Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

I abruptly went down the hall in the direction Ruth had taken. This took me to the main entryway, where an ornately carved staircase rose from a marble floor. Life-sized portraits of bygone Bayards were hung on the walls.

I prefered Marcus Whitby’s simple staircase with its poster of Kylie Ballantine’s “Ballet Noir,” but I backed up to get a better look at a stern woman in mauve silk, wondering if she was the Mrs. Edwards Bayard who had gone to the opening of Larchmont Hall in 1903; I could see a resemblance to young Catherine and to Calvin Bayard in the narrow planes of her face. Not the great beauty Geraldine Graham’s mother had been.

I heard Ruth’s voice above me and slid around behind the stairwell where the balustrade formed an alcove. “All you have to tell her is that he was asleep and in bed. But you know if this happens again, I will have to talk to Mrs. Renee about it.”

A second woman mumbled something inaudible. I hurried back down the hall to the anteroom, the thick carpeting muffling my steps. I managed to be standing at the window, gazing outside with supreme indifference, when Ruth reappeared. The mumbler was a woman in her thirties, with a bony, anxious face. Like Ruth, she wore jeans, not a uniform, and had on a heavy gray cardigan over a faded T-shirt.

“This is Theresa Jakes.” Ruth fished my card out of her blazer pocket and did a creditable job in pronouncing my name. “Mr. Bayard has been ill and Theresa is helping Mrs. Bayard nurse him.”

Theresa’s hands were red from much scrubbing. She tucked them nunlike into the sleeves of her cardigan and looked at me nervously.

I repeated my little speech. “Did you take a phone call from Marcus Whitby? Did you try to arrange for Mr. Bayard to see him?”

Theresa shook her head. “I know better than to let journalists come here. It’s Mrs. Bayard’s strictest order. Anyone who wants an interview has to talk to her in town. No one can bother Mr. Bayard here at home.” “Could he have taken the call himself?” I asked.

Theresa looked helplessly at Ruth Lantner. “There is a phone in his room, but we’ve turned off the ringer so it won’t bother him. Unless heI guess I could check it.”

“But he did go out Sunday and Monday night, right?” I said, plowing forward despite my growing uncertainty. “Was it you who brought him home?”

“He wasn’t out,” Theresa said. “He was sleeping, sleeping heavily.” “You were with him all night?” I asked.

“He doesn’t need someone in the room with him,” Theresa said. “He doesn’t have that kind of illness. But if he leaves, an alarm goes off over my bed so that I can make sure he’s all right.”

“And that alarm never sounded?” I persisted, hoping to get some inkling about what she’d done that Ruth was going to report the next time it happened-since whatever it was explained why I’d been admitted to the house. “It’s funny, because young Catherine emphasized that she’d used his key to get into Larchmont Hall.”

Theresa made a little dismayed face at Ruth, who shook her head at the other woman and said, “Catherine wasn’t here Monday night. Mr. Bayard did not leave the house on Monday. Or on Sunday. Whatever scheme you have in mind-“

“If something hadn’t happened here, you wouldn’t have let me into the house at all,” I cut in ruthlessly. “I have the names of everyone who lives here; one of them will talk to me and tell me the truth.”

“The men can tell you nothing that I don’t already know,” Ruth said with finality. “Theresa, you go back upstairs to Mr. Calvin so Tyrone can get on with the vacuuming.”

Theresa put her chapped red hands into her pockets and scuttled down

the hall toward the main staircase. I couldn’t think of any way to press my point. If Ruth had seen Whitby, or any strangers, Sunday night she wasn’t going to tell me. If Calvin Bayard had left the house, despite whatever illness he had, she wasn’t going to tell me that, either.

I might be able to find a way to talk to the men working with the hay, but it wouldn’t happen today under Ruth’s stern eye. Theresa looked as though she’d be more likely to crack, but it would take me some time to find a way to talk to her alone.

I wryly conceded the field to Ruth, shaking her hand, thanking her for her help. I started down the hall toward the front door, but Ruth called to me to follow her back the way we’d come.

I smiled blandly. “My car is right outside the main entrance. It’s ridiculous for me to use the side door.”

Before she could order me out of the front hall, Calvin Bayard suddenly lurched around the edge of the great staircase and headed toward us, calling “Renee! Renee!”

Theresa walked next to him, a chapped hand on his arm. “Renee isn’t here, Mr. Bayard. She’s at work right now.” With her patient, she was a different person: assured, gentle, her anxiety gone.

“Renee, this woman won’t go away. I don’t like her, make her go away.” Calvin Bayard plucked at Theresa’s hand, looking at Ruth, whose short dark hair and stocky build did give her a vague resemblance to Renee Bayard.

The voice that I’d loved as a student was still deep, but it had become tremulous and uncertain. His face with its long narrow hollows had shrunk and turned pinkish. Whatever illness I’d imagined hadn’t come close to this. I dug my nails into my palms to keep from crying out in dismay.

He suddenly caught sight of me and stumbled to me, grabbing me in a rough hug. “Deenie, Deenie, Deeme. Olin. I saw Olin. Trouble, trouble. Olin is trouble.”

He crushed me tightly against the rough fabric of his jacket. He smelled of talcum powder and stale urine, like an infant. I tried to move away from his embrace, but despite his age and his illness he was strong.

“It’s all right,” I said, as he continued to clutch me. “Olin is dead. Olin doesn’t mean trouble now. Olin is gone.”

“I saw him,” he repeated. “You know, Deeme.”

Between them, Theresa and Ruth managed to remove his arms from my back. “He saw the story about Olin Taverner on the news,” Theresa panted. “He’s been very agitated, thinking that this man is out to get him. He keeps claiming he’s seeing him out the window.”

“Why did you let him watch the news?” Ruth demanded.

“No one told me about the history, or I wouldn’t have let him,” Theresa snapped back. “Everyone in this house tiptoes around simple things and then blames me for not doing my job, because I’m supposed to use ESP to figure them out. Get a psychic off the TV hot line if that’s what you need in a nurse.

To my surprise, instead of blistering Theresa for impertinence, Ruth said, “No one’s trying to keep things from you, Theresa. It was before my time, too, but it was so important in the Bayard lives that people still talk about it-I just assumed someone had told you.”

“Who’s Deenie?” I asked, rubbing the place on my shoulders where Calvin Bayard had dug in his hands.

“It’s a nickname for Mrs. Bayard,” Theresa said. “He cries for her when he’s really upset. Mr. Bayard, we’re going to get you a nice hot drink and take a little walk. You come with me. You like to watch Sandy heat your milk, don’t you? With Sandy and me to look out for you, no one can hurt you. Remember that.”

I sat in my car, shaking. When I was a student I had daydreamed about being held in Calvin Bayard’s arms. The nightmarish way my old fantasy had come true made me sick to my stomach. The man who’d stood up so valiantly to the Walker Bushnells and Olin Taverners of America now derived pleasure from watching the cook boil milk. It was too much. I couldn’t bear it.