Downstairs, Esther and the Inspector had apparently reached the end of their conversation. Cavell, an unlit pipe in his hand, was studying the rows of books in the bookshelves, while Esther stood with her back to the fire, watching him with silent intensity. She was smoking a cigarette, rapidly and furiously, as if she had a great many things that she wanted to say and couldn’t, and was using the cigarette as a cork to bottle them up.
Turee introduced Harry and Cavell, and then he turned and said pointedly to Esther, “You and I can wait in the game room. The Inspector might want to talk to Harry alone.”
Esther gave him a sharp look, but she made no verbal objection as he put his hand on her elbow and guided her out into the hall.
The game room, which was across the hall from the kitchen, contained ample proof that the fellows were not as enthusiastic about fishing as they were about certain other sports: a well-used poker table with ivory chips, a pinball machine, an elaborately carved billiard table with a dozen cues racked up on the knotty pine wall.
Esther perched on the side of the billiard table, her right leg swinging aggressively as if it wanted to kick at something or someone.
She said, “All right, let’s have it.”
“Have what?”
“The reason you spirited me away from Harry and the Inspector.”
Turee smiled. “My dear Esther, no one spirited you away. You’re too big a girl to be spirited away, for one thing.”
“Don’t go off on verbal maneuvers. Why were you so anxious to get rid of me?”
“I wasn’t anxious. I simply thought it would be polite if you and I let the Inspector talk to Harry in private.”
“Politeness. That was one reason?”
“Certainly.”
“Now what are some others?”
“Others?”
“You always have an ulterior motive, Ralph, sometimes several of them. You remind me of a set of boxes the boys used to play with when they were younger — when you open the largest one, you find a smaller one, and inside that, still a smaller one, and so on.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Every time you give me a motive for doing something, I know there’s another reason inside it, and yet another inside that one. Inside every box there’s a motive.”
“It can’t go on ad infinitum. What’s in the smallest box?”
“Your fat little ego.”
Turee’s laugh had a brittle note. “You make me sound extremely complicated.”
“Or devious.”
“I’ll make you a promise, Esther. If I ever open that last box, I’ll invite you over. Will you come?”
“With bells on,” Esther said primly. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Of course, I don’t guarantee there’ll be much of a surprise inside. Just one fat little ego.” Turee could see that she was enjoying the game; he was even beginning to enjoy it himself. “What do you suppose it’ll look like?”
“A kewpie doll. One of those tiny celluloid kewpie dolls you can buy in the dime store.”
“That’s not very flattering.”
“Oh it is, really. Compared to what I think mine would look like. Or Ron’s.”
“What about Ron’s?”
“Ron would never get to the last box. Or if he did, he’d never invite me over to see it, or anyone else. It would be strictly a private showing.”
“I wish you could think more kindly of Ron.”
“I wish I could, too,” Esther said slowly. “I happen to love him.”
MacGregor had laid a fire in the fireplace and the room by this time was so warm that the windows had steamed up. Turee had a childish impulse to go over and write his name in the steam, or print a message or draw a picture — a heart with an arrow piercing it, and underneath, ESTHER LOVES RON.
“I’m not very sensible,” Esther said, in a detached manner. “I appear to be sometimes — very sensible and efficient and practical. Actually it’s all a front. I’m a fool, and the worst kind, too, the kind that knows it, that sees ahead of time all the wrong things to do and does them anyway. I fell in love with Ron the first time I met him. I knew he had a wife and child. I knew he was spoiled by too much money and a terribly foolish set of parents, I knew our backgrounds and our tastes were completely different. I went after him anyway, tooth and nail. It was easy. Ron was a perfect setup. He still is.”
“How do you mean that?”
“If I could do it, any woman could. Or can.”
“Now, Esther, don’t go...”
“Ron is a patsy. The perfect patsy.”
“Your circumstances aren’t quite the same as Dorothy’s.”
“Oh, they’re different, all right. But are they any better?”
It was, perhaps, the opportune time to tell her everything he knew about Thelma and Ron, but Turee had neither the courage nor the desire, nor even all the facts. It seemed to him a fateful piece of irony that Esther should now find herself in the same position into which she had forced another woman a long time ago. Somebody would have to tell her. Who, he wondered, had told Dorothy?
Turee had not seen Ron’s first wife, Dorothy, for a number of years. Dorothy was a wispy blonde, the daughter of a furniture manufacturer, and as badly spoiled in her own way as Ron was in his. A confirmed hypochondriac before she was out of her teens, by the time she married, at twenty-one, she had become the prey of every quack in the city. Her infrequent outings with her husband, to concerts or plays or dinner parties, were always interrupted between acts, during intermission or before dessert, by sharp and mysterious pains that sent her home, usually alone. Her one pregnancy, spent largely in bed, had resulted, to everyone’s surprise, especially Dorothy’s, in a perfectly normal girl child. The girl was raised from the beginning by a governess, so that Dorothy was left free to concentrate on her multitude of symptoms. If Ron had been, as Esther claimed, the perfect setup, it was, without doubt, largely due to Dorothy.
The last news Turee had had of Dorothy was from Harry, who went to see her once or twice a year for old times’ sake. Harry reported that she was living in her mother’s town house on the north side, with two special nurses in attendance, a recluse before she was forty. She had confided to Harry, whom she had always liked, perhaps because of his interest in drugs and medicines, that she was suffering from an obscure malady of the bloodstream and would not last the year. She invited Harry to attend her funeral and Harry, ever one to oblige, had accepted the invitation.
Dorothy and Esther — they were poles apart, and Turee wondered how Ron could have married them both. Perhaps Dorothy’s frailty had made him feel more masculine, but after a liberal dose of that, he married Esther as an antidote, someone he could lean on.
Esther said suddenly, “Would you like to play a game of billiards?”
“Not much.”
“Nor I, really. I just thought it would help pass the time. I guess I shouldn’t have come up here. There’s nothing I can do, is there?”
“Now that the police are in charge we’d better let them handle everything. A bunch of amateurs milling around won’t help.”
“Ah, yes, the jolly old police.”
“Come here a minute.” Turee took his handkerchief and rubbed some of the steam off one of the windows. Outside, the younger policeman, Newbridge, was examining the tire tracks on the driveway. “Look out there.”
Esther looked. “Well?”
“The police know what they’re doing.”
“Do they?” She turned from the window. “They can examine all the tire tracks to hell and back, but they’re not going to find Ron that way.”
“All right, be cynical,” Turee said. “At least you had sense enough to call them in.”
“That was sense?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’re right. But it wasn’t mine.”