Lovers and Liars Trilogy (59 page)

McMullen drew on his cigarette. He watched its smoke curl upward from his hand. After a pause, he began speaking again.

“First, the essential background. You may or may not know: I have been a close friend of Lise Hawthorne’s for many years. We first met shortly before I joined the army, in 1972. This was long before her marriage, obviously. I spent a summer in Virginia with the Grenville family. At the time, I was recovering from an illness. The Grenvilles were old friends of my mother’s, and distant cousins of Lise’s. I needed a spell of rest and recuperation, at least my mother thought I did, and the Grenvilles very kindly took me in.” He paused. “Lise was seventeen then. It was her debutante year. That photograph in my apartment—the one I used—was taken then. Lise and I liked one another immediately. We became, and remained, close friends.”

He glanced at Pascal.

“I should say this now. I want you to be perfectly clear. When I say friends, I mean friends. Lise and I have never been lovers. You understand?” Pascal said nothing; he nodded. McMullen went on.

“It was and is a very deep friendship, however. I have always admired Lise. She is one of the few—the very few—genuinely good people I have ever known. She has shown me great kindness in the past, and I would do almost anything to return that kindness. Lise knew that. The opportunity finally came last summer.”

Gini glanced at Pascal as he said this, and McMullen, who was sharp-eyed, noticed at once.

“I should also make one other thing clear,” he continued. “You may well feel I’m biased against Lise’s husbands—and perhaps I am. I don’t believe that bias clouds my judgment, though you may. For what it’s worth, I have never liked John Hawthorne, and I advised Lise against marrying him. I think he is a dangerous, cold, arrogant man—very like his father, in fact. I think he is manipulative, motivated by self-interest and ambition—a man utterly without principles, a politician of the worst sort. He is also highly intelligent, and gifted, which makes his behavior far worse in my view. Lise used to claim”—he hesitated fractionally—“that I was mistaken. She would admit some of his faults—the arrogance, for instance—but she would say there were mitigating factors, his upbringing and such. At the time she married him, she was passionately in love with him. At that time, I knew a great deal more about her future husband than Lise realized, and I had to decide whether to tell her what I knew, or remain silent. In the end, I decided to stay silent. Lise was so persuasive on his behalf, so full of his virtues, it seemed cruel to speak out. In the first place, she would have refused to believe me. In the second, it would have brought our friendship to an end.” He paused, looking away from them.

“I convinced myself that Lise could be right, that Hawthorne might have changed. So I said nothing. I very much regret that now.”

There was a brief silence. McMullen extinguished his cigarette. He looked at Pascal.

“I’ll come back to my reasons for distrusting Hawthorne later. I should like to leave those to the end. After all”—his voice became embittered—“I know why you’re here. I know why Nicholas Jenkins was so keen on this story in the first place. I may be unused to dealing with journalists, but even I know how fast they react to a hint of sexual scandal, to the idea of an eminent man leading a secret sexual life. Am I wrong?”

The question was sharply put. Gini said nothing, and allowed Pascal to reply. The bitterness in McMullen’s tone interested her. It was as if, with a certain contempt, he was deciding to tell them what he believed they wanted to hear.

“No, you’re not entirely wrong,” Pascal replied in even tones. “I wouldn’t say it was the only kind of story to which reporters reacted swiftly, but never mind that now. We can come back to that later, as you say. Go on.”

“Very well.” McMullen leaned back in his chair and began to speak more rapidly. “During the years of her marriage I saw Lise less often than before. I was in the army, she was in America, I had frequent postings abroad. We used to write to each other from time to time. About four years ago, after I left the army, I met her in Italy briefly, where she was staying, without her husband, with friends. I saw her on a few other occasions over the next three years, when she and Hawthorne were visiting London. I had dinner with them—and I noticed nothing amiss. Once Hawthorne was first posted here, I saw them more frequently. Lise invited me to various embassy dinners and parties, that kind of thing. I would meet Hawthorne, exchange a few words. He was always perfectly civil. Then, last July, I was invited for a long weekend at their country house here. And that was when I finally realized something was terribly wrong.

“I could see straight away that Lise was under strain. It was some weeks since I’d last seen her, and in that short time, it was as if she had wasted away. She’d become painfully thin, she scarcely ate, she seemed nervous around her husband, she had these sudden inexplicable changes of mood. It was very difficult to spend any time alone with her. The house was full of other guests; Hawthorne himself was there. On the second day, I managed to get her away. We went for a long walk in the grounds. Miles and miles. It started raining. Lise began crying. It was terrible. Finally, she broke down. She told me everything.” He broke off suddenly. His face had darkened, and he gave an angry gesture.

“What you have to understand is this. His treatment of Lise may have worsened, but it’s been going on for years. A chain of other women, mistresses, secretaries. He slept with another woman the night before their marriage. He was faithful to his new wife for precisely five days. Lise knows that not because anyone gossiped, but because
he
chose to tell her. He’s been systematically stripping Lise of any confidence she ever had, telling her she was stupid, inept, comparing her to the other women he had affairs with, boasting about his one-night stands—”

Again that violent emotion had surfaced. Gini watched as McMullen fought to get it back under control. He lit another cigarette, his hand shaking a little as he lifted the match, then abruptly he rose to his feet.

“I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me. I need a drink—and I hate to drink alone. You’ll join me?”

The question, Gini noted, was directed solely at Pascal.

“Yes, we will,” Pascal said, and McMullen checked himself.

“I’m being rude,” he said, addressing Gini this time. “I apologize. It wasn’t intentional. I don’t find it easy to discuss any of these things, particularly in front of a woman.”

He poured three measures of whisky, added water. He handed their glasses to Gini and to Pascal, and then sat down. He glanced at his watch again.

Pascal said, “Just how worried are you about the time? We do need to get this clear, you know.”

“Of course. It’s all right,” McMullen said hastily. “I’m coming to the point where you will already have quite a lot of information.” This time he made an effort to include Gini in his next question.

“You know there were rumors circulating in Washington before they came over here? You know that Appleyard finally picked up on those rumors?”

“Yes,” Gini said. “We do.”

“Fine.” He gave a curt nod. “What you may not know is who started those rumors. It was John Hawthorne himself. It was part of a long campaign to undermine Lise.”

He stopped to light another cigarette, then continued. “For years, the first six years of their marriage, Hawthorne believed his dominance over Lise was so strong that no matter what he did, he could get away with it. He knew Lise was too devout a Catholic ever to contemplate divorce. He knew how much she loved her children. He believed he could rely on that, and on her pride. Then there was a change. Around four years ago, Adam, their younger son, became ill.”

He paused, still trying to fight down emotion. “He nearly died. I think something snapped in Lise then. She might have gone on enduring it all, the humiliations, the cruelty, the boasts—but after Adam’s illness, she finally saw that she had to protect her children from this man. She began to see at last—at least this is what she tells me—that Hawthorne’s influence on his children could ultimately be as harmful to them as
his
father’s had been to him. So she gave Hawthorne an ultimatum. Either he changed his ways, or she would leave him and live apart with her children. She didn’t threaten him with exposure—nothing like that. Just separation. And Hawthorne swore to her he would change.”

McMullen gave them both a cold glance.

“You can imagine how long that lasted. A few months. Hawthorne was panicked into resigning from the Senate—I think because he feared scandal, and for the first time in his life he was genuinely afraid of what Lise might do. But being a reformed man didn’t suit him at all. He was drinking heavily; there were violent quarrels with Lise. Then he stopped the drinking and took up with the women again. Only there was this new variation, an added twist. The mistresses and one-night stands weren’t enough anymore. That’s when the monthly appointments with the blondes began. But he covered himself. He began on a new strategy. That’s when the rumors about Lise’s mental health began to circulate too….

“It was clever of him, you have to admit that.” McMullen looked at them closely. “Lise was genuinely very near to breakdown then. Hawthorne told her, if she tried to leave him, he would get custody of the children. He would claim she was an unfit mother, mentally unstable. Both he and his father had a long interview with her, and they spelled it out very clearly. They showed her a list of witnesses who’d take the stand against her—servants, maids, secretaries, friends. Some of those Hawthorne and his father could bribe, others they simply leaned on—and they had years of experience in doing that. Hawthorne’s father’s proudest boast was that there was no one he couldn’t buy.

“Beyond that specific threat,” McMullen continued, “the scheme was an effective one. Hawthorne was protecting himself in advance. If, in future, Lise ever did speak out against him, whether in a custody battle or just to friends, few people would believe her. Anything she said would be dismissed as paranoid, as deluded. And of course, the saddest thing of all was that the more he pressured her in this way, the worse her health became. I personally believe that he and his father planned it that way: They were trying actually to drive her insane. After all, from John Hawthorne’s own point of view, better an unstable wife in a mental institution than a smashed-up presidential career. That way Hawthorne got everyone’s vote of sympathy—a sick wife could be turned to his advantage, do you see?”

“Up to a point.” Gini leaned forward. “Except by then, Hawthorne’s career was on hold. He’d resigned from the Senate. It was before he took up the post here.”

“Hawthorne’s career has
never
been on hold,” McMullen replied sharply. “You have to understand that. It’s fundamental to the man. He may have decided it was wise to take a backseat for a while, until he’d dealt with the question of Lise. He may have decided it was better to get her away from friends and relations in America, yes. But he has
never
abandoned his central ambition—and neither has his father. You can be quite certain that his father has been involved in all this, every step of the way. If Hawthorne ever did hesitate as to the wisdom of committing his wife, the mother of his sons, to a mental institution, you can be sure the father would be there at his shoulder, saying go right ahead, it’s the best way.”

“Is that what you think?” Pascal asked. “You seriously think Hawthorne intended to have his wife committed?”

“I don’t think it. I know. He threatened her with it several times. He’s already selected the hospital. It’s called Henley Grange. It’s private and it’s twenty miles outside London. Hawthorne gave them a sweetener—a donation of fifty thousand dollars, last year.”

“How do you know that?”

“Lise saw the canceled check. Moreover, a doctor affiliated with Henley Grange has been treating Lise since last autumn. Hawthorne called him in personally. And you know when he did that? Two days after I first spoke to Appleyard. Which was about two days after Hawthorne started tapping my phone.”

He leaned forward, his face now strained and intent. “Do you see? You have to understand the timing here. Last July, when Lise told me her story, I was appalled. I couldn’t believe that any man would act in that way—ritualizing his sexual encounters, then forcing his wife to listen to descriptions of them month after month. If anyone other than Lise had told me that story, I might not have believed it. But it
was
Lise—and Lise never lies. And, as it happened, it echoed other things I’d heard about Hawthorne long before. Hawthorne was always a sadist. He was a sadist as a very young man.”

He broke off, hesitated, then looked at Pascal. “I want you to understand how desperate I was. That July, I tried so hard to persuade Lise to act, but she wouldn’t, she was too afraid. I could see why Hawthorne was undermining her with that rumor campaign, and I was certain it would intensify. I was right. Last September the rumors finally filtered down to a journalist who was prepared to use them—Appleyard. That’s when he started calling up Lise’s doctors in London. When her doctors informed Lise, she knew she had to fight back, and fight back hard. That’s when she and I began to plan. We were careful, but not careful enough. I think Hawthorne probably suspected that she had spoken to me in the summer. I’m sure that’s when he began his surveillance using Romero and others. There are three of them in London now who used to work for Hawthorne’s father. Check them out sometime.”

He took a deep swallow of his whisky, which seemed to steady him. “Anyway. As soon as Hawthorne realized what was happening, that he was actually under threat of exposure, he acted fast. He had us both watched all the time. He made that donation, he called in those doctors, and they filled Lise up with Christ knows what—stimulants, sedatives, tranquilizers. Injections before breakfast, lunch, and dinner, injections every night before bed. Pills, capsules; nurses in constant attendance. It was terrifying. I managed to get Lise to see a doctor I knew—”

“Ah, yes,” Pascal said evenly. “The one your sister recommended. It was mentioned on the tape you gave Jenkins.”