with which to back it up, she had gradually built a business that was the despair of her competitors. “You’ve got to see St. V. to swing” had become an axiom among the jive and jam folk. Winchell had called Margot the Queen of Swing in a Sunday night broadcast.
But Cristie knew that although Margot’s income was large, her expenses were high and the pace was terrific. She had engaged herself to Euen Firth with her eyes open, made no secret of it. She wasn’t and she didn’t pretend to be, madly in love with the gangling, not quite “ex-” playboy in his early thirties, with a prospective couple of millions in his jeans. Euen was the son of Charles Firth, one of the country’s leading drug manufacturers. Not that Margot wasn’t fond of Euen in her own way. She was, but she had explained to Cristie quite frankly that he could give her the things she wanted, the chance to stop and take a deep breath, to lie back and relax and laze a bit—for a while, anyhow.
Margot went on talking, but she gave Cristie a shrewd glance. Cristie averted her face. The gnawing little worm of fear in her breast stirred. Margot was terrifically keen, saw all there was to see. She didn’t know, specifically, about Steven. Cristie didn’t want her to know, didn’t want anyone to know—yet.
She was relieved when the maid entered and said that Margot was wanted on the phone. Cristie wasn’t afraid of Johnny or of Euen. Men didn’t notice things, like women. Johnny went on reading the lyric of a new Harry Woods song and sipping a Tom Collins. Euen was engrossed in a newspaper.
Margot was away for about five minutes. When she re-entered the living room, a modernistic room mollified by incongruous and comfortable additions that would have driven its designer mad, a change had come over her. Her mouth was constricted and her strong plain face was a bad color. Johnny put his feet, flung over a chair, on the floor.
“Who was it, Margot?” he asked, frowning at his cousin.
At Margot’s answer the blood rushed into Cristie’s face, stained her throat. Standing near a table, rolling a cigarette between the fingers of a large shapely hand, Margot said in a queer flat tone, “It was Steven Hazard’s wife, Sara.” The cigarette she was holding broke and tobacco dribbled to the floor.
Cristie was aware of the fact that Margot knew Sara. They had been at Miss Brandon’s school together, and Sara had been a pupil there when Margot was teaching deportment for room and board and nothing a year before she started her upward climb. The connection between them was neither close nor intimate. Cristie’s hands tightened in her lap. What had Sara Hazard said to Margot to make her look like that? Something disturbing, certainly.
Margot threw the ruined cigarette into the waste basket, got another from a box, lit it and said, without turning to Euen Firth, lolling in his corner with a highball, “Sara Hazard mentioned you on the phone just now, Euen. I didn’t know you were a friend of hers.”
A surge of relief, a dart of surprise, wonder; it was then that it began for Cristie, that baffling sense of distortion, of values superimposed on other values, the underlying ones quite different from those that showed on top.
Euen Firth blinked sandy lashes. His eyes were uneasy, furtive. “Sara Hazard . . . ? Who the hell is Sara . . . ?” His long, sallow, high-nosed face and dish-chin smoothed themselves out. “That’s right,” he said, “I remember now. Yes. I met a Mrs. Hazard at the Jettison’s on Long Island last winter.”
He got up and helped himself to a fistful of Scotch and very little vichy. His narrow-shouldered back was turned. He forgot to release the siphon on the bottle and the vichy squirted over the tray in a wide pool.
The other two didn’t notice, but Cristie did. Margot was looking at Johnny. It was a strange look, weighing, speculative. Cristie was conscious of a slight feeling of suffocation. Johnny didn’t meet Margot’s glance. He was gazing out at the terrace with its hedge of cedars in red terra-cotta pots against the broken frieze of the towers of New York and a mauve evening sky barred with long streaks of green.
There was a funny little pause. Nobody said anything. Then Johnny said with a yawn, “I don’t like that woman. I ran into her the other day with the Henleys. I don’t care how long it is before I see her again.”
Margot was crossing to her desk, a chromium and leather contraption with half a hundred drawers. She seated herself, took out a memorandum book and said over her shoulder, “Oh, but you will, Johnny, darling. You and Euen will both see her, shortly. She wasn’t coming to my party tonight. She’s changed her mind.” He intonation was clipped, incisive.
Euen’s highball halted halfway to his lips. Johnny’s brows drew together. Cristie saw them both through a mist. Her sense of foreboding, her latent fear had quickened, sharply. Steven had said that Sara was going to the theater with friends. Why had she altered her plans? What did it mean? Cristie felt herself beginning to shake.
She got up, walked to one of the windows and stood there with her back turned, looking out into the dusk.
Chapter Two
THE ERMINE CAPE
WITH the coming of darkness Cristie’s spirits lifted. The atmosphere of the penthouse helped. It was anticipative, brisk, and every moment, was bringing her nearer to Steven. Margot had thrown off her preoccupation and was busy with a thousand details. Sara Hazard’s name wasn’t mentioned again. Cristie tried to forget her. At seven Euen and Johnny went home to change and Margot and Cristie had a quiet meal together, just a bite because the dining room was filled with the caterer and his men.
Cristie dressed quickly, slashing herself to renewed vigor with a hot and cold shower. Eau de Cologne, a mist of powder, cobwebs of stockings, white sandals. She applied lipstick and slid into cool white chiffon, yards and yards of it, bound round her midriff with a girdle of silver.
Margot wore stiff, sweeping brown net that was superlatively smart and reduced mere prettiness to a wishy-washy non-essential. She had invited almost a hundred guests. Publicity was good for her business. Cristie got a fleeting impression once or twice in those last moments that she would have liked to call the whole thing off. There was nothing solid to tie it to.
People began arriving at around half past nine. By half past ten the spacious, flower-decked rooms were well filled. There was music, sweet and swing. There was dancing. There were games. There was impromptu singing. Voices were recorded on a special machine that Margot had for her composers. A number of the guests had a try at it and there were exclamations of dismay and corresponding laughter when the records were played back. A new baritone from the Met sang and there was a soft-shoe dance by Gorkin from the town’s hit musical.
Men in white jackets and women in thin, colorful gowns wandered into every room and out on the terrace. The drinks were plentiful and excellent. Euen Firth, tall and sandy and beaming, was in his element as auxiliary bar man. He was one of his own best customers.
As the evening advanced and the time she might expect to see Steven approached, the penthouse began to be peopled with shadows as far as Cristie was concerned. Smile, reply, respond to talk—about the weather, about how well Margot was looking, about what a splendid fellow Euen Firth was. Her whole being was centered on the thought of Steven, when he would come and what he would have to tell her.
She tried to banish Sara and her belated telephone call, tried not to speculate as to why Sara had given up the theater and was coming to the penthouse instead. The attempt wasn’t a success. She wasn’t the only one who was troubled. She hadn’t imagined it; there had been something peculiar about the way Margot and Johnny and Euen had reacted to Sara’s shift in plans. Perhaps it was to see or say something to one of them,
