River House.”
“All of it?”
“All of it,” she said. Her smile was hardly a smile at all, yet I sensed there was laughter behind it. Not shared laughter, but laughter at my expense.
I tightened up a little inside. I could guess how the brush salesman with his foot in the door must feel when the housewife says that she doesn’t really need any brushes, but she just might take a quick look. I wondered what the brush salesman did then—did he find himself a more likely prospect, or did he take a lopsided pride in his sales talk and move in for the kill?
We turned into the blue-graveled drive, found a space to park and nothing more was said until we were inside. I ordered lunch without counting the house or wondering how big the noon throwaway would be. My mind was not on business. She was wearing a perfume that I had been aware of all morning and it seemed to me that I had never before been so completely aware of a woman.
She said, “You know, you’ve done surprisingly well in changing this place around—in spite of its being entirely commercial, the feeling of the past is still in this room.”
“You aren’t the first to say that, but you’re the first who matters,” I said.
She said, “I’m not teasing now. I meant that. I knew this house well in the old days and I’ve got the unreal feeling that these people lunching here today are guests.”
Well, she had one advantage in appraising River House that I would never have—she had memory. I was going to take her on a tour of this place all right, as soon as we were finished with dessert, to see it through her eyes.
“Do you know,” she said, “I’d especially like to see the upstairs.”
I said, “There’s nothing up there but my room. The rest of the rooms are used only for storage.”
“I know,” she said.
I didn’t wonder how she knew.
“Let’s do it now?” she said abruptly, stood up and started for the green-carpeted stairs. I followed her. I liked to watch her go up the stairs. She had fine, strong legs, with a good curve at the calf and a stout ankle. We stopped in front of the door at the top of the third flight of stairs and I opened the door and looked in. I made a move as though to let her precede me, assuming that she would step first to the window overlooking the river, as I had once or twice seen other girls do.
But she did not even cross the threshold. She stood looking in, and what she saw was a chest of drawers and a bureau and a bed. There was a small desk and a steel filing cabinet against one wall and a small shelf of books.
“Books?” she said. “Do you like to read?” She studied the titles.
I said, “Whenever I get a little time.”
She started to turn away. She said musingly, “I wanted to see where you lived. I hoped that it would tell me something about you. But it looks like a hotel room.”
I said, “What else? This is a public house, not a home.”
She swung a quick glance along the hall. “Shall we go down now?”
I put both hands on her shoulders. I turned her toward me, moving her so that her face was level with mine. But she put both hands against my chest, pushing.
“Not now,” she said. “Not right here—not right now. These things can’t be forced, not with me, at any rate.”
I looked at her steadily, aware of a sincerity and a half-promise that were more important and more enticing than any other promise had been before.
I said, “Of course,” and took my hands from her shoulders and touched her elbow, but only to guide her toward the stairs. I had waited before. I had waited through the war years and through most of the years since and now I had twisted life around a little, this past year or so, to fit a pattern I had long had in mind. The whole thing, the waiting, the planning, could have been upset in a matter of seconds here on the lonely third floor of River House.
She paused at the top of the stairs and looked at me. There was a skylight overhead and I could see the blue of her eyes and the question behind them—a question she seemed to be asking of herself, not me.
She smiled suddenly and said, “You’re a patient man, Jason. I’m afraid of patient men. They don’t often lose any game they play.”
I said, “Then this is only a game?”
The smile went away. “No,” she said slowly. “This isn’t just a game any more. I thought you understood that.” She turned quickly and started down the stairs.
When I had seen her out the front door to her car I asked, “Anne, if it isn’t a game any more, will I see you tonight?”
She did not hesitate. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll come unescorted and you’ll have to sit with me.”
But I did not sit with her in the barroom of River House that night. I sat with a Major Craddock instead.
You might have been in the late great war and still have been lucky enough never to have met Major Craddock. He was not a combat soldier, nor yet stateside. He was—or had been—an MP officer. He had always operated in base section. Operated is the right word.
He came into the barroom at River House that Saturday night with his gut sucked in and his chest out and his shoulders very square. He had a crew cut and a big, blueish jaw. He kept his eyes squinted into dangerous slits, so there would be no doubt that, although here was a gentleman and upon occasion a very polished one, here, too, was a very hard case.
He came straight to the table where I sat waiting for Anne Cramer, and said, “You’re Broome.”
I put an inch of cigar ash into the black tray that had RIVER HOUSE printed on it in white letters. I leaned back in the caned chair and looked up at him.
I remembered this man, all right. One of his MP’s had arrested me in a base section town for wearing a mixed uniform, minus a tie. I hadn’t had much trouble proving why I was dressed that way. A phone call to a code number had fixed that. But the memory nudged me now and some of the old annoyance scratched across my palate. It made my voice raspy.
I said, “I’m Broome.”
He sat down. He said, “Do you know who I am?”
I said, “No.”
He said, “I am Major Craddock.” His voice got a little smug. “I am General Gunther Cramer’s right hand man.”
I thought to myself, You are just one shade removed from being General Gunther Cramer’s dog-robber . . . but I did not say that. I said, “How do you do, Major Craddock. I hope you are enjoying your stay in Newburyport.”
He took out and lit a cigarette after frowning at my cigar. He went through all that silly business of tapping it and lighting it with great care.
He said, “Broome, I’m going to be blunt with you. It has come to the general’s attention that his daughter has been seen in this place.”
“Anything
