“One for sorrow, two for mirth.” It clattered around in my cranium like one of those idiotic singing commercials, while I coffeed and crullered. “One for sorrow, two for mirth.” What the hell? The tie-in with “Seven for a secret” and “Never forget four” seemed obvious. But the meaning was as murky as the skies when I went out to hire a hack.
Thunder grumbled. Lightning flashes made the white fences stand out as if floodlighted, against the vivid green of thoroughbred pastures. The heat was oppressive.
The cabdriver knew where Tildy Millett’s place was, sure. A show farm, Lovelawn was. Not many horses out there now, but he’d heard she planned to breed trotters next spring. Maybe she’d be breeding something else, too; there was talking about her latching up with some big advertising man.
I chuckled at his feeble jest. Would he know whether she’d come home by plane, today?
He wouldn’t know. He’d just come on at midnight. But it was only another mile down the pike; there were relatives living with her, if I wanted him to wait while I found out if she was there.
It began to rain. We passed a famous racing stud whose colors I’d bet on often at the tracks. The whitewashed stables and paddocks, the parklike grounds, the long white fences loping over gently rolling hills — very picturesque. The Land of Gracious Living. As advertised. I was in no mood to appreciate it.
Why had Lanerd said Tildy was on her way to Lexington when she hadn’t been? Why had Walch’s club thought he might be in Lexington, when he was on Long Island Sound? Most important, what followed “One for sorrow, two for mirth”?
The cabdriver said, “Here’s Lovelawn. Hey, they got the chain on.” He stopped.
Between fieldstone pillars a massive chain was padlocked.
“I better wait for you, huh? It’s quite a piece up to the house. Maybe there’s nobody home, after all.”