Mark Mills - Amagansett

‘Manfred—’ Wakeley took a step towards Manfred and found himself staring into the barrel of the gun.

‘I can end this now. It’s over. Gone.’

‘You don’t have it in you,’ grinned Labarde.

Manfred spun back, on the point of firing.

‘Tom,’ hissed Hartwell.

‘No.’

They had all been summoned here for a reason, steered and cajoled towards this stage, this amphitheater in the woods, each with his role to play: Labarde to lay down a life he no longer valued; Manfred Wallace to bring about his own ruin; Hollis to bear witness to the killing, no more.

‘Manfred—’ said Wakeley again. And that’s when Manfred fired.

Labarde was jerked to the right by the impact of the bullet. Manfred fired a second time, and the moment he did so, the scene was lit by a blinding white light, the tableau frozen for a split second: Wakeley recoiling, the muzzle flash from the handgun, Labarde seemingly suspended in time and space, but in reality buckling towards the ground.

Manfred Wallace was turning to the source of the flash of light when Hollis and Hartwell burst from the bushes.

‘Police,’ yelled Hollis. ‘Drop the gun. I said, drop the gun!’

It was the shock more than anything that forced the gun from Manfred Wallace’s fingers.

‘On the ground. Now. Both of you!’

As he recovered the weapon, Hollis glanced over at Labarde. He lay face down in the dirt, inert, an arm twisted behind his back.

In a fit of fury, Hollis found himself kicking Manfred Wallace in the side of the chest.

‘Spread your arms and legs.’

‘I—’

‘Shut up!’ snapped Hollis, kicking him again.

The moment was trapped for posterity by Abel as he emerged from his hiding place.

Forty-One

The following days passed in a blur of lawyers and seemingly endless debriefings by men from the DA’s office as everyone shouldered in looking for a slice of the cake. A pack of newshounds descended on East Hampton. Most were obliged to sleep in their cars, the inns and boarding houses already at capacity, what with it being the height of the season.

Justin Penrose was the first to crack. Those with the least to lose always were. He cut himself a deal—accessory after the fact of manslaughter—for his role in covering up the hit-and-run. It was the turning point. Once Lizzie Jencks had entered the frame, there was a motive for the murder of Lillian Wallace. The floodgates opened. Now it was just a question of who would drown and who would be saved. Wakeley and Manfred Wallace fought each other for the lone life preserver.

Wakeley had done a good job of protecting his charge from any association with the murder—too good a job as it turned out; there was almost nothing linking him to the crime. Manfred’s lawyer drew a parallel with Henry II and Thomas à Becket, claiming that Wakeley had taken it upon himself to rid Manfred of his meddlesome sister. This argument largely fell on deaf ears.

Hollis didn’t witness it at first hand, the unsightly spectacle of the two former friends turning on each other. He had already removed himself from the scrum by then. So had George Wallace. The newspapers presented him as a broken man, destroyed by the revelation about the true circumstances of his daughter’s death. The Press was no better equipped than anyone to speculate in this way. Following his brief interrogation by the DA, George Wallace had simply disappeared.

Chief Milligan, on the other hand, had taken center stage, the winds of national interest fanning the flames of his ego into a firestorm. Strangely, Hollis found himself amused rather than angered by the sight of Milligan claiming credit for the arrests, the successful conclusion of his own month-long investigation.

When it came to it, Hollis really didn’t care, and that realization surprised him. Besides, his thoughts were elsewhere—with the man hanging between life and death in Southampton Hospital. The man who had been manipulating events from the moment he first dragged his lover’s body from the ocean in a net.

Labarde had survived the initial surgery, only to be hit by a raging infection. He had not regained consciousness.

The fourth time Hollis visited him, there was a leather-cheeked old Indian seated at his bedside, clasping his hand. Hollis waited patiently in a chair for twenty minutes, unable to make out what the Indian was muttering in his soft voice.

When the old man finally left, he said, ‘Ain’t nothin’ to do if he don’t want it. And he don’t.’

Who could blame him? There was a bunch of people poised to pounce all over him, eager for his version of events, should he survive. Hollis had made a point of charming the head nurse, a woman who concealed a good heart behind a lofty demeanor. She had finally relented, promising that he would be the first to know if there was any news.

The call came four days later, early in the morning, at Mary’s place, to which Hollis had decamped to avoid the overeager newspapermen staking out his house. When the phone rang, his head was thick with exhaustion, having hit the pillow only an hour or so before.

Abel and Lucy had come to dinner, and somehow they’d all found themselves seeing in the dawn. There was a lot to catch up on. Abel had been out of circulation all week, dealing with the commotion over ‘the photo’, as it was now referred to.

It had been bought many times over, syndicated around the world, and he was still reeling from the shock of what he’d achieved: the big picture, the photographer’s dream. True to form, Abel dismissed the image as a work of mediocrity, an instant of violence trapped on film, with little else to recommend it apart from a certain ghoulish appeal.

He was wrong. It somehow captured more than the moment, pointing to a deeper, more universal injustice: two well-dressed types gathered at the execution of a working man. Wakeley was frozen in the act of turning his head away and raising his arms protectively, an instinctive gesture, but one which seemed to imply he was washing his hands of the deed. Because of the angle, the gun wasn’t visible, but the muzzle flash was, shards of lightning exploding from Manfred Wallace’s fingers, a faceless figure clad all in black, unleashing a thunderbolt. There was something almost beatific about Labarde’s expression as he crumpled forward and to the right.

They said all this to Abel, but he stuck to his guns. He much preferred the shot of Hollis putting the boot into Manfred Wallace, a print of which he had also brought along with him by way of a gift—the only one in existence, framed in oak. Mary remarked that the look of hatred on Hollis’ face scared her, and Abel told her that that was the point. It was the one time he’d seen the real Hollis, he said, the beast within; and he wanted her to know what she was letting herself in for.

Abel had a healthy mistrust of what was happening to him. Picture editors and agents, many of whom had never even bothered to return his portfolio, were now calling him at all hours of the day and night. He knew he had gotten lucky, stumbling on success in his own backyard. Later in the evening, he announced, a little drunkenly, that even if his career took off it wouldn’t change him as a person.

‘Oh go on, please,’ said Lucy, ‘just a bit.’

Their laughter woke up Edward, who shouted down from his bedroom window for them to put a sock in it.

Finally the dawn light crept overhead, revealing a low, feathery mist on the paddock. Abel and Lucy made a half-hearted offer to help clear up, heading for their car almost in the same breath. Hollis and Mary left the table as it was and went inside to bed.

After they had made love, they lay on their backs side by side, their fingers intertwined, drifting off to sleep.