“Now, let me get this straight, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said, “You knew your daughter was seeing Tommy Barlow.”
“Of course I knew.”
“You didn’t try to discourage it?”
“Discourage it? Why the hell would I do that?”
“Well… well, she was married, Mrs, Tomlinson.”
“Married! To that bully? That was a marriage? Hah!” Mrs. Tomlinson shook her head. “She married Michael when she was eighteen. What does a girl of eighteen know about love?”
“How old was she now, Mrs. Tomlinson?”
“Almost twenty-one. A woman. A woman capable of making up her own mind.” She nodded. “And what she decided to do was to leave Michael and marry Tommy. As simple as that. So why should she kill herself?”
“Are you aware, Mrs. Tomlinson, that your daughter told her husband she was coming to visit you on the day she died?”
“Yes.”
“Did she do that often?”
“Yes.”
“In effect, then, you alibied her, is that right?”
“Alibied? I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“I would call it two sensitive women helping each other against a bully.”
“You keep referring to Mr. Thayer as a bully. Did he ever strike your daughter?”
“Strike her? I’d break every bone in his body!”
“Threaten her then?”
“Never. He’s a boss, that’s all. Believe me, I was glad she planned to leave him.”
Carella cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable in the presence of this big woman who thought of herself as a small woman. He was uncomfortable in the presence of this mother who condoned her daughter’s adultery.
“I’d like to know something, Mrs. Tomlinson.”
“What’s that?”
“Michael Thayer said he called you after he saw your daughter’s picture in the newspaper…”
“That’s right.”
“… and asked you whether she was here.”
“That’s right.”
“Mrs. Tomlinson, if you approved of your daughter’s relationship with Barlow, if you disliked Michael so much, why did you tell him she wasn’t here?”
“Because she wasn’t.”
“But you knew she was with Barlow.”
“So what?”
“Mrs. Tomlinson, did you want Michael to know what was going on?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why did you tell him the truth?”
“What was I supposed to do? Lie and say Margaret was here? Suppose he asked to speak to her?”
“You could have invented some excuse. You could have said she’d stepped out for a minute.”
“Why should I lie to that louse? Anything he got was coming to him!”
“What do you mean?”
“The divorce, I mean, Margaret leaving him.”
“Did he know she planned to leave him?”
“No.”
“Did she tell anyone else about this divorce, Mrs. Tomlinson?”
“Certainly. She was seeing a lawyer about it.”
“Who?”
“I think that’s my daughter’s business.”
“Your daughter is dead,” Carella said.
“Yes, I know,” Mrs. Tomlinson said.
And then, for no apparent reason, Carella repeated, “She’s dead.”
The room, for the space of a heartbeat, fell silent. Up until that moment, even though Mrs. Tomlinson had been in the midst of funeral preparations when they’d arrived, even though the conversation had most certainly dealt with the circumstances of their visit, Carella had had the oddest feeling that Mrs. Tomlinson, that Hawes, that he himself were not really talking about someone who was utterly and completely dead. The feeling had been unsettling, a persistent nagging feeling that, despite references in the past tense, despite allusions to suicide, they were all thinking of Margaret Irene Thayer as being alive, as a girl who was indeed about to leave her husband next month to begin a new life.
And so, his voice low, Carella repeated, “She’s dead,” and the room went silent, and suddenly there was perspective.
“She was my only daughter,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. She sat on the sofa that was too small for her, a huge woman with flat feet and big hands and lustreless green eyes and fading red hair, and suddenly Carella realized that she was truly tiny, that the furniture she’d surrounded herself with was bought for a small and frightened woman lurking somewhere inside that huge body, a woman who really did need gentleness and tenderness.
“We’re very sorry,” he said. “Please believe that.”
“Yes. Yes, I know. But you can’t bring her back to me, can you? That’s the one thing you can’t do.”
“No, Mrs. Tomlinson. We can’t do that.”
“I was looking at all my old pictures of her yesterday,” she said. “I wish I had some pictures of Tommy, too. I have a lot, of Margaret, but none of the man she was going to marry.” She sighed heavily. “I wonder how many pills I’ll have to take tonight,” she asked. “Before I can sleep. I wonder.”
In the silence of the living room, a small porcelain clock, delicately wrought and resting on a small inlaid end table, began chiming the hour. Silently, Carella counted the strokes. One, two, three, four. The echo of the chimes faded. The room was still again. Hawes shifted his position on the uncomfortable caned chair.
“I’ve made a hundred lists,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. “Of things to do. Michael is of no help, you know, no help at all. I’m all alone in this. If Margaret were only alive to…” And then she stopped because the absurdity of what she was about to say suddenly struck her. “If Margaret were only alive to help with her funeral preparations” were the words in her mind and on her tongue, and she swallowed them at once because the presence of death was suddenly very large in that small room. She shivered all at once. She stared at Carella and Hawes in the deepening silence of the room. Outside on the street, a woman called to her child. The silence lengthened.
“You… you wanted the lawyer’s name,” Mrs. Tomlinson said.
“Yes.”
“Arthur Patterson I don’t know his address.”
“In the city?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Tomlinson shivered again. “I’m telling you the truth, you know. Margaret was leaving him.”
“I believe you, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said. He rose suddenly and crossed the room. Gently, tenderly, he took her huge hand between both his own and said, “We appreciate your help. If there’s anything we can do, please call us.”