Vanish in an Instant

17

The street was still five stories down, but the sky seemed closer than it had during the morning. Now at twilight it pressed against the window of Meecham’s office, a shapeless changing mass, the color of bruised flesh.

Mrs. Christy was gone for the day, and the telephone was ringing. There was a typewritten note propped against the lamp on Meecham’s desk and he read it before he reached for the phone.

“E.J.M: Following calls came in. 11:35 Cordwink. 12:10 Mrs. Hamilton, no message. 1:15 Mr. Geo. Loesser, will call back. 1:4 °Checker Cab, motion for new trial denied. 3:10 Miss McDaniels can’t find her copy of will. 3:15 Sweeney Dry Cleaners, rug shrinkage unavoidable and refuse to settle. 3:45 Mrs. Alistair re trust deed. 4:05 Mr. Loesser, call him at 5-5988 before six. 4:33 Mr. Post won’t be in tomorrow. L. E. Christy.”

He picked up the phone. “Hello, Meecham speaking.”

“This is George Loesser, Mr. Meecham. I may be wrong, but I think we met a year or so ago at a convention in Chicago.” Loesser spoke in a thin nervous voice with a slight New England accent. “Does that ring a bell?”

“It could,” Meecham said. He hadn’t been to a convention for ten years. “Bring me up to date a little.”

“Absolutely. Well, right now I’m with a Detroit firm, Lewenstein, Adler and Birch. The reason I’m in town is that I had to meet a client at the airport this morning and then I drove her over here. My client happens to be very interested in seeing you.”

“As a lawyer?”

“Not at all,” Loesser said sharply. “My firm handles all her affairs. This is quite a different matter, a personal one. She would like to talk to you because the Sheriff mentioned your name in connection with Virginia Barkeley. You were looking after Mrs. Barkeley’s interests, weren’t you?”

“For a time.”

“My client is Lily Margolis.”

“Oh.”

“As you may know, she was in Lima visiting her sister at the time of Mr. Margolis’ death.”

“I knew that, yes.”

“She returned as soon as she could. She’s been with the Sheriff this morning and part of the afternoon. She hadn’t anything much to tell him, of course. It was just a formality.”

“If she’s seen Cordwink, why does she want to see me?”

“Frankly, I don’t know.” Loesser sounded sincerely puzzled. “Curiosity, probably. Cordwink didn’t tell her a great deal, and you know women, they like details, never get sick of details. That’s understandable, of course, in Lily’s case. She’s never come up against anything like this before. She’s led a very sheltered life, you might say, and this business has been a great shock to her emotionally, mainly because of the children. Naturally I’ve done my best to keep her and the children out of the papers.”

“I knew someone had.” Loesser had been successful too. No photograph or snapshot of either Lily Margolis or her children had appeared in any newspaper, and very few facts about her personal life had been mentioned. It was possible, though, that there were very few facts to mention, that Lily Margolis was one of those dull and virtuous women who had no interests outside of her children and the mechanical operations of her home. Meecham had met a great many such women, and sometimes their dullness, and often their virtue, was a surface covering, a thin sheet of ice over a running river, dangerous to cross.

“My own feeling about the matter,” Loesser said, “is that it would be better to forget it. In fact, I’m phoning you now under protest. I didn’t want to, and I don’t think anything will be gained by mulling over the sordid details. But Lily wants it that way. If you come and talk to her you’ll be reimbursed for your time, of course.”

“You realize that the case is settled.”

“Of course. Since the young man killed himself this morning...”

“How did you find that out?”

“Strangely enough, Lily was in the Sheriff’s office when the message was phoned in. She couldn’t help overhearing.” Loesser coughed, but it was more of a nervous mannerism than a real cough. “I understand you were a friend of the young man?”

“I knew him.”

“It’s a sad affair all around, but especially for Lily and the two children. Fortunately, they’re well provided for. One of the few sensible things Margolis did in his lifetime was to take out enough insurance.”

“Double indemnity has healed a lot of broken hearts.”

“It helps, and why not?” Loesser said defensively.

“Why not, indeed.” Meecham looked at the clock on his desk: 5:10. “I’ll be glad to see Mrs. Margolis. When?”

“How about tonight after dinner? Or right away, if you’d prefer.”

“That would be better.”

“I’m at Lily’s house now. Do you know where Lancaster Drive is, near the golf course?”

“Yes.”

“It’s 1206, a white-and-green colonial house. You can’t miss it. The kids have spent all afternoon building a couple of snowmen at the driveway entrance.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The floodlight was on at the entrance gate, and the snow figures stood like sepulchers, one on each side. Loesser had made a mistake about them, though. They weren’t snowmen. One of them was a lady, with a pink ruffled apron tied around her lumpy waist and a bandana covering her head to hide its baldness. One of her charcoal eyes had fallen out of its melting socket. She had a witch’s nose made out of a carrot and a moist beet-mouth, and stuck in her chest was a long dripping icicle that gleamed in the light like a stiletto with a jeweled handle. The snow lady seemed to be aware of the wound: her blurred beet-mouth was anguished, and her single eye stared helplessly into the night.

Meecham pressed hard on the accelerator and the wheels of the car spun for a moment in the slush and then took hold. The driveway was on a steep grade and it hadn’t been shoveled. Neither had the steps of the house, or the wide pillared veranda. There were sounds of dripping everywhere, as in a greenhouse.

Nearly every window was lighted and wide open, as if the rooms were being aired after a period of disease.

Loesser answered the door himself. In contrast to his thin nervous voice over the phone, he was a heavy-set moon-faced man in his forties, with a smile that flashed off and on with the precision of a traffic signal. He had courtroom manners and a way of talking to a person without looking at him, as if he was really aiming his words at an unseen and very critical jury.

“Good of you to come, Meecham.” The two men shook hands. “Let me take your coat. The maid’s upstairs with the kids.”

He took Meecham’s coat and hung it in a small closet that opened off the foyer. Meecham noticed that the closet was empty except for a pair of child’s rubber boots.

“Lily hasn’t had time to unpack or get organized,” Loesser said. “I’m her cousin, by the way, in case you were wondering how I come in on all this.”

“I wasn’t wondering very hard.”

“No? Well, I thought you might. The fact is” — he tugged at his tie — “the fact of the matter is that I’ve stood by Lily all during this unfortunate marriage of hers.”

It was the sort of remark that demanded an answer of some kind: Oh? How interesting. Is that a fact? Good for you, old boy. Stout fellow. Meecham merely made an indeterminate noise.

“Well, Lily’s waiting in the den,” Loesser said. “It’s the only room in the house that doesn’t smell of moth crystals. The place has been closed up, you know.”

The den wasn’t what Meecham expected from its name, a book-and-pipe sanctuary for a man. It turned out to be a small room on the southeast corner of the house, equipped for activity, not rest. There was a sewing machine, a drawing board, a small hand-loom, a dressmaker’s dummy, and a long unpainted wooden table filled with children’s toys. The pine walls were covered with children’s art, sketches and watercolors and fingerpaintings, some of them hanging from the molding in frames, and some of them fastened loosely to the wall with thumbtacks. The pictures were all signed, most of them right across the middle, Ann M. or Georgie.

Activity had given the room an air of pleasant untidiness. But there was nothing untidy about Lily Margolis. She was a slim muscular young woman in a tweed suit with flecks of blue in it that exactly matched the color of her eyes. Her brown hair was clipped short in rows of curls, and the curls were so uniform that it seemed as though she had weighed and measured each of them before letting herself be seen in public. Her face was deeply sunburned, so that her eyes looked very bright and clear in contrast, and her teeth very white. Her features were plain, but the carefully chosen tweed suit, and the carefully acquired sunburn, gave her quite a striking appearance.

She repeated the words Loesser had used, but her New England accent was stronger than his, as if she had retained it deliberately to show her contempt for the Middle West.

“It was very good of you to come, Mr. Meecham. Please sit down, won’t you? And George, would you mind awfully bringing us a drink?”

Loesser got up obediently, but he looked slightly pained and he turned at the doorway to give Mrs. Margolis a don’t-say-anything-interesting-while-I’m-gone glance.

Lily Margolis returned to the wooden bench by the drawing board where she’d been sitting before she rose to greet Meecham. She sat, stiff and erect, her feet planted squarely on the floor, her large competent-looking hands crossed on her knees. “You see, Mr. Meecham, I don’t know quite what happened, or why. Everything is fuzzy and confused. It’s like trying to understand someone else’s nightmare.”

Someone else’s, Meecham noted, not her own. The statement fitted in with his previous conception of her; she seemed to have the occupational schizophrenia of the perfect secretary, a self-effacing manner combined with a positive knowledge of her own superiority. Yes, boss on the one hand, and silly boy on the other. Perhaps not exactly the perfect wife.

She leaned forward slightly toward Meecham, but without bending her back. “I had taken the children down to Lima to spend Christmas with my sister — her husband is a mining engineer. I was only there two weeks when the message came that Claude had had an accident. Rather delicate wording, don’t you think, for what really happened.”

“You’re weathering the shock very well,” Meecham said.

“When you’ve had as many shocks as I’ve had in eight years, one more hardly matters. I’m a little punchy by this time, like an old fighter.” She smiled, without bitterness, without feeling of any kind. “I’ve had so much uncertainty. Now at least things are settled. I don’t have to wonder where Claude is or what he’s doing. I don’t have to try and decide whether to divorce him for the sake of the children, or not to divorce him for the sake of the children. Fate stepped in and like a referee stopped the fight. I’m not sorry and I won’t pretend that I’m sorry. Claude was a terrible fool. Only a terrible fool would...”

She stopped but the idea was clear: only a terrible fool would get murdered. And, in a sense, Meecham agreed; the victim, like the murderer, had a certain choice of fate, a selection of circumstances.

Loesser returned with a pitcher of martinis. He poured a drink for Meecham and one for himself.

“You’ll excuse me, Mr. Meecham,” Lily Margolis said. “I don’t drink.”

“It makes her sick,” Loesser explained. “Well, here’s how.”

“It doesn’t make me sick in the least, George. I wish you wouldn’t keep telling that to everyone.”

“Well, it does make you sick. I’ve...”

“George dear, what will Mr. Meecham think of us, indulging in a silly family squabble like this?”

Loesser gazed with a stony little smile at the wall behind her head: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you that the witness is lying, that the effect of alcohol on her system is highly deleterious, and, in fact, it makes her sick.

Meecham shifted restlessly in his chair. There was a bowl of russet apples on the table in front of him and the sight and smell of them started a hungry gnawing in his stomach. He felt like a man who had come to a banquet as guest speaker and then found himself lost in the shuffle of preliminaries and introductions while the food got cold. So far Mrs. Margolis hadn’t asked a single question about her husband’s death, and Meecham was almost certain now that she didn’t intend to, that he had been invited to the house not to talk but to listen.

“George, there’s no point in your staying here,” Mrs. Margolis said suddenly. “You have a long drive ahead of you and you know how Marion hates anyone to be late for dinner.”

Loesser cleared his throat. “It’s my duty to stay. This is a family matter.”

“Are you afraid I’ll say the wrong thing?”

“Well, no. Not really.”

Mrs. Margolis laughed and said to Meecham, “He is. He’s afraid I’ll make a slanderous remark about Virginia. I will, too.”

“Now, Lily,” Loesser protested. “Now I suggest that you let bygones be bygones.”

She ignored him. “Virginia is your client, I understand, Mr. Meecham?”

“She was.”

“Did she mention me?”

“She said she had met you.”

“Met me? That’s a laugh. Yes, indeed, she met me. We had quite a charming brawl before I left for Lima.”

Loesser looked extremely uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t say it was a brawl exactly.”

“It was a brawl. She called me a liar and tried to slap me and pull my hair, and I held her wrists so she couldn’t. I’m quite strong.”

“Tennis,” Loesser explained. “Plenty of...”

“George. I wish you’d go home.”

“I know you do,” he said grimly. “But I’m not going. You’re tired and emotional and you may stick your neck out without meaning to.”

“It’s my neck.”

“It was Claude’s too.”

Her face looked a little sick under its healthy sunburn. “What a... a terrible thing to say.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but damn it, Lily, you won’t pay any attention unless I... Anyway, I’d forgotten that’s where he was...”

Meecham interrupted. “We’re not getting anywhere.”

“We would, if George would go home.”

“I’m not going home,” Loesser stated.

“Well, then keep quiet.” A pulse in Mrs. Margolis’ temple had begun to beat hard, moving rhythmically under her skin. “I didn’t intend to quarrel with Virginia. I went to her house out of a sense of duty. I knew she was going out with Claude because my maid Rose saw them together at one of those juke-box places outside of town. Rose goes to Dr. Barkeley for allergy shots and she recognized Virginia right away. So I... went to see her.” She fidgeted with her plain gold wedding ring, slipping it over the joint of her finger and back again. “I told her the truth, that she was wasting her time on Claude because he was keeping another woman, had been keeping her for years, perhaps before we were ever married. Years and years,” she repeated. “The silly girls like Virginia were just cover-ups. He took them dancing or out to dinner. But he was never seen with her. She was his — his real love.”

Her control was slipping down like a zipper under too much pressure.

“His real love. Isn’t that funny? That a man like Claude could actually love one woman all those years? I used to lie awake and wonder, what did she look like, what did she have that I didn’t have, what did they talk about...”

“Now, now, Lily,” Loesser said. “You have no proof at all that Claude knew this woman for a long time or even that he was keeping her. You’ve always had a wild imagination where Claude is concerned. It’s possible that the two of them were merely good friends.”

Mrs. Margolis’ mouth curved in an ugly little smile. “Old school chums. That’s a brilliant idea, George.”

“Well, damn it, my own impression of Miss Falconer is that she’s a highly respectable woman.”

“You’ve met her?” Meecham said.

“Yes, in a way. It happened accidentally about two months ago. I went into Hudson’s at lunch time to pick up a book for my wife. I saw Claude standing at the glove counter and went over to say hello, thinking that perhaps we might have lunch together and I’d have a chance to talk to him about Lily. He didn’t come into town often and when he did he avoided me. He knew what I thought of his behavior, especially this latest business involving Virginia Barkeley.”

Mrs. Margolis was leaning toward him with a rapt expression on her face like a small girl who had never tired of hearing the same story and wanted it repeated, word for word.

“I didn’t realize, of course, that Claude had anyone with him until it was too late for me to retire gracefully. He introduced the woman to me as Miss Falconer. She was a tall, rather common-looking woman about Claude’s own age. I knew Lily had been thinking for some time that Claude had a steady mistress, but I couldn’t believe it was this Miss Falconer. She wasn’t the type and, besides, Claude didn’t act embarrassed or anything.”

Mrs. Margolis made a sound of contempt. “Claude wouldn’t have been embarrassed if he’d been caught making love to her on the steps of the city hall. You can’t embarrass a moral imbecile.”

“At least give him credit for some sensibility. As I said before, I had the impression that he and the woman were old friends. They were very much at ease with each other and...”

“So are lovers.”

“Yes, but Miss Falconer doesn’t suit the role very well. She’s not young or attractive. She’s a good ten years older than you are, Lily, and not nearly so pretty.”

“Thank you,” she said heavily. “Thank you very much, George.”

“Well, I mean it. She’s just an ordinary woman.”

“Ordinary. That’s all you ever say about her. How can you tell whether she’s ordinary or not? And it isn’t what she is that’s important — it’s how she made Claude feel. That’s what falling in love must be, meeting someone who makes you feel good, who fills a need for you.” She looked down at her own shadow on the floor. “I never found out what Claude’s need was.”

Loesser went over and patted her shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. He may have had some sort of glandular imbalance.”

“Glandular imbalance.” She began to laugh. “That’s marvelous. Glandular imbalance.”

“I must say I don’t see anything particularly funny about it.” He turned his back on her and addressed Meecham: “Well, that’s the story. I told Lily about meeting Miss Falconer and Lily immediately drew her own conclusions as women always do, and decided to leave town for a while. Before she left she went to see Virginia Barkeley. You know the result of that.”

Meecham nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Mrs. Margolis said.

“There was a brawl, you claimed.”

“That was one result. The other result was that Claude was killed.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I haven’t been taken in by the confession of an unbalanced man with a guilt complex. I know who killed my husband, and George knows it and...”

“Leave me out of this,” Loesser said.

“They had Virginia in jail, right where she belongs. Why didn’t they keep her there?”

“They couldn’t,” Loesser explained with weary patience. “She was held for questioning as long as they could hold her, for forty-eight hours. After that they had to charge her or let her go. Naturally they let her go because Loftus proved that he committed the murder.”

“Proved, George? Proved?” She chewed the word as if it was a stick of sharply flavored gum. “A lot of things can be proved that aren’t true, and a lot of things that are true can’t be proved. I can’t prove that my husband kept a woman called Miss Falconer for years, but I know he did, the same as I know that Loftus was lying. Why did he lie? Because he was insane? Or for money? Or both? You knew him, Mr. Meecham, George told me you knew him. Why did he lie?”

Meecham looked at the bowl of apples on the table. “There’s no evidence that he was paid, or insane or lying.”

“No evidence but common sense. Tell me, Mr. Meecham, weren’t you surprised when Loftus came forward with his story?”

“I wasn’t expecting it,” Meecham said. He remained uncertain of the degree of his surprise, though he remembered the scene vividly, Loftus half-hidden behind the hedge, his hair whitened by the falling snow. “I’ve died a thousand times from fear,” he had said. “A thousand deaths and one would have been enough. A great irony.” The words turned over in Meecham’s mind like stones in a river.

“Someone was expecting it, someone wasn’t surprised,” Mrs. Margolis said. “Why should she be? She paid him for it. She bought that confession the way you go into a butcher shop and buy a pound of baloney. And that’s what she got, baloney! She bought that con—”

“For God’s sake, be quiet, Lily.” Loesser was beginning to sweat. “You don’t realize the seriousness of what you’re...”

“I will not be quiet. I have a right to my opinion.”

“Keep it an opinion, then.”

“Very well. In my opinion, Virginia Barkeley killed my husband in a jealous rage. It’s a common motive, and for a woman like her, I suppose, a strong one. She has an uncontrollable temper, everyone knows that.”

“Allegedly,” Loesser said.

“All right, allegedly!” she shouted. “She was allegedly angry and jealous and she reacted against Claude the way she reacted against me the day I told her about Claude and Miss Falconer. She attacked him as she attacked me. According to my opinion! Damn you, George. Damn you. I won’t keep modifying everything, qualifying everything.”

“You’re on safe ground as long as you’re damning me,” Loesser said. “So go ahead.”

But Mrs. Margolis had turned to Meecham again. There was a glassy glare in her eyes, as if she was burning up with a fever of rage and resentment that had been slowly, for years and years, infecting her system. “She was there in the room, wasn’t she? Do you think she could have slept through a murder? How quiet is a murder? Do you think Claude wouldn’t have fought back if a stranger came at him with a knife?”

“There was no evidence of a struggle,” Meecham said.

“That’s what I’m talking about. There was no evidence of a struggle because there was no struggle. Claude was taken unawares. Not by a stranger like Loftus. By someone he trusted, someone he thought was just fooling with the knife. Claude was a big man. He could have torn Loftus apart. Can you expect me to believe that he just stood there and let himself be killed?”

“The attack was quick,” Meecham said, “and your husband had been drinking quite heavily. So had Virginia. In fact, her blood alcohol concentration was so high it’s doubtful that she had sufficient strength and co-ordination to use the knife.”

Mrs. Margolis swallowed hard, her hand against her throat. “I have no proof, nothing. But I feel in my heart that she killed him. I don’t know how, but she’s responsible.”

“In your opinion,” Loesser said.

“In... in my opinion.” She rubbed the throbbing pulse in her temple.

“You’re tired out, Lily. Why don’t you have a nice hot supper with the children and then go to bed?” He added, to Meecham, “She was up all night on the plane — ran into a storm in the South.”

“I understand.”

“Naturally, she doesn’t see things in their proper perspective. I myself am convinced that Loftus gave a perfectly straightforward account of the affair and then killed himself in remorse. Don’t you think so, Meecham?”

“It seems reasonable,” Meecham said, though he didn’t agree with either Loesser’s oversimplified version or Mrs. Margolis’ personal and over-imaginative one. The truth lay somewhere between the two extremes like an uncharted island between two shores. Meecham hoped that someday it would be found, by star and compass, or by blind luck. “Did you tell the Sheriff about your suspicions, Mrs. Margolis?”

“I intended to. George wouldn’t let me. He said it would cause trouble.”

Loesser flushed. “Confound it, Lily, what I meant was that you’d do yourself and the children a lot more harm than Virginia — more publicity, more scandal. You’ve got to consider not just your own feelings but the children. They’re the real unfortunates in this rotten business.”

“I’ve been a little unfortunate myself,” she said dryly. “So was Claude.”

And a great many others, Meecham added in silence. Little ones and big ones: Gill who might lose his job, Miss Falconer who had lost a lover, and Loftus who had lost everything. The Garinos, Dr. Barkeley, Mrs. Hearst, cold and bitter in her grief, Loftus’ mother buying darkness by the quart, and Virginia herself watching the trains go past.

Then he thought of the snow-lady he’d seen at the entrance gate with the icicle in her heart, and he wondered if Loesser wasn’t right, after all — that the children were the real unfortunates. They would carry their scars longer, and with bewilderment, and in inaccessible places.

Loesser accompanied him to the front door. He seemed more at ease now that the interview was over and all statements had been properly qualified as opinions and allegations. “I hope you haven’t taken Lily too seriously, Meecham.”

“No.”

“The tragedy’s knocked her off-balance, but she’ll right herself. You know how most women are, their emotions are direct and clear like Scotch. There’s no hangover. In a few months she’ll have forgotten about Virginia and Miss Falconer and all the rest of them.”

“I don’t suppose you ever looked up this Miss Falconer.”

“No, but I tried to find out where she lived just out of curiosity. There was no Miss Falconer — or Faulkner — listed in the 1951 or ’50 Arbana directories. The ’48 directory listed a Jemima Falconer as a secretary and gave a Catherine Avenue address, I believe. It may or may not have been the same woman, and besides, a lot can happen in four years.”

“What about the Detroit vicinity?”

“I found several listings under both spellings, which was as good as a dead end for me. I hadn’t the time or inclination to try and track down the woman, especially since the only evidence I had of her connection with Claude was that chance meeting in Hudson’s, and Lily’s intuition. You’ve no doubt had some experience with female intuition, in court and out of it. It’s almost as fallible as tea leaves or head bumps.”

He took Meecham’s coat and hat out of the hall closet.

“I repeat, it was nice of you to come out and talk to Lily. I think now that she’s gotten a few things off her chest she’ll be better.”

“Probably.”

“Send your bill to me. Please don’t be hesitant about it. That was our arrangement over the phone.”

“Let’s leave it on the cuff,” Meecham said. “I might want a favor from you some day.”

“Any time. My office is in the First National Building and my house is in Grosse Point.”

“I’ll remember that.”

They parted with a very hearty handshake like a pair of old alumni after a homecoming.

Meecham crossed the wet driveway and got into his car. He drove in low gear down the steep grade to the entrance gate.

During the hour that he’d been in the house the snow-lady had been melting in the soft air like butter in the sun. The icicle was still sticking through her heart, though her nose and her remaining eye had fallen out and the scarf clung moistly to her shrinking head. By morning, if the weather held, she would topple into an indistinguishable mass of gray slush, and no one would remember her existence except two children.