The Iron Gates

Chapter 1

The dream began quietly. She and Mildred were in a room and Mildred was curled up in a chair, writing.

“What are you writing, Mildred?” Lucille said. “You are writing, what are you writing?”

Slowly, dreamily, Mildred smiled, “Nothing, I have finished, I have quite finished,” and she rose and walked through the window into the snow.

“You mustn’t go out just in your dress like that, Mildred, you’ll catch cold.”

“No... I’m going away... I’ve quite finished...”

“No, it’s dark, it’s snowing.”

But she walked away inexorably, leaving no tracks, casting no shadow.

“Mildred, come back! The back of your head is open!”

“No...”

“You’re bleeding. You’ll make the park untidy.”

“I’m going away,” Mildred called back, softly. “Goodbye, dear. Good-bye, Lucille.”

She walked on, between the trees, and up and over the hills. With each step she became smaller and smaller, yet more and more distinct, as if neither time nor space had the power to blur her details. Now and then she turned around and she was always smiling, like a little doll.

“Little doll!” Lucille cried. “Little doll...”

“Away,” came the answer, soft as a whisper but so clear. “Good-bye — good-bye, dear...”

Eternally she walked and bled and smiled and grew clearer and clearer.

Lucille awoke, suffocating, sick with horror at this tiny thing moving across her mind, no bigger than a finger, a match, a pin. She sprang from her bed and pulled aside the curtains that shrouded the windows. She looked out, and there was the park, there were the trees, the hills, the trackless snow. But Mildred had been dead for sixteen years.

Somewhere in the distance a church bell rang out the Sunday sound of a city. She became suddenly conscious of how grotesque she would appear if Andrew should walk in and find her like this, crouched beside the window, scanning the snow for his dead wife.

She rose and turned, and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She had forgotten the mirror was there, and for an instant, before she had time to set her face, she seemed a stranger, a lady in a mirror, no longer young, wearing a blue nightgown, with her red-gold hair swinging against her shoulders in two long thick braids. She paused to look at the stranger, smiling faintly because it was only a game, yet uneasily because games were never just games, Andrew said, there had to be some motive behind them. Perhaps even after fifteen years that was how she still felt, like a stranger in the house, visiting someone else’s husband and someone else’s children.

“Oh, nonsense,” she said aloud, and walked quickly toward the mirror and the stranger moved and grey and became herself. “What utter nonsense!”

Her tone was the one she used with Andrew and the children, half-severe, half-humorous, completely understanding. The I’m-smiling-but-I-mean-it voice. The sound of it was so familiar that automatically the accompanying facial pattern sprang into place. Her eyes lost the strained anxious look and became kindly and intelligent, her full firm mouth softened, one eyebrow rose a little.

That’s better. This is how I really am. This is me. Lucille Morrow.

Mildred wasn’t important any more, though her portrait still hung on the living-room wall, and now and then she bobbed up in dreams. A fat kewpie doll carved out of soap, Lucille thought. Something doughy and sticky you couldn’t get off your hands...

She picked up a brush and began to brush her hair vigorously. With each stroke the dream receded and the doll blurred and melted;

Her moment of insecurity had passed and left her with a more conscious sense of possession. This was her hand, her brush, her house, her husband whistling in the adjoining room. Only the children could never belong to anyone but Mildred. For Andrew’s sake Lucille had tried to like them and make them like her in return. But they remained Mildred’s children and she was uneasy with them and the most she ever achieved was an armed truce.

Still, they were no longer children. Polly was getting married this week, and some day Martin would marry, and she and Andrew would be left alone in the house. With Edith, of course, but she didn’t count.

Her hand paused. She gazed into the mirror and saw the future stretching out in front of her, a length of red-velvet carpet covered with a marquee.

She dressed quickly and coiled her hair in a coronet around her head. Like a queen she moved out into the hall, proudly but cautiously, as if she must test the red-velvet carpet and measure the height of the marquee. She walked down the stairs enjoying the sound of her taffeta morning coat following her with obsequious little noises like a genteel servant.

Upstairs, a door slammed and Andrew’s voice shouted, “Lucille! Wait a minute, Lucille!”

She paused at the bottom of the steps.

“What is it, Andrew?”

“What’s happened to my scarf?”

Lucille checked an impulse to say, “What scarf?” She said, “All your scarves are in your bureau drawer.”

“All except this one and this” is the one I want to wear.”

“Naturally.”

“What did you say?”

Lucille raised her voice. “I said, naturally, the one you want to wear is the one that isn’t there.”

“It’s the other way around,” Andrew shouted. “The one I want to wear is the one...”

“All right,” Lucille said, smiling. “What does it look like?”

“Blue. Dark blue with little gray things on it.” He came to the head of the stairs and gesticulated. “Little gray things like this.”

He was a tall, gray-haired man, nearly fifty now, but he was still slim and he had the quick vigorous movements that characterized his son Martin and his sister Edith. His features were thin, almost delicate, but he had large soft brown eyes which gave his face an oddly guileless expression and caused him trouble now and then with his women patients. Like many really good-natured men, when he tried to look cross he overdid it. He sent a ferocious scowl down the steps at his wife.

“Somebody gave it to me for Christmas last year,” he said.

“I did,” Lucille said serenely. “And it’s not blue, it’s black. Have you looked under your bed?”

“Yes.”

“Andrew, why? Why do you always look under beds for tilings first?”

“It’s the logical place. So much room. Lucille, you wouldn’t come up and...”

“I wouldn’t,” Lucille said. “If I came up and found it for you it would only make you crosser.”

“I promise.”

“No.” She turned calmly and walked away, flinging over her shoulder, “Try the cedar closet in the hall.”

Ignoring Andrew’s noises of distress she went into the dining room.

Edith and Polly were already at breakfast. Edith was buttering a piece of toast with the precise contemptuous movements of one who despises food as a necessary evil to be gotten over with as quickly as possible. Polly, a cup of coffee in front of her, was smoking and gazing dreamily out of the window.

“Good morning, Edith,” Lucille said. She bent over Edith’s chair and the cheeks of the two women touched briefly. It was a routine of long standing. They were fond of each other, in a dry expedient way, for they were of the same age and they were interested in the same thing, Andrew. “Good morning, Polly.”

“Morning,” Polly said, without taking her eyes from the window.

“Good morning,” Edith said. “Sleep well?”

“Fine.”

“More than I did.” Her voice was so high and sharp that it seemed ready to break into hysteria, or snap with a death twang like a violin string. Every year it seemed to Lucille that Edith’s voice got higher, that the string was pulled more and more taut and played a thin sinister obbligato over the most ordinary remarks.

“What is all the shouting about?” Edith said. “If you want fresh toast, ring for Annie. I told her to have it ready. Sometimes I think Andrew likes to shout simply for the sake of shouting.”

Lucille sat down, smiling, and unfolded her napkin. “Perhaps.”

“I’ve seen him at the office simply oozing quiet charm, and when he gets home he howls, he does, he really howls.”

“He couldn’t find a scarf he wanted,” Lucille said.

She felt suddenly and absurdly happy. She wanted to laugh out loud, she felt the laughter forming in her throat and she had to force it down. She couldn’t explain to Edith or Polly that she wanted to laugh because this room was warm and bright, because it had begun to snow outside, because Andrew. couldn’t find something and had looked under the bed...

She looked at Edith and Polly and for a minute she loved them both utterly, because she was so pleased with herself and the beautiful quiet life she had built out of nothing. I love you, my dears, my dears. I can afford to love you because I have everything I want and neither of you can take anything away from me.

“Andrew never could find anything,” Edith said. “And the closer it is to him, of course, the more trouble he has finding it. I suppose it’s psychological.”

Polly stirred slightly. “What is?” she said. “No, don’t tell me...”

“Finding things,” Edith said. “I expect Freud would say that you find only the things you really want to find. Some people have the most wonderful gift for finding money. There’s a man in New York... Polly, it would be nice if you sat up straight.”

“What for?” Polly said.

“You look as if you have curvature of the spine all huddled up like that.”

“I’m not huddled, I’m relaxed.”

“The table is no place to relax.”

“O.K.,” Polly said without resentment, and uncoiled herself from the chair. For a minute she remained upright, and then she propped her elbows on the table and supported her head in her hands. Her long black hair swung silkily over her wrists.

“Honestly,” said Edith, in affectionate exasperation.

Lucille remained quiet. She no longer made any attempts to discipline her stepchildren, and even when she was especially annoyed with one of them she had enough self-control to refrain from comment. She had always tried to be fair to them and when they disagreed with their father she often forced herself to take their side against him. But in spite of her efforts they had remained aloof and careful.

Perhaps it’s because they were at a difficult age when I married Andrew, Lucille thought. Polly was only ten, and Martin twelve, and they were both so fond of Mildred.

Mildred, Lucille thought, and found that the laughter in her throat had evaporated like the bubbles in a stale drink.

“Though I never relax myself,” Edith said, sitting very upright, “I don’t mind others relaxing in the proper place. It depends on the personality whether you can or can’t.”

“Mildred,” Lucille said, “Mildred had a very relaxed personality.”

She hadn’t said the name aloud for years, she didn’t want to say it now, but she forced the words out. Her moment of complete happiness had gone, and it was as if the warm bright room had led her on and deceived her and she must cast a corpse into it for revenge.

“Yes, she had,” Edith said shortly. “Though I think you should have enough sense not to...”

“Yes, I know,” Lucille said in confusion, conscious of Polly’s hard steady stare. “I’m very sorry.”

“Today of all days,” Edith said.

“I’m sorry, Edith.”

“I’m glad you are. Today of all days we don’t want to be reminded of unpleasant things. We must make a good impression on Mr. Frome.”

“Lieutenant Frome,” Polly said. “And you needn’t bother about the impression. I made that weeks ago.”

“Still, we are your family, my dear.”

“He’s not marrying you.”

Edith blushed and said sharply, “I realize that he’s, not marrying me and that no one ever has, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Please!” Polly said, and got up and planted a quick kiss on her aunt’s cheek. “I didn’t mean that, silly. I meant I hate fusses, and so does Giles. I don’t want this to be a today-of-all-days. Giles’d curl up and die if he thought he was putting anyone out by coming here.”

“Then he’s too sensitive,” Edith said crossly.

“I know he is. That’s why I’m glad he’s got me. I’m not.” She put her arm around her aunt’s shoulders and whispered in her ear, “It’s lucky I’m not sensitive or how could I have stood all your crabbing?”

“Crabbing?” Edith’s mouth fell open. “Really, Polly! As if I’d ever stoop to crabbing!”

“You do crab,” Polly said, laughing. “And you make speeches.”

“Well, I never! The nerve of...”

“Confess it, confess it now or I’ll tickle you.”

“Oh! You sit down right this minute and behave yourself.” Edith smoothed her ruffled hair and feelings. “You and your jokes. You’re worse than Martin. As if I ever made speeches. Do I, Lucille?”

“Never,” Lucille said, with a smile.

“You see, Polly?”

But as soon as Lucille was brought into the conversation Polly’s mood changed. Her face became a blank, her eyes fixed themselves coldly on Lucille and Lucille read in them”: “See how nicely we get along without you? This is how you’ve been spoiling things for us all these years.”

“I don’t believe in mailing speeches.” Edith said. “I think the tongue is a much overrated organ.”

“Isn’t it,” Polly said absently, and strolled over to the window, her square shoulders outlined in the light.

Lucille glanced at her and was struck again by the difference between Polly and the rest of the family. There was something compact and uncompromising and stubborn about even the way she was built. She was rather short, and though slim, she gave the impression of sturdiness and durability. She did not expend her energy haphazardly and aimlessly like Martin and Edith. She moved with a kind of lazy competence and she did nearly everything well, and was at home anywhere.

Her features had the soft roundness of her mother’s, and she was, like her, fundamentally a tranquil person. But where Mildred’s tranquility had been deepened by happiness and security’, Polly’s had been warped and hardened by years of implacable hatred of her stepmother.

Perhaps with Martin alone I would have been successful, Lucille thought. He’s a man, and more pliant. But Polly... Polly seemed already grown-up a: ten. She distrusted me, as a grown woman distrusts another woman whose house she has to share.

Edith had finished her coffee and her long thin fingers chummed restlessly on the tablecloth. She had finished one thing, breakfast, therefore she must start another thing at once. Whether the activity was her own or someone else’s did not matter. She was constantly on the move and setting other people in motion.

“I wish Andrew would hurry.” she said. “I expect Martin to be late, of course. I think I’d better go up and see what’s keeping then.”

“Lots of time,’ Polly said. “Giles’ furlough doesn’t begin officially until noon and it won’t take us over an hour to drive out to the camp.”

“I understand,” Lucille said, rather shyly, “that officers have ‘leaves’ and enlisted men have ‘furloughs.’ ” Polly shrugged, and said, without turning around, “Oh, do you?”

“I think I... I heard it somewhere.”

“Really?”

“Of course, so did I,” Edith said hurriedly. “Though I prefer to call it ‘furlough.’ It sounds so much more important, Polly. Why Andrew and Martin insist on driving out with you I don’t know.”

“They want to look him over first,” Polly said, “and then if he doesn’t measure up they can dispose of the body some place and bring me on home, teary but intact.”

Edith tried to look shocked. “I’m sure such an idea never entered Andrew’s head.”

“I was joking, darling.”

“What a way to joke!”

“But the main idea, I suppose, is to give Giles the impression of male solidarity behind me. ‘None of your funny work, Frome, or else...’ ‘Be good to our little Polly’ — that sort of thing.”

“I consider it quite touching,” Edith said.

“Yes, isn’t it? And so redundant. They both know that since I have decided on Giles, nothing in this world can stop me from marrying him.” She glanced briefly at Lucille.

“I’m glad you feel like that,” Lucille said quietly. “It’s bad policy to interfere with marriages.”

The girl flushed and turned away again.

“There’s altogether too much fuss made about marrying,” Edith said. “When I was young I naturally had some experience with moonlight and roses, but the roses nearly all turned out to be the crepe-paper ones from the dime store, and the moonlight no better than a street lamp, not so good for seeing purposes.” She smiled affectionately at Polly’s back. “But I expect you’ve known that for years.”

“Off and on,” Polly said. “I lapse. This is my nicest lapse.”

“I’m really very anxious to see him,” Edith said with a break in her voice. “It’s so hard to believe you’re old enough to be getting married. It seems like yesterday...”

“I never thought you’d get sentimental about me.”

“As if I’d ever get sentimental,” Edith said and briskly pushed back her chair. “I’m going up to hurry Andrew along. If he looks for the scarf much longer he’ll have the whole house torn up.”

She went out in a flutter of silk and sachet.

Left alone with her stepmother Polly came back to the table and poured herself another cup of coffee.

Because she felt embarrassed with Lucille she focused her eyes carefully on the objects on the table, examining and appraising them as if she were at an auction — the silver coffee urn with the little gas flame under it, the red cups on white saucers, the remains of Edith’s breakfast, two pieces of toast sagging against the toast rack, a bald and imperturbable boiled egg in a red bowl, and a corner of Lucille’s blue sleeve.

“I’m glad Giles could get his... his furlough,” Lucille said politely.

Polly did not look up. “So am I, naturally.”

“Three weeks, is it?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re being married on Friday — five more days.”

“We have to wait for the license. Then we’ll go down to the registry office and get the mumbo-jumbo over with and be off.”

“Where are you going?”

Polly shrugged. “Here or there. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, I guess not,” Lucille said, and the two were silent again.

In the hall there were sounds of laughter and running footsteps, and a few seconds later Martin came bursting into the room. His hair was rumpled and his tie wasn’t tied but he had the self-assurance and smiling arrogance of a man who has achieved success early and easily. He had had his back broken when he was a child and sometimes his walk was stiff and painful; but he never talked about it and he was almost always smiling, and if he lived a secret bitter life of his own behind the smile he never let on.

He looked so much like his father that Lucille’s lips curved involuntarily when she saw him and her eyes were soft as a lover’s.

“Edith just flung me down the stairs,” Martin said cheerfully. “What in hell’s the hurry? It’s only nine-thirty and the Big Four don’t meet until noon.”

He pulled out a chair and sat down, and ran his two hands over his hair to smooth it. In the process he knocked over a cup on the table and narrowly missed Polly’s head with his elbow.

“I don’t think Giles is going to like you, Martin,” Polly said crisply. “You’re too violent.”

“Of course Giles will like me. I’m going to give him lots of advice. I’ll tell him everything a young man in his condition should know.”

“He’s twenty-nine, darling. A year older than you are.”

“But totally lacking in experience.”

Polly made a face at him.

So far Martin hadn’t even looked at Lucille but she knew the omission was not deliberate as it would have been in Polly’s case.

She did not want to call attention to herself by speaking, so she watched the two of them in silence, forgetting Mildred and taking pride in the fact that these were Andrew’s children and both of them so good-looking and dark and clever. Martin was literary editor of the Toronto Review, and very young for his job. Polly had taken her degree in sociology at the university, and for four years had worked in various settlement houses doing everything from investigating cases to helping deliver babies.

“Is that my egg?” Martin said, pointing to the red bowl.

“Nobody can own an egg,” Polly said. “They’re so impersonal.”

“I can.”

“Don’t take it,” Lucille said, laughing. “It’s not very warm. Annie will make you another.”

But Martin had already sliced the top off the egg, and was choosing a piece of stale toast from the rack. Lucille poured his coffee for him and then rose to leave. She would have liked to stay on at the table as she usually did on Sundays, but she knew she’d be in the way. Martin and Polly were already deep in a discussion of how Martin should and should not behave to Giles.

“Do not be funny,” Polly said. “And above all do not slap him on the back or ask him what his officer’s swagger stick is for. Everyone asks him that and it’s very embarrassing because he doesn’t know. And above all...”

Lucille closed the door softly behind her.

She stood for a moment in the hall, uncertain of herself and her position, not sure what to do or where to go. She had a sudden shock of recognition.

I’ve been here many times before, she thought. Alone in a hall with the doors closed against me, a stranger, a tramp.

She had a vision of herself, her body bent forward in lines of furtiveness like a thief about to tiptoe past a sleeping policeman.

Then from upstairs she heard Edith’s voice raised in angry solicitude, “I do believe you’ve given yourself a fever, Andrew!” and abruptly everything became normal again, the policeman woke, the thief was caught and put neatly behind bars, and Lucille’s thoughts folded and packed themselves into their proper files.

“My dear Edith.” Andrew’s voice was raised too, and he sounded nervous and irritable. He doesn’t want Polly to get married, Lucille thought. He still thinks of her as a little girl. “How can anyone give himself a fever?”

“You know very well that I meant,” Edith said. “You’re coming down with a cold, and it’s a lot of nonsense anyway, this dashing out into the snow to meet...”

“My dear Edith. I am not dashing out into the snow. I intend to conduct myself in a dignified manner in a closed car with a heater, providing...”

“You know very well...”

“...providing I am allowed enough privacy to get dressed.”

“All right, get double pneumonia.”

“Dear heaven!” Andrew said, and a door slammed.

Lucille walked down the hall, thinking, with a smile, of Edith. Poor Edith, she thrives on imminent catastrophes and likes to think of herself as the great Averter of them... I could do the menus and make out the shopping list for tomorrow... I wonder if Giles is allergic to anything...

She went into the small book-lined room that Andrew called his den. The sun hadn’t reached this side of the house yet and the room was gloomy and smelled of unused books.

She turned on a lamp and sat down in Andrew’s chair and stretched out her hand for a memo pad and a pencil. She began to plan the menus for the week, with one eye on rationing and the other on Annie’s limitations in the kitchen. Lobster, if available, and a roasting chicken. Mushrooms, or perhaps an eggplant.

She bent over the pad, frowning. She wanted everything to be perfect for Giles, not because he was Giles and about to marry Polly, but because she was Lucille. She had the subtle but supreme vanity that often masquerades under prettier names, devotion, unselfishness, generosity. It lay in the back of her mind, a blind, deaf and hungry little beast that must always be fed indirectly through a cord.

While she planned she drew pictures absently on the back of the memo pad. Vaguely through a sea of lobsters and shrimp she heard Edith’s voice calling her.

“Lucille, where on earth are you?”

“In here. In the den.”

Edith came rushing through the door with an air of challenging a high wind.

“I think Andrew’s caught a cold,” she said with a tragic gesture. “Today of all days. His face is quite flushed.”

“Excitement,” Lucille said. Edith was smoking, and her pallor, seen through a veil of smoke, reminded Lucille of oysters.

“Oysters,” she said.

Edith looked a little surprised. “I loathe oysters. Unless they’re covered with something and fried.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like the color of the things.”

“Neither do I,” Lucille said calmly, and added oysters to the list.

“Though I wasn’t, as a matter of fact, talking about oysters,” Edith said with a certain coldness. “I was talking about Andrew. I think he should be sensible and stay home today.”

“Oh, leave him alone, Edith.” Seeing her sister-in-law’s color rise she added quickly, “Andrew hates to be babied. The best thing you and I can do is to stay out of everyone’s way. Leave the three of them together. In a way it’s their morning, we mustn’t interfere. For the present — we’re — we’re outsiders.”

Edith looked as if she were about to continue arguing, then with a sudden twist of her shoulders she turned and sat down on the edge of the desk.

“You’re so reasonable, Lucille,” she said, almost complainingly. “I don’t know how you do it, always putting yourself in some other person’s place and coming out with exactly the right solution. It’s extraordinary.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.” Contented and smiling she leaned back and touched her hair lightly with the tips of her fingers. The little beast had been fed and had stopped gnawing for a moment.

A few minutes later Edith went out, and Lucille sat with the memo pad on her knee, patiently waiting for Andrew to come in and say good-bye to her. But he didn’t come.

He’s forgotten you.

Well, of course he has. He’s with his children. It’s their day, after all. I said it myself.

But he has forgotten you.

Well, of course. I’m not a dewy-eyed bride any more...

She got up and went to the window and stood waiting to catch a glimpse of him as he left the house. She saw the three of them going up the driveway, close together, arm in arm. With the snow whirling around them they seemed like a compact unit, indivisible and invulnerable.

While she watched, a squat dark cloud moved across the sun like a jealous old woman.

Lucille stood, wanting to cry out, “Andrew! Andrew, come back!” as she had cried out to Mildred in the dream.

But no sound came from her lips, and after a moment she went back to her chair and lighted a cigarette and picked up the memo pad again.

She looked down at the pictures she had drawn while she was planning the menus. They were women’s faces, the faces of fat silly kewpie-doll women. They smirked and simpered at her from the paper, and tossed their coy ringlets and fluttered their eyelashes.

Detachedly, almost absently, she burned out their eyes with the end of her cigarette.

Chapter 2

Around noon on Sunday, December fifth, the Montreal Flier was derailed about twenty miles from Toronto. The cause of the derailment was not known but it was hinted in the first radio reports that it was the work of saboteurs, for the train had been passing a steep bank at the time and the number of people killed and wounded was very high. Volunteer doctors and nurses were asked to come to Castleton, the nearest hospital.

Edith heard the news on the radio but paid little attention to it beyond thinking fleetingly that death and catastrophe were so common these days that one had to be personally involved to get excited over them.

“All volunteer doctors and nurses report at once to Castleton Hospital, King’s Highway number...”

She rose, yawning, and turned the radio off, just as Lucille came in.

“What was that?” Lucille asked.

“Some train wreck.”

“Oh. Lunch is ready. Any calls for Andrew this morning?”

“Two.” Years ago Edith had appointed herself to answer Andrew’s calls on Sunday. She said wistfully, “Remember the old days when I used to spend nearly the whole day at the phone?”

“Andrew is sensible not to work so hard,” Lucille said. “His assistant is perfectly capable.”

“Still it was rather fun to be so busy.”

“Not for Andrew.” She smiled, but she was annoyed with Edith for bringing the subject up. She and Edith, between them, had made the decision that Andrew was to retire, at least partially. Now that he had, Lucille was beginning to doubt her own wisdom. Andrew’s health was better but he had spells of moodiness.

“Doctors are too hard on themselves,” she said, as if to convince herself. “That’s why so many of them die young.”

“Don’t talk about dying young. It upsets my digestive tract.” She turned away, biting her lower lip. “It makes me think of Mildred... I can’t help wishing you hadn’t referred to her this morning, especially in front of Polly.”

“I’m really sorry. It just slipped out.”

“You’ll have to be careful. She might not want Giles to know how — how Mildred died.”

“She’s probably told him already.”

“No, no, I don’t think so. Such a terrible thing.” Edith closed her eyes and Lucille saw that the lids were corpse-gray with the blue veins growing on them like mold.

“So bloody,” Edith said. “So — bloody. I... really...”

“Edith, you mustn’t.” Lucille put out her hand and touched Edith’s thin pallid arm. “Come along and have your lunch.”

“I couldn’t eat a thing.”

“Certainly you can.”

“No. Just remembering it upsets me...”

“We’ll see,” Lucille said, a trifle grimly.

She walked out, leaving Edith to wander wispily behind her like a little unloved ghost.

Lucille estimated the situation and acted as usual with good sense. Given any sympathy or encouragement Edith would mope herself into indigestion or a migraine.

“Sweetbreads for lunch,” Lucille said cheerfully.

Edith brightened at once. In spite of the tug of her conscience she saw Mildred floating away out of her mind and the blood frothed into yards and yards of beautiful pink gauze trailing Mildred down the years.

“I adore sweetbreads,” she said.

She ate too heartily and had indigestion anyway, and by two-thirty she had begun to fidget because Andrew and the children hadn’t returned. Lucille tried to calm her and succeeded only in making herself nervous and impatient.

At four o’clock Lucille built a fire in the living-room grate to cheer them up. But the wood was damp and the flames crept feebly up along the log like dying fingers beckoning for help.

“They should be here,” Edith said. “They should be here. I can’t think what has happened.”

“Probably nothing at all,” Lucille said and poked the log again and turned it.

“I told you that wood wouldn’t burn.”

“My dear Edith,” Lucille said, “it is burning.”

“Not really burning. I’m surprised at Andrew worrying me like this, I’m surprised at him. He should know better.”

“How could Andrew know you were going to eat too much and make yourself nervous?”

“You’re going too far, Lucille.”

“I should have said that two hours ago.”

“It carries a nasty implication,” Edith said coldly. “As if I would not worry about Andrew if I hadn’t eaten too much, which I’m not admitting in the first place. I think you might...”

The telephone in the hall began to ring. The two women looked at each other but did not move.

“Aren’t you going to answer it, Edith? It’s probably a call for Andrew.”

Edith didn’t hear her.

“An accident,” she whispered. “I know — an accident...”

“Don’t be silly,” Lucille said and went out to answer the phone herself.

The operator’s nasal voice twanged along the wire.

“A collect call from Castleton for Mrs. Andrew Morrow. Will you accept the call?”

“This is Mrs. Morrow. Yes, I’ll take it.”

“Here is your party. Go ahead.”

“Hello,” Lucille said. “Hello?”

For a moment there was no reply but a confused background of sound. Then, “Hello, Lucille. This is Polly.”

“What’s happened?”

“There’s been an accident.”

“Polly...”

“No, not ours. We sort of happened into it and Father and I are staying to help. There’s a little hospital here, that’s where I’m phoning from.”

“Polly, you sound funny.”

“Maybe I do. I’ve never seen a train wreck before. Anyway, I’m in a hurry. There aren’t enough doctors and nurses. Tell Edith not to worry. Good-bye.”

“Wait — when will you be home?”

“When they can spare us. Martin and Giles are helping get the bodies out. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” Lucille echoed.

Edith was tugging at her sleeve. “What is it?”

“Nothing much,” Lucille said. “There was a train wreck and Andrew’s helping.”

“How awful!” Edith said, but the words meant nothing to Lucille. She was looking over Edith’s shoulder, smiling. Andrew was safe, her world was safe. All the trains on earth were of no importance if Andrew wasn’t on them.

She hurried back into the living room to stir up the fire... Andrew would be tired when he came home, he would like a fire and a hot toddy.

But no matter how hard she worked, the wood refused to burn. She rose to her feet, dusty and defeated. Slowly she moved her head and her eyes met Mildred’s, Mildred, whole and happy and done in oils, and changeless, Mildred, still a nuisance after sixteen years, having to be dusted once a day and sent away to be cleaned when her plump white shoulders showed scurf.

Lucille looked at her bitterly but Mildred’s soft sweet mouth did not alter, and her blue eyes undimmed by time or tears or hate stared forever at a piece of wall. “It’s all coming back to me,” Edith said.

“What?” Lucille said. “What?”

“The wreck I was trying to remember. It was when Andrew and I were practically children. I don’t remember how it happened exactly but the train was derailed in some way not a mile from the house. And of course we had to go over as soon as we heard about it.”

She went on and on, and Lucille heard only snatches. “Hundreds of bodies, yes, hundreds... very unpleasant for children... soldiers to help because the other war was on then...”

In the excitement Edith’s indigestion disappeared, and Lucille acquired a headache.

“You’re becoming more moderate with the years,” she said sharply. “The last time you told me, it was thousands of bodies.”

“Oh, it was not,” Edith said, offended. “I’m very accurate at numbers. You’re not yourself today, at all, Lucille. You’re quite critical.”

“I have a headache.”

“Go up and lie down then. You’re not yourself today,” she repeated.

“I don’t want to lie down,” Lucille said and was surprised to hear how childish she sounded.

Edith and I are not friends, she thought. We get along and laugh together and understand each other but with only a little less control we might rail at each other like fishwives.

“Very well, I’ll lie down,” she said. She walked abruptly to the door hoping that if she hurried she might defeat Edith by having the last word.

But she was not quick enough.

“Well, I should think so,” Edith said.

Breathing hard, Lucille went to the staircase and began to ascend. She wanted Edith to hear how briskly and youthfully she went upstairs, but the deep carpet and her own weariness betrayed her and the sounds she made were the soft treacherous sounds of a panther moving across the uncertain floor of a jungle.

She had intended to pass the hall mirror without looking at herself but now that she had reached it she couldn’t bear to turn her head away and slight an old friend.

“Hello,” she said, quirking an eyebrow to show herself how whimsical she was being saying hello to herself. “Hello, stranger.”

She passed down the hall into her own room.

As far as anything in the house could be free of Mildred, this room was. In Mildred’s day it had been the guest room because the windows looked out over the park. Mildred had draped the windows herself with yards of suffocating ruffles and net and visitors saw the park only through a pink fog.

Lucille’s first act had been to strip off the ruffles and replace them with crisp tailored drapes. There was a chair beside the windows and here Lucille often sat watching the people in the park, in the winter the skiers and the children with sleds and toboggans, in the summer the parade of prams and picnickers and cyclists.

There was one very steep hill that hardly any cyclist ever managed to get up, and Lucille found pleasure in estimating at just what point the bicycles would falter and the riders dismount and trudge up the rest of the hill.

She enjoyed the people who used the park. They were so tiny and harmless and always making things difficult for themselves by going up and down hills. But she especially loved the cyclists, the ones who never reached the top. Cruelly she enjoyed their endless and futile activity while the clock on her bureau ticked away the minutes and the years.

Outside it had stopped snowing. The park lay like a silent lolling woman softly draped in white with hints of darkness in its hollows.

Lucille turned from the window. She did not like the park at dusk. For a long time after Mildred died nobody had gone into the park after nightfall. There were rumors of a man who roamed the hills with an axe in his hand, there were tales of ghosts and half-human animals. But Mildred and the man were soon forgotten, and intrepid children and impatient lovers had driven away the ghosts.

Only Lucille remembered the man with the axe. She had never believed in him for an instant, yet some perverse part of her mind had kept him for her in storage. When she was disturbed and restless he came out from hiding, gently at first so that she would think he was an old friend. His face was smiling and familiar and she never saw the axe in his hand or the blood on his clothes until it was too late. Then gradually his face would change and distort into something so grotesque and hideous that she could never describe it in words or even remember it when she was feeling calm again.

Lucille laughed suddenly, thinking of Edith.

“Edith would say I have repressions,” she said aloud. “Poor Edith.”

She went to the mirror and began to make up her face for Andrew.

“If you’re tired,” Martin said, “why not let me drive?”

Andrew did not take his eyes off the road.

“Gravel and snow,” he said. “I think I’d better keep the wheel.”

Polly’s voice came from the back seat, “You should know by this time, Martin, that Father thinks nobody can drive as well as he can.”

“Never saw one,” Andrew said.

“The trouble with you...” Polly said.

“The trouble with you,” Andrew said, “is you talk too much, my dear. You’re likely to give Giles the right impression.”

“Giles,” Polly said, “do I talk too much?”

The young man beside her stiffened in order to show her that he was alert and listening to her. But he hadn’t heard the question at all. A combination of circumstances had made him so ill at ease that he was aware only of his own problems and discomfort.

In the first place he didn’t feel quite at home yet in his officer’s uniform. He didn’t know what to do with his swagger stick, and though he felt that he should put his arm around Polly he didn’t want to lose the stick, or break it.

He was, moreover, nervous with Polly’s family. How could they talk like this after seeing the wreck and the bodies?

The wreck had affected him more than the others because he was not used to death and sickness and because it was a little bit like war and he was going to see a lot of things worse than this. The knowledge clutched his stomach like an iron hand.

He sat up straighter. In the headlights of an approaching car his face was stern and white, and the small fair moustache he was growing only emphasized his youth and helplessness.

“Forget about it, Giles,” Polly said, seeing the misery in his eyes.

“Forget about what?” he said stiffly.

“Everything.”

“Oh.”

She squeezed his hand. “You look awfully nice in your uniform.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry we had to run into this today, darling.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Giles said. “I mean, it’s all right. I mean, it’s not your fault.”

“True,” Martin said dryly.

He rather liked Polly’s young man, but he was in no mood to go easy on him. He himself had been stirred by the wreck to pity and anger which, in Martin, turned at once into sarcasm.

“Martin doesn’t want anybody to know he’s human,” Polly said, “so he’ll be biting and snarling for a week now.”

“Like the cur I am,” Martin said.

“Martin loves snarling.”

“Don’t you both?” Andrew said, suddenly irritated with the road and his children and their endless wrangling and the young lieutenant who wasn’t good enough for Polly.

“I don’t,” Polly said. “I get along with everybody.”

“Lack of taste,” Martin said, slumping further on the seat. “Your chief fault.”

More uneasy than ever, Giles cleared his throat and tried to think of something very correct to say. By the time something occurred to him Polly and Martin were talking again. Frustrated, he began to beat his stick rhythmically against his knee.

The car glided over the treacherous road. On a curve the wheels slipped and lurched ahead and the car sprawled sideways in the middle of the highway.

“Better reconsider,” Martin said. “I’m a heller on snow and gravel.”

“Kindly shut up, Martin,” Andrew said, twisting the steering wheel furiously.

“I’m trying to save trouble,” Martin said. “Lucille will blame me if I don’t deliver you cosy and safe at the door.”

“See?” Polly said to Giles. “Now he’s biting Father. I think we should feed the poor mutt and walk him past a hydrant.”

“What?” Giles said, and blushed. “Oh. I see.”

Martin grinned into the darkness. “You can’t blame Polly for being earthy now and then. She’s had such a wide range of experience. Tell him the case of Mrs. Palienczski, Polly.”

“Not until after we’re married,” Polly said calmly.

Married, Andrew thought, and his fingers dug into the steering wheel. Polly getting married, staking her life on the chance that this young man was clean and decent and responsible and healthy...

I don’t like him, Andrew decided.

Once the words had formed in his head, the feeling which had been vague before became definite and irrevocable. “I don’t think I like him,” had become “I’m determined I’ll never like him.”

Andrew was not given to introspection or self-analysis — he had been too busy for it all his life — and so he thought his judgment of Giles was perfectly impartial and well-considered, and, of course, correct.

“It’s nearly midnight,” Martin said.

“Nearly midnight,” Giles echoed, and was conscious of a feeling of relief that the day was almost over and tomorrow could be no worse.

For the rest of the journey he was silent. Every now and then when they passed a lighted village he would glance down at Polly’s dark fur coat. He had never seen her wearing it before and it looked very expensive, like the car, and Martin’s hat, and Andrew’s watch. In addition to his other fears he began to be afraid that the Morrows were rich, that they might have servants who would intimidate him, that he wouldn’t know which fork to use. Or he might slip on a waxed floor, or break an antique chair...

Anyway, I’m a soldier, he thought. Anyway, that’s more than Martin is. I’m a lieutenant with a whole platoon of my own.

He closed his eyes and wished that he could be back where he belonged, with his platoon...

“Giles,” Polly said. “Darling, wake up. We’re here.”

He was awake immediately and reaching instinctively for his swagger stick. But his mind was confused and when the car jerked to a stop he had the impression that Andrew had driven right up on to a veranda, a spacious veranda with huge white pillars. He blinked slowly and looked out the window and saw that the car had stopped under a portico. Between the pillars he could see the dim sprawling hills of the park.

“You take the car in, Martin,” Andrew said wearily and climbed out of the car.

Martin slid over on the seat. “All right. Remove yourselves back there.”

“Come on, Giles,” Polly said. “We’ll get out here.”

He was still staring out the window at the park. A park, he thought, their park, a whole damn park in the middle of a city.

“Come on,” Polly said. “You can moon over the scenery some other time. I’m cold.”

Giles got out. There was a brisk clumsiness in his movements as if he hadn’t quite got used to his own size.

“Is it yours?” he said. “All that?”

“Of course not,” Andrew said brusquely.

“Really, Giles,” Polly said, laughing. “That’s High Park. We happen to live next to it. You’ll love it, Giles. Tomorrow we’ll walk through it...”

“No, you won’t,” Andrew said. He turned his back to them and pressed the doorbell. He spoke over his shoulder and his voice sounded thin and distant. “I don’t want to be tyrannical about this but I must insist that you stay out of the park.”

“I’m afraid you’ve caught a cold, Father,” Polly said.

“You must stay out of the park,” Andrew said. “It isn’t a nice place.”

“Of course, sir,” Giles said stiffly. “Of course, sir. I don’t like parks.”

“I’m afraid Father is overtired,” Polly said. “Martin and I often go into the park, especially in the winter to ski.”

“It isn’t a nice place,” Andrew said, and pressed the bell again.

Martin came running up the driveway. He had his hat off and his dark hair was feathered with snow. He threw his hat up in the air and caught it, and let out a shout that was an exultant challenge to the weather.

Giles stood, shaken with envy and wistfulness. I’d like to. do that, he thought. I could do that.

“Martin is always uninhibited,” Polly said, “but especially in the first snow of the year.”

The portico light went on suddenly, and the door opened.

Giles had a confused impression that several women were rushing out at him all talking at once... “We didn’t hear the car...” “Andrew, you didn’t tie your scarf...” “You’re not chilled, Andrew?”

Polly’s voice rose above the babble, clear and cold. “Come on, Giles. I’ll fix you a drink while they’re taking Father’s temperature.”

The talk died down and Giles was able to see now that there were only two women. One of them was tall and thin and looked like Martin, with her dark curly hair cropped close to her head. She had bright birdlike eyes and a wide mobile mouth and it surprised Giles to hear how high and tight her voice was and how anxious her laugh. This must be Edith, Giles thought.

The other woman was taller, and seemed at the same time younger and more mature than Edith. She had the controlled subdued beauty that plain women sometimes acquire when they have achieved happiness and success and security. Her red-gold hair was coiled in a braid around her head.

She came toward Giles, holding out her hand and smiling apologetically.

“We’ve been terribly rude,” she said. “You’re Giles, of course. I’m Lucille Morrow.”

He shook her hand, very embarrassed because he still had his gloves on and because Polly had flounced ahead into the house without looking back.

“How do you do?” Giles said.

“And this is Edith, Polly’s aunt. Edith dear, come over and meet Giles.”

Edith darted at him. She was wearing something that fluttered in the wind and it seemed to Giles that she was entirely fluid and never stopped moving, talking, smiling, having ideas.

“Hello, Giles,” she said. “What a pretty uniform, don’t you think so, Lucille? We are so glad to have you here, Giles. Andrew, please go into the house at once, though you probably have pneumonia already.”

“Nothing I’d like better,” Andrew said and stamped ahead into the house.

“What a way to talk!” Edith slipped her hand inside Giles’ arm. “Polly is always rude, don’t mind her. One of the first things you have to do is teach her some manners. We’ve never been able to.”

Giles found himself being guided expertly and firmly into the house and down a hall. He had no time to look around or even to think. Edith did not once pause for a breath or an answer.

Her hand on his arm was like a bird’s claw, helpless and appealing, yet somehow grotesque. He thought if he moved his arm the claw would tighten from fear and the harder he tried to shake it off, the tighter it would cling.

“Here we are,” Edith said, and thrust him neatly into the living room.

Lucille was pouring out the hot toddies. Martin and Polly were sitting on the chesterfield talking, and Andrew stood in front of the fire warming his hands.

“Attention, everybody,” Edith said. “And Polly, this means you as well as everyone else because I’m going to make a speech.”

“I knew it,” Polly said tragically. “I knew it.”

“How could you know it when I just decided myself?” Edith said. “Besides, it’s a very short speech, and I consider this an occasion.”

“And occasions deserve speeches,” Martin added. “Preferably by Edith. Come on over here, Giles. We may be up all night.”

“You will if you keep interrupting me,” Edith said. “Anyway, I want to welcome you to the house, Giles. We are glad you could come and we think you will find us a... a happy family.” She blushed and gave Giles an embarrassed and apologetic smile. “I know how sentimental that sounds but I think it’s true, we are a happy family. Of course we have our lapses. Polly is invariably rude and Martin’s high spirits are a trial...”

“And Edith gets maudlin,” Polly said.

“Oh, I do not,” Edith said. “And Andrew can never find anything and then he gets cross, don’t you, Andrew?”

“I may become justifiably irritated,” Andrew said, “but never cross.”

“As for Lucille,” Edith said and smiled across the room at her sister-in-law.

There was a pause and the room seemed to Giles to become static. It was no longer a real room but a picture, the man standing warming his hands at the fire, the two women smiling and smiling at each other, the three figures on the chesterfield relaxed and yet unnatural. Happy family, Giles thought. An ambitious picture painted by an amateur. The smiles of the women were set and false, and the figures on the chesterfield sprawled ungracefully like stiff-jointed dolls.

“As for Lucille,” Edith said, “I don’t believe she has any lapses.”

Lucille laughed softly. “Don’t you believe her, Giles. I’m the worst of the lot.”

His eyes met hers and he felt suddenly warm and understood and contented. The rest of the family with their constant jokes and squabbles were a puzzle to him, but he felt that he knew and liked this quiet beautiful woman.

Something stirred in her eyes like mud at the bottom of a pool.

“I haven’t seen you before,” she said. “Have I?”

“No,” Giles said uncertainly.

“For a moment you reminded me of someone.”

“There!” Edith said triumphantly. “That’s Lucille’s lapse. Someone is always reminding her of someone.”

Lucille said, “Life is an endless procession of faces for me. I am always trying to match them up.”

She picked up her glass and looked into the murky liquid. It seemed to come alive and surge with millions of little faces, winking, frowning, sly, puckered, brooding, bitter, smiling little faces, incredibly mobile and knowing. She could not close her eyes and blot them out. She knew that then they would appear behind her eyelids and that she must walk alone through this delicate, soundless hell.

When Giles said good night to her she was still holding the glass, looking into it with bewildered melancholy, like a child trying to comprehend the universe.

“Good night, Mrs. Morrow,” he said.

She raised her head, and in her quick nervous smile he saw a flutter of questions: You? Where do you fit in? Have you a place? Have I?

“Good night, Giles,” she said in a composed voice. She glanced across at her husband. “Coming, Andrew? It’s very late.”

Very late, too late, later than you think... I mustn’t let my nerves bother me like this, or I’ll dream of Mildred again.

Chapter 3

In the late afternoon of December the sixth Lucille Morrow disappeared.

The house had been quiet all day. Martin and Andrew were working, and Edith had gone on a shopping tour with Polly and Giles.

In the kitchen the two young servants, Annie and Della, were cleaning silverware. When the front doorbell rang Annie snatched up a clean apron, tying it as she ran along the hall.

As soon as she opened the door she regretted this waste of energy. It wasn’t a real caller but a dark shabby little man in a battered trench coat.

“Mrs. Morrow?” he said hoarsely.

Annie, who admired Lucille, was both flattered and angry at the mistake.

“Mrs. Morrow is resting,” she said, in a voice very like Lucille’s own. “She cannot be disturbed.”

The little man blinked, and shifted his feet. “I got something for her. I got to give it to her. You go and get her.” He turned up his coat collar and then slowly and patiently put his hands in his pockets. “Special delivery like.”

“I’ll take it,” Annie said. “And why you can’t use the back door is more than I can say.”

“Very special delivery,” the man said, but his voice lacked conviction. He seemed to have lost all interest in the matter and wasn’t even looking at Annie any more. “What the hell, you give it to her, I give it to her, what’s the odds. Here.”

He brought one hand out of his pocket, and thrust a parcel at Annie. Then he turned with a jerk and walked away, his head lowered against the wind.

Annie closed the door and looked at the parcel. It was a small rectangular box wrapped in plain white paper. Perfume, Annie thought, and shook it to see if it gurgled. But the parcel remained noncommittal and neither gurgled nor rattled.

Briskly Annie mounted the steps and knocked on Lucille’s door.

“Come in,” Lucille said. “Yes, Annie?”

“A parcel for you,” Annie said. “A funny little guy brought it.”

“Man,” Lucille said.

“A funny little man, then,” Annie said. “Don’t you think my grammar is getting swell, Mrs. Morrow? Della noticed today, I sound just like you.”

“Yes,” Lucille said. “You’re a very clever girl.”

“Oh, I’m not really clever,” Annie said modestly. “I just figure, here is my chance to get cultured so I try to get cultured.”

“That will be all, Annie.”

“I figure, chances don’t grow on trees. I could be making more in a war plant but what would I be learning, I tell Della.”

Lucille waited in silence and after a time the silence penetrated into Annie’s consciousness and she turned, with a small sigh, and went out.

She had barely reached the kitchen when she heard the scream. It rushed through the house like a wind and was gone.

“My goodness,” Della said. “What was that?”

The two girls looked at each other uncertainly.

“I guess it was her,” Annie said. “I never heard her scream before. Maybe she twisted her ankle. Maybe I better go up and see.” But when Annie went up Lucille’s door was locked.

“Mrs. Morrow,” Annie called. “Mrs. Morrow. You hurt yourself?”

There was no answer, but Annie thought she heard breathing on the other side of the door.

“Hey,” Annie said. “Mrs. Morrow!”

“Go away,” Lucille said in a harsh whisper. “Go away. Don’t bother me.”

“Della and me, we-figured you twisted your ankle or something...”

“Go away!” Lucille screamed.

Her spirit bruised, Annie returned to the kitchen.

“Well, I like that,” she told Della. “You hear her? She yelled at me.”

“And her usually so quiet,” Della said. “But then she’s just at the age. Sometimes they go off like that.” Della snapped her fingers.

“Who?” Annie said.

“Women,” Della said mysteriously. “At that age. Hysterics and fits over nothing. Maybe she didn’t like what was in the parcel. Say it was jools, emeralds, say, and she didn’t like them. Say she gives them to us.”

“To us,” Annie breathed. “Oh, Lordy.”

“A necklace, say.”

The silverware was forgotten. The emeralds were sold, except two. (“We should keep one apiece,” Della said.) The money was invested in war bonds (“I believe in war bonds,” Annie said), and flowered chiffon dresses and mink coats (“Exactly alike,” Della said. “Wouldn’t that be cute?”

“Except you’re fatter than I am,” Annie said).

The argument over a red roadster was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.

“Red,” said Annie, “is vulgar,” and picked up the telephone.

“Yes, Dr. Morrow. Yes, I’ll call her, Dr. Morrow.”

She turned and hissed at Della, “Him. For her. You go and tell her.”

“Well, I won’t,” Della said. “Nobody can call me vulgar and expect favors all the time.”

Stubbornly, she turned her back, and Annie, seeing that nothing short of a sharp pinch would move her, decided to go herself.

When she arrived upstairs the door of Lucille’s room was open and Lucille was missing. Annie called out several times, and then, in a fit of exasperation, she searched Lucille’s room and the adjoining bathroom, and the room beyond that, which belonged to Andrew.

Della was called, and the two girls looked through the entire second floor, now and then calling, “Mrs. Morrow.” The silence made them nervous and each time they called their voices were shriller and higher.

Clinging together they came down the stairs and switched on all the lights. The house ablaze with light no longer seemed so quiet, and Annie moved almost boldly ahead into the living room.

“Wait,” Della said. “I thought I heard something. I thought I heard a — a footstep.”

“You heard no such thing,” Annie said, shaken.

“Oh, I don’t like this,” Della moaned. “She’s done away with herself. Things like that happen at her age. Oh, I wish people would hurry up and come home.”

“She didn’t do away with herself, we would’ve found the corpse.”

Once the idea of death had entered their heads the girls became too frightened even to talk. Silently they went through all the rooms on the first floor.

There was no trace of Lucille Morrow or the box she had received.

The girls returned to the kitchen and the more familiar scene loosened their tongues.

“Maybe it was really emeralds,” Della said, “and instead of giving them to us she’s gone out to throw them away, say, or have them reset.”

“How could she go out?” Annie said. “Weren’t we sitting here in these very chairs? Did anybody ever come in or go out that I don’t know about, I ask you.”

“We could go up again and see if any of her coats are missing.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I was just saying we could.”

Annie’s curiosity was whetted. A minute later the girls were on their way upstairs again.

In the clothes closet Lucille’s dresses hung, ready to be worn, and the shoes lay on the racks ready to be stepped into.

“It’s like looking at a dead person’s things,” Della whispered. “You know, after they’re dead when you sort out their clothes and there they are all ready only nobody to wear them.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Annie, intent on studying the coats.

“I got a funny feeling, Annie.”

“Oh, you and your feelings. It would serve you right if she walked in here right this minute and fired us both for getting into her things.”

Dreading this possibility, and yet feeling that it would be an improvement on their present situation, they cast longing fearful glances toward the doorway.

But Lucille didn’t walk through the door and neither of the girls ever saw her again.

They returned to the kitchen and Della suddenly noticed that the telephone receiver was still dangling on its wire. Instead of merely presenting this fact to Annie, Della, true to her nature, opened her mouth, put one hand over it and with the other hand pointed toward the telephone.

Annie, whose back was to it, gave a shriek and swung round to meet whatever doom Della’s open mouth and quaking finger indicated.

Seeing only the telephone she whispered, faint with relief, “I thought... I thought you saw — something.”

“Him,” Della said. “You forgot him.”

“Oh, Lordy.”

“You better phone him back.”

“Oh, Lordy, he’ll be mad.”

But Annie did not give him a chance to be mad. She told him immediately and bluntly that his wife had disappeared.

“Have you gone crazy, Annie?” Andrew demanded. “Plumb disappeared, Dr. Morrow, honestly.”

“Annie, kindly...”

“Oh, I know how it sounds, Dr. Morrow, nobody” can tell me how it sounds. Della and me, we’re scared. We been through all the rooms except ours and there ain’t a trace of her, I tell you.”

“Where’s my sister?” Andrew said. “Let me speak to her.”

“She didn’t come back yet.”

“Then you two incompetents are there alone?”

“Della and me,” Annie said huffily, “we may not have an education but we got eyes and Mrs. Morrow has plumb disappeared. Right after the man brought the box we heard her scream and I went up and she told me to beat it. And that’s the last thing she said to me on this earth.”

“I’ll be right home,” Andrew said. “Meanwhile don’t get hysterical. Mrs. Morrow very likely went out for a walk.”

“Without a coat?” Annie said, and paused slyly. “What’s this about a coat?”

“Her coats are all in her closet. Della and me, we looked and they’re all there.”

“See here, Annie,” Andrew said in a calm voice, “don’t get excited. You know Mrs. Morrow fairly well by this time. Has she ever done anything that wasn’t practical and reasonable?”

“N-no, sir.”

“Then hold the fort until I get there.”

“Maybe it wasn’t something she done, maybe it was something somebody done to her.”

But Andrew had already hung up. Slowly Annie did the same and turned to face a feverish-looking Della. “But there’s nobody here,” Della said.

“Maybe not.”

“Oh, you’re trying to scare me again! What’d he say?”

“He’s coming home.”

“Right away?”

“That’s what he said. He don’t believe us. He says she went for a walk. A walk in this weather in a short-sleeved dress, I ask you. And anyway does she ever go for walks?”

“Not that I know of,” Della agreed. “But you can’t tell at her age.”

“I’m sick of hearing about her age.”

They were silent a moment. Then Della said wistfully, “We could talk about the emeralds again. You want to?”

“Sure.”

“We’d keep one apiece. How many do you think there was in the first place?”

“Fifty,” Annie said listlessly.

“Fifty, imagine that! They’d be worth a million. What’d be the very first thing you’d buy, Annie?”

“A dress, I guess.”

“I’d buy a black-chiffon nightgown.”

The game went on, but the emeralds had turned into green glass.

Shortly before six o’clock Andrew arrived home with Martin. Hand in hand, for moral support, the two girls came out into the hall.

“Well?” Andrew said, with a trace of irritation. “Mrs. Morrow back yet?”

Annie shook her head. “No, sir.”

“You said over the phone that you looked through the whole house except your own rooms?”

“We didn’t look there because what would she be doing up there? You think we should go up there now?”

“Don’t bother,” Andrew said and turned to Martin. “Run up to the third floor, will you, just as a precaution.”

“All right.” Martin flung his coat and hat on the hall table and ascended the steps, two at a time.

Andrew took off his own coat in a leisurely manner. “What are all the lights on for?”

“Della and me, we felt better with them on,” Annie said. “Della’s got bad nerves.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Della muttered.

“Turn off some of the lights,” Andrew said.

His refusal to get excited made the girls calmer. Della’s mind began to function again and she went out to the kitchen to start preparing dinner, leaving Annie to tell about the man with the parcel.

Annie couldn’t remember whether the man was short or tall, dark or fair, young or old. She knew only that he was sinister.

“By sinister no doubt you mean shabby?” Andrew said dryly. “Go on.”

“The light was dim and I didn’t notice him much because he should’ve come to the back door.”

Andrew listened patiently as she described the box and the conversation. But Annie noticed that he kept one eye on the steps waiting for Martin to return.

Martin came back, looking partly amused, partly exasperated.

“Crazy as it sounds,” he said, “she’s gone.”

His father silenced him with a look and turned to Annie. “All right, Annie, you may go. It’s simply a matter of waiting for Mrs. Morrow to come back.”

“What gets me,” Annie said, “is the coats.”

“What coats?” Martin said.

“You may go, Annie,” Andrew repeated sharply.

Annie left, and remarked to Della that never ever until today had Dr. Morrow or Mrs. Morrow spoken roughly to her.

Left alone in the hall Andrew and Martin glanced uneasily at each other.

“Crazy as hell, isn’t it?” Martin said. “A grown and capable woman goes out of the house and everyone begins to imagine things.”

“If she went, she went without a coat. Annie says there is none missing. Come in here. I don’t want those two to hear us.”

They went into Andrew’s den and closed the door.

“She might have slipped over to a neighbor’s house,” Martin said, avoiding his father’s eye.

“She doesn’t know the neighbors. Lucille’s not like that.”

“How do you know? She might do some calling that she doesn’t tell you about.”

Andrew blinked. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing. Just that you can’t know everything about a person.”

“That’s true. But in fifteen years you get a fairly accurate impression, you can anticipate reactions.” He reached for the decanter on his desk. “Drink?”

“Thanks,” Martin said.

“This is practically the first time I’ve ever come home without having Lucille greet me. No doubt that sounds dull to you, Martin.”

“Pretty dull,” Martin said, and at the mere mention of dullness and constriction and boredom he felt incredibly vital and alive. He waited to fling himself out of the chair, to stretch, to jump, to run, to make noises. He felt his muscles go taut, and he had to force himself to keep his feet still.

Andrew noticed the tension but misunderstood the cause.

“What did you mean, that Lucille might do some calling that she doesn’t tell me about?”

“Good Lord, I wasn’t slandering her. I simply meant that she wouldn’t tell you every little thing she did for fear of boring you. She’s a quiet person anyway.”

“Yes. Annie said she screamed.”

“Screamed?” Martin said. “Lucille? What about?”

“She wouldn’t tell Annie.” Andrew leaned his head on his hands. He looked grayer and more tired than Martin had ever seen him look before.

How old he is, Martin thought, how old and settled. Intolerant of age and inactivity, Martin began impatiently to move the stuff about on Andrew’s desk. He emptied and then filled a pen, he rearranged some books, he scribbled his name on the blotter and he folded a page from the memo pad into a fan.

“Being a doctor’s wife,” Andrew said, “is a hard job. Being a second wife doesn’t make it easier. Yet Lucille has never complained. What’s that you’re staring at?”

“Nothing,” Martin said. “A piece of paper. Somebody’s burned holes in it with a cigarette.”

“Put it down then, and don’t fidget. You’re as jumpy as Edith.”

“Odd.”

“What?”

“These pictures. They look like my mother. Somebody’s burned the eyes out.”

“What? Give it to me.” Andrew took the paper and looked at it briefly. “Nonsense. Not a bit like your mother.”

“I think so.”

“More implications, Martin?”

“Not at all,” Martin said politely, and tossed the paper aside as if it suddenly bored him.

“You believe,” Andrew said, “that Lucille drew pictures of Mildred and then mutilated them?”

“Oh, what does it matter?”

“It matters to me. If you like, when Lucille comes back home I’ll ask her.”

“Good Lord, no!”

“I insist on asking her,” Andrew said.

Martin pounded his fist on the desk. Nearly all of his arguments with his father left him with this feeling of helpless rage against Andrew’s naiveté. After twenty-five years of being a doctor Andrew seemed never to have lost his faith in human nature. Martin, who had no faith in anyone but himself and no religious convictions beyond the basic one that he was God, alternately respected and despised his father.

The two men watched each other across the width of the desk. The return of Lucille was now an issue between them, and their faces had a waiting look.

At six-thirty Edith arrived. She had left Polly and Giles dining at the Oak Room and had rushed home in the conviction that everything would go wrong in the house if she didn’t.

The fact that everything had already gone wrong was explained to her vividly by Annie as soon as she opened the door. After the first shock was over Edith plunged into the mystery and upset the whole house with her splashing and churning.

It was Edith who discovered that Lucille’s black-suede purse and the housekeeping money for the rest of the month were missing. Della and Annie vigorously denied going near the drawer where Lucille kept her purses. Edith believed them.

“So,” she told Andrew, “Lucille must have taken it herself.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she wanted to go out and buy something, that’s the simplest explanation.”

“She wasn’t wearing a coat.”

“Nonsense,” Edith said. “I’m not pretending to know why she went out but I refuse to believe any sensible person would go out in this weather without a coat. She may have worn one of mine.”

Edith’s coats, however, were all found in her closet.

It was Della who backed up Edith’s belief in what a sensible woman would do. Della had gone up to her room on the third floor to change her uniform. Her discarded one, tear-stained because Edith had called her a moron, she tossed into the closet. She saw that someone had disarranged the clothes.

A few minutes later she came down the stairs wailing.

“My money,” she screamed at Edith. “My coat and money! She took it! She’s a thief, a common thief!”

Twenty dollars and a reversible raincoat had been taken from Della’s closet. The coat, beige gabardine on one side and red-plaid wool on the other, was practically new and not even a fifty-dollar check mended Della’s broken heart.

Though the manner of Lucille’s departure now seemed to be explained, for Edith the taking of Della’s coat merely deepened the mystery.

“Why Della’s coat?” she said. “Why not one of her own? It’s as if — as if she was escaping and didn’t want anyone to recognize her.”

“No,” Andrew said. “No, I don’t believe it.”

“And the money... Yes, Andrew, she ran away.”

“The girls swear they didn’t hear her go out. They went upstairs and looked for her.”

“That was when she got out,” Edith said. ‘‘She ran up to hide in Della’s room while they were looking through hers. When they went downstairs again and were searching the living room she came down with the coat and the purse and the money...”

She put her hand over her eyes to blot out the picture. How vivid it seemed, how grotesquely easy it was for the mind to twist Lucille’s placid smile into a crafty grin, to add slyness to the quiet eyes, and furtiveness to the sure slow movements of her body.

Perhaps I look like that to someone, Edith thought. We are all protected by a veil of trust. I must think of her as she was.

But the veil was already torn and the crafty grin and the furtiveness became clearer. Suspicions grew in Edith’s mind like little extra eyes.

“And then,” Edith said, “she simply went out the back door while the girls were in the living room.”

“Simply,” Andrew said with a sharp mirthless laugh. “Simply!”

Edith flushed. “I’m terribly sorry, Andrew.”

“Sorry! Another magnificent understatement, my dear. I don’t want you to be sorry for having spoken your mind. If you believe that my wife is a thief and perhaps worse, you can’t help it. Any more than Martin can help it.”

“I haven’t said anything,” Martin said. “Yet.”

“Keep quiet, Martin,” Edith said. She went over to Andrew and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Andrew, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to think.”

He smiled up at her, wryly. “Then why think? If Lucille went away she had a reason to go. She’ll be back.”

Edith and Martin exchanged glances over his head. “And if she had a reason.”

Andrew continued, “she had a right to go. People should be allowed a certain freedom of movement. They shouldn’t get the feeling that they are constantly required to be some place at some specific time. They should have certain periods when nothing whatever is expected from them.”

“This is very like a lecture,” Edith said coldly, “directed against me.”

“Perhaps deservedly, Edith. You’re a driver. You can’t help it, I know, any more than I can help allowing myself to be driven, for the sake of peace.”

“What has all this to do with Lucille?”

“Nothing,” Andrew said. “Nothing at all. I was just talking.”

“You aren’t usually so talkative.”

“I keep thinking,” he said with a vague gesture, “I keep thinking, suppose when she was up in her room she had a feeling that she was in a prison, that she must suddenly escape, that the very walls were a weight on her. When I feel like that I escape to my office, I run like a hare back to my pregnant women, my neurotic young girls, my ladies with cysts and sorrows and headaches and backaches and constipation...”

“Really, Andrew!” Edith said, frowning.

“Women,” Andrew said. “I don’t know how many there are in the world, but I think I’ve seen half of them and they’re all constipated.”

“Father had a couple of drinks before you came,” Martin said.

“You know you can’t drink, Andrew,” Edith said, annoyed. “It goes to your head.”

“Please go away, Edith. Please go away back and sit down some place.”

But Edith refused. She was as incapable of sitting down as she was of keeping quiet. Pacing the room she went over all the facts again, returning in the end to the unanswerable question, why?

“Why?” Martin echoed. “Perhaps Father’s right. She felt like that, and off she went.”

Edith shook her head. “No, that’s quite incredible. You know what a thoroughly sensible person Lucille is. If she felt like that she would simply have gone for a nice t long walk or something.”

“People aren’t always capable of making sense,” Andrew said in a strange voice. “There are forces — forces in the mind...” He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on her. “Look, Edith. See, it’s like a jungle, the mind, dark and thick, with a million little paths that the light never reaches. You never know the paths are there until something pops out of one of them. Then, Edith, you might try to trace it back looking for its spoor and tracks, and you go so far, just so far, but the path is too twisted, too lightless, soundless, timeless...”

Edith was standing with her mouth open, and quite suddenly she began to cry. She cried not for Andrew’s, sake or Lucille’s, but from sheer exasperation, because two people in whom she had placed her trust had betrayed her by stepping out of character. She saw Andrew as a dear little boy who suddenly and incongruously grows a long gray beard.

She brushed away her tears with the back of her hand, angrily conscious that Martin was looking at her with dismay, and Andrew with a kind of detached interest.

She averted her face and said stiffly, “You’re implying that Lucille has gone crazy?”

“No,” Andrew said, his voice mild again, and a little tired. “No. I think she...”

“It would be far more to the point to investigate the man who brought the parcel to her. However dark a jungle my mind is, Andrew, I am still capable of logic. Whatever prompted Lucille to go away, the man with the parcel is connected with it. That’s the only out-of-the-ordinary thing that’s happened to her.”

“No,” Andrew said, “there’s one other, isn’t there? Giles Frome.”

“What on earth would Giles have to do with it?”

“Probably nothing. Like yourself I’m simply being logical.”

“Good Lord,” Martin said. “I haven’t been able to get a word in. I agree with Edith about the man with the parcel. The trouble is finding him.”

“What are the-police for?” Edith said.

“The police,” Martin said dryly, “are for finding people.”

Chapter 4

“My wife,” Andrew said, “has disappeared.”

“Ah,” Inspector Bascombe said, and folded his big square hands on the desk in front of him. He was a heavy, sour-looking man with bitter little eyes that seemed to fling acid on everyone they saw.

He was thinking, so your wife has disappeared. Yours and a couple of thousand others’. Including mine. With an electrician from Hull.

“The details, please,” he said without inflection.

“They’re rather peculiar.”

Why, sure they are. Bascombe thought. The details are always peculiar. What isn’t peculiar is how the wives turn up again when they’re left flat and broke. Except mine.

He said, “Sit down, Dr. Morrow, and make yourself comfortable. There’s rather a long form to be filled out, her description and so forth.”

Bascombe watched him as he sat down. He felt very glad that Morrow’s wife had disappeared because Morrow was the kind of man he hated most, next to electricians. Goddam whiskey ad, he thought. Men of achievement, men of tomorrow. Even the top drawer have women troubles, what a goddam shame.

Thinking of whiskey ads reminded him of the bottle of Scotch he had hidden in the files. He tried to forget it again by being extra crisp and businesslike.

“Name?”

“Lucille Alexandra Morrow.”

He wrote rapidly. Lucille Alexandra Morrow. Female. White. Age forty-five. Red-gold hair, long; blue eyes, fair skin, no distinguishing marks.

The red-gold hair reminded him of the Scotch again. His hand jerked across the paper leaving a spray of ink.

He looked up to see if Morrow had noticed, but Morrow wasn’t watching him. He had his eyes fixed on the lettering on the glass door — Department of Missing Persons.

“Kind of fascinates you, doesn’t it,” Bascombe laughed. “I read it a million times a day.”

Make it two million, and every time, I get a cold wet feeling in the gut. The Missing Persons. Some of them will never be found, some will come back by themselves, drunk or sick or broke or just tired. And some of them will come up from the mud at the bottom of the river in April or May, the ladies on their backs, and the gentlemen face down.

He got up abruptly, and the pen rolled across the desk. Muttering something under his breath he went into the next room and closed the door behind him.

Sergeant D’arcy, a small rosy-cheeked young man who looked a little too elegant in his uniform, glanced up from his desk.

“Yes, sir?” he said.

“Get the hell in there,” Bascombe said thickly. “Some guy’s lost his wife. Take it all down. I feel rotten.”

“Yes, sir,” D’arcy said, riffling some papers efficiently. “Is there anything I can do, sir?”

“What I’ve already told you to do.”

“I meant aside from...”

“Scram, lovely.”

When D’arcy had gone Bascombe removed the bottle of Scotch from the back of the Closed Cases M to N file. D’arcy, who was listening, heard the gurgle of liquid, and thought, poor Bascombe, he had a truly great brain but he was drinking on duty again and would have to be reported.

To Andrew, D’arcy presented his fine teeth, brushed for five minutes in the morning and five at night.

“Inspector Bascombe had a slight touch of indigestion. He asked me to continue for him.”

He picked up the form, noticing at once the spray of ink. Poor Bascombe.

“Now, of course,” he said, “we require a few more details. Has Mrs. Morrow ever gone away like this before?”

“Never.”

“There is no evidence of coercion?”

“None,” Andrew hesitated, “that I know of.”

“Did she have any reason for leaving, to your knowledge, any domestic upsets and the like?”

“None.”

“No other man involved, of course?”

Andrew looked at him with cold dislike. “There has never been any other man involved in her life except her first husband, George Lanvers. He’s been dead for nearly twenty years.”

“We have to ask certain questions,” D’arcy said, flushing. “We really do.”

“I understand that.”

“We...” D’arcy paused and looked hopefully toward the door.

He wished Bascombe would come back. He didn’t like asking people questions, he didn’t even like the Department. Or Bascombe.

He cocked his head, listening for sounds in the outer office. As soon as he heard one he excused himself and went out.

Bascombe had gone, but three people were waiting on the benches along the wall. One of them, an elderly well-dressed woman, D’arcy was able to dismiss immediately. She had come every day for nearly six months looking for her son.

“Sorry, Mrs. Granger,” D’arcy said.

She seemed quite cheerful. “No news from Barney yet? He’ll turn up. One of these days he’ll be turning up and surprising me.”

She went out briskly. The two men rose and came over to D’arcy. They were in the fur business and they had sold a mink coat to a man, named Wilson for cash. The cash had turned out to be counterfeit and Wilson and the coat were missing.

D’arcy referred them, with a superior smile, to another department. But he wasn’t feeling superior. He had the sinking sensation that he always got when he was required to do any thinking for himself.

The door opened and Bascombe came back in.

“The doctor still here?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. It seems to be a very interesting case.”

“Aren’t they all.”

“I wish — I think you should talk to him personally.”

Bascombe’s face was flushed and his eyes were a little glassy.

“Thanks for the advice, D’arcy.”

“Well, but I really mean it, sir. Dr. Morrow looks as if he might have considerable influence.”

“The only kind of influence I care about comes in quart bottles,” Bascombe said, but he laughed, almost good-naturedly, and went back into his own office.

It was nearly noon when he came out again with Dr. Morrow. Morrow left immediately, looking, D’arcy noticed, pretty grim.

Bascombe was smiling all over his face. “A very nice case. The lady disappeared with all the money she could get her hands on, wearing one of her maid’s coats. A reversible coat. Get it?”

“No, sir.”

“Plaid on one side, beige on another. She can switch them around and make it harder for us to find her. Inference, she’s not coming back and she doesn’t want to be found. So just for the hell of it we’ll find her. Get your notebook.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. The usual checkups first, hospital and morgue and her bank — Bloor and Ossington Branch of the Bank of Toronto. I think you’ll draw blanks there. Morrow’s going to send over a couple of studio portraits by messenger. Meanwhile, start calling beauty parlors.”

“All of the beauty parlors?” D’arcy said faintly.

“Use your noddle and you won’t have to. If the woman is really in earnest about disappearing, she’ll probably try to disguise her most distinctive feature, her hair, and then grab a train or bus for out-of-town.”

“And the bus terminals and stations being mostly in the south and west I’m to try those sections first?”

“Amazing,” Bascombe said. “Beauty and brains you have, D’arcy. I’m going out to lunch. Be back later.” When he had gone D’arcy did a little checking-up on his own and discovered that the bottle of Scotch was missing from the file.

“Poor Bascombe,” he said sadly. “I’ll have to report him. It’s my duty.”

He didn’t want to report Bascombe, who was a fine figure of a man, really.

He sat down at his desk and picked up the telephone directory. D’arcy was at his best on a telephone, he could forget how small he was and how the other policemen didn’t like him and kept shunting him back and forth from one department to another.

While he was working Kirby came in. He was a big loose-jointed young man who spent half his time around the morgue and the hospitals.

“It’s about time someone appeared,” D’arcy said. “I haven’t had my lunch. I’m hungry.”

“Too bad.” Kirby took off his hat and stretched and yawned. “Where’s Bascombe?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. He doesn’t confide in me.”

“He owes me five bucks on the Macgregor girl. I found her this morning. She’s in a ward at Western with a nice case. Says she got it in a washroom.”

“People,” D’arcy said primly, “should behave themselves.”

Pointedly, he returned to the telephone. He worked nearly all afternoon with one eye on the door, waiting for Bascombe to come back.

At four-thirty he became quite excited by a telephone conversation he had with Miss Flack, who owned and operated the Sally Ann hairdressing parlor in Sunnyside. He tried to get Bascombe’s apartment on the wire. Nobody answered.

“I’ll report him,” D’arcy whispered. “I really will. It’s high time.”

He went up to Sands’ office.

The Allen Hotel is on a little street off College. A redbrick building, caked with soot, it has passed through many phases in its long life. It has been, in turn, a private hospital, a barracks, an apartment house, and a four-bit flophouse. The Liquor Act was passed just in time to save it from the wreckers. A few licks of paint, extra chairs and tables, a new neon sign and a license to sell beer and wine transformed the old building into the Allen Hotel, a fairly prosperous tavern with a dubious clientele. The clientele was kept under control by a large tough bartender and a number of printed prohibitions which were strictly enforced: No checks cashed. No credit. No spitting.

There were other prohibitions also, but these were not printed on signs. The bartender attended to them himself. He would sidle up behind a customer and say gently, “No pimps,” or sometimes, “No fairies.”

Not that he gave a damn about them but he was afraid of the health and liquor inspectors that came around. He didn’t want the place to close up. With his salary and the rakeoff he got from the beer salesmen he was buying a house out in the east end for his family.

Through his efforts the Allen Hotel got quite a good name with the various inspectors. They didn’t bother much about it any more. The word was passed around, and a number of people who didn’t want to come in contact with the law began to use the rooms upstairs. It was ironical, but in one way it wasn’t so bad. The bartender soaked up information like a blotter. Some of it he sold, some of it he gave away to his friend Sands. From Sands, in return, he got the pleasant feeling that he was on the good side of the law, and that if a time came when he wasn’t, there was at least one honest policeman in the world.

He took personal pride in Sands and followed all his cases in the newspapers. Whenever Sands came in for a drink or some information the bartender’s face would take on a sly, conspiratorial smile because here were all these bums drinking side by side with a real detective and not knowing it. Sometimes he was so pleased he had to go into the can and roar with laughter.

Today he wasn’t so pleased. He leaned across the counter and spoke out of the side of his mouth.

“Mr. Sands.”

“Hello, Bill,” Sands said, sitting on the bar stool.

“Mr. Sands, there’s a friend of yours in the back booth. Been here nearly all day. I would sure like to lose him.”

“Bascombe?”

The bartender nodded. “This is no kind of place for a policeman to get drunk in. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Mr. Bascombe.” He grinned suddenly. “Not unless it was fatal.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Sands said. “Bring me a small ale.”

He got off the bar stool, a thin tired-looking middle-aged man with features that fitted each other so perfectly that few people could remember what he looked like. His clothes blended in with the rest of him, they were gray and rather battered and limp. He moved unobtrusively to the back of the room.

Bascombe was sitting alone in the booth with his head in his hands.

“Bascombe.”

No answer.

“Bascombe.” Sands knocked away Bascombe’s elbows. Bascombe’s head lolled and then righted itself. His eyes didn’t open.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Bascombe said huskily. “Make it double.”

Sands sat down on the other side of the booth and sipped his ale patiently. Pretty soon Bascombe blinked his eyes open and looked across the table at him.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said, “it’s you. Go away, Sands, go away, my boy. You have this elfin habit of appearing suddenly. I don’t like it. It’s upsetting.”

“D’arcy’s been looking for you,” Sands said.

“Trouble with D’arcy is his brassiere’s too tight.”

“You’d better come to and listen. D’arcy’s got his knife in you.”

“Sure, I know,” Bascombe said. “I got sick of him following me around and maybe I talked a little rough to him.”

“He reported you for drinking on duty.”

Bascombe blinked again. “Who to?”

“To me.”

“As long as it was to you.”

“Maybe next time it won’t be,” Sands said. “How many times is this that Ellen’s left you?”

“Five,” Bascombe said, his face twisting. “Yeah. Five. In three years.”

“I suppose it’s no use my pointing out that Ellen is a little tramp?” Sands said dryly. “She isn’t housebroken. You can’t do anything with that kind but leave them. Get a divorce. Bascombe.” Bascombe didn’t answer. “If it’ll make it easier for you, I could have you transferred to another department. That’s D’arcy’s suggestion.”

“That goddam little...”

“Sure, but even D’arcy hits it on the button sometimes. I think he’s right. He said you were fussed up this A.M. over some doctor whose wife is missing.”

“I can’t help thinking of Ellen.”

“That’s what I mean. Incidentally D’arcy thinks he’s traced the doctor’s wife as far as some hairdressing shop down near Sunnyside.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“Oh, I’ve been interested in the Morrow family for a long time,” Sands said, and picked up his glass again. “For about sixteen years, I guess. Get your coat on.”

“What for? I’m not going any place.”

“Yes, you are. I spent an hour and a half looking for you. I told D’arcy that you were out doing some work for me and that I’d pick you up and take you down to Sunnyside. Get your coat.”

“You’re an easy guy to hate, Sands. You’re so goddam right all the time, aren’t you, so goddam sure of yourself.”

Sands said nothing. He never talked about himself, and he didn’t like to listen to other people talk about him. It seemed unreal to him, as if they must be talking about someone else.

He left Bascombe struggling with his overcoat and went ahead to the bar.

The bartender was rinsing glasses. He stopped work and wiped his hands.

“He going with you, Mr. Sands?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus,” Bill said. “You must be a regular one of those guys that the rats followed.”

“A nice description,” Sands said. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats...

“Human nature is sure a funny thing,” Bill said. “Take me, how big I am, and take you, how small you are, and here I couldn’t do a thing with Mr. Bascombe, and he follows you like a lamb. You must have plenty muscle that don’t show.”

“Any eight-year-old could knock me off my pins.”

“Jesus, Mr. Sands, you shouldn’t talk like that.” Bill was offended. “It might get around.”

Bascombe came up. He had his overcoat buttoned wrong but he walked straight and his voice had lost its thickness.

“Bye, Billy-boy,” he said to the bartender. “When they kick me off the force let’s make a date in a dark alley.”

“I’d like that fine,” the bartender said thoughtfully.

When the two policemen had gone Bill returned to the glasses. Officially the Allen Hotel had been open all day but it was after dark that business got heavy. Bill had a couple of waiters who came in around seven. When there was a rush on he helped serve but most of the night he spent sizing up the customers and easing out drunks and keeping an eye on the money. At the Allen any bill oven five dollars was automatically considered phony until Bill had passed on it.

Tuesday night was the slowest of the week and only one thing happened that Bill felt Sands should know about. A little ex-con and hophead called Greeley came in with a red-headed fat woman. The woman Bill recognized as a floozie from a house down the street. But it took him several minutes to recognize Greeley. He had on a brand-new topcoat and a new green fedora. But the newest thing about Greeley was his expression. He acted like a millionaire who had to rub shoulders with a rough mob.

“Well, well,” Bill said. “Mister Greeley. Pardon me while I catch my breath. And is this charming lady Mrs. Greeley?”

The woman giggled, but Greeley gave him a sour look and led the woman to one of the tables. Bill followed them.

“If I’d known you was coming, Mr. Greeley, I’d have got out my Irish-lace tablecloth, sure as hell.”

“Champagne,” Greeley said, and sat down without taking off his hat, and coat.

“Teaspoon or tablespoon?” Bill said. The woman giggled again.

Greeley laid a fifty-dollar bill on the table.

Bill did everything to the bill but chew it up, and it still looked good.

When the bottle of champagne was gone Greeley had lost his sour look and was beginning to talk big. Bill stood as near the table as he could and now and then he caught a snatch of Greeley’s talk.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life bouncing in and out of Kingston for rolling drunks and picking pockets. Listen, Sue, I’m on to something. You climb on the wagon with me, baby.”

“Sure,” the woman said. “Sure. Anything you say.”

“The kinda life we lead we don’t get respect for ourselves. Something high class, that’s what I got, something classy and steady. Look around this dump, look at it.”

The woman obliged.

“Ain’t it a dump?” Greeley said. “Couple of days ago this was my idea of a big night, getting tanked in a dump like this with a chance to get fixed up after.”

“Well, what are we sitting here for if you’re so high class?”

“Saying good-bye,” Greeley said solemnly. “Saying good-bye to a crappy life like this. From now on you’ll be covered with diamonds.”

“The hell with diamonds. I want a square meal.”

Greeley ordered a couple of hamburgers and another bottle of champagne.

The woman ate the hamburgers, biting on them as if her teeth hurt.

Three soldiers at the bar began to sing and Bill couldn’t hear what Greeley was saying now. But he guessed it was the same kind of stuff. Greeley was leaning across the table being very intense while the woman chewed and watched him with a where-have-I-heard this-before expression in her eyes.

Around ten they got up to go out and Bill noticed that Greeley’s pants were badly frayed at the bottom. He hurried over to the till to test the fifty-dollar bill again.

Greeley saw him and flung him a contemptuous smile. Bill followed him to the door.

“Good night, Mister Greeley,” he said. “You’ll be back, we hope not.”

The woman giggled and said, “Honest, you’re a scream.”

Greeley grabbed her arm. “You never laugh at nothing I say.”

The woman pushed him away coolly. “At you I’m laughing all the time. I just gotta stop myself or I’d die.”

“Good-bye, Wisenheim,” Greeley said to Bill, opening the door. “Come and see me at the Royal York.”

“They still taking on dishwashers? I bet you look cute in an apron.”

A final giggle from the woman and then the door slammed.

Wish my wife would laugh like that at everything I say, Bill thought. She’s got no sense of humor.

He went over to the soldiers. “Better quiet down, boys. I just saw a couple of M.P.s go past the door.”

The soldiers quieted, and Tuesday night went on.

Chapter 5

On Tuesday Edith quarreled with nearly everyone in the house. She began with Andrew, who told her at breakfast time that he was going to report Lucille’s disappearance to the police.

Edith raged and wept. It was too humiliating, it was too shameful, how would they ever hold their heads up again.

Andrew had left without even bothering to argue. Frustrated, Edith turned her anger on Martin. How could Martin go to the office when they needed him, he must stay home, it was his duty...

Directly after breakfast Martin too left the house.

The most violent quarrel was in the evening. Edith was in the living room with Polly and Giles. She suggested that the wedding be postponed.

Polly gave her a long hard stare. “What for?”

“It wouldn’t look right if you were married at a time like this.”

“It wouldn’t look right to whom?” Polly said. “You? Lucille?”

“People will talk.”

“People always do. This is Giles’ last furlough before he goes overseas.”

“I know,” Edith said tragically. “I know it’s a terrible thing to have it spoiled like this. But couldn’t you wait just a few days? Perhaps Lucille will be back then.”

“I don’t care a damn about Lucille,” Polly said. “I never have. The only way I’ve been able to live in the same house with her was to ignore her, not to let her spoil things for me. Well, she’s not going to spoil them now.”

Giles tried not to listen to the two women. He looked down at his hands, hardly recognizing them as his own he felt so unreal and formless. He seemed to be moving through a nightmare, without the power to wake up and without the strength to protect himself against the dim shapes of danger. Sometimes the house was like a box and he was alone in it and on the ceiling of the box there were shadows without cause and the walls moved slightly, in and out, as if the box were breathing. Sometimes he stopped to listen to it, and he heard his own breathing, surely it must be his own, but it sounded as if someone were breathing along with him in rhythm that wasn’t quite perfect.

When he went into a room it always seemed that someone had just left it. The air was stirring, and the door quivered.

“She’s been very good to you,” Edith was saying shrilly. “You shouldn’t talk like that about her in front of Giles.”

“I talk the way I want to. I don’t fake things.”

“Nobody listens to me in this house! I won’t have it! I forbid you to be married until we find out about Lucille.”

“I don’t need permission,” Polly said. She turned her back, but Edith’s voice clawed at her ears.

“What do you know about Giles? What do you know s about him?”

“I guess there isn’t much to know,” Giles said, and attempted to smile. “I mean, I realize how queer it looks that Mrs. Morrow should disappear the day after I arrive. But I assure you...”

“You must be crazy, Edith,” Polly said in a cold flat voice. “It’s bad enough that Giles should have to be here at such a time, without being accused by you.”

“She said he reminded her of someone,” Edith cried, flinging herself violently into this new idea. “You can’t tell about people, you can’t believe anyone, you can’t trust...”

Her voice snapped. She turned abruptly and ran out of the room, the sleeves of her dress fluttering. She looked like a great flapping bird with broken wings.

“Giles.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s get out of here. Now. Tonight.”

“Can we?”

“No one can stop us. We’ll just leave. Giles, go up and pack. We can go to a hotel.”

“All right.” The ceiling of the box seemed to open and clear cool air rushed in. “All right, we’ll just leave.”

“Oh, Giles.”

The telephone in the hall began to ring.

“It surely looks like her,” said Miss Betty Flack. “It surely does. But I can’t be sure. I mean if it’s important, with the police in it and all, then I can’t be sure.” Miss Flack handed back the photographs and added thoughtfully, “But it surely looks like her.”

Over Miss Flack’s platinum curls Bascombe and Sands exchanged glances.

“What I mean is,” said Miss Flack with an elegant gesture, “I think it’s her, all right. She came in just when I was closing the shop up and wanted to know if I did hair-cutting. Well, naturally I do, though my real specialty is cold waves:”

“You cut her hair?” Sands said, gently guiding Miss Flack’s mind back from the cold waves.

“I gave her a feather cut. Did you see For Whom the Bell Tolls? Well, like that. The girl in it, I mean. Mrs. Smith, she said that was her name, she didn’t seem to care how I cut it, just sat there holding her purse. I noticed her shoes were wet and I like to make a little joke now and then with my customers, so I asked her, laughing-like, if she’d been in swimming down at the lake. She didn’t think it was funny,” Miss Flack said, adding fairly, “Maybe it wasn’t.”

“Didn’t she say anything at all?” Sands asked.

“Just about how cold it was. I surely felt sorry for her with such a. flimsy little coat on. She was such a lady, if you know what I mean, and so sort of desperate looking. I thought to myself at the time, maybe her husband drinks or something.” Miss Flack had another of her thoughtful pauses. “He certainly looked as if he drank.”

“Oh,” Sands said, and Bascombe’s hands twitched as if they wanted to get around Miss Flack’s throat and choke something out of her. “Her husband came with her?”

“Not exactly. I mean, I don’t know if he came with her, but when she went out I stood at the door getting a breath of fresh air and I saw this man waiting across the street. Mrs. Smith stopped and talked to him for a minute and then she walked ahead and he followed her. I remember thinking to myself at the time, isn’t it a caution what women marry sometimes. She was so tall and handsome and he was just a little fellow.”

“A little fellow,” Sands said, and thought back sixteen years to the last time he’d seen Andrew Morrow. Morrow was about six foot three. Even making allowances for the fact that the light had been dim and Miss Flack’s memory was of the vague and romantic order, Sands was sure that the man Mrs. Morrow met across the street had not been her husband.

It was easy enough to check. Sands asked Miss Flack for a telephone and while he was sitting in the booth looking in the directory for Morrow’s number, he heard Miss Flack tell Bascombe that she herself was single, had a half-interest in the beauty parlor and liked great big men.

Sands dialed.

The door into the hall was still open and Polly and Giles heard Della answer the phone and then trot down the hall. A minute later Andrew came to the phone. They heard him say, “Hello. Yes, this is Dr. Morrow.”

“Well,” Polly said sharply, “do we listen or do we talk? Or do you go up and pack?”

“I will if you want me to.”

“If!” Polly said bitterly. “Oh, well, nothing like a telephone ringing for breaking up moods, is there, Giles?” She clenched her hands and began to swear in an undertone. “Damn, damn, damn, damn.”

Andrew’s voice crept into the room. “Sands? No, I’m sorry I don’t think I do remember. Sands.” A pause, a change of tone. “Oh. Oh, yes.” He cleared his throat. “I’m... I’m very glad you were able to... to get that far. S-sunnyside? No, I was at home. The maids were frightened and called me home from the office. Will you hold the line, please?”

Gray-lipped, he came to the door of the living room and shut it without saying anything.

“It’s the police,” Giles said. “I suppose they’ve found out something. I... Polly, what’s the matter?”

Her shoulders were shaking and a film had spread over her eyes like ice over a river.

“Giles, it’s that man, it’s that same one. Sands. He came with a lot of men and I could see them from my window going over the snow. Parts of it were like red slush.”

“I don’t understand...”

“One of them, Sands, came in the house and sat over there, in that chair. He just sat and looked at us, at Martin and me, for a long time. Martin kept laughing. I don’t know why, but he kept on laughing and laughing.”

She rose unsteadily and walked across the room and stood in front of Mildred’s portrait. For a minute the implacable brown eyes stared into the mild and vacuous blue eyes.

Giles looked after her, puzzled. “Who is that?”

“My mother.”

“Oh.”

“She was quite young when she died.” Polly turned around. Her face was hard and merciless. “Probably it’s just as well. She was the type who would have run to fat.”

Giles didn’t want to look at her. He was always a little frightened of her. In their relationship it was Polly who was the realist, he the dreamer; she was the leader, he the follower.

“I’d better go up and tell Martin,” she said. “He’ll want to know.”

“Do you still want to leave? Do you want me to go up and pack?”

“What?” she said, as if she had forgotten about it, had even forgotten him and who he was and why he was there. “I’ll have to tell Martin.”

“It was in the winter,” Sands said. “For a couple of months there’d been stories of children being chased in the park on their way home from school. The stories were vague and nobody was ever arrested. Then one night Mildred Morrow was out visiting a friend. She didn’t come home.”

Sands paused. “The friend was a widow who lived in the next house. Her name was Lucille Lanvers. Her statement was that Mildred had left her house before eleven o’clock, ostensibly to go home. Dr. Morrow was at the hospital on a confinement case and when he returned at one o’clock Mildred Morrow still hadn’t come home. He called his sister Edith who was in bed and they went over to Mrs. Lanvers’ house. The three of them looked around the park for an hour or so and then called in the police.

“About six o’clock the next morning we found Mildred Morrow lying against a tree with her head split open. Her purse and some valuable jewels were missing. The weapon wasn’t found but we were pretty sure it was an axe. There was a heavy snowfall during the night, the body was almost completely covered and while there were indentations in the snow where foot tracks had been they were useless to us.”

“Who had the case?” Bascombe said.

“Inspector Hannegan. I was a patrolman at the time.

I rode a motorcycle.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Bascombe said. “A motorcycle.”

Sands smiled quietly. “Sure. Hannegan figured the case was simple robbery and he had a great time hauling in all the boys who’d ever stolen a balloon from the dime store. As a favor, he let me fool around with the case from another angle. I got nowhere. There seemed to be no motive for the crime except robbery. I talked to the family and to Mrs. Lanvers, but I had no official standing. Then Hannegan got tired of the case and closed it after a few weeks.”

“What was your verdict?”

“I had none. Dr. Morrow had an alibi. His sister Edith puzzled me, she’s one of these rather unstable people, and I had an idea that she was jealously fond of her brother and probably preferred him without a wife. Mrs. Lanvers was a quiet restrained woman, quite plain-looking, not as pretty as she is now, if her photographs don’t lie. She was Mildred Morrow’s best friend, and here again there was no motive but the vaguely possible one that she wanted Mildred’s husband.”

“And got him.”

“Yes, but it’s not unusual for a man to marry his wife’s best friend. It’s happening all the time, especially in cases like this where the man was profoundly in love with his wife. Morrow was crazy about Mildred. He was very sick for a long time after she was killed.”

“And Lucille nursed him, I suppose,” Bascombe said with a cynical smile.

“I don’t know,” Sands said. “But it was the children who worried me most. I don’t know much about children and I found their reactions very queer. The girl was ten or eleven at the time. She acted as though nothing had happened and whenever I asked her a question she would stare at me and pretend she hadn’t heard. The boy was a couple of years older, going to Upper Canada College at the time, he acted wild and crazy. He laughed a great deal and offered to fight me. He said he’d take me on with one hand tied behind his back provided I promised to keep clear of his spine which he’d had broken once in a football game.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s now literary editor of the Review.”

“My God!”

“The only one of the family I’ve seen since is the girl, Polly. I came across her three years ago in court. She was testifying in some charity case. She recognized me and turned her head away.”

“Funny she remembered you.”

“Yes. Funny. Her father didn’t when I phoned. Anyway, Hannegan closed the investigation and I was called off. Now I think it’s opening again.” He looked across at Bascombe. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Bascombe said.

Miss Flack emerged from the small cubicle where she’d been gilding the lily.

“It surely is nice of you to offer to drive me home,” she said. “To tell the honest truth I was scared to death when you said you were policemen. Now I’m not a bit scared.”

“Good for you,” Sands said.

Miss Flack was deposited at her apartment.

“What now?” Bascombe said.

“We look around.”

“I think somebody told me once that Toronto was fifteen miles east and west and nine miles north and south.”

“Is that a fact,” Sands said.

“What I want to know is who’s holding the baby, you or me?”

“We’re sharing it until it’s old enough to choose.” The car shot ahead almost as if it knew what direction to take, like a well-trained horse. “I want to get to Mrs. Morrow first.”

Mr. Greeley and his lady friend were at £ dime-a-dance hall out on the pier. Neither of them felt at home. The place was too classy. Greeley was ashamed to take off his overcoat and show his old suit. By the end of the second dance the sweat was pouring down his neck and the effects of the champagne were wearing off. Greeley needed something stronger than champagne.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

“What for?” the woman said. “I’m having a swell time.”

“Hell, if it’s rear-bumping you want you can get it in a street car and cheaper.”

“We just get some place and then you want to go.”

“I got a date, anyway. Come on.”

He walked out, not even looking around to see if she followed.

When they were outside she said, “You got no manners, Eddy.”

She buttoned her coat. The lake slapped at the pier with cold contemptuous hate.

“Jesus, Eddy, let’s go home.”

“Quit crabbing.”

“I don’t like it here.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake, wait a minute.”

He pushed aside the flap of his overcoat, and stabbed something into his thigh through his clothes. His thigh felt sore but his mind began to see things right again, he had the right perspective now. Life was a stinker, but he, Greeley, had it licked.

Me, Greeley.

It was two o’clock in the morning when Sands called up again. Andrew hadn’t gone to bed, he was sitting in his den with a book in his lap.

“Yes?” he said into the phone.

“Dr. Morrow? Inspector Sands. Could you get dressed...”

“I am dressed. What’s happened?”

“I’m at the Lakeview Hotel. It’s on Bleacher Street, right off the Boulevard, west of Sunnyside. Your... your wife is here.”

“Yes... yes...” It was as if something had split inside his head and he had to talk above a terrible roaring. “Is she... she’s all right?”

“She’s alive,” Sands said.

“She’s sick, then? You say she’s sick? I...”

Edith appeared at the door of the den, wrapped in an old plaid bathrobe. “What is it, Andrew? Tell me this instant! What is the matter?”

“I’m coming right away,” Andrew said and laid down the phone.

“I’m going with you,” Edith said. “Whatever it is I’m going with you, you can’t face it alone.”

Andrew looked at her, but he couldn’t see her properly. She was just a blur of colors, a whirling chart of colors without form or meaning or substance. He didn’t even feel his own hand pushing her aside, and though his legs moved, his feet didn’t seem to touch the floor.

His eyes functioned but only if he looked at one thing at a time, one separate stationary thing, the door, the instrument bag packed and ready in the front seat of the car, a street lamp, a house, a tree.

She sat upright in a chair. Beside her the steam radiator was turned on and gave off blasts of noise and heat that smelled of paint. But her face remained cold and waxy and her eyes frozen.

“Mrs. Morrow...”

(There is a man in my room. Is it my room? No. Yes, my room. One man and another man. Two men.)

“...I’ve phoned your husband. He’s coming right away.”

(What a lot of men in my room and so much talk.)

“If there’s anything I could get you...”

(They might be talking to me.)

Bascombe shifted uneasily. “I don’t think she hears you.”

(But I do. You’re making a mistake, young man. Young man? Old man? Two, anyway. Two, two.)

“Mrs. Morrow, I’d like to help you. If you can remember what happened to you...”

An expression moved across her face, softly, like a cat walking. She knew she must be clever now, these were her enemies.

(She was in the lake, she was swimming, and the water was cold and dark and the waves passionate against her and so strong. She saw a hand stretched out to help her, she reached for the hand and it pushed her savagely away, down, down, down, so black, so dying, dying.)

“Mrs. Morrow, here is your husband.”

“Lucille... Lucille, darling...”

He came into the sweltering room. She turned her head very slowly and saw him hold out his hand to her.

She began to scream. The screams came out of her throat smoothly, almost effortlessly, like a song from a bird.

When the ambulance came she was still screaming.

The ambulance neglected to pick up Mr. Greeley. The headlights just missed him.

He was sitting in the alley behind the hotel propped up against the wall. The wind from the lake stabbed at his face but Greeley didn’t mind it. Life was a stinker but he, Greeley, had it licked. The night was dark but full of bright dreams — warm women, silk, thick soft fur, velvet hills and soft snug places.

Dreaming, he passed into sleep and sleeping into death.