Executive Suite (22 page)

Edith Alderson's first lost battle had been over this house and, like a warrior imprisoned within the walls of her own defeat, she had been forced to live in it for over twenty years. The house had been built in 1869 by Gustav Krautz, one of the brothers who had taken over the old Mills Iron Foundry and made a fortune supplying gun caissons for the Union Army. On his dollar-made ladder, Gustav Krautz had climbed out of Dutchtown. But he hadn't quite made North Front. He had come as close as a secret meeting in the back room of the Federal Club had allowed, building his house on George Street, where the back of his lot was separated by only a narrow alley from the house that faced North Front Street.

That, Edith Alderson knew, was why Fred had bought the house—because, by the time they had been able to buy, the house across the alley had been the home of Avery Bullard. Nothing that she had said had been of any avail. Her opinion hadn't counted. Fred had countered everything with the, to him, unanswerable argument that “Mr. Bullard thinks it's what we ought to do.”

The house, despite everything that she had tried to do with it, had remained as it had been built, the tasteless product of a tasteless mind in a tasteless age. Every room, even the kitchen, was paneled in dark wood so elaborately carved that her one-room attempt to cover it with paint had been a shocking failure. All that she had done was to highlight the fat bellies and rotund behinds of innumerable carved cupids who, like night-flying bats, had been hitherto almost invisible in the all-pervading darkness. No rugs would quiet the perpetual squeaking of the old parquetry floors, no amount of cleaning would keep pace with the up-sifting dust that came out of the cracks, nor would anything banish the pervading odor of mustiness. In the moments of total despair, glancing up, she was faced with sly grins of the fiendish little elves who were caricatured in the stained-glass semi-circles that crowned all of the windows.

But even the house, bad as it was, had not been the worst thing that Avery Bullard had done to her. Put in its simplest terms—and all of the years of loneliness had given Edith Alderson plenty of time to reduce everything to the simplest of terms—Avery Bullard had taken her husband away from her. He had turned her life into the meaningless sham of being married to a man whose first loyalty she could not claim.

What Avery Bullard wanted had always come first. What she had wanted hadn't mattered. It had been that way almost from the beginning, from the second year of their married life. Fred was like a man mesmerized by a demon. When Avery Bullard had snapped his fingers they had left everything and moved to Millburgh. That was when she had made her first mistake. She had been too young and too innocent then to know that there were men in the world like Avery Bullard.

For a while she had blamed Fred and, by the time she came to realize that the fault was all Avery Bullard's, it was too late. By then Fred was completely in the ogre's power. A man couldn't start over again in middle life. What else could Fred do? It was then that she had stopped fighting back. There was only one thing left and that was to wait for Fred's retirement.

Tonight, miraculously, the hope of an earlier escape had burst upon her. Avery Bullard was dead! Then, cruelly, the hope had been torn away by the prospect of Fred being made president. If Fred were to sit in Avery Bullard's chair, he would be eternally condemned as the slave of Bullard's ghost … speak with Bullard's voice … think with Bullard's brain. Bullard's heart would be his heart and there would be no place for her. All his life, Avery Bullard had defeated her and now he was threatening to continue her defeat even from his grave.

She walked on. Out of the back windows, over the head-high boxwood, she could see the top of the house where Avery Bullard had lived until Florence had left him.

At the time, Edith Alderson had credited Florence's leaving as her first victory over Avery Bullard. She thought that it would bring the man to his senses. It hadn't. After that he was more of a demon than ever. There were many times when Fred would not come home until long after midnight. Red-eyed and drunk with fatigue he would fall asleep beside her without even touching her hand. Later, in the darkness, she would hear the mumbling of his dream-voice mouthing the words of Avery Bullard and then her eyes would burn as the fire of her hatred turned her tears into scalding steam.

“Edith?”

She turned, startled. Her husband was standing in the arch of the living room. His obvious composure was in frightening contrast to her own lack of inner poise.

“Mr. Bullard's cousin,” he said precisely. “Unless I'm mistaken we have his address on our Christmas card list. Can you tell me where I might find it?”

She walked toward him and then past him, into the library, carrying in her ear the impersonal formality of his voice.

The list was in the bottom of the drawer where she piled the never-read pamphlets that came each month from the Millburgh Historical Society. She found it. The name was on the first page.

“Thank you.” He was leaning over the desk, writing copperplate script with a very sharp pencil.

She had seen another name on the list. “Fred?”

“Yes?”

“You're sending a telegram?”

“Yes.”

“There's someone else we ought to wire.”

“Who?”

“Florence.”

He straightened and she saw him looking at her, his face softly pink as if he had grown younger in this last hour, the color emphasized by the whiteness of his perfectly combed hair. “I doubt if he'd want us to do that.”

“He's dead.” The words were too short to register all that she tried to make them say, so she added, “I'll send it myself,” and crossed to the cloisonné box in which she kept recent personal letters. There had been one from Florence only last month. She found it and walked back toward the desk lamp so that there would be light enough to read the corner card.

“Give me the address,” she heard him say and her heart leaped to the encouragement of this first small victory. “Mrs. Florence Bullard—The Pines Hotel—Packer Beach, Maine.”

She had paced her voice to his writing and, when he made the period after “Maine,” she spoke his name.

“Yes?” The word was a courtesy sound, not an inquiry. He was starting to write the message.

“Fred, you can't do it!”

The words seemed to explode from her lips. His head came up slowly in poised surprise, the pencil waiting. “Can't do what, my dear?”

“Be president of the company.”

“Why?”

Desperation drove her voice. “You're not well, Fred, you know you're not. It—it would kill you. You know what the doctor said—what all the doctors said.”

His voice came back, maddeningly calm. “That was before the operation, Edith. I've been very well these last two years.”

“But why do you want it—why?”

“Now, Edith, you—”

“There's no reason—no reason on earth. We don't need more money. We have all we'll need. Fred, you're sixty-one. It's only four more years until you can retire. Fred, don't you—can't you—”

Her voice dropped like a lance shattered on the shield of his hard-masked face.

“Edith, you don't understand.”

“I do understand! It's still Avery Bullard, it's still—”

“No,” he said, sharply enough to interrupt her, but then his voice dropped, not into softness but into the quiet intensity of calculated hatred. “It's Loren Shaw. If I'm not president, then Shaw will be.”

“Let him be. What do you care?”

“You don't mean that, Edith.”

“I do mean it. You've given your whole life to Avery Bullard. That's enough.”

For a moment, seeing the questioning break in the mask of his face, she clutched at the hope that she might still win. He had looked down and was tracing a wavering line on the pad with the sharp edge of his pencil. She held her breath, waiting for the sound of his voice. With the first word of her hope faded.

“No, Edith, I haven't given my life to Avery Bullard. I've given my life to the company—and I'm not going to see it destroyed by a bastard like Shaw.”

Bastard! The word struck like a gun shot. She had never heard him use a word like that before. That wasn't Fred … no … no … no … that was Bullard … that was Avery Bullard talking!

In silent despair she shrank back against the wall. Without looking at her, he finished writing the messages. Then he picked up the telephone and began to dial the number that he had already written on the top edge of the pad.

No, that hadn't been Fred talking … Fred wasn't capable of hating … that was Avery Bullard … only Avery Bullard could harbor a hatred like that.

Then, from the secret recesses of her mind, where that horrid word lay smoldering like a fused bomb, she hurled it back toward the picture of Avery Bullard that hung above her husband's desk.

7.44 P.M. EDT

As Don Walling turned onto Ridge Road he had noticed that the gasoline gauge needle was almost touching the Empty pin and pulled into the filling station that flanked the country club entrance. “Red” Barry, the owner, bounced up from his perch on the grease rack and came toward him, his peaked cap riding jauntily over his indelible grin.

“Hiya there, Mr. Walling. Say, bad news about Mr. Bullard, huh?”

Don Walling held his response to a nod, repulsed by Red's griefless tone and the irreverence of his senseless grin.

A crowded convertible whished by and the sound of young laughter lingered in its wake. More laughter came from the club tennis courts behind the screening trees. The garbled scream of a many-throated cheer floated up from the soft-ball diamonds below the turn of the hill and, still more distantly, there was the honky-tonk music from Joyland Park. The hush of death should have been upon the earth and, because it was not, the aloneness of his grief made it all the more poignant, a feeling that was accentuated by the lurking self-criticism that he himself had been guilty of neglected grief because he had allowed his mind to be occupied with thoughts, not of Avery Bullard, but of who might be his successor.

“Not so old either from what I hear, huh, Mr. Walling?” Red said with the grin that never changed but now seemed hideously ghoulish. “Only fifty-six they tell me. Young man but a hard life, huh, Mr. Walling? I'll stick to pumping gas. That'll be three-ninety-two, Mr. Walling.”

He gave him four dollars and drove off in quick escape. But there was no escape from the griefless cacophony of the world. Driving down the hill was like sliding into a cauldron of raucous merriment. Joyland Park was built on the flat floor of an abandoned quarry and the sheer face of cut rock behind it acted as a sounding board that amplified a thousand separate noises and scrambled them into one discordant roar.

Traffic stopped at the bottom of the hill. The roller coaster was just beyond the high board fence and he flinched at the ear-piercing shrieks of exalted delight that accompanied the down-roaring plunge of the cars.

The traffic stream started to move but he had hardly shifted before a policeman's upraised hand halted him again to let a freshet of people storm across the road toward the park entrance, pushing, shoving, driven by the frantic urge to shout and laugh and scream at man-made excitement. He recognized one of the men—a shift foreman in the sanding room at the Water Street factory. The recognition prompted the thought that many of the others must be Tredway people, too, and he recalled Avery Bullard saying, at the directors' meeting where they had approved the company budget for community contributions, that paychecks from the Tredway Corporation directly supported one out of three families in Millburgh, and contributed to the support of at least half of the rest.

Avery Bullard was dead … but did it matter to them? So what? they would say … who was Avery Bullard? Only a man … men died every day … just another name in the obituary column … not even the name on the bottom of their paychecks. That was the name that counted … the name on the paycheck … Frederick W. Alderson, Vice-President and Treasurer.

The policeman's hand dropped and Don Walling's mind leaped ahead with the moving car. There was a chance that Mary might be right, that Fred Alderson might not take the presidency. At least he would be reluctant, out of modesty if nothing else. His mind rehearsed what he would say … Fred, I know how you feel … we all feel the same way … no one can take Avery Bullard's place … but you've been with him longer than any of the rest of us … closer to him … know how he thinks … all the half-done things that we have to carry on. Carry on … yes, that's what we have to do, Fred … carry on.

Brakes screeched. He had failed to see a car leaping at him around the sharp back-turn of North Front Street. A twist of the wheel, subconsciously guided, avoided the collision but his heart was still beating overrate when he turned into the Alderson drive.

As he passed the house, turning in the paved area behind it, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Mrs. Alderson's face in the window. She must have hurried to the door because she was opening it as he came up the steps. It was not, as he first thought, a gesture of hospitality because she did not hold the door for his entrance but closed it quickly behind herself and motioned him to the side of the porch.

As he came close enough to see her eyes it was obvious that she had been crying. He was surprised because he had always thought of Mrs. Alderson as a coldly unemotional woman and he had not suspected that she could be so deeply affected by the death of Avery Bullard.

“I know how you feel,” he said sympathetically. “We all feel the—”

“Tell me quickly,” she broke in, “—before Fred comes. What's this going to mean? It's been so long—so many years—he's given so much of his life—”

His mind leaped to the one conclusion that her words seemed to demand … she was pleading that her husband be made president.