The Beaufort Sisters Read online

  ‘As you said, it’s immaterial.’ There was silence for a while but for the faint hum of the air-conditioner. At last Tim said, ‘What happens now? Do you tell Nina?’

  ‘No. Nor will you.’

  ‘I just might, you know – ’

  Lucas shook his head firmly; he appeared much less uncertain now. ‘I don’t think you will. You’re weak, Tim. You always have been – I know you better than you know yourself. I’ll give you $250,000 and you’ll disappear. I don’t care where you go, but go. With the $50,000 you won on our bet, you’ll have enough to stake you to the good life – you obviously enjoy that. You won’t be rich, but you won’t starve.’

  ‘Nina won’t let me go.’

  ‘If you go without telling her, she won’t be able to stop you.’

  Tim felt his blood thumping, but it wasn’t with anger: unless it was anger at himself. Slowly, over the past months, he had been pulling the plug on his own life: he had known it, but he had not been able to stop. Every time after making love to Margaret he had known it; but each time she had called him to make another date he had gone to her. It had not been just sex that had made him go to her, though she had been surprisingly abandoned at that. He was not in love with her nor infatuated by her; but he had met her each time with anticipation and the pleasure only evaporated when all the love-making was finished and he stood under the shower in the motel bedroom and looked down at the swollen traitor between his legs. Margaret would come into the bathroom and kiss him, not passionately any more but tenderly, with love, and every time he would offer no argument, would tell himself that next time there would be no next time. He knew now that he had been unfaithful to Nina for the simplest and meanest of reasons: he was incapable, if another woman loved him, of being totally faithful. I have been faithful to thee, Nina, in my fashion …

  ‘What about Michael?’

  ‘He stays with Nina and you renounce all rights to him.’

  ‘You make him sound like an oil lease.’

  ‘He’s more than that to me, and you know it. I have no sons, but one day he will be the senior stockholder in the Beaufort Trust. I’ll have other grandchildren eventually, but he will always be the first.’

  ‘You seem to be talking only in money terms.’ Tim got up, began to walk around. He looked and sounded angry, but he knew it was a hollow anger. ‘Jesus, what about Nina? She still loves me. You won’t believe me, but I still love her, too!’

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t think of that when you were with the other woman.’

  He wanted to shout Margaret’s name; but already he saw the consequences. It would wound Lucas, which would give himself malicious pleasure; but it would not stop there. Lucas would confront Margaret; and Tim knew enough of Margaret now to know what would happen next. She would confront him, demand that he tell Nina the truth. And that he could not do: Lucas had been right. Telling her would not be easy, but he could do it; but he was too weak to go on living the life that would follow. Everyone would have their hold on him: Nina, Lucas, Margaret. And he was not such a bludger that he could stand that.

  ‘You want me to disappear? You mean just go, without a goodbye or anything?’

  ‘What would you have to say?’ Lucas had put down the brass ruler: he had won, was no longer uncertain.

  Tim sat down again. ‘You’re asking too much, Lucas.’

  Lucas shook his head. ‘Not if it protects Nina and Michael. You’ll never be worth anything to them. If you stay, you’ll only go on whoring and sooner or later Nina will find out. You can go now, a clean break, and take some money with you – ’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, stop talking about money!’

  Lucas’ look now was that of a businessman, not a father-in-law: he had already won the war in the latter relationship. ‘You would regret saying that if I said, all right, let’s stop talking about money. But you’ll need it – you’ve become too accustomed to it. The money is there – ’ He nodded to a large brief-case on a side table. Tim was not to know it, but it was one of two cases that had carried the ransom money for Nina to Germany three-and-a-half years before. Lucas appreciated the irony, but would not share it. ‘You can leave immediately. There isn’t even any need for you to go back to the house.’

  Tim didn’t bother to check the brief-case: he knew that Lucas was honest in money matters if not in family matters. ‘You’re mean, Lucas. Other rich men have paid millions to get rid of their unwanted in-laws.’

  ‘Are you asking for a million?’

  ‘Don’t blanch. This will do. But I’m going home first. Don’t worry – I shan’t give the game away. But I want a last look at them. I’m entitled to that in lieu of more money.’

  ‘Can I trust you?’ Lucas wasn’t certain how serious Tim was about the extra money.

  ‘You’ll have to, Lucas old chap.’ He picked up the brief-case. Money weighed heavily when you were unaccustomed to it. ‘I just hope Nina forgives you for what you’re doing.’

  ‘If I can trust you, she’ll never know what I’ve done.’

  5

  Nina saw Tim drive in through the gates as she drove down from the stables. She pulled up opposite him. ‘How did you get on with Daddy?’

  ‘We had a good heart-to-heart talk. Everything is going to be all right from now on.’

  ‘No fight? Or did you give in to him again?’ Then: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. But he’s so demanding … Why are you home?’

  ‘I have to pick up some papers. Where’s Michael?’

  ‘He’s somewhere around, with George. I’m going into the Plaza, to get my hair done. Can you meet me for lunch?’

  ‘I can’t. I have a date. You look beautiful, darling heart.’

  ‘Thank you. A wife loves to hear that from her husband in the middle of the day. Come home more often.’

  So, without knowing it, she said goodbye to him in a banter of banalities. She smiled, blew him a kiss and drove out of the estate. She also drove out of his life and that of her son. When she came home in mid-afternoon they were both gone.

  ‘Mr Tim said he was taking Michael to the zoo,’ said George Biff.

  ‘Strange. He didn’t mention anything to me. When did they go?’

  ‘ ’Bout twenty minutes after you went this morning. Mr Tim was in the house, then he come down and said him and Michael was going to the zoo.’

  Nina went back into the house and spoke to one of the maids.

  ‘No, Mrs Davoren, Mr Davoren didn’t say where he was going. He came downstairs with a couple of bags, put ’em in his car. Then he and Michael drove away.’

  Then Nina began to panic. She rang her father: there must be some connection between him and Tim’s strange behaviour. He said abruptly. ‘I’ll be home at once,’ and hung up in her ear.

  The panic gave way to aching fear, which is far worse, because the mind has started working again. Then, as the hours and the days and the weeks went by, the fear turned into shock and grief and anger. Tim, whom she loved, had murdered her without actually taking her life. And he had taken Michael, for which she could never forgive him.

  Chapter Five

  Margaret

  1

  When Tim disappeared, Margaret was shattered; though no one would have known. It was then that she showed the control that was later to have some people describe her as cold and calculating. The change in her did not occur overnight and if it had it would probably not have been noticed by the other members of the family. For everyone was shattered to a greater or lesser degree, even George Biff, who had come to have a great deal of affection for young Michael. The worst affected were Nina and Lucas.

  ‘He had no right to take Michael with him!’ Lucas raged. ‘He had no right to do that to Nina!’

  Edith, consoling the weeping Nina, had tried to quieten her husband. ‘Sweetheart, please. He wasn’t concerned with rights and wrongs. He’s walked out on us. Don’t make it sound as though we had some sort of contract with him.’

  ‘
Isn’t marriage a contract?’ Lucas was ready for murder; or looked to be. ‘We’ll get him back, Nina – I promise – ’

  ‘Who?’ Margaret sat aside from her parents and Nina, her senses numbed. But she looked the least upset of the four. They were in Nina’s bedroom and she deliberately kept her eyes away from the bed where Tim and Nina had slept together last night. ‘Who will you get back? Tim or Michael?’

  ‘We don’t want him back – ’

  ‘Sweetheart – please. It’s for Nina to decide.’ Edith picked up the crumpled note from the bedside table. ‘Goodbye, darling heart. Forgive me. That’s all. You would have expected an explanation … Is there an explanation?’

  Nina shook her head, sat up slowly and wiped her eyes. ‘I told you, Mother – ’ She looked at her father. ‘Can you get someone to look for them, Daddy? Both of them?’

  ‘Both?’ Lucas sounded cautious. Or so it seemed to Margaret, watching everything like a spectator.

  Edith said, ‘You’ll have to look for both of them. You don’t think he will leave Michael somewhere alone, do you? He’s a swine, going off like that, but he did love Michael. He wouldn’t do that to the child.’

  ‘Both of them, Daddy.’ Nina sat listless, body slumped; but her voice was determined. ‘Please.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lucas.

  ‘Leave the police out of it,’ said Edith. ‘If we can get them back here without anyone knowing, it will be less hard on Nina – ’

  ‘I don’t care if anyone knows!’ Nina straightened up for a moment. ‘All I want is them back! Jesus, Mother, stop worrying about what people will think!’

  Edith’s face was expressionless, but Margaret, watching closely, knew that she was hurt. She gazed at Nina for a moment, then stood up and looked at Lucas. ‘I still think we can do without the police for at least twenty-four hours. Get a private investigator, Lucas. Do you know a reliable one?’

  Lucas hesitated. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Don’t waste any time then. Now I’d better go back and see to Sally and Prue. They are as upset as any of us. No – ’ She put a tentative hand on Nina’s shoulder. ‘Not as much as you, darling. Stay with her, Meg. Come on, Lucas. There’s no time to waste.’

  But too much time had already been lost. At the end of the week Dave Pedemont, the private investigator Lucas had engaged, came to Lucas and told him he was certain that Tim and Michael were not in Kansas City or even in Missouri or any of the neighbouring states. ‘He’s fled the country, Mr Beaufort. I reckon we’re gonna have to start looking for him somewheres else. Canada, Europe, anywheres. That’s gonna cost money.’

  ‘Is the job too big for you?’

  ‘Well, it’s bigger’n anything I’ve done so far. But I got contacts – ’

  ‘How much do I owe you, Mr Pedemont?’

  ‘Mr Beaufort, my job’s not finished – ’

  ‘It’s finished. If my grandson – and my son-in-law’ – an afterthought – ‘have left the country, then I’ll need an international agency to look for them. Send me your bill, Mr Pedemont. Amalgamate it with your bill for that other job. Address it to me here and mark it personal.’

  ‘I can handle this job.’ Pedemont could see a dream going out the window: a job that might take him all over the world … ‘I think I deserve a chance to prove I can do it – ’

  ‘This isn’t some sort of entrance examination. Send me your bill. That will be all. The door’s behind you.’

  ‘You son-of-a-bitch.’ But Pedemont said it under his breath: in his job you spent half your time working for sons-of-bitches and you never knew when they’d call on you again.

  Five days after Tim disappeared Margaret missed her period. At first she thought it might have been due to the shock she felt at his vanishing as he had; but then she knew better. Or worse, if you liked. Her mother was still concerned with consoling Nina; both households, family as well as servants, were subdued. If Margaret’s inner turmoil showed at all, and she had no way of knowing, no one appeared to notice it. But for protection against scrutiny, wary of Prue who had recovered more quickly than any of the others and was once more as observant as ever, she said she was going down to Fairfax, the family plantation.

  ‘I want to do some study. I can’t concentrate here.’

  ‘I think you should stay here,’ her mother said. ‘Nina needs all of us to lean on. She may want to talk to you rather than to me. Sisters have confidences – ’

  Margaret went across to see Nina. ‘I’m not deserting you, Nina – ’

  ‘I know that.’ Nina had lost weight, looked almost plain. God, I wonder if I look like that, Margaret thought. But I’m not losing any weight. ‘You’ve been wonderful.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing – ’

  ‘You’ve been more understanding, just saying nothing … I’d hate to hurt them, but Mother and Daddy are wearing me out with their attention. They mean well, but sometimes I just want to be alone. Or sit with someone who doesn’t feel they have to keep talking all the time. That’s where you’ve been so understanding.’

  ‘Well – ’ Margaret accepted the compliment awkwardly, feeling the irony of it. If she had been quiet, untalkative, it had been because she had been afraid of giving herself away. She ventured, ‘I miss them. Not as much as you, naturally, but I do miss them. I still keep believing Tim will walk in here one day – ’

  ‘Me, too. I don’t believe he’ll keep Michael from me. Not forever.’

  Margaret kissed her, loving her but feeling hypocritical. ‘I’ll only be a few days down at Fairfax.’

  ‘I’m tempted to go with you – ’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ said Margaret loyally; but wanted to be alone.

  ‘No, I’d better stay here. Just in case …’

  Margaret went down to Fairfax and two days later did the most calculated thing she would ever do. She spent the two days pondering whether she should have an abortion. To do so would mean having to go out-of-state, to some doctor whom she would not know and who would not know her. There were doctors in Kansas City who did abortions; there was one who came to her mother’s parties who took care of the country club women, married and unmarried. She knew two girls at college who had gone east to St Louis; they would give her the name of their doctor. But she was too much a Beaufort: she could not take outsiders into such a confidence. In the end, however, she decided against an abortion because she wanted Tim’s baby: she knew she had lost Tim forever. It was an emotional decision, totally against the calculated one that followed it.

  She called Frank Minett, asked him to come down to Fairfax. He came at once, tearing down the country roads in his ten-year-old Pontiac; the only place Frank ever took risks was on the roads. He swung in through the gates of the plantation and roared up the avenue of willow oaks that led to the mansion. But when he switched off the engine and stepped out he was a different man: it was as if the hellbent driver had stayed in the car.

  ‘Meg honey – ’ He kissed her on the cheek, one eye over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching them. ‘You look – hell, worn out.’

  ‘I need comforting.’ She tucked her arm into his, thinking: Can I really spend the rest of my life with him? ‘I came down here to think about us.’

  ‘Us?’ He was no fool: he knew how little real encouragement he had been given.

  ‘I think what happened up home brought it on. Tim walking out – Nina losing him. I started to wonder about losing you.’

  ‘I was beginning to think you had already lost me. Or got rid of me. How much have we seen of each other in the last six weeks? A couple of nights a week and all we talked about was what you were doing in your summer courses.’

  Somehow she had expected him to be overjoyed, unquestioning at her sending for him. But she gave him another chance: ‘I was trying to make up my mind about how you felt. Sometimes I got the feeling you were more concerned with what my father thought of you than what I did.’

  ‘Meg – ’ He was weakening. ‘Look – Christ,
how do I say this? If I hung back with you, it was because I thought you’d already written me off. When you and I would neck – this is insulting, I’m sorry – I’d think it was just a Beaufort sister’s way of having a fling before she settled down with one of her own class.’

  She smiled, hiding her annoyance. ‘You think too much about class, Frank. You sound like a socialist.’

  It was his turn to smile. ‘Don’t tell your father, for God’s sake! Are they coming down here – the family?’

  ‘No, there’s just you and me.’

  ‘In a house this size?’

  He had never been invited to Fairfax by the family; it was only a long time later that she learned he had come down to inspect it on his own. He had been writing a book on Midwest wealth, naturally starting with the Beauforts. Three chapters into the book he had met Lucas Beaufort and Margaret; and the book had got no farther. But he had; and he would go much farther. He looked at the ante-bellum mansion, a little awed to think that it represented only a minor symbol of the wealth to which this girl beside him was part-heiress. It was almost a cliché Southern mansion. An Ionic-columned porch stretched across the front, giant magnolia trees stood at either side like floral book-ends, a peacock, like a bonus grace note, strutted across the broad lawns.

  ‘There’s the housekeeper, Mrs Henriques, and her daughter,’ said Margaret. ‘But that’s all. They’ll look after us. Can you stay?’

  ‘A day or two, yes.’ He had become cautious again. ‘What’s the matter, Meg?’

  ‘I told you – I need comforting.’ She almost lost her temper then; and he almost lost his chance to marry into the Beauforts. ‘You’re not much help – so far – ’

  Then, diving off the high-board, suddenly realizing his luck, he swept her up in his arms and swung her round, put her down and kissed her passionately. She had never seen him so abandonedly gay: he was a stranger, suddenly attractive. If he stayed like this she might, might, even come to love him.

  He let her go, grabbed his bag out of the car. ‘Where’s the guest-room? There must be a dozen of them in a house like this.’