Margaret Millar

Vanish in an Instant

For My Loved Ones

MILL AND LINDA

1

Snow and soot sprinkled the concrete runways like salt and pepper. Twenty miles to the east Detroit was a city of smoke and lights. Twenty miles to the west the town of Arbana was not visible at all, but it was to the west that Mrs. Hamilton looked first as if she hoped to catch a miraculous glimpse of it.

On the observation ramp above the airfield she could see the faces of people waiting to board a plane or to meet someone or simply waiting and watching, because if they couldn’t go anywhere themselves, the next best thing was to watch someone else going. Under the glaring lights their faces appeared as similar as the rows of wax vegetables in the windows of the markets back home. She scanned the faces briefly, wondering if one of them belonged to her son-in-law, Paul. She wasn’t sure she would recognize him — in her mind he had never entirely taken shape as a person, he was just Virginia’s husband — or that he would recognize her.

“I certainly haven’t changed,” she said aloud, quite sharply.

Her companion turned with an air of surprise. She was a slim girl in her early twenties, rather pretty, though her fair hair and extremely light eyebrows gave her a frail and colorless appearance. Her eyes were deep blue and round, so that she always looked a little inquisitive, like a child to whom everything is new. “Did you say something, Mrs. Hamilton?”

“People don’t change very much in a year, unless it’s a bad year. And I haven’t really had a bad year until this... until now.”

The girl made a sympathetic sound, to which Mrs. Hamilton reacted stiffly. Mrs. Hamilton actively disliked and resented sympathy. In contrast to her plump small-boned body, her nature was brisk and vigorous. Holding her large black purse firmly under her arm she crossed the swept concrete apron toward the entrance to the terminal. As she passed the ramp she glanced up at the vegetable-faces once more.

“I don’t see Paul. Do you, Alice?”

“He might be waiting inside,” the girl said. “It’s cold.”

“I told you to be sure and buy a warm enough coat.”

“The coat’s warm enough. But the wind isn’t.”

“Californians get spoiled. For winter this is quite balmy.” But her own lips were blue-tinged, and her fingers inside the white doeskin gloves felt stiff as though they were in splints. “I didn’t ask him to meet me in my telegram. Well, we’ll take a taxi to Arbana. What time is it?”

“About nine.”

“Too late. They probably won’t let me see Virginia tonight.”

“Probably not.”

“I guess the... I guess they have visiting hours like a hospital.” She spoke the word they as if it had an explosive content and must be handled carefully.

There was a line-up at the luggage counter, and they took their places at the end of it. To Mrs. Hamilton, who was quick to sense atmosphere, the big room had an air of excitement gone stale, anticipation soured by reality.

Journey’s end, she thought. She felt stale and sour herself, and the feeling reminded her of Virginia; Virginia at Christmas time, the year she was eight. For weeks and weeks the child had dreamed of Christmas, and then on Christmas morning she had awakened and found that Christmas was only another day. There were presents, of course, but they weren’t, they never could be, as big and exciting and mysterious as the packages they came in. In the afternoon Virginia had wept, rocking herself back and forth in misery.

“I want my Christmas back again. I want my Christmas!” Mrs. Hamilton knew now that what Virginia had wanted back were the wild and wonderful hopes, the boxes unopened, the ribbons still in bows.

Soon, in two weeks, there would be a new Christmas. She wondered, grimly, if Virginia would weep for its return when it was gone.

“You must be tired,” Alice said. “Why don’t you sit down and let me wait in line?”

The response was crisp and immediate. “No, thanks. I refuse to be treated like an old lady, at my age.”

“Willett told me I was to be sure and look after you properly.”

“My son Willett was born to be an old maid. I have no illusions about my children. Never had any. I know that Virginia is temperamental. But that’s all. There’s no harm in her.” She rubbed her moist pallid forehead with a handkerchief. The room seemed unbearably hot, suddenly, and she was unbearably tired, but she felt impelled to go on talking. “The charge is false, preposterous. In a small town like Arbana the police are inefficient and probably corrupt. They’ve made an absurd mistake.”

She had spoken the same words a dozen times in the past dozen hours. They had, with repetition, gained force and speed like a runaway car going downhill, heading for a crash.

“Wait until you meet her, Alice. You’ll find out for yourself.”

“I’m sure I will.” Yet the more Mrs. Hamilton talked about Virginia, the more obscure Virginia became, hidden in a thicket of words like an unknown animal.

“I have no illusions,” the older woman repeated. “She is temperamental, even bad-tempered at times, but she’s incapable of injuring anyone deliberately.”

Alice murmured an indistinct but reassuring answer. She had become conscious, suddenly, of being a focus of attention. She turned and looked over Mrs. Hamilton’s shoulder toward the exit door. A man was standing near the door watching her. He was in his middle thirties, tall, a little slouched as if he worked too long at a desk, and a little hard-faced, as if he didn’t enjoy it. He wore a tweed topcoat that looked new, and a gray fedora and heavy brown English brogues.

“I think your son-in-law just came in.”

Mrs. Hamilton turned too, and glanced brightly at the man. “That’s not Paul. Too well-dressed. Paul always looks like someone in a soup line.”

“He seems to know you, by the way he stares.”

“Nonsense. Don’t be so modest. He’s staring at you. You’re a pretty girl.”

“I don’t feel pretty.”

“No woman feels pretty without a man. I used to feel pretty, though I never was, of course.”

It was true. She had never been pretty even as a girl. Her head was too large for her body and emphasized by thick brown hair that was now burning itself out like a grass-fire and showing streaks of ashes. “You must learn to pretend, Alice. After all, you’re not a schoolteacher any more. You’re a young woman of the world, you’re traveling, all sorts of exciting things can happen to you. Don’t you feel that?”

“No,” Alice said simply.

“Well, try.”

The man at the door had come to a decision. He crossed the room briskly, removing his hat as he walked.

“Mrs. Hamilton?”

Mrs. Hamilton faced him, a slight frown creasing the skin between her eyebrows. The encounter, whatever it meant, wasn’t in her plans. She had no time to waste or energy to squander on a stranger. She gripped her purse a little tighter as if the stranger had come to steal something from her.

“Yes, I’m Mrs. Hamilton.”

“My name is Eric Meecham. Dr. Barkeley sent me to meet you.”

“Oh. Well, how do you do?”

“How do you do?” He had a low-pitched voice with a faint rumble of impatience in it.

“You’re a friend of Paul’s?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“I’m a lawyer. I’ve been retained to represent your daughter.”

“Who hired you?”

“Dr. Barkeley.”

“In my wire I instructed him to wait until I arrived.”

Meecham returned her frown. “Well, he didn’t. He wanted me to try and get her out of jail right away.”

“And did you?”

“No.”

“Why not? If it’s money, I have...”

“It’s not money. They can hold her for forty-eight hours without charge. It looks as if that’s what they’re going to do.”

“But how can they hold an innocent girl?”

Meecham picked up the question carefully as if it was loaded. “The fact is, she hasn’t claimed to be innocent.”

“What — what does she claim?”

“Nothing. She won’t deny anything, won’t admit anything, won’t, period. She’s...” He groped for a word and out of the number that occurred to him he chose the least offensive: “She’s a little difficult.”

“She’s frightened, the poor child. When she’s frightened she’s always difficult.”

“I can see that.” The line-up had dwindled down to just the three of them. Meecham looked questioningly at Alice, then turned back to Mrs. Hamilton. “You came alone?”

“No. No, I’m sorry, I forgot to introduce you. Alice, this is Mr. Meecham. Miss Dwyer.”

Meecham nodded. “How do you do?”

“Alice is a friend of mine,” Mrs. Hamilton explained.

“I’m a hired companion, really,” Alice said.

“Really? If you’ll give me the luggage checks, I’ll get your things and take them out to my car.”

Mrs. Hamilton handed him the checks. “It was kind of you to go to all this trouble.”

“No trouble at all.” The words were polite but without conviction.

He carried the four suitcases out to the car and piled them in the luggage compartment. The car was new but splattered with mud and there was a dent in the left rear fender.

The two women sat in the back and Meecham alone in the front. No one spoke for the first few miles. Traffic on the highway was heavy and the pavement slippery with slush.

Alice looked out at the countryside visible in the glare of headlights. It was bleak and flat, covered with patches of gray snow. A wave of homesickness swept over her, and mingled with it was a feeling much stronger and more violent than homesickness. She hated this place, and she hated the lawyer because he belonged to it. He was as crude and stark as the landscape and as ungracious as the weather.

Mrs. Hamilton seemed to share her feeling. She reached over suddenly and patted Alice’s hand. Then she straightened up and addressed Meecham in her clear, deliberate voice: “Just what are your qualifications for this work, Mr. Meecham?”

“I took my law degree here at the University and played office boy to the firm of Post and Cranston until they found me indispensable and put my name on a door. Is that what you want to know?”

“I want to know what experience you’ve had with criminal cases.”

“I’ve never handled a murder case, if that’s what you mean,” he said frankly. “They’re not common around town. You know Arbana?”

“I’ve been there. Once.”

“Then you know it’s a university town and it hasn’t a crime rate like Detroit’s. The biggest policing problem is the traffic after football games. Naturally there’s a certain percentage of auto thefts, robberies, morals offenses and things like that. But there hasn’t been a murder for two years, until now.”

“And they’ve arrested my daughter.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t, I just can’t believe it. All they had to do is take one look at Virginia to realize that she’s a — a nice girl, well brought up.”

“Nice girls have been in trouble before.”

There was a brief silence. “You sound as if you think she’s guilty.”

“I’ve formed no opinion.”

“You have. I can tell.” Mrs. Hamilton leaned forward, one hand on the back of Meecham’s seat. “Excuse me if I sound rude,” she said softly, “but I’m not sure you’re qualified to handle this business.”

“I’m not sure either, but I’m going to try.”

“Naturally you’ll try. If murders are as rare in this town as you claim, it would be quite a feather in your cap to conduct a defense, wouldn’t it?”

“It could be.”

“I don’t believe I’d like to see you wearing that feather, at my daughter’s expense.”

“What do you suggest that I do, Mrs. Hamilton?”

“Retire gracefully.”

“I’m not graceful,” Meecham said.

“I see. Well, I’ll talk it over with Paul tonight.”

They were approaching the town. There was a red neon glow in the sky and service stations and hamburger stands appeared at shorter intervals along the highway.

Mrs. Hamilton spoke again. “It’s not that I have anything against you personally, Mr. Meecham.”

“No.”

“It’s just that my daughter is the most important thing in my life. I can’t take any chances.”

Meecham thought of a dozen retorts, but he didn’t make any of them. He felt genuinely sorry for the woman, or for anyone to whom Virginia Barkeley was the most important thing in life.

2

One wing of the house was dark, but in the other wing lights streamed from every window like golden ribbons.

The place was larger than Meecham had expected, and its flat roof and enormous windows looked incongruous in a winter setting. It was a Southern California house, of redwood and fieldstone. Meecham wondered whether Virginia had planned it that way herself, deliberately, because it reminded her of home, or unconsciously, as a symbol of her own refusal to conform to a new environment.

The driveway entrance to the house was through a patio that separated the two wings. Here, too, the lights were on, revealing hanging baskets of dead plants and flowerpots heaped with snow, and a barbecue pit fringed with tiny icicles.

Mrs. Hamilton’s eyes were squinted up as if she was going to cry at the sight of Virginia’s patio, built for sun and summer and now desolate in the winter night. Silently she got out of the car and moved toward the house.

Meecham pushed back his hat in a gesture of relief. “Quite a character, eh?”

“I like her. She’s very pleasant to me.”

“Oh?” He stood aside while Alice stepped out of the car. “You’re a little young to be a hired companion. How long have you worked for her?”

“About a month.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well...” She flushed again. “Well, that’s a silly question. I have to earn a living.”

“I meant, it’s a funny kind of job for a young girl.”

“I used to be a schoolteacher. Only I wasn’t meeting...” any eligible men were the words that occurred to her, but she said instead, “I was getting into a rut, so I decided to change jobs for a year or so.”

He gave her a queer look and went around to the back of the car to unlock the luggage compartment. Mrs. Hamilton had gone into the house, leaving the front door open.

Meecham put the four suitcases on the shoveled drive and relocked the compartment. “I suppose you know what you’re getting into.”

“I... of course. Naturally.”

“Naturally.” He looked slightly amused. “I gather you haven’t met Virginia.”

“No. I’ve heard a lot about her, though, from her brother, Willett, and from Mrs. Hamilton. She seems to be — well, rather an unhappy person.”

“You have to be pretty unhappy,” Meecham said, “to stab a guy half a dozen times in the neck. Or didn’t you know about that?”

“I knew it.” She meant to sound very positive, like Mrs. Hamilton, but her voice was squeezed into a tight little whisper. “Of course I knew it.”

“Naturally.”

“You’re quite objectionable.”

“I am when people object to me,” Meecham said. “I’ve forgotten your name, by the way, what is it?”

Instead of answering she picked up two of the suitcases and went ahead into the house.

Mrs. Hamilton heard her coming and called out, “Alice? I’m here, in the living room. Bring Mr. Meecham in with you. Perhaps he’d like some coffee.”

Alice looked coldly at Meecham who had followed her in. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thanks, Alice.”

“I don’t permit total strangers to call me Alice.”

“Okay, kid.” He looked as if he was going to laugh, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “We seem to have started off on the wrong foot.”

“Since we’re not going anywhere together, what does it matter?”

“Have it your way.” He put on his hat. “Tell Mrs. Hamilton I’ll meet her tomorrow morning at 9:30 at the county jail. She can see Virginia then.”

“Couldn’t she phone her tonight or something?”

“The girl’s in jail. She’s not staying at the Waldorf.” He said over his shoulder as he went out the door, “Good night, kid.”

“Alice?” Mrs. Hamilton repeated. “Oh, there you are. Where’s Mr. Meecham?”

“He left.”

“Perhaps I was a little harsh with him, challenging his abilities.” She was standing in front of the fireplace, still in her hat and coat, and rubbing her hands together as if to get warm, though the fire wasn’t lit. “I’m afraid I antagonized him. I couldn’t help it. I felt he had the wrong attitude toward Virginia.”

The room was very large and colorful, furnished in rattan and bamboo and glass like a tropical lanai. There were growing plants everywhere, philodendron and ivy hanging from copper planters on the walls, azaleas in tubs, and cyclamen and coleus and saintpaulia in bright coralstone pots on the mantel and on every shelf and table. The air was humid and smelled of moist earth like a field after a spring rain.

The whole effect of the room was one of impossible beauty and excess, as if the person who lived there lived in a dream.

“She loves flowers,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “She isn’t like Willett, my son. He’s never cared for anything except money. But Virginia is quite different. Even when she was a child she was always very gentle with flowers as she was with birds and animals. Very gentle and understanding...”

“Mrs. Hamilton.”

“... as if they were people and could feel.”

“Mrs. Hamilton,” Alice repeated, and the woman blinked as if just waking up. “Why is Virginia in jail? What did she do?”

She was fully awake now, the questions had struck her vulnerable body as hailstones strike a field of sun-warmed wheat. “Virginia didn’t do anything. She was arrested by mistake.”

“But why?”

“I’ve told you, Paul’s wire to me was very brief. I know none of the details.”

“You could have asked Mr. Meecham.”

“I prefer to get the details from someone closer to me and to Virginia.”

She doesn’t want the facts at all, Alice thought. All she wants is to have Virginia back again, the gentle child who loved animals and flowers.

A middle-aged woman in horn-rimmed glasses and a white uniform came into the room carrying a cup of coffee, half of which had spilled into the saucer. She had a limp but she moved very quickly as if she thought speed would cover it. She had a spot of color on each cheekbone, round as coins.

“Here you are. This’ll warm you up.” She spoke a little too loudly, covering her embarrassment with volume as she covered her limp with speed.

Mrs. Hamilton nodded her thanks. “Carney, this is Alice Dwyer. Alice, Mrs. Carnova.”

The woman shook Alice’s hand vigorously. “Call me Carney. Everyone does.”

“Carney,” Mrs. Hamilton explained, “is Paul’s office nurse, and an old friend of mine.”

“He phoned from the hospital a few minutes ago. He’s on his way.”

“We are old friends, aren’t we, Carney?”

The coins on the woman’s cheekbones expanded. “Sure. You bet we are.”

“Then what are you acting so nervous about?”

“Nervous? Well, everybody gets nervous once in a while, don’t they? I’ve had a busy day and I stayed after hours to welcome you, see that you got settled, and so forth. I’m tired, is all.”

“Is it?”

The two women had forgotten Alice. Carney was looking down at the floor, and the color had radiated all over her face to the tops of her large pale ears. “Why did you come? You can’t do anything.”

“I can. I’m going to.”

“You don’t know how things are.”

“Then tell me.”

“This is bad, the worst yet. I knew she was seeing Margolis. I warned her. I said I’d write and tell you and you’d come and make it hot for her.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

Carney spread her hands. “How could I? She’s twenty- six; that’s too old to be kept in line by threats of telling mama.”

“Did Paul know about this — this man?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe he did. He never said anything.” She plucked a dried leaf from the yam plant that was growing down from the mantel. “Virginia won’t listen to me any more. She doesn’t like me.”

“That’s silly. She’s always been devoted to you.”

“Not any more. Last week she called me a snooping old beerhound. She said that when I applied for this job it wasn’t because Carnova had left me stranded in Detroit, it was because you sent me here to spy on her.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mrs. Hamilton said crisply. “I’ll talk to Virginia tomorrow and see that she apologizes.”

“Apologizes. What do you think this is, some little game or something? Oh, God.” Carney exploded. She covered her face with her hands, half-laughing, half-crying and then she began to hiccough, loud and fast. “Oh— damn— oh— damn.”

Mrs. Hamilton turned to Alice. “We all need some rest. Come and I’ll show you your room.”

“I’ll — show — her.”

“All right. You go with Carney, Alice. I’ll wait up to say hello to Paul.”

Alice looked embarrassed. “I hated to stand there listening like that. About Virginia, I mean.”

“That’s all right, you couldn’t help it.” A car came up the driveway and stopped with a shriek of brakes. “Here’s Paul now. I’ll talk to him alone, Carney, if you don’t mind.”

“Why — should... I... mind?”

“And for heaven’s sake breathe into a paper bag or something. Good night.”

When they had gone Mrs. Hamilton stood in the center of the room for a moment, her fingertips pressing her temples, her eyes closed. She felt exhausted, not from the sleepless night she had spent, or from the plane trip, but from the strain of uncertainty, and the more terrible strain of pretending that everything would be all right, that a mistake had been made which could be rather easily corrected.

She went to open the door for Paul.

He came in, stamping the snow from his boots, a stocky, powerfully built man in a wrinkled trench coat and a damp shapeless gray hat. He looked like a red-cheeked farmer coming in from his evening’s chores, carrying a medical bag instead of a lantern.

He had a folded newspaper under his arm. Mrs. Hamilton glanced at the newspaper and away again.

“Well, Paul.” They shook hands briefly.

“I’m glad you got here all right.” He had a very deep warm voice and he talked rather slowly, weighing out each word with care like a prescription. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you — Mother.”

“You don’t have to call me Mother, you know, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Then I won’t.” He laid his hat and trench coat across a chair and put his medical bag on top of them. But he kept the newspaper in his hand, rolling it up very tight as if he intended to use it as a weapon, to swat a fly or discipline an unruly pup.

Mrs. Hamilton sat down suddenly and heavily, as though the newspaper had been used against her. The light from the rattan lamp struck her face with the sharpness of a slap. “That paper you have, what is it?”

“One of the Detroit tabloids.”

“Is it...?”

“It’s all in here, yes. Not on the front page.”

“Are there any pictures?”

“Yes.”

“Of Virginia?”

“One.”

“Let me see.”

“It’s not very pretty,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better not.”

“I must see it.”

“All right.”

The pictures occupied the entire second page. There were three of them. One, captioned Death Shack, showed a small cottage, its roof heavy with fresh snow and its windows opaque with frost. The second was of a sleek dark-haired man smiling into the camera. He was identified as Claude Ross Margolis, forty-two, prominent contractor, victim of fatal stabbing.

The third picture was of Virginia, though no one would have recognized her. She was sitting on some kind of bench, hunched over, with her hands covering her face and a tangled mass of black hair falling over her wrists. She wore evening slippers, one of them minus a heel, and a long fluffy dress and light-colored coat. The coat and dress and one of the shoes showed dark stains that looked like mud. Above the picture were the words, held for questioning, and underneath it Virginia was identified as Mrs. Paul Barkeley, twenty-six, wife of Arbana physician, allegedly implicated in the death of Claude Margolis.

Mrs. Hamilton spoke finally in a thin, ragged whisper: “I’ve seen a thousand such dreary pictures in my life, but I never thought that some day one of them would be terribly different to me from all the others.”

She looked up at Barkeley. His face hadn’t changed expression, it showed no sign of awareness that the girl in the picture was his wife. A little pulse of resentment began to beat in the back of Mrs. Hamilton’s mind: He doesn’t care — he should have taken better care of Virginia — this would never have happened. Why wasn’t he with her? Or why didn’t he keep her at home?

She said, not trying to hide her resentment, “Where were you when it happened, Paul?”

“Right here at home. In bed.”

“You knew she was out.”

“She’d been going out a great deal lately.”

“Didn’t you care?”

“Of course I cared. Unfortunately, I have to make a living. I can’t afford to follow Virginia around picking up the pieces.” He went over to the built-in bar in the south corner of the room. “Have a nightcap with me.”

“No, thanks. I... those stains on her clothes, they’re blood?”

“Yes.”

“Whose blood?”

“His. Margolis’.”

“How can they tell?”

“There are lab tests to determine whether blood is human and what type it is.”

“Well. Well, anyway, I’m glad it’s not hers.” She hesitated, glancing at the paper and away again, as if she would have liked to read the report for herself but was afraid to. “She wasn’t hurt?”

“No. She was drunk.”

“Drunk?”

“Yes.” He poured some bourbon into a glass and added water. Then he held the glass up to the light as if he was searching for microbes in a test tube. “A police patrol car picked her up. They found her wandering around about a quarter of a mile from Margolis’ cottage. It was snowing very hard; she must have lost her way.”

“Wandering around in the snow with only that light coat and those thin shoes — oh God, I can’t bear it.”

“You’ll have to,” he said quietly. “Virginia’s depending on you.”

“I know, I know she is. Tell me — the rest.”

“There isn’t much. Margolis’ body had been discovered by that time because something had gone wrong with the fireplace in the cottage. There was a lot of smoke, someone reported it, and the highway patrol found Margolis inside dead, stabbed with his own knife. He’d been living in the cottage which is just outside the city limits because his own house was closed. His wife is in Peru on a holiday.”

“His wife. He was married.”

“Yes.”

“There were — children?”

“Two.”

“Drunk,” Mrs. Hamilton whispered. “And out with a married man. There must be some mistake, surely, surely there is.”

“No. I saw her myself. The Sheriff called me about three o’clock this morning and told me she was being held and why. I wired you immediately, and then I went down to the county jail where they’d taken her. She was still drunk, didn’t even recognize me. Or pretended not to. How can you tell, with Virginia, what’s real and what isn’t?”

“I can tell.”

“Can you?” He sipped at his drink. “The sheriff and a couple of deputies were there trying to get a statement from her. They didn’t get one, of course. I told them it was silly to go on questioning anyone in her condition, so they let her go back to bed.”

“In a cell? With thieves and prostitutes and...”

“She was alone. The cell — room, rather, was clean. I saw it. And the matron, or deputy, I think they called her, seemed a decent young woman. The surroundings aren’t quite what Virginia is used to, but she’s not suffering. Don’t worry about that part of it.”

“You don’t appear to be worrying at all.”

“I’ve done nothing but worry, for a long time.” He hesitated, looking at her across the room as if wondering how much of the truth she wanted to hear. “You may as well know now — Virginia will tell you, if I don’t — that this first year of our marriage has been bad. The worst year of my life, and maybe the worst in Virginia’s too.”

Mrs. Hamilton’s face looked crushed, like paper in a fist. “Why didn’t someone tell me? Virginia wrote to me, Carney wrote. No one said anything. I thought things were going well, that Virginia had settled down with you and was happy, that she was finally happy. Now I find out I’ve been deceived. She didn’t settle down. She’s been running around with married men, getting drunk, behaving like a cheap tart. And now this, this final disgrace. I just don’t know what to do, what to think.”

He saw the question in her eyes, and turned away, holding his glass up to the light again.

“I did what I could, hired a lawyer.”

“Yes, but what kind? A man with no experience.”

“He was recommended to me.”

“He’s not good enough. Virginia should have the best.”

“She should indeed,” he said dryly. “Unfortunately, I can’t afford the best.”

“I can. Money is no object.”

“That money-is-no-object idea is a little old-fashioned, I’m afraid.” He put down his empty glass. “There’s another point. If Virginia is innocent, she won’t need the best. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed. I have to keep early hours. Carney showed you your room, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Make yourself at home as much as possible. The house is yours,” he added with a wry little smile. “Mortgage and all. Good night, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“Good night.” She hesitated for a split second before adding, “my boy.”

He went out of the room. She followed him with her eyes; they were perfectly dry now, and hard and gray as granite.

Red-faced farmer, she thought viciously.

3

In the summer the red bricks of the courthouse were covered with dirty ivy and in the winter with dirty snow. The building had been constructed on a large square in what was originally the center of town. But the town had moved westward, abandoned the courthouse like an ugly stepchild, leaving it in the east end to fend for itself among the furniture warehouses and service stations and beer-and-sandwich cafés.

Across the road from the main entrance was a supermarket. Meecham parked his car in front of it. Its doors were still closed, though there was activity inside. Along the aisles clerks moved apathetically, slowed by sleep and the depression of a winter morning that was no different from night. Street lamps were still burning, the sky was dark, the air heavy and damp.

Meecham crossed the road. He felt sluggish, and wished he could have stayed in bed until it was light.

In front of the courthouse a thirty-foot Christmas tree had been put up and four county prisoners were stringing it with colored lights under the direction of a deputy. The deputy wore fuzzy orange ear-muffs, and he kept stamping his feet rhythmically, either to keep warm or because there was nothing else to do.

When Meecham approached, all four of the prisoners stopped work to look at him, as they stopped to look at nearly everyone who passed, realizing that they had plenty of time and nothing to lose by a delay.

“Speed it up a little, eh, fellows?” The deputy whacked his hands together. “What’s the matter, you paralyzed or something, Joe?”

Joe looked down from the top of the ladder and laughed, showing his upper teeth filled at the gum-line with gold. “How’d you like to be inside with a nice rum toddy, Huggins? Mmm?”

“I never touch the stuff,” Huggins said. “Morning, Meecham.”

Meecham nodded. “Morning.”

“Up early catching worms?”

“That’s right.”

Huggins jerked his thumb at the ladder. “Me, I’m trying to inject the spirit of Christmas into these bums.”

Three of the men laughed. The fourth spat into the snow.

Meecham went inside. The steam had been turned on full force and the old-fashioned radiators were clanking like ghosts rattling their chains. Meecham was sweating before he reached the middle of the corridor, and the passages from his nose to his throat felt hot and dry as if he’d been breathing fire.

The main corridor smelled of wood and fresh wax, but when he descended the stairs on the left a new smell rose to overpower the others, the smell of disinfectant.

The door lettered County Sheriff was open. Meecham walked into the anteroom and sat down in one of the straight chairs that were lined up against the wall like mute and motionless prisoners. The anteroom was empty, though a man’s coat and hat were hanging on a rack in the corner, and the final inch of a cigarette was smoldering in an ash tray on the scarred wooden counter. Meecham looked at the cigarette but made no move to put it out.

The door of the Sheriff’s private office banged open suddenly and Cordwink himself came out. He was a tall man, match-thin, with gray hair that was clipped short to disguise its curl. His eyelashes curled too, giving his cold eyes a false appearance of naivete. He had fifty years of hard living behind him, but they didn’t show except when he was tired or when he’d had a quarrel with his wife over money or one of the kids.

“What are you doing around so early?” Cordwink said.

“I wanted to be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

“You bright young lawyers, you keep me all the time in stitches. Yah.” He scowled at the cigarette smoldering in the ash tray. “What the hell you trying to do, burn the place down?”

“It’s not my...”

“That’s about the only way you’ll get your client out of here.”

“Oh?” Meecham lit a cigarette and used the burnt match to crush out the burning remnants of tobacco in the ash tray. “Have you dug up any new information?”

“I should tell you?” Cordwink laughed. “You bloody lawyers can do your own sleuthing.”

“Kind of sour this morning, aren’t you, Sheriff?”

“I’m in a sour business, I meet sour people, so I’m sour. So?”

“So you didn’t get a statement from Mrs. Barkeley.”

“Sure I got a statement.”

“Such as?”

“Such as that I’m an illiterate buffoon of canine parentage.”

Meecham grinned.

“That strikes you as humorous, eh, Meecham?”

“Moderately.”

“Well, it so happens that I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, class of ’22.”

“Funny, I thought you were a Harvard man. You act and talk like a...”

“You bright young lawyers kill me.” He grunted. “Yah. Well, I don’t care if she makes a statement or not. We have her.”

“Maybe.”

“Even you ought to be smart enough to see that. You’d better start combing the books for some fancy self-defense items. Make sure you get a nice stupid jury, then razz the cops, turn on the tears, quote the Bible — yah! Makes me sick. What a way to make a living, obstructing justice.”

“I’ve heard the theme song before, Sheriff. Let’s skip the second chorus.”

“You think I’m off-key, eh?”

“Sure you are.”

Cordwink pressed a buzzer on the counter. “You won’t get away with a self-defense plea. There isn’t a mark on the girl, no cut, no bruise, not a scratch.”

“I don’t have to prove that the danger to her person was objectively real and imminent, only that she thought, and had reason to think, that it was real and imminent.”

“You’re not in court yet, so can the jargon. Makes me sick.”

The Sheriff pressed the buzzer again and a moment later a young woman in a green dress came into the room blithely swinging a ring of keys.

She greeted Meecham with a show of fine white teeth. “You again, Mr. Meecham.”

“Right.”

“You ought to just move in.” She switched the smile on Cordwink. “Isn’t that right, Sheriff?”

“Righter than you think,” Cordwink said. “If justice was done, the place would be crawling with lawyers.” He started toward his office. “Show the gentleman into Mrs. Barkeley’s boudoir, Miss Jennings.”

“Okeydoke.” Cordwink slammed his door and Miss Jennings added, in a stage whisper, “My, aren’t we short-tempered this morning.”

“Must be the weather.”

“You know, I think it is, Mr. Meecham. Personally, the weather never bothers me. I rise above it. When winter comes can spring be far behind?”

“You have something there.”

“Shakespeare. I adore poetry.”

“Good, good.” He followed her down the corridor. “How is Mrs. Barkeley?”

“She had a good sleep and a big breakfast. I think she’s finally over her hangover. My, it was a beaut.” She unlocked the door at the end of the corridor and held it open for Meecham to go through first. “She borrowed my lipstick. That’s a good sign.”

“Maybe. But I don’t know of what.”

“Oh, you’re just cynical. So many people are cynical. My mother often says to me, Mollie dear, you were born smiling and you’ll probably go out smiling.”

Meecham shuddered. “Lucky girl.”

“Yes, I am lucky. I simply can’t help looking at the cheerful side.”

“Good for you.”

The women’s section of the cell-block was empty except for Virginia. Miss Jennings unlocked the door. “Here’s that man again, Mrs. Barkeley.”

Virginia was sitting on her narrow cot reading, or pretending to read, a magazine. She was wearing the yellow wool dress and brown sandals that Meecham had brought to her the previous afternoon, and her black hair was brushed carefully back from her high forehead. She had used Miss Jennings’ lipstick to advantage, painting her mouth fuller and wider than it actually was. In the light of the single overhead bulb her flesh looked smooth and cold as marble. Meecham found it impossible to imagine what emotions she was feeling, or what was going on behind her remote and beautiful eyes.

She raised her head and gave him a long unfriendly stare that reminded him of Mrs. Hamilton, though there was no physical resemblance between the mother and daughter.

“Good morning, Mrs. Barkeley.”

“Why don’t you get me out of here?” she said flatly.

“I’m trying.”

He stepped inside and Miss Jennings closed the door behind him but didn’t lock it. She retired to the end of the room and sat down on a bench near the exit door. She hummed a few bars of music, very casually, to indicate to Meecham and Virginia that she had no intention of eavesdropping. I’ll take the high road...

“She sings,” Virginia said. “She whistles. She quoted poetry. She’s so cheerful it drives me crazy. You’ve got to get me out of here.”

“I’m trying.”

“You said that before.”

“Now I’m repeating it. Mind if I sit down?”

“I don’t care.”

He sat down at the foot of the cot. “How’s your hangover?”

“It’s all right. But they’ve got fleas or something in here. I have more of those red welts all over my ankles. Did you remember to bring the DDT?”

“Sure.” He took the small bottle of DDT out of his overcoat pocket and gave it to her.

She read the label, frowning. “It’s only two percent.”

“I couldn’t get it any stronger.”

“You could.”

“All right, but I didn’t.”

“What were you afraid of, that I’d drink it in remorse or something?”

“It occurred to me,” Meecham said. “Now don’t get excited. Your mother will be here soon.”

“When?”

“Nine-thirty.”

“Do I... do I look all right?”

“You look fine. Very pretty, in fact.”

“Don’t say that. I know I’m not pretty.”

Meecham smiled. “We disagree about so many things, let’s not disagree about that. Where did you get the cockeyed idea that you’re not pretty?”

“I know I’m not. We won’t discuss it.”

“All right.” He offered her a cigarette and she shook her head in refusal. “Let’s discuss Cordwink. Give him a statement today and you’ll be out...”

“I wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

“Why not?”

Her lips tightened. “I know what I’m doing. If I refuse to tell Cordwink anything, he won’t have anything to trip me up with later on.”

“That argument is sound but rather limited.”

“Besides, now that my mother’s here, she’ll handle everything.”

“Oh?”

“Wait and see.”

“Your mother,” Meecham said dryly, “is undoubtedly a strong and persevering woman, but she can’t handle an entire sheriff’s department.”

She looked at him stubbornly. “She believes in me.”

“I don’t care if she thinks you’re Queen of the May, a mother’s faith isn’t enough to go to court on.”

“I won’t be going to court.”

“No?”

“I’m not guilty. I didn’t kill him.” She raised her voice. “Hear that, Miss Big Ears? I didn’t kill Margolis.”

Miss Jennings began to hum again: And you’ll take the low road.

“Well, that’s something anyway,” Meecham said. “A denial. Can you back it up?”

“That’s all I’m saying right now.”

“Why?”

“Because it is.”

“Because you don’t remember,” Meecham said. “According to the lab report your blood alcohol was 2.23.”

“What does that mean?”

“You were loaded.”

Virginia’s cheeks turned slightly pink. “Does my mother know that?”

“She must, by this time.”

“She’ll be furious. She’s a teetotaler.” She said it very seriously, as if the crime of which she was accused was not murder but drinking.

“So you won’t give Cordwink a statement.”

“I can’t. Don’t you understand? I can’t tell him I don’t remember anything, he’ll throw the book at me.”

“He may anyway.”

She bit her lower lip. “I admit I was a little high Saturday night.”

“You were quite stupendously drunk, Mrs. Barkeley. You weren’t a little high.”

“Well, stop repeating it!” she cried. “Why did you come here anyway? I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

“Don’t you?”

There was a pause. Miss Jennings was wide-eyed with curiosity, but she hummed valiantly on, keeping time with her left foot.

“You weren’t drunk all Saturday night. What happened earlier, before Margolis was killed?”

“We danced and had something to eat.”

“You also had a fight around eleven o’clock.”

“Claude and I were the best of friends,” she said stiffly.

“It’s on the record, Mrs. Barkeley. A waitress at the Top Hat remembers you both and has already identified your pictures. In the middle of the argument you got up and walked out and a few minutes later Margolis followed you. Where did you go? Or don’t you want me to tell you?”

“You like talking so much, tell me.” The words were arrogant, but they weren’t spoken arrogantly. Her voice trembled, and Meecham wondered if she was frightened at the thought of meeting her mother. She had shown no previous signs of fear.

He said, “You went to a beer-and-pretzel place a couple of doors down the street. It was jammed with the Saturday-night college crowd. Margolis caught up with you there. You were at the bar talking to a man when Margolis arrived. You got up and left with Margolis, and the other man got up and left too, according to one of the bartenders. But he doesn’t know whether the man left with you, or whether he was just going home because it was nearly closing time. Which was it?”

“Stop.” Virginia pounded the edge of the cot with her fist. “Do we have to go into it like this?”

“Somebody has to. We can’t all sit around nursing our amnesia.”

“You’re pretty insolent, for hired help.”

“And you’re pretty uncooperative for a girl who might spend her next twenty years sorting out dirty clothes in a prison laundry.”

“That was an ugly remark.” The girl’s face was paper-white, and her skin seemed to be stretched tight and transparent across her cheekbones. “I won’t forget it.”

“I hope not,” Meecham said. “There’s one very interesting point about the finding of Margolis’ body. His wallet was missing.”

“What difference does that make?”

“His friends claim he always carried a fair amount of cash.”

“He did.”

“It makes me wonder about your anonymous stranger at the bar. I gather you didn’t take Margolis’ wallet?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you’re broke.”

“So you’ve been checking up. Afraid you’re not going to get paid?”

“I’ve been checking. Your car isn’t paid for, your house is mortgaged, your husband is...”

“Leave Paul out of this,” she said sharply. “And get one thing straight — if I want money, I don’t have to go around lifting wallets.”

“You can ask your mother.”

“That’s right, I can.”

“Well, here’s your chance.” Meecham glanced at his watch. “She should be arriving right now.”

The overhead lights went off suddenly and the feeble rays of the morning sun filtered in through the barred windows like dim hopes.

Virginia got up and looked out the window at her little square of sky. “I can’t see her in here. There must be some other place.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” He opened the cell door and stepped out. “Miss Jennings?”

Miss Jennings came up, swinging her keys. “All through for now?”

“Mrs. Barkeley’s mother is coming to visit her. They haven’t seen each other for a year. I thought we might be able to borrow some other room for a while, Miss Jennings.”

“Well, I guess so. I’ll see. After all, one’s own mother.” She glanced rather uncertainly at Virginia. “I’ll have to stay with you all the time. Mr. Meecham can talk to you in private because he’s your lawyer. But anyone else... There are rules, even about mothers.”

“What do you think she’s going to do,” Virginia said, “slip me a loaf of bread with a chisel inside?”

Miss Jennings laughed hollowly. “She’s a great one for joking, isn’t she, Mr. Meecham?”

“Just great.” He gave Virginia a warning glance and she went and sat down on the cot again with her back to them both.

Miss Jennings locked the cell door. “I’ll go and ask the Sheriff if you can use his private office. But I don’t guarantee a thing. He’s not at his best this morning.”

“Thanks for trying, anyway.” When Miss Jennings had gone, he spoke through the bars to Virginia: “It’s time you started to win friends and influence people.”

“Really?”

“Put on an act. You’re an innocent flower, dirt has been done by you, and now your dear old mother has come to visit you from the faraway hills.”

“What ham. It’s too thick to slice.”

“Ham or not, try some,” Meecham said. “By the way, do you know Margolis’ wife?”

“I’ve met her. She has a bad complexion.”

“How did you meet her?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Everything about you is my business until you get out of here for good. How did you meet Margolis?”

“He built the house for me. For me and Paul, that is.”

Miss Jennings returned and opened the cell door again. “Your mother’s waiting in the Sheriff’s office, Mrs. Barkeley. My, she doesn’t resemble you a bit, except maybe just around the eyes. Family resemblances fascinate me. Here, you can borrow my compact mirror to see how you look.”

“I know how I look,” Virginia said.

“Now, is that nice?” Smiling cheerfully, Miss Jennings replaced the compact in her pocket. “You look sulky, if you want the truth.”

Virginia opened her mouth to reply, caught another warning glance from Meecham and changed her mind. She followed Miss Jennings silently down the hall. Her face was calm, almost stony, but she walked as if she had trouble keeping her balance.

“Do you want me to stay?” Meecham asked.

Virginia half-turned and said, over her shoulder, “What for?”

“Well, there’s my answer.

“Right.”

He dropped behind the two women. When they reached the Sheriff’s office Virginia went in ahead, taking little running steps. “Momma! Momma!”

Meecham wondered grimly whether this was the real thing or whether it was ham too thick to slice.

He walked slowly past the open door. Mrs. Hamilton was holding Virginia in her arms, rocking back and forth in grief and gladness. She was crying, and Virginia was crying, and Miss Jennings’ face was all squeezed up as if she too was going to cry. All three of them looked so funny that for an instant Meecham almost laughed.

The instant passed.

“Ginny darling. Darling girl.”

Christ, Meecham thought, and walked away as fast as possible to get out of earshot.

At the bottom of the stairs leading up to the main floor a man was sitting on a bench, his back resting against the wall.

Meecham stared at him curiously as he passed, and the man returned the stare, unselfconsciously, like someone accustomed to attracting attention. In spite of the winter weather he wore no coat or hat, and his skin was mushroom-pale as if he had lived underground for a long time, out of reach of the sun. He was still young. His face looked younger than Meecham’s, but the shape of his body was like that of a dissolute old man — scrawny shoulders and pipestem wrists and a huge pendulous belly which he tried to hide by keeping his arms folded in front of him.

He looked at Meecham, his eyes enormous in the thin sensitive face, and then he rose heavily and awkwardly like a woman far gone with child and moved on down the corridor.

Meecham went up the stairs. Outside, the Christmas tree lights were in place and turned on, but they didn’t show up very well because the sun was shining.

4

When Meecham arrived at the house it was almost dark and snow was falling again, a fine light snow, iridescent, like crushed diamonds.

Alice met him at the door. Though he’d only seen her once before, on the previous night, she looked very familiar to him, like a kid sister. He glanced down at her with a critical brotherly eye. She was wearing a cherry-colored dress that didn’t suit her; the lines were too straight, the color too vivid.

“Do I come in?” Meecham said.

“Well, I guess so.”

“What’s the matter? Anything wrong?”

“No. Except that there’s no one here but me. Dr. Barkeley and Mrs. Hamilton are out.”

“That’s all right. Maybe I’m early.”

“Early?”

“I was invited for tea.” He consulted his watch. “At five. It’s now five.”

“No one told me anything about it. Mrs. Hamilton’s been gone all day.”

He took off his coat and laid it across a chair while Alice watched him, still looking puzzled and rather unfriendly.

She said, “Why did she invite you for tea?”

“Maybe she wants to read my tea leaves. That should be interesting,” he added with a dry smile. “I might be about to get some money or meet a short suspicious blonde.”

“That’s not very funny.”

“Then stop acting suspicious.”

“I’m not.”

“Have it your way.”

He crossed the room and stood with his back to the mantel, his left arm supporting some of his weight. His body was never quite erect. When he walked he slouched, and when he stood he always leaned against something like a man who had spent too much time in a car and at a desk.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“At the movies. She phoned at noon and told me she intended to stay downtown for lunch and do some shopping and take in a double feature. She sounded quite gay and girlish, as if she was going on a spree.”

“Maybe she was.”

“Oh, no. She doesn’t drink.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that kind of a spree.”

“Then why don’t you say what you think?”

“Maybe I will, sometime.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“Now what are you miffed about?”

“You’re so condescending.”

“I don’t feel that way,” he said gravely. “In fact, right now I’m confused. I can go down to lower Fifth Street and look in the window of a house, any house, and tell you quite a lot about the people who live there. But I’m not used to houses like this or girls like Virginia or women like Mrs. Hamilton.”

“Or like me?” The question slipped out unintentionally, like a line from a fishing reel left unguarded for a moment.

“I think I know quite a bit about you, Alice.”

“Oh? You’ve met dozens like me, I suppose.”

“A few.”

She turned away so that he couldn’t see the angry flush that stained her face.

He didn’t see it, though he guessed it was there. “Why does that make you mad?”

“I’m not mad.”

“You wouldn’t want to be absolutely unique, would you, like a three-headed calf or something?”

“Of course not.” I would, she thought violently. I want to be absolutely unique.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said with a trace of a smile. “It’s just that I knew a three-headed calf once, and all it ever wanted to be was ordinary.”

“This is a ridiculous conversation,” Alice said. “I think you’d better stick to looking in windows on lower Fifth Street, Mr. Meecham.”

“I don’t look in...”

“You said you did.”

“I said I could.”

“Anybody can. You hardly need any special equipment for window peeping.”

“I am not a window peeper.”

“Well, you said you were.”

“I did not say I...”

“I heard you distinctly.”

Meecham shook his head in exasperation. “All right. All right, I’m a window peeper.”

“I can believe it.”

“I think I’ve changed my mind about you, Alice. You are unique. Absolutely unique and impossible.”

Alice gazed at him blandly. “I’d rather be impossible than ordinary. Mrs. Hamilton says I can be anything if I try.”

“Mrs. Hamilton’s an authority?”

“On most things.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said. “Don’t get stuck on the old girl. She might let you down.”

From outside there came the sound of footsteps hurrying across the patio. A moment later the front door burst open and Mrs. Hamilton came rushing into the room. Her coat was flying open and her hat had slid to the back of her head. She looked blowsy and old and scared.

As she turned to close the door behind her the parcels she was carrying slid out of her arms and dropped to the floor. There was a muffled shatter of glass, and almost instantly the smell of lilacs crept poignantly into the room like a remembered spring.

“Turn off the lights, Alice,” she said. “Don’t ask questions. Turn them off.”

Alice did as she was told. Without lights the smell of lilacs seemed stronger, and Mrs. Hamilton’s harsh breathing rose and fell in the darkness.

“Someone is out there. A man. He’s been following me.”

Meecham coughed, faintly. She took it as a sign of disbelief.

“No, I’m not imagining things, Mr. Meecham,” she said sharply. “He followed me from the bus stop. I couldn’t get a cab downtown so I took the bus. This man got off at the same corner as I did. He followed me. I think he meant to rob me.”

“He may live in one of the houses around here,” Meecham said.

“No. He came after me quite deliberately and openly. When I walked fast he walked fast, and when I paused he paused. There was something almost sadistic about it.”

“He’s probably a neighborhood nut who gets his kicks out of scaring women,” Meecham said. Or a policeman, he thought, maybe one of Cordwink’s men. “Where is he now?”

“The last I saw of him he had gone behind the cedar hedge.” She crossed to the window and pointed. “Right there, at the entrance to the driveway. He might be there yet.”

“I’ll go out and take a look.”

“What if he’s dangerous? Maybe we should call the police immediately.”

“First, let’s see if he’s still there,” Meecham said.

Outside, the snow was still falling. It felt good, after the heat of the house. Through the patio and down the driveway Meecham walked, a little self-consciously, aware that the two women were watching him from the window and not sure how far they could see, since it wasn’t totally dark yet.

By the time he reached the end of the curving driveway the snow didn’t feel quite so pleasant. With quiet persistence it had seeped in over the tops of his shoes, and up his coat sleeves and down under his collar. He felt cold and wet and foolish.

He said, in a voice that wasn’t as loud or as firm as he intended: “Hey. You behind the hedge. What are you doing?”

There was no answer. He had expected none. The old girl had probably dreamed up the whole thing. Darkness, weariness, a deserted street, footsteps behind — together they were rich food for the imagination.

Pulling up his coat collar against the snow, he was on the point of turning to go back to the house when a man shuffled out from the shadow of the hedge. He moved like an old man, and his hair and eyebrows were white, but the whiteness was snow. He stood with his back to the street lamp so that his face was just a blur in the deepening twilight. The light-colored baggy coat he wore hung on him like a tent.

“What am I doing here?” he said. “I’m waiting for the doctor.”

“Behind a hedge?”

“No, sir.” He had a rather high, earnest voice, like a schoolboy’s. “I intend to go to his office, but I thought I’d stand here a bit and enjoy the night. I like a winter night.”

“Kind of cold, isn’t it?”

“Not for me. I like the smell of cedar too. It reminds me of Christmas. I won’t be having a Christmas this year.” He brushed the snow from his eyebrows with the back of his bare hand. “Of course I’m not really waiting for the doctor.”

Meecham’s eyes were alert, suspicious. “No?”

“Oh, I’ll see him, of course. But what I’m really waiting for — and so are you, if you only knew it — is a destination, a finality, an end of something. My own case is rather special; I’m waiting for an end of fear.”

I was right, Meecham thought. He’s a neighborhood nut. Aloud he said, “You’d better pick a more comfortable place to wait. Move on, now. We don’t want any trouble.”

The man didn’t even hear him. “I’ve died a thousand times from fear. A thousand deaths, and one would have been enough. A great irony.”

“You’d better move on, go home and get some sleep. Have you got a family?”

“A family?” The young man laughed. “I have a great family.”

“They may be waiting for you.”

“I won’t be going home tonight.”

“You can’t stay here.” Meecham glanced briefly at the man’s shoes. Like the overcoat, they looked new. He said anyway, “I can let you have a couple of bucks.”

“What do you think, that I’m a bum wanting a handout? I’m not a bum.”

A car came around the corner, its headlights searched the man’s face for a moment like big blind eyes. Meecham recognized him instantly. He had seen him that morning in the county jail, the old-young man with the sensitive face and the swollen dissolute body. The body was hidden now under the tent of his overcoat. His face was bland and unlined, and the falling snow had feathered his eyelashes and made his eyes look dewy and innocent. He was, Meecham thought, about twenty-eight.

He said aloud, “We’ve met before.”

“Yes, I know. I know who you are.”

“Oh?”

“You’re Mr. Meecham, the girl’s lawyer.”

Meecham had an abrupt and inexplicable feeling of uneasiness. It was, he thought, like turning around suddenly on a dark night and finding at your heels a silent and vicious dog; nothing is said, nothing is done; the walk continues, the dog behind you, and behind the dog, fear, following you both.

“What’s your name?” Meecham said.

“Loftus. Earl Duane Loftus.” The young man blinked, and the snow tumbled from his eyelashes down his cheeks in a miniature avalanche. “You’d better go and call the police. You wouldn’t mind if I waited inside the house until they arrive? I’m not cold — I never mind the cold — but I’d like to sit down. I tire easily.”

“Why should I call the police?”

“I’d like to give them a statement.”

“What about?”

“I committed a murder.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t believe me,” Loftus said.

“Oh sure, sure I do.”

“No. I can tell. First you thought I was a bum, now you think I’m a psycho.”

“No, I don’t,” Meecham lied, without conviction.

“Well, I can’t blame you, actually. I guess every murder case attracts a lot of tips and confessions from psychos, people who want punishment or publicity or expiation. I don’t fit into any of those classes, Mr. Meecham.”

“Of course not,” Meecham lied again, wishing that a patrol car would come along, or that the young man would go away quietly, and without a fuss.

“I can see you’re still skeptical. You haven’t even asked whom I killed.”

Meecham felt cold and weary, and a little impatient. “What gave you the idea you killed anyone?”

“The body. The dead body.” Loftus’ long skinny fingers worked nervously at the lapels of his coat. “I didn’t come here following the old lady home. We had a common destination, that’s all. I wanted to see the doctor and tell him first. His wife didn’t kill Margolis. I did.”

Meecham’s impatience had grown with his discomfort. “How’d you kill him, with a shotgun as he was going into the post-office to mail a letter?”

Loftus shook his head, very seriously. “No, sir, I didn’t. I stabbed him in the neck. Four or five times, I believe.”

“Why?”

“I had a good many reasons.” He leaned toward Meecham in an almost confidential manner. “I look funny to you, don’t I? You think like a lot of people that a man who looks so funny must also be funny in the head. Looks are very important. Very deceiving too. I’m quite sane, quite intelligent even. There’s only one thing the matter with me; I am going to die.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“You asked why I killed Margolis. Well, that’s one of my reasons. Ever since I found out, a year ago, what my chances were, I’ve been pondering the situation. Since I was going to die anyway, I thought I would take someone with me — rid the world of someone it would be better off without, some incorrigible criminal, perhaps, or a dangerous politician. But when the time and opportunity came, it was Margolis. I wish it could have been someone more important. Margolis was very third-rate.”

“He had a wife and two kids.”

Loftus’ calm was unshaken. “He won’t be missed. I’ve done them a favor.”

“Well,” Meecham said quietly. “Come inside and sit down.”

“Thank you, sir.”

They walked, side by side, toward the house. It seemed to Meecham that it was the longest and strangest walk he’d ever taken.

5

Loftus looked at the clock on the mantel. 6:10. So the clock was going, all right, time was passing, but slow and soundless. He missed the noise of ticking. The clock he had in his own room ticked so loud that it often kept him awake. Sometimes in the middle of the night he got up and covered it with a glass bowl that he’d bought in the dime store. The glass smothered the noise a little but didn’t obscure the face of the clock.

The room was quiet. Mrs. Hamilton and the blonde girl had gone to another part of the house, and the doctor had come, and, after a long whispered conference in the hall, had gone away again. There were only the four of them left, the two policemen, and Meecham, and Loftus himself.

“Loftus.”

Loftus turned. “Yes, sir.” He wasn’t sure if this was the way to address a sheriff. He had never talked to one before.

“When did you write this?” Cordwink said.

“This afternoon.”

“Why?”

“I thought it would be better to write it down myself, to get things very clear. They are, aren’t they? Clear?”

Cordwink made a noise in the back of his throat. “Clear as a bell. You thought of everything, Loftus.”

“I tried to.”

“It makes me wonder whether you might have had a little help with it.”

“Who would help me?”

“Well, now. Meecham over here is always willing to lend a hand, especially if...”

“You’re off your rocker, Cordwink,” Meecham said flatly. “I never saw the man before in my life.”

“No?”

“No. And just what do you mean ‘help’ him with it? You talk as if we’re a couple of school kids and I did his homework for him, or something.”

Cordwink rustled the papers he held in his hand. There were eight of them, closely written. By moving his head slightly Loftus could see the top sheet. It had been the most difficult to write. He had made so many copies that he knew it by heart: My name is Earl Duane Loftus. I am writing this without coercion or advice on the part of anyone, and with the full knowledge that it can be used as evidence in a court of law...

Cordwink was speaking. “This comes at a convenient time for you, Meecham. Your client’s in jail, a lot of evidence against her...”

“Circumstantial.”

“... and then out of the blue comes a nice pat answer to all your problems.”

“But it didn’t come out of the blue,” Loftus said, blinking his eyes nervously. “Not at all, sir. I intended to admit everything right from the beginning, but I needed some time. I had to do a few things first, personal things. I’m afraid I didn’t give much thought to Mrs. Barkeley being held in jail. But then it didn’t do her any harm, did it? She’s a little spoiled.”

“Is she?”

“I think so.”

Cordwink’s mouth tightened. “There’s nothing in what you’ve written here to indicate that you knew her before last Saturday night.”

“I didn’t know her, not actually. I saw her once, a little over a year ago. I had come to consult Dr. Barkeley, I was feeling so tired and heavy, and I minded the heat so much. I...” He paused, folding his arms to hide his belly. It was my belly that worried me, he thought. It had begun to swell, bigger and bigger. I had nightmares about being a hideous freak, the only man in the world who ever had a baby. It wasn’t a baby, but I was a freak, all right. I didn’t know it then. I said, it’s my nerves, doctor, maybe I need a rest, a change of climate. You need hospital treatment, he said. I went to him three times, and the third time he told me what I had. It was only a word to me then, a pretty word like a girl’s name, Leukemia, Leukemia Smith, Leukemia Ann Johnston. Chronic myeloid leukemia, he said. He didn’t tell me I was dying. But I knew, I knew. He never sent me a bill.

“Loftus,” Cordwink said.

Loftus jerked his head up. “Yes, sir.”

“Go on. You were saying?”

“I... oh, yes. Yes. I saw Mrs. Barkeley once when I went to the doctor’s office. She was in the yard raking up leaves.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, oh no. I just passed by.”

“Did she notice you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever talked to her?”

“Just on Saturday night, that’s the only time.”

Cordwink turned to the deputy he had brought with him, a young intense-looking man in a tweed suit. “Dun- lop, you’re getting all this down?”

“Yes, sir,” Dunlop said. “‘Just on Saturday night, that’s the only time.’”

“When Mrs. Barkeley came into the bar, Loftus, did you recognize her?”

“Of course. She’s a very pretty woman.”

“What was the name of the bar?”

“It’s in there, in my confession.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Sam’s Café.”

“Are you sure? I thought it was Joe’s.”

Loftus shook his head. “It was Sam’s. If you’re trying to confuse me, you can’t. I remember everything very clearly. I only had one drink, a beer. I was just finishing it when Mrs. Barkeley came up to the bar and sat down beside me. This is all written down, but I suppose you want me to repeat it, just to test me, is that it?”

“Go on.”

“She smiled at me and said hello. I was flattered, thinking she might have remembered me. Then I saw how drunk she was, eyes glassy and out of focus, and her smile not real at all, just sort of painted on like a doll’s smile.”

“What else did she say?”

“You mean her exact words?”

“Yes.”

Loftus thought a moment. “She said, ‘God, this place stinks.’”

Meecham made a sound like a laugh and covered it with a cough. Cordwink turned and stared at him. “Is something amusing you, Meecham?”

“No.” Meecham coughed again. “I have a slight cold.”

“Is that a fact? Dunlop.”

“Yes, sir,” Dunlop said.

“Read that back. Mr. Meecham wants a good laugh.”

Dunlop bent over his notes. “‘God, this place stinks.’”

“There. Is it as funny as you thought it was, Meecham?”

Meecham looked as if he intended to make a sharp reply but he held it back. “No.”

“All right then. What else did Mrs. Barkeley say to you, Loftus?”

“She said she wanted a drink but she’d left her purse in the car. I bought her a beer. She had just started to drink it when Margolis came in. He was an impressive-looking man. I’d seen him before at the county hospital where I go for my X-ray treatments and shots. His firm was building the new T.B. wing and he used to hang around a lot, talking to the nurses. Margolis remembered me too. I’m quite a — freak.” He looked down at the floor. “Margolis asked Mrs. Barkeley to leave. She said she didn’t want to go home, and why didn’t all three of us go to another place for a drink. Margolis humored her. When she started for the door he said I was to come along and he’d give me a lift home. I accepted. I wanted a lift home, but there was more to it than that. I was excited, thrilled as a high-school kid at suddenly becoming a part of all that — glamor, I guess you’d call it. I didn’t realize until we got out to the car that offering me a lift home wasn’t exactly a noble gesture on Margolis’ part. He needed me to help him handle Mrs. Barkeley. She passed out in the back seat. Margolis shook her and swore at her, but she was limp as a rag.”

He stopped to wipe the sweat from his face with his handkerchief.

“... and swore at her,” Dunlop said in his quick uninterested monotone, “but she was limp as a rag.”

Loftus appealed to Cordwink: “I’ve admitted everything. Why does he have to take all this down?”

“It’s routine, for one thing. For another, the statement you’re making now will have to be checked with your written confession for discrepancies.”

“But I’m guilty, I’ve...”

“No matter if you write five hundred confessions, you still have to be tried in a court of law to determine the degree of your guilt.”

“Yes. Yes, I see now. I didn’t realize.” I sound so meek, Loftus thought. I don’t sound like a murderer at all. Maybe I would be more convincing if I acted belligerent, but I hardly know how.

“Are you ready to continue, Loftus?”

“I... yes, of course. Margolis said he couldn’t take Mrs. Barkeley home in that condition, and he asked me if I’d mind helping him get her out to his cottage. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard of his cottage. There were rumors around the hospital... I was there so much that I got to know quite a few of the nurses, and that’s how I first heard of Margolis and his affairs.”

“The cottage was just outside the city limits, on the river. It didn’t look like much on the outside, but it was fixed up nice inside — leather furniture and a stone fireplace and some good reproductions hanging on the walls, a Van Gogh, I remember, was one of them.”

“Tell me more about the fireplace,” Cordwink said.

“Well, there were a pair of fishing rods, crossed, on the wall above it, and on the mantel itself there were several of those big German steins and two hunting knives in leather sheaths.”

“Dunlop...” Cordwink made a half-turn. “Was the inside of Margolis’ cottage described in any of the papers?”

Dunlop put down his pencil. “A couple of Detroit papers carried a shot of the outside, and the Tribune, I think it was, had a shot of the floor where Margolis was found — bloodstains, et cetera.”

“No fireplace in the picture?”

“No fireplace.”

Loftus smiled anxiously. “I don’t read the Tribune anyway, sir.”

“All right, go on.”

“I helped Margolis carry her inside the cottage and put her on the davenport. She was still out cold. Margolis was very angry by this time. I think the two of them must have been quarreling earlier in the evening, and that this was a final straw for Margolis. He began calling her names and shaking her again. It was an ugly scene. I thought of all the things I’d heard about Margolis around the hospital. I thought of — well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. I went over to the fireplace. The fire was lit and the room was beginning to get very warm. I picked up one of the hunting knives and took it out of its sheath. Margolis wasn’t paying any attention to me. He’d forgotten I was there. I was just a bum, a nobody, a... well, then I did it. I stabbed him in the neck. I’m not very strong and I thought his neck would be the easiest place. It wasn’t easy. I had to stab him four or five times. He fell after the first stab, but he didn’t die right away. He kept sort of flopping around on the floor. The blood was terrible. It got all over me, my gloves and my coat and pants. And the smell — I began to retch. I ran for the door, and I kept on running. I lost my head, forgot about the girl, forgot about everything. All I wanted to do was get away from that blood, that smell. I went home by side streets. I don’t know how far I walked, two miles, three miles. No one noticed me particularly. It was late, and it was snowing, big feathery flakes of snow that clung to my clothes and hid the stains. The house was dark when I got home. I let myself into my room and took off the clothes that had blood on them and put them in the back of the wardrobe. That’s where they are now.”

“In the wardrobe,” Cordwink said.

“Yes, 611 Division Street, the left front room. It has its own entrance, that’s why the landlady calls it an apartment.”

“What did you do on Sunday?”

“I was very weak, I had to stay in bed.”

“Didn’t see any papers?”

“Not until early Monday morning, that is, this morning. As soon as I read that Mrs. Barkeley was being held, I went down to the jail to see you. You were busy, and I waited in the corridor. Mr. Meecham saw me there.”

Meecham nodded. “Yes, I saw him.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Cordwink said. “What happened, Loftus? Lose your nerve?”

“No. I suddenly realized, as I was sitting there, that there were a lot of things I hadn’t attended to, and that I’d never get a chance, once I’d confessed. So I walked out again.”

“A lot of things you hadn’t attended to, such as what?”

“Personal things. I closed my bank account, and sold my car, things like that.”

“Listen to this, Loftus.” Cordwink turned over the pages until he found what he was looking for. “ ‘I stabbed Margolis deliberately and with intent to kill, and not to protect Mrs. Barkley or myself.’ You still claim that?”

“Better think before you answer,” Meecham said. “That deliberation and intent business will...”

“Keep out of this, Meecham,” Cordwink said, scowling. “You’re not his lawyer.”

“He needs one.”

“He’ll get one.” Cordwink faced Loftus again. “Have you any money?”

“A little, yes. The past few months I’ve been able to work. I’m an accountant. That’s what my treatments have been for, not so I could live longer, but so I could carry on with my job, live more efficiently.”

“How much money? Two thousand? One?”

“Oh, not that much.”

“Lawyers come high. The more crooked they are, the bigger their price. That’s how they stay out of the booby hatch, by rubbing the lesions on their conscience with greenbacks.”

Loftus looked a little puzzled. “Well, if I have to have a lawyer, Mr. Meecham will suit me fine. He’s been very kind.”

“Kind?” Cordwink raised his eyebrows, exaggeratedly. “This I must hear.”

“When he thought I was just a bum, he offered me two dollars.”

“Well, well. Where’d you get the two dollars, Meecham, selling phony oil shares to war widows?”

Meecham’s smile was a little strained. “I object to the question on the grounds that it is intimidating and forms a conclusion.”

Dunlop put down his pencil, and said, with a faint whine, “When everybody keeps talking like this, I don’t know what to write down. Everybody shouldn’t keep talking like this.”

“Don’t write anything,” Cordwink said. “Call a patrol car and take Loftus down and book him.”

I’m going to jail, Loftus thought. But he still couldn’t quite believe it. Jail was for criminals, for thieves and thugs, for brutal angry lawless men. He said, with the surprise and disbelief evident in his voice: “I’m going to... to jail?”

“For the present, yes.”

“Why do you say, for the present?”

“We have no facilities at the jail for looking after a dy— a sick man. There’s a prison ward at the County

Hospital. You’ll be transferred there eventually.”

“The County Hospital.” Loftus laughed, holding his hands over his belly. It hurt him to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. “That’s funny, isn’t it? The final irony. After all that’s happened, I’ll end up where I started — in a ward at the County Hospital.”

The sound of his laughter faded, though his mouth kept grinning. He saw Cordwink and Meecham exchange uneasy glances. “You’re uncomfortable, aren’t you? — disturbed? — you wish you’d never seen me? Yes, it’s the same everywhere I go, I make people uncomfortable. I don’t have any friends. No one wants to be near me, people are afraid to be near a man who’s walking a step ahead of death. I make them too conscious of their own fate, and they hate me for it. I’m not blaming them, no, I understand how they feel. I loathe myself more than anyone could loathe me. I loathe this decaying body that I’m trapped inside, hopelessly trapped inside. This isn’t me, this grotesque body, it is my prison. What prison have you to offer that could be half so terrible?”

He didn’t realize that he was crying until he felt the sting of salt on his lips. He sometimes cried when he was alone at night and the hours seemed so ironically endless; but never in front of anyone, not even his wife on the day she left him. He wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve, ashamed that he had broken down in front of these three men.

Cordwink stared out of the window, motionless, his face like granite. Inside, he felt something begin to move, like a steel claw, reaching out and clutching his stomach, squeezing. It could be me. Or Alma and the kids. Don’t let it happen. Me or Alma and the kids.

A pair of headlights swerved up the driveway. He glanced across the room at Loftus. Loftus had slumped forward in his chair, his hands covering his eyes. The back of his neck looked very young, a boy’s neck, thin and vulnerable and white as wax.

“Loftus.”

There was no reply, no stirring in response to his name.

“Loftus,” Cordwink said again. “The car is here.”

Loftus raised his head slowly. He seemed dazed, as if he’d flown his prison, had gone miles and years away, and was now returning, like a soul to hell.

“I’m ready,” Loftus said.

6

611 Division Street was a three-story red-brick house on the outskirts of the college district. Light and noise poured from nearly every window. On the second floor two young men were bending over a microscope. In the adjoining room a boy sat at a table by the window, absorbed in the blare of the radio beside him, his head resting on an open book. Meecham couldn’t see into any of the rooms on the top floor, but it sounded as if a party was going on up there. There was a continuous babble of voices punctuated by sudden peals of laughter.

The left part of the lower floor was dark and the shades were drawn.

Following Cordwink up the sidewalk Meecham thought, it’s a funny place for Loftus to live — a dying man in the midst of all this noise and youth.

The sidewalk forked to the left. A little path no more than a foot wide had been shoveled through the snow and sprinkled with cinders. This was Loftus’ private entrance.

Cordwink took out the ring of keys that Loftus had given him. “Still want to tag along, Meecham?”

“Certainly.”

“What do you expect me to find?”

“The bloodstained clothes he was wearing Saturday night.”

“You seem to have a lot of confidence in that confession. Wishful thinking, Meecham?”

“Could be.”

“You and Loftus are kind of palsy for a couple of guys who never met before.”

“I’m palsy with everyone.”

“Yeah. You got a heart of gold, haven’t you? Cold and yellow.”

“You’re getting to be a sour old character if I ever saw one.”

Cordwink inserted one of the keys into the lock. It didn’t fit, but the second one did. The flimsy door, curtained at the top, swung inward. “By the way, it wouldn’t be quite ethical to take on a second client while your first client is still in jail.”

“She won’t be in jail long. Your forty-eight hours are nearly up, Cordwink. By tomorrow morning you have to charge her or release her.”

“And if she’s released, you’d take on a lost cause like Loftus?”

“One minute you’re implying that his confession is a phony and the next minute he’s a lost cause. Make up your mind.”

“He’s a lost cause to you, anyway. He hasn’t much money.”

“Well?”

“Or at least that’s what he claims.” Cordwink turned on the light switch inside the door, but he didn’t look at the room. He was watching Meecham. “Suppose you were in Loftus’ shoes and wanted some money.”

“Money isn’t much good, where’s he’s going.”

“Suppose he didn’t want it for himself. For a relative, maybe, or a close friend. It seems to me that Loftus had something very valuable to sell — his absolutely certain knowledge that he’s going to die anyway. No matter what he does, he has nothing to lose.”

“So?”

“So he committed a murder. For money.”

“Whose money?”

“Virginia Barkeley’s.”

“That sounds reasonable enough,” Meecham said calmly, “except for a few little things. First, Mrs. Barkeley only met Loftus once, in a bar, for about five minutes. That’s not quite long enough to arrange a big deal like murder.”

“She could have known him before. They’d both deny that, naturally, if there’s a deal on.”

“In the second place, if she paid him to kill Margolis, she wouldn’t have arranged the matter so that she’d be caught as she was.”

“Maybe she’s very, very subtle.”

“In the third place she hasn’t any money and neither has her husband. I’ve checked. They live up to their income, the house is mortgaged and the furniture isn’t paid for.”

“There are ways of raising money.”

“And in the fourth place you don’t even know that Loftus has any money.”

“I’ll find out.”

“Your trouble is stubbornness, Cordwink. You were sure Mrs. Barkeley was guilty and you can’t admit you were wrong even with Loftus’ confession staring you in the face.”

“What’s staring me in the face is a lot of funny coincidences and right in the middle of them is a lawyer called Meecham.”

“Is that a fact?”

“That’s one. Another one has just occurred to me. Suppose Loftus was paid for services rendered, what did he do with the money?”

Meecham said wearily, “He dug a hole in the back yard and buried it.”

“I figure he gave it to someone, either the party he wanted it for in the first place, or a go-between.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“Whom am I going between, or between whom am I going? Oh, hell. You know I never saw Loftus until today.”

“That’s your story.”

“His, too.”

“It would be, of course, if the two of you are working in collusion.”

Meecham lit a cigarette. There was no ash tray in the room that he could see, so he put the burnt match in his pocket. “So now you’ve dreamed up a place for the money you’ve dreamed up. Want to see my wallet? Check books? Or maybe I’m wearing a money belt. Why don’t you check?”

“Don’t worry, I will. When the time comes.”

“You can waste a lot of time chasing little bright butterflies, Cordwink.”

“I like the exercise.”

Meecham raised his head. He saw that the Sheriff was looking rather pleased with himself, and he wondered whether Cordwink really believed in his own theory or whether he was merely needling him. Cordwink hated all lawyers, but his hatred wasn’t a personal one. It was a matter of principle: he hated lawyers because he believed their sole objective was to circumvent the law.

Cordwink began to circle the room, his eyes moving from object to object with alert precision.

The room was fairly large, and fitted out for light housekeeping. In one corner, half-hidden by a painted cardboard screen, was a small sink and a two-burner gas plate and a table. The bed was a studio couch neatly covered with a blue and yellow chenille spread, and above it, high on the wall, a trio of college pennants was nailed:

Illinois. Arbana. Yale.

The pennants were very old and very dusty. They probably didn’t belong to Loftus, Meecham thought. They had been on the wall when he moved in and he left them there because they were too high to reach. Anyway, there they were, emphasizing the transient feeling of the room, symbols of college boys who were no longer boys, football teams that were forgotten, textbooks left to mildew, with silverfish camping, sleek and comfortable, between the pages.

A room for transients, with Loftus the last, the most transient of them all. It was as if Loftus had known this and had taken pains to obliterate his traces. The whole room, except for the pennants, was scrupulously clean. There were no clothes or shoes lying around, the top of the bureau held only an alarm clock with a glass bowl inverted over it, and the wastebasket beside the desk was empty. Whatever had been in the wastebasket — letters, bills, check stubs, pages from a diary? — they were all gone now. There was no clue to Loftus’ mind and personality in the room except for the books that filled the high narrow bookcase.

The books were oddly assorted: a few novels, two anthologies of poetry, How to Win at Canasta, a biography of Pasteur and a Bible — but most of them concerned psychology and medicine. Cecil’s Textbook of Medicine, Cancer and Its Causes, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, Peace of Mind, Release from Fear, Alcoholism and Its Causes, The Alcoholic and Allergy, A New View of Alcoholism, How to Treat the Alcoholic, Drinking Problems, Glandular Deficiency in Alcoholism.

Cordwink, too, was staring at the books. “He doesn’t look like a lush,” he said finally.

“No.”

“You can’t always tell, though. One of the worst lushes I ever knew used to take up collection in the Methodist church. No one even knew he took a drink until one night he started hopping around the house trying to get out of the way of the fish. He thought there were little fish flopping all over the floor. Bats and snakes and beetles I’d heard of, but never little fish. It was creepy, made the bottom of my feet kind of ticklish. Funny, eh?”

“What happened to him?”

“He hit the real skids after that. Landed in jail four or five times that year for non-support, disturbing, petty theft. He always had a whale of an excuse. Drunks are the wildest liars in the world.”

“Loftus isn’t a drunk.”

“Maybe not.”

There was no closet in the room, but between the studio couch and the screen that hid the gas plate, a seven-foot walnut wardrobe stood against the wall. It was a massive piece of furniture, with a big old-fashioned plain lock. There was no key to fit it on the key-ring Loftus had given him, so Cordwink forced the lock with the small blade of his jacknife. When the door opened, the pungent smell of moth crystals filled the room. Cordwink sneezed, and sneezed again.

There was hardly enough clothing inside the wardrobe to justify the lavish use of moth crystals: two suits, well-worn but cleaned and pressed, a sweater, shoes, a pair of galoshes, a khaki baseball cap, some pajamas; and on the floor, three suitcases. Two of them were empty. The third Cordwink took out and placed on the studio couch.

Pasted across the top of the suitcase was a faded Railway Express consignment slip: From Mrs. Charles E. Loftus, 231 Oak Street, Kincaid, Michigan, to Mr. Earl Duane Loftus, 611 Division Street, Arbana, Michigan. Value of contents, $50.00

“His mother,” Cordwink said. “Or maybe his sister-in- law. Or maybe it doesn’t even matter.”

The value of the original contents might have been fifty dollars. The present contents had little monetary value: an old trench coat, a blue serge suit, and a pair of brown oxfords, all of them stained with blood.

Cordwink pressed down the lid of the suitcase. “I’d like to talk to the woman who runs this place. Loftus said she’s a Mrs. Hearst. Go and get her, will you?”

“Why don’t you? You have the authority.”

“This stuff is evidence. I wouldn’t trust you alone with it.”

Meecham colored. “What the hell do you think I’d do, grab it and take off for South America?”

“I don’t know and I’m not going to find out. Be a good boy now, Meecham, and co-operate, and some day you may be District Attorney, then you can kick me in the teeth if I’ve got any teeth left by that time.”

“Who are you kidding? You haven’t got any left now.”

Cordwink’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t make any reply. He crossed the room to the door that led into the hallway of the house, unlocked it, and motioned Meecham out with a curt nod.

Meecham went out, quite meekly. He felt a little ashamed of himself for making the crack about Cordwink’s teeth. Nearly everyone in town knew that Cordwink had had his front teeth knocked out in a fight with two berserk sailors who were equipped with brass knuckles. The sailors went to a military prison, Cordwink went to the dentist, and the brass knuckles went into his pile of impounded weapons that included everything from sawed-off shotguns to paring knives.

Meecham followed the hall past an immense high-ceilinged dining room into the kitchen. It was a big old-fashioned kitchen, designed not merely for cooking and eating, but for all kinds of family living. There was a card table with a plastic canasta set, a rocking chair, a record player, a bookcase and a couch with a blanket neatly folded at the foot. A woman stood at the sink, wiping dishes and humming to herself.

Her voice and figure were youthful, and her light hair was cut girlishly short and curled close to her head. But when she turned, hearing Meecham approach, he saw that she was about forty. Her hair was gray, not blonde as it appeared at first, and the skin around her sharp blue eyes was creased and dry, like crepe paper.

She smiled at Meecham as she rolled down the sleeves of her dress and buttoned them at the wrists. Her smile was not artificial exactly, but facile, as if she was accustomed to smiling in all kinds of situations and at all kinds of people. “Were you looking for someone?”

“Yes, the owner of the house.”

“The bank owns it,” she said crisply. “Arbana Trust and Savings. I rent it.”

“You’re Mrs. Hearst?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Eric Meecham. I’m a friend of Mr. Loftus.”

“A friend of Earl’s? Isn’t that nice, it really is.” Out of habit, she spoke with a little too much emphasis. It made her enthusiasm, which was real, sound forced. “For a minute there I thought you were going to try and sell me something. Not that I wouldn’t like to buy something, but nobody ever got rich on college boys. They’re nice boys, all of them, boys from good homes. But what with taxes the way...” She paused, suddenly frowning. “You’re from out of town?”

“No, I live here.”

“I just wondered. Earl’s never mentioned you. He hasn’t many friends and he usually tells me things. I... is anything the matter? Where is Earl? Where is he?”

“I can’t say, definitely.”

“I knew something was up. He always has supper with me Monday nights. Tonight he didn’t come, didn’t phone. I waited an hour. Everything was ruined. Where is he?”

“In jail.”

“In jail? Why, that’s crazy. Why, Earl is one of the quietest, most refined...”

“The Sheriff is in his room now. He wants to talk to you.”

“To me? A sheriff? Why I... I don’t know what to say. This isn’t some kind of trick one of my boys put you up to? They play tricks on me sometimes, not meaning to be cruel.”

“There’s no trick,” Meecham said. “I’m a long way from college.”

“A sheriff,” she repeated, in a strained voice. “I’ll talk to him, if I must. But I’ve nothing to say. Nothing. Earl is a perfect gentleman. And more than that, too. You only see him now, when he’s sick.” She hesitated, as if she would have liked to say more about Loftus, but decided this was not the time or place. “All right, I’ll talk to him. Some mistake has been made somewhere, of that I’m sure.”

She preceded Meecham down the hall, wiping her hands nervously on her apron and casting uneasy glances up the staircase to her left, obviously afraid that one of the “boys from good homes” would come down and see her talking to a policeman.

Meecham followed her into Loftus’ room and closed the door. “Mrs. Hearst, this is the Sheriff, Mr. Cordwink.”

Cordwink acknowledged the introduction with a brief nod. “Sit down, Mrs. Hearst. I just want to check up on a few things about Earl Loftus.”

The woman didn’t sit down. She didn’t even advance into the room, but stood rigidly with her back against the wall, her hands clenched in the pockets of her apron. “I don’t understand why you’re here. Earl hasn’t — done anything?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Cordwink said. “How long has he been with you?”

“Lived here? A year, almost a year.”

“You know him pretty well, then?”

“I... yes. We are friends.”

“He confides in you?”

“Yes, you understand, I’m not like a mother to him, the way I am to some of my boys. No indeed, Earl’s different, more mature. Our conversations are very stimulating. Why, he talks as mature as any man my — my own age.”

“I notice that he has his own telephone and mailbox.”

“Yes, this little apartment is completely separate from the rest of the house.”

“Then you wouldn’t, naturally, be able to keep as close track of him as you would of your regular roomers.”

Mrs. Hearst’s mouth looked pinched. “I don’t have to keep track of anyone.”

“What I meant was...”

“I know what you meant. You meant, do I snoop in on other people’s telephone conversations and examine their mail. No, I don’t. And in Earl’s case it wouldn’t even be necessary. He tells me everything.”

There was a brief silence before Cordwink spoke again, in a quiet, amiable voice: “He seems, on the surface, to be quite an exceptional young man.”

“Not just on the surface. He’s exceptional all through. Very intelligent, Earl is, and very polite and considerate, doesn’t drink or smoke or run around with women.”

“He’s married, isn’t he?”

“Married? Why, of course not. He would certainly have told me, and he’s never mentioned a wife. Just his mother. He’s devoted to his mother. She lives out of town, but she came to see him last summer. A very refined type of woman. She’s ill most of the time, that’s why she doesn’t come to see him oftener. Earl himself isn’t very — very well.”

“Yes, I know that.” Cordwink went over to the studio couch and lifted the lid of the suitcase. “I suppose you’re familiar with Loftus’ clothes?”

“His clothes? That’s a funny question. I don’t understand.”

Cordwink picked up the wrinkled bloodstained trench coat, quite naturally and casually, as if it was an ordinary piece of clothing. There was no indication, in his movements or expression, of his extreme distaste for the sight of blood, the feelings it gave him, of loss, futility, vulnerability. The blood on this worn and dirty coat had been the end of a man and might be the end of another.

He said calmly, “Do you, for instance, recognize this coat, Mrs. Hearst?”

“I... don’t know. It’s so wrinkled. I can’t... What are those marks?”

“Blood.”

She drew in her breath suddenly, gaspingly, like an exhausted swimmer. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it, I say. Where’s Earl? Where is he? You’ve got no right prying into his things like this! How do I know you’re policemen? How do I know you’re not a pair...?”

“Here’s my identification.” Cordwink took his badge out of his pocket and showed it to her. “Mr. Meecham isn’t a policeman, he’s a lawyer. As for prying into Loftus’ things, I’m doing it with his consent. Here are his own keys. He gave them to me.”

The woman sat down, suddenly and heavily. “What... what did Earl do?”

“He says he killed a man.”

She stared, round-eyed, glassy-eyed, into the corner of the room. “Here? Here in this house?”

“No.”

“Earl didn’t... couldn’t... it’s impossible.”

“He says he did.”

“But you can’t believe him. I’ve often thought, time and time again I’ve thought, that someday that terrible disease would affect his mind, would...”

“His mind seems clear enough,” Cordwink said.

“But you don’t know Earl. He could never harm anyone. He hated to kill anything. Why... why, once there was a mouse in his room — last fall — I wanted to set a trap but he wouldn’t let me. He said the mouse was so tiny and harmless...”

“Mrs. Hearst.”

“I’m telling you, Earl wouldn’t.”

“This is his coat, isn’t it?”

She turned her head away and stared at the wall. “Yes.”

“And this suit? The shoes? Please look at them, Mrs. Hearst. You can’t identify something without looking at it.”

She glanced briefly at the suit and shoes and then away again. “They’re Earl’s.”

“No question about it?”

“I said they’re Earl’s. Now can I go? I’ve had a great shock, a terrible shock.”

“In a minute,” Cordwink said. “The trench coat, and the serge suit — were these the clothes Loftus usually wore when he was going out in the evening, say?’

“Why?” she said bitterly. “Don’t you think they were good enough to go out in? Well, maybe they weren’t! But they were the only ones he had. He couldn’t afford any more.”

“When I saw him an hour ago he was wearing a new topcoat, new suit, new shoes. All of them looked expensive.”

“I don’t care! I don’t know what you’re implying, and I don’t care!”

“Did you ever lend him money, Mrs. Hearst?”

“I... no! Never! He’d never have taken it, never have borrowed money from a woman, never!”

“All right,” Cordwink said. Privately he wondered how much, and when. “Then you didn’t lend him any money, say, this morning?”

“No!”

“Did you see him this morning?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When I was shoveling off the walk, about seven-thirty.”

“What exactly did you say to him?”

“I said... I said, ‘Earl you can’t go like that, in just a sweater and slacks, it’s winter, you’ll catch cold.’”

“And he said?”

“That he’d sent his coat to the cleaner’s and that anyway he wasn’t cold. I asked him where he was off to, so early. And he said he was going downtown to see about selling his car. He said it wasn’t working so well, it was just a nuisance in the winter, so he thought he’d sell it, and then, in the spring, maybe he’d — he’d be feeling better and could work more and buy a... a new car. I said, just joking, how about a Cadillac, then you can take me for a ride. And he said there — wasn’t anyone he’d rather take for a ride in a Cadillac than... than me.”

She looked toward the window as if she was trying to see, not the dark of a winter night, but a morning in spring, with Earl well again and at the wheel of his new car.

“As you know now,” Cordwink said, “he didn’t send his coat to the cleaner’s. It was here all the time, locked inside the wardrobe. He had approximately forty hours to dispose of it, but he apparently made no attempt to. That’s curious, don’t you think, Mrs. Hearst?”

“Curious,” she repeated dully. “Yes. It’s curious. Everything’s curious.”

“Do you clean Loftus’ roo— apartment?”

“Go on, call it a room. It’s not an apartment, it’s just a room. I know it’s just a room, and Earl knows it and everyone...” She stopped, holding the back of her hand to her mouth. “I clean it twice a week, Tuesday and Saturday. I don’t have to do it, it’s not included in his rent. I do it for — because I like to,” she added defiantly. “I like to clean.”

“Take another look around now, Mrs. Hearst. Is this the way his room usually looked?”

“No.”

“What’s different about it?”

“A lot of his things are gone.”

“Clothes?”

“Not clothes. Personal little things, like his desk set, for instance. He had a very nice desk set, onyx, quite expensive. His mother gave it to him. His mother’s picture is gone too, it was in a silver frame. And his radio — he used to keep his radio on the table over there.”

“Have you any idea what happened to the missing objects?”

“They could have been — s-stolen.” But she stumbled over the answer. It was fairly obvious, both to Meecham and to Cordwink, that she didn’t believe the articles had been stolen.

“Or pawned, maybe,” Cordwink said. “Was he in the habit of pawning things?”

“He — when he had to, when he was desperate. He had such terrible expenses. And then there’s his mother, he sends her money. Last fall he scrimped and saved to send her some and when he did she blew it all in — went out and bought the desk set I told you about, and mailed it to him. It was a nice gesture, of course, only it was such a foolish thing to do. But then, she’s very refined, she doesn’t realize that people have to scrounge around for money these days.”

“You think, then, that Loftus pawned this stuff of his that’s missing?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea where?”

“There’s a little place in the east end, right next to the bowling alley. Devine’s, it’s called.”

“Did Loftus tell you that’s where he usually went?”

“I... no. No, he didn’t.” Her skin looked flushed. “I found a pawn ticket once when I was dusting his bureau. It was for his wrist watch. He never got the watch back. He told me he’d lost it. It wasn’t a real lie, Earl never lies. It was just a fib to save his pride. Being poor,” she said, “having to pawn things, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. But Earl isn’t used to it the way some people are. His father was well-to-do — he was a broker in Detroit before he died — and of course when Earl was working steadily he got a very good salary. Being poor is new to Earl. It’s his disease that’s dragged him down, his disease and his mom— No. No, I won’t say that. His mother can’t help herself, she’s very refined.”

Cordwink lit a cigarette. He rarely smoked, and the package from which he had taken the cigarette looked as though it had been in his pocket for months. He said, “When did you last see Loftus wearing this trench coat?”

“Saturday night. I was on my way to the hockey game, one of my boys is on the team. I met Earl on the sidewalk out in front of the house. I stopped to chat, I always do, and Earl said he’d just finished dinner downtown and that he was going to bed early because he was tired.”

“After the game you got home around...?”

“Eleven, it was just about eleven. Earl had gone to bed by that time.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Well, I thought he’d gone to bed. It never occurred to me that he hadn’t, and his lights were off.”

“Did you see him on Sunday at all?”

“No, Sunday’s my day off. I always go over to Chelsea to visit my sister and her kids. My sister and I had a little disagreement, nothing serious, but I left earlier than usual. I got home around 8:30. Earl’s light was on, I saw it shining under the door when I went into the hall. I thought of dropping in on him a minute, I was upset and Earl always cheers me up. But when I stopped outside his door he was talking on the telephone so I went on up to my room.”

“How long did you pause there, in the hall?”

“Oh, half a minute, no longer.”

“And you heard him talking?”

“Yes.”

“But not necessarily on the phone.”

“I... no, not necessarily, but...”

“In fact, there may have been someone in here with him.”

“Well, I can’t swear to it, of course, but I’m sure there wasn’t anyone here. Earl never has company.”

“No girl friends?”

Mrs. Hearst frowned. “No, none. Of that I am sure. He doesn’t bother with girls, young girls.”

“Was it a question of money?”

“No. Earl considers himself... well, deformed. He told me once that he couldn’t expect any woman to go out with a freak like he was.” She rubbed her eyes with the corner of her apron. “He isn’t a freak. It hurt me, his saying that. He isn’t a freak. A lot of women would be glad to — to look after him, see that he got the proper rest and food and didn’t go traipsing around in the cold without his galoshes and overcoat. A lot of women would be... would be...”

She hid her face in her apron, in silent grief. Watching her, Meecham wondered if the grief was for Loftus, or for all the women like herself who wanted a man to look after.

His eyes shifted to Cordwink. Cordwink’s face was grim and the cigarette he was smoking was chewed at one end like a cigar. He opened his mouth, and Meecham thought he was going to say something to the woman. But the Sheriff didn’t speak. Instead, he went over and helped Mrs. Hearst out of the chair and guided her out into the hallway as if she were blind.

When he came back he slammed the door shut behind him and looked bitterly across the room at Meecham. “Okay, you got any smart cracks to make, Meecham?”

“No.”

“That’s good, because I’m not in the mood to listen to any.” He closed the suitcase with a bang, picked it up and turned off the lights. “I’ll drop you off at Barkeley’s so you can pick up your car.”

“Thanks.”

Cordwink didn’t speak again until he got into his car and pulled away from the curb.

“The fact is,” he said, “I’m a very emotional man where women are concerned.”

7

The light of morning coming in through the barred window was dingy, and along the corridor a cool damp wind blew, erratically, first one way and then the other.

Miss Jennings wore a heavy cardigan over her brown dress, and instead of piling her hair high on top of her head as usual, this morning she had let it hang to keep the draft off her neck. As Miss Jennings was in the habit of pointing out, to anyone who was interested and a great many who weren’t, weather never bothered her, she rose above it. The clicking of her heels against the floor was overpoweringly cheerful, and she was humming, off-beat and off-key, but with a good deal of spirit.

Virginia pretended not to hear either the footsteps or the humming. She ignored Miss Jennings right up to the last moment; and then it was no longer possible to ignore her because Miss Jennings took her key-ring and slid it playfully and noisily across the bars of the cell like a child running a stick along an iron fence.

“Hi!” Miss Jennings always addressed her charges in a good loud voice, as if out of a conviction that imprisonment, like age, impaired the hearing. “Well, you’re all prettied up already. That’s good, because someone wants to see you right away.”

“If it’s that greasy little psychiatrist again tell him to go peddle his dreams.”

“Now, really. Now, is that any way to talk about nice Dr. Maguire? Besides it’s not him — he. It’s Mr. Meecham. He has a big surprise for you.”

“I wonder.”

“He has, too. Guess what it is.”

“I don’t like guessing games.”

“Oh, don’t be a little old spoilsport. Go on, guess.”

“I’m going home,” Virginia said.

“Yes! How about that now, aren’t you happy? Aren’t you surprised?”

“My mother sent me a message last night. So did Meecham.”

“Oh. Well, they couldn’t have known for sure, though. The lab reports weren’t in, the blood, and so forth.”

“What blood?”

“Why, he had blood all over his clothes, same as you had. They say he’s a nice young man, no record or anything. What amazes me is the amount of blood in a person, it’s simply amazing.”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Well, all right,” Miss Jennings smiled, rising above the blood as she rose above the weather.

She unlocked the cell door and Virginia stepped out into the corridor. She was pale, and the skin around her eyes looked blue, as if bruised by pressing thumbs.

“My, my,” Miss Jennings said. “You don’t look one bit happy. ‘Fess up now, you’re sorry to be leaving us.”

“Oh, sure.”

“You’ve been treated well, haven’t you?”

“Great. Just great. I’ll recommend the place to all my friends.”

Miss Jennings was still wearing her smile but it sagged in places like a worn-out dress. “You’re a sarcastic little snip, aren’t you?”

“So?”

“You think you’re so goddam smart all the time. All the time making smart talk. Oh, I heard your remarks about me to Mr. Meecham yesterday.”

“I knew you were too good to be true, Jennings.”

There was a thin line of white around the edges of Miss Jennings’ mouth. “I know you and your type. Jeering all the time, jeering at decent hardworking respectable people. I hate you. You hear that? I just hate you!”

“Oh, can it,” Virginia said. “Who cares?”

“And I’m sorry you’re leaving. I hope you’ll be back, next time for keeps.” She unlocked the door into the main corridor and the keys on the big key-ring clanked viciously. “You can go from here by yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“The girls that come in here and go out again, I always try to give them a nice send-off. But you, I wouldn’t even say good-bye to you. I think you’re a cold, bad, nasty woman and to hell with you.”

She shut the door between them with a decisive bang. All the way down the corridor Virginia could hear the clanking of metal against metal. It sounded as though Miss Jennings was slamming her keys against a wall in time to some rhythm of rage in her heart.

I’m not, Virginia thought, I’m not a cold nasty woman.

The door of the Sheriff’s office was open, and Meecham was waiting for her inside, with a brief case under his arm. Cordwink was there too, hunched over a desk that was strewn with papers. On a bench along the wall sat a white-faced young man in a gray prison uniform. The young man was staring at Virginia with a curious kind of intensity. She had an uneasy feeling that there was some silent communication in that glance, that he was trying to say something to her, or ask her something.

No introductions were made, no greetings exchanged. Not a word was spoken until Cordwink said, in his low heavy voice, “Do you recognize this man, Mrs. Barkeley?”

“Not by name. I think I’ve seen him before, though.”

“Where?”

“I don’t remember. Anywhere — on the street or at Paul’s office or in a bar. I get around quite a few places.”

“It was in a bar,” Loftus said, very quickly. “Sam’s — Saturday night, you talked to me...”

“Keep out of this, Loftus.”

Cordwink slapped the desk to emphasize the order. Loftus blinked nervously, but he went right on talking: “I’m only trying to help, Mr. Cordwink. What difference does it make if she remembers me? I’ve admitted fifty times that I killed Margolis. All these questions and interviews and tests — they aren’t going to change anything.” He turned to Virginia. “I asked Mr. Meecham to tell you but now I can tell you myself. I’m sorry about your having to stay in jail for a couple of days like this.”

“That’s... all right.” Under the glaring ceiling lights her face was as white as Loftus’, and the half-circles under her eyes made her look old and tired and hard. She whirled suddenly and faced Meecham. “I... couldn’t we get out of here? I want to get out of here.”

“All right,” Meecham said. “That suit you, Cordwink?”

“It has to.” Cordwink stood up. “The papers are all signed, nothing’s stopping you, the door’s open, go on.”

“What about your suitcase, Virginia?”

“To hell with the suitcase,” Virginia said harshly. “I just want to get out of here.”

Her departure was as wordless as her entrance. No one said good-bye, see you again, glad to have met you. Virginia walked out of the door and down the corridor so rapidly that Meecham had to hurry to catch up with her. Even when she reached the main door she didn’t stop to put on her coat. She just held it around her shoulders as she went out, and the arms of the coat flopped back and forth in the rising wind, making silly boneless little gestures.

The sidewalk was dirty with slush and on the road the cars swished by with splatters of mud. Even the wind was dirty. Somewhere, in the north of Canada, it had started out fresh, but it had picked up dirt on its journey, smoke and dust and particles of soot.

They stood in silence, side by side, at the intersection until the light turned green. Then they crossed the road to the parking lot where Meecham had left his car.

The car was locked. With only a slight hesitation Meecham unlocked his own door first and got in the car. Then he leaned across the seat and unlocked the other door for Virginia. The little amenities of politeness seemed as inappropriate and futile here as they had in the Sheriff’s office.

Meecham laid his brief case on the seat between them and started the car and switched on the heater. A cold blast of air gushed noisily from the heater.

Virginia reached over and turned the heater off again. “It makes too much noise.”

“All right.”

“Well, I did what you told me to. Didn’t I?”

“More or less.”

“I said that he looked familiar, that I’d seen him before. Isn’t that what you meant in the note you sent me last night?”

Meecham nodded.

“It’s not true though. I’ve never seen him before, not in Sam’s or any other bar or any other place.”

“You had quite a few memory lapses on Saturday night.”

“I remember talking to someone at Sam’s but it wasn’t this man. I’d have remembered him because he looks like Willett before Willett began to get fat.”

“Willett?”

“My older brother. When you meet someone who looks like your own brother, you don’t forget him, do you?”

“I haven’t got a brother.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t be so damned annoying, Meecham.”

“Me, annoying.” He turned left at the next intersection. The driver of the car behind him began to sound his horn furiously.

“You didn’t make a signal,” Virginia said. “If conversation interferes with your driving...”

“Your conversation interferes with my thinking,” Meecham said acidly. “You forget some things, you remember some things. The things you’re supposed to remember you forget, and the things you’re supposed to forget you remember.”

“I can’t help that.”

“Look, you just got out of jail ten minutes ago. Do you want to talk yourself right back in?”

“I thought you were my lawyer. Aren’t you supposed to be able to tell everything to your lawyer?”

“Theoretically, yes. But let’s get one point straight. What you told me just now — and very positively — was that you never saw Loftus before in your life. You may believe that, but I don’t. The evidence is against it. The fact that you’d been drinking heavily all evening makes your memory unreliable anyway. Then there’s Loftus’ own statement, and his report of some of your remarks to him. Loftus claims that you said among other things, God, this place stinks. One of the bartenders at Sam’s overheard it, and identified you as the woman who said it. He has a half-interest in the place, and I think you hurt his feelings. Well, are you still sure you never saw Loftus in your life until this morning?”

“I’m positive.”

“I know one definition of positive — being wrong at the top of your voice.”

“All right, I may be wrong.” She sounded depressed, listless. “It doesn’t matter much anyway, does it? When is Claude going to be buried?”

“This afternoon.” It was the first time he had heard her use Margolis’ first name or indicate in any way that she had been interested in him.

“I wouldn’t go to his funeral even if I could. I hate dead people.” She huddled, shivering, inside the big plaid coat. “I remember once when I was at school, the mother of one of my friends died, and I went home with the girl to cheer her up. Her mother was at the undertaker’s, they hadn’t quite finished — fixing her up. The girl combed her mother’s hair and fixed her glasses. The damned glasses kept slipping down that dead face, the girl kept putting them in place again. It was ghastly; I almost screamed. Do you have a cigarette?”

“Here.”

“Thanks. Shall I light one for you, too?”

“All right.”

She lit two cigarettes and gave him one. “Tell me, Meecham, are you on the level?”

“Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer. Sure, I am.”

“I don’t think it’s so stupid. You must get lots of opportunities and meet lots of funny people.”

“I do, indeed,” Meecham said dryly.

“Speaking of mothers, how much is my mother paying you?”

“For what?”

“She is paying you?”

“She offered to. I haven’t sent her a bill.”

“How much are you going to bill her for?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, think now. How much?”

“What is this anyway?” Meecham said, turning his head briefly to look at her. “What’s up?”

“She owns quite a bit of real estate back home. Two apartment houses in Pasadena and one in Westwood, and so on.”

“Why tell me?”

“So that you’d know she could afford to pay — oh, quite a lot.”

“I’m supposed to bill her for quite a lot, eh?”

“She can afford it, I tell you.”

“Then when Christmas comes around in a couple of weeks I send you a nice little present, is that it?”

“Sort of.”

“It sounds nasty,” Meecham said. “And you sound nasty.”

“It sounds worse than it is. I like my mother. I’m not trying to chisel her on anything. I can get money from her any time, only I hate to ask her. She always has to know why and what for. This way it would be the same money actually, only I wouldn’t have to answer any questions.”

“It still sounds nasty. What do you want the money for?”

“Questions, questions. Nobody trusts me.”

“What do you want the money for?”

“To run away,” she said earnestly.

“Where to?”

“It wouldn’t be running away if I told you where. Besides, I haven’t decided, and it doesn’t matter where as long as it’s far away and the climate’s good.”

He glanced at her again. Her listlessness had gone, and she looked very sincere and hopeful about her new project of running away. But it was a childish hopefulness, without a plan behind it or a foundation under it. “Away” would be pleasant simply because it wasn’t “here.”

“It will be good for me, good for my morale, to get away,” Virginia said. “Carney thinks I’m bad, and Paul thinks I’m a fool. They’re both very good people, virtuous people. But it’s hard to live with anyone who sets up standards you can’t ever reach.” She paused to draw on her cigarette. “And now this. This business about Claude. I’ll never live it down. No one will ever believe that I wasn’t one of Claude’s women. You don’t believe it, Meecham. Do you?”

“I could.”

“I wasn’t, anyway. I went out with him a few times because he was a wonderful dancer.”

It wasn’t very convincing, in view of the evidence of the quarrel the two of them had had on Saturday night. But Meecham didn’t say anything.

They had come to a railroad crossing just as the signal turned red and the crossing barriers were being lowered into place. A freight train began to move very slowly down the track, heading west. Virginia strained forward in her seat and watched it intensely, watched each car roll ponderously past as if she was wishing she was on one of them, heading west to some place where the climate was good.

He felt sorry for her. The feeling disturbed him, so he turned his attention to the printing on the sides of the freight cars. Michigan Central. Rock Island. Burlington. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Union Pacific. Grand Rapids. C.P.R. Do Not Hump. And, in chalk, on the bulging belly of a tank car, Kilroy Was Here, followed by a spirited reply, Who Wasn’t, Joe and Howie.

A hundred cars — oil and lumber, automobiles and scrap metal and fertilizer, explosives and people — a vast jumble of everything, and always room for one more, Virginia.

The caboose slid past, the barriers rose and Virginia sat back in the seat, her eyes shining, her breathing accelerated. The train had excited her — its possibilities, its destination, its very movement. Impulsively, she raised her hand and waved at the caboose as it disappeared down the track.

8

Meecham stopped the car in the driveway and got out. Pulling his overcoat collar up around his neck, he went around the back of the car and opened the door for Virginia. “Here you are. And good luck.”

She glanced up at him in surprise. “Aren’t you coming in?”

“No.”

“But my mother will want to see you, to thank you.”

“She hasn’t anything to thank me for. The whole thing has been a pleasure.”

“You’re sore, aren’t you? Just because I suggested that about the bill.”

“I’m not sore,” Meecham said. “I have to go back to the jail to see Loftus.”

“Why?”

“Because he asked me to.”

“But why should he...?”

“I don’t know, and I probably wouldn’t tell you anyway.”

“Well, thanks for the ride.” She got out of the car and went toward the front door of the house. Before she was halfway there the door opened and Mrs. Hamilton came out.

Virginia ran into her mother’s arms and her mother held her there, rocking back and forth. It was almost an exact repetition of the scene the previous morning in Cordwink’s office.

“Momma!”

“Ginny darling. Darling girl.”

“Oh, momma!”

Meecham watched them, but this time he felt quite detached, unmoved. He wondered what Mrs. Hamilton would do if she found out how and why Virginia had tried to raise money.

As unobtrusively as possible he slid in behind the wheel of his car and pressed the starter button. Mrs. Hamilton’s reaction to the sound was immediate and exaggerated, like an amateur actress’ response to a cue that was late in coming.

“Mr. Meecham! Oh, Mr. Meecham, wait a minute.”

With an air of resignation Meecham switched off the ignition, set the emergency brake and got out of the car for the second time.

Mrs. Hamilton approached him, her right hand stretched out in greeting. “You weren’t leaving?”

“I was. I have some bus—”

“Please come in and have a cup of coffee. Or a drink. Business can wait. This is such a happy occasion for me. I have my girl back safe and sound.”

Safe and sound. Meecham almost winced at the phrase, it seemed so incongruous. Her girl would probably never be either safe or sound. He had a suspicion that Mrs. Hamilton knew this and that the phrase had slipped out, in unconscious irony.

“I’d like some coffee,” Meecham said. “Nice of you to invite me.”

Virginia had gone ahead into the house. Her coat had fallen off one shoulder and the hem dragged in the dirty snow.

“She looks terrible,” Mrs. Hamilton said, in a changed voice. “As if she hasn’t eaten, hasn’t slept.”

“Have you?”

“Some. Thank God it’s all over now, anyway. It is over. Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“The man is guilty, he’s proved it?”

“As far as I know, yes. I’m not the Sheriff’s confidant.”

The answer seemed to satisfy her. “I think you’ve brought us luck, Mr. Meecham.”

The inside of the house was moist and fragrant, like a florist’s shop. Meecham saw that, in anticipation of Virginia’s arrival, someone had watered all the plants, watered them too liberally as if to make up for past neglect. The saucers under the flowerpots were brimming and one of the ivy-planted wall brackets dripped with sharp little pings onto the waxed concrete floor.

Mrs. Hamilton didn’t notice the dripping. She had taken Virginia’s coat and was hanging it in the closet. She handled the coat with a kind of nervous tenderness as if it was of great value and she wasn’t sure how to treat it. For the first time Meecham took a close look at the coat. Its bold black and white design dazzled the eye, but the material was cheap.

Neither of the women made any move to take Meecham’s hat or coat, so he laid them across a chair. He was a little irritated because he was sure that the omission on their part was more than a lapse in manners; it was an unconscious expression of their real feeling toward him. He wondered again why Mrs. Hamilton had invited him in for coffee, and why he had accepted against his will.

“We should do something to celebrate,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “Perhaps a little dinner party tonight. Would you like that, Ginny?”

Virginia ignored, or didn’t hear, the question. She was gazing at Meecham thoughtfully, part of her lower lip caught between her teeth. “Meecham, I’ve got an idea.”

“Mr. Meecham, dear,” Mrs. Hamilton corrected. “Mr. It sounds coarse to...”

“Momma, please. I’m talking.”

“Then talk properly.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Momma, this is important!” She turned back to Meecham. “I think I’ll sue them for false arrest. I suffered grievous humiliation, didn’t I, my reputation was damaged, I underwent great privations, et cetera. How about that, Meecham?”

“It’s not such a good idea,” Meecham said.

“It is, it’s a wonderful idea. Why, I could get a fortune if I won.”

“You couldn’t win because you haven’t a case. There was no malicious persecution, and the Sheriff had enough grounds to arr—”

“Stop.” Mrs. Hamilton spoke quietly but with such force, such cold anger, that Meecham stopped in the middle of a word, and Virginia turned to look at her mother with an air of surprise. “I’m ashamed of you, Virginia. Ashamed.”

“For heaven’s sake, Momma, I’ve got my rights and...”

“There’ll be no further discussion of this, ever.” Mrs. Hamilton’s face had changed from white to pink, and now back to white again, as if there was something the matter with her circulatory system and it responded too quickly and too violently to changes in her emotions. “The subject will never be brought up again. Is that clear to you, Virginia? And you, Mr. Meecham?”

“The whole thing was a pipe-dream anyway,” Meecham said.

“Of course. Of course it was.” She was regaining her composure. “You hear that, Virginia?”

“I heard.”

“Now go and say hello to Carney, like a good girl. She can’t leave the office.”

Virginia turned obediently and walked away, but not before giving Meecham an obvious we’ll-talk-about-it-later glance. Mrs. Hamilton must have seen the glance and interpreted it, but she said nothing about it until she and Meecham were settled in front of the fireplace.

Between them, so close to Meecham that he could scarcely move his legs, there was an immense three-tiered glass table that looked as though it weighed a ton. The chair that Meecham occupied was deep and low and soft, one of those chairs it was difficult to get out of even without a table blocking the way.

Meecham felt suddenly and inexplicably afraid. The fear passed over him like a wave, accelerating his heartbeat, and left behind beads of moisture on his forehead and a damp cold sensation across the small of his back. He had to control an impulse to kick away the huge table, spilling the coffee from its silver urn, shattering the china cups and the glass tiers. Violence is the instinctive response to fear. But because the fear was nameless and unimmediate, the violence was vague and unreasoning. He dropped an ash tray. Dropped it, quite unintentionally, and when he saw it break he had no conscious feeling of satisfaction, but he stopped sweating and his heartbeat was normal again.

Mrs. Hamilton dismissed his apologies with a gesture. She looked annoyed, not at the loss of the ash tray, but at the interruption of her thoughts.

She said quietly and firmly, “You understand, don’t you, that Virginia gets wild ideas sometimes. You mustn’t take them seriously.”

“I don’t.”

“This false arrest business would never do, you understand that.”

“Quite.” He didn’t remind her that he’d said the same thing himself, at least twice.

“Virginia can be very persuasive. I... I beg of you not to pay any attention to her. She doesn’t realize the consequences of such a thing — more publicity and investigations, policemen prying into things.”

“What things?”

“Everything,” she said, spreading her small plump hands. “Paul has suffered enough. Crank phone calls and letters, and reporters stopping him on the street.”

“It will all blow over.”

“Not if Virginia does anything further. Like this suit she wants to start.”

“No lawyer would touch it.”

It was his third or fourth reassurance. “That’s a relief,” she said, and Meecham thought the subject was closed until she added, “Why does Virginia want money so badly?”

“You’d better ask her.”

“She’d lie.”

“Maybe.”

“Not that she’s a liar, a real liar, but she’s secretive sometimes because she doesn’t understand how completely sympathetic I am to her.” She repeated the word completely with emphasis, as if denying an unspoken accusation of lack of sympathy. “I understand her, she’s my girl. We’ve always been very close.”

“I see that.”

“Tell me frankly, Mr. Meecham. Did you examine any of the reports about Virginia?”

“What reports?”

“While she was in — while she was there, they must have asked her questions, given her tests, things like that. They usually do, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know how they — turned out?”

“No.”

“I thought since you were... Well, it doesn’t really matter. Virginia’s normal, of course. A little spoiled, but completely normal.”

“I agree,” Meecham said. It was futile to say anything else.

Mrs. Hamilton looked at him gratefully. She had received the answer she wanted and now it was time to change the subject before Meecham could reverse or modify his answer. She said, “It’s been a sordid business. I’m glad it’s over, and I suppose you are too.”

“In a way.”

“Send me your bill as soon as possible. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying here. Or I can pay you right now, if you like, in cash.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Somewhere in the house a telephone rang, twice.

“You’ll come to our little celebration dinner tonight, Mr. Meecham?”

“Thanks, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it.” He never wanted to set foot in that house again, to be subtly imprisoned by a soft chair and a glass table and a quiet frantic woman. “I have some business to attend to.”

“Of course. You must have other clients, hundreds.”

“A few, anyway.”

“This man, Loftus. He’ll undoubtedly get a good lawyer?”

“Money or no money, he’ll get a lawyer of some kind.”

“Why do you say, money or no money?”

“If he can’t afford to pay, the court will appoint two lawyers for the defense. There’s no Public Defender here as there is in Los Angeles.”

“I didn’t realize we had such a thing. I’ve never had occasion to be interested in — matters like that.”

Quick light footsteps sounded in the hall, and a moment later Alice appeared in the doorway. She looked as if she had been working. Her hair was drawn back tightly behind her ears and tied with a blue ribbon, and she wore an apron that reached almost to her ankles. Her face was warm and flushed and pretty.

Mrs. Hamilton frowned, faintly but pointedly, in Alice’s direction, like a mother silencing a little girl, warning her not to interrupt while the grownups were talking. Or, if she had to interrupt, at least to remove her apron first.

“My dear Alice,” she said, “what have you been doing?”

“Cleaning.”

“You know perfectly well you’re not expected to do any of the household work.”

“I don’t mind. And it needed doing.”

Mrs. Hamilton turned to Meecham with a smile that seemed forced. “Now what would you do with a girl like that?”

“I don’t know,” Meecham said. He felt, quite irrationally, that Alice’s appearance had changed something in the room, broken a tension, snapped an invisible wire. He got up from the chair, pushing the glass table away until its bamboo legs shrieked in protest. The table was lighter than he thought.

Alice was watching him gravely from the doorway. “Your office called, Mr. Meecham. You’re to drop in there after you talk to Mr. Loftus.”

“Thank you.”

In the silence that followed Meecham could hear the ivy-planted wall bracket still dripping, very slowly and softly, like the final blood from a death wound.

Mrs. Hamilton had risen too, to face Meecham. “I think you might be quite a clever and devious creature, Mr. Meecham.”

“So is a weasel, so I won’t bother thanking you for that, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“You’ve been stringing me along,” she said in a cold flat voice. “You’re going to be Loftus’ lawyer, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“You can lie about it. Go on. Everybody else lies.”

“I’m not lying.”

“How can I believe you? How can I believe anybody?” She crossed the room, moving with agonizing slowness like a deep-sea diver forcing his leaden feet across the ocean floor, fighting a pressure he can’t see or understand. “I... Alice, I think I’ll go up to my room and rest awhile. Please see that Mr. Meecham is — looked after.”

Meecham watched her until she disappeared around a corner of the hall. Then he turned his head and looked at Alice, and in that moment he had two wishes, diverging in means, but with a common purpose: to get Alice away from that house. His first wish was that he had a mother or a father or a family of some kind so that he could invite Alice to stay with them. Since he had no family at all, he wished that Mrs. Hamilton would take Alice and board the earliest plane for home. Some day, some remote day when he had surplus time and money, he might go to see her. She might be married, by that time, married and with a couple of children; a placid contented matron, shopping, going to movies, lying in the sun. This projection into the future was so vivid, his sense of loss so acute, that he felt a tide of rage rise in him, rise and ebb, leaving a taste of salt.

He said, abruptly, “When are you leaving for home?”

“You mean L.A.?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Hamilton hasn’t told me.”

“You could tell her. Tell her you want to leave.”

“But I don’t want to,” she protested.

“Have you seen Virginia?”

“Yes, a few minutes ago, with Carney.”

“Suppose I told you I think Virginia is dangerous?”

“Are you trying to scare me? I don’t understand. Everything is all right now, isn’t it? Everything’s been settled?” She took a step back, away from him. “Or has it? Why are you going to see Loftus if you’re not his lawyer?”

“Because he asked me to.”

“As an old pal?”

“More or less.”

“You never saw him before last night, does that make you an old pal?”

“He thought I had an honest face,” Meecham said, “so I became his old pal right away. It happens, now and then, especially to a lonely guy in trouble. I’m a lonely guy myself and I’ve been in trouble, so I know a little about these things.” He put on his coat. “Nobody seems to like the idea of me talking to Loftus. I wonder why.”

“I don’t care, one way or the other. I was just puzzled.” She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of the oversize apron. “I guess I’m getting suspicious of everybody. I don’t know why.”

“That’s the trouble with suspicion, it infects even the nicest people. Good-bye, Alice.”

“Good-bye.”

He bent down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. She didn’t react in any way. She just stood there, looking surprised and a little forlorn.

He was halfway to the center of town before he realized that he hadn’t had any coffee after all. He wanted, then, to turn around and go back, not for the coffee he had missed, but because the solution of the problem had suddenly struck him. It was quite simple: the house should be abandoned like a ship about to sink under the weight of excess cargo. Alice and Mrs. Hamilton should go home, Carney get another job, Paul rent an office somewhere downtown. And Virginia — there was only one thing to do about Virginia: give her the money to run away, far away where the climate was good.

He thought of the expression on her face as she had watched the train go past and waved at the red caboose. Motion, change, speed, they were essential to Virginia. She should always be on a passing train, one that went round and round the world and never stopped.

9

Meecham didn’t go directly to the jail. The place he wanted to see first was on his way. He found it finally, after driving past twice — a small store with a single window, wedged inconspicuously between a bowling alley and a cigar shop.

A sign above the door was lettered in green and white: Doug Devine, Prop. There was no other identification, and none was needed. The window was piled to the ceiling with the scraps and leavings, the hopes and futilities, the desires and fears and evils, of human beings. Wedding rings and automatics, rosaries and hunting knives, worn shoes and violins; and, at the back of the window, the bland, ageless face of a grandfather clock. The clock was running, and on time: 10:35.

Inside the store a middle-aged man was sitting on a wicker bench examining a shotgun. The gun was old and grimy. About four or five inches of the barrel had been sawed off, and the rest of it was mended with black friction tape. It was a desperate weapon, as likely to explode when the trigger was pulled as to discharge its shot. Meecham wondered what desperate man had bought and sold it, and what desperate man would buy it and add another chapter to its dark allusive history.

Devine looked up from his task. He was a black Irishman with coarse curly hair and eyes bright as beetles. “It works,” he said briefly. “I tried it.”

“Oh?”

“Sure. But you never know what you’re going to hit. Aim it at your wife and you end up shooting the neighbor’s pet goldfish.”

“That could be good.”

“Oh, sure. No argument about that. No law against shooting up goldfish.” He got up and put the shotgun carefully on the wicker bench. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Maybe.”

“Buying or selling?”

“Buying.”

“I figure you for an insurance investigator,” Devine said. “Right or wrong?”

“Wrong.”

“I bet I was close.”

“Pretty close.”

“I’m always close. Practically the only thing I know in this whole cockeyed world is people and I can’t make a nickel out of it. Give me an idea what you’re interested in. You want to start music lessons, we got a nice clarinet.”

“No, thanks. What I...”

“Fellow that sold it to me said it once belonged to Benny Goodman. Funny thing, how a lot of people dream up the same old stuff and think it’s new. There’s not a clarinet in any pawnshop east of Frisco that ain’t been played by Goodman or Artie Shaw. We got some nice bargains in jewelry.”

“I was thinking of a picture frame.”

“Just the frame?”

“Yes.”

“We got some first-class framed oil paintings, some genuine Manderheim’s.”

“I never heard of Manderheim.”

“I never did either, but you’d be surprised how many I’ve sold.” He pointed to a picture of a vase of roses and ivy that was propped against the legs of an up-ended chair. “See that, over there. If I told my customers that somebody’s Aunt Agnes painted it on her kitchen table, I couldn’t give it away. But Manderheim — well, he’s different, he’s strictly class. Romantic, even. You want to know why he doesn’t sign his pictures? Well, he’s run away with another man’s wife, see, and he doesn’t want to be recognized because the husband is out gunning for him. Yes, sir, people will believe anything if it’s preposterous enough.” He added, with a touch of gloom, “Funny thing is, I damn near believe in Manderheim myself.”

So did Meecham. “Maybe some other time I’ll take a Manderheim,” he said. “Right now all I want is a frame. My girlfriend had her picture taken last week. By a curious coincidence her name’s Manderheim too.”

Devine didn’t smile. “You want a silver frame?”

“Yes.”

“About eight by ten?”

“About that.”

Devine was silent a moment, rubbing the side of his chin with his hand. His skin was like sandpaper. “I’m in a peculiar business, mister, and I get peculiar people in here asking for peculiar things. Now there’s nothing special about a silver picture frame by itself. I buy one occasionally, sell one occasionally. What’s peculiar is that this morning, inside of one little hour, I get three calls for a silver frame. You’re the third. The second was a cop, and the first was a lady.”

“Who was she?”

“State your business, mister.”

Meecham took one of his professional cards from his wallet.

Devine accepted the card, read it with a grunt and dropped it on the floor. “I told the cop, and I’m telling you. I didn’t know her from Adam.”

“You said people are your specialty. You must have noticed her.”

“Sure, sure. I figured her for a nurse, or maybe a schoolteacher. She was ordinary, not bad-looking not good-looking, not well-dressed, not poorly dressed. Forty, or there-abouts, thin, had a sharp nose. Looked like she’d been crying or had a bad cold. She was standing outside when I opened up the store at nine. She said she wanted a few odds and ends for her house, and would I mind if she looked around. She went through the whole place very methodically, like someone who’s used to looking for things. It took her about twenty minutes to find what she wanted: the silver frame, a table radio, and an onyx pen and pencil set. $48.50 for the works. A steal.”

“Have you seen the papers this morning?”

“I’ve got four kids,” Devine said. “When you got four kids you don’t read the paper until night when they’re all in bed. Why?”

Meecham ignored the question. “I suppose you remember who sold you the articles that this woman bought.”

“Certainly. I both remember and I got it written down on my books. He’s a young man I’ve done business with before. Sometimes he pawns a couple things, sometimes sells them outright like yesterday. His name’s Desmond. Duane Desmond.” He studied Meecham’s face for a moment. “That’s a phony, eh? I kind of thought it might be. What’s his real tag?”

“Earl Loftus.”

“Why all the sudden interest in him? He dead or something?”

“He’s in jail.”

“Is that a fact?” Devine showed no surprise. “Well, like they say, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Who was the lady who bought the stuff he sold me?”

“I thought you might have recognized her,” Meecham said with a wry little smile. “It was Manderheim’s mistress.”

Devine blushed like a girl. “Oh, can it now. What the hell.” He followed Meecham to the door. “The stuff I got from Desmond — Loftus, I mean — it wasn’t hot?”

“No.”

“That’s a relief. I wonder why the woman bought it all back again?”

“Maybe to return it to him.” Maybe to remember him by, he added silently. He thought of the way she had sat in Loftus’ room, her head buried in her hands, in silent grief. He said, “There was no picture in the frame?”

“Sure there was. A nice-looking woman, sixty or thereabouts, white hair. I figured at first it must be Loftus’ mother. I asked him didn’t he want to take the picture out and keep it, and he said no. So I guess it wasn’t his mother.”

“I think it was.”

“Well, now that’s strange, eh? You’d think a guy would keep a picture of his own mother.”

It was strange. Particularly strange in the case of Loftus, the devoted son. “What did you do with it?”

“Threw it away. It was no pin-up, what else would I do?”

“Maybe you could remember where you threw it.”

“Sure I could remember, for all the good it will do. I put it in the furnace and burned it along with the other rubbish. It was just an ordinary picture, ordinary woman. How was I to know anybody’d want it? What do you want it for, anyway?”

“I don’t. I’m just curious. I’d like to know why Loftus didn’t keep it.”

“Maybe he was sore at her. I get sore at my old lady.”

“You may be right.” Meecham opened the door. After the mustiness of the shop the winter wind felt fresh and clean. “Thanks for the information.”

“Welcome. Come in again.”

“I will.” Meecham stepped out into the street and stood for a moment in front of the cluttered window, buttoning his topcoat. When he looked back into the store, he saw that Devine had returned to the wicker bench and was sitting with the ancient shotgun across his knees.

10

He found Loftus in a small room across the hall from the Sheriff’s office. Loftus was alone, and not under restraint of any kind, though there was a policeman outside in the corridor.

Meecham knew the policeman. His name was Samuels; he was nearing retirement age, his legs and feet bothered him, and he suffered from attacks of hiccups that sometimes lasted for hours. Whenever Samuels got the hiccups his colleagues planned intricate, and occasionally hilarious, ways of scaring them away. None of them worked.

“Hello, Samuels,” Meecham said. “How are things?”

“Bad. You got here just in time. They’re taking your boy in there away.”

“Where to?”

“The doc says he should be in a hospital. So as soon as I get the transfer papers, that’s where I’m taking him, out to County.”

“I’ll talk to him first. Mind if I close this door?”

Samuels shrugged, a magnificently eloquent shrug which implied that as far as he was concerned every door in the place should be shut and the whole building blown up.

Meecham went inside and closed the door. The room was very small, furnished with a card table and three folding chairs, all different, a bridge lamp, a davenport with two broken springs, and a swivel chair with a cracked and worn leather seat. Everything in the room seemed to be discards from other rooms and offices, including the pictures that lined the windowless walls: photographs of the Detroit Red Wings, Abraham Lincoln, a sailboat, Dizzy Dean, and a score of unnamed and unremembered magistrates and judges and policemen.

Loftus was sitting in one of the folding chairs, staring up at the ceiling ventilator, his eyes strained and supplicating, as if they saw, beyond the ventilator, the sky; and beyond the sky the great hole of eternity already open for him.

Meecham said, “Loftus?”

Loftus moaned, faintly, the protesting sound of a man returning from a dream.

“Sorry I’m late, Loftus. Are you feeling all right?”

“I’ve been trying to pray. My mind won’t let me, it keeps flying, flying through space.” He lowered his head, and his eyes met Meecham’s. “They’re taking me away. I think I’m dying.”

The ventilator whirred like wings.

“No. No, you’re not, Loftus. Cordwink thinks you’ll be more comfortable in the hospital, have more care, better food.” He spoke too heartily, in an attempt to cover his conviction that the care and comfort were too late, the food useless to a man who couldn’t eat.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital. Please. I don’t want to go, Mr. Meecham.”

“I can’t prevent them doing what’s best for you.”

“It’s not best. I hate that air, smelling of sickness. I... well, I’ll go, of course. I’ll go. There’s no choice.” He glanced down at the suitcase beside his feet. It was the first time Meecham noticed it. “Emmy came to see me this morning.”

“Mrs. Hearst?”

“Yes. They wouldn’t let her in, but they let me have the stuff she brought me, some of my clothes and my radio. I don’t know how she got the radio. I sold it yesterday.”

“She bought it back from Devine this morning.”

“She? God! She must have found out about the name I... I used.”

“Maybe not,” Meecham said. “I did, though.”

“Duane Desmond. How do you like that for a grown man, eh? Funny, isn’t it? I don’t know what got into me. Duane Desmond. God!” He pounded the flimsy card table with his fist. One of the hinged legs collapsed and the table sagged but didn’t fall. Loftus bent down and straightened the hinge, looking a little ashamed of himself. “You won’t tell Emmy.”

“Why should I?”

“She mustn’t find out. She doesn’t know I’m a fool.” He rested his head on his hands. Meecham saw then the toothmarks on the knuckles of both of Loftus’ hands. Even in the dim yellow light of the old bridge lamp they were plainly the marks of teeth, and one of them was bleeding. The blood looked like any other blood to Meecham. But he knew that this blood was venom, and that the long night — when Loftus had sat in silent frenzy biting his knuckles — was only the beginning of a longer night.

Meecham was seized by a sensation of incredible helplessness. He wanted to communicate with Loftus, to express sympathy and friendship, but the words he knew were inadequate as all words are inadequate in the imminence of death. For the first time in his life Meecham experienced a sense of religion, a feeling that the only way he and Loftus could communicate with each other was through a third being, a translator of the spirit.

Loftus turned his head suddenly. “You went to Devine’s to check up on me, Mr. Meecham?”

“I had to find out what happened to the articles that were missing from your room, whether you’d given them away, pawned them, sold them.”

“Is that so important?”

“It’s important because Cordwink has — or had — an idea that someone paid you to kill Margolis.”

“Is that your idea too?”

“No. I think you sold the stuff to Devine because you were broke. If you were broke, obviously you weren’t paid.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Certainly. You could tell me anything you like but it wouldn’t necessarily be the truth.”

“You think I’m a liar, Mr. Meecham?” he said, anxiously.

“You’re human.”

“All this checking up on me, it’s not necessary. I ask no favors. I’m a guilty man and I’m willing to take my punishment. But this prying — this unnecessary...”

“What you say isn’t evidence unless it’s backed by what you’ve done.”

“I guess you’re right. But whatever you find out, don’t tell Emmy.”

“What is there to find out?”

Loftus didn’t answer. He was gnawing on his bleeding knuckles again.

“She’s very fond of you, Loftus.”

“She is, yes, I’m sure she is. I... What did...? You were talking to her last night, what did she say about me?”

“She was full of praise, of course; how kind and thoughtful you were, and a little bit about your history.”

Footsteps passed in the corridor beyond the door. They sounded faint and far away.

“It’s hard to admit you’re nothing,” Loftus said. “I’m admitting it now. My life has been without meaning or purpose or satisfaction. I should never have been born; my father didn’t want children and my mother felt trapped by the responsibility. The whole thing has been a mistake from beginning to end. I am afraid of my moment of dying, terribly afraid. But I will be glad to be gone. You don’t read poetry, Mr. Meecham?”

“No.”

“There’s a phrase that Yeats used. I have it written down in my book.” He took a little black notebook from his shirt pocket and leafed through it. Each page that Meecham could see was crammed from top to bottom with writing, writing so small that it seemed impossible to read with the naked eye. He wondered whether this was Loftus’ natural handwriting, or whether he wrote that way deliberately to save space in the little book.

“Here it is,” Loftus said. “I’m not sure exactly what it means, it’s out of context. But this one phrase keeps cropping up in my head lately: ‘That this pragmatical preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem, Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme.’

“‘Pragmatical preposterous pig of a world,’” he said, spitting out the words like pits that he’d been chewing too long. “That describes it. I will be glad to leave.”

He lapsed into silence again. The only sound in the room was the whirring of the ventilator, though there was a sensation of sound and movement, as if beyond the closed door many things were happening, preposterous things.

Meecham said, “Why did you ask me to come here?”

“I want to hire you. Oh, not to defend me, that won’t be necessary. But there are one or two little things that I won’t be able to take care of. I’d like you to do them for me.”

“What are they?”

“I have some money. I sold my car and a few little articles. It amounted to $716.00 I want my mother to have it.”

“Where is it?”

“Emmy will give it to you. It’s in an envelope in the middle of a package of letters. Deduct your fee, whatever it is, and give the rest of the money and all the letters to my mother. They’re her letters. She wrote them to me when I came here. Tell her...” He hesitated, clenching and unclenching his hands. “Tell her to reread them, every one of them, to see... No. No, don’t tell her that. Let her do what she likes with them. It’s too late anyway. Just give her the money and tell her to go away somewhere for a while.”

“Why?”

“She can’t... can’t face things very well. It’s better if she goes away. Her address was in one of the morning papers. That’s bad. She may be hounded by reporters or — well, Kincaid is a small cruel town.”

“I’ll deliver your message. I don’t guarantee that I can persuade her to leave.”

“You can try. Here, I’ll write the address down for you.”

“Don’t bother, I saw the papers,” Meecham said. He remembered the address, not from any newspaper, but from the Railway Express consignment slip that had been pasted across Loftus’ suitcase: From Mrs. Charles E. Loftus, 231 Oak Street, Kincaid, Michigan, to Mr. Earl Duane Loftus, 611 Division Street, Arbana, Michigan. Contents valued at $50.00.

“I know it’s asking a lot, Mr. Meecham. But if you could go sometime today, get to her first — it’s only a hundred miles...”

“I’ll go today.”

“Thank you.” Loftus rose, clumsily, supporting himself by leaning one hand on the card table and the other on the back of the chair. “Thank you very much.”

“Why didn’t you keep her picture, Loftus?”

“I wanted to be alone. Entirely alone, without even a picture. Can you understand that?”

“It isn’t a good thing to be alone. Relatives have a way of standing by in emergencies. Haven’t you got any, except your mother?”

“I had a wife once. She left me, got a divorce. I can’t blame her. She was a big, strong, healthy woman. At least she was then, I haven’t seen her for a long time.”

“Has it occurred to you that your mother might want to come here to see you?”

Loftus shrugged, wearily. “She won’t come. Oh, she’ll want to come, she may even plan to come, have everything arranged, suitcase neatly packed, everything. She may even get as far as the bus depot. Then she’ll take a little drink to calm her nerves. You can guess the rest.”

“Yes.” He recalled the number of books about alcoholism that Loftus kept in his room.

“She was always death against liquor. She never had a drink until she was nearly fifty. My father had run out on her by that time, and one day she went out and bought a bottle of wine to calm her nerves. It happened right away. One drink, and she was a drunk. She’d been a drunk for maybe thirty years and didn’t find it out until then. For her the world vanished in that instant. She has never seen it since. She never will again.”

“Perhaps. There are cures.”

Loftus only shook his head.

“I’ll see to it personally that she comes to visit you, if you want her to.”

“No, thank you,” Loftus said politely. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

The door from the corridor opened and the policeman, Samuels, came in. He had taken his handcuffs from the leather case fastened to his belt and he was playing with them, clicking them from wide to narrow and back again, the way Miss Jennings played with her ring of keys and for the same reason, because he was bored and a little embarrassed.

“All through, Mr. Meecham? We got orders to be on the move.”

Meecham turned to Loftus. “Are we all through?”

“I think so,” Loftus said.

“If something else comes up, let me know. In any case, I’ll be around to see you when I’ve transacted the business we discussed. Perhaps early in the morning.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll see Emmy right away.”

“Tell her not to worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“I will. Good luck.”

Meecham stood in the doorway of the small windowless room and watched the two men go down the corridor, handcuffed together, walking slowly and in step. Then he turned, abruptly, and walked as fast as he could in the other direction and out the rear entrance.

It was noon, but there was no sun. The sky hung close over the smoky city like a sagging tent top that would some day blow away, exposing the vast blackness of space.

Meecham waited for the traffic signal to change. A car went through the yellow light and almost sideswiped another car. Both drivers began to curse, ineffectually through closed windows, like little boys hurling threats from the safety of their own doorsteps. A woman came out of the supermarket across the street, jerking the arm of the crying child staggering along behind her. An old man on crutches inched his way across the icy sidewalk to the curb and stood eyeing the speeding cars with hate and fear.

A column of bitterness rose like mercury in Meecham’s throat. Pig of a world, he thought. Preposterous pig of a world.

11

When he rang the doorbell Emmy Hearst answered it herself, immediately, as if she’d been there at the door watching from behind the lace curtains of the little window for someone who would never come. Her eyes were so swollen that they didn’t look like human eyes at all, but like twin blisters raised by fire. When she spoke she held one hand against her throat as if to ease its aching:

You saw him?”

Mecham nodded. “Yes.”

I tried to. They wouldn’t let me. They said I had no right, no right.” She clung to the door for support, a tall strong woman who had come abruptly, in a single day, to the end of her strength.

They’ve transferred him to the hospital,” Meecham said.

He’ll get good care there. Won’t he?”

“Of course.”

There was a burst of masculine laughter from one of the rooms on the second floor.

Mrs. Hearst glanced nervously at the staircase. “I can’t ask you to come in, I... I’m busy. I have business to attend to.”

Mecham said, “I can’t stay anyway. Loftus asked me to pick up a package of letters that he wants me to take to his mother.”

“His mother,” she said quietly. “Always his mother. She’s a stone around his neck, drowning him, she’s like a... Yes, I have the letters. They’re in the kitchen. I’ll get them for you.”

She went down the hall and through the swinging door into the kitchen. Meecham heard her give a little cry of surprise: “Why... why, I thought you were upstairs.”

“Well, I’m not upstairs. How do you like that, eh?”

The door stopped swinging and settled into place, entombing the sound waves in its heavy oak. But the woman’s little cry of surprise hung in the air for a moment like a question mark of smoke and then disintegrated.

Meecham waited, uneasy and depressed. The front door was still open and he didn’t close it; he felt that she had left it open deliberately. The wind blew down the hall and up the stairs, agitating the lace curtains and the coats and sweaters hanging on the old-fashioned hall rack. On the floor beside the rack there was a pile of rubbers and galoshes and a pair of battered tube skates and one gym shoe with the name Kryboski inked on each side.

Meecham looked at his watch and then coughed, a long purposeful cough. A minute later the swinging door opened again and Mrs. Hearst came toward him with a brown package under her arm. She was lurching slightly, as if she was carrying either inside the package or inside herself something heavy that threw her off balance.

She thrust the package at him. It was very light. “Here. Please go. Please.”

“Certainly,” Meecham said. But he was a little too late. A man had come out of the kitchen, a big ruddy-faced man with fair hair. A hall-length away he looked quite distinguished and physically powerful. But as he came nearer, the shaft of light from the open door exposed the fraud like an efficient camera. His body was running to fat, and his face was disfigured by lines of indecision and self-doubt, ambition gone sour and life gone sour. His pale eyes moved constantly, back and forth, like birds at sea looking for a piece of kelp to rest on. He was one of those men Meecham recognized as a common type; the big boy whose mind and emotions had never been able to keep up with his maturing body. With the years the gap widened and the personality narrowed. He was, perhaps, forty-five.

Mrs. Hearst deliberately turned her head away as he approached. When she spoke she didn’t look at either of the men, she seemed to be addressing the grease-darkened lilies that climbed the wall:

“This is my husband, Jim.”

“Say, what is all this anyhow?” Hearst said. “Just what is it? Mysterious packages, cops in the house, Emmy bawling all over the joint. A guy has a right to know, don’t he?”

He tugged, self-consciously, at his tie. The checked suit he wore was a little too tight around the hips, and the sleeves were too short, so that his wrists stuck out, not the vulnerable pipe-stem wrists of a growing boy, but thick wrists covered with coarse gold hairs. His manner, his clothes, his expression, they all added to his air of chronic failure... the air of a man who has tried and quit a hundred jobs in a hundred places, always out of step and off-beat.

“Well? Ain’t anybody going to say anything but me? Not that I can’t do the talking. I’ve got plenty to say and plenty to ask too.”

“Shut up, Jim,” Mrs. Heart said, without turning.

“Now she tells me, shut up. Mind my own business, she says. Maybe that’s my trouble, I have minded my own business. I’ve winked an eye at things.” He looked at his wife. “Some pretty funny things, eh, Emmy?”

“Shut up,” she repeated listlessly. “He’s not a cop, he’s a lawyer. And the package... Oh, you tell him, Mr. Meecham. Tell him what’s in the package since he won’t believe me.”

“They’re letters,” Meecham said. “Written to Loftus by his mother. I’m returning them to her at his request.”

Hearst looked disappointed. “Just a bunch of old letters, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“You mean all the value they’ve got is just sentimental?”

“Yes.” Meecham didn’t mention the money in one of the envelopes. He had the notion that if Hearst knew there was money involved he would put up a fight to keep it; a not unreasonable fight, since the package had been left in his own kitchen, and he, Meecham, had no power of attorney for Loftus, and, in fact, no proof that the package even belonged to Loftus.

But Hearst had already lost interest in the package. He was watching his wife, his eyes moving constantly in their sockets but keeping her within range. “He’s quite a sentimental guy, Loftus is. Too bad I don’t have that sentimental stuff, the ladies are crazy for it. And manners he’s got too, real fancy manners that makes an ordinary guy feel like a bum. I’m not a bum. I’m a rough diamond, sure, but I don’t go around carving people up either. Eh, Emmy?”

“I don’t know what you do when you’re out of town,” she said distinctly. “And I don’t care.”

“I work. That’s what I do. I work.” The word seemed to stimulate him. He turned to Meecham, suddenly animated: “Right now I’m pushing a new product we got out, a soapless suds. Best thing on the market, Noscrub it’s called. I’m in charge of out-of-town advertising.”

“You distribute free samples from door to door,” his wife said, still speaking in the same clear and distinct way, like a teacher correcting the repeated lies of a small boy.

“That’s right, build me up. That’s great. Funny how you could get so mealy-mouthed over Loftus because he read books instead of doing a man’s work. Books and soft talk...”

“A man’s work. A two-year-old could be taught to deliver samples from door to door.”

His face purpled and he seemed ready to strike her. He looked, for the first time, decisive, sure of his ground and his rights. But the moment passed. His anger, like his other emotions, was not quite fully developed; it turned against himself so that he was his own victim.

“Wait till the product catches on,” he said. “Just wait.”

“Yes, Jim.”

“I’ll be advertising manager, I’ve got Weber’s word for it.”

“Yes, Jim.”

“Yes Jim, yes Jim, yes Jim.” He shook his head, in a new anger and an old despair. “Goddam it, build me up, Emmy. Like a real wife, build me up.”

“The higher you’re built the sooner you’ll fall.”

“You built him up. Earl this, Earl that, Earl you’re wonderful.”

“I never said he was wonderful.”

“You did. I heard you.”

“People who spy at doors will hear anything, and what they don’t hear they’ll make up.”

“I didn’t have to spy at doors. It was here, all over the place, right under my nose.” His eyes shifted to Meecham. “How about that, eh? You take a guy into your home, you treat him right, treat him like your own...”

“You never said a civil word to him in your life.” She was examining the wallpaper again. “Not a civil word.”

“You said enough for both of us, didn’t you? What do you think, I should of shook his hand for making me feel like an old bum?”

“I haven’t had a friend since I left school, man or woman, not a friend. That’s what Earl is to me, a friend.”

“I’ve kicked around in my life, and one thing I know, there’s no such thing as a man and woman being friends. It’s not in the books. It’s against nature.”

“Your nature, maybe. Not...”

“Anybody’s nature!”

“Keep your voice down. The boys might hear you.”

“Let them. Maybe they’ll learn a thing or two.”

“If you don’t mind,” Meecham said, “I’d better be going.”

Neither of them paid the slightest attention. They were absorbed in each other, like boxers in a ring, each of them intent only on the other’s weak spots and unguarded moments.

She had crossed her arms on her chest, as if protecting a vulnerable place. “What are you accusing me of? Say it.”

“I will.”

“Well, go on. Say it in front of Mr. Meecham here. He’s a lawyer.”

“Sure, I’ll say it. I don’t care if he’s President Truman.”

“Well, what’s stopping you? Go on, go on.”

“He was your lover,” Hearst said. “That piddling little shrimp was your lover.”

“You fool,” she whispered. “You terrible fool.” She began to cry, very quietly, her forehead pressing against the wall. Tears fell from her swollen eyes and splattered the greasy lilies of the wallpaper. Her head moved, from one side to another, in misery and denial.

“Emmy?”

“Go away.”

“It’s not true then, eh, Emmy?”

“What do you think? A sick man — a dying man — what — do — you — think?”

“I... well...”

He looked with pathetic uncertainty at Meecham, like a small boy who had made his mother cry and sought reassurance that eventually she would stop and everything would be all right again.

“Emmy?” He touched her shoulder tentatively. “I didn’t mean nothing, Emmy. You know me, I shoot off at the mouth, sure, but I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head. If you was only honest with me, Emmy. If you was only honest.”

Meecham went out the door with the package under his arm. Neither of them noticed or cared.

Outside, the wind was fresh, but he had a sensation of suffocating heaviness in his throat and chest, as if the slices of life he had seen in the course of the morning were too sharp and fibrous to be swallowed.

12

Highway 12 ran due west from Arbana to Kincaid, just over fifty miles of straight road through flat countryside. Under better circumstances it might have been an hour drive. But heavy trucks and heavy weather had pocked and dented the road, and beyond Jackson the snow began to fall in huge wet flakes that clung to the windshield like glue. Every few minutes Meecham had to slow down to give the windshield wipers more power and speed.

When he reached Kincaid it was five, and the street lights were on. Here and there a few houses were already decorated for Christmas, with strings of colored lights along the porches, clusters of pine branches and cones attached to the doors. The shops and the streets were crowded, and the crowds looked gay as if freshened by the new snow.

He had no trouble finding Oak Street. It crossed the main highway at a traffic signal in the center of town.

Two Hundred Thirty-one was a two-story, white-brick apartment house in a neighborhood that derived its brash but decaying air from nearby slums. Meecham parked his car and crossed the street with the brown package under his arm. The building itself was well kept, and nailed to the front door there was a Christmas wreath, a red cellophane bell surrounded by artificial spruce boughs and red wax berries. The snow made the spruce and the berries look quite real.

Inside the small lobby there was a row of locked mailboxes and on the wall a black arrow pointing to the basement, and a sign, Manager’s Office. The third mailbox belonged to Loftus’ mother: Mrs. C. E. Loftus, Apartment Five.

Meecham walked down the hall. The carpeting was worn but clean, and the air smelled pungently of paint. Someone in the building obviously had a flair for lettering. All over the walls there were elaborately executed instructions: APARTMENTS ONE — FIVE, THIS WAY →→. NO SMOKING IN CORRIDORS. KEEP YOUR RADIO LOW AFTER ELEVEN O’CLOCK PLEASE. NO SOLICITING. PLEASE USE NIGHT BELL ONLY WHEN NECESSARY. NIGHT BELL ↓↓.

Number Five had a fire extinguisher fastened to the wall just outside the door. Meecham pressed the buzzer, waited half a minute, and pressed it again, twice. There was no response. He went back to the lobby and down the steps to the basement following the Manager’s Office arrow.

A small man past middle age, in a peaked painting cap and splattered overalls, was squatting in a full knee bend outside the door, putting masking tape around the knob. He turned when he heard Meecham’s footsteps, turned without rising and without losing his balance even for a moment. His back was straight as a board.

“Yes, sir?”

“Are you the manager?”

“Yes, sir, I am. Victor Garino.”

“I’m looking for Mrs. Loftus. I’m Eric Meecham, a friend of Earl’s, her son.”

Garino’s eyes behind his rimless spectacles looked misty.

“Oh, you are? Earl’s a fine boy. You tried her apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Well, come in, come inside.” He opened the door and Meecham preceded him into a small living room. The room was so crowded with furniture and knickknacks that there was hardly any space to move. In a box beside an electric heater a litter of kittens was mewling, while the mother cat stalked around and around the box with a kind of angry dignity, as if ashamed of the way her children were behaving in front of a stranger.

“You like cats, Mr. Meecham? Yes?”

“Very much.” He had never particularly liked or disliked them but the sight of the tiny furry bodies stirred something inside him.

“Yes, I like all animals, but cats, ah, they’re quiet and quick, and they earn their keep. We never have any complaints about rats,” Garino added proudly. “Never. Sit down, will you? Then I can sit down too. Ah, that’s better. You came from Earl, eh? How is he?”

“The same as usual.”

“Ah, yes. Did you...? You knocked on her door very loud, did you? Sometimes she’s hard of hearing. Also she’s a deep sleeper.”

“Also she gets loaded.”

“Yes,” Garino said in a melancholy voice. “She gets loaded very bad. Often’s the time I let myself in her apartment with my passkey just to see she’s not burning the place down or something. She’s a problem. She’s a nice lady but she’s a problem.”

“I can see that.”

“How we found out, Mama and me, was by the incinerator. Rum bottles. Empty rum bottles kept coming down the chute all the time making a fine mess. Mama said it must be Mrs. Loftus. No, I said, no, how could it be, such a nice dignified lady drinking all that rum. Mama was right, though.” Garino’s eyes were sad as a hound’s. “I went up and asked Mrs. Loftus please not to throw rum bottles down the chute. Right away she denied it, acted real shocked. Why, Victor, she said, why, Victor, you know I never touch the stuff. It must be the young couple upstairs, she said.”

The mother cat had settled down beside Garino on the davenport and was purring in her sleep.

“After that,” Garino said, “there were no more rum bottles in the incinerator. She took them out and threw them somewhere. I often saw her go down the street with a paper bag full of bottles. It looked funny, her such a lady walking down the street to dispose of her garbage. Ah, we feel bad, Mama and me. The bottles didn’t make such a great mess, we would have just let her keep on using the incinerator.”

“Maybe you should.”

“It’s too late now. If I went and told her it was all right to use the incinerator she couldn’t pretend any more, she couldn’t have any pride left. That wouldn’t be good. Anyway” — Garino spread his hands — “she’s not such a terrible bother. Her rent is always paid, Earl sends it to me. And she is quiet. No parties, no company. She keeps to herself. Sometimes when she forgets to eat, Mama takes her up a little plate of something. She’s not a common drunkard, you understand. She’s a lady who’s had one sorrow too many. Some people get strong under sorrows. Other people, they snap like twigs, they break, it’s not their fault.”

“What sorrows?” Meecham said.

“First, they lost their money and then her husband ran away, just left one afternoon while she was at a movie. After that her son went out and got married, left her alone. For nearly a year she was alone and then Earl and his wife came back and they all lived together up in Number Five. That was worse than being alone because there were fights all the time, just words, but loud nasty words, between Earl and his wife, and Earl and his mother, and his mother and his wife. Fighting, fighting, over everything.”

“What was his wife’s name?”

“Birdie, they called her. Such a silly name. She wasn’t anything like a bird. She was a big woman, older than Earl, and quite pleasant unless you crossed her... She had a terrible temper, just terrible. Maybe everything would have worked out, though, if the three of them didn’t have to live together, if there wouldn’t’ve been that jealousy between the two women. As it was, Birdie left town — she’d only been here a month or so — and a little while afterwards Earl got a legal notice that she’d divorced him in some other state, Nevada, I think.”

“When was that?”

“About two years ago. Upped and left just as suddenly as Mr. Loftus had left. After that Earl began to change. No one knew he was sick, he just got quieter and never went out. First we thought it was sadness over Birdie. He was crazy over her, and when she was in a good mood she babied him and fussed over him like a mother. Mrs. Loftus never babied him, being such a baby herself in some ways. Yes, we thought Earl’s trouble was lovesick. But he didn’t get any better. One day he went to Arbana, he wanted to look up some books in the University Library, he was always book crazy. He never came back here. He wrote his mother, he paid her rent, everything was friendly, but he never came back. Maybe it was true what Mrs. Loftus told me — that he had to stay there for hospital treatments. But we have a hospital here. So...” He sighed. “Ah well, I’m getting to be an old gossip. More and more, an old gossip.” He got up from the davenport and then reached down and patted the cat’s head as if apologizing for making too abrupt a move. “I’ll go and ask Mama if she saw Mrs. Loftus go out.”

When he opened the kitchen door, a rich odor of oil and garlic spilled out, submerging the smell of paint. Meecham went over to the box of kittens and knelt down beside it. They were all asleep now, piled haphazardly on top of one another in a corner. He touched one of them very gently with his forefinger, and immediately the mother cat sauntered over to the box with the casual but alert air of a policeman who doesn’t want to start trouble but intends to be around if trouble appears.

Garino returned, followed by a short broad woman in a cotton housedress. She obviously wasn’t Italian like her husband. Her hair was light brown, her eyes green, and she had a certain brusqueness of movement and speech that suggested impatience.

Garino started to speak. “Mama said, yes, Mrs. Loftus went out early this morning. To the grocery store, that’s what Mama thought, only Mama thought maybe she’d come back again and...”

“I can tell it, Victor,” his wife said. “After all, I’ve got a tongue in my head.” She flashed a glance at Meecham. “I guess Victor told you about her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there you have it. When she goes out I never know when she’ll come home or how she’ll come home or if she’ll come home. Nobody knows. She doesn’t know herself.” Mrs. Garino crossed her arms on her chest with slightly exaggerated belligerence. “She’s been gone all day. You know what that means, Victor.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Remember last time.”

“Yes. Yes, Mama.”

“You’d better go and start looking for her.”

Garino glanced at Meecham with an air of apology. “Usually she stays in her apartment and drinks quietly by herself. But sometimes...”

“This is a sometime,” his wife said sharply. “You get your coat on, Victor. You find her. We’ve got other tenants to consider too. Remember last time.”

“What happened last time?” Meecham addressed the question to Garino.

Garino looked down at his hands. “She got in trouble, arrested. After that she was in the hospital for two weeks. She was sick.”

“She had the D. T.’s.” Mrs. Garino’s face had gone a little hard. “You hurry up now, Victor.”

“All right, all right.”

“I’ll go with you,” Meecham said. “I have to find her anyway.”

The woman turned and gave him a long level stare. “Why?”

“I have something for her.”

“Money?”

“Yes.”

Garino had gone into the next room to get his coat. “She’ll blow it all in two days,” his wife said in a low voice. “Victor, in there, he thinks I’m getting sour. Yes, and maybe I am. I’ve got myself to consider too. All this extra work and worry and none of it doing one sliver of good, sure I’m sour. But Victor... Ha, Victor thinks she’s a lady, and ladies don’t get to be common ordinary drunks. Ha. Victor’s been in this country for twenty years and he still thinks like a Wop, still talks about ladies. People are people. Everyone’s people.”

Garino stood in the doorway with his hat and coat on and a woolen muffler crossed at his neck. “You talk too much, Mama.” He added, to Meecham, “Scotch women are jealous.”

Mrs. Garino’s face was white. “Jealous! Me, jealous!”

“Yes, you are.” Garino went over and kissed her affectionately on the forehead. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“As if I cared.”

“You could make some fresh coffee and have it ready.”

“I wouldn’t make you any coffee for all the money in the world.”

“I’m not offering you money.”

“Me, jealous. That’s funny. That’s a scream.”

“Get me a clean handkerchief, will you, Mama?”

She went into the next room, muttering under her breath. When she returned with the handkerchief she didn’t hand it to him; she threw it at him from the doorway. He caught it, one-handed, and then he went out the door, smiling. Meecham followed him up the steps and through the lobby and into the street.

Garino was still smiling. “Ah, now, you mustn’t be embarrassed, Mr. Meecham. That wasn’t a quarrel. Mama and I have been married for twenty-one years. When I get home there will be fresh coffee on the stove and I will tell Mama I love her and she will admit she’s a little jealous.”

“That’s all there is to it, eh?”

“Not at first, no. But after twenty-one years we have worked out some short cuts. We have a system.”

“My car’s across the road,” Meecham said.

“We could walk. I know some of the places where she goes, only two or three blocks away. But then, maybe you don’t like walking?”

“It’s all right for women and children.”

They crossed the street and got into Meecham’s car.

13

At half-past eight they were still searching, and Garino was getting hungry and beginning to worry about what his wife would say when he got home.

“Always before, I’ve found her,” Garino said. “She doesn’t go from place to place, a drink here, a drink there, like some people. She’s shy of strangers. There are only two or three little bars that she ever goes to.”

The two or three little bars had expanded into twenty, of all sizes. No one had seen, or admitted having seen, Mrs. Loftus.

Making a sudden decision, Meecham swung the car around in a U-turn at the next corner. “I’ll take you home, Garino.”

“No, no. Mama said, find her. I’ve got to...”

“There’s no point in both of us wasting time and this is my job, not yours,” Meecham said. The fact was, that although he enjoyed Garino’s company, Garino slowed him down; he seemed to know everyone in town and he stopped to chat, shake hands, inquire after wives and children, like a politician touring the city, not forgetting the details in spite of more important issues in his mind. Meecham’s impatience had spread from the weather and the ugly little city to the Garinos and to Mrs. Loftus herself. She was a pathetic figure, but her very pathos was a burden and a nuisance. He wished he had never heard of her.

“This is my job,” he repeated. “You’ve done what you could, Garino.”

“Little enough,” Garino said gloomily. “I don’t know where else. She has no friends anymore.”

“I’ll take you home.”

“To tell the truth, I have a stomach-ache. Yes, and the cats... I have to look after the cats. And the furnace too, suppose it needs shaking down and Mama can’t shake it down right, and the complaints start coming in, no heat, no hot water...”

His voice trailed away. Meecham turned left, in the direction of Oak Street, while Garino sat, stiff and uncomfortable, his back barely touching the back of the seat, as if he was unaccustomed to driving in cars and wasn’t sure what disaster the next corner would bring.

“Do you think you’ll find her?” Garino said.

“Yes.”

“Then what? Then you bring her home, she goes to sleep, and in the morning it starts all over again. One day is like another. Sometimes,” he said soberly, “sometimes I think, ah, the hell with everything.”

Meecham stopped the car in front of the white-brick apartment building. He could see Mrs. Garino peering out of the window of the basement apartment. She had her face right up against the glass with both hands cupped around her eyes to shut out the kitchen light behind her. When she saw the car, and Garino getting out, she ducked her head in guilty haste.

“I hope you find her soon,” Garino said nervously.

“I hope so.”

“I will wait up, to see things are all right. Where will you go?”

“I’m not sure,” Meecham said. He was almost sure, though. Pulling away from the curb he tried to recall Loftus’ words about his mother: “She may want to come, she may have everything arranged, even get as far as the bus depot...”

The depot was on a little side street toward the west side of town. Half of the small waiting room was taken up by rows of benches and the other half by a newsstand and a lunch counter. A bus had just left, or was loaded and ready to leave, because the benches were empty except for a man with a little girl about ten. Both the man and the little girl were completely absorbed in comic books.

Meecham sat down at the lunch counter and ordered coffee. There was only one other customer, an intense- looking, pimply young man in a bus-driver’s uniform.

“I’ve got a few minutes yet,” the driver said. “Give me another cherry coke, Charley.”

“The way you guzzle that stuff, it’s coating the insides of your stomach.” Charley put the drink on the counter and wiped his hands on his apron. He was a big burly man with a round face and a worried little smile. “I heard on the radio, more snow coming.”

“Snow don’t bother me. It’s the people asking questions and craning their necks all over the place trying to drive the bus.”

“Say, did the old lady get on all right?”

“I didn’t see any old lady.”

“She bought a ticket. Maybe she’s in the rest room and didn’t hear the announcement. You better go and check, Roy.”

“Listen, Charley, I drive a bus, I don’t run no old-ladies’ home. You want to check, check.”

“Jesus, no one moves a muscle around this place excepting me.”

Charley took off his apron and chef’s hat and went toward the rest room. Meecham got up and followed him.

“I heard you talking,” Meecham said. “About an old lady.”

Charley paused at the door of the rest room, his hand on the knob. “So?”

“I’m looking for the mother of a friend of mine, woman in her late sixties, white hair, nice-looking, refined.”

“Could be her. Myself, I don’t pay much attention to old ladies.”

Charley glanced around carefully to see that no one else had come in, and that the man and the little girl weren’t watching, before he opened the door of the rest room.

It was a small square box of a room equipped with a chair and a moth-eaten couch, and smelling heavily of wet paper towels and disinfectant.

She was lying on her back on the couch with her eyes closed, a tiny woman, thin to the point of atrophy. Her face had the same look of fragility and innocence as her son’s: high cheekbones with shadowed hollows underneath, wide serene forehead, and brown lashes thick and straight as bristles. She was dressed for a winter day in a black cloth coat with a lamb collar and high velvet carriage boots trimmed with black-dyed rabbit fur. Where the boots touched the calves of her withered legs, the fur was entirely rubbed away. At the foot of the couch, on the floor, was a paper bag and a stained and battered calfskin purse with a chain handle.

“I never been in here before,” Charley said with interest. “I guess women don’t write on walls.”

“Mrs. Loftus,” Meecham said.

Her breathing paused at the mention of her name, just for a fraction of a second, and then it went on as before, heavy and uneven. Her hands were at her sides, palms up, in a supplicating way, as if she was asking for something, money, help, mercy, love, or just another drink. She wore short kid gloves, and protruding from the wrist of the right glove was her bus ticket. She had put it, not in her purse as a grown woman would, but in her glove for safekeeping. It reminded Meecham of the Sunday School collection nickels he had carried when he was a boy, in the thumb of his mitten or the toe of his shoe; the uncomfortable but wonderfully virtuous feeling of that nickel-for-the-Lord in his shoe. The old lady and the old memory pierced him like unexpected arrows from a long bow.

“Hey, lady,” Charley said. “Wake up. Your bus is leaving.”

She moved her head to one side and her hat slipped to the floor, exposing her white silky hair, a little yellowed in places from neglect and curling tongs. Charley bent down to pick up the hat, but he didn’t reach it. He straightened up with a grunt of surprise. “Hell, she’s drunk. Catch that breath, will you? She’s kayoed.”

The bus driver, too, had come into the room. He stared down at the woman with his pale lips pressed together in disapproval. “It’s a fine thing, isn’t it, having people like that hanging around our depot.”

“Come on, lady. Wake up now.”

“You can just save your breath, Charley. I wouldn’t dream of taking her on my bus, not if she’s got thirty tickets.”

“Oh, shut up. Give the old girl a break. She’s somebody’s mother.”

“Just so long as she ain’t mine,” the driver said. “Personally, I’ve got a good mind to call the police. They know how to deal with people like that.”

Charley’s face hardened. “Call the police and I’ll clobber you. Now get out of here.”

“You can’t order...”

“Turn blue. Just turn blue.”

The driver backed out of the room, still talking, but inaudibly, under his breath.

“That stinking lily,” Charley said. “I ought to poke him, but I don’t want to bust my knuckles.”

Meecham was bending over Mrs. Loftus. He had taken off her gloves and was rubbing her small bony hands. The skin felt very dry and cold like a leaf in autumn.

“Mrs. Loftus. Can you hear me?”

She stirred a little, and spoke a name without opening her eyes. “Victor?”

“I’m taking you home, Mrs. Loftus.”

She didn’t answer.

“Maybe if I opened the window,” Charley said, “she’d snap out of it sooner.”

“Good idea.”

Charley went over and pushed up the window over the washbasin. Fresh snow from the sill sifted into the room like a flight of furry white-winged insects coming to rest. “I never figured she was drunk, see. She’s been in a couple of times today and I thought first she was waiting for someone and didn’t know what bus to meet. Then, about an hour ago, she comes in the third time, buys a ticket for Arbana and sits down to wait. I kept an eye on her because she looked sick and she acted sick; kept coming in here to the rest room and coming out again. I never for a minute figured she was getting herself hootched.”

Meecham picked up the paper bag from the floor and looked inside. It contained a half-empty fifth of cheap rum. He twisted the bag shut again and dropped it into the metal trash container.

“I don’t want to hurry you, mister,” Charley said. “Nothing like that. Only if she’s the mother of a friend of yours like you said, maybe you ought to phone your friend.”

“He’s out of town. I’ll take her home myself.”

“I don’t want to hurry you, I know you’re in a spot. Only there’s a little kid out there with her father. You know kids, they’re always running to the can. Suppose she comes in here and sees the old lady, it might scare her.”

Meecham recalled the gruesome cover of the comic book the little girl had been reading, but he said agreeably, “Yes, it might. I’ll do my best.”

He looked down again at Mrs. Loftus, helpless in her coma of rum and ruin. He wondered if this was how Virginia was on the night Margolis was killed, and if Loftus, watching her, had unconsciously identified her with his mother, had attacked Margolis as the father-rival-invader. It seemed to Meecham that this idea made the murder of Margolis more plausible, that it synthesized the rather vague and philosophical motives Loftus had given into something stronger and closer to the heart. Loftus was a passive man, a man of ideas. For him to become the aggressor, to commit so positive and final an act as murder, must have required a positive motive: not money, as Cordwink believed, and not the childishly rationalized notion of ridding the world of a nuisance; but hate, the obverse of fear, and rage, the obverse of impotence.

“Victor?” Mrs. Loftus said again. She had opened her eyes and was staring up at the ceiling, at one particular spot, as if she realized that she was in a strange place and was afraid to look around and find out where.

“Victor isn’t here,” Meecham said. “He’s waiting for you at home. I’ll take you there.”

“I’m in the hospital?”

“No, in the bus depot.”

“Bus? Bus.” She struggled to get up, lost her balance and sat down heavily on the couch again. “My bus ticket. Where’s my bus ticket? Got to see Earl. Got to see my boy.”

Meecham put his hand on her arm to steady her; it felt as fleshless as a broom handle. “The bus has gone, Mrs. Loftus. Besides, you’re not well enough to go on a trip by yourself.”

“I’m not well.” Her pale round eyes took on a crafty expression. “I’m ill, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

“I had a fainting spell. I remember now. I felt quite faint, so I just lay down and had a little rest until the feeling passed. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“You be sure and tell Victor that. Victor’s beginning to get some very odd ideas.” She picked up her purse from the floor, hanging on to Meecham’s coat sleeve to balance herself when she leaned over. “Where is my luggage?”

“I haven’t seen it,” Meecham said. “Perhaps you checked...”

“I had my luggage with me. In a paper bag. I couldn’t find my suitcase so I packed a few little things in a paper bag.” She had begun to tremble violently, all over her body. Her knees shook, and her mouth and hands and shoulders, and her head kept moving back and forth as if her neck was too feeble to hold it up and it was just balancing there precariously like a ball on the nose of a seal. “It wasn’t much, my toothbrush and towel and a few little things like that. But it’s a matter of principle. I want my luggage. I want my luggage.” She looked up at Charley. “You. Are you the attendant?”

“Me?” Charley said. “Oh, sure.”

“Please go and tell the manager I’d like a few words with him.”

“He’s not in.”

“Then I’ll wait. I don’t like to be insistent but I can’t let a thing like this pass. I want my luggage. It’s a matter of principle. I want...”

“Oh, for crying in the sink,” Charley said, “give her the bottle.”

There was an instant of dead silence. Then Mrs. Loftus sat down again, covering her eyes with her trembling hands. “Please. I want my luggage.”

“I’ll take a look around and see if I can find it,” Meecham said. He pretended to look under the couch and on top of the towel rack. Then he reached into the trash bin and pulled out the paper bag. “Is this it, Mrs. Loftus?”

She raised her head and stared at the bag with excitement and loathing. “Yes. Yes, that’s it. Give it to me.”

But she didn’t wait for him to give it to her. She rose and staggered toward him, her arms outstretched. She took the bag in her hands, and felt its contours with anxiety and then relief, like a mother feeling the bones of a child who had fallen and might have been injured.

“Yes, this is it. Everything’s here — toothbrush, towel — thank you, sir.” Her violent shaking had stopped. The very sight of the bottle had steadied her: the sight of land to the seasick sailor. “Thank you very much.”

“Don’t mention it,” Meecham said.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll freshen up a bit. After all, this is the ladies’ room, you know. I don’t understand how you two got in here in the first place. The management must be very lax.”

The two men went out into the waiting room, Charley to the lunch counter, and Meecham to one of the hard wooden benches. He sat down and lit a cigarette and kept his eye on the door marked Ladies.

Five minutes later Mrs. Loftus emerged. She’d put on her hat and gloves and rouged her cheeks. Whatever she had drunk from the bottle during the five minutes had worked its dark magic. She seemed quite confident and poised, and when she approached Meecham her step had a spring to it, like a young girl’s. It looked grotesque, that semblance of youth in a starved and wasted body.

“There you are, young man.” She spoke slowly, letting out each consonant with great care like a fisherman letting out a taut line foot by foot, not sure what is on the other end. “I’m quite ready now, if you are.”

“My car’s across the street.”

“Isn’t that nice. Then we won’t have to pay taxi fare. Whenever I have one of my little spells Victor calls for me and we take a taxi home. I don’t care for taxis. The drivers can be extremely discourteous.”

They went out together. When they crossed the street she hung on to Meecham’s arm. She was light as a bird but he felt that he was dragging a stone that had been dragged for a long time by many people, had become larger and heavier as it collected debris, until now it weighed a ton.

14

Garino was waiting at the front door of the apartment house. All the lights were turned on, in the lobby, and on the porch, and the walk had been shoveled and sprinkled with cinders. As soon as he saw the car stop he came down the steps and opened the door for Mrs. Loftus.

“Why, there you are, Victor,” she said, as if she’d been looking for him all over town.

“Here I am,” Garino said, a little grimly. “Have you eaten? It’s nine o’clock.”

“Nine already? Dear me. Where do the days go, I wonder. They simply...”

“Have you eaten?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll bring you up something.”

“I said I’m not hungry, Victor.”

“All right. Come on, we’ll go inside.”

Meecham followed them into the lobby with the package of letters under his arm.

“This very kind gentleman drove me home. A perfect stranger to me, too. But then I sometimes think strangers are often nicer than other people.”

“Where were you?”

“My dear Victor, where would I be? I was in the bus depot, of course. When one is going to take a bus one goes to the bus depot.”

“What bus?”

“To Arbana, to see Earl. I had this odd letter from him this morning and I decided that Earl needs me. A son needs his mother in time of trouble.”

“What trouble?”

“He didn’t say anything definite but I can read between the lines. It was as plain as day. Earl needs me, I said to myself, I can’t fail my son, I must go and help him. But then...” Her voice faltered, and her face wrinkled up in bewilderment and surprise. “But then I didn’t go. I didn’t go, did I?”

“That’s a good thing. You’re better to stay right here.”

“But my son...”

“Earl’s a good boy. He’ll never get into trouble.”

Garino unlocked the door of her apartment, pushed it open with his right elbow and clicked on the wall switch with his left hand, all in one easy practiced motion as if he had done the same thing a hundred times. “Please come in, Mr. Meecham.”

Meecham went in but he didn’t close the door after him. The smell in the small living room was unbearable. It was obvious that someone — probably Garino himself — had tried to straighten the place up in a hurry and hadn’t had time to clean out the fireplace. It was a litter of rubbish; cigarette butts, newspapers, apple cores, a whole moldy orange, a shriveled head of lettuce, an empty bottle of ketchup blackened by fire, and a wedge of cheese beaded with oil. Every piece of furniture in the room bore the scars of Mrs. Loftus’ daily battles with herself: burns and stains, dents and holes and broken springs.

“Dear me,” said the old lady. “It’s nice to be home. I think I’ll go and make some coffee.”

She started for the kitchen, holding the paper bag against her chest with both arms as if she was dancing with it.

Garino intercepted her at the door. “I’ll make the coffee. You sit down.”

“I’ll make it myself. I’m quite...”

“Give me the bottle,” Garino said.

“What bottle?”

“Give it to me.”

“If you’re referring to this cough medicine I purchased this afternoon... I’ve had this cough. I’m not well, Victor, you know that. I’m not well. I had a bad spell in the bus depot. Ask the young man. He’ll verify it.”

Garino looked questioningly over the old lady’s head at Meecham. Meecham shrugged and turned away.

“Yes,” Garino said. “Yes. I guess you had a bad spell.”

“I certainly did, Victor. I felt it coming on at noon. I started to cough. You know that nasty cough I have and how you’re always telling me to buy some medicine for it?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“Well, I finally did. There, you see? I took your advice. I’m improving, aren’t I?”

“Yes, of course.”

There was a sound from the hall. Meecham looked up and saw Mrs. Garino standing in the doorway, with an old woolen sweater flung over her shoulders. She didn’t speak, or give any indication that she was there. She just stood watching her husband and Mrs. Loftus, her eyes flat and hard and metallic like coins.

“But the medicine didn’t agree with me in some way. I began to feel faint. And then I did faint, Victor.”

“You faint a lot,” Mrs. Garino said quietly.

Mrs. Loftus whirled around with a cry of surprise. “Why, there you are, Ella. I was just telling Victor that...”

“I heard you.”

“You must meet this nice young man, Ella. I don’t know your name, young man, but I’d like you to meet one of my dearest friends.”

Mrs. Garino didn’t look at Meecham. She started across the room, holding the old sweater close across her breasts. “So you fainted again.”

“Why, yes. Yes, I did, Ella. I swear to you I...”

“Mama,” Garino said. “Please go home.” “Not yet.”

“Please, you mustn’t...”

“I mustn’t what?”

“It’s better not to say anything.”

“That’s been your system all along. It’s sure worked out swell, hasn’t it?”

Garino looked down at the floor, in silence.

“When’s it all going to stop, Victor? All this pretending, this silly stupid game we’ve been playing. Do you think it’s doing her any good? Take a look at this rotten mess of a room. Smell it.”

“Be quiet, I beg of you,” Garino said. “You’ll only hate yourself afterwards, you’ll...”

“Who are we all kidding anyway? Headaches, coughs, neuritis, fainting spells, anything. Anything but the truth. It can’t go on forever like this. Somebody’s got to tell the truth sometime.”

“Perhaps the truth can wait for tonight,” Meecham said.

“It’s been waiting for years,” Mrs. Garino said, still addressing her husband. “Go on, tell her, Victor.”

“No! No, be quiet!”

“Tell her she’s a drunk. Tell her you know it and I know it, we’ve known it for years and so has everybody else in town.”

The steam radiator began to clank, like cymbals heralding the truth.

“Ask her a few things, too. Ask her why Earl left, why Birdie left, why everyone’s left except us. You blamed Birdie for fighting with her, didn’t you, just like you’re blaming me now. Well, there’s only one thing to blame. This.” She reached out and grabbed the paper bag from Mrs. Loftus’ hands. “This.”

“No, no.” Mrs. Loftus was swaying back and forth like a tower of toy blocks about to fall. “Give it to me. My medicine.”

“Medicine. Who do you think you’re fooling except yourself? Sometimes I think I could stand anything except this pretending all the time. Can’t you admit anything, just once, one word of truth? What’s in here? Gin? Whisky? Rubbing alcohol?”

The old lady moved slowly sideways toward a chair and held onto the back of it with both hands, clung to it like an ageing ballerina to the bar, for reassurance and new strength.

“You’re not behaving like a lady, Ella,” she said in a whisper. “You’re making defamatory remarks.”

Mrs. Garino threw back her head and began to laugh; her whole body vibrated with harsh tinny laughter. Garino didn’t say anything. He went over to her, took the paper bag out of her hand and placed it on the table. Then he put his arms around her waist and the two of them walked out into the hall together, Garino matching his step to hers.

The instant the door closed Mrs. Loftus took the bottle out of the paper bag, uncorked it and put it to her lips, very daintily, a fine lady sipping fine tea from the best of china. An immediate change came over her, the same change Meecham had observed in the bus depot: a revitalizing, a flow of color to her skin, as if the stuff she drank was blood and went directly into her veins.

She put the bottle down and looked across the room at Meecham, her eyes narrowed to slits in an attempt to focus accurately.

“Are you still here?”

“Yes.”

“Want a drink?”

“Not now, thanks.”

“It’s rum,” she said. “Ella was wrong. I don’t fool myself, and I don’t mind admitting to the right people that I take the odd nip now and then, if there’s a chill in the air.”

Or if it’s hot, Meecham added silently, or dry or windy; in a spring rain or on a sunny afternoon, a smoky morning in fall, Indian summer or Easter moon. All weather had a chill to it, every day was winter.

Meecham went over and sat down in the old cherrywood rocker opposite Mrs. Loftus. “I know it’s late, but I wanted to talk to you. Earl asked me to.”

“Earl?” She put a hand to her throat as if the name had jabbed her there like a needle. “My bus. I missed my bus. I must...”

“There are other buses,” Meecham said. There could be a thousand buses but she’d never be on any of them. He realized now how hopeless his mission was: he couldn’t persuade her to leave town as Loftus wanted her to do, and he couldn’t give her the money because she was obviously unfit to handle it.

“Yes, of course there are other buses, aren’t there? I’ll go tomorrow, early in the morning. But first I must tidy things up a bit. I will not have anyone like Ella casting aspersions on my home. Did you hear what she said?”

“Yes.”

“She lied about Birdie leaving, too. Birdie didn’t leave, I kicked her out. You’re not good enough for my son Earl, I told her. Pack your bags and start moving, we don’t need your help to get along, I said.”

“What kind of help?”

“Money. Earl was temporarily unemployed — the firm he was working for went out of business — and Birdie took a job as a waitress. That’s when they came to live with me. Birdie managed all the money, wouldn’t let me do any of the shopping, treated me like a child. She even gave me an allowance. Yes, and you want to know how much? A dollar. A dollar a week. Every Saturday she’d give it to me and say, very sarcastic, don’t spend it all in one place. A dollar. What can you buy with that?”

Two bottles of dago red, Meecham thought.

“And then she started to accuse me of pilfering, taking money from her purse. She told Earl and Earl came to me, and I said, Earl, I’m only your mother but I have some rights, and what am I going to do when the poor paper boy comes for his money and I don’t have a cent? It isn’t fair to ask that poor paper boy to come back again and again when Birdie’s purse is lying there right out in the open, I said. Earl understood perfectly. You know what happened?” She let out a crow of laughter. “They raised my allowance to five dollars. I beat Birdie at her own game, didn’t I?”

“I guess you did,” Meecham said.

The little story, with its interlocking links of deceit and truth, humor and sordidness, was oppressive. The old lady had spoken with such a complete sense of right and justification. Petty theft? — never. Saving the poor paper boy a second trip? — of course. Meecham felt a flash of sympathy for the vanished Birdie.

Mrs. Loftus uncorked the bottle again. This time she didn’t sip quite so daintily, and her reaction wasn’t so immediate and distinct. It came gradually, into her speech and mannerisms — an occasional slurring of s’s and omission of final consonants, grand but vague gestures, and a constant widening and narrowing of her eyes in an attempt to blink away a film that wasn’t there. Meecham wanted to take the bottle from her and hide it some place, at least temporarily, so that she wouldn’t get too drunk to talk. He had a curious and irrational desire to hear more about Loftus and Birdie, as if Loftus’ relationship with his wife and mother might explain more about the murder of Margolis. Yet he was sure that there was no link except the psychological one — the effect of A and B on C had determined C’s conduct toward D.

“You bet I beat her at her own game. Yes, sir,” the old lady went on. “Birdie never fooled me. First time I saw her I had her spotted. She wasn’t any twenty-eight, as she told Earl, and she wasn’t any innocent virgin. Any woman could have sheen srough her but not Earl. Earl was always a pure boy, a good boy, took after my side of the family. Never smoked or drank like other boys, or went out carousing to parties. He stayed home nights and read, or we played carj together. It was a good innocent life he led until the day he met Birdie. Didden tell me he met her, didden say a word about her till the day he brought her home and said, this is my wife. Like that. This is my wife. And there she stood, with that hennaed hair and that hard look, forty if she was a day, forty, and him just a boy.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but it was a meaningless gesture. The tears that had been wept had long since dried and formed a crust of salt over an emotion long since dead.

“If you knew Earl — how good he is, this deep feeling of love inside of him. But he gave it all to her. Never saw her as she was, a hard exshperienced woman. The day he got the divorce papers she sent him from Nevada he sat in his room. All day, just sat, looking out the window. You’d think he expected her to walk past. Well, she didden walk past. She coulden. She was in Nevada. Issen at right? Eh?”

“I suppose so.”

“You bet it’s right. And good ridushe to bad rubbish. Go, I told her. Go.” She pointed toward the door with majestic dignity. “Go! And she went. She...” Her hand fell to her side. “You go too. I’m tired. You go home.”

“I will in a minute. Have you heard from Birdie since she left?”

“No.”

“Has Earl?”

“Has Earl? What has Earl?”

Meecham said patiently, “Did she write to Earl?”

“She coulden write her own name. Ignorant, understand? Ignorant. Whyn’t you go home?”

“I’m going.” He picked up his coat and the package of letters. He stripped the brown paper from the package. Inside, there were about fifty or sixty letters, arranged, as far as Meecham could tell, in order of date. They were addressed to Earl Loftus in writing that was large and hesitant, like a school child’s. “Tell her to reread them” Loftus had said, and then he’d changed his mind: “No, don’t tell her anything.”

One of the envelopes was blank and new, and heavier than the others. Meecham put it in his pocket. He felt a kind of helpless anger against Loftus for giving him the responsibility of delivering the money, and against Mrs. Loftus, fumbling around in her twilit world where money could buy only one thing, darkness.

The old lady had closed her eyes, and her head had sunk like a tortoise’s into the worn fur collar of her coat.

“Mrs. Loftus, listen to me for a minute.”

“Whyn’t you go home?”

“These are your letters. I’m leaving them here on the table. I have some money for you too. I’ll give it to the Garinos to take care of. The fact is that you were right about Earl. He is in trouble. You’ll be hearing about it very soon anyway. If it will make it easier for you I’ll tell you myself right now... Mrs. Loftus? Hey, Mrs. Loftus!”

The old lady let out a delicate snore. Darkness had been bought.

Cursing under his breath, Meecham put on his coat, turned out the ceiling light and went into the hall. Mrs. Garino was just coming up the steps from her apartment in the basement. She looked pale and calm, like the sea after a storm. She was carrying a metal tray with a pot of coffee on it and a sandwich cut daintily into diamonds and garnished with a radish rose.

“She’s asleep,” Meecham said.

“I can wake her. She has to eat.”

“She should be in a hospital.”

“You know what that means, getting commitment papers for her as a habitual drunk. The booby hatch, that’s what it means,” she said bitterly. “Did you give her the money you brought?”

“No.”

“How much is it?”

“Over seven hundred dollars.”

“Where would Earl get that kind of money?”

“He sold his car,” Meecham said. “And a few other things.”

“But Earl knows his mother. It’s not reasonable for him to sell his things and send her a lot of money in a lump sum like that. He knows what she’d do with it.”

“He wanted her to take the money and leave town for a while, go on a little holiday.”

“A holiday, where?”

“Hasn’t she any relatives she can visit?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Meecham. I mean, if she was your relative would you invite her for a visit? Earl must be crazy. A holiday. He must be...”

“About this money,” Meecham said. “I don’t want to keep it. I hardly know Loftus, he isn’t my client and I’m not taking any fee for this trip.”

She was watching him suspiciously. “You must have had some reason for coming.”

“Put it down to curiosity. Anyway I came, I accomplished nothing...”

“You found her and brought her home. That’s a lot and I’m grateful. But I know what you’re going to say about the money and the answer is no. I won’t keep it for her.”

“It was just a passing thought,” Meecham said dryly.

“Why should I keep it — and dole it out to her in dimes and quarters, have her come wheedling...? No. I won’t. Take it back to Earl. Or send it to her a little at a time so at least she won’t starve.”

“Is her rent paid?”

“Up to the new year.”

“I’ll pay you for January then, and give you some extra to keep her in food.”

“Earl pays her rent.”

“He won’t be paying it from now on.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

Meecham told her, while she stood resting the tray on the railing of the banister. She didn’t express shock and incredulity as he expected her to and as the other people had who knew Loftus.

When he had finished she said, quietly, “Did you tell her?”

“I tried to. She went to sleep.”

“It’s just as well.”

“She has to know sometime. It’s probably written up in your own newspaper tonight.”

“Maybe. I haven’t looked at it yet.” She sighed and turned away. “I’ll tell her myself, tomorrow.”

“She may take it hard.”

“You think so, do you? Well, you’re wrong. She’s not human any more. She’s like one of those things you see at a carnival, pickled in a bottle. I don’t know why I try to keep her alive.” She looked down at the tray grimly. “I don’t know why.”

Meecham took a hundred dollars out of the envelope, and put it on the tray.

“I’ll give you a receipt,” Mrs. Garino said. “If you’ll wait a minute.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“It’s a funny way to do business.”

“This isn’t exactly business.” It’s not business, he thought, it’s life; and it’s not money that’s involved, but human beings. The dainty sandwich with its radish rose couldn’t have been bought for a thousand dollars.

15

The following morning Meecham reached his office a little after ten o’clock. The secretary whose services he shared with the two senior partners in the firm was behind her typewriter, a thin, stringy-haired, vivacious girl with glasses.

She looked at him with highly exaggerated surprise. “My goodness, it’s Mr. Meecham. I hardly recognized you, it’s been so long.”

“I’m a little too tired for banter this morning, Mrs. Christy.”

“Wild night?”

“Pretty wild.”

“At your age. Well. Here’s the score board. Mr. Cranston is howling mad because his wife bought an antique highboy, and Mr. Post just went home with a migraine because the Doretto case has been dismissed. And there’s a girl waiting in your office, a blonde.”

“Who’s the girl?”

“A Miss Dwyer. She’s been waiting nearly an hour. I gave her a copy of Fortune to read. She looked like the intellectual type.”

“She’s not.”

He opened the opaque glass door of his office. It had his name on it, Eric J. Meecham, in firm black letters, and whenever he saw it he felt a little firmer himself, sharp and clear around the edges.

His office was small and overfurnished, but it had a wide window with a leather-covered seat as long as a couch, where you could sit and watch the street, five stories below, or the sky, a stone’s throw away.

Alice was watching the street, her chin cupped in her hand. The morning sun had turned her hair to tinsel, and Meecham wondered whether she bleached it a little. The thought of the small deception pleased him. It seemed to him charming and feminine for a woman to improve on nature.

“Hello.”

She jumped in surprise at the sound of his voice and made a motion to get up.

“No, don’t move,” Meecham said. “You look pretty.”

“Do I?”

“I should hire you to come and sit there by the hour.”

She gazed at him, unsmiling. “I wish you wouldn’t say smooth things to me.”

“Why not?”

“It puts me off, makes me feel that you’re ordinary. Anyone can be smooth, it’s just words.”

“You’re cross because I kept you waiting.”

“I guess,” she said. “A little.”

He sat down beside her on the window seat. “You shouldn’t be.”

“I kept listening for you so hard, I... well, that’s a bad sign, isn’t it?”

“Very bad.”

He took both her hands and held them against his chest. They looked down at the street together, remote and serene, like angels on a cloud.

Alice stirred finally. “Naturally it isn’t going to work out.”

“Naturally. What isn’t?”

“You know. Even if you feel the same way as I do. Everything’s against it. I don’t like the town and the climate’s terrible and I’m so far from home. And then you’re not very young any more and they say the older a man gets the less adjustable he is to marriage. Naturally it won’t work out.”

“Naturally.”

“You don’t have to keep repeating that word.”

“I’m agreeing with you. You’re such a sensible young woman, I have to. Of course, there are a few other points you didn’t mention. You can’t cook, for one thing. And you bleach your hair.”

“How did you know? Anyway, just a little bit.”

“Also my great-uncle James was a crackpot. I don’t own a house. I haven’t much money, and...”

“Oh, Meecham.”

“Have I forgotten anything?”

“Oh, Meecham, I love you.”

“At this point I think I might kiss you, if I didn’t have one foot in the grave.”

“I didn’t say you had one foot in the grave. I said you weren’t very young and adjustable and...”

“I accept the apology.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her for a long time, feeling that he had never kissed a girl before, it was so strange and perfect.

She looked very solemn. “I will love you forever, Meecham.”

“You’d better... Are you happy?”

She shook her head.

“Well, for Christ’s sake,” he said helplessly. “Why not?”

“I’m just not, that’s all. I feel awful.”

“Well, for...”

“I can’t help it. All that sweet stuff that’s been written about love, and this is how I feel, just plain awful. I ache, and my insides are hollow as if I could eat forever, only nothing fills me up and the sight of food makes me sick. I’ll probably starve to death. I’m too thin anyway.”

“No, you’re not. You’re perfect.”

“No. I don’t have enough of a figure, you know?”

“I have a rough idea.”

“I look terrible in a strapless evening gown. I tried one on in a store once. My collarbones project.”

“I happen to be very fond of projecting collarbones,” he said. “It’s a regular complex.”

“You know what I mean. I’d like to be perfect for you. I’d like myself to be perfect and things to be perfect.”

“If you and things were perfect, you wouldn’t look twice at me.”

“Oh, I would,” she said passionately. “I couldn’t help it.”

“The town isn’t so bad. There are worse climates, and you could always go home for visits.”

“I know.”

“We can work things out. Things don’t work themselves out.”

She looked up at him, still pale and still solemn. “On top of everything else, you’re nice, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes I think so. Not often.”

“The climate — people get used to it, don’t they? And I bet it’s pretty in the spring, isn’t it?”

“Very pretty.”

“With little green sprouts and buds coming out all over. I think I’ll like that part of it very much.”

“I think you will.”

“Anyway, I don’t feel quite so hollow anymore.”

“That’s good.” He lifted her tinseled hair and kissed the soft nape of her neck. Standing there, with his mouth against her skin, he felt that he loved all women because he loved Alice.

“We’ve never even had a date together,” she said. “Isn’t that funny, Meecham?”

“Yes.”

“We haven’t had a chance to fall in love. How did it happen? How could it have happened?”

“If I knew I’d go out and tell the world.”

The buzzer on his desk sounded, harsh and sudden, like an alarm clock disturbing a dreamer.

He reached over and turned on the switch. “Yes?”

“There’s a Mrs. Hamilton on the phone,” Mrs. Christy said. “Do you want to talk to her?”

“No, but I will.”

“O.K., go ahead.”

He turned off the switch and reached for the telephone. Alice put her hand on his arm to stop him. “Did she say — Mrs. Hamilton?”

“Yes.”

“Tell her I’m not here. Tell her you haven’t seen me or heard from me.”

“All right, if that’s what you want me to say.” He picked up the phone. “Hello.”

“Mr. Meecham, this is Mrs. Hamilton. How are you?”

“Fine. And you?”

“I’m fine too. Everything is.” She sounded so falsely cheerful that he wondered if anything at all was fine. “We seem to have a bad connection, Mr. Meecham. Will you talk louder?”

“All right.”

“The fact is, I’m a little concerned about something. I suppose it’s absurd to worry about a sensible girl like Alice. But then it’s sometimes the sensible ones who do and say silly things, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes.”

“Have you seen her this morning?”

“No, I haven’t.” He looked across the desk at Alice. She was sitting on the window seat again not watching the street, but watching him, her eyes wide and anxious. He smiled at her reassuringly but she didn’t smile back. “What reason have you to worry, Mrs. Hamilton?”

“Perhaps I haven’t any reason. I’m not sure. She’s acting peculiarly.”

“In what way?”

“It’s hard to... well, I think she’s avoiding me. This morning, for instance, she left the house, without breakfast, without saying a word to anyone. She disappeared, in fact.”

“She’s probably downtown shopping.”

“Then why didn’t she tell me where she was going? Surely that would have been the natural thing to do? I was right there, having breakfast with Virginia and Paul in the dining room, and Alice went past the door and that’s the last I saw of her. It seems odd, doesn’t it?”

“Everything seems odd until it’s explained.”

“Outside of the family, you’re the only person she knows in town. I had the notion that she would come to you, if something was — if she had anything on her mind.”

“What would be on her mind?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” It was a positive yet somehow unconvincing statement.

“She might come here. If she does, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you. You realize that I’m very fond of Alice, she’s a very dear girl.” She paused. It was a significant pause, Meecham thought, and he waited for the but. It came. “But I didn’t hire her to go running off like this.”

She emphasized the word hire quite carefully, as if to put Alice in her place, through Meecham. Meecham resented her tone, but stronger than his resentment was his feeling that Mrs. Hamilton was a desperate woman fighting with her back to the wall against shadows that Meecham couldn’t see and shapes he didn’t recognize. He thought of Mrs. Loftus in her twilit world where everything was shadow, and shapes were molten and confused. The two women had nothing in common but despair. Yet it seemed that somewhere, at some point, their separate worlds had collided like wandering planets, and one had lost part of itself and the other had cracked through the middle.

“Mr. Meecham, are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll let me know for sure then, if Alice turns up?”

“I’ll let you know. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Meecham.”

Meecham replaced the telephone on his desk, and looked at it thoughtfully, then moved it half an inch to the right. “You could have told her you were going shopping.”

“I didn’t want to face her.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t trust her any more. She’s changed.”

“That’s why you came here, to tell me she’s changed?”

“No.” Alice turned and looked down at the busy street. “A man came to see her last night. I saw him, and I think she knows I saw him.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure she didn’t want me to see him, that the meeting was to be a secret.”

“How did you get in on it?”

“I heard a knock on the front door, not the chime, just a short knock, like a signal. I’d been in my room lying in bed, sort of thinking things over. When I heard the knock I got up to answer it because I... well, I thought it might be you. That’s another bad sign, isn’t it? Every time the phone rings or there’s a knock on the door or footsteps on the sidewalk, every time a car stops I think it might be you.”

“That’s the worst yet,” he said, smiling. “Go on.”

“I put on my robe and slippers and went down the hall. I got as far as the corner where the hall bends and then I heard voices. I looked around the corner and saw Mrs. Hamilton standing at the door talking to a man, a stranger. I don’t know why but I suddenly felt furtive. I wasn’t spying or eavesdropping, I couldn’t even hear what they were saying. But I had the feeling that the meeting was wrong somehow and the man shouldn’t have been there at that time of night.”

“What time?”

“Nearly eleven.”

“Where was the rest of the household?”

“Carney sleeps out, and the cook was in her room... She has a television set and hardly ever leaves it. And Virginia went with Paul to a movie. The celebration dinner had been kind of a flop. Virginia was terribly nervous so someone suggested a movie.”

“Which someone?”

“I think Mrs. Hamilton mentioned it first. Virginia agreed that it was a good idea, and she invited me to go along. It was very — thoughtful of her, wasn’t it?”

“Very. But I wonder what the thought was.”

“You mean they were trying to get rid of me for the night, Virginia and Mrs. Hamilton?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. It’s also possible that Virginia invited you because she took a liking to you. She’s unpredictable.”

“She didn’t take anything to me, like or dislike. She ignored me until the movie business came up, and then she tried to sound very cordial and friendly. I don’t know, maybe she was being cordial and friendly. I can’t tell. My judgments of people have gone haywire, so I can’t trust my...”

“Don’t get excited.” He put his hand reassuringly on her shoulder. “You refused the invitation?”

“Yes. I said I was going to bed early, and I did. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about you, and what you said about me going back home as soon as possible. I wasn’t worried about them trying to get rid of me for the evening. I was worried about you trying to get rid of me forever.”

“It seems I failed.”

“Miserably.”

“It’s my nicest failure, to date,” he said. “You may regret it, though.”

“Meecham, I’m trying to tell you something, only everything seems to come around to us, just us.” She frowned. “I should try to be impersonal, don’t you think?”

“By all means. Be impersonal.”

“I... don’t look at me then.”

“All right.” He looked at the wall. “Go on.”

“Well, they stood there in the hall talking. The man could have been anybody, a friend, or someone selling insurance or Christmas cards or something. If he had come in the daytime, I’d never have noticed him or thought twice about him. It was the secrecy that disturbed me — the lateness, the soft knock on the door instead of the chime, their low hurried voices. But I didn’t try to hear what they were saying. I went back to bed. Then a few minutes later Mrs. Hamilton came down the hall very quietly. If I hadn’t been listening for her, I don’t think I’d have heard her. She didn’t go to her own room directly. She stopped at my door. I could actually hear her breathing, very heavy labored breathing like someone whose air had been cut off, someone who’d been choked. Not that I... not that I really think she was choked...”

“What do you think?”

“That she’d had a shock, a bad shock, and that she was checking up on me to make sure I hadn’t seen or heard anything.”

“You didn’t hear anything, though.”

“No.”

“And all you saw was a stranger at the door. Was the hall light on?”

“One of them was.”

“You must have had a fairly good view of him then.”

“For a minute I did. He was a tall man, rather handsome, with light hair and a reddish face. He was about forty, I think, and he was wearing a bright green plaid topcoat. I never thought of it before, but he might have been a policeman.”

“He might have been,” Meecham said. But he knew he wasn’t a policeman. He remembered the man and he remembered the green plaid coat hanging with the other coats on the hall rack, swinging in the wind from the open door. This is my husband, Jim.

Jim Hearst and Mrs. Hamilton. Another equation to be solved, he thought, and each new equation led to still another, and on and on into the infinity of the human mind. He felt stunted and inadequate, an engineer without a slide rule, a chemist without a formula.

“Of course he was a policeman,” Alice said, sounding irrationally pleased, as if she too had discovered an equation and had solved it quite simply, by counting on her fingers. “I guess I was just depressed and dreamed up a lot of nonsense, didn’t I?”

For a minute he couldn’t answer. He was not sure how much to tell her, or even how much he himself knew.

“Didn’t I, Meecham?”

“I suppose you did.”

“Things seem so much worse at night, in the dark.”

“They do when you’re alone.”

“I’ll never be frightened with you, Meecham.”

“No.” He took her in his arms again. She was warm and soft in her innocence, eager in her new love that would endure forever, burn through the dark of night and the chill of winter. He wondered, with a detachment that was cruder to himself than it was to her, how long it would last.

He said, “You’d better have a story ready for Mrs. Hamilton.”

“All right. What?”

“You went to get your hair done.”

“But it isn’t done.”

“Get it done.”

“All right,” she said meekly. “Meecham, how did you know? About the bleach, I mean.”

“I have little birds spying for me all over town.”

“No. I mean it. How did you?”

“A blind guess, darling.”

“I wouldn’t like to think you knew too much about women,” she said, frowning. “Other women, I mean. I don’t care what you know about me. Naturally I’ll try to act mysterious sometimes.”

“When you do I promise to act mystified.”

“Oh, Meecham. I feel... I feel just overcome with love. Do you think I’m making a mistake telling you that? Should I keep you guessing?”

“It’s a little late for that,” Meecham said. “Besides, I’m tired of guessing. I ought to buy a new slide rule or go back to counting on my fingers like you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He kissed her lightly on the temple. “Run along now and get your hair done.”

“When will I see you? Couldn’t we have lunch together, perhaps?”

“Not today. I have to go out to the hospital to see Loftus.”

“Loftus again,” she said, flatly.

“Loftus again.”

“Why?”

“I have some money that belongs to him. I want to know what to do with it.”

“Why should he give you money? Why should you still be involved with him like this?”

“There’s no involvement.” He knew there was, though. First a moral and mental involvement, and then gradually a physical one which had him trapped in a net of human ropes. Every way he turned he found new knots in the net. He couldn’t fight or talk or buy his way out of it; each knot, tighter and more intricate than the preceding, must be loosened and picked apart — the old lady, the Garinos, Virginia and her mother, the dead Margolis, Emmy Hearst and the husband she despised, and Loftus himself, the first and the final knot, and the most difficult of all.

16

The county hospital was a heterogeneous group of old and new buildings about three miles to the south of town. The so-called prison ward was not a ward but a two-story yellow brick house separated from the other buildings by some fifty yards and a steel fence. Originally the house had been the superintendent’s quarters, but as additional hospital facilities became necessary, the superintendent moved out and the house was used as an isolation ward for victims of the more highly contagious diseases like diphtheria and typhoid. Immunization gradually decreased the number of these diseases to almost nothing, but no immunization had been found against crime, and the number of county prisoners had increased considerably. Some of them were physically sick and needed attention, and some were mentally sick and needed even more. This latter fact was recognized after a series of spirited board meetings, newspaper editorials and a petulant statement from the local congressman who was running for re-election.

The conversion from protecting society from diphtheria to protecting it from its own bastard, the criminal, was accomplished with simple economy. The curtains were removed from the windows and bars were substituted; the fence was constructed; nurses were replaced by orderlies, and what had been first the superintendent’s parlor, and then the children’s ward, was now furnished as a combination chart room, office and lounge for the orderlies.

A sign on the door said, Ring and Walk In. Meecham rang and walked in.

The orderly on duty was sitting at a small desk in the corner reading a chart.

“Good morning, Gill,” Meecham said.

Gill looked up from the chart, frowning. “How did you get past the gate?”

“The trusty’s an old friend of mine.”

“We have rules, Meecham, you know that.”

“I’m not breaking anything.”

Meecham had known Gill for a year or more. The orderly was a stocky young man whose principal interest was disease. He was the only employee of the hospital who could listen, with intense concern, to the complaints and symptoms of every patient under his care. He was, accordingly, very popular and much more useful than he himself realized. Migraines and stomach cramps, asthmatic attacks and cardiospasms, had been talked away into Gill’s receptive ear, and many a fear had been drowned in his liquid brown eyes.

At his own request he had been transferred to the prison ward because he wanted to study the relationship between crime and disease. He was very conscientious about it; he kept a notebook in which he jotted down all kinds of medical lore and symptoms, and observations and remarks made by his charges. But so far he had reached no conclusion beyond the fact that the prisoners were on the whole quieter and made less fuss over their pains than the men in other wards.

“I just want to talk to him for a minute,” Meecham said.

Gill fingered the stethoscope he wore around his neck. It was his own stethoscope, he’d bought it a week ago, and one of the interns was teaching him how to use it and interpret the meaning of its sounds correctly. He wore it with great pride and self-consciousness, like a diamond necklace.

“I told you over the phone, Meecham, no visitors. He’s a very sick boy.” To Gill all his patients, of any age, were boys, as. if by becoming sick they had retrogressed into childhood. Meecham wondered if Gill knew how close to the truth this was.

“I’m not a visitor.”

“He had to have a blood transfusion last night. They took a test when they brought him in yesterday morning and they found out his percentage of myleo — myeloblasts was very high.”

“What’s a myeloblast?”

Gill colored. “It’s a bad sign, anyway, very bad. The transfusion perked him up, though. In fact, he got restless and couldn’t settle down and go to sleep. He wanted to talk so I stayed with him.”

“All night?”

“Sure. I didn’t have anything else to do except sleep, and I never had a leukemia case before. The fact is, I think it’s a coming disease, so I want to find out as much about it as I can. Then by the time I can afford to go to medical school I’ll know a lot of stuff the other guys won’t know, the real inside stuff.”

“Like myeloblasts,” Meecham said. “What did he want to talk about last night?”

“What most of the boys talk about. Himself and women.”

“What women?”

“His mother, for one. It seems his mother is an alcoholic. I’ve often noticed that there’s a history of alcoholism in most...”

“What other woman?”

“He called her Birdie. She was his wife, but he gave her a raw deal and she left him. Say, what do you want to know stuff like this for?”

“I’m interested. You’re interested in Loftus’ myeloblasts and I’m interested in his wife.”

“Are you trying to find her or something?”

“Just out of curiosity, yes.”

“You must be awfully curious, to want to go where she’s gone.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s dead,” Gill said. “She was killed in a car accident in Las Vegas about a year and a half ago.”

“Killed?”

“Not outright. She died several days later in the hospital.”

Meecham felt a little dizzy and off-balance, as if one of the knots in the net of ropes had been cut away under his hand and left him swinging in air.

Birdie was dead, had been dead for a long time. She hadn’t just vanished for an instant around a corner, she had walked away into the shadows of some strange street.

“That’s — too bad,” he said finally.

“It sure is.”

“He didn’t tell me about it.”

“People tell me a lot of things, I don’t know why. But I never heard anyone talk as much as Loftus did last night. He must have been crazy about that woman. Birdie this, Birdie that, I damn near went to sleep a couple of times except the chair was so hard. The funny part of it is that he never mentioned what he was in here for until I asked him. And then I got the impression that the murder seemed to him a very trivial thing, like parking beside a red curb. I’ve had a couple of psychopaths in here and that was their attitude. But Loftus shows no signs of being a psychopath. Except for that one blank spot, the murder itself, he’s a very moral and responsible man. Do you know his mother?”

“I’ve met her.”

“From what I heard, she’s quite a case, eh? You know, I’ve been sort of thinking things out this morning and I was wondering when I get enough money to go to medical school if I shouldn’t concentrate on psychiatry. I haven’t got any education, just what I picked up here and there, but you’re an educated man, don’t you think psychiatry’s the coming thing?”

“We could all use a little.”

“That’s what I mean. When they get most of the physical diseases licked in a test tube, then I’ll have my psychiatry, I won’t be left flat on my rear.”

“I’ll be your first patient,” Meecham said, “if you’ll let me in to see Loftus.”

“I can’t, Meecham. The boy’s sick. Honest-to-God sick, not like some of the fakers I get.”

“I know that.”

“Besides, he’s sleeping. He had a sedative three hours ago.”

“I’ll wait.” Meecham sat down on the edge of the desk and lit a cigarette. “If he’s too sick to talk, all right, I promise not to ask him any questions. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? After all, the sight of me isn’t going to scare him to death. I’ll walk quietly in, and if he’s asleep, I’ll walk quietly out. Where is he?”

“In the bridal suite,” Gill said. The phrase had lost any connotations of humor long ago; it was the standard term used to describe the building’s only private room where the very ill or the post-operative patients were kept. “You go to a lot of trouble just for curiosity’s sake, don’t you?”

“Occasionally.”

“Who are you working for?”

“Myself only.”

“Well, come on. I’ll see if he’s awake.”

“Thanks, Gill. Show up at my office around the middle of February and I’ll help you with your income tax.”

“Who are you kidding?” Gill reached into a drawer and took out a ring of keys. It wasn’t as large as the ring Miss Jennings had at the county jail but there were more keys on it, of every size and shape. “You know, I get kind of sick of locking things up all the time. Lock the doors, lock the windows, lock the lavatory, lock up the thermometers, the rubbing alcohol, the dishes, even the spoons.”

Meecham followed him to the door. “Why the spoons?”

“A couple of years ago a guy was in here who’d been beaten up in a family brawl. He tried to choke himself by swallowing some orange peelings and pushing them down his throat with a spoon. So, no spoons and no oranges.”

He unlocked a door that led into a long narrow hall. In spite of the sun and air, paint and disinfectant, the odor of rotting wood clung to the old house. It trailed up and down the hall and up and down the hollowed steps like the restive ghost of the superintendent looking for a trace of himself.

There were four rooms on the lower floor. From three of them the doors had been removed and full-length gates had been substituted, made of the same material as the fencing around the grounds.

From inside one of the gates a man began to groan with sudden fervor.

Gill paused. “Oh, stop it, Billings,” he said pleasantly. “Be a good boy.”

The boy was an elderly Negro with a tobacco-stained beard and white hair that reached his shoulders. “Them prunes I had for breakfast, they’s setting hard on my belly like billiard balls.”

“Can that phony dialect. Last time you were here you were talking like a Yale man.”

“I’se rumblin inside.”

“I’ll give you something in a little while.”

“Listen. Come here and listen, white boy.”

“I can’t now, Billings. I’m busy.”

“Listen. I’se full of sin. It’s rumblin round my belly. Oh, sweet Jesus stop that rumblin, stop clackin them billiard balls in my insides.”

“There aren’t any billiard balls in your insides,” Gill said. “It’s gas.”

“I’m only an old nigger full of sin, sweet Jesus, no one to turn to ceptin you. Now they’s gonna cut off my hair, cut off my beard, they’s gonna take away what’s rightfully mine, saying I got lice. I never had a lice, Lord, all I got’s the rumblin.”

“Haven’t you heard, Billings? Everybody’s wearing their hair short these days, even the women.”

“You’ll be crawlin through the fires of hell, white boy, and I’ll be ridin into heaven.” The old Negro rolled over on his cot and, face to the wall, he resumed his low melodious groaning.

Gill turned away with a shrug and went on down the hall.

The fourth room had its original oak door, but a small rectangular peephole had been cut out at eye level. Gill looked in through the peephole before he unlocked the door.

The shades were drawn and the room was almost in darkness, so that only light-colored objects were visible at first, the bed, basin, a covered trash container, a white chair lying overturned in the corner, and above the chair Loftus’ face. He had grown enormously during the night. His face reached nearly to the ceiling.

The old Negro was groaning to sweet Jesus and Gill was breathing like a tired horse, and there was a rattle of branches against the windowpane.

Gill crossed the room and pulled up the shade. Then he went to the corner and touched one of Loftus’ dangling hands. Loftus began to swing very slowly back and forth as if a wind was rocking him.

“It’s not my fault,” Gill said. “If they want to die bad enough you can’t stop them. It’s not my fault. I gave him the sedatives and he promised he’d take them and go to sleep.”

He’d kept one part of his promise, Meecham thought, but the two yellow capsules were still lying on the metal table beside the bed.

“White boy, you there, white boy? I’se been talkin to the Lord, white boy, and he says you’re full of sin, says you oughtn’t give a poor old nigger prunes for breakfast. You listenin, boy?”

“How could I have stopped him?” Gill said. “How could I? Maybe all night while he was talking, he was making plans, looking around trying to see what he could use.”

The room had nothing in it that was sharp or pointed, nothing that could be broken to form a cutting edge; even the light bulbs were inaccessible. But Loftus, like other desperate men, found a way. He pried the wire handle off the trash container and attached it to a ventilation hole in the wall near the ceiling. To the handle he fastened a twisted strip torn off the gray hospital blanket from his bed. Standing on the chair he tied the other end of the strip around his neck. He stood there like that, perhaps a minute, perhaps an hour, before he shoved the chair away with his foot.

He had died quietly, without a fight. On the white wall behind him there were no marks of feet kicking in anguish or struggling to get a hold on the wall to ease the pressure around his neck. There were no scratches or fingernail marks on his throat. It was as if he had died by willing, before the twisted strip of blanket had time to cut off his air.

His face was not discolored, and though his mouth was slightly open, his tongue didn’t protrude. He looked quite tranquil, as if the long night that he’d been dreading had turned out well and the dreams it held were pleasant. Its shadows were without terror, and its streets were the same strange streets that Birdie had walked along.

“I hears you, white boy, I hears you talkin and whisperin. You get down on your knees and ask the sweet Jesus to loose the devil in you standin in there whisperin and laughin bout a poor old nigger’s insides.”

Gill wheeled around suddenly and screamed toward the open door: “Shut up! Shut up, I tell you!”

“Whisperin and laughin...”

“Shut up, goddam it!”

“Cursin and yellin and whisperin...”

“I’ll come in and brain you, goddam it!”

“Threatenin, threatenin a poor old man that’s full of sins and lice and gonna have his hair cut off. Get down on your knees, white boy, and ask for the devil to loose you.”

Gill stood with his fists pressed against his ribs, the color draining out of his knuckles. “All right, Billings,” he said at last. “I got down and the devil loosed me.”

“Sing Hallelujah.”

“Hallelujah,” Gill said, with the tears streaming down his face. “Hallelujah.”

17

The street was still five stories down, but the sky seemed closer than it had during the morning. Now at twilight it pressed against the window of Meecham’s office, a shapeless changing mass, the color of bruised flesh.

Mrs. Christy was gone for the day, and the telephone was ringing. There was a typewritten note propped against the lamp on Meecham’s desk and he read it before he reached for the phone.

“E.J.M: Following calls came in. 11:35 Cordwink. 12:10 Mrs. Hamilton, no message. 1:15 Mr. Geo. Loesser, will call back. 1:4 °Checker Cab, motion for new trial denied. 3:10 Miss McDaniels can’t find her copy of will. 3:15 Sweeney Dry Cleaners, rug shrinkage unavoidable and refuse to settle. 3:45 Mrs. Alistair re trust deed. 4:05 Mr. Loesser, call him at 5-5988 before six. 4:33 Mr. Post won’t be in tomorrow. L. E. Christy.”

He picked up the phone. “Hello, Meecham speaking.”

“This is George Loesser, Mr. Meecham. I may be wrong, but I think we met a year or so ago at a convention in Chicago.” Loesser spoke in a thin nervous voice with a slight New England accent. “Does that ring a bell?”

“It could,” Meecham said. He hadn’t been to a convention for ten years. “Bring me up to date a little.”

“Absolutely. Well, right now I’m with a Detroit firm, Lewenstein, Adler and Birch. The reason I’m in town is that I had to meet a client at the airport this morning and then I drove her over here. My client happens to be very interested in seeing you.”

“As a lawyer?”

“Not at all,” Loesser said sharply. “My firm handles all her affairs. This is quite a different matter, a personal one. She would like to talk to you because the Sheriff mentioned your name in connection with Virginia Barkeley. You were looking after Mrs. Barkeley’s interests, weren’t you?”

“For a time.”

“My client is Lily Margolis.”

“Oh.”

“As you may know, she was in Lima visiting her sister at the time of Mr. Margolis’ death.”

“I knew that, yes.”

“She returned as soon as she could. She’s been with the Sheriff this morning and part of the afternoon. She hadn’t anything much to tell him, of course. It was just a formality.”

“If she’s seen Cordwink, why does she want to see me?”

“Frankly, I don’t know.” Loesser sounded sincerely puzzled. “Curiosity, probably. Cordwink didn’t tell her a great deal, and you know women, they like details, never get sick of details. That’s understandable, of course, in Lily’s case. She’s never come up against anything like this before. She’s led a very sheltered life, you might say, and this business has been a great shock to her emotionally, mainly because of the children. Naturally I’ve done my best to keep her and the children out of the papers.”

“I knew someone had.” Loesser had been successful too. No photograph or snapshot of either Lily Margolis or her children had appeared in any newspaper, and very few facts about her personal life had been mentioned. It was possible, though, that there were very few facts to mention, that Lily Margolis was one of those dull and virtuous women who had no interests outside of her children and the mechanical operations of her home. Meecham had met a great many such women, and sometimes their dullness, and often their virtue, was a surface covering, a thin sheet of ice over a running river, dangerous to cross.

“My own feeling about the matter,” Loesser said, “is that it would be better to forget it. In fact, I’m phoning you now under protest. I didn’t want to, and I don’t think anything will be gained by mulling over the sordid details. But Lily wants it that way. If you come and talk to her you’ll be reimbursed for your time, of course.”

“You realize that the case is settled.”

“Of course. Since the young man killed himself this morning...”

“How did you find that out?”

“Strangely enough, Lily was in the Sheriff’s office when the message was phoned in. She couldn’t help overhearing.” Loesser coughed, but it was more of a nervous mannerism than a real cough. “I understand you were a friend of the young man?”

“I knew him.”

“It’s a sad affair all around, but especially for Lily and the two children. Fortunately, they’re well provided for. One of the few sensible things Margolis did in his lifetime was to take out enough insurance.”

“Double indemnity has healed a lot of broken hearts.”

“It helps, and why not?” Loesser said defensively.

“Why not, indeed.” Meecham looked at the clock on his desk: 5:10. “I’ll be glad to see Mrs. Margolis. When?”

“How about tonight after dinner? Or right away, if you’d prefer.”

“That would be better.”

“I’m at Lily’s house now. Do you know where Lancaster Drive is, near the golf course?”

“Yes.”

“It’s 1206, a white-and-green colonial house. You can’t miss it. The kids have spent all afternoon building a couple of snowmen at the driveway entrance.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The floodlight was on at the entrance gate, and the snow figures stood like sepulchers, one on each side. Loesser had made a mistake about them, though. They weren’t snowmen. One of them was a lady, with a pink ruffled apron tied around her lumpy waist and a bandana covering her head to hide its baldness. One of her charcoal eyes had fallen out of its melting socket. She had a witch’s nose made out of a carrot and a moist beet-mouth, and stuck in her chest was a long dripping icicle that gleamed in the light like a stiletto with a jeweled handle. The snow lady seemed to be aware of the wound: her blurred beet-mouth was anguished, and her single eye stared helplessly into the night.

Meecham pressed hard on the accelerator and the wheels of the car spun for a moment in the slush and then took hold. The driveway was on a steep grade and it hadn’t been shoveled. Neither had the steps of the house, or the wide pillared veranda. There were sounds of dripping everywhere, as in a greenhouse.

Nearly every window was lighted and wide open, as if the rooms were being aired after a period of disease.

Loesser answered the door himself. In contrast to his thin nervous voice over the phone, he was a heavy-set moon-faced man in his forties, with a smile that flashed off and on with the precision of a traffic signal. He had courtroom manners and a way of talking to a person without looking at him, as if he was really aiming his words at an unseen and very critical jury.

“Good of you to come, Meecham.” The two men shook hands. “Let me take your coat. The maid’s upstairs with the kids.”

He took Meecham’s coat and hung it in a small closet that opened off the foyer. Meecham noticed that the closet was empty except for a pair of child’s rubber boots.

“Lily hasn’t had time to unpack or get organized,” Loesser said. “I’m her cousin, by the way, in case you were wondering how I come in on all this.”

“I wasn’t wondering very hard.”

“No? Well, I thought you might. The fact is” — he tugged at his tie — “the fact of the matter is that I’ve stood by Lily all during this unfortunate marriage of hers.”

It was the sort of remark that demanded an answer of some kind: Oh? How interesting. Is that a fact? Good for you, old boy. Stout fellow. Meecham merely made an indeterminate noise.

“Well, Lily’s waiting in the den,” Loesser said. “It’s the only room in the house that doesn’t smell of moth crystals. The place has been closed up, you know.”

The den wasn’t what Meecham expected from its name, a book-and-pipe sanctuary for a man. It turned out to be a small room on the southeast corner of the house, equipped for activity, not rest. There was a sewing machine, a drawing board, a small hand-loom, a dressmaker’s dummy, and a long unpainted wooden table filled with children’s toys. The pine walls were covered with children’s art, sketches and watercolors and fingerpaintings, some of them hanging from the molding in frames, and some of them fastened loosely to the wall with thumbtacks. The pictures were all signed, most of them right across the middle, Ann M. or Georgie.

Activity had given the room an air of pleasant untidiness. But there was nothing untidy about Lily Margolis. She was a slim muscular young woman in a tweed suit with flecks of blue in it that exactly matched the color of her eyes. Her brown hair was clipped short in rows of curls, and the curls were so uniform that it seemed as though she had weighed and measured each of them before letting herself be seen in public. Her face was deeply sunburned, so that her eyes looked very bright and clear in contrast, and her teeth very white. Her features were plain, but the carefully chosen tweed suit, and the carefully acquired sunburn, gave her quite a striking appearance.

She repeated the words Loesser had used, but her New England accent was stronger than his, as if she had retained it deliberately to show her contempt for the Middle West.

“It was very good of you to come, Mr. Meecham. Please sit down, won’t you? And George, would you mind awfully bringing us a drink?”

Loesser got up obediently, but he looked slightly pained and he turned at the doorway to give Mrs. Margolis a don’t-say-anything-interesting-while-I’m-gone glance.

Lily Margolis returned to the wooden bench by the drawing board where she’d been sitting before she rose to greet Meecham. She sat, stiff and erect, her feet planted squarely on the floor, her large competent-looking hands crossed on her knees. “You see, Mr. Meecham, I don’t know quite what happened, or why. Everything is fuzzy and confused. It’s like trying to understand someone else’s nightmare.”

Someone else’s, Meecham noted, not her own. The statement fitted in with his previous conception of her; she seemed to have the occupational schizophrenia of the perfect secretary, a self-effacing manner combined with a positive knowledge of her own superiority. Yes, boss on the one hand, and silly boy on the other. Perhaps not exactly the perfect wife.

She leaned forward slightly toward Meecham, but without bending her back. “I had taken the children down to Lima to spend Christmas with my sister — her husband is a mining engineer. I was only there two weeks when the message came that Claude had had an accident. Rather delicate wording, don’t you think, for what really happened.”

“You’re weathering the shock very well,” Meecham said.

“When you’ve had as many shocks as I’ve had in eight years, one more hardly matters. I’m a little punchy by this time, like an old fighter.” She smiled, without bitterness, without feeling of any kind. “I’ve had so much uncertainty. Now at least things are settled. I don’t have to wonder where Claude is or what he’s doing. I don’t have to try and decide whether to divorce him for the sake of the children, or not to divorce him for the sake of the children. Fate stepped in and like a referee stopped the fight. I’m not sorry and I won’t pretend that I’m sorry. Claude was a terrible fool. Only a terrible fool would...”

She stopped but the idea was clear: only a terrible fool would get murdered. And, in a sense, Meecham agreed; the victim, like the murderer, had a certain choice of fate, a selection of circumstances.

Loesser returned with a pitcher of martinis. He poured a drink for Meecham and one for himself.

“You’ll excuse me, Mr. Meecham,” Lily Margolis said. “I don’t drink.”

“It makes her sick,” Loesser explained. “Well, here’s how.”

“It doesn’t make me sick in the least, George. I wish you wouldn’t keep telling that to everyone.”

“Well, it does make you sick. I’ve...”

“George dear, what will Mr. Meecham think of us, indulging in a silly family squabble like this?”

Loesser gazed with a stony little smile at the wall behind her head: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you that the witness is lying, that the effect of alcohol on her system is highly deleterious, and, in fact, it makes her sick.

Meecham shifted restlessly in his chair. There was a bowl of russet apples on the table in front of him and the sight and smell of them started a hungry gnawing in his stomach. He felt like a man who had come to a banquet as guest speaker and then found himself lost in the shuffle of preliminaries and introductions while the food got cold. So far Mrs. Margolis hadn’t asked a single question about her husband’s death, and Meecham was almost certain now that she didn’t intend to, that he had been invited to the house not to talk but to listen.

“George, there’s no point in your staying here,” Mrs. Margolis said suddenly. “You have a long drive ahead of you and you know how Marion hates anyone to be late for dinner.”

Loesser cleared his throat. “It’s my duty to stay. This is a family matter.”

“Are you afraid I’ll say the wrong thing?”

“Well, no. Not really.”

Mrs. Margolis laughed and said to Meecham, “He is. He’s afraid I’ll make a slanderous remark about Virginia. I will, too.”

“Now, Lily,” Loesser protested. “Now I suggest that you let bygones be bygones.”

She ignored him. “Virginia is your client, I understand, Mr. Meecham?”

“She was.”

“Did she mention me?”

“She said she had met you.”

“Met me? That’s a laugh. Yes, indeed, she met me. We had quite a charming brawl before I left for Lima.”

Loesser looked extremely uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t say it was a brawl exactly.”

“It was a brawl. She called me a liar and tried to slap me and pull my hair, and I held her wrists so she couldn’t. I’m quite strong.”

“Tennis,” Loesser explained. “Plenty of...”

“George. I wish you’d go home.”

“I know you do,” he said grimly. “But I’m not going. You’re tired and emotional and you may stick your neck out without meaning to.”

“It’s my neck.”

“It was Claude’s too.”

Her face looked a little sick under its healthy sunburn. “What a... a terrible thing to say.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but damn it, Lily, you won’t pay any attention unless I... Anyway, I’d forgotten that’s where he was...”

Meecham interrupted. “We’re not getting anywhere.”

“We would, if George would go home.”

“I’m not going home,” Loesser stated.

“Well, then keep quiet.” A pulse in Mrs. Margolis’ temple had begun to beat hard, moving rhythmically under her skin. “I didn’t intend to quarrel with Virginia. I went to her house out of a sense of duty. I knew she was going out with Claude because my maid Rose saw them together at one of those juke-box places outside of town. Rose goes to Dr. Barkeley for allergy shots and she recognized Virginia right away. So I... went to see her.” She fidgeted with her plain gold wedding ring, slipping it over the joint of her finger and back again. “I told her the truth, that she was wasting her time on Claude because he was keeping another woman, had been keeping her for years, perhaps before we were ever married. Years and years,” she repeated. “The silly girls like Virginia were just cover-ups. He took them dancing or out to dinner. But he was never seen with her. She was his — his real love.”

Her control was slipping down like a zipper under too much pressure.

“His real love. Isn’t that funny? That a man like Claude could actually love one woman all those years? I used to lie awake and wonder, what did she look like, what did she have that I didn’t have, what did they talk about...”

“Now, now, Lily,” Loesser said. “You have no proof at all that Claude knew this woman for a long time or even that he was keeping her. You’ve always had a wild imagination where Claude is concerned. It’s possible that the two of them were merely good friends.”

Mrs. Margolis’ mouth curved in an ugly little smile. “Old school chums. That’s a brilliant idea, George.”

“Well, damn it, my own impression of Miss Falconer is that she’s a highly respectable woman.”

“You’ve met her?” Meecham said.

“Yes, in a way. It happened accidentally about two months ago. I went into Hudson’s at lunch time to pick up a book for my wife. I saw Claude standing at the glove counter and went over to say hello, thinking that perhaps we might have lunch together and I’d have a chance to talk to him about Lily. He didn’t come into town often and when he did he avoided me. He knew what I thought of his behavior, especially this latest business involving Virginia Barkeley.”

Mrs. Margolis was leaning toward him with a rapt expression on her face like a small girl who had never tired of hearing the same story and wanted it repeated, word for word.

“I didn’t realize, of course, that Claude had anyone with him until it was too late for me to retire gracefully. He introduced the woman to me as Miss Falconer. She was a tall, rather common-looking woman about Claude’s own age. I knew Lily had been thinking for some time that Claude had a steady mistress, but I couldn’t believe it was this Miss Falconer. She wasn’t the type and, besides, Claude didn’t act embarrassed or anything.”

Mrs. Margolis made a sound of contempt. “Claude wouldn’t have been embarrassed if he’d been caught making love to her on the steps of the city hall. You can’t embarrass a moral imbecile.”

“At least give him credit for some sensibility. As I said before, I had the impression that he and the woman were old friends. They were very much at ease with each other and...”

“So are lovers.”

“Yes, but Miss Falconer doesn’t suit the role very well. She’s not young or attractive. She’s a good ten years older than you are, Lily, and not nearly so pretty.”

“Thank you,” she said heavily. “Thank you very much, George.”

“Well, I mean it. She’s just an ordinary woman.”

“Ordinary. That’s all you ever say about her. How can you tell whether she’s ordinary or not? And it isn’t what she is that’s important — it’s how she made Claude feel. That’s what falling in love must be, meeting someone who makes you feel good, who fills a need for you.” She looked down at her own shadow on the floor. “I never found out what Claude’s need was.”

Loesser went over and patted her shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. He may have had some sort of glandular imbalance.”

“Glandular imbalance.” She began to laugh. “That’s marvelous. Glandular imbalance.”

“I must say I don’t see anything particularly funny about it.” He turned his back on her and addressed Meecham: “Well, that’s the story. I told Lily about meeting Miss Falconer and Lily immediately drew her own conclusions as women always do, and decided to leave town for a while. Before she left she went to see Virginia Barkeley. You know the result of that.”

Meecham nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Mrs. Margolis said.

“There was a brawl, you claimed.”

“That was one result. The other result was that Claude was killed.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I haven’t been taken in by the confession of an unbalanced man with a guilt complex. I know who killed my husband, and George knows it and...”

“Leave me out of this,” Loesser said.

“They had Virginia in jail, right where she belongs. Why didn’t they keep her there?”

“They couldn’t,” Loesser explained with weary patience. “She was held for questioning as long as they could hold her, for forty-eight hours. After that they had to charge her or let her go. Naturally they let her go because Loftus proved that he committed the murder.”

“Proved, George? Proved?” She chewed the word as if it was a stick of sharply flavored gum. “A lot of things can be proved that aren’t true, and a lot of things that are true can’t be proved. I can’t prove that my husband kept a woman called Miss Falconer for years, but I know he did, the same as I know that Loftus was lying. Why did he lie? Because he was insane? Or for money? Or both? You knew him, Mr. Meecham, George told me you knew him. Why did he lie?”

Meecham looked at the bowl of apples on the table. “There’s no evidence that he was paid, or insane or lying.”

“No evidence but common sense. Tell me, Mr. Meecham, weren’t you surprised when Loftus came forward with his story?”

“I wasn’t expecting it,” Meecham said. He remained uncertain of the degree of his surprise, though he remembered the scene vividly, Loftus half-hidden behind the hedge, his hair whitened by the falling snow. “I’ve died a thousand times from fear,” he had said. “A thousand deaths and one would have been enough. A great irony.” The words turned over in Meecham’s mind like stones in a river.

“Someone was expecting it, someone wasn’t surprised,” Mrs. Margolis said. “Why should she be? She paid him for it. She bought that confession the way you go into a butcher shop and buy a pound of baloney. And that’s what she got, baloney! She bought that con—”

“For God’s sake, be quiet, Lily.” Loesser was beginning to sweat. “You don’t realize the seriousness of what you’re...”

“I will not be quiet. I have a right to my opinion.”

“Keep it an opinion, then.”

“Very well. In my opinion, Virginia Barkeley killed my husband in a jealous rage. It’s a common motive, and for a woman like her, I suppose, a strong one. She has an uncontrollable temper, everyone knows that.”

“Allegedly,” Loesser said.

“All right, allegedly!” she shouted. “She was allegedly angry and jealous and she reacted against Claude the way she reacted against me the day I told her about Claude and Miss Falconer. She attacked him as she attacked me. According to my opinion! Damn you, George. Damn you. I won’t keep modifying everything, qualifying everything.”

“You’re on safe ground as long as you’re damning me,” Loesser said. “So go ahead.”

But Mrs. Margolis had turned to Meecham again. There was a glassy glare in her eyes, as if she was burning up with a fever of rage and resentment that had been slowly, for years and years, infecting her system. “She was there in the room, wasn’t she? Do you think she could have slept through a murder? How quiet is a murder? Do you think Claude wouldn’t have fought back if a stranger came at him with a knife?”

“There was no evidence of a struggle,” Meecham said.

“That’s what I’m talking about. There was no evidence of a struggle because there was no struggle. Claude was taken unawares. Not by a stranger like Loftus. By someone he trusted, someone he thought was just fooling with the knife. Claude was a big man. He could have torn Loftus apart. Can you expect me to believe that he just stood there and let himself be killed?”

“The attack was quick,” Meecham said, “and your husband had been drinking quite heavily. So had Virginia. In fact, her blood alcohol concentration was so high it’s doubtful that she had sufficient strength and co-ordination to use the knife.”

Mrs. Margolis swallowed hard, her hand against her throat. “I have no proof, nothing. But I feel in my heart that she killed him. I don’t know how, but she’s responsible.”

“In your opinion,” Loesser said.

“In... in my opinion.” She rubbed the throbbing pulse in her temple.

“You’re tired out, Lily. Why don’t you have a nice hot supper with the children and then go to bed?” He added, to Meecham, “She was up all night on the plane — ran into a storm in the South.”

“I understand.”

“Naturally, she doesn’t see things in their proper perspective. I myself am convinced that Loftus gave a perfectly straightforward account of the affair and then killed himself in remorse. Don’t you think so, Meecham?”

“It seems reasonable,” Meecham said, though he didn’t agree with either Loesser’s oversimplified version or Mrs. Margolis’ personal and over-imaginative one. The truth lay somewhere between the two extremes like an uncharted island between two shores. Meecham hoped that someday it would be found, by star and compass, or by blind luck. “Did you tell the Sheriff about your suspicions, Mrs. Margolis?”

“I intended to. George wouldn’t let me. He said it would cause trouble.”

Loesser flushed. “Confound it, Lily, what I meant was that you’d do yourself and the children a lot more harm than Virginia — more publicity, more scandal. You’ve got to consider not just your own feelings but the children. They’re the real unfortunates in this rotten business.”

“I’ve been a little unfortunate myself,” she said dryly. “So was Claude.”

And a great many others, Meecham added in silence. Little ones and big ones: Gill who might lose his job, Miss Falconer who had lost a lover, and Loftus who had lost everything. The Garinos, Dr. Barkeley, Mrs. Hearst, cold and bitter in her grief, Loftus’ mother buying darkness by the quart, and Virginia herself watching the trains go past.

Then he thought of the snow-lady he’d seen at the entrance gate with the icicle in her heart, and he wondered if Loesser wasn’t right, after all — that the children were the real unfortunates. They would carry their scars longer, and with bewilderment, and in inaccessible places.

Loesser accompanied him to the front door. He seemed more at ease now that the interview was over and all statements had been properly qualified as opinions and allegations. “I hope you haven’t taken Lily too seriously, Meecham.”

“No.”

“The tragedy’s knocked her off-balance, but she’ll right herself. You know how most women are, their emotions are direct and clear like Scotch. There’s no hangover. In a few months she’ll have forgotten about Virginia and Miss Falconer and all the rest of them.”

“I don’t suppose you ever looked up this Miss Falconer.”

“No, but I tried to find out where she lived just out of curiosity. There was no Miss Falconer — or Faulkner — listed in the 1951 or ’50 Arbana directories. The ’48 directory listed a Jemima Falconer as a secretary and gave a Catherine Avenue address, I believe. It may or may not have been the same woman, and besides, a lot can happen in four years.”

“What about the Detroit vicinity?”

“I found several listings under both spellings, which was as good as a dead end for me. I hadn’t the time or inclination to try and track down the woman, especially since the only evidence I had of her connection with Claude was that chance meeting in Hudson’s, and Lily’s intuition. You’ve no doubt had some experience with female intuition, in court and out of it. It’s almost as fallible as tea leaves or head bumps.”

He took Meecham’s coat and hat out of the hall closet.

“I repeat, it was nice of you to come out and talk to Lily. I think now that she’s gotten a few things off her chest she’ll be better.”

“Probably.”

“Send your bill to me. Please don’t be hesitant about it. That was our arrangement over the phone.”

“Let’s leave it on the cuff,” Meecham said. “I might want a favor from you some day.”

“Any time. My office is in the First National Building and my house is in Grosse Point.”

“I’ll remember that.”

They parted with a very hearty handshake like a pair of old alumni after a homecoming.

Meecham crossed the wet driveway and got into his car. He drove in low gear down the steep grade to the entrance gate.

During the hour that he’d been in the house the snow-lady had been melting in the soft air like butter in the sun. The icicle was still sticking through her heart, though her nose and her remaining eye had fallen out and the scarf clung moistly to her shrinking head. By morning, if the weather held, she would topple into an indistinguishable mass of gray slush, and no one would remember her existence except two children.

18

Gurton’s café was on State Street at Main, between a haberdashery and a department store. Gurton had been installed there for thirty years, the chef for nearly twenty, and for five Meecham had been eating his dinners there several times a week. He knew the menus, the waiters, Gurton’s children and their children, and every picture on the wall. When the place closed for repainting once a year, Meecham missed it. It was the closest thing to a home, a social continuity, that he had ever had in his solitary life.

Gurton came to the door to meet him, smelling heavily of the cloves he was always chewing. “How’ve you been, Meech?”

“Fine.”

“Somebody’s got your table.”

“That’s all right. I’ll sit someplace else.”

“I thought you weren’t coming. I figured you were out of town. You haven’t been around.”

“I’ve been working.”

Gurton was an enormous man. He ate too much, and drank too much beer in his off-hours, and the only exercise he ever got was shuffling to the front door to greet his friends and counting his money at night after the place was closed. He enjoyed counting his money and he always took the day’s receipts home with him. To protect himself he carried a Colt automatic. He knew, theoretically, how to use it, but he was actually more terrified of the automatic than he was of any robber. Gurton was convinced that someday, in spite of the safety catch, it would go off accidentally and cripple him, or explode in his pocket and blow him to pieces. Like a man putting all his eggs in one basket, Gurton had loaded all his worries and fears into the automatic.

“You got your name in tonight’s paper,” he said.

“Did I?”

“I rang up all my kids and said, Meech has his name in the paper. You want to see it?”

“No.”

“You aren’t human.” Gurton shook his head and his jowls flapped like a turkey’s wattles. “I knew this guy Loftus that you found dead. Not by name, but once I saw his picture I recognized him. He used to come in here about two, three years ago, with his girlfriend, a tall bright-looking redhead. They used to sit and drink coffee, never saw a pair that could drink so much coffee. After a while they stopped coming in and I thought they must have broken up or got married.”

“They got married,” Meecham said, “and moved to another town.”

“Is that a fact? It didn’t mention that in the paper.”

“They were divorced after a short time and the woman was killed in an auto accident out West.”

“That’s too bad. I always feel sorry when people get divorced or don’t get married at all, which is even worse.”

Meecham knew what was coming and tried to avoid it by picking up the menu.

It came anyway. “It’s no good for a man, always being alone. You ought to get married, Meech, start having a few kids to put a little zip in your life and to give you something to leave behind you. Take this guy, Loftus, what did he leave behind him, eh?”

“Seven hundred and sixteen dollars.”

Gurton looked disappointed. He hadn’t expected or wanted an answer. “Now how come you know that?”

“You’re getting nosy, Gurton.”

“I’ve always been nosy.”

“It’s bad for business.” Meecham put the menu back in its metal holder. “I’ll take the veal cutlets. Mind if I use the phone in your office?”

“Go ahead. The cutlets are no good, it’s the wrong time of year for veal.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“That reminds me, you know what the priest said to the butcher at confession? He said, you’re cutting up too much.”

“That’s a howl.”

“I consider it funny,” Gurton said with dignity. “Thank God I don’t work so hard that I have no sense of humor left, like some people.”

Gurton’s office was a small room on the mezzanine. In contrast to the meticulously neat kitchen downstairs, the office was littered with papers and letters, magazines, canceled checks, watch folders and half-empty packs of cigarettes.

Meecham closed the door and sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk. It took him five minutes to find the telephone directory, which had fallen into the wastebasket. Hearst was listed as Jameson R. Hearst, 611 Division Street. He dialed 2-6306.

Emmy Hearst answered the phone. She sounded as if she’d been crying again and he knew she must have found out about Loftus by this time.

“Hello.”

“Hello. Mrs. Hearst?”

“Yes.” There was a hum of activity in the background, voices and music and bursts of laughter. It was seven o’clock; Mrs. Hearst’s “boys” would all be home. Meecham recalled the first night he’d gone to see Loftus’ room; how incongruous it had seemed to him that Loftus should live in a house so full of youth and vitality.

“This is Eric Meecham. Is Mr. Hearst in? I’d like to talk to him.”

“What about? Jim doesn’t know anything.”

“It’s a trivial matter,” Meecham said, hoping that it was. “I don’t want to bother you about it, you’ve had a bad time.”

“I wish I were dead,” she said in a low flat voice. “I wish I were dead.”

“Words aren’t much good, I know, but I’d like to assure you that he didn’t suffer. I saw him afterwards.”

“He didn’t leave any note, any message?”

“No.”

“It said in the paper that he talked to the guard all night.”

“To the orderly, yes.”

“Did he talk about — me?”

“I guess he talked about everything.” He couldn’t give her the bald truth, that Loftus had talked only about Birdie. Mrs. Hearst didn’t even know of Birdie’s existence. The first night when she discussed Loftus with Cordwink she’d said, Earl tells me everything and he’s never mentioned a wife. It would be a cruel blow to her when she found out about Birdie. Meecham knew that eventually she must find out. He said, “I know it’s hard to be realistic in a situation like this, Mrs. Hearst. But the fact is, Earl had very little time left anyway. He would have died soon.”

“I can’t — talk about it anymore. I... I... I’ll call Jim.”

There was a long pause, then the sudden sharp slamming of two doors and the background noises ceased.

“Yes?” Hearst said. “Who’s this?”

“Eric Meecham.”

“The lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t get it. I expected to hear directly from her.”

Meecham made a little sound of surprise, then covered it with a cough. “She couldn’t manage it — too many people around.”

“She’s got no business calling a lawyer in on a thing like this. I don’t like it.” There was a moment’s silence. “Is the agreement ready?”

“She’s still thinking it over.” He wasn’t sure yet who the “she” was — Virginia or Mrs. Hamilton — and he had no idea what agreement she was supposed to have made. He made a blind guess: “Your asking price is a little high.”

“I never mentioned money,” Hearst said. “I’m an honest man. If she said I mentioned money she’s a liar. I wouldn’t take a red cent from her. Just try me. Offer me money and I wouldn’t take it, see?”

“What exactly do you want?”

“I told her what I want.”

“She didn’t make it clear to me. She was quite upset.”

“I want a chance. A future. There’s no future in a town like this for a man like me. I can do things once I get a chance.”

“So?”

“Well, supposing she buys a new car and needs somebody to drive it back to California for her.”

“You’ll drive it back.”

“Sure, that’s right. And then when we get there, she’s got a lot of connections, she could fix me up with a job, maybe around a movie studio, maybe as her regular chauffeur.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Sure, it’s reasonable, Mr. Meecham.” He sounded almost pathetically eager. “She’s got nothing to be upset about. All I’m asking is a favor in return for the favor I’m doing her.”

“She didn’t tell me what your favor was.”

Hearst hesitated, like a small boy playing cards, wanting to win the game on his own but tempted to show everyone what a good hand he had. “It’s a personal family matter,” he said.

“I see.” Meecham was sure now that the “she” was Mrs. Hamilton, and the “family” was Virginia, and the only connecting link between them and Hearst was through Loftus. But he didn’t know what this link was. Loftus had not been friendly with Hearst, he wouldn’t have confided in him; in fact, he had never even confided in Mrs. Hearst with any degree of truth.

“What I want,” Hearst said, “is an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?”

“One that’s written down and legal, like a contract.”

“You’ll have to specify the exact terms. I can’t draw up a contract without...”

“Sure, sure, I know that.”

“We’d better have a talk about it some time,” Meecham said, deliberately evasive.

“Some time. Say, what do you think this...?”

“How about the day after tomorrow at four, or early next week?”

“Stop trying to stall me. It’s now or never, as far as I’m concerned. I want that agreement.”

“All right.” Hearst had reacted as he expected. “I’ll pick you up and we’ll go over to my office. Say in about half an hour?”

“I’ll be ready.”

“Good.”

Meecham hung up, replaced the telephone directory exactly where he’d found it, in the wastebasket, and went downstairs to his table. His dinner was waiting for him, not the veal cutlets he had ordered, but a platter of fried chicken over which Gurton was hovering and clucking like a fat old hen.

“Gurton.”

“Now listen, Meech, the cutlets were no damn good, understand? Not fit for my mother-in-law. Not fit for a...”

“Are you still carrying that Colt automatic?”

“I have to.”

“How about lending it to me for a while tonight?”

“What for?”

“I’m going calling on a few friends.”

“You with a gun, Meech? That don’t make sense. No sir, I wouldn’t lend you my gun no more than I’d serve you those cutlets. Suppose it goes off and hits you in the leg and then you have your leg amputated? How about that? Anyway, what kind of friends are these, that you’ve got to carry a gun?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

“You’re mixed in with funny people, eh?”

“Some of them are funny. Some of them are quite serious.”

“Bejesus, Meech, I think you’re kidding me. You don’t want my gun.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“Guns are for crooks and crazy people and suckers like me who have to carry money around on a dark night. Now here’s a funny thing — nobody’s my friend in the dark. I see a guy coming up the alley on my way home, and I know him and he knows me, but he’s not my friend, understand? I always want to turn around and run. That’s what darkness does to people.”

“Or money does.”

“Well, anyway, I’m glad you were kidding. For a minute there I took you honest-to-God-serious.”

“Yes, so did I,” Meecham said.

All during dinner he wondered what kind of crazy impulse had made him ask Gurton for the automatic.

I’m nervous, he thought, like Gurton carrying his money in the dark. I have no friends. I know them and they know me, but I want to turn around and run.

19

The night was turning cold, and an eager new wind raced up and down the streets. Under the lights the sidewalks and the limbs of trees shone icy.

Meecham moved stiffly toward the house with his brief case in his hand. During the past hour when the weather had changed, some of Mrs. Hearst’s boys had made a slide of ice, three or four yards long, from the sidewalk to the porch steps. Meecham would have liked to try the slide, but the brief case felt heavy and he felt heavy. He thought, if this was another house and if Alice was with me, we might try the slide together.

On the porch, underneath the parlor window, there was a stepladder lying on its side, and a basket of pine branches and a spiral of copper wire, as if someone had started to decorate the house for Christmas and then lost interest. The parlor blinds were up, and the crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling blazed with light. A group of young men and girls were sitting around a table playing cards.

Meecham went up the steps and pressed the doorbell. The porch light went on instantly above his head like a spotlight. It stayed on for a few seconds and then it went off again, and the door was opened by Emmy Hearst. Her eyes were still puffed, but she’d put on some make-up and a black close-fitting dress that looked new and emphasized her slimness.

“Come in.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll have to talk in the kitchen. One of the boys is entertaining.”

She closed the door behind him and led the way down the hall. Following her, Meecham had the same impression of youth and energy that he’d had the first time he saw her standing at the sink humming to herself. It had been a shock then, as it was now, when she turned around and her face showed the bitter years.

“He isn’t here,” she said abruptly. “He had to go downtown. He asked me to tell you to wait.”

“For how long?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I had an idea that he wanted to see me as soon as possible.”

She crossed her arms as if holding herself together in readiness for a blow. “What about?”

“You’d better ask him.”

“I did. He wouldn’t tell me. But it’s bad, isn’t it?”

“I can’t very well discuss...”

“How bad?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

“It’s about this murder? Isn’t it?”

“I think so.”

She sat down on the couch and began to pick bits of wool off the blanket that covered it. The floor was littered with fuzz, as if she had already spent hours sitting there picking at the blanket like an industrious bird gathering material for its nest. She spoke listlessly, without raising her head: “After you phoned him, he phoned someone else.”

“Who was it?”

“I heard him dialing but I couldn’t hear his words. Afterwards he came and told me he was going downtown for a package of cigarettes.”

“And I’m to wait here until he comes back?”

She turned the blanket over and began on the other side. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“Why?”

“When he walked out the door I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to see him again.”

A trickle of sweat ran down the side of Meecham’s face leaving a cold moist track like a slug’s track. He said carefully, “I think I’d better try to find him.”

“Don’t. Let him go.”

“He has some information. I want it.”

“Information,” she repeated. “He’s taken you in. What information could he have? He was here, right in this house, when Margolis was killed. He was sleeping.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I saw him. That was the night I cut my arm. See, it’s still bandaged.”

She started to push up her left sleeve but Meecham stopped her. “Yes, I remember the bandage.”

“Well, that was the night it happened — Saturday. I had gotten up to take a sleeping pill. One of the boys broke the porcelain tap in the basin a week or so ago, and I fell against it in the dark and cut myself. I went into Jim’s room to see if he’d help me bandage it. But he was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake him up. That was about 12:30.” She leaned forward, looking at him anxiously. “You don’t understand about Jim. He’s like a kid. He’s never had much excitement, and when this — this business happened, we weren’t mixed up in it at all, but Jim — it went to his head. He’d say anything to be in on things, to be part of the excitement.”

“Someone might take him seriously.”

“No one who knows him.”

“There are a lot of people who don’t know him,” Meecham said. Including me, he thought. I take him seriously. “I’ll wait for another fifteen minutes. If he doesn’t show up I’ll start looking for him.”

“I don’t care.” She shook her head. “We’re through anyway. I’m going away. The car’s mine, I paid for it myself. I’m going to get in it and drive, just drive away somewhere, I don’t care where I end up.”

They were Virginia’s words, but she spoke them with more decision and assurance than Virginia had. Virginia might dream of leaving, pack her vague plans between layers of folded hopes; but Emmy Hearst would leave, get into her car and drive away without a backward glance. She was a forceful woman, and Meecham thought what a comic tragedy it was that such a woman would always choose emotionally stunted men like Hearst, or physically stunted ones like Loftus.

“I’ll stay with my sister in Chelsea for a while, and then, after that, I don’t know. Everything’s so vague and useless. When Earl was alive, no matter how bad things were, I always had a reason for living.” She leaned over suddenly, and with nervous fingers gathered up all the fuzz on the floor and squeezed it into a ball. “I loved Earl. He was the only person I’ve ever loved in my whole life. He was — perfect.”

“No,” Meecham said. “He wasn’t.”

“To me he was.” She went to the sink and threw the ball of fuzz into the garbage strainer, as if deliberately walking away from the argument. The supper dishes were still on the drainboard, two glasses, two plates, two of everything. Jim’s and Emmy’s, Meecham thought ironically. His and Hers.

“You’re idealizing Loftus,” he said. “It will be harder for you if you don’t face reality.”

“I don’t care.”

“Not tonight, perhaps, but next week, next year. You’ll go on with your life, working, meeting new people. But you’ll never meet a living man who’ll be as perfect as your image of a dead man. So you’ll have to change that image, cut it down to size.”

She turned and stared at him. “What are you getting at, Mr. Meecham?”

“Loftus was human. He had bad qualities as well as good qualities.”

“You could never shake my faith in him.”

“I can,” Meecham said. “I think I have to.”

“Try. Go ahead and try.”

“Did he ever tell you about Birdie?”

“Birdie?” A pulse began to pound in her throat, and she put her hand over it to hide it. “Who was — Birdie?”

“She was his wife.”

“No. No, he never had a wife.”

“He married her about two years ago. They were diver—”

“Please,” she said. “Please. Don’t.”

“They were divorced — there was trouble over his mother, I believe — and later Birdie was killed in an auto accident out West.”

For almost a whole minute she didn’t speak or move. Then, with a sudden furious sweep of her hand, she thrust all the dishes off the drainboard into the sink. The crash split the air, and little pieces of glass sprayed out of the sink like water from a fountain.

Some of the glass struck her but she didn’t flinch or even notice. She just turned and walked away from the whole mess, looking very composed.

Pausing in the doorway, she said to Meecham in a cold flat voice, “Your fifteen minutes are up. Good night, Mr. Meecham.”

20

Eight o’clock, and a church bell was ringing out a Christmas carol, alternately brash and wispy, as the wind carried the tune like a temperamental choir boy.

O Little Town of Bethlehem. As he passed the church Meecham sang with the bells, a nervous obsessive singing that had nothing to do with music but was only an expression of disquiet. People were gathered on the church steps, huddled protectively in groups to withstand the force of the weather and of other groups. O Little Town.

Two blocks beyond the church he saw, in the glare of his headlights, a woman walking alone down the street. She was limping, heading into the wind with her coat and scarf flapping uselessly behind her like sails torn from a mast. Meecham pulled over to the curb. The woman turned abruptly, glanced at the car through her horn-rimmed glasses, and then began walking again with the springy uneven steps of someone accustomed to walking on ice.

Meecham drove ahead a few yards, stopped the car and leaned across the seat to open the window nearest the curb.

“Carney.”

She came closer, blinking away the moisture from her wind-whipped eyes. Her cheeks and her chin and the tip of her nose were red and shiny with cold.

She said, “Give me a lift?”

“Hop in.” He opened the door and she got into the car. Leaning back in the seat she held her mittened hands against her face to ease the aching of the cold.

“I’m freezing.”

“You look it.”

“I couldn’t get a cab so I decided to walk.” Her glasses had steamed up from the heat of the car so that she looked blind. She made no attempt to take off the glasses or wipe them; she seemed content, for the moment, to see nothing, to rest behind the fog like a ship at anchor.

The car moved ahead with a spinning of the rear wheels.

“Where are you going?” Meecham said.

“To the house. Alice phoned and asked me to come. She said it was an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

Carney gave a quick nervous laugh. “Any kind. Some people seem to jump from emergency to emergency, and other people like me just wait around to be useful after the fall.”

“What’s happened, Carney?”

“They’ve gone, that’s what happened. The two of them — Virginia and her mother.”

“When?”

“Just a while ago. They sent Alice out on some errand or other, and when she came back to the house they were gone. She phoned me right away and she tried to phone you and Paul too.”

“How did they leave?”

“In the new car. I should have known there was something funny about that car. It isn’t like Mrs. Hamilton to go out and buy something like that without shopping around. She’s not stingy, but she’s careful about her purchases — she hates to get stung.”

“Where did she buy the car?”

“Right off the showroom floor. You know that Kaiser Frazer branch out near the stadium. She and Virginia went there in a cab this morning, and Virginia drove the car home — a yellow Frazer sedan.”

“It’s gone now, of course?”

“Yes. Alice checked.”

“Why is she so sure they’re not coming back?”

“Because they left some money for her in an envelope, her salary and enough to get home on.” With a sound of anger she shook her head violently, like a wet spaniel shaking water off its ears. “How could they be so stupid? A middle-aged woman and her married daughter running away like a couple of children. Why? Why did they do it?”

“Figure it out.”

“No, I don’t want to. It... looks bad, doesn’t it?”

“As bad as possible.”

“Oh God, I’m tired. I’m tired of emergencies. I’m tired of playing the maiden aunt. When something goes wrong, call Carney. It’s been like that ever since I knew them. Well.” She took a deep breath. “Well, now something has gone really wrong and I can’t help them at all.”

Meecham turned left at the next corner. Part of the Barkeley house was visible at the end of the block, but most of it was hidden behind the evergreen hedge where Loftus had stood the first night. It seemed a long time ago.

He said, “Did you have any idea they were planning to leave?”

“No, but I thought something was in the wind. The new car, and then the telegram this morning.”

“What telegram?”

“From Willett, her son in Los Angeles. He wired his mother a thousand dollars. She had to go down to the Western Union office to get it. Now why should Willett have wired her that much money?”

“Because she asked him to.”

“She must have,” Carney said. “But why? She had a lot of money when she came. I remember asking her about Willett the night she arrived, and she said something about Willett being the same old Willett, that he was in a great stew because she was carrying so much cash.”

“How much is so much?”

“I can’t give you a definite figure, but I know she’s always carried very large amounts of cash. She was never afraid of being robbed, as I would be. On the contrary, it gave her a sense of security.”

He stopped the car in the driveway but didn’t get out. Instead, he said, “What happened to her money?”

Carney hesitated. She had taken off her glasses and was swinging them in a circle, one way and then another. “She gave it away, I guess.”

“To whom?”

“Well, to Virginia. She...”

“Virginia hasn’t a dime,” Meecham said. “She was trying to cook up a scheme with me to float enough cash to run away.”

“I don’t know, I just can’t reason things out. Nothing seems — well, sensible. Nothing seems sensible.”

“Not yet.”

They got out of the car and went toward the house, walking side by side and close together in curious intimacy, like mourners approaching a grave. But the grave was only Virginia’s patio, built for sun and summer but now dark and useless, the redwood chairs glazed with ice, the barbecue pit discolored by the soot of winter, and the plants dead in their hanging baskets.

Inside the house it was very warm but Alice and Barkeley still had their heavy coats on, as if in the stress of the moment they had both forgotten their personal comfort.

Alice looked ready to cry, but there was no sign of emotion on Barkeley’s face except for a kind of weary contempt.

He addressed Meecham. “Well, what do we do now, call the police?”

“Perhaps that’s the best idea.”

“I don’t want to, but I can’t think of any alternative.”

“You might try to catch up with them.”

“How?”

“We know they’re heading west, that’s the important point. From here as far as Morrisburg, Highway 12 is the only road west. At Morrisburg they can take 60 southwest. So the problem is to catch them before they reach Morrisburg.”

“I’ll get the car out,” Barkeley said. He was halfway to the door before he finished the sentence. It was the first time Meecham had seen him move quickly.

Carney had sat down and taken off her galoshes. “I won’t go along. Alice can, but I won’t. Like I said, I’m tired of emergencies.”

Meecham looked at Alice. “Do you want to come?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It will be safer if you stay here. The roads aren’t good and we’ll be speeding.”

She touched his sleeve, shyly. “It would be worse staying here wondering if anything’s happened to you.”

“Nothing will happen to me. I want you to stay here with Carney.”

“I... all right.”

“Well,” Carney said with an odd little smile. “So that’s the way it is, is it?”

Meecham nodded.

“Well, good luck to you both. Maybe you won’t need it as much as Carnova and I did, but you’ll need it.”

The last Meecham saw of her she was sitting with her right knee crossed over her left, her hand nursing her crippled foot. She looked old and bitter and hard, as if, in the role she’d played as maiden aunt, all the nieces and nephews had turned out bad and she had no faith or charity left.

The two men sat in the front seat. At first they were too tense to talk; they stared in silence at the road ahead while the windshield wipers clicked back and forth like metronomes. There was a light snow, not falling, but sweeping up and across the road in gusts, so that one moment there was nothing to be seen except whirls of white, and the next moment, in the lull of the wind, the air would be clear and everything seemed to be doubly visible — the billboards, the telephone poles, and the heavy piles of snow left at intervals on each side of the road by the snow plough after the last storm.

“They won’t get far in weather like this,” Barkeley said finally. “Virginia’s a terrible driver.”

“Virginia isn’t driving,” Meecham said.

“She must be. Her mother doesn’t know how.”

“They have a friend with them. A man called Hearst.”

Barkeley’s only reaction of surprise was to take a tighter grip on the steering wheel. “Who is Hearst?”

“He lives in the house where Loftus lived, he works for a detergent company, and he wants to go to California.”

“That’s not telling me much.”

“It’s as much as I definitely know. What I suspect is that he’s a very small-time chiseler, and that he knows something your wife and mother-in-law don’t want known. So they took Hearst along, not for the ride, but to get him as far away from town as possible.”

“What does he know?”

“As far as I can gather from the physical evidence — times, places, actions — there’s only one thing he can know. At the time Margolis was killed on Saturday night, Hearst was in his own house. So was Loftus.”

“So was...? No. No, that’s impossible.”

“He was watching Loftus because he was jealous of him. Hearst is a traveling man, away from home all week on business. He had time to hatch plenty of suspicions about his wife and Loftus, not without some justification. On Saturday night Mrs. Hearst left the house about 7:30, met Loftus out on the sidewalk on his way home after dinner downtown, and then went on to a hockey game. That’s her story, but Hearst didn’t believe it. He was pretty sure she intended to meet Loftus somewhere in the course of the evening. He could have followed his wife, of course. But Hearst is a lazy, half-hearted man; it was easier for him to stay right in the house and keep an eye on Loftus. I believe that’s what he did. He spied on Loftus and Loftus didn’t go out.”

“You have no proof of that.”

“No, it’s merely an opinion,” Meecham said. The word reminded him vividly of the scene between Lily Margolis and her cousin, Loesser, a few hours before: “I will not be quiet, George. I have a right to my opinion.” “Keep it an opinion, then.” “Very well. In my opinion, Virginia Barkeley killed my husband in a jealous rage!”

He said aloud, “We may never know the truth of what happened. Maybe there isn’t any whole truth about anything, just a lot of versions, of different colors and different flavors, like ice cream, and you pick the most palatable. Cigarette?”

“Not while I’m driving.”

Meecham lit one for himself, cupping his hands over the lighter so that its sudden glare wouldn’t distract Barkeley’s eyes from the road. The wind was slackening, and the flakes of snow had become larger, coagulating with moisture into thick fluffy whirls that clung stickily wherever they fell. The windshield wipers had lost their rhythm. They jerked, slowed, stopped, and went on in wild haste, like a hunted man.

Meecham spoke again. “As Carney put it, nothing seems sensible. Loftus was an intelligent young man with a conscience, yet he accepted money to confess to a murder he didn’t commit and fabricated enough circumstantial evidence to back it up — his bloodstained clothes, his knowledge of the inside of Margolis’ cottage, what kind of knife was used, where it was kept, the temperature of the room, the number of times Margolis was stabbed, and so on. He couldn’t have fabricated all that evidence without help.”

“Whose help?”

Meecham didn’t answer.

“You mean my wife’s help,” Barkeley said. “Don’t you?”

“It seems — logical.”

“But the blood on his clothes — how could Loftus have managed that? The Sheriff himself said that it wasn’t rubbed on, it was splattered there from a wound, a quart or more of the stuff.”

“That’s one of two things I hope to find out soon. Where did the blood come from and where did the money go?”

“You think my wife knows.”

“It’s very possible.”

“You might as well make that a definite opinion, Meecham. You seem to have opinions about everything.”

“I don’t pick them off trees,” Meecham said. “They’re flung into my lap.”

“No opinions about me yet?”

“None.”

“That’s odd. I had quite a time-honored motive, you know. My wife was Margolis’ mistress.”

“I don’t think she was.”

“Very polite of you to say so, anyway.”

“It’s not politeness. I’m taking Lily Margolis’ word for it. Margolis had a real love — that’s her phrase — but it wasn’t Virginia.”

“The degree of Virginia’s unfaithfulness hardly matters, does it?”

“I thought you’d be interested.”

“Yes, I am,” Barkeley said quietly. “I’m disappointed, too, that she didn’t get any happiness out of all the grief she’s given the rest of us. You’d think somebody would get something out of it. But no, Margolis is dead, and Virginia is running away, and I’m running after her, reluctantly and without hope. If I find her, what then? What then?” he repeated. “I just don’t know.”

Neither did Meecham. The next hour seemed as imponderable and remote as the next year.

They were passing through a small town identified by a sign over the railroad station door as Algonquin. A layer of fresh snow hid its ugliness like frosting on a soggy cake.

“Morrisburg is only another thirty miles,” Barkeley said. “We won’t catch them.”

“We might.”

“I don’t think so.”

He was wrong. Meecham spotted the bright yellow Frazer about a half-mile beyond Algonquin. Its hood was half- buried in a pile of snow left by a snow plough at the side of the road. A tow truck was parked in front of the Frazer, its red blinker going off and on like a buoy light to warn the approaching traffic.

Barkeley parked his car a few yards beyond the tow truck and Meecham got out and walked back.

A gray-haired angry-looking woman sat behind the wheel of the truck, her arms folded aggressively across her chest. A teen-aged boy in leather cap and windbreaker was busy with a shovel digging away the snow from the Frazer’s bumper.

“Need any help?” Meecham said.

The boy looked up and shook his head. “Nope.”

“A nasty thing to have happen to a new car like that.”

“Not much damage done. Didn’t hit nothing except snow.”

The woman in the truck cranked down the window and stuck her head out. “What’s he want, Billy?”

“Nothing.”

“He ain’t one of those insurance fellows?”

“How should I know?”

“Just think,” the woman said bitterly. “Just think, if your father’d stayed home tonight where he belongs. But no. Not him. He had to go and...”

“Oh, for heck’s sake, Mom, stop crabbing.”

The woman’s lips continued moving, but no one heard what she said because she’d closed the window again.

Meecham asked the boy, “Anyone hurt in the accident?”

“One of the women was riding up front and got her head bumped on the windshield. Nothing much.”

“Where are the people now?”

“They’re waiting for the car at my Dad’s place, about five hundred yards up the road. We got a garage and a hamburger stand.”

“Good. I’ll drop in.”

The boy resumed his shoveling and Meecham began walking back to the car.

The woman had opened the window of the truck again. “I bet it was one of those insurance fellows.”

“It don’t matter anyway.”

“It’s after eight. I missed Guest Star. Your father knows Wednesday’s the best night. And here I sit, in the middle of a snowstorm when I could be...”

The snow gradually covered her voice as it covers cat tracks.

21

The Hamburger stand was one large room built onto the front of an old brick farmhouse. It was equipped with three oilcloth-covered tables, a dozen chairs and a long wooden counter. At one end of the counter, facing the door, there was a small television set on a crude homemade shelf attached to the wall. A boxing match was on the screen showing two boxers, bodies close and heads together in a clinch. They looked as though they were sobbing on each other’s shoulders.

A waitress was languidly drying a pile of cups and saucers, her eyes glued to the screen.

Hearst sat at the counter alone. There was a sandwich and a cup of coffee in front of him, but he was too absorbed in the boxers to eat or drink. His face, like that of the waitress, had a curious stupor, as if they were both drugged by the motions on the screen. He didn’t turn his head, or even blink when the door opened and Meecham and Barkeley came in.

There was no sign of either Virginia or her mother.

“One of them’s getting all bloody,” the waitress said, apparently to Hearst though she didn’t look at him. “Why can’t we get something more cheerful, I’d like to know.”

“Leave it on,” Hearst said. “It’s not real anyway.”

Barkeley and Meecham sat down at the counter. The waitress didn’t notice, or pretended not to.

“It looks real,” she said.

“The whole thing’s phony, like wrestling. For blood they use ketchup.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Sure it is. I know one of the head guys at the biggest station in Detroit.”

“I bet.”

“Sure I do.”

“Well, I’d just as soon have blood running down my face as ketchup. I hate the smell of ketchup, reminds me of every joint I ever worked in.” She wheeled around suddenly and said to Meecham, “We don’t have menus, just what’s written on the mirror up there.”

Hearst turned at the same instant, and recognized Meecham.

“Hello, Hearst,” Meecham said.

Hearst’s expression of apathy didn’t change. He never did anything right and he never expected to do anything right, so his failures were no surprise to him. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t know anyone was looking for me. I...”

“Where’s Mrs. Hamilton?”

“In the washroom. The girl’s in there too. Washing up, I guess.” He looked at Barkeley as if he thought Barkeley was a policeman. “I didn’t hurt the car much. Maybe the headlights are bust, but it wasn’t my fault. I went into a skid.”

“You were born in a skid,” Meecham said, “and never got out of it.”

Ignoring the remark, Hearst continued to address Barkeley with earnest righteousness in the manner of a petty crook caught in a misdemeanor on his way to commit a felony. “I didn’t steal the car. She hired me to drive out to the Coast. I got the contract right here in my pocket. It’s all written down. What’s written down is legal, isn’t that right, Mr. Meecham?”

“Let’s see it.”

The “contract” was a piece of paper torn from a scratch pad. The signature was Mrs. Hamilton’s, but the rest of it had obviously been written by Hearst himself in an awkward hand, so heavy in places that the ink was blotched and the paper torn by the pen. “I, the undersigned, on this December thirteen, 1950, agree to hire Jameson Ralph Hearst as chauffer for my new Frazer and to retain his services for a period of two years at a salary of $150.00 per monthly plus full maintenance (room and board). Signed, Rachel Mills Hamilton.”

Hearst watched Meecham as he read it. “That’s legal, isn’t it? I made up the words myself but it’s legal.”

“You did a great job.” Meecham folded the paper and put it in his own pocket.

“Hey, give it back. That’s my contract. I need it. When I get to California...”

“You’re never getting to California.”

Hearst looked a little sick. “I am. Some day I am. Some day I’ll...”

“All right, some day,” Meecham said. All Hearst’s days were some days, he thought. There was no definite tomorrow or week after next, just a shady avenue of some days.

Virginia came out of the washroom followed by her mother. There was a bluish lump on the right side of Virginia’s forehead and the skin around her right eye was slightly darkened. Her hair was smooth, her face powdered and her lips freshly rouged. She looked as tidy and lifeless as a corpse primped for the funeral service. When she saw Barkeley she turned immediately, and brushing past her mother she went back into the washroom and closed the door.

Mrs. Hamilton continued walking toward the three men at the counter, unsteadily, and listing slightly, as if she’d just gotten off a boat and couldn’t adjust to the stability of land.

She wore a dark beaver coat that looked like one of Virginia’s coats; it reached to her ears at the top, and to her snowboots at the hemline. She was clasping the ill-fitting coat around her with both hands, as if its thick heavy fur was a new skin that held her body together.

She was smiling, but the smile, like the coat, seemed to belong to someone else.

“Well, Paul. I... didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I guess not,” Barkeley said.

“I hardly know what to — to say. I mean...”

“Are you all right?”

“C-certainly I’m all right. I’m just fine.”

“You don’t look it,” Barkeley said sharply. “I’m driving you home right away, all three of you.”

“Not me, you aren’t,” Hearst said.

“You, too.”

“No, sir. I got this far, I’m not going back. I told Emmy she’d never see me again. You think I’m going to walk in that door and let her think I’m a sap? No, sir. I’m staying here. I got a legal contract.”

Mrs. Hamilton turned to him. “Mr. Hearst, please. You must realize that we can’t go on with our trip right now. Perhaps... perhaps later. Some other day.”

“I got this far. I don’t want to go back.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his coat sleeve. It left a damp dingy stain on the glossy blue serge. “I don’t want to walk in that front door and face her like I was a sap that couldn’t get along without her.”

“We all have to go back,” Mrs. Hamilton said gently, as if she was addressing an animal that couldn’t understand words, only the tone in which the words were spoken. “I’ll go and get Virginia.”

“No, I will,” Barkeley said. “You sit down and take it easy. Meecham, see that she drinks a glass of milk.”

Barkeley went toward the washroom. There was no lock on the door, only a hole where the lock had once been.

“Virginia.”

He pushed the door open slowly. Virginia was standing motionless at the washbasin looking at herself in the cheap dust-smeared mirror above it, both fists clenched against her abdomen as if to ease a cramp. The mirror, and the lump over her eye distorted her features.

“I’m ugly,” she said. “Look at me. You never knew that before, how ugly I am.”

“It’s a bad mirror.”

“Is it? Is it really?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head back and forth in a slow melancholy way. “No, that’s not right. I can’t blame the mirror. It’s too easy.”

“You never do anything easy,” he said. “You run too fast and stumble. Then other people have to pick you up off the ground.”

“Is that why you came — to pick me up off the ground?” She smiled, and the ugly girl in the mirror smiled too, her face doubly distorted. “Well, don’t bother. I like it here on the ground. Me and Hearst, a couple of flops. Maybe the two of us should just keep on going west together.”

“You wouldn’t get very far.”

“Would you send the police after me?”

“I’m afraid I’d have to.”

“Because of Claude.”

“Yes.”

She reached out her hand and with her forefinger traced an x in the dust on the mirror, then a whole row of x’s. “Do you think I killed him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you ask my mother? She’ll tell you. She knows everything. You and my mother would make almost as good a pair as Hearst and I. She knows everything, and you never do anything wrong. Wonderful combination, isn’t it? Unbeatable. I can’t beat it anyway and I’ve quit trying. I can’t keep up with all you nice virtuous people who never do anything wrong, who never even feel like doing anything wrong!”

He caught her by the shoulders and turned her around so that she had to look at him instead of the ugly girl in the mirror. “Where did you get the idea that there are only white saints and black sinners in this world?”

She stared at him, mute and suffering.

“It’s an impossible standard to live by, Virginia. It doesn’t leave any room for ordinary human mistakes.”

“Like Claude?”

“Like Claude.”

Her mouth began to tremble uncontrollably, as if the muscles around it had been stretched too tight and suddenly snapped like elastic bands. “I never — I wasn’t anything to him. My mother won’t believe that. She says she does, she always says she trusts me and has faith in me, but I know it isn’t true. The way she looks at me, always expecting that I’ve done something, that I’m bad. And the awful part is I can’t help feeling that she’s right, that I am bad. It’s been like that ever since I can remember.”

“You’re not bad,” he said. “And I believe you. Whatever you say about Margolis, I believe you.”

“Do you, honestly?”

“Yes.” He was conscious of the passage of time, of the three people waiting for him in the next room, but he didn’t want to leave. In the whole year of his marriage he had never understood Virginia’s nature so completely, or felt closer to her than he did now in the sordid little washroom.

“If Claude was alive,” she said, “I could prove we were just friends, just putting in time together. I didn’t have anything else to do, and Claude was waiting for someone to come back, so we both had lots of time to waste.” She rubbed the lump on her forehead vigorously with her fingertips. It seemed to Barkeley that the gesture, like so many of Virginia’s gestures and actions and words, was a self-punishment.

“Does your head hurt?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Then don’t rub it like that.”

“Was I rubbing it? I didn’t mean to.”

He took both her hands and held them tightly in his. “Who was Claude waiting for?”

“A woman. Lily Margolis told me about her first. Lily came to the house one day and said she wanted to do me a favor by telling me that Claude was in love with another woman. She started out calmly enough but then she got carried away by her own words and began calling me names. I was afraid Carney or someone in your office would hear her, so I put my hand over her mouth to stop her. I guess her version of it is different, but that’s what really happened — I was scared and embarrassed, and I had to shut her up. Carney heard everything, of course,” she added with a trace of bitterness. “She always does. She said if I didn’t behave myself she was going to write and tell my mother. Carney doesn’t like me. She pretends to. She’s like my mother, she pretends all the time. That cheerful act of hers — that kindly tolerance — it’s all a front.”

He didn’t agree or disagree, and after a time she began talking again:

“Later on I asked Claude if it was true that he’d been in love with someone for a long time and he said yes, it was true but the woman had left him and he was afraid that this time she wasn’t coming back. We didn’t quarrel about it or anything like that. I even felt sorry for him. I know how it is to wait for someone who doesn’t come.”

“Have you waited very often for me, Virginia?”

“You know I have.”

“I always came, though. The next time you wait, remember that.”

“I’ll remember. I promise.”

“Come on, Virginia. We’re going home now.”

“Please. I can’t face it.”

“You’ll have to.”

“I don’t know what will happen. What will they do to me? What will they do to my mother?”

“I can’t answer that.”

He held the door open for her and she walked slowly past him, one hand pressed against the lump on her forehead as if it was an excrescence of evil that would shrink under the pain of atonement.

22

The room was one Meecham had never been in before, in the rear of the Barkeley house. It was small and square and almost empty. There were no books, no pictures, and the only furniture was a fluorescent lamp and a davenport with a matching chair that needed reupholstering. The window was a wall of glass that in the daytime looked out on the hills behind the town, but now at night reflected only the room itself, and the mother and daughter sitting at opposite ends of the davenport, like strangers. They were both staring at Meecham as if they expected him to introduce them to each other. He wondered if he could, if he knew the right combination of words that would mean, this is Virginia and this is Rachel Hamilton.

“I wanted to talk to you both privately,” Meecham said. “It’s your right and privilege to consult a lawyer before making any official statement.” Neither of the women seemed to be listening, but he continued anyway. “Mr. Hearst has already told me what he knows: that Loftus didn’t leave his apartment on Saturday night, that he, Hearst, came to you with this information yesterday evening, and you, Mrs. Hamilton, agreed to hire him as your chauffeur provided that he kept the information to himself. Is that right?”

Mrs. Hamilton spoke through stiff dry lips. “You know it is.”

“Why did you agree?”

“I didn’t want the case reopened.”

“Why were you certain that Hearst was telling you the truth?”

“I... well, I just believed him, that’s all.”

“You had good reason to believe him,” Meecham said. “You’ve known almost from the beginning that Loftus was innocent.”

She didn’t reply.

“Whose idea was it to leave for California?”

“Mine.”

“You thought you’d get away and stay away and that would be the end of the whole business?”

“I thought it was — possible.”

“Do you know who killed Margolis?”

She didn’t look at Virginia, but her right hand half-rose in an unconscious gesture of defense. “I know nothing about it.”

“Go on,” Virginia said. “Tell him that I did.”

“Keep out of this, Virginia.”

“You’ve handled everything so far, now I have a right to...”

“Be quiet, you stupid girl.” She added in a softer tone, as if she regretted her words: “Don’t you see, I’m trying to help you.”

“Paul said I was to tell the truth, to be honest.”

“Honest. Don’t you think everybody would like to be honest? Most people — can’t afford the price. They can just afford to be a little honest here and a little honest there, and in front of certain people.”

“I’m one of them,” Meecham said.

“I hardly think so, Mr. Meecham.”

“You can’t lie about your age to someone who’s holding a photostat of your birth certificate, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“You have a photostat?”

“Several. The equivalent of several, anyway.”

“I see.” In the fluorescent light of the lamp her face looked translucent yet solid, as if the skin had been turned into quartz and the eyes into agate. Even her voice had crystallized, sharp and hard. “I want you to understand one thing, Mr. Meecham. Throughout this whole affair I’ve acted in my daughter’s best interests. From the very first minute that I heard she was in trouble I began to plan, as I’ve planned so many times before, in spite of her increasing hostility.”

She spoke without looking at Virginia or giving any indication that she knew Virginia was still in the room.

“All my life I’ve done everything possible for her. She’s been hard to raise, terribly hard. It’s been one crisis after another ever since the day she was born, and I’ve met each one with all the strength I had. Now I don’t have enough left to go on with. I’m a weary old woman. Virginia’s on her own now. When she makes a mistake she must correct it herself. I won’t be here to help her.”

She lapsed into a restless silence. The only sounds in the room were muted and remote, the sounds of breathing, of wind pressing on the pane, and the faint humming of the lamp.

“I was in bed asleep when the telegram came from Paul that night. It seems so long ago now, but it was only Saturday, or rather early Sunday morning, about one o’clock by our time on the Coast. I sent two telegrams back immediately, one to Virginia and one to Paul, advising them to say and do nothing until my arrival. I had no definite plan of action in the back of my mind, not even a definite opinion about Virginia’s innocence or guilt. I only knew she was in trouble and it was up to me to help. I didn’t go back to bed that night. I made plane reservations, I packed, I checked my bank account, and then I called my son Willett. The next morning Willett drove me to the bank, and I took out $10,000, a thousand of it in cash and the rest in traveler’s checks. Willett thought I was crazy, but I realized my expenses were going to be heavy no matter what happened. So I came prepared. I arrived Sunday evening, and early the following morning I went to see Virginia. I was appalled.”

For the first time she looked directly at Virginia, and then she repeated the words. “I was appalled. I had expected — well, at least an end to my uncertainty. But there was no end. She couldn’t remember what had happened because she’d been drunk. She couldn’t affirm or deny anything. I tried not to show my alarm but I felt desperate. The evidence against her seemed so overwhelming, and she was acting as she always does when she’s scared to death, brassy and disdainful, deliberately making enemies of people who could be useful — the Sheriff and the matron, and you, Mr. Meecham. Yes, and even me. No wonder I felt despair when I left her that first morning.

“I went out into the corridor. There was a young man sitting on a bench just outside the door of the Sheriff’s office. I had never seen him before and he had never seen me. I realize now that he must have been sitting there for some time, listening.”

“He was,” Meecham said. “I saw him there when I left.”

“You know, then, who he was.”

“Yes.”

“He spoke to me — something about the weather — and then he asked me if I was Virginia Barkeley’s mother. When I said I was he told me he wanted to discuss a very important matter with me about Virginia.”

Meecham said, “It was Loftus who originated the plan?”

“Yes. Even if I’d had the idea myself, it would have been impossible for me to carry it out, to go around town looking for a man able and willing to do what Loftus did.”

“Did his plan seem reasonable to you?”

“At the time, yes.”

“You weren’t frightened or suspicious? You didn’t think he was crazy?”

“You knew him, Mr. Meecham. He wasn’t crazy. He had nothing to lose excepting his life which was already lost, and I had nothing to lose except money which I could afford. Those were his very words. To me, the way I felt then, they seemed very logical. They don’t anymore.” She pressed the back of her hand against her forehead as if to ease the pain of a memory. “We reached an agreement. I... I bought him, the way you’d go out and buy a dog. That he wanted it like that is no excuse for me.”

“Why did he need the money?”

“For someone else.”

“He didn’t say who it was?”

“No. Just that the money would help someone else have a decent life. I wonder now, as I’ve wondered so often in the last two days, if it will.” Her hands were working nervously, clenching and unclenching. “Loftus said he would arrange all the details and I was to meet him, with the money, at 4:30 at the bus stop at Arbor and Pontiac.”

“That’s just a block from here.”

“Yes.”

“Did he ask you for any information about the murder that he could use — about the hunting knives Margolis had, and the furnishings of the cottage and so on?”

“No. I couldn’t have told him anyway because I didn’t know.”

Meecham turned his gaze on Virginia. “You knew.”

“I’d been in the cottage before, yes,” she said. “If that’s what you mean. But I didn’t tell Loftus anything. How could I? The only time I ever saw him was yesterday morning in that room with you and the Sheriff. Remember? The Sheriff asked me if I knew Loftus and I said I’d seen him somewhere before.”

“And Loftus said it was on Saturday night in a bar. Sam’s bar.”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t the truth, was it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yet Loftus knew that you were in that bar, and that you did talk casually to a man there. He even knew exactly what you said: God, this place stinks. How could he hear you say that and still be at home in his apartment with Hearst watching him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Someone must have told him. Someone who was there in the bar, who saw you and heard you, who might even have been following you. Who would be interested in following you? Who would be interested in following you and Margolis, Virginia?”

“No one.”

“Can’t you think of anyone?”

“No!”

“I can. Lily Margolis, for one; only she happened to be several thousand miles away. For another, Margolis’ friend, Miss Falconer. Or Carney; Carney was very interested in your welfare. But there’s still another possibility. Paul Barkeley.”

“If Paul had been there I’d have seen him,” Virginia said quietly. “You mustn’t try to drag him into this mess. I’ve been the cause of everything and I’m willing to do the suffering — Momma and I. Aren’t we, Momma?”

The two women looked at each other as if through the periscopes of enemy submarines across a fathomless and crawling sea. Then Mrs. Hamilton turned away with a sighing sound. “Yes. Yes, Virginia.”

“Paul didn’t know anything about the murder or about the arrangement with Loftus. Did he, Momma?”

“No, dear. Nothing at all.” She held her hands together on her lap, as she would hold two small restless animals to force quiet upon them. “I met Loftus at 4:30 at the bus stop. I had the money with me. I’d cashed six travelers’ checks, at three different banks to avoid unnecessary questions or suspicions. I phoned Alice and told her I was going to a double feature and asked her to invite you for tea, Mr. Meecham. It was Loftus’ idea to have you there when he — when he put on his act. I think he wanted to try it on you first before he talked to the Sheriff.”

“Like an out-of-town tryout,” Meecham said. “Well, it worked.”

“Yes, everything worked out very well. Until last night, when I heard from Hearst. He came here to the house and we talked. And I knew then that I had to get Virginia away from this town. Whether she was innocent or guilty, perhaps I would never know. Her memory might be sealed forever, or she might wake up from a dream some night and it would all be sharp and clear in her mind. Look at her, Mr. Meecham. Look at my pretty girl. Somewhere behind those soft eyes there’s a record of everything she has ever seen or touched or heard or felt or done. It’s all there, but out of context, out of time, out of range.”

Virginia stared at her mother with eyes that were not soft at all. “You talk about me as if I was a child or a psychopath.”

“You are my child.”

“Am I?”

Though the two women sat within touching distance of each other, Meecham felt that there was a great space between them, an expanse of sea too violent to sail, of land too mountainous to cross, and of years too long to remember.

Mrs. Hamilton reached out, across the expanse. “Virginia...”

“If I have a dream some night, I will never tell you about it,” Virginia said. “I promise.”

“My dear...”

“I’ll never tell anyone.”

“I... yes. Yes, perhaps that’s the best way.” She looked at Meecham. “What will happen now, Mr. Meecham?”

“You’ll have to call the Sheriff.”

“I see. What then?”

“He’ll decide what action to take. You’ve withheld evidence concerning a murder. That’s a felony.”

“Is it? Fancy that, I’ve committed a felony. Willett will be very surprised,” she said, almost gaily. “Well then, I suppose the next step is to hire a lawyer.”

“Yes.”

“But not you, Mr. Meecham.”

“That’s right,” Meecham said with a slight smile. “Not me.”

“I feel you’re very tired of us all. You think we create difficulties where none exist, that our troubles aren’t as real as broken legs or measles, or something you can see.” She rose and went to the door. “You’ll take care of Alice?”

“I’ll try.”

“Alice is a good girl,” she said, thoughtfully. “I wish I knew how... Well, I’ll go and phone the Sheriff. You needn’t wait, Mr. Meecham. Good night.”

“Good night.”

He walked out the door and down the hall. He didn’t look back but he knew she was watching him. He could feel her eyes on the back of his neck, cold and painful as the touch of ice.

23

Alice was waiting for him in his car, a black scarf covering her bright hair, so that he didn’t see her until he opened the door.

“Hello,” Meecham said.

“Hello.”

“Going anywhere?”

“Anywhere at all,” she said. “Wherever you go.”

“All right.” He let the car coast down the driveway to the street. He felt an intense activity inside his body, like hundreds of wheels turning in all directions. He was almost afraid to speak because of what the wheels might do to his voice. But when he finally spoke he sounded quite calm and detached. “I’m going home.”

“Then that’s where I’ll go too.”

“Maybe you’d better not.”

“I’m twenty-three,” she said with naive pride, as if twenty-three was a very special age that conferred great wisdom and rightness on its wearer.

“I was twenty-three once too,” Meecham said, “along with a lot of other people. I often made mistakes.”

“I won’t.”

The traffic in the center of town was congested with cars that slid ghostlike along the streets, and students bundled like mummies against the cold. The bell tower was striking 9:15 when Meecham stopped the car in front of a small white duplex.

Hand in hand, they walked across the unshoveled sidewalk and up the porch steps of the right side of the duplex. A card above the doorbell said Eric Meecham. Two bottles of milk stood in a drift of snow outside the door. The milk had frozen and grown out of the tops of the bottles like strange white fungus that springs up overnight after a summer rain.

“I guess I forgot to bring in the milk,” Meecham said.

“Does it always do that in the winter?”

“When it’s very cold.”

“It looks funny. I’ll have to get used to a lot of different things, won’t I, Meecham?”

“Yes.” He tried to unlock the door but the key stuck and wouldn’t move. He made three attempts before the door finally opened and a warm draft of air swept out to meet them like a friendly hostess.

Meecham turned on the hall light. “It’s not very clean, I guess. It looks clean enough to me, but to a woman...”

“It’s very clean.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t see how it could be any cleaner, really. I... Oh, Meecham. Frozen milk and the place being clean — what does anything matter?”

He untied the scarf that was knotted under her chin and it fell soft and unnoticed to the floor like a leaf.

“You’re beautiful, Alice.”

“Oh, I hope so. I couldn’t live if you didn’t like the way I looked.”

She was clinging to him with all her strength, like a vine that had been growing alone and whose seeking tendrils had at last touched a tree. He held her tightly in his arms and kissed her, and the wheels inside him began to move with such furious speed that their noise whirred and pounded in his ears. When the telephone rang he hardly recognized it at first as a new and separate sound, but its sharp insistence gradually penetrated his mind like a pain.

Alice stirred in his arms and shook her head as if to shake off the intrusion. “I guess — that’s the phone.”

“Let it ring,” he said.

“Do other women call you very often?”

“Sometimes.”

The telephone continued to ring, five, six, seven times.

“You could answer,” she said, “and then if it’s another woman tell her you’re very busy and you’ll be busy for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Years. Forever.”

“All right.” He picked up the phone from the hall table. His hands were shaking and his knees felt weak. “Hello.”

“Is that you, Mr. Meecham?”

“Yes.”

“This is me, Victor Garino. You remember?”

“Of course. Where are you?”

“Here at home, in Kincaid. I’ve been trying to reach you ever since before supper. Mama and me, we’re having a bad time with Mrs. Loftus. It’s about the money.”

“What money?”

“The rest of Earl’s seven hundred dollars. You shouldn’t have sent it to her, Mr. Meecham.”

Meecham felt the inside breast pocket of his coat. The envelope containing the rest of Loftus’ money was still there.

“She’s going wild,” Garino said. “Buying not just liquor but everything, everything she sees. Records, dozens of records, and nothing to play them on. And a dress for Mama, a great big dress so big Mama could get into it twice. And for me, a new hat and a lamp and a case of wine, a whole case...”

“What do you think I can do about it?” Meecham said.

“You must come and take the money back again, what’s left of it. I asked her to let me keep it for her and she said no, if I kept it she’d never see more than a dollar at a time like in the old days when Birdie gave her an allowance. I have no right to take the money from her. But you have, Mr. Meecham. You sent it to her and you can take it back again. That would be lawful, wouldn’t it?”

“No, it wouldn’t, because I didn’t send her any money.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line. Then Garino’s voice again, talking not into the telephone but to someone beside him. “He says he didn’t send it, Mama.”

“He must have. Where else would she...?”

“She borrowed it, maybe.”

“Who from? Who’d lend her money?”

“She wouldn’t steal.”

Then there was another silence, and Mrs. Garino said in a barely audible voice, “I never leave my purse around anymore.”

Meecham spoke sharply into the phone: “Garino?”

“I’m here, Mr. Meecham. I was talking to Mama. She says to tell you we’re very sorry we bothered you, and... and what else, Mama?”

“Merry Christmas,” Mrs. Garino said.

“Oh yes, and a merry Christmas,” Garino said gravely.

“Wait a minute, Garino.”

“I am embarrassed, making such a big mistake, thinking you sent the...”

“Forget it. Is Mrs. Loftus home now?”

“Yes.”

“Keep her there.”

“By this time she is too drunk to go out anyway.”

“I want to talk to her,” Meecham said. “It’s very important. I can leave right away and I should be there in a little over an hour.”

He put the phone down and turned to Alice. She was smiling at him, but not very convincingly.

“You left me behind once tonight,” she said. “I don’t want to be left behind again.”

“Do you like long winter drives in the country?”

“Very much.”

“Sure?”

“I adore them.” She reached down slowly, bending at the knees, and picked up her scarf from the floor. She said, without rising, “I could sit right down here and bawl.”

“Please don’t.” He pulled her gently to her feet. “Remember, you’re twenty-three.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“No. Here, I’ll put on your scarf for you. Will you let me?”

“I guess.” She watched him as he tied the scarf awkwardly under her chin. “Meecham, do we have to go?”

“We have to.” He switched off the hall light and for a moment they stood in the dark facing each other but not touching. “You’re not angry?”

“No.” She shook her head, rather sadly. “But I don’t think I’m twenty-three any more. I think I’m older.”

24

The lights in the Garinos’ basement apartment were on. From the sidewalk Meecham and Alice could see right into the kitchen. Mrs. Garino was sitting alone at a big linoleum-covered table, motionless, as if she was listening for a sound or waiting for something to happen.

Garino answered the door. He had a sleeping kitten nestled in the crook of his arm.

“You arrived fast, Mr. Meecham.”

“Yes. Miss Dwyer, Mr. Garino. Miss Dwyer is my fiancée. She came along for the ride.”

“Come in, come in.” Garino stepped back to let them in, and at the movement the kitten awoke and began sheathing and unsheathing its claws against the rough wool of Garino’s sweater coat. In and out, the claws moved like iridescent needles being thrust in and out of tiny pink plush cushions. “I will get my keys.”

“I could hold the kitten for you,” Alice said shyly.

“Ah, you like kittens, eh?”

“I love them.”

“This one, he is the littlest. He is always the last to eat, and when he sleeps he is always at the bottom of the pile, so I spoil him a little to make up for this.” Alice sat down in an old wicker rocking chair and Garino put the indignant kitten on her lap. “I will go and tell Mama to fix some coffee.”

“I already put it on,” Mrs. Garino said from the kitchen, sounding rather angry that anyone should have to remind her to make coffee.

“Come out here for a minute, Mama.”

“I’m not dressed for company.” But she came to the door anyway, smoothing her skirt down over her hips. “We’re upset around here today. I didn’t have time to fuss with clothes.”

Meecham introduced the two women and they eyed each other carefully from an ambush of smiles before they stepped out into the open.

“She can stay down here with me,” Mrs. Garino said to her husband. “She wouldn’t want to go up there to that...”

“Mama.”

“How many times a day do you have to say Mama to me like that? You might as well be honest and say shut up.”

“That wouldn’t be so polite,” Garino answered blandly. The two men went out into the hall and Garino closed the door.

“Is she still in her apartment?” Meecham said.

“Yes, I went up to check fifteen minutes ago. She is drunk, naturally, but not as bad as I expected. I heard her through the door walking around talking to herself.”

“Does she know that Earl’s dead?”

“I couldn’t tell her. She was so happy today, spending that money, how could I spoil it? It’s a long time since she had money to spend and it went to her head. When you never have more than a dollar, a hundred dollars seems like it would last forever.”

“If my guess is right, there’s a lot more than a hundred dollars involved.”

“Then you know how she got the money?”

“I don’t know how she got it,” Meecham said. “But I know where it came from originally.”

“She didn’t steal it, though?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.” But he sounded relieved.

The door of Mrs. Loftus’ apartment was locked. Though Garino had the key to it in his hand, he knocked once, and then again, before using it.

The old lady was sitting sideways on the battered davenport, her feet up and ankles crossed, her back to the door. She was smoking a cigarette through a long silver holder, her fingers elegantly extended.

She spoke without moving her head. “Don’t I ever get any privacy anymore?”

Garino turned a little white. “I asked you please not to smoke when you’re drinking.”

“You’re a butterinski, Victor. That’s what we used to call people like you in my day. What do you want now?”

“I brought someone to see you.”

“I’ve already seen someone.” She flicked the ashes off her cigarette in the general direction of an ash tray. Some of the ashes spilled on the floor and the rest on her dress. Meecham noticed that the dress already had two or three scorch marks on it though it looked brand new. Everything she wore looked brand new — the magenta-colored dress with a purple velvet flower at the waist, sheer black stockings, ankle-strap suede pumps and a hat made of sleek black feathers. Nothing fitted her. The hat perched on her head like a reluctant raven, the stockings hung in pleats on her legs, and the full skirt of the dress stuck out from her fleshless hips like a ballerina’s tutu.

The room smelled of whisky and of smoke, more acrid than cigarette smoke. Meecham saw then that the old lady had been burning something in the grate. The center of the fire had burned down to a crust of gray and black ash, but around the perimeter some material was still smoldering.

“I didn’t know you were going out,” Garino said.

She bent her head toward him, slowly, as if to avoid frightening the raven on her head. “I am not going out, Victor.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I said...”

“It’s very cold and late, and besides, the bars will be closed pretty soon.”

The old lady’s eyes flickered. “Why, I wouldn’t dream of going out on a night like this.”

“Promise.”

“It never even occurred to me to go out on a night like this. As a matter of fact, I was about to retire when I decided to try on my new clothes.”

“It’s a pretty dress.”

“You really like it? It doesn’t fit, but then I didn’t buy it for fit. I bought it,” she added in a very reasonable tone of voice, “for the color. It’s such a cheerful color it makes me feel alive.”

“Ella can maybe take it in at the seams for you.”

She stared at him coldly. “Then you don’t really like it, after all.”

“Yes, I do. I was only...”

“You have no right to force your way into my home and inflict your opinions about clothes on me, Mr. Garino.”

“You’d better go to bed before...” Garino hesitated, looking down at his hands.

“Before what, Mr. Garino?”

“Before Ella has to put you to bed.”

She thought this over quietly for a moment. Then she said with an air of triumph, “I can’t go to bed. I’ve got company.” She pointed the cigarette holder at Meecham. The cigarette had burned down to the end and gone out. “Who are you, company?”

Meecham repeated his name.

“Well, sit down, sit down some place and we’ll all have a cozy drink together. You too, Victor.”

“No, I don’t want one, thank you,” Garino said.

“You needn’t pretend, in front of me, that you don’t drink. I happen to know that you drink in secret all the time. A lot of people do. Billions. Pour some of us billions a drink, Victor.”

Garino’s dark skin showed an angry streak of purple across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. “You can wait for a while.”

“I can’t wait. I need the energy. Whisky is a body fuel. I read that in the newspaper. There’s no reason why I can’t have some body fuel.”

“You intend to go out, don’t you?” Garino said. “You weren’t trying on clothes.”

“Why, of all the absurb ideas!”

“Where were you going?”

“Give me a drink.”

“Where were you going?”

“You dirty foreigner.”

Garino’s eyes glittered like an oil sludge over moving water. “Watch what you say. I am your only friend.”

“Oh no, you’re not. I have lots of friends.”

Meecham sat down facing her. The scarred and rickety coffee table seemed like a precarious bridge between them that must be crossed carefully, one step at a time.

“Who are they?” he said.

“Who are they is none of your business. I don’t go around to other people saying who are they, who are they all the time.”

“Did your friends give you any money?”

She raised her head high and tried to look haughty. “I wouldn’t dream of accepting charity. I’m a woman of independent means.”

“I realize that, of course,” Meecham said. “But you wouldn’t have any objection to accepting money that came from Earl. It did come from Earl?”

“Don’t bother me. I’m tired. I need some body fuel.”

“All right.” Meecham nodded at Garino, and Garino went, silent and tight-lipped, into the kitchen. When he returned he was carrying a plastic tumbler filled to the brim with whisky.

Mrs. Loftus drank it in three gulps. “That newspaper was right. It is a fuel. Why, I feel warmer already.”

Meecham said, “Earl is dead, Mrs. Loftus.”

The old lady began to tremble, and Meecham thought for a moment that she was going to react violently to the news. But too many nerves of communication had been cut between her and the outside world. Pain was dulled and pleasure remote.

“Did you hear me, Mrs. Loftus?”

“I don’t want to hear anything. You leave me alone.”

“Before he died he had over six thousand dollars,” Meecham said. “How much of that did you get?”

“I’ve forgotten his face. He was nice-looking, but I’ve forgotten... I can’t picture it.”

“Who sent money to you? Or brought it to you?”

Though her mouth worked, she didn’t speak for a moment, and when she did it wasn’t an answer to Meecham’s questions but to questions that rose within her like smoke from a forgotten fire. “Such a hard life, a terrible life. Earl is lucky. I wasn’t a good mother to him. Something happened to me. What was it? I don’t remember. Something happened. I think I was ill and too tired to care.”

Meecham recalled the piercing words Loftus had used about her: One drink and she was a drunk. She’d been a drunk for thirty years and didn’t find it out until then. For her the world vanished in that instant. She has never seen it since. She never will again.

“Earl didn’t understand,” she said in a whisper. “He wrote cruel things to me sometimes, said I broke my promises, said I didn’t try hard enough. I burned all his letters. Birdie told me to.”

“Who told you?”

“Birdie did. Tonight. I was sitting here and suddenly in comes Birdie through that door like a ghost.” She glanced at the locked door expectantly as if she wanted to conjure up the ghost again, a friendly ghost more real than the shadows she lived among.

“Please, Mrs. Loftus,” Meecham said sharply. “Take it easy now. Tell me...”

“Forget the past, Birdie said, burn it all up. And she’s right. From now on things are going to be different. I’m going away, I’m going to start a new life. Birdie says it’s bad for me living here like this from hand to mouth in a town full of gossip.” Birdie said and Birdie says... The words seemed to hypnotize her like a new religion with a special chant. “Birdie says I ought to live in the country, in a big house with lots of trees and flowers around and dogs in the yard.”

Meecham leaned toward her across the table trying to focus her attention. “Birdie was here tonight?”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that. She doesn’t want Victor to know, doesn’t like people who snoop.”

“I’m not snooping. But you must be making a mistake, Mrs. Loftus. It couldn’t have been Birdie.”

“I know Birdie. I recognized her right off, she didn’t have to open her mouth.”

“Earl claimed she was killed in an accident out West.”

She didn’t seem surprised. “Sometimes Earl told little fibs.”

“This was more than a little fib. If he lied about her death, it means that he was deliberately trying to prevent anyone from finding her.”

“Well, I found her without even looking. She’s alive, all right. Showing her age, I must say,” Mrs. Loftus added slyly. “Oh, yes, she’s gotten older. And she’s had a few knocks in the process, so now she understands better about other people with troubles, like me. She’s different, Birdie is. She says I’m different too.” She tilted her head at Garino. “You think I am, Victor?”

“Ah — yes.” Garino looked sick. “Very different.”

“You don’t mean that nice, do you?” she said slowly.

“I mean it nice.”

“At least I haven’t gotten stout. So many older women get stout.”

Not without food, Meecham thought. “Birdie gave you money?”

“She sent it to me. It came this morning in the mail, a check with a little note. Two hundred dollars.”

“And then?”

“Then what? I spent it, of course.”

“All of it?”

“Not all of it,” she said disdainfully. “I’m not a fool. I have twelve dollars left.”

“How far do you think twelve dollars will go toward that big house in the country?”

“Birdie says I’m not to worry. She’s taking care of everything; Earl asked her to. She knows where the house is. She’s going to drive me there tonight. It might be quite a long drive. If I could have another drink, Victor?”

“It would be better not to,” Garino said.

“Just one. Then I’ll throw the bottle away. I’m going to quit drinking — did you know? I am. I promised Birdie and I promise you, too.”

Garino brought the bottle out of the kitchen and poured her a drink. While she drank it he stood over her with melancholy patience like a hen brooding over an egg that has gone rotten in its shell.

“Now I’ll throw the bottle away, see, as I promised. Give it to me.”

Garino recorked the half-empty bottle and put it in her lap. Then he held out his arm and she pulled herself to her feet by hanging on the sleeve of his old sweater coat. She tottered toward the fireplace, balancing precariously on her new spike-heeled pumps like a child on stilts.

“Didden think I’d keep a promise, eh? Well, you were mistaken, Victor.” With loving care she placed the bottle upright in the center of the grate where the fire had died. Then she returned to the davenport breathing hard and noisily, as if she had walked, not the width of a room, but a great distance across a span of years.

She sat down carefully, her eyes avoiding Garino’s. Garino didn’t say anything. He went over to the fireplace, removed the bottle and took it out to the kitchen again. The silence in the room was unbearable, the silence of terrible words not yet spoken.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Victor,” she said at last.

Garino’s face was like wood. “You could blow the place up. It’s a fuel. Remember?”

“You have turned against me.”

“I don’t want the place blown up.”

“You and Ella both. I’ve only got one friend left.”

“Birdie was never your friend,” Garino said. “I remember the fighting, fighting all the time the two of you.”

“Things have changed.”

“Where is this big house she’s taking you to, with trees and flowers and dogs in the yard?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Is it a private house?”

“What do you mean, is it private. Of course it’s... What do you mean?”

“I thought it might be some place where they take care of — older people and so on.”

“An asylum.”

“No, I didn’t mean...”

“You meant an asylum,” she said shrilly. “Earl wouldn’t allow it. Do you hear me? He’d never allow it!”

“Earl is dead.”

“But he gave her money to look after me and she promised him she would, she promised.”

“Promises breed like fleas in your family.”

“You go away!” she wailed. “I won’t listen to you!”

“What if she doesn’t show up? What then? You’ll be glad enough then to stay here, won’t you, even if it’s not good enough for you. And me, I’m not good enough either, I’m a dirty foreigner.”

“Please, both of you,” Meecham said. “This arguing isn’t accomplishing anything. Mrs. Loftus, are you listening to me?”

The old lady raised her head slowly like a sick animal. “Birdie will come for me, won’t she?”

“She’ll be here, sure,” Meecham said with conviction. “Are you all packed and ready to leave?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me first, where did you cash that check she sent you?”

“At a... little place down the street.”

“Store? Bar?”

“A... a tavern. I just happened to be passing by and...”

“Yes, I know. What is the name of the place?”

“Peterson’s. It’s not a bad check, is it? I’ve spent the money. I couldn’t pay it back. I don’t want to cheat Mr. Peterson. He’s helped me out when I... when I’ve been ill.”

“The check’s probably good.”

“It’s got to be. He didn’t want to cash it at first because I told him it was from my daughter-in-law, and he said, how could it be, it wasn’t signed Mrs. Loftus. I had to explain to him that Earl and Birdie were divorced and Birdie took back her maiden name of Falconer.”

“Of what?”

He spoke the words so explosively that the old lady shrank back in fear. “Maybe Birdie wouldn’t like me to be telling so much.”

“How did she sign that check?”

“J — Jemima Falconer.”

“Jemima Falconer,” Meecham repeated. The name sounded very familiar yet remote, like the echo of a friend’s voice.

“She never let anyone call her Jemima. She thought it sounded as if she was colored. We called her Birdie — that was her nickname at school.”

Meecham remembered the descriptions of Birdie that he’d heard from various people. From Garino: “Birdie they called her. Such a silly name. She wasn’t anything like a bird. She was a big woman, older than Earl and quite pleasant unless you crossed her — she had a terrible temper.” From Mrs. Loftus, the night he had found her at the bus depot: “Didn’t say a word about her till the day he brought her home and said, this is my wife. And there she stood, with that hennaed hair and that hard look, forty if she was a day, forty, and him just a boy.” From Loesser, at Lily Margolis’ house: “My impression is that she’s a highly respectable woman. I knew Lily had been thinking for some time that Claude had a steady mistress, but I couldn’t believe it was this Falconer woman.” From Gurton at the restaurant: “Loftus used to come in here two or three years ago with his girlfriend, a tall bright-looking redhead.” And from Gill, the orderly who had spent the last night with Loftus, listening to him talk: “Birdie this, Birdie that. He must have been crazy about that woman.”

On that last night, with his own death molded and cast and waiting for him like an iron maiden, Loftus had tried to protect Birdie with the only weapons that were left to him, lies. He had invented her death in the auto accident in the West so that no one would look for her or discover where and who she really was. He had covered her with lies as the snow covers walkers on a winter night and obscures their footprints behind them.

Now, from out of this white ambush Birdie had stepped clear and sharp and real, with blood in her veins and money in her hand and promises on her lips. A big house with trees, and a new life with hope; Birdie said and Birdie says. Why? Why did she come back to say anything? Meecham looked at the old lady... She was intent on fitting a new cigarette into the silver holder, her whole mind and body intent on this small task which would be so easy for anyone else, and he realized the futility of asking her questions.

“I’ll do that for you,” he said.

“Leave me alone. I can do it. Whyn’t you go away?”

“That might be a good idea.”

“It’s an exshellent idea. Ex — cell — ent.”

Meecham rose and went to the door. “I hope you’ll send your new address to Mr. Garino.”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”

“Come on, Garino.”

Garino stood where he was. “We can’t leave now. I’m going to stay and see that things are all right. I don’t trust...”

“Things will be all right. Let’s go.”

“But...”

“I can look after myself, Victor,” the old lady said firmly. “I’m a woman of ex — pe — rience.”

“Good night, then.”

She didn’t answer. She was peering at the little clock on the mantel, her eyes narrowed to slits to make them focus. It was eleven o’clock. Or perhaps it was twelve. Or ten? The hands of the clock wavered, this way, that way. Ten, twelve, eleven, ten.

“Make up your mind,” she said to the clock.

25

Eleven-thirty by Meecham’s watch. For nearly half an hour he had been waiting in the dark on the bottom step of the basement stairs, his shoulder pressed against the old wooden banister. He couldn’t see the front door from this position because there was a turn in the stairs, but he could hear what went on in the hall above. He could even hear, very faintly, Mrs. Loftus walking around in her apartment, making last-minute preparations for the trip. Meecham’s shoulder and the back of his neck felt stiff and sore where the draft struck him. He looked at his watch again. Another minute had crawled by, as slow and laborious as a sloth. She’s not coming, he thought. Perhaps Birdie had been scared away, or perhaps the whole thing was what he had believed at first, the wish-fantasy of a drunken mind.

Then he heard the front door open, and quiet but firm footsteps moved along the thin carpeting. A pause, the click of a doorknob, and then the old lady’s voice, with a sob in it:

“I thought you weren’t coming, Birdie.”

“Of course I was coming.”

“It’s so late.”

“I had some trouble with the car.” The woman’s voice was as quiet and firm as her footsteps. “Is this your suitcase?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take it. Button up your coat, it’s a raw night.” A moment of silence. “You’ve been drinking.”

“Just a nip. You said yourself it’s a raw night.”

“You didn’t tell anyone that you were leaving, or about me?”

“Of course not,” the old lady lied solemnly.

“You burned everything?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, then.”

Footsteps down the hall.

Meecham rose quietly and began to ascend the stairs. At the bend in the staircase he paused. The two women were at the front door, Birdie bent under the weight of the suitcase, and the old lady wrapped like a mummy and clinging to Birdie’s free arm.

“Where are you going?” Meecham said.

They both swerved toward him, and Meecham felt a column of emotion rise thick in his throat, disbelief and then anger and then sadness. In that one brief moment when Birdie turned, three women merged in her and became one, merged inevitably and naturally like atoms forming a molecule.

Her face was as familiar to him as Alice’s: the square forcible jaw, the gentle mouth, and the eyes still blistered from the burning of her tears. He thought back to the last time he’d seen her when she had thrust all the dishes into the sink with a furious sweep of her hand, and the shattered glass had sprayed like water from a fountain.

She was looking down at the old lady with something like pity in her eyes. “You told. You poor fool.”

“I didden, Birdie. I didden tell!”

“It’s all right.”

“You’re mad at me. You won’t take me along.”

“I’m not mad, Clara. I never really expected anything to work out.”

Meecham came up the rest of the steps and Mrs. Loftus watched him, peering at him from her heavy wraps like a mole from a thicket, half-dazed and half-blind.

“You go away! Go on! You’re spoiling our trip. Birdie, tell him to go away. What about our trip, Birdie?”

“I guess we’ll have to postpone it for a while,” Mrs. Hearst said quietly. “Mr. Meecham wants to talk to me.”

“He’s a butterinski.”

“Yes. Yes, I guess he is. Come on, we’d better go back to the apartment.”

With a decisive movement she picked up the suitcase and went back down the hall, the old lady staggering behind her, whimpering.

“I want to live in the country. I want to have dogs in the yard. I want...”

“Sh... Sh, now.”

“You promised.”

“I’ll keep my promise,” Mrs. Hearst said. “But not tonight, Clara.”

She opened the door of the apartment and paused for a moment on the threshold, swaying slightly, as if solid waves of time were beating at her legs.

“I used to live here,” she said to Meecham. “Earl and me. Did you know that?”

“I knew it.”

“I didn’t realize how much you were finding out about me until after supper tonight when you came to see Jim. Then I knew I had to drive over here and cover my tracks somehow.” She crossed the room to the old cherry-wood rocker near the window and touched the headrest with her hand. “This was Earl’s chair. He was just like a baby; rocking soothed him.”

Meecham remembered the rocking chair in the Hearst kitchen and he wondered if Mrs. Hearst had kept it there for Earl to sit in when he came to talk in the evenings.

“We used to fight when we lived here. We were having bad luck. Earl was out of a job and I was trying to support all three of us, working as a waitress. In a small town like this there aren’t many jobs, you take what you can get. Nothing worked out for us. Earl felt like a failure and Clara was drinking all the time, and I couldn’t see anything ahead but hell. I was younger in those days; I thought I knew what hell was like.” She glanced at the old lady who was sitting bolt upright on the davenport with a fixed smile on her face, like a deaf-mute trying to appear interested in a conversation. “Clara knows.”

“What’s that you say, Birdie?”

“Nothing much. Would you like a drink?”

“I’ll get it. We’ll celebrate old times, eh, Birdie? Shelebrate old times.” She started toward the kitchen, arms outstretched like an amateur tightrope walker. “Don’t let me disturb the talking. I love to hear good talk.”

Looking at the two women now it was impossible for Meecham to imagine the “old times” when the two strong personalities had clashed. There was no clash any longer; one of them was too weak to make a sound, like a broken drum.

“Well, I divorced Earl. I borrowed the money from my sister and took a bus to Las Vegas. When I came back to Arbana I was single again. I started a rooming house, and that’s how I met Jim. I was feeling so empty and old and... Anyway, we got married. I guess I’m the kind of woman that don’t know how to live without having a man to please and cook for and look after.”

For the second time that night Meecham thought what a pity it was that such a forceful woman would always choose emotionally or physically weak men like Hearst and Loftus.

The old lady was still moving around the kitchen, rattling dishes and opening and closing cupboard doors.

“Jim and I got along all right. Nothing special, but all right. Then, about a year ago, I met Earl on the street. I hardly recognized him, he’d changed so much. We stood there in front of Kresge’s... It was snowing, and Earl didn’t have a hat on and his hair was soaking wet, and he told me that he was sick. He had just found out what was the matter with him and he’d been walking the streets trying to figure things out. Those were the words he used, figure things out.

“I took him home and we sat in the kitchen and he asked me if I had a room for him to stay in. He moved in the next week. I didn’t tell Jim or anyone who he was. My sister found out and we often fought about it. But to me it was the right thing to do. We didn’t live together as husband and wife, we lived as friends that needed each other. He talked to me when I got upset or lonely, and I looked after him when he was sick, and kept his apartment clean and saw that he got enough to eat. We had a lot of quiet happiness together, Earl and me. There was always in the back of my mind the hope that someday someone would find a miracle cure for his disease. The worse he got, the more I hoped, until it was all I could think about, making him live.”

She was looking out of the window, down at the dark and empty street. “If I hadn’t hoped so hard he would be still alive.”

“I don’t believe I understand,” Meecham said.

“I went to Claude for money.”

“Money for Loftus?”

“Yes, to take him away. I’d read in the paper about a cancer clinic in New York where they were doing research on Earl’s disease, and I thought if I could just get him there, there might be a chance for him. I didn’t have a cent and nothing to sell except an old car, and no one to borrow from. Except Claude. The more I thought about going to Claude, the more reasonable it seemed. We had known each other a long time, long before Lily ever met him, and when we parted there was no final blowup or anything, we just drifted apart. That’s how I thought of it.

“I went to his office a week ago today and waited for him outside. We went and sat in his car and I told him everything. What a terrible mistake I made!” she said bitterly. “If I’d asked him to lend me money for a new house or a trip I’d have gotten it. But Claude was a vain man. He couldn’t believe that I loved another man, and that it was the kind of love he and I never had together. He kept saying how he knew I’d come to him, and I kept trying to tell him how I felt about Earl and how serious his condition was. Claude wouldn’t listen. I got out of the car and walked home. I was burning up inside, and my head was splitting so I felt like it was going to blow up. You can feel more anger for somebody else than you ever can for yourself.”

Meecham knew that she was right. Listening to her, he experienced inside his own head a corresponding pressure of anger and resentment, against Margolis, and against all the tyrannies and tyrants that harass the weak.

“For the next two days I went around as usual. I guess I did all the ordinary things, but I couldn’t stop thinking of the money and how easily Claude could have lent it to me if he wanted to, and how much it might mean to Earl. On Saturday night Jim came home after a bad week on the road. He started an argument about me paying too much attention to Earl. I had to get out of the house so I went to the hockey game by myself. That much of what I told you before is true. After the game I was driving through town on my way home when I saw Claude. He was just getting out of his car in front of the Top Hat. There was a girl with him that I didn’t know, all dressed up like a Christmas tree. I stopped my car. I had no plan or anything in mind. I think I stopped mostly because I didn’t want to go home anyway and because I was curious. At first that was all, I was curious.

“They went into the Top Hat together, and I waited. A long time I waited, picturing the two of them inside, drinking and laughing and dancing like only people can that have their health and some money. I tried to picture Earl and me in there having a good time and I almost laughed, it was so funny.

“I thought of all kinds of crazy things when I was sitting there. I thought of going in and facing up to Claude, demanding money right in front of his new girlfriend. Claude’s car was parked across the road, and I even thought of getting behind the wheel and driving it away and selling it some place. Imagine thinking of stealing! Never did I think of stealing before, even when I was a kid, but I thought of it then. Everything began to get very sharp and separated in my mind, so I felt anything I could do for Earl was good and what anyone did against him was bad.

“Maybe I would have stolen the car, I don’t know. But I didn’t, because the girl came out of the Top Hat. She was alone and I could see when she passed me that she was drunk. She was staggering around and talking to herself. She went on up the street into another bar and I followed her. She was standing at the counter when I got there, talking to the man beside her. I heard her say that she wanted a beer and that she’d left her purse behind, and what a terrible place the bar was.”

“That it stank, in fact,” Meecham added.

“Yes, those were her words.”

“And that’s how Loftus knew exactly what happened in that bar, not because he was there but because you told him.”

“I told him,” she said, painfully. “He made me. He planned everything as soon as he found out what I’d done.”

“Margolis came into the bar?”

“Yes. He didn’t stay, but took the girl by the arm and steered her outside. It was nearly closing time. A lot of people were leaving and I left too. When I got outside, I saw Claude trying to lift the girl into his car. She had folded up completely and she was hard to handle because she wasn’t little, like Clara. I wondered who the girl was. I thought, she must have someone, parents or relatives or maybe a husband, who wouldn’t want to see her like that with a man like Claude. And then the idea occurred to me that I should follow them, that maybe the situation might have money in it somewhere, money for Earl.”

She went on talking, quietly and earnestly, as if it was very important to her to explain everything and clarify her motives. It seemed to Meecham that the explanation was not for him or for herself but for Earl.

“They went to Claude’s cottage on the river. I walked right in. The girl was on the couch asleep and Claude was starting a fire in the grate. Claude said, how the hell did you get here? I didn’t answer that. I just told him again I wanted some money and if he didn’t give it to me I would phone Lily and the police and the girl’s parents, everyone I could think of. He laughed at me. He said the police wouldn’t be interested and the girl had no parents and Lily was in South America. When I heard that, I felt that I had nothing left, no hope, no chance, nothing. The whole world was against me and Earl, the whole world, laughing at us, like Claude. I went over to the fireplace. Claude had turned away from me and was poking at the fire again. You’re showing your age, Emmy, he said. You’d better start dyeing your hair. Those were the last words he ever spoke. When I stabbed him he sort of twisted around and nearly fell on top of the girl. Blood spurted all over her dress and coat but she didn’t wake up. I stabbed him again, three or four times more, and I stood there and watched him die. I wasn’t sorry for him or scared for myself. I just felt kind of relieved, like some awful pressure was gone from inside me.”

It was her second mention of the pressure of anger. But Meecham was aware that behind the anger, like a chorus lost in the shadows of a stage while the spotlight followed the principal, there were other pressures; a whole chorus of pressures chosen haphazardly from every period of her life, unrehearsed, dancing out of step and time, screaming off-key.

“I didn’t plan anything,” she said. “It all just happened, and so quick, quicker than telling about it.”

“His wallet was missing.”

“I took it. I stole it. Sometimes I think I feel worse about that than I do about killing him. I was brought up strict, I never stole or told lies when I was a kid. I... well, there was forty dollars altogether. I kept the money and threw the wallet in the snow on my way home. It was snowing heavy by that time. That was lucky for me because I never thought of tire tracks or footprints or anything. I never even thought of the girl being left there with Claude’s body. That seemed like luck too, at first, having her get arrested. I never dreamed it would turn out like this, me with the money I wanted for Earl, and no Earl to make it worthwhile. Six thousand dollars, and no Earl.”

From the kitchen came the crash of glass and the old lady’s voice, thick with the sleep she wooed and fought with like a lover: “A mesh, an awful mesh, mush clean it up fore Victor sheath it.”

“I wasn’t scared until I got home and then I realized what I’d done. It hit me the way I’d struck Claude hard and fast, so I could hardly crawl into the house. Everyone was asleep and the lights were off. I rapped on Earl’s door and he let me in. I told him what had happened. He didn’t get excited, he just kept saying everything would be all right. He fixed me some coffee and when I’d drunk it he made me tell him everything I saw and heard and did, every detail. He wrote down what I said in a notebook. I didn’t know then what his idea was, not until he said, Where will we get the blood? Where will we get the blood,” she repeated dully.

“Where did you get it?”

“From me, from my arm. I told you that I’d cut my arm on the broken tap... I had to tell you something, I knew you’d seen the bandage. But I didn’t cut it, Earl did. It took such a long time to get enough blood and Earl was sick from hurting me. But we had to have it to stain the clothes and it had to be mine because it was the same kind as Claude’s.”

“How did you know that?”

“Once years ago he was hurt on the job and had to have a transfusion. They used my blood, so I guessed it was the same kind. We had to take the chance anyway. Earl bandaged my arm. I guess I broke down then and started to scream because Earl put his hand over my mouth and he kept saying, I killed Margolis, you were home in bed, you know nothing about it, I killed him.

“I was crazy with fear but Earl wasn’t. He said no jury would convict him because he was going to claim that he killed Claude to protect the girl, and the police would never be able to prove any other motive because there wasn’t any. With me it was different, Earl said. They could trace back and find out about my relationship with Claude, they could pin fifty motives on me.

“I don’t know how I got through that night. The next morning I drove over to my sister’s in Chelsea, like Earl told me to do. It was Sunday, and Earl had to wait until Monday to go to the police because he wanted to sell whatever he could before they locked him up. I didn’t find out that the girl had been arrested until Sunday night. I drove back home right away to talk to Earl. Earl said her arrest wouldn’t affect his plan. He was wrong. Neither of us imagined how wrong he was, how it was going to affect not just us but everybody.

“On Monday morning Earl left the house early to sell his old Chevvy and pawn whatever he could, and went over to the Sheriff’s office with the confession in his pocket written out and memorized. You know what happened there... He met the girl’s mother, Mrs. Hamilton, in the corridor. Earl was never a schemer, never wanted anything for nothing. But he had a scheme then when he realized Mrs. Hamilton thought her daughter was guilty.

“He came home just before lunch time, terribly excited. He told me all about it, how the girl being a suspect would give me double protection and how the money would take care of Clara and me. He made me promise to look after Clara no matter what happened.

“He brought the money to me late in the afternoon, six thousand dollars. A fortune. Next morning the first thing I did was go down to Devine’s and buy back the things Earl had pawned. They were Earl’s keepsakes and I thought I’d have them waiting for him as a little surprise when he got out. I did what Earl said to do with the rest of the money. I deposited a little of it in the old account I had under my maiden name and hid what was left. I thought I was safe. Everything seemed so foolproof. Even if Earl’s confession was torn apart, suspicion wouldn’t fall on me but on the girl. Yes, I felt safe, I even felt hopeful. Earl would get off, we’d go away together, he’d be cured. I was full of crazy dreams like when I was young. I guess Earl didn’t have any dreams. This morning he hanged himself.”

The old lady’s voice drifted from the other room: “Birdie? You there?”

“I’m here.”

“Going to bed, very tired.”

“I’ll help you.” She met the old lady at the kitchen door and took her by the arm. Slowly, the two of them moved across the room. “I can’t stay with you tonight, Clara. You’ll be hearing from me, though. I have to go away for a while but I’ll be back, don’t worry. I’ll be back, won’t I, Mr. Meecham?”

He was sure she would.

The snow had stopped. The air was clear and sharp, and the midnight moon traveled with them along the highway.

You are leaving Kincaid. Elevation 900, Population 10,550. Come Back Soon!

“She’ll be back,” Meecham said. “In a year, two years. Maybe sooner.”

Alice pressed closer to his side, as if the mere mention of departures and returns was a threat of separation. “What will happen to her then? What will she be like?”

“She’ll be the same. The pattern is the same — for Birdie, Miss Falconer, Emmy Hearst — and she’ll follow it.”

Alice shook her head in protest. “No, that’s too cynical. People can change; they do.”

“Do they?” The lights of Kincaid were no longer visible, though their reflection shone in the sky. “She’ll come back,” he repeated. “If Jim is still around she’ll take up with him again. If he isn’t, she’ll find someone else, some man who will depend on her, a prodigal son she can mother.”

“You must believe in fate, Meecham,” she said gravely.

“Maybe.”

“Then I guess you must be my fate. I didn’t choose you. You just suddenly loomed up like a... well, like an iceberg.”

“That’s a beautiful thought.”

“I mean it to be.”

He took his eyes off the road for a second and looked down at her. Her face was a vague white blur in the darkness, anonymous, not Alice’s face, but any woman’s. He wondered, with a curious feeling of tightness in his throat, how many icebergs were ahead for Birdie and with what reckless skill she’d steer toward them.

Whatever happened, Birdie would survive. Thinking of her and of the girl beside him, Meecham was conscious of a great surge of energy and power, as if he could go on driving forever without food or sleep.

Content

Margaret Millar
Vanish in an Instant

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