Stillwatch 1 Pat drove slowly, her eyes scanning the narrow Georgetown streets. The cloud-filled sky was dark; streetlights blended with the carriage lamps that flanked doorways; Christmas decorations gleamed against ice-crusted snow. The effect was one of Early American tranquillity. She turned onto N Street, drove one more block, still searching for house numbers, and crossed the intersection. That must be it, she thought--the corner house. Home Sweet Home. She sat for a while at the curb, studying the house. It was the only one on the street that was unlighted, and its graceful lines were barely discernible.
The long front windows were half-hidden by shrubbery that had been allowed to grow. After the nine-hour drive from Concord her body ached every time she moved, but she found herself putting off the moment when she opened the front door and went inside. It''s that damn phone call, she thought. I''ve let it get to me. A few days before she''d left her job at the cable station in Boston, the switchboard operator had buzzed her. "Some kind of weirdo insists on talking to you. Do you want me to stay on the line?" "Yes." She had picked up the receiver, identified herself and listened as a soft but distinctly masculine voice murmured, "Patricia Traymore, you must not come to Washington.
You must not produce a program glorifying Senator Jennings. And you must not live in that house." She had heard the audible gasp of the operator. "Who is this?" she asked sharply. The answer, delivered in the same syrupy murmur, made her hands unpleasantly moist. "I am an angel of mercy, of deliverance--and of vengeance." Pat had tried to dismiss the event as one of the many crank calls received at television stations, but it was impossible not to be troubled. The announcement of her move to Potomac Cable Network to do a series called Women in Government had appeared in many television-news columns.
She had read all of them to see if there was any mention of the address where she would live, but there had been none. The Washington Tribune had carried the most detailed story: "Auburn-haired Patricia Traymore, with her husky voice and sympathetic brown eyes, will be an attractive addition to Potomac Cable Network. Her profiles of celebrities on Boston Cable have twice been nominated for Emmys. Pat has the magical gift of getting people to reveal themselves with remarkable candor. Her first subject will be Abigail Jennings, the very private senior Senator from Virginia. According to Luther Pelham, news director and anchorman of Potomac Cable, the program will include highlights of the Senator''s private and public life. Washington is breathlessly waiting to see if Pat Traymore can penetrate the beautiful Senator''s icy reserve." The thought of the call nagged at Pat.
It was the cadence of the voice, the way he had said "that house." Who was it who knew about the house? The car was cold. Pat realized the engine had been off for minutes. A man with a briefcase hurried past, paused when he observed her sitting there, then went on his way. I''d better get moving before he calls the cops and reports a loiterer, she thought. The iron gates in front of the driveway were open. She stopped the car at the stone path that led to the front door and fumbled through her purse for the house key. She paused at the doorstep, trying to analyze her feelings.
She''d anticipated a momentous reaction. Instead, she simply wanted to get inside, lug the suitcases from the car, fix coffee and a sandwich. She turned the key, pushed the door open, found the light switch. The house seemed very clean. The smooth brick floor of the foyer had a soft patina; the chandelier was sparkling. A second glance showed fading paint and scuff marks near the baseboards. Most of the furniture would probably need to be discarded or refinished. The good pieces stored in the attic of the Concord house would be delivered tomorrow.
She walked slowly through the first floor. The formal dining room, large and pleasant, was on the left. When she was sixteen and on a school trip to Washington, she had walked past this house but hadn''t realized how spacious the rooms were. From the outside the house seemed narrow. The table was scarred, the sideboard badly marked, as if hot serving dishes had been laid directly on the wood. But she knew the handsome, elaborately carved Jacobean set was family furniture and worth whatever it would cost to restore. She glanced into the kitchen and library but deliberately kept walking. All the news stories had described the layout of the house in minute detail.
The living room was the last room on the right. She felt her throat tighten as she approached it. Was she crazy to be doing this--returning here, trying to recapture a memory best forgotten? The living-room door was closed. She put her hand on the knob and turned it hesitantly. The door swung open. She fumbled and found the wall switch. The room was large and beautiful, with a high ceiling, a delicate mantel above the white brick fireplace, a recessed window seat. It was empty except for a concert grand piano, a massive expanse of dark mahogany in the alcove to the right of the fireplace.
The fireplace. She started to walk toward it. Her arms and legs began to tremble. Perspiration started from her forehead and palms. She could not swallow. The room was moving around her. She rushed to the French doors at the far end of the left wall, fumbled with the lock, yanked both doors open and stumbled onto the snow-banked patio. The frosty air seared her lungs as she gulped in short, nervous breaths.
A violent shudder made her hug her arms around her body. She began to sway and needed to lean against the house to keep from falling. Light-headedness made the dark outlines of the leafless trees seem to sway with her. The snow was ankle-deep. She could feel the wetness seep through her boots, but she would not go back in until the dizziness receded. Minutes passed before she could trust herself to return to the room. Carefully she closed and double-locked the doors, hesitated and then deliberately turned around and with slow, reluctant steps walked to the fireplace. Tentatively she ran her hand down the rough whitewashed brick.
For a long time now, bits and pieces of memory had intruded on her like wreckage from a ship. In the past year she had persistently dreamed of being a small child again in this house. Invariably she would awaken in an agony of fear, trying to scream, unable to utter a sound. But coupled with the fear was a pervading sense of loss. The truth is in this house, she thought. * * * It was here that it had happened. The lurid headlines, gleaned from newspaper archives, flashed through her mind. "WISCONSIN CONGRESSMAN DEAN ADAMS MURDERS BEAUTIFUL SOCIALITE WIFE AND KILLS SELF.
THREE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER FIGHTS FOR LIFE." She had read the stories so many times, she knew them by heart. "A sorrowful Senator John F. Kennedy commented, ''I simply don''t understand. Dean was one of my best friends. Nothing about him ever suggested pent-up violence.''" What had driven the popular Congressman to murder and suicide? There had been rumors that he and his wife were on the verge of divorce. Had Dean Adams snapped when his wife made an irrevocable decision to leave him? They must have wrestled for the gun.
Both their fingerprints, smudged and overlapping, were found on it. Their three-year-old daughter had been found lying against the fireplace, her skull fractured, her right leg shattered. Veronica and Charles Traymore had told her that she was adopted. Not until she was in high school and wanted to trace her ancestry had she been given the whole truth. Shocked, she learned that her mother was Veronica''s sister. "You were in a coma for a year and not expected to live," Veronica told her. "When you finally did regain consciousness you were like an infant and had to be taught everything. Mother--your grandmother--actually sent an obituary notice to the newspapers.
That''s how determined she was that the scandal wouldn''t follow you all your life. Charles and I were living in England then. We adopted you and our friends were told you were from an English family." Pat recalled how furious Veronica had been when Pat insisted on taking over the Georgetown house. "Pat, it''s wrong to go back there," she''d said. "We should have sold that place for you instead of renting it all these years. You''re making a name for yourself in television--don''t risk it by raking up the past! You''ll be meeting people who knew you as a child. Somebody might put two and two together.
" Veronica''s thin lips tightened when Pat insisted. "We did everything humanly possible to give you a fresh start. Go ahead, if you insist, but don''t say we didn''t warn you." In the end they had hugged each other, both shaken and upset. "Come on," Pat pleaded. "My job is digging for the truth. If I hunt for the good and bad in other people''s lives, how can I ever have any peace if I don''t do it in my own?" * * * Now she went into the kitchen and picked up the telephone. Even as a child she had referred to Veronica and Charles by their first names, and in the past few years had virtually stopped calling them Mother and Dad.
But she suspected that that annoyed and hurt them.