Mark Mills - Amagansett

‘We’ve only one Penrose in East Hampton—Everett.’

Probably the father; must be a family home.

‘Any way I could get the address?’

‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘Number 2 Water’s Edge.’

Not a house, but a road. And not a road he’d ever heard of in the summer colony, though private tracks were constantly being opened up for new residences.

‘Where is that, do you know?’

‘It’s near Springs, just off Old Stone Highway.’

He felt his heart leap, the pieces falling into place, his eyes already searching the framed map on the wall across the corridor.

‘Thanks, Olive,’ he said absently, then hung up.

The map laid bare the events of the evening in connecting lines, some straight as an arrow, others twisting and coiling, but all leading to and emanating from that dusty stretch of Town Lane west of the junction with Indian Wells Highway.

Manfred and Lillian Wallace hadn’t headed back into East Hampton on leaving the Devon Yacht Club, because the Penroses’ house lay directly to the north, on the western shore of Gardiner’s Bay. And if driving from Water’s Edge to East Hampton, then Town Lane was a likely route to take, especially if you felt like picking up a head of steam.

Hartwell had abandoned the trail after Justin Penrose’s assertion that Manfred and Lillian Wallace had visited him for no more than an hour, leaving well before the time of the accident. And that had been that, just another of the many blind alleys Hartwell would have wandered down at the time.

Or maybe Hartwell hadn’t bought the story. His keen observation of Hollis and Penrose at the funeral suggested that he recalled his meeting with Penrose the year before. Maybe he’d had his suspicions at the time. But what could he do? Challenge the word of a respectable member of the community, of larger society?

The wealthy had closed ranks. Penrose had been called on to serve up an alibi. But just how far had his sense of duty, loyalty and friendship carried him? Was he also privy to the conspiracy to silence Lillian Wallace? For that would explain away the remaining anomalies in the story: Lillian’s split from Penrose, her uncharacteristic move to East Hampton for the winter months.

Her guilt had gotten the better of her, destroying her relationship with Penrose, driving her back to the scene of the crime, jeopardizing the fragile edifice of the shared lie.

Hollis checked himself; he was speculating now. And all based on one name uttered by a fisherman whose motives remained far from clear.

The phone rang, shrill and loud in the confined space of the hallway, startling him.

‘Hello.’

‘Tom?’

Oh Christ, thought Hollis.

‘Mary.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Your hostess for this evening.’

Supper with Mary. How could he have forgotten?

‘I’m sorry, I’m working.’

‘At home?’

‘It’s true,’ he said pathetically, and was rightly rewarded with a silence on the other end of the line. ‘I should have called.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

What could he tell her? Not the truth—that the invitation had completely slipped his mind.

‘I was about to. I was literally just walking to the phone when you called.’

‘Having literally just walked away from it a minute ago, I suppose.’

‘Huh?’

‘I called. Your line was engaged.’

The phone call to Olive at the telephone exchange.

‘Look, Mary—’

‘It’s okay, I think I understand.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Just tell me, are you going to come over or not?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Okay,’ she said, then hung up.

Hollis made to call her back then realized he didn’t know her number. The directory wasn’t in the drawer of the table in the hallway. When he finally located it on the floor of the larder and dialed her number, there was no reply.

He fought the urge to jump in the car and head on over. There was a lot more to be done on the case files before he could satisfy himself he hadn’t missed anything.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rang.

He leapt into action. The first thing he concealed was the bottle of gin. He was gathering together the files for removal to the larder when Mary’s face appeared at the back door.

He froze, caught in the act. Dumping the files back on the table, he went to the door and threw the latch.

‘I didn’t mean to surprise you,’ she said, ‘but I thought we should talk. Face to face.’

He stepped aside, allowing her to enter, resigning himself to her reaction. It wasn’t just the mess, it was the grime—the thin film of grease thrown up by his inexpert cracks at cooking, and to which the dust had then adhered.

‘I’ve let things go a bit.’

‘I’ll say you have.’

She picked her way around the clutter on the floor. He cursed himself as she reached for the glass on the table and took a sip.

‘Neat?’ she asked.

‘It helps me think.’

‘My husband used to say it helped him sleep.’

His shame gave way to indignation. She had no right to come snooping on him.

Mary glanced at the files on the table. ‘I’m relieved,’ she said. ‘I thought maybe you were lying.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘What then? You were so absorbed you forgot all about our date?’

Hollis hesitated. ‘That’s pretty much the size of it, I’m afraid.’

Mary glanced back at the files. ‘First Lillian Wallace, now Lizzie Jencks?’

He could see what was coming and he wished it wasn’t.

‘I said there might come a time when I’d ask what you’re up to. Now’s that time, Tom.’

He hesitated. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t know for sure, not yet.’

‘Enough to sneak a bunch of papers home.’

‘I didn’t sneak them home.’

‘Come on,’ said Mary. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Doing what?’

‘This cloak-and-dagger stuff. I thought the whole idea was to leave this kind of thing behind you. Isn’t that what you said? A quieter life?’

‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘A drowning and a hit-and-run?’ She paused. ‘Are they connected?’

‘Mary,’ sighed Hollis.

Now she was hurt, stung by his refusal to trust her. And he realized then that he’d seen that look before, in Lydia’s eyes, the first time he’d shut her out, laying the foundations of the wall.

‘Okay,’ said Mary.

She headed for the door.

‘Mary…’

‘No, Tom,’ she said as the door swung shut behind her.

For a moment he thought he might run after her and tell her all, but a sterner voice in his head questioned the wisdom of doing so. With the investigation so precariously poised, what good could possibly come from confiding in a person he cared for, but who, when it came to it, he hardly knew?

Besides, there was a lot to be done, much to be thought through, not least of all: how best to obtain samples of paintwork from all the vehicles at the Wallace residence.

Twenty-Nine

Conrad checked his watch. Ten o’clock. Time to make himself scarce.

He allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness outside, then headed for the beach. He walked west along the shore, the sky dirty with stars. He searched for distraction, but it was hard to find. The night, after all, had been theirs, the only time when they could roam freely, without fear of being seen together.

They had never discussed the need for discretion, it was a given from the first, the way things had to be. The world wasn’t ready for them yet. The secrecy wasn’t without its satisfactions, though. It added a spice to their encounters, an edge of illicitness.

At Lillian’s suggestion they had sometimes met openly in public, as customers in a general store or as moviegoers obliged to sit next to each other. On these occasions they rarely spoke, except to apologize as they brushed past each other, or to exchange pleasantries about the weather under the unsuspecting gaze of a counter clerk. One time, Lillian had ‘dropped’ her purse while paying for some goods, obliging Conrad to crouch at her feet and gather up the scattered coins. And she had made no attempt to deny him the lingering view up her linen skirt of her nakedness beneath.

The anticipation that went with these encounters was maddening, too maddening on one occasion, and they’d been unable to wait till later, Conrad’s hand delving beneath Lillian’s jacket, strategically folded on her lap, during a night sequence in The Imperfect Lady, the auditorium of Edwards Theater cast into welcome gloom. And with the giant faces of Ray Milland and Teresa Wright looking down on them from the screen, he had brought her to a rippling climax—bearing out her claim that she could reach her peak in total silence, a skill acquired in the dormitories of New England boarding schools, she maintained, where the slightest gasp in the drowsy darkness would attract howls of ridicule.

There was another side to the clandestine nature of their affair that they both welcomed. There was never a wasted moment, no time-consuming introductions to each other’s friends, no social gatherings where both were present yet not together. It seemed that they had somehow managed to distill a year, more, into a few brief months. They were never lost for things to talk about, arguing for argument’s sake about books and ideas, trading stories about their lives. She told him about her dream of becoming a theater actress, and how it had slipped away from her with the onset of war and the death of her mother, her ally. She said she had moved up to East Hampton for the winter to recover from the split with her fiancé—one part of the truth, he now suspected; her claim that Penrose had left her for another woman probably a lie.

They felt no compulsion to remain indoors once darkness had descended. Sometimes they would swim in her pool, then make their way across the sandhills to the beach, where they’d cook up whatever fish he’d brought with him that evening over a driftwood fire. Other times, when she visited him, they would strike out on foot, heading north over Montauk Highway, crossing the railroad, disturbing the snakes warming themselves on the tracks in the cool night air. Napeague was his world, and he shared it with her as they wandered. He pointed out the spot where he and Billy used to gather coal from beside the tracks during the early years of the Depression, big bituminous lumps tossed from the tender by sympathetic railroad men. He drew her attention to the best cranberry bogs and to the osprey nests, platforms of sticks and bone and rope and other debris, perched precariously atop the telegraph poles. They strolled the skirts of the salt meadows, and they pulled blue-claw crabs from the channels with scoop nets.

By flashlight, they foraged for Indian artefacts in the soft sand just back from the beach on Gardiner’s Bay, unearthing shards of broken pottery and arrowheads discarded many centuries before. And though he never took her there, not wishing to tempt the fates, he told her about the whale skeleton buried beneath the straggle of bearberry bushes.

On windless nights they would take the cat-boat out and go firelighting for fluke. Sometimes they made love in the cockpit, rocking on the gentle swell. One time, the sounds of some event at the Devon Yacht Club had drifted across the water towards them—a Cole Porter number carried on the night breeze—and it struck Conrad that Lillian had chosen to be with him, lying in his arms, rather than consorting with her own kind. And though this puzzled him, he never questioned her motives, he never doubted her desires.