Mark Mills - Amagansett

‘Questions?’ frowned Penrose.

‘You knew Miss Wallace well.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘We were together for a time if that’s what you mean. Why?’

‘I believe you were engaged, no?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘I don’t know, a month or two ago.’

‘Up here?’

‘Look, what’s this all about?’

‘In East Hampton?’

‘Yes, in East Hampton.’

‘This was the time you went swimming with her off the ocean beach.’

Penrose visibly stiffened. ‘You know,’ he said firmly, ‘I really don’t think I have time for this right now.’

‘Of course. We can do it later if you want.’

Penrose glanced around him. Cars were beginning to pull away from the verge, making for the reception at the Wallaces’ house. He turned back to Hollis, resigned to having the conversation.

‘How did she appear to you?’

‘Well, a lot better than just now.’ Embarrassed by his flippancy, Penrose added solemnly, ‘Look, she seemed well. Very well indeed.’

‘Were you worried about her? I mean, her leaving the city, coming up here over the winter?’

‘Yes, I was worried about her. We all were. But as I say she seemed very well, much better.’

‘Do you mind me asking why you broke off your engagement?’

Penrose weighed the question. ‘As a matter of fact, I do. I don’t see that it’s any of your business. In fact,’ he added, ‘what is your business?’

‘I’m just trying to get a picture of her state of mind. It’s routine in cases of unattended deaths.’

That phrase again.

‘What are you saying?’ asked Penrose. ‘That you think she took her own life?’

‘Oh no, Mr Penrose, I know she didn’t.’

This was the moment he had been heading for. A guilty man would recognize it for what it was: Hollis laying down his hand. Penrose’s expression was impossible to read. A poker player, no doubt about it. And a good one.

‘Then why are we having this talk?’ said Penrose.

‘Like I say, it’s just routine. Thank you for your time.’

Hollis stood his ground, waiting to see if Penrose glanced back at him before climbing into the limousine.

He didn’t.

But Hollis did see Bob Hartwell observing him from down the far end of Cooper Lane. He turned away when Hollis caught his eye.

Thirteen

Conrad glanced at his watch. Unless they were running late, they’d be putting her in the ground about now. He had no difficulty picturing the scene, because he’d passed by the cemetery the previous day.

It was a large plot, shaded, pleasingly so, the earth heaped up beside the fresh hole. She would have approved of the headstone, nothing too ostentatious, no ornamental frills, just her name, date of birth and date of death carved into some kind of pale stone, softer than marble. He had frowned as he did the calculation. Twenty-six years old. She had lied to him about her age, adding two years. Why?

He had struggled with the question then, and he did so again now as he lay curled on his bed, fully clothed.

With time, no doubt, she would have offered up an explanation.

With time.

Did he really think their relationship would have continued on its course indefinitely? Had he ever allowed himself to believe that it could? It would have been easier to lie to himself and say no; but there had been signs from the beginning, almost from their very first exchange. They had discussed it later, or rather she had discussed it, pushing him to admit that he had sensed it too. And he had flatly denied any such immediate feelings.

That was their game. Their dance. On other occasions, he took the lead and she did her best to step on his toes. The truth was, they’d both known they would see each other again after that first chance encounter. And they had, a little less than a week later.

It was dusk, and Conrad was by the barn, tarring a fyke net in the old cauldron once used for trying-out whale oil, racing to beat the creeping darkness.

She materialized ghost-like from the gloom, clutching a bottle of whiskey.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’

‘How’s the foot?’

‘Better…Not true. It keeps opening up.’

‘I told you not to walk on it.’

‘I’m not good at taking orders.’ She glanced at the cauldron. ‘What’s cooking?’

‘Tar.’

‘This is for you.’

The whiskey was his brand—Imperial—noted and logged on her last visit.

‘It’s by way of a thank you for coming to my aid…albeit a little slowly at first.’

‘You want some?’ he asked.

‘Is it any good?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think so. It was the cheapest one in the liquor store.’

She tried it nonetheless, mixed with Coke. As soon as he had cleaned up and changed his clothes he joined her on the deck and poured himself a glass.

‘It’s my birthday,’ she said.

‘Happy birthday.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Shouldn’t you be out celebrating?’

‘That’s exactly what my father said when I spoke to him earlier.’

‘Sounds like a wise man.’

Lillian smiled.

‘I’ll do something over the weekend,’ she said. ‘My brother and sister are coming up. They’re throwing a surprise party for me.’

‘Some surprise.’

‘My cousin let it slip. Poor Alice, she was never the brightest flame.’

They sat in silence, staring at the stars.

‘I don’t have a present,’ said Conrad, ‘but I can offer you supper.’

‘Well, that depends what’s on the menu.’

‘Lobster and caviar?’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Where’d you think they came from?’

‘I don’t know. Lobsters, I suppose, but caviar…’

‘It’s been a good year for sturgeon.’

‘You catch them here?’

He pointed at the ocean, adjusting a little to the southwest. ‘About there. Got six hundred fathoms of net fishing just off the bar. We’ll haul the gear tomorrow, set it again, keep it up till the spring run drops off at the end of May.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Come with me.’

He fired up the generator and led her over to the old whaleboat house beside the barn. It was here that they prepared the sturgeon roe. He talked her through the operation, demonstrating how they separated then salted the eggs. When she asked if they did good business, he shrugged. He didn’t tell her that they’d made enough in the last month alone to see them good till the end of the year. Before leaving, he took a couple of tins of their own caviar off the shelf, gifts from a grateful buyer at the Fulton Fish Market eager to do more business with them. Then he plucked two lobsters from a wooden tub and asked her to choose between them.

‘I reckon we’re good for both,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

She set the table while he cooked. She remarked on the beauty of the sideboard, and he told her that it was made from the wood of one of the tall elms on Amagansett Main Street felled by the ‘38 hurricane. He explained that the house too was a victim of that apocalyptic storm. It had started life in East Hampton, on the western shore of Georgica Pond, put up as a summer home by a New York publisher at the turn of the century. Shattered by the high winds, it had lain derelict throughout the war before Conrad bought it, transporting it along the beach on skids to the plot of land he’d just purchased on Napeague. A section of the roof, the back bedroom and one corner of the main room were all missing, and all were replaced with lumber and shingles recovered from the old Amagansett Gun Club, sold off by the members when they decided to upgrade their bunking quarters out on Montauk.

The barn had arrived a few months later, dismantled in Amagansett then re-erected, piecemeal, beside the house. After more than two hundred and fifty years of service, the Van Duyns no longer had need of it. Ten generations of the family had stored their hay in the barn, and many more generations of cows had brushed against its sturdy uprights, rounding them off, buffing them smooth as glass.