Prelude to Terror (4 page)

Lois Westerbrook had brushed her hair free from her turban’s clamp, exchanged her tucked and frilled dress (the newest rage) for white silk pants and black shirt. High heels had been replaced with flat sandals, amber earrings with demure pearl studs. Beads were no longer worn as a tight neck-band; a simple long gold chain now broke the severity of the shirt. Eye-shadow was reduced in intensity, lipstick lightened and mouth reshaped. She hoped, as she surveyed the transformation, that it would reassure Colin Grant: this was the way he had first seen her. Basset’s good right hand, at the Arizona luncheon. It would also emphasise the fact that she had taken considerable trouble this afternoon to stay unidentified in New York. Caution had been, was still necessary; she would give him all the reasons why. If he came... Would he? She gave one last glance at her reflection in the mirror. You obviously believe he will turn up, she told herself. But only one half of her mind was on herself and her successful visit to Schofeld’s. (Not even the
Times
critic, who had visited Basset for an interview, had recognised her.) The other half was on Gene Marck, now waiting in the sitting-room next door. Or was he still ’phoning?

He had arrived just before nine, when she was in the shower. A strange man, with moods that varied from hot to cold. Tonight he was in one of his coldest. He hadn’t even stayed beside her while she dressed; instead he had dropped two brief kisses that were almost as absent-minded as his excuse for retreating into the sitting-room to wait for a call from Washington. She guessed it was more business discussion with the architect who was reconstructing the Virginia house for Basset’s museum. Why hadn’t Gene stayed in his own room—at the end of this corridor, an arrangement to keep anyone from connecting the two of them—and received his nine o’clock call there? Once the call was over, he hadn’t returned to the bedroom. Calls of his own to make? Of course, he was worried. He always worried about details. Which was no excuse to use her sitting-room as a public ’phone booth.

Anger had slowed her, kept her late, one way of administering a rebuke. Would he even be aware of it? Annoyance was dying; she could shake her head over her attempt at discipline. Gene was Gene. He had his own ways, and nothing would change them. He could be warm and passionate—she had never known such love. He could be detached and remote. But that, she reminded herself, was nothing to do with her. He had told her so. And he did have immense responsibilities. He was Victor Basset’s private accountant for the art collection—he kept score on purchases, values, restoration, insurance, all that heavy but important business, and added enough good advice to make him one of Basset’s favourite aides. My very favourite, too, she thought, and decided it was time to enter the sitting-room.

Gene Marck put down the ’phone and rose to meet her. He was of medium height and careful about his weight, a healthy specimen with skin tanned by Arizona sun. His hair was thick and blond, with grey beginning at the temples. The diplomat’s look, Lois Westerbrook called it. (She had always liked men who were older. Gene was forty-eight.) Now he was studying her dress. “Very suitable,” he said with marked approval. “Well worth waiting for.”

So his mood had improved. She could safely allow her own to sharpen. “I didn’t want to disturb your ’phone calls.”

“Now, now,” he said warningly, but a quick smile softened his serious face, strong-boned, tight-lipped, transforming him into a warm and amiable man. It dropped away, just as suddenly as it had appeared. Once more he was business-like and alert.

Worried too, she thought, noticing the furrow that deepened between his eyebrows, always a sign of stress. His clear blue eyes had that distant look as if he were seeing beyond her and this room. “How did you get on today? Did you meet—”

He took her in his arms, interrupted her with a kiss. “Careful! My hair and lipstick! You don’t want Mr. Colin Grant to raise an eyebrow, do you?”

“When is he due?”

“I told him ten o’clock.”

“That doesn’t leave us much time.”

“You telephone too much,” she reminded him. “Why didn’t you use the bedroom ’phone?”

“You’d have been a distraction.”

“Were the Washington calls so important as all that?”

“Just checking on Grant,” he said. She didn’t quite believe it. The dossier he had made on Grant, now lying on the desk, was complete enough. His arms had tightened around her again, and he was kissing her on either cheek. “See,” he said as he released her, “I didn’t disturb your lipstick one bit. How is Mr. Grant these days? Much the same, or changed?”

“Changed. More difficult. Perhaps less confident. More hesitant. Wary, I think.”

“Suspicious?”

“That’s going too far. Let’s say he thinks he is nobody’s fool.”

“Good.” He had spoken too emphatically. He saw the slight surprise in her eyes. “You’re nobody’s fool, either, my love.”

Except yours, she thought. “Gene, when do we tell Basset—about us?”

“You want to lose our jobs? We’ve hidden our feelings for three years. He’d never really trust us again. You know the house rules. No philandering between the inmates. Basset wants our minds kept on his business. Full value for the money?”

“We
do
keep our minds on—”

“As we’ve been doing in the last ten minutes?”

It was a point. She had to smile. And then sighed.

“I know,” he said softly. “We’ll get married when we have made enough to keep you in the style to which you’ve grown accustomed. Enough, too, to let you resign from your job. I don’t want a part-time wife.”

Just a part-time mistress? The logic escaped her—he hadn’t much time for anyone these days. His argument about losing Mr. Basset’s trust was stronger. It would be a matter of damaged pride: no one could deceive Basset. He was a past master in secrecy himself.

Gene was back to the business on hand. “I think I’ll slip out before Grant gets here, telephone you from my room, and then you can invite me over to meet him.”

“Why not stay?”

“I don’t want him to find us too cosy. I’ll leave before he does, make an innocent exit.”

“Oh, no!” she said, the words jerked out of her at the thought of another lonely night.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Someone else to see?”

“It isn’t a woman, if that is what’s troubling you.”

Perhaps it was. In Arizona it was easy to know what women he could meet: all were visitors to Basset Ranch. Here, in New York... She tried a small joke. “Careful, or I’ll have you followed.”

His blue eyes turned to ice.

Nervously she added, “I had Colin Grant followed today. It’s very simple.” She forced a laugh. “It worked. I found him exactly when and where. You see, Gene, you are not the only one who checks and double-checks.”

“Was all that necessary?”

Her own voice hardened. “Grant never did like large parties. Consult your dossier. Brawls, he used to call them. He might never have appeared. I damned well wasn’t going to get dressed up for nothing. So I made sure of him.”

The cold stare left Marck’s eyes. The sudden smile was warm and sunny. He tried to mollify her. “I see I don’t have to tell you what to say to him.”

She wasn’t placated. She was as capable as Gene, sometimes more so. “I can write my own script,” she said sharply.

“Yes, sir!”

He didn’t salute, but the words gave the same effect, a sergeant replying to a junior officer who was inferior in every way except in rank.

The smile had disappeared.

“Gene—” she began, ready to back down. She stopped as she heard the knock at her door and pointed frantically towards her bedroom. Gene was already on his way there, to take its exit into the corridor once it was safe.

Grant arrived at the Albany with only a few minutes to spare. At ten o’clock exactly he was entering Lois Westerbrook’s sitting-room. Subdued colours, flowers, a choice in couch and chairs, enough space and interior decoration to justify the excessive expense of this hotel. The pictures on the wall were nondescript; not one bookcase was provided. The windows were shaded, framed in satin, and possibly overlooked Park Avenue. One door, connecting with another room, was ajar.

Lois Westerbrook noticed it too, and moved swiftly over to shut it. She waited there for a moment (listening for the sound of closing from the bedroom’s outer door) and then turned back to Grant. Really, she was thinking, didn’t Gene trust me to handle this interview? Then why hadn’t he stayed here and played overseer? He must think that we’ve got Grant firmly hooked. That was Gene’s word. She didn’t like it, but it went with the bait: a free trip to Vienna and a five-thousand-dollar fee. Who could resist it? Gene had asked her, especially a man who had taken a big cut in salary when he left Washington. And was available. (The Schofeld Gallery was closing for the summer in mid-July. Gene’s dossier on Grant was complete, if succinct.) “Do sit down, Mr. Grant. Any trouble on your way up here?”

He chose one of the firmer chairs, and assured her that there had been no difficulty at all in reaching her room without being noticed. In the lobby there had been a small group of new arrivals, straight off the plane, with an amazing hodgepodge of luggage for a place like the Albany—Vuitton combined with cardboard boxes tied by string: ostentatious I-couldn’t-care-less, the new fad of the unaccustomed rich, like blue jeans costing eighty dollars a pair.

“And in the elevator?” she asked as she crossed to a tray of drinks. “Some brandy?”

“Scotch, please.” She had been a little flustered, he thought, but she was coming back to normal even if she was paying too much attention to pouring his drink. He himself hadn’t been exactly calm. He had hidden his embarrassment, he hoped, by seeming to take more interest in the room than in her. That black and white outfit suited her, reminded him of the girl in frontier pants and shirt, with an Arizona tan and a Beacon Hill accent. “I rode up with three of the new arrivals—Hollywood characters—dressed as if they had been hauled off the beach at Santa Monica, and a woman they called ‘Countess’, and a couple of Venezuelans. At least, they spoke Spanish and talked of Caracas. They got off at this floor and I slipped out with them, trying to look like an oil promoter.” He still felt ill at ease. He hadn’t liked that approach to her room. It wasn’t the Albany that impressed him, with all its expensive restraint and its super-wealthy or titled guests, but this feeling of unreality.

“You were really discreet,” she said. “Soda or plain water?”

“On the rocks.”

She poured herself a glass of white wine and brought the drinks over, with a folder under one arm, to the table beside him. She sat down opposite, placing the folder on her lap, and raised her glass. “To you, Mr. Grant.”

The formality amused him: he was being briefed on the tone of this meeting. He raised the over-generous glass of Scotch in reply, laid it back on the table untouched—safer to let the ice thin out that triple dosage. There was a marked silence. In another moment, he was thinking. I’ll be reduced to looking around and making some trite remarks about imitation Louis XV chairs. There was always the weather, of course. And he laughed.

That broke the tension. Lois Westerbrook relaxed visibly. He wouldn’t be so difficult after all. “I agree,” she said.

“With what?” Now where was she leading him?

“Your opinion about the change in me. This afternoon—at Schofeld’s—you found me slightly comic, didn’t you?”

“Not that. Decorative. Highly fashionable.”

“But comic,” she insisted.

“You merged right into the scene.”

“Yet, I
was
serious. I meant every word I said. And I’m still serious.”

“Anyway, you’re recognisable now.” She really was a beauty, he thought, a self-assured, competent and cool-minded beauty with liquid gold hair and agate eyes. He had liked her better as she opened the door to him, when she had seemed flustered, cheeks pink, lips soft with uncertainty.

“That’s just the point, Mr. Grant I
had
to make sure you wouldn’t be connected—through me—with Mr. Basset. Your Maurice Schofeld has visited the ranch. He has a good memory. Especially for women.”

“Why didn’t you just call on me at my apartment? People do, you know.” This girl loves too much mystery, he was thinking: or is it to impress me? Then, as she only smiled and shook her head, he saw a possible explanation. “You had to make sure,” he quoted back, “that you wouldn’t be connected with me. Doormen talk. Right?”

She rose and laid the folder down on the chair. “I haven’t much to offer in the way of supper. Just sandwiches. I didn’t want a waiter barging in.”

“And connecting you with me, or me with you?”

She had reached a service-cart, lifted the silver lid that covered a napkin-wrapped mound. He was the most annoying man, she thought: unsettling. Did he see everything as a joke?

“No thank you,” he told her. “I’ve had supper. You go ahead.” He hoped that would stop her being the perfect hostess. In a way, it was touching: a woman putting a guest at ease with food and drink. The normal impulse, of course. Or did she want him to be so much at ease that he wouldn’t have one critical faculty left? “I think we’d better start talking, don’t you?”

She replaced the lid on the salver of sandwiches, leaving them untouched. She was still thinking about his apartment, for she said, a touch defensively, “Your doorman might very well talk, if a certain reporter just stopped for a few moments to chat with him.”

“What reporter?” Now that was carrying things too far.

“A very investigative type. He’s writing a book on the way the ten richest men in America use—or misuse—their spending money. Victor Basset is one of the specimens under his microscope. Somehow he was tipped off that I was in town. That roused his natural curiosity, I suppose. Perhaps every lead must be followed.”

“I sit corrected.” Grant smiled and took his first drink.

She returned to her chair, lifting the folder with distaste. What was in it? he wondered for the third time. “It looks as if Basset’s present project is already blown,” he suggested.

“I don’t think so. Or else there would have been some mention of it in the newspapers. No journalist can resist a scoop if he has the facts. At the moment, this one is merely wondering why I should be in New York as ‘Jane Smith.’ However, she’ll be leaving early tomorrow for Los Angeles. There she’ll disappear, thank heavens. I’ll return by stages to Arizona.”