“No idea. It’s not that solid. It isn’t even as solid as a hunch. Call it an itch.”
“What’s itching?”
“Amity’s a place that keeps coming up. Constance Markley went to school there. Her best friend at the time was a girl who now has an arrangement with Graham Markley and wants Constance found. Silas Lawler makes trips there. You told me that yourself. All these things together make an itch.”
“It’s pretty weak. What do you expect to learn?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing. I told you it was just an itch. I’ll go to Amity to scratch it, and maybe then it’ll quit bothering me.”
She reached up and took my face in her hands and pulled it down to hers. Her lips under mine were warm and alive, and her tongue was quick and clever. My tensile strength was low and getting lower, and I was on the shaky verge of letting Amity and good intentions go to the devil for another day, but then the instant before I cracked she pushed me away and dropped her hands.
“Go on,” she said. “Go on to Amity.”
Gulping air, I stood up and got a bag from the closet. She sat quietly and whistled softly through her teeth while I packed the bag with a couple of clean shirts and a change or two of socks and shorts. At the door on the way out, I stopped and looked back at her, and she was still sitting there in the bed with her shoulders against the headboard and her black eye on the near side watching me from a corner.
“There’s a hot plate and a pot and some coffee,” I said.
“Thanks very much.”
“Make yourself at home for as long as you like.”
“This dump a home? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Do I get the raincheck?”
“I’ll think about it. Call me the first fair day.”
“The very first. If you see the janitor, give him my regards.”
“Are you going,” she said, “or not? If you are, please hurry and get the hell out of here.”
I got out, followed by the black eye, and went downstairs to my clunker at the curb. On the way to the office, I stopped at a drug store for a cup of black coffee, which I needed, and it was approximately a quarter after eight when I reached my desk in time to answer the telephone, which was ringing.
“Hello,” I said. “Percy Hand speaking.”
I was answered by a measured voice I had heard before. It seemed to imply a careful calculation of effect in even its simplest remarks.
“Good-morning, Mr. Hand,” it said. “Graham Markley here. Excuse me for calling so early, but it’s urgent that I see you.”
“Can’t it wait? I’m getting ready to leave town.”
“I know. That’s one of the things I want to talk with you about.”
“What are the others?”
“Not now. When I see you.”
“All right. I’ll wait for you in the office.”
“I’d rather you’d come here.”
“To your home?”
“No. I’m in Miss Salem’s apartment. Can you come immediately?”
“If not sooner,” I said.
After hanging up, I opened a couple of pieces of mail left over from yesterday. One was an offer from a finance company to loan me up to a grand on my signature, which I dropped in file thirteen. The other was a check for a hundred dollars from a client, which I tucked in my wallet and stuck in a pocket. The check from Silas Lawler had not had time to arrive yet. When it did arrive, I’d file that in thirteen too, in small pieces.
Desk work concluded, I locked the office and went back to my clunker and drove to the apartment house in which Faith Salem lived, sometimes in the sun. When I pressed the button beside her door, the hour was pressing nine. I had to wait a minute before Maria opened the door. She retreated backward before me, nodding three times, one nod for each backward step.
“Miss Salem and Mr. Markley are having coffee on the terrace,” she said. “They would be pleased to have you join them.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I know the way.”
I waded the pile and crossed the tile and came out onto the terrace. Faith Salem and Graham Markley were sitting at a glass-topped table on which there was a silver tray on which there was a silver coffee service. I could smell the coffee as I approached, and it smelled good. Markley heard me and saw me and stood up to meet me. He was wearing a soft blue sport shirt with a square tail hanging casually outside a pair of darker blue trousers. His feet were shoved into comfortable brown loafers. He didn’t look like a man who had come from somewhere else after getting up in the morning. Although he didn’t offer to shake hands, he smiled without any apparent effort.
“It was good of you to come so promptly, Mr. Hand,” he said. “Will you have coffee with us?”
“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t mind if I do. Good-morning, Miss Salem.”
My claim, as I recall it, was that tousled Robin, sitting up in bed, was the loveliest woman in the world, except one. I was now looking at the exception. She smiled and extended a hand, which I took and held and released after a moment. The cool light of the morning had gathered in her golden hair, and her golden skin had a light that was all its own.
“How are you, Mr. Hand?” she said. “I hope you had a good night.”
“As a matter of fact, I did. I had an exceptionally good night. And you?”
It was an innocent enough question, a small courtesy in return for one, but it startled her in reference to the particular night, and after being startled, she was quietly amused. Her smile was now confined to her eyes, and the eyes flicked swiftly to Markley and back to me. I don’t know if I intended the reference as she took it or not. Maybe I did and didn’t realize it. Maybe, as Robin would have said, it was psychological.
“Quite pleasant, thank you,” she said. “I was afraid your face might pain you and keep you awake. It looks much better this morning. Won’t you sit down?”
I sat down in a wicker chair away from the table, and she poured coffee from the silver pot into a cup of white Bavarian china.
“Do you take cream or sugar?” she said.
“Just coffee,” I said.
She passed the cup, and I took it and drank some of the coffee, and it was hot and strong and as good as it smelled. I wondered if Robin had made coffee on the hot plate and was possibly drinking some of it at this moment. Not that it was a possibility of importance. It was just something I happened to wonder.
“Miss Salem tells me that you’re planning a trip to Amity,” Graham Markley said.
“That’s right,” I said.
“I would like to know why.”
“I’m tired of being poor and ignorant. I intend to matriculate in the college there.”
His face, which had maintained a kind of neutrality between amiability and animus, froze all of a sudden in lines of the latter. He lifted his coffee cup and drank from it and set it carefully down again, and the action was obviously a deliberate exercise of control — or a diversion until control had been secured.
“I hope you won’t try to entertain me, Mr. Hand. I’m never amused by evasions and clever remarks.”
“I’m not trying to entertain you. It’s just my awkward way of telling you that you’re asking questions about something that’s none of your business.”
“That’s better. I much prefer the direct treatment. However, I disagree with you. You are engaged in a case that involves my wife. Your trip to Amity is connected with this case. This makes it my business.”
“Is that so? I wasn’t engaged by you. The single fact that the subject of the investigation is your wife doesn’t necessarily give you any prerogatives. Moreover, since you prefer the direct treatment, I might add that you’ve shown an almost incredible indifference to your wife’s disappearance up to this time. Why the sudden interest?”
“I’ll let that pass. You’re clearly a crude man with few sensibilities, and you wouldn’t understand the difference between indifference and reticence. I know you better than I want to, Mr. Hand, but that’s really not very well. I don’t know if you’re competent. I don’t know if you’re honest. I don’t know what you will make, or try to make, of a rather delicate matter which concerns me vitally. In brief, I don’t trust you, and I intend to establish jurisdiction over this investigation whether you like it or not.”