I checked myself. That photo couldn’t have been faked. And for me it had been too late since 1937.

I introduced the ladies to Polly Lake and showed Germaine about the Osborn Jones, explaining what a skipjack was and how it came to pass that oysters were still dredged under sail in Maryland. She was politely interested: her late husband had enjoyed sailing out of Cowes, she said, in the Solent, but she herself was prone to motion sickness. However, she was mad about oysters: what a pity the season was ended. I thought to pick up on Lord Jeff, try whether I could sound her present feelings about his old affair with Jane; she forestalled me by inquiring about the Osborn Jones, whether I’d named it after the salty old voyeur in the Floating Opera novel or whether the fictional character and the boat were both named after an historical original. Ought she to ask Jane instead? she wondered mischievously.

I was impressed: a delicate maneuver, as if she’d read my thoughts and was gently reminding me (what in fact I’d forgotten for the moment) that during our trying days together in Harrison’s decline we’d had occasion to compare cordial notes on the apparent obliviousness of our friend Jane, both to the fictionalization of our old affair (which Germaine had heard about but not then read) and to Jane’s later fling with Lord Amherst, which Harrison sometimes alluded to.

Lucky fellow, Ambrose Mensch: I do like and trust Germaine Pitt. As if on cue, Jane saluted our return from the foredeck to the bar by explaining brightly to her friend that Captain Osborn Jones had been an old dredge-boat skipper whom I’d befriended back in the 30’s and introduced her to. He used to live alone in the Dorset Hotel, she declared, and preside over a collection of similarly aged guests called the Dorchester Explorers’ Club.

Ah, said Germaine. Even Polly rolled her eyes.

I pass over my cocktail party, Father of mine, because its radiant, miraculous aftermath so outshines it. Anyhow it was a failure in the sleuthing way, so far as I know; I’ve yet to check with Polly, whose idea of subtle investigation is the Disarming Point-blank Question put by a Fetchingly Candid Elder Lady — a device that not infrequently works, and a rôle she so enjoys playing that it’s scarcely a rôle. I’d told her, more or less, about the photos and the blackmail threat, as about all our office business. She was of course enchanted. In her immediate opinion there were but two imaginable suspects: Reg Prinz if Jeannine in fact contested the will, A. B. Cook if she did not. Therefore we’d invited Cook to the party; but a secretarial voice from his home, over by Annapolis, RSVP’d us his regrets: he was presently out of the country. Polly promised to give me a chance to observe and talk to the guests myself before she took charge of the inquiry. She also informed me (this was in the office, just after Jane’s appointment) that I was in love.

Absurd, I said. But true, said she. By six everyone had arrived: Mensch (who’s to get the honorary doctorate declined by Cook), Jeannine and Prinz and the movie crowd, Drew and Yvonne, and, for filling and spacing, some Mack Enterprises folk and a few foundation trustees. A ship of fools, Drew declared, and disembarked early: yet he said it mildly, and when Polly asked him whether he’d expected me to invite a delegation of his friends to blow up the boat, he kissed her cheek and said one never knew. Later I heard her asking Prinz whether he’d ever dabbled in still photography — couldn’t catch his answer, if there was one — and later yet I saw her at the bar, deep in conversation with Jeannine, no doubt asking what her plans were regarding her father’s will. Finally, to my surprise, she went about the boat looking at her watch and declaring her astonishment that it was seven o’clock already. Most took the hint. The movie folk had another party to go to anyhow, at Robert Mitchum’s spread across the river; Germaine and Ambrose, too, plainly had other irons in the fire. The Mack Enterprises and T.F. people remembered their several dinner plans; not a few invited Jane, who however declined, and/or their host, ditto, and/or Polly, who responded to some one or another of them that she’d be pleased to join them shortly, as soon as the party was tidied up.

An odd thing had happened, Dad. From the moment that Lincoln appeared on Long Wharf and Jane issued forth in a handsome white pants suit, blue blouse, and red scarf, I was, as the kids say nowadays, “spaced.” I’d been truly curious to hear what Germaine had to say about Cook’s declining that degree; I wanted to try to talk to Drew about the demonstrations at Marshyhope and Abe Fortas’s resignation from the Supreme Court, as well as about Harrison’s will, and to Jeannine about the progress of the film. But I had the feeling, unfamiliar since 1917 or thereabouts, that if I opened my mouth something outrageous would come out. After that initial tour of the boat with Germaine, I scarcely moved from the afterdeck, merely greeting guests, seeing to their drinks, and smiling sappily, while that white pants suit and its tanned inhabitant moved ever before my eyes. Ah, Polly, Polly: yes, I am, and passing odd it is to be, daft in love in my seventieth year!

Again like an old-fashioned teenager, I’d scarcely talked to Jane all evening, only hovered on her margins as she chatted with all hands back by the taffrail. Now that everyone was gone but her and Polly, I busied myself settling up with the help, excited that Jane had lingered behind, wondering why, still almost afraid to speak, wishing Polly would leave, half hoping she wouldn’t. Jane’s chauffeur came expectantly pierwards. It was still only seven-thirty. Now the three of us were together on the afterdeck with our last gin and tonics, and it occurred to me that Polly had walked down from the office; I owed her a lift home.

Could we go sailing? Jane suddenly asks. What a good idea! cries dear Polly, utterly unsurprised. We’ve no crew, says I, rattled. Jane guesses merrily she hasn’t forgotten how to sail: don’t I remember their old knockabout from Todds Point days, that we used to sail out to Sharps Island in? You’re hardly dressed for sailing, I point out. Listen to the man, tisks Polly; the best-dressed skipper on Chesapeake Bay. I don’t believe he wants to take us sailing, pouts Jane. Never mind us, says Polly airily: I’ve got me a dinner date, and if you don’t mind I’ll borrow your chauffeur to take me there; it’ll knock their eyes out. She was welcome to him, Jane told her — unless I really was going to refuse to take her sailing. Jane, I said (seriously now), there’s hardly a breath blowing. Very brightly she replies, Maybe something will spring up as the sun goes down. She goes so far as to take my elbow: If not, we can drift on the tide, like the Floating Opera.

Dear Father: Flustered as I was, I heard her correctly. She did not say Floating Theatre; she said Floating Opera. And thus ends this long recitative and begins the wondrous aria, the miraculous duet.

But you are wondering about Polly. Polly Lake is no martyr, Dad: no long-adoring, self-effacing secretary. Polly’s her own woman, ten years a widow and no yen to remarry, having nursed a husband she was fond of through a long and ugly terminal illness. Polly has grown-up children and grandchildren who love her, plenty of friends of both sexes, good health and a good job, more hobbies and interests than she can find time for, and at least one other casual lover besides me, who’d love her less casually if she’d permit him to. Polly Lake is mildly abashed that her romantic life is more various and agreeable since menopause and widowhood than it was before. Sex itself she neither over- nor underrates: male companionship without it she finds a bit of a bore. Even when she’s not feeling particularly horny herself, she prefers her male friends to feel a bit that way. The only woman I ever met who finds cigar smoke erotically arousing. So don’t worry about her. Good night, Poll.