Night-Bloom (46 page)

As eccentric as his life-style was, living on the fringes of criminal life as he did, he nonetheless clung to a strict code of ethics. The “code,” as contradictory and inconsistent as it was, contained proscriptions against the peddling of drugs, promiscuous sex, the use of alcohol on all but special occasions and finally and most emphatically, sponging on the public dole.

Public assistance was a special category for Watford. There was no room there for easy casuistry. It was simply repugnant to him. He didn’t despise people who accepted it; he merely pitied them. The sense of loathing he felt for any public charity went beyond reason and, undoubtedly, was an offshoot of his father’s own fiercely independent and mostly misguided notions regarding pride and manliness.

That Christmas season found Watford demoralized. More so than ever before. Whatever might have been said of him, he had always been a sanguine and resilient creature. He was willing to take the daily drubbings that life administered because he subscribed wholeheartedly to the notion of a better day. Recognition now, however dim, of the chronic, possibly fatal nature of his illness, along with the daily rejection he’d encountered in his search for work, had just about throttled whatever final vestiges of hope he could muster. Above all holiday seasons, Christmas without hope is undoubtedly the most hopeless—the zero point of despair.

With characteristic fashion of trying to make the best of things, he rose early the day before Christmas and prepared a small bird for Christmas Eve. Following that, he went out and purchased yams and salad greens at a local greengrocer, plus a bottle of inexpensive claret and a mince pie. As an afterthought he asked a neighbor, a recently widowed lachrymose lady as solitary as himself, to join him for dinner.

The meal was pleasant enough, but the two of them there by themselves in the musty little house, eating off his mother’s Spode with nothing but the most desultory talk between them, served only to heighten his sense of isolation and bereavement.

Much to his relief, the lady departed shortly after dinner, leaving him to himself—to the parlor and the ticking of numerous clocks and the crackling fire expiring on the hearth. His sense of gloom deepened. For no particular reason, he thought of Quintius, his meeting with him at the gallery and the man’s refusal to acknowledge their acquaintance. That, for Watford, was unpardonable, even more so than the alleged crimes of which he was suspected. In the next instant the red of rage enflamed his features.

Granted a wide social gulf lay between them, but did that mean that Quintius had been so mortified to have shared a hospital room with him that he had to disavow the incident entirely? During that vague, scarcely remembered period of convalescence, Watford felt he had given Quintius not only companionship but the will to recover. Surely he deserved better than the kind of scorn that Quintius had heaped upon him.

By the time he had gotten into bed that night he’d worked himself into a fine fettle. So great was his sense of personal affront that he was unable to sleep. He tossed and turned while anger churned inside him. Perhaps a deep intuition that his days now grew short made him all the more determined to .square his books.

He rose early the next morning, Christmas Day, and dressed. He drank a cup of coffee at a neighborhood stall and took a subway to Pennsylvania Station, where he bought a ticket and boarded a train for Huntington, Long Island. He had found Quintius’s Long Island number and address in the Manhattan directory where it appeared directly beneath the entry for Quintius Gallery, Madison Avenue.

When he reached Huntington he took a cab from the station to Cold Spring Harbor, instructing the driver to take him out to the Quintius place.

From the depot they reached the Quintius residence in a little under twenty minutes. The driver was about to turn into the long, winding gravel drive, but Watford asked to be let off at the entrance instead.

“It’s a long way in.” The driver stared at him through the rearview mirror.

“That’s okay. I prefer to walk.”

“Suit yourself.”

The driver handed him change and accepted his tip without looking back. Watford got out and started through the two big stone stanchions. Momentarily wavering, he paused and glanced back over his shoulder. The driver was still there, staring queerly at him. Watford could see the man shrug, then tear off with a shriek of tires.

Watford trudged up the drive, his collar up and his ungloved hands balled into fists deep inside his overcoat pockets. For no immediately apparent reason, he had dressed in his best Sunday finery. The fact that it was Christmas Day may have had something to do with it.

Moving up a gentle acclivity, rounding a wide curve in the drive, looming up ahead through a stand of bare birch, Watford saw stone chimneys surmounting a slate mansard roof. A small, late-model Porsche stood drawn up at the head of a circular drive that swept round to the front of the house.

Watford veered off the drive and stood shivering for a while in a thick screen of evergreens encroaching upon the house. There were gardens all about, mulched and covered over with plastic sheets for the winter. Cold frames were set out all round, and innumerable plantings of rhododendron and azalea stood wrapped in burlap. To the left of the house and just beyond a gentle rise, Watford could see an immense slab of Sound, gray-green and tumbling shoreward, whitecaps churned by icy blasts of wind coming out of the north. Other than the smart little Porsche, there was no sign of anyone about the house.

He wore, a heavy overcoat and beneath that a suit. But even at that, the icy blasts sweeping through the trees took his breath away. With each gust his trousers buffeted about his legs and his feet grew tingly numb inside his shoes. Nevertheless, he drew his collar up more tightly round his throat and waited.

He must have waited there for upward of twenty minutes, growing colder and more desolate by the minute. Wavering between irresolution and his need to set things aright, he had begun to question the wisdom of his being there at all, and wondering whether he should not slink off at once before he was discovered.

In the next moment the choice was taken completely out of his hands. The front door swung open and someone, a man, stood framed in the doorway, his back facing Watford. Given the height and noble proportion of the figure in the doorway, Watford knew at once the man to be Peter Quintius. He stood talking with someone just inside the door. Craning his neck and leaning forward, Watford caught a glimpse of pale rose, then a flash of movement. It was a woman’s robe.

The figure of the man appeared to turn slowly, and in the next instant Watford had a clear view of profile, followed shortly by a full prospect of the woman just beyond. The man was indeed Quintius, and the woman, he presumed, was his wife.

Quintius turned another ninety degrees and started briskly down the front steps. Even as the massive oak door closed behind him, Watford could hear the squeal of ancient brass fastenings rend the frozen air.

Quintius moved down the steps and round to the side of his car. At that moment Watford stepped out from the concealment of the woods and started toward him. The distance between them was possibly fifty yards. Without actually running, Watford moved with remarkable swiftness, seeming to accelerate as he drew closer. With the first definitive crunch of his foot on the gravel drive, Quintius whirled and stared at him. Something in the man’s eyes had the effect of stopping Watford dead in his tracks.

“Mr. Quintius?”

“Yes?”

“It’s me. Charles Watford. Remember?”

The expression on Quintius’s face registered no recognition. Quite the contrary, it was more that of a bemused curiosity as he watched the slight, stooped figure scrambling toward him.

Watford’s hand shot out before him and he was smiling. “You do remember? Beth Israel? The bed next to you? I came up to see you a few months ago. At your gallery? Remember?”

Something wary leapt at once into Quintius’s eye. “I don’t know you. I have never …”

“But you do. You shared a room with me. At the hospital.”

“You have no business on this property. Get out of here.”

Watford felt himself cringe but stood his ground. When at last he did speak, it was softly, with the most poignant affability. “I will. Just as soon as you admit you know me.”

Quintius stood uncertainly while Watford confronted him. Staring up at him, he gave the appearance of a small hound who’s treed a bear.

“Mr. Quintius,” Watford resumed—politely, reasonably, arguing with quiet force. “I’m certain you know me.”

“Isobel.” Quintius shouted over his shoulder. “Isobel.”

“I’ll be happy to leave the moment you …”

The door squealed open and Isobel Quintius stood framed there in a pink robe, staring at the two of them. “Peter? What in God’s—”

“Isobel,” Quintius snapped at her, his eyes riveted on Watford as though he were a deadly serpent about to strike. “Call the police.”

“Mrs. Quintius …” Watford’s hand rose in appeal. “I’m sorry to …”

“Call the police, Isobel. For God’s sake.”

At once the door slammed shut and she was gone. Watford seemed puzzled and hurt. “There’s no need for police. I’m not a criminal.”

“You’re trespassing here. You have no right here.”

“You
do
remember me from Beth Israel. I see it in your eyes. Why do you deny it?”

“I deny nothing. I don’t know you. I’ve never been to Beth Israel.”

Quintius glowered down at him, then spun round and started back up the steps. Just as he reached the door he turned and started back down as if something had just occurred to him. “Except for that time you came into my gallery, I’ve never seen you before. Now will you stop annoying me and my family? The police will be here any minute. If you’re not off this property by then I’ll press charges. I will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

Quintius was right. A local police patrol car was there within the next several minutes and two Huntington policemen got out and stared back and forth from Quintius to Watford while the two men shouted at each other. Mrs. Quintius looked on helplessly. “Who is he?” one of the policemen asked. Quintius shook his head. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

“Yes, he does. He knows me all right.” Watford appealed to one of the policemen. “We shared a hospital room together.”

“He lies. I’ve never seen the man.”

“Get him out of here,” Mrs. Quintius called from the safety of the door.

“I just want him to admit he knows me.”

Quintius glared down at Watford from the upper step. “The man’s insane.”

Whatever Quintius had denied before, whatever slur or indignities he had heaped on Watford were all as nothing compared to those last three words. The charge of insanity, or mental instability, was absolutely intolerable.

Like a small fierce terrier, Watford hurled himself on Quintius. Mrs. Quintius screamed and the big man staggered backward even as the two policemen pounced on Watford, dragging him, kicking and struggling, to the car.

“You lie.” Watford spat and kicked. “You lie. You know me. You know you know me.”

The patrol car doors were flung open and while one of the policemen encircled Watford from behind with his arms, struggling to hoist him off the ground, the other tried to force his head down so that it would clear the door frame.

“You know me all right. You know I was in that hospital room with you.”

Quintius stood aghast on the top step; Isobel cowered beyond the door, watching in horror while the police struggled to subdue the shrieking, flailing figure.

At one point they heard a grunt and Watford’s head banged with a queasy thud against the top of the car. His face was bleeding and his glasses were askew. As hard as the police tried to cram his head down below the doorframe of the patrol car, the more it came bouncing right up. Arms flailing all the while, Watford spat obscenities at Quintius. “You son of a bitch. You know me. I helped you when you were in pain. Why don’t you admit it? You bastard. Aren’t I good enough?”

There was a grunt and a shudder. Watford’s head cleared the top of the doorframe and he was propelled sprawling headlong into the backseat of the patrol car. The doors were slammed, and as the car lurched off down the drive, the Quintiuses, badly shaken, could see one of the policemen in the backseat still thrashing about trying to subdue Watford. For some time after the car had disappeared behind a rise, the Quintiuses stood staring at the troubled vacancy left in its wake. An icy wind soughed in off the Sound and the bare birches clicked fretfully against each other in the near-zero air. Mrs. Quintius turned and looked at her husband. A frightened, inquisitive look haunted her eyes. “What was that man talking about, Peter? What was all this about a hospital? What in God’s name was he trying to say?”

It was Christmas Day. No one was about. Not the chief of police. Not the town magistrate. Not even a local justice of the peace. Everyone was on holiday and the two police who’d taken Watford into custody had not the faintest notion of what to do with him. Until that could be determined, they decided to detain their prisoner in one of the small temporary holding cells in the basement of the Cold Spring Harbor Town Hall.