for Carla?”

“No one. A gun Strega hired.”

“Where’s Walter’s gun?”

“In the Jaguar.” She began to nod her beautiful head in time to the powerful music. “There’s nothing you can do, you know. Not a thing.”

I walked out. I went through the snow back to the Jaguar and got Walter Radford’s gun. It was a simple hunter’s side-arm. Then I got into my car and started back for New York. I would tell Gazzo the story. He could handle the local police.