XNormal boys don’t bleat about their mothers . . . The Brent boys in the Mother’s Day photograph with little Molly between them, twinkling deviltry in their eyes, had been intensely normal. They weren’t saps, dripping that kind of stuff about their mother’s favorite flowers and favorite cocktail. Molly wouldn’t have adored a couple of brothers who were capable of doing that. This man is a phony. He was smiling at me, Ivy League and State Department from tip to toe . . . the smiler with the knife under the cloak, I thought. I smiled back at him. Two smilers; but the knife I was trying to conceal, a stage prop in futile hands, was no match for his.
He smiled at Mrs. Brent then, and with what a difference . . . contrite and most engaging.
“I crashed the party, yesterday,” he said. He made a
