“The committee halted their investigation into Calvin that afternoon, while I was sleeping in my suite at the Plaza. I assumed Calvin and Olin came to a `gentleman’s agreement.”’ She gave the phrase a savage inflection.

“Olin would cease and desist, Armand would go to prison, Kylie would lose her job and Calvin would keep Olin’s affair with MacKenzie to himself-that would have ruined Olin in the fifties, you see. I made all of these assumptions because MacKenzie returned to Larchmont and hanged himself. Neither of us knew that Darraugh was sent home unexpectedly from Exeter.”

She looked at me bleakly. “Of course-Renee knew everything. About me and Calvin, about Olin and MacKenzie. And she flaunted her knowledge to me, in those subtle ways one can in a closed community. I was never more thankful for anything than when she and Calvin bought that apartment in town.”

I went to the kitchen and brought her a glass of water. “Ma’am, I didn’t mean for you to tell me so much, or to have it be so upsetting for you. But you see, I think Olin told this story to Marcus Whitby. And I think Marc went to Renee for her version. Marc was working on a long project on Kylie Ballantine, and he was a careful journalist; he wouldn’t print such a story without hearing the Bayards’ side. Renee killed him, in an efficient way. She gave him bourbon dosed with phenobarbital, and when he fell into a coma, she drove here to Anodyne Park, where she borrowed a golf cart, and drove him to your old pond. Now-I’m afraid she’ll kill the Egyptian boy if she gets to him before I do.”

Geraldine drank the water. “And you think I can stop her? I showed no capacity for that when I was younger and more vital.”

“I’m wondering if Catherine ran away to some place that was important to her and her grandfather. I desperately need to know-it may be too late already now-but-was there some private special place that you and Calvin cherished?”

Her mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “Many special places, all by necessity private. But-I suppose-his family used to own a hunting lodge near Eagle River, up in northern Wisconsin. When the North Woods became a national forest in the thirties, the family had to give up their land, but Calvin’s father worked out an agreement where the family could keep

the lodge for private use for twentyfive years. The agreement must have expired about the time Calvin married Renee.

“The lodge is where we held the committee benefit that caused so much questioning in Congress. And it’s where Calvin and I used to go sometimes in the fall. Besides the great lodge, which would sleep thirty people, there was a cottage in the woods behind it. We were happy there, in a place where we could-be intimate without wondering who was outside the bedroom door. I think Calvin took the girl up there when she was younger.,,