Lehman said to Aggie, who was impatient to start down the path, “Hold your horses a minute, lass. Now when you found the plaid cap, was it directly below here?”
“No sir. I walked along a piece first until I got tired and sat down and then I found it.”
“About how far did you walk?”
“I don’t know. I can show you down there.”
“Show me up here first.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Try. Start walking.”
They began walking single file up the road with Aggie in the lead like a general with delusions of troops.
The road was not a main one, and though it was marked on maps as “improved,” the improvements had long since disappeared in the throes of winter. The surface had buckled in places and some of the potholes were as large as Aggie’s head.
Lehman appeared to be watching his footing very carefully, paying no attention to Miss Barabou struggling along in the rear. Aggie was skipping on ahead, not looking down at the road at all but avoiding every bump and hole as if she had made a complete mental map of the route and knew its every pitfall.
“I’m beginning to get tired,” Aggie said, “so I guess it was right about here.”
She looked up expectantly, as if awaiting Lehman’s commendation, but he seemed too preoccupied to notice her. He was staring down at the mud along the side of the road, his eyes narrowed against the morning sun.
“Well?” Miss Barabou said when, out of sorts and breath, she finally caught up with the others.
“Look here, ma’am.”
“I can’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
“No?”
“Some tire marks, that’s all. It’s a road, you’d expect to find tire marks.”
“Not ones leading over the top of the cliff.” Lehman turned to Aggie, who was bouncing all over the place. “Be a good lass and stay out of the way. In fact, how about you going back and waiting in the car?”
“But I haven’t showed you anything yet.”
“You’ve shown me quite a lot more than I expected.”
“Tell me what.”
“Well, stand still a minute. See these marks here? They were made by the tires of an automobile, a new one and a heavy one, my guess is a Lincoln or a Cadillac. Now where do they lead?”
“Nowhere. They just stop.”
“Exactly. They just stop.”
Lehman walked to the edge of the cliff and Miss Barabou followed him, wide-eyed and nervous. “What does it all mean?”
“It means there’s a car down there, perhaps with people in it.”
“People. But we’ve got to do something right away, help them...”
“I’m afraid it would be too late. The marks aren’t fresh and the water’s deep.”
“Perhaps you’re being too pessimistic. It could be that some people just stopped here for a look at the view and went on again. That’s more likely than...”
“There’s no sign that the car turned around.”
Miss Barabou’s hand moved to her throat. “I’ll — I’d better take Aggie back to the car.”
But she stood peering down at the water below, as if she hoped to distinguish the outlines of a car, the contours of people. The glare of sun on water dazzled her eyes and she stumbled back half-blinded.
Lehman caught her by the arm. “Watch it. That’s a long fall.”
“Yes.”
“It’s a city car, I’ll bet you that.”
“How can you tell?”
“Around these parts a person driving an expensive car would still be using snow tires at this time of year. The kind of winters we have up here, we need them. But in a city where the roads are kept clear, snow tires wouldn’t be necessary.” He paused. “I wonder.”
“You wonder what?”
“What makes a person drive over a cliff.”
Lehman drove Miss Barabou and Aggie back to school and left them there with instructions to say nothing to anyone. Then he called the Provincial Police and returned to the cliff. Three police cars were waiting for him when he arrived, as well as the resuscitation squad of the local fire station, all ready to go into action.
No action was necessary.
Two barges, sent down from Meaford with winches and dredging equipment, located the car in twenty feet of water just below the cliff where Lehman had found the tire tracks. The car was barely damaged, the windows and windshield were unbroken, and Ron Galloway was still inside, fastened snugly to the driver’s seat by his safety belt.
Fourteen
Ralph Turee returned to his office from his eleven o’clock seminar feeling hungry and exhausted. He had got up too early for sufficient rest and too late for breakfast. Harry had spent the night at his house and the two men had talked until after three in the morning. Talked and talked and settled nothing beyond what was already settled — Galloway was missing, and Thelma was waiting for him to come back and claim her as his future wife.
He sat down at his desk and was unpacking the lunch Nancy had made for him when the door opened and Nancy herself appeared.
Turee looked up in surprise. It was not a rule that Nancy should stay away from his office during working hours, but her visits were so infrequent that she looked strange in the surroundings, like a new graduate student perhaps, or someone who’d lost her way in the corridors and merely stopped by for directions. She was a small pretty woman with a round cherubic face and rather short sturdy legs — “practical” legs, Turee called them, in contrast to what he considered her impractical mind. She was wearing her new violet-colored Easter suit, which meant that the occasion, whatever it might be, was important.
He rose and kissed her briefly on the forehead by way of greeting. “How did you get here?”
“Took a cab.”
“A cab. My God, Nancy, I told you we’re short of money this month after those Easter outfits you bought for the kids and...”
“Save your lecture. This is an emergency.”
Her tone rather than her words stopped him. “Has one of the kids been...”
“Nothing like that. Esther called. She wants me to spend the rest of the day with her.”
“Why?”
“Ron’s been found.”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
Something inside Turee that had been stretched tauter and tauter like a violin string broke suddenly with a twang. Along with a dozen other sensations he felt a sense of relief that the suspense was over. Ron was, in a way, now safe; safe from Esther’s cold scorn, and Thelma’s demands, and Harry’s reproach, and the ridicule of the world. “How did it happen?”
“He drove off a cliff into the bay, somewhere not too far from the lodge. He had the convertible with the top down. Esther said the policeman who came to tell her said Ron mightn’t have been found for days, or weeks even, if he hadn’t had his safety belt fastened.” Her lower lip projected childishly and began to tremble. “I don’t know, there’s something so f-f-funny about that, Ron was always p-playing it s-s-safe.”
“Don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it.”
“All right then.” He watched with detachment while she dabbed at her eyes, wondering for the hundredth time at what peculiar things roused a woman’s emotions. The fact that Ron drove over a cliff to his death didn’t seem to bother her as much as the safety belt being fastened. “Ron did it intentionally?”
“Yes. Esther had a letter from him this morning — he’d posted it Saturday night in some little town up north. She told me about it on the phone.”
“And?”
“Well, this will come as a great shock to you, Ralph, but — well, Thelma’s pregnant. By Ron. It’s incredible, utterly incredible, he and Harry were such good friends. I can’t believe it. Can you?”