The Vanished Child Read online

  Reisden smiled. “Who is Adair?”

  “A curious man. A very simple man. Quite religious—in the Third Order Secular of St. Francis, I believe. He runs a charitable hospital for children, and doesn’t simply run it, he lives there with the children. You saw, of course, how much of the case depends on his story. But he wouldn’t have harmed Richard.”

  “For no one hurts the thing he loves.” Reisden’s voice was quite flat. Victor reached out and took his hand in a gesture that he tried to make not flirtatious at all. For each man kills the thing he loves. Poor dear Oscar had been right about so many things.

  “Dear boy, don’t torment yourself forever. She really wouldn’t want it.”

  “Yes. Don’t worry.” Reisden clasped his hand and let it go. “What happened after Richard disappeared?”

  “Eventually Gilbert Knight got the money,” Victor went on. “Did I mention that his father had completely disinherited him? Now he has it all. Millions and millions and millions of dollars.”

  “Does that make him the chief villain?”

  “So dull. He was absolutely the first person one would have suspected. I want Jay French to have done it. He didn’t have any reason, it was impossible for him to have got Richard out of the hotel. He must have done it.”

  “One can do things without motive,” Reisden demurred carefully.

  Victor nodded. They were on shaky ground again. “But generally, you know, murders have some reason. Jay French should have had some grudge against William, or have been dismissed by him. And there wasn’t anything of the sort. Jay simply went upstairs, came downstairs, shot William, and kidnapped Richard.”

  “No explanation.”

  “None, dear boy.”

  “Would anyone at the Harvard conference, or in Boston, think I looked like one of the Knights? Anyone other than Adair, I mean.”

  “Oh, no, no, no, dear boy. You must go if you want to. Even darling Lizzie Borden isn’t recognized on the street. And you are the Baron von Reisden, not Richard at all.”

  “Then I will go,” Reisden said.

  Victor looked at him shrewdly. Reisden raised both eyebrows.

  “Don’t go, dear boy. You don’t have to.”

  “I’m giving a paper at the Harvard conference.” Reisden smiled. “And going to New York afterward. Opening doors, as Louis says.”

  “He could read it.”

  “He could.” Reisden mimed a push on an invisible, rather heavy door, then ducked as it swung back and hit him. It was cleverly done, Victor thought, done like an actor. Uneasiness mimed so well that it hardly seemed to belong to Alexander. “I don’t have to go to Harvard, or to Paris. Except that Louis’s right. It’s go or give up.”

  “Then, dear boy, find out what happened to Richard. I’ll give you forty percent of the book royalties and you won’t have to write a line. No, I’ll go half, and dinner at Bauer-Grünwald. For once I could afford to take you.”

  Reisden laughed and shook his head.

  “Oh, do,” Victor purred. “I would get three hundred pounds on the advance alone.”

  Harry Boulding’s birthday; an engagement

  It was not a house without music, but never before this evening had the staid Boston neighborhood heard the kind of music that was blaring and bouncing down Commonwealth Avenue. Harry Boulding had wanted a real dance band, and the best one in Boston had been crammed onto the second-floor landing, playing Boston-starch-collared versions of ragtime. The caterers’ wagons had rolled up the avenue all afternoon, and the buffet had been laid on the heavy, old-fashioned dining-room table, on the thick, dated linen that the old butler had brought out from the least accessible closets. The florists had hidden the dark gargoyle-carved paneling under seasonal flowers: poinsettias, holiday greens, rosettes of red ribbon. Harry had grumbled, “They got rid of all their leftover Christmas muck on us,” but now that the party had started no one seemed to mind. What could go wrong, what could be less than perfect, for the coming-of-age party of Gilbert Knight’s adopted heir?

  The carriages stretched all up and down Commonwealth Avenue, the horses stamping in the snow. Some men from the Iroquois Club had come in a sleigh and were giving some girls from Wellesley rides up and down the avenue and around the Public Garden. As the sleigh swooped drunkenly in the snow, the Iroquois boys hallooed at windows and threw snowballs and passersby ducked to get out of the way. The first floor was packed with guests. Big burly teammates of Harry’s clustered around the dining-room buffet, tearing at chickens with their fingers. They talked seriously about Yale games, spring training, good plays. In the little parlor, Harry was opening joke birthday presents; there was a shocked universal shriek from the girls. “Oh, you! What do you want to show a girl a thing like that for!”

  “Harry, what’s your old man getting you for your birthday?” someone yelled. “Boston Harbor to sail in?”

  “He’ll have an announcement,” Harry said carefully, enunciating around a few beers and perhaps just a little too much gin. He was not drunk, just incredibly happy. All his friends were here, it was his birthday, and for once the dull old house was lively. He held up the offending present in two fingers.

  “This, my friends, is shhhh—” He shook his head, dropped the present sadly, and held his finger to his mouth. “Shush. Be quiet. This, my lovely friends, is what the horses do on the street. My friend Joseph here has sent a wicked and an offensive thing to me. So what do we do?”

  “What do we do?” the whole room yelled.

  Harry grinned maniacally. “Let’s dance!”

  Not that the big parlor wasn’t already crowded. All the furniture had been put against the walls and the rugs taken up for the evening, but no Boston house was really meant for serious dancing. People were dancing cheek to cheek, elbow to elbow, dancing in a mass, tuxedos crushed, corsages a flat mess against bosoms that were much closer to their partners’ starched shirt fronts than etiquette and dancing school required. Harry, tall and burly, roiled into the center like a halfback into a scrimmage. “Pet! Pet! Perdita! I want to dance! Where’s my girl?”