Chapter 3

Frank Torrance wondered why Carolyn Hawkes had asked him to visit her. Ten to one she would try to bribe him. It was the usual. He had been offered the weirdest things in his career. Sometimes he wondered if he should accept them. He knew of others who did. He also knew of others who had either been fired or buried into dead-end jobs because they had been too honest for their own good.

"I might end up the same way" he thought "My mother did not work her fingers to the bone washing other people's floors so that I should end that way."

But he never took that thought seriously. He was damn sure that his pious mother would not like it at all to find that she had worked her fingers to the bone so that he could become another corrupt official. Like the ones who looked the other way while his father spat out his lungs in the factory floor. He had loved his father, dead when he was eight. He loved his mother. And he was not going to give a break to those bastards who killed fathers of eight year olds because taking precautions against occupational diseases was too expensive.

And Carolyn Hawkes was one of these. He had counted ten serious violations. Not picayune stuff, of the kind that prompted many to rightfully claim petty harassment. He had learned to steer away from those even before the new directives. No, the stuff going on at the Collins cannery was serious. Some of it was deadly.

And the people did not complain. How could they? It was a one industry town. You either worked for the Collins family, or did not work at all. it had been that simple for generations.

He wondered how they had managed to send Margaret Evans to Congress. He liked the lady. She was the one who had pulled strings so that he would be sent here. Not a moment too soon, as he could see.

He wondered if he should drop in to see Barnabas Collins again. The renegade of the Collins family and Ms. Evans one-time campaign manager. He had welcomed him into town and assailed him with suggestions for his job. Many were worthless, but others proved to be one-hundred percent accurate, like his listing of fire hazards.

He wondered what he did for a living. He would like him to work in his department. With a little training he would make an excellent investigator. Maybe it would do him good, too. If he moved to DC, then he would get out of this small town and the sad memories it evidently held for him.

He checked himself. How could he know what kind of memories this place held? Of course, this affair with the girl from the Jennings agency was on the rocks. Seemed a typical case of a couple going through Hell in order not to hurt the other with the truth. Very noble, but awful dumb.

He was a sad man, true. And gentle, too. Carolyn Hawkes hated him and was quite open about it. But him, when he talked of her, he was always gentle. Yes, he knew what she was doing. He was fighting her. He had helped Margaret Evans get elected. He had managed to get a Federal Inspector in, and given him all the help he could. But he would not say a harsh world against Mrs. Hawkes.

A psychologist would have a field day with him. He might even get a chapter all by himself in a psychology book.

He was no there when he called. Instead he found his girlfriend nursing a drink.

"You should not drink so much." he told her.

"I do not see what business it is of yours."

"I like both of you. I do not like to see you hurting each other. Why don't you tell him that the love affair is over? It will hurt at first, but it will be much worse if you end up an alcoholic. And what makes you think that he is happier? I know these things happen...

"You know?" she mocked him. " You tell me about your experience. Do you want me to tell you about mine? What could you know that I don't?

"I guess I went too far." he gulped. "I am sorry. But you two seem so unhappy, and I like both of you. Specially you...Anyway, if I didn't love to be involved with other people's problems I would be in another line of work."

"Did you come all the way to tell me this?"

"No. I want to talk to Barnabas. You see, I am supposed to meet Mrs. Hawkes today. I suspect that she will try to bribe me. I want to know what to do. I know that he wouldn't want me to arrest her. But I cannot let her go on either.

"Can you be non-committal?"

"First lesson a bureaucrat ever learns.."

"Then be non-committal. Later come back here and decide what to do next. He has a handle over her, but he'd rather not use it."

"These people "thought Torrance as he left" were very nice but very neurotic too. Well, nothing is gained by antagonizing your allies."

He wondered where Barnabas could be. Asking would be useless. The best kept secret seemed to be Barnabas' whereabouts at certain times. If he wasn't around, no one would say where he might be..

His mind returned to her, in that lonely house. Probably pouring herself another drink. Poor girl. And good looking too. With so much going for her, why did she do that to herself?

Well, musing would never get the job done. He had to see Carolyn Hawkes and make as if he didn't hear the offers she made. If only those people would come up with something that would really tempt him. Like an estate in the Caribbean - his own private island. But those people were too damn cheap, even for bribing...

Mrs. Hawkes was still young, but her face was marked by bitterness. He knew that she was a widow., that her cousin had joined a commune, and that her uncle had not been committed because it would not be proper, in her view, to have a Collins in a nuthouse. There was also the scandal of her mother's marriage. It had seemed funny when he had first heard it. Now that he saw what it had done to her, it was not. Her mother had once been a recluse. Maybe Mrs. Hawkes was heading in that direction.

He thought he could understand Barnabas' gentleness with her.

She took him into her study. She tried to smile coquettishly at him. Would he find old-fashioned seduction here? He hoped not. Bribery he could handle, but Carolyn Hawkes trying to play the siren would just be ludicrous. He would not know whether to laugh or cry.

"I am sorry about the service." she said "There isn't a servant you can trust these days."

He had heard that line before. It was old before he was born. And while those people complained about their servants, his mother was washing floors on hands and knees...

Then he remembered the other juicy story. the trusted housekeeper who had one day decided to go to college. And worse, this servant of theirs had married Professor Eliot Stokes. A University Professor. Somebody they received in their living room. Why couldn't that woman remember the difference between those who served the tea and those who drank it?

So now, she had no housekeeper, and had to receive a Federal Inspector in such a fashion.

She took her time getting to the point. She wanted to talk about everything except the factory. At least she did not try to seduce him.

But if she wasn't the over talkative type, why keep going on about Carter, Ford, Nixon, and the Watergate?

"I think that Watergate was blown out of proportion" she said. "Kennedy and Johnson did worse"

'You might be right..." he was in no mood to waste time in an argument.

"I am right and you know it."

"Well, Nixon was caught. Kennedy and Johnson are dead, and there is no point raking them over the coals. but Nixon is alive."

"And he is not an Ivy League Liberal, of course."

"All right" he sighed. "I can see that we may start on along discussion, but that is now why I came here. I have a job to do..."

He could not finish. In front of him stood an old man, his eyes staring strangely at him.

"What are you talking about? Nixon? He was framed, you know. You framed him. You and Maggie Evans, who used to be a servant in this house... A governess is just a servant with airs... Maggie did it so that she could get elected. Barnabas was in it, too..."

This was evidently Roger Collins, the nut. Getting rid of him took a while. By the time they put him to be, it was dark.

"Mrs. Hawkes" he had to get to the business he had to do here "there are several gross violations in your plant. I do not want to blame you. I know that it is an old problem, from long before you were born. But something has to be done about it."

"Do you think that is that easy? You and all those Washington bureaucrats trying to tell me how to run my business.."

"Lady, spare me the speeches. I've heard all of them. I am willing to give you a chance to make good. I will make recommendations that you be considered a special case since you did not create the problem, just inherited it."

She quickly straightened up.

"There is somebody I want you to meet." she said, smiling. ",Maybe you will understand my position better after meeting her."

As if on cue an attractive brunette stepped in. He recognized her. Megan Todd, also of the Jennings agency.

"She can explain it better than I can" Carolyn said, as she left the room.

"Look, Mr. Torrance," Megan said. "it is nothing personal. I hope you understand. It is just a job that I've been hired to do. I don't want you to be more alarmed than you need."

"What are you talking about?"

"I will just you. I hate playing cat and mouse and I don't get paid by the hour."

In three steps she had come over him, taken him by the arms, and bared her teeth.

"There aren't such thinks as vampires" she managed to think before she bit him.

When he came to, she was rubbing water on his face.

"You took it awfully hard," she said. "most people usually don't. Don't worry. Nothing's broken. I haven't really harmed you. I only made sure that you will do what I'll tell you to do."

"What...what do you want me to do?"

"What Mrs. Hawkes paid me for. Write a good report for her. Be nice to her,."

Torrance burned with rage when he realized that she was right. He would now write the kind of report she wanted, even if it was one lie after another. He would never be able to put the Hawkes bitch behind bards. Damn her, talking nonsense all this time so that Megan could keep her appointment.

"You should not have been so stubborn" Megan added "Nothing like this would have happened if you had the good sense of taking a bribe. It would have been cheaper for her, too. I am expensive."

"The bitch!" The goddamn bitch!" I'll get her for this."

"Come on, Mr. Torrance." Mrs. Hawkes came back into the room. "stop the theater. As you said, cut the speeches. I too have heard them. And if you see cousin Barnabas, tell him from me to go to Hell."

"To think that you used...such...such a thing."

"Why do you look at my friend that way?"

"I am not your friend, Carolyn" Megan said softly. "I wonder if anyone is. I only do it for the money"

"Don't look at her that way, Mr. Torrance. She isn't so different from cousin Barnabas. In fact, he's the one who made her what she is today."