At the door to the ballroom, Clay paused and waited until the hovering photographers had recognized him. This was usually a swift process but with a President in the ballroom the interest of the press in any one of the half thousand members of Congress was apt to be slight, no matter how striking the Representative’s appearance, how glorious his war, how superb his companion. But finally they rallied round.

  Clay knew the ones from the news services by name; the others he pretended to recognize. Elizabeth clung to his arm, simulating fear and delight in equal portions. She had once confided to him that the one thing she would most like to be was a movie star, on the practical ground that if one liked the world’s attention (and candidly she had admitted that she very much wanted to be recognized as a beautiful woman, attractive to men), the movie star alone commanded universal interest. Not even the President could compete with the fame and sexuality of a star adroitly publicized.

  Clay had disagreed. He saw no reason why a politician, even such a traditionally dull figure as the President, could not be presented in the same way as a movie star to the public. “But,” she had observed, “how many politicians look like you! and are young! and a hero!” Clay had laughed. “You put things in their proper order anyway.” He had not told her that this same order was the very one exploited by Blaise and the public relations firm which had been engaged to maintain Clay’s celebrity in the shadowy precincts of the House of Representatives. Youth was exploited (promise of future greatness) as well as war record (a film of his wartime adventures was now being made) and physical appearance (whenever he appeared in public, girls would clamor at the photographers’ prompting). Yet, as Clay knew, that which begins falsely becomes with constant repetition true. The girls now mobbed him without urging; aware that since others were said to react in this way, they must, too. As a result he had received the ultimate accolade: a dry insult from the Speaker of the House: “I always enjoy seeing that young man speak.”

  Blaise had determined that for the next few years, Clay must be presented not only as a youthful idealist but also as an alternative to the usual politician. Clay had agreed, confident that he was indeed unlike the usual politician, although he realized that in actual performance he had been somewhat less than vigorous. For the most part he favored increased military spending while viewing with ritual alarm the predatory Soviet empire as it threatened to dominate Europe and turn to hot what everyone now referred to as “the cold war.” In the House itself he had made as many friends as he could considering his enviable status. It was taken for granted that he would soon move on. But when and to what no one was certain, including Clay, who could be his state’s governor, if he chose; but he did not choose this thankless office which involved, for the most part, haggling over building contracts with state legislators, usually bought.

  The Senate was the obvious place to go. But he had vowed not to run against Burden in 1950. On the other hand, 1952 seemed a century away, and the prospect of four more years in the House was dispiriting. Despite his legendary youth, he did not regard himself as young. More to the point, in four years he would be forty-two and if his career was to be, literally, prodigious he must by then have made a significant political mark, an impossibility for any member of the House who did not possess seniority and its prize, a committee chairmanship. Meanwhile, he circulated, and waited, and tried to win the President’s confidence.

  “Good to see you, Clay!” The President was pink with excitement; in the bright light of the newsreel cameras his thin gray hair glistened as though made of metal while thick spectacles magnified enormously small shrewd eyes.

  “Good to see you, Mr. President!” Clay pumped the hand of his party leader warmly. “Did you get the letter I wrote you, sir…”

  But the grinning President had been removed by his host the governor. That was exactly right for a two-term Congressman, thought Clay irritably: one minute with the sovereign, and a photograph to be sent as quickly as possible back to the state.

  “He looks so…sexy!” exclaimed Elizabeth, delighted to have shaken the Presidential hand.

  “Sexy? Good God, you are crazy. That’s the President.”

  “And that’s what I meant,” said Elizabeth evenly, and Clay laughed. Not many girls were so honest. He enjoyed Elizabeth much of the time. Their affair had begun, ludicrously, in the stalled elevator of a new apartment house. Since that time, they had seen one another often and if she found his promiscuity distressing (he had been reasonably candid with her), she was careful never to betray jealousy. Meanwhile, she made herself useful to him, for through numerous Shattucks and Watresses, she seemed to know everyone in the outside world, that is to say New York City.

  One Labor Day weekend they had motored to Southampton, where for three days in an old house belonging to her Uncle Ogden Watress, Clay drank gin and tonic (not bourbon and water), played tennis on a grass court (not clay) and lunched daily at a beach club overlooking an oval pool in which the noise of interchangeable towheaded children drowned out all talk of the stock market (not politics). Elizabeth was an excellent guide, financial (“Oh, he has to have money, because she does and she’s a Democrat”) as well as social (“Gladys was his second wife which means that Tony is Gene’s half brother and Gladys Junior is their stepsister”).

  Like an anthropologist in search of a link between himself and another race, Clay studied the New Yorkers, tried to analyze in what way they were different from the Washingtonians. For one thing, they made less noise. They were low-keyed in their responses; they seldom boomed good-fellowship, feigned or true. Most striking of all, they did not believe or even pretend to believe that deep in the common man resided wisdom; and not to believe in the people was heresy in Washington. After all, had it not been they who had sent father, grandfather, uncle to the capital? Despite Millicent Smith Carhart’s aristocratic bluntness, she liked nothing better than to relate how some vulgarian had expressed in his quaint way a truth, entirely obscure to those who had been expensively educated and led fancy lives. But at the Racquet Club the common man was not admired; at the Knickerbocker Club he was seldom mentioned; at the Brook he was unknown.

  But though Clay found the New Yorkers’ disdain of the people somewhat alarming (after all, his own career depended entirely upon the franchise of the simple), he did enjoy listening to Uncle Ogden (a banking genius, according to Elizabeth) dismiss with scorn that electorate which had inflicted the demonic Roosevelt and now the mediocre Truman upon a republic which “don’t you see, was never intended to be a democracy.” Yet for all their complaining, Clay was uncomfortably aware that at heart the New Yorkers did not take politicians seriously. Between elections they even regarded their man Dewey with contempt, their quadrennial support of him the result more of a horror of the people than a display of enthusiasm for a candidate who was bound, sooner or later, to betray the sacred money to the few for the profane votes of the many. They had been stung before. Fortunately, Clay’s publicity made him appealing even to those who would ordinarily have fled at the approach of a Western Congressman. Then of course he was genuinely helpful to anyone who wished to thread the Congressional labyrinth in pursuit of gold. Finally, all men are attracted to someone on the rise. And he was rising. Had not the President in his progress deliberately paused, so that photographers might record his approval of Congressman Overbury?

  “Old Harry certainly didn’t give you much of his time, did he?” A familiar abrasive voice sounded in Clay’s ear. It belonged to Billy Thorne. Full of sweet Manhattans, he chewed the stem of a cherry.

  “Hello, Billy.” Clay tried to push past him.

  “Miss Watress, I don’t suppose you remember me but we met…”

  “I don’t think I do,” murmured Elizabeth, flute beneath brass. She clutched Clay’s arm and gave him a helpful shove which, unfortunately, propelled them into a long table.

  But though they were trapped, Clay refused to show impatience. In politics everyone must be pleased. “What’re you doing now?” he asked, as though he wanted very much to know the answer. Elizabeth clutched his arm for what seemed moral support but when he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she was entirely absorbed in the stumpy figure of the grinning President, grabbing at hands in his circle of light.

  “I expect to work for him.” Billy indicated the President.

  “How can you?” This was abrupt, but not unnatural.

  “Why not?”

  “Your…well, your radical past might make it difficult.”

  “Those days are over.” Billy was blithe with anticipated power. Resting his weight on the false leg, he swayed from side to side, like a demented metronome. “I expect to be at the White House after the first of the year.”

  “Well, let’s hope your job doesn’t require Senate confirmation.” Unintended malice is the most wounding. Clay regretted having spoken so brusquely.

  The metronome came to a clicking stop. “Luckily I don’t have to depend on my ex-father-in-law How about you?”

  “Blaise is a most useful man.” Clay remembered to smile. “Our relations are friendly.”

  “Yes, we all know about that.”

  Billy’s overemphasis had its effect. Clay wondered as he often did what people really said of him and Blaise. Before the war, Washington gossip was concerned almost entirely with adultery. The subject was endlessly diverting and as long as those involved maintained appearances, no man was ever much censured. But though appearances were still maintained with prewar care, particularly by those whose lives were public, private gossip had become singularly brutal. The war, Freudian analysis, and popular novels had revealed all sorts of recondite and undreamed-of vice. No one was spared, not even Millicent Smith Carhart, whose long friendship with Lucy Shattuck was now highly suspect, and there was much discussion as to did they or did they not and if they did what did they do? In any case, it was taken for granted that whatever one seemed to be, one was really the opposite.

  “Oh, Clay! Clay!”

  Irene Bloch seized him with long-fingered hands. “How simply dreadful!”

  Irene turned to Elizabeth who took a step back, startled: was she dreadful!

  Then Irene’s gaze took in and promptly let go the image of Billy Thorne. He did not matter. With one hand she clung to Clay while with the other she pulled Elizabeth toward her. “I heard it on the radio, in my car. Just now, on the way here. What really happened? You know how they are on the radio, just an announcement, no details. Mais quel désastre!”

  “What did you hear on the radio?” asked Clay carefully. Irene’s eyes went wide as she heard the question; then she drew Elizabeth even closer to her. In times of trouble thus do the women of the tribe share the common grief.

  “You don’t know?” Each word was pronounced with wonder and delight. “You really have not heard?” She looked first at one, then at the other, ravished to be fate’s messenger. “Then that explains why you’re here at a party. I wondered, of course.”

  Clay’s face went warm. He was suddenly dizzy. Now he would be told.

  “She’s dead,” said Irene Bloch. Tears suddenly streaked her ash-white cheeks. “Enid’s dead!”

  IV

  “I know the error was mine and I will not shirk the responsibility.” Three times in the course of an hour Dr. Paulus had said this phrase, and each time the word “shirk” became “shuck,” to Peter’s annoyance. By attending to such details he was able not to comprehend “this highly tragic affair,” again in Dr. Paulus’s phrase.

  They were gathered in the library. Though the day was cold, the fireplace was empty. Against the dark paneling the portrait of Aaron Burr, its left eye recently restored, represented Enid at the conference.

  Since it was Dr. Paulus who brought the news, he sat in Blaise’s chair. Frederika was enigmatic in a bright tweed suit, antithesis of black. Blaise sat on the bench before the fire, chin upon clenched hands. Clay stared out the window at a row of fir trees arranged like pawns at the start of a game of chess. Peter observed them all from a leather chair beside the door.

  Dr. Paulus told his story. From time to time he touched handkerchief to his lips, which was perverse since they were dry while his cheeks glistened with sweat. “I don’t know how I forgot. I never do forget. At least never before, not once in all my years at the Home. But this one time I did. I left those keys in the car. I don’t suppose it’s any excuse to say that I was under considerable tension myself, of an administrative nature, I should say, not psychological,” he added, his old unctuous authority returning briefly, a reminder to himself of who he had been that morning and would be soon again once he had escaped from Laurel House and its savage lord.

  “This was at noon, just thirty minutes…a mere half hour before our luncheon is served.” Peter writhed at the word as well as the thought of what that “luncheon” must have been.

  “She had been with my wife up until shortly before eleven, discussing art which is…which was their favorite subject when together, my wife majored in art, at Louisiana State, and she so much enjoyed the pictures Mrs. Overbury painted. They were very close, the two girls. Anyway, they were together in the atelier…” It took them all a moment to work out ah-telleer. “…until just about eleven, when Mrs. Overbury said she thought she’d like to lie down before lunch and Mrs. Paulus said, ‘Of course, honey,’ and left her in the atelier. Well, as we can piece together the story, Mrs. Overbury then went to her room where she gathered a few belongings and wrapped them in a piece of canvas, the kind she painted on. We don’t allow valises in the rooms, for obvious reasons. Then at about noon she came outside and went over to my car…”

  “You don’t have guards? There’s nobody to keep an eye on who goes where?” Blaise’s voice sounded querulous though from his expression Peter realized that he meant to bluster.

  “As you well know, Mr. Sanford, we do not have guards in the prison sense or in the sense that our patients are violent or wish to escape…which they aren’t and don’t, and are screened in advance for just that. Disturbed they are, of course, and capable even of little…eruptions but not violent. So we are not a prison, even though some might like it better if we were.”

  Good for Paulus. Peter turned to look at his father who stiffened, started to answer, then abruptly covered chin and mouth with two fists. As for Clay, he was now watching the doctor, his expression pleasant. Peter could not begin to guess what Clay felt. He had arrived last, saying that he had been at a meeting when he heard the news. For the first few minutes he had been nervous. But the mood of the others was contagious; now, he was passive and apparently serene. Grief not begun; shock not yet ended, they were all like gods, surveying a hero’s death upon some windy height, below heaven.

  “But we do have nurses and others who are in constant attendance and, in a way, our patients are always under what you might call surveillance. But this particular noon,” he frowned and blotted his mouth. Peter thought he heard a rasping sound as two abrasive textures met. “It so happened that Mrs. Paulus was in the other wing of the new house while I was involved in an administrative matter of some complexity, and so it was then that Mrs. Overbury got into my car and drove away.”

  Clay was suddenly alert. “If you never left your keys in the car before, how did she know that this time you would, and pack her things in advance?”

  “Well, now, Congressman…” As Dr. Paulus intoned the title richly, the Southern cadence of his voice conjured up a vision of the old Congresses, his people’s traditional shield against the hostile North. “I have given that matter some thought and I have discussed the matter at length with my wife and others, and I have learned that Mrs. Overbury had lately taken to strolling each forenoon in front of the main house where I park my car and so, in retrospect, it seems clear that she was indeed waiting for that one occasion when I might inadvertently leave those keys in that car.”

  “But what about today?” Clay’s voice, suddenly hard, erased all memory of old Congresses. He was the new order, impatient and precise. His voice, Peter had often noticed, became markedly Western whenever he spoke of his state or discussed the business of the House, as if by a shift in accent he meant to remind himself and others that he was in fact what he was in title, representative.

  Clay put Dr. Paulus through his paces. He was relentless inquisitor as well as grieving husband. But of course there was no grief in him, thought Peter bitterly. In the dull autumnal light Clay’s hair seemed gray not blond, and Peter suddenly saw him as he would be in twenty years’ time, strong-faced and plausible, the President. It was not impossible. But for now: might not Enid have seen the keys before she went to her room to pack her belongings? Well, yes, sir. Maybe, sir. That was the best the committee chairman could wrest from the evasive witness, but it was sufficient to justify the inquisitor’s display of weapons. The rest of the testimony followed simply enough.

  “She reached the main highway shortly before one o’clock. She must’ve made very good time because she was quite a ways south of Richmond when it happened.”

  When it happened. Peter saw the highway; saw the sharp bend it made among tall pine trees. The sun shone bright and cold; he could smell the pines. Just beyond the bend in the highway was an intersection, invisible to travelers from the north and of no interest at all to this traveler from the north who wanted only to reach the Mexican border as soon as possible. Peter watched, helpless, as an old truck containing two cows pulled slowly onto the highway from a rutted side road. There was no one in sight when the farmer started to make his turn into the right lane. Then Enid rounded the bend, doing eighty miles an hour.

  Now stop the story, Peter told himself. Start to revise. Enid pulls sharply into the left lane, is safe, does not with a hideous hollow sound crash into the rear of the truck, smashing truck and herself to pieces.