“Mr. Leachman has fits.”
“Now what has that got...”
“His own sister told me. He has fits. He even,” Celia added with an air of triumph, “foams at the mouth.”
Mabel’s face was so red it seemed ready to burst its skin like an overripe tomato. “Will you stop changing the subject?”
“I didn’t change the subject. You brought up Mr. Leachman and I merely pointed out that he has fits. Bad ones.”
“That’s simple gossip.”
“Gossip, is it? How is it that when you find out something interesting about a person you get information, I merely get gossip.”
“Put your coat on, Mom. We’ll be late for church.”
“I don’t feel like going to church.”
“Maybe you don’t feel like it but you need it. I think maybe I do too. And after church we’ll go see Mr. Leachman. And I don’t care if he’s foaming like bubble bath, you’re going to tell him what happened and show him the wallet and describe the man in the car.”
“I didn’t see him very well, only by the street light.”
“The wallet had a name in it?”
“Yes. Galloway. Ronald Gerard Galloway.”
“Sounds phony to me,” Mabel said. “Come on, let’s get going.”
Nine
The news that Ron Galloway had been seen alive at Thornbury at approximately ten o’clock Saturday night was relayed to Esther late on Sunday afternoon.
She had just returned home from the lodge and was having early tea with the two boys in their playroom on the second floor. The boys were on their worst behavior. Sensing Esther’s remoteness and preoccupation, they were using every trick in the book to draw her back into immediacy and refocus her attention on them. Food was thrown, epithets exchanged, tears shed. Through it all Esther tried to remain firm and kindly, but the cumulative strain of the past twenty-four hours proved too much for her and she herself had almost reached the point of tears when Annie came in to announce that Mr. Bream was waiting for her in the library.
“I told you I wasn’t at home,” Esther said sharply, in a transfer of anger. “To anyone.”
“I couldn’t help it, Mrs. Galloway. He said he had some very important news. And anyway, it’s Mr. Bream.” She inflected the name to give it special importance, partly to excuse her disobedience of orders and partly because she liked Harry. He treated her with respect.
“All right. Take over these hellions. I can’t do a thing with them.”
Annie gave her a superior you-never-could glance which Esther pretended not to notice. Esther was well aware that Annie had more power over her than she had over Annie. The balance of power lay in the boys, and Annie handled them with the ease and poise of a skilled animal trainer who realizes the exact limitations of her beasts and expects no more from them than what they can give.
“They’re really quite good boys,” Annie said firmly.
“Yes, of course they are.”
Harry was waiting for her in the library. Even before she entered the room she could hear him pacing up and down as if he were angry.
Esther said, “Annie tells me you have news.”
“Of a kind.”
“Is it about Ron?”
“Some of it is.”
“Don’t talk in riddles, Harry. This isn’t the time or place.”
“I can’t help that. It is a riddle. Everything is.” His hair and clothing were disheveled and his face feverish-red as if he’d just been battling a high wind. He was rather a short man but he usually held himself straight and tall so that people seldom thought of him as short. Yet during the afternoon he seemed to have shrunk by inches, his shoulders sagged, his neck was bent, and he looked small and wizened and old.
Perhaps I’ve changed just as much as Harry has, Esther thought, and she was grateful that there was no mirror in the room to tell her so.
“It’s bad news, of course,” she said sounding very detached.
“No. No, it’s not. Not about Ron, anyway.”
“Tell me.”
“Some woman saw him last night in a little town called Thornbury, about ten o’clock. He ran over her dog.”
“He what?”
“Ran over her dog and killed it. He slowed down, saw what he’d done and threw some money out of the car to pay for the dog. The woman described the car, and Ron, the cap he was wearing and so on. It was Ron, all right.”
“How can you be sure?”
“There was all kinds of identification in his wallet. I guess he didn’t have time to take the money from his wallet so he just threw out money, wallet and everything. It was one of those impulsive things Ron does without thinking.”
“Without thinking? Oh no. He thought, all right. He thought, as usual, that money will pay for anything.”
“Now look, Es, I might have done the same thing myself if I’d been in a terrible hurry.”
“Why should he be in a terrible hurry?”
“I don’t know. I just say maybe he was.”
“And that’s why he didn’t stop the car, because he was in this terrible hurry?”
Harry hesitated. “He could have been scared, too.”
“That’s better. That sounds much more like Ron. He makes a mistake and runs away, throws money out of cars instead of stopping. Oh, it must have been Ron, all right. Even if there hadn’t been any identification in the wallet, I’d know it was Ron. Will he ever grow up? Will he ever just once stand and face things?”
“Now Es, don’t start...”
“Where’s Thornbury?”
“Well, it’s about halfway between Collingwood and Owen Sound. You pass through it on the way to the lodge. You must have seen it today.”
“I didn’t notice.” She let out a long deep sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath, waiting for an attack. “And that’s all the news?”
“Yes.”
“It’s worse than none.”
“I don’t see how you figure that.”
She turned away so that when she spoke again she seemed to be addressing the window. “All this time, right up until now, I’ve been thinking that Ron went away deliberately to avoid me. Perhaps he drove to Detroit, I thought, and after wrestling with his conscience for a while, he will call me and tell me where he is and everything will be all right again. Or as close to all right as it ever has been. That’s what I’ve been thinking, that he did something wrong and couldn’t bear to face me and ran away.”
“That’s quite possible.”
“No, it isn’t. Not now. If he wanted to run away he wouldn’t run to the one place in the world where I’d look for him first. If he was seen in Thornbury, that means he was on his way to the lodge, or had been there and was coming back. In which direction was he going when he went through Thornbury?”
“I never thought to ask. There actually wasn’t time. The Inspector returned to the lodge right after you left for home and told me about the Thornbury business. I thought you’d want to know right away so I drove down here.”
“You could have phoned.”
“I wanted an excuse to leave anyway.”
“Why?”
“I’d been trying to get in touch with Thelma. I got through to her once but she hung up on me. I tried again several times after that. The phone kept ringing all right, but no one answered. I know the reason, now.”
His tone was so peculiar that she turned to stare at him. “What’s the matter, Harry?”
“She’s left me,” Harry said, and began suddenly and silently to cry. He covered his face with his hands in an effort to hide his tears but they dribbled out between his fingers and down his wrists into his cuffs.
Esther had never seen a grown man cry before, and the shock of it temporarily immobilized her. She couldn’t speak, and her only thought at first was that Harry needed a handkerchief, somebody should give poor Harry a handkerchief, he was getting his shirt wet.