The Rich Are Different (91 page)

I walked away from my servants down Park Avenue, and when my senior bodyguard tried to follow me I had to tell him again to go home. He fell back. I walked on. I was alone at last, but people kept battering themselves against my solitude until I had no defences left to protect me from the hideous seething horror of that city. There was a panhandler on every block. I walked down one of the richest streets in New York and the beggars came out to meet me with their clutching hands and crafty eyes and beaten ruined faces.

‘Mister, can you spare a dime?’ The voices haunted me. I had never heard them before. My bodyguards had always pushed the beggars away before they could bother me, and I had lived a life of ignorance at my palace at Willow and Wall.

I gave away all my loose change and turned east. Above me towered the shining spire of the Chrysler Building but I did not look up. I looked ahead and saw only the fetid sweating streets and in the distance on Third Avenue the dark knotted girders of the El.

On Lexington I headed south again, and the swirling dust made me choke, until I felt as if I had been disgorged in some macabre shipwreck and was being pounded to death on an asphalt beach. When the beggars accosted me once more I gave away my paper money – I had about twenty dollars – and then I gave away my watch too and my jacket and silk tie, and last the gold cuff-links I had inherited from Paul.

My shirt was sticking to my back, and as I paused to roll up the sleeves I found I’d lost my bearings. Then I realized Lexington Avenue had ended and I was somewhere north of Washington Square. Blundering into Third Avenue I walked downtown for some time but I was still so disorientated that when I stopped to wipe the sweat from my forehead I again forgot where I was. I looked up at the street sign on the nearest corner. The notorious Dutch name, long since corrupted by English-speaking tongues, stared back at me.

I walked on into the Bowery.

Black rotted buildings full of unimaginable vermin rose on either side of me. The stench permeated the air, the stench of garbage and worse, the stench of disease and decay and despair. I had to stop again to wipe the sweat from my forehead, and suddenly the prostitutes of both sexes were accosting me, and I saw the smashed bottles in the gutter and the drunks in every doorway and the shabby senseless bodies strewn on the stinking sidewalk.

Nobody believed
me when I said I had no money. I saw the violence shimmering behind their eyes and I started to run, heading blindly west, but long before I reached Broadway I had to stop for breath. I leant against a wall as I tried to control my breathing, but when my vision cleared I shrank at once into the nearest doorway. Ahead of me on the dark dingy street about forty derelicts were clustered around the barred doorway of a restaurant. Fortunately they had their backs to me, but since I had learnt that it was foolish to call attention to myself I waited in my doorway in the hope that they would disperse. My heart was still thumping in my chest when I found out why they were waiting. The restaurant door was unlocked and a man emerged carrying a can of garbage. I never saw what happened to the man; I assume he beat a hasty retreat. But I saw what happened to the garbage.

The can was instantly upturned. The derelicts pawed through the bones and vegetable scraps, and in a second fighting had broken out for the choicest pieces.

A window above my head was flung open as someone leaned out to investigate the noise, but although I heard the radio playing faintly in the background I paid no attention to it. It was only when the volume of the radio was turned up to drown the noise in the street that I recognized the tune which was being played.

It was ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’.

I leaned my burning forehead against the wall, and as the world grew dim before my eyes I grieved for America, for great golden glamorous America, careering through the glittering twenties as if there were no limit to its fabulous wealth and no end to the fairytale dreams which all came true. The tears streaked my cheeks. I watched the derelicts fighting over the garbage in the most spectacular city on earth, and I asked the unanswerable question of the millions who had suffered in the Depression, and the question was always why, why did this have to happen to us, what did we do, was there anything we should have done? And I felt the helplessness of people in the grip of forces beyond their control, the despair of those compelled to stand by in impotence as their lives were wrenched out of shape, and the frustration of those who believed there was no recourse, no hope and no cure.

The derelicts drifted away. I picked my way over the wreckage on the sidewalk, sidestepped two bodies and again began to run downtown.

I found Broadway at last and ahead of me was the graveyard of Trinity Church. It occurred to me that the traffic was light and I realized most people had gone home from work. I went into the church but there was no message for me there so I left, stumbling down the Street past Morgan’s to the corner of Willow and Wall.

The night-watchman hardly recognized me. I pushed past, fobbing off his anxious inquiries, and hoped no one was working late. I could see no one, speak to no one. I felt mutilated.

In the sanctuary of my office I paused only until my breathing was under control and then I crept downstairs to raid Lewis’s liquor cabinet.

I was
crying quietly all the time, and when I entered the room and glanced at my reflection in the mirror I saw for a terrifying second a stranger I did not know. Screwing up my eyes I pressed a hand against my forehead, and in the quiet pounding darkness which followed I felt Paul’s presence in the room where he had died.

I opened my eyes but of course there was nothing to see. I glanced back into the mirror but saw only my familiar face, dirty and tearstained. I spun round but I was alone.

Clenching my fists I moved to the liquor cabinet concealed behind the book shelves and poured myself half a tumbler of brandy.

When the brandy was gone I called Alicia.

‘Cornelius, are you all right?’ she said at once. ‘When you were late I called the office but they said you never came back after the doctor’s appointment. Where are you now?’

‘At the bank. I’m fine, just fine. Sorry I didn’t call. I’m so sorry, Alicia,’ I said and started to cry soundlessly again. ‘So sorry.’

‘Shall I send a car down to you? Carter and Foster were really concerned when you sent them home. Are you sure you’re all right?’

I dashed the tears from my eyes and bent forward over the phone. ‘I have a little work to do,’ I said. ‘Don’t delay dinner. Don’t send anyone. Don’t worry. I’m all right. Just a little work to do … So sorry, Alicia.’

‘All right, but don’t work too hard – come home soon, darling,’ she said, blowing a kiss into the phone. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

I could not speak. I heard her hang up. Several more seconds passed before I replaced the receiver.

I was beyond tears now but that only made me feel worse and although I knew I had to do something to take my mind off my pain I felt incapable of action. I had squeezed my eyes shut again before I realized with a shock that I was trying to recall Paul’s presence.

I poured myself some more brandy.

Paul would have understood. He had only had one daughter. That was why I had been frightened by our parallel lives but now that the parallels had all been drawn and I had nothing else to fear perhaps I could embrace his life with relief. It would be a release, an alternative to my ruined dreams. I would become Paul. No sons. Just one daughter.

I remembered Alan Slade.

Immediately I was amazed by my previous naïvety for of course, as I now realized, it was impossible that he could be Paul’s son. It was hard to imagine Paul being deceived, but as Steve had once said, nothing was impossible to Dinah Slade. She had deceived Paul. I could probably prove it if I tried hard enough. I would try. That was the obvious thing to do. It was the project I needed to divert myself from the fact that Alicia and I—

My mind snapped shut. I stood up, knocking over my empty brandy glass and paced around the room. I felt light-headed but the pain was growing duller as my mind became absorbed in this new challenge. I wondered where to begin my investigations. There was no clue in the Diana
Slade Cosmetics file; I had read the correspondence there long ago and knew the letters related only to business matters. There must have been a file on Miss Slade, but all Paul’s correspondence with various women had been destroyed after his death. Yet somewhere there had to be the evidence I wanted, and somehow I was going to find it.

Energy seized me. As I moved more quickly about the room I picked things up and put them down again as if I were a clockwork toy wound up to an unbearable pitch of tension. I did not dare to stop in case I started to think about Dr Glassman, the quiet office, the clean white bare examination room, the terrible sight of that marred seminal fluid on the slide beneath the microscope. Mumps. A kid’s disease. So stupid, so unnecessary.

I burnt out the memory and focused on my project. Mayers had destroyed the love letter files in the vaults, but I must take nothing for granted. Miss Slade was no ordinary lover, and it was unlikely that Paul would have kept her correspondence in the vaults as if it were a dead file. I paused to calculate the size of the correspondence. He had left her in the November of 1922 and she had arrived in New York in the April of 1926, so one could assume they had corresponded for at least three years. If I assumed too that they had written once a month that meant a file of about forty letters – eighty, since Paul always kept a copy of each letter he dictated. There would also be the photographs; I knew Miss Slade’s technique by this time. Eighty letters and God knows how many pictures. Quite a file.

Picking up the phone I called Sylvia. I felt better now that I had something positive to do. The phone rang, a maid answered and a minute later Sylvia was asking me how I was.

When the necessary courtesies were finished I said: ‘Sylvia, I have a crazy question to ask you. When you sorted out the library after Paul’s death, did you ever come across any letters from Dinah Slade?’

‘Heavens, no! Paul would never have kept letters like that at home, Cornelius. The letters in the library were family letters he had kept for sentimental reasons – there were some from his mother and from his sister and from your mother too, of course. But I’ll tell you one odd thing which to this day is an unsolved mystery: his correspondence with Vicky was never found, and I know for a fact that he kept every single letter she ever wrote to him.’

‘Are you sure he kept them at home?’

‘He did at first because after she died he made a sort of scrapbook of all her mementoes – I found him working on it one evening, and I’m afraid I let him know that I thought he was being unnecessarily morbid. We never discussed the subject again, and later when the correspondence failed to turn up I did wonder if he had removed it to the office. I even wondered if Mayers had burnt the file, but that’s highly unlikely because he would never have destroyed Vicky’s letters without permission from the family.’

‘Hm.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Did you discuss this with anyone?’

‘Yes, I asked Steve to make a special search at the office and I asked
Elizabeth if she knew what might have happened. I thought your mother might have liked the letters if they were still in existence because she had been so fond of Vicky.’

We dwelt on the mystery for a minute longer and then after thanking her I hung up.

I had to find Elizabeth Clayton’s number in the phone book before I lifted the receiver again to place the call.

‘Cornelius?’ she said doubtfully after the butler had called her to the phone. Elizabeth and I had never cared for one another; Bruce’s role in the conspiracy had made it impossible for me to be more than civil to her, but even before Paul’s death I had thought her cold and snobbish.

‘Yes, Mrs Clayton,’ I said politely. ‘Good evening. I wonder if you can help me. I’m trying to trace a section of Paul’s private correspondence which I suspect still exists even though Mayers destroyed so many of those files after the assassination. Do you by any chance happen to know where—’

‘You’re not looking for Dinah Slade’s file, are you?’ she said at once.

I was so surprised that it took me a moment before I could say neutrally: ‘Why should you think that?’

‘Steve was looking for it once but he told me later he never found it. If I were you I wouldn’t waste time looking for it, Cornelius. I’m sure one of the first files Mayers destroyed would have been the correspondence between Catullus and his Lesbia.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Oh, you didn’t know? That’s how they used to address each other in their private correspondence. Paul showed me some of the early letters – they were classical quizzes and really quite droll.’

‘Mrs Clayton,’ I said, taking a deep breath, ‘did Paul and Vicky also have classical names for each other when they corresponded?’

There was a pause. ‘Why, yes,’ said Elizabeth surprised. ‘I’d quite forgotten, but yes, you’re right, they did. In his letters he always addressed her as Tullia and signed himself MTC.’

‘MTC?’

‘Marcus Tullius Cicero. Tullia was Cicero’s much-beloved daughter.’

‘Yes, of course. Thank you, Mrs Clayton,’ I said, and severed the connection.

With the appropriate keys I dashed down to the vaults. I looked under Marcus, under Tullius or Tullia, under Cicero, under Catullus and under Lesbia, but found nothing. Yet I felt sure I was on the trail.

I checked the business files upstairs. Still nothing. Deciding I needed another drink to boost my flagging spirits I trailed back to Paul’s office and once more touched the spring to open the concealed bar.

The bookcase swung towards me. Paul’s books, kept in memory of him and untouched since his death, stared me in the eye.

‘My God!’ I said. I forgot the drink. I stepped back and looked at the bookcases which stretched from floor to ceiling on either side of the fireplace.

It took
me some minutes to find them because I started at the top and they were on the bottom shelf but eventually I saw the twin volumes standing side by side.