Vanish in an Instant

2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“About a month.”

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I... of course. Naturally.”

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

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

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

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

“Naturally.”

“You’re quite objectionable.”

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

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

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

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

“No, thanks, Alice.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He left.”

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

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

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

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

“Mrs. Hamilton.”

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

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

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

“But why?”

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

“You could have asked Mr. Meecham.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then what are you acting so nervous about?”

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

“Is it?”

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

“I can. I’m going to.”

“You don’t know how things are.”

“Then tell me.”

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

“You didn’t tell me.”

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

“Did Paul know about this — this man?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll — show — her.”

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

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

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

“Why — should... I... mind?”

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

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

She went to open the door for Paul.

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

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

“Well, Paul.” They shook hands briefly.

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

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

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

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

“One of the Detroit tabloids.”

“Is it...?”

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

“Are there any pictures?”

“Yes.”

“Of Virginia?”

“One.”

“Let me see.”

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

“I must see it.”

“All right.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Right here at home. In bed.”

“You knew she was out.”

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

“Didn’t you care?”

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

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

“Yes.”

“Whose blood?”

“His. Margolis’.”

“How can they tell?”

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

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

“No. She was drunk.”

“Drunk?”

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

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

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

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

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

“His wife. He was married.”

“Yes.”

“There were — children?”

“Two.”

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

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

“I can tell.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I did what I could, hired a lawyer.”

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

“He was recommended to me.”

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

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

“I can. Money is no object.”

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

Red-faced farmer, she thought viciously.