Jane pressed her hand against her chest. “I’m afraid Jonathon and I had a fight,” she said. “He drove off in a pet and I ran out to try to persuade him to come back, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. You didn’t by chance notice our car leave, did you?”
Since Mrs. Creighton was an elderly lady whose joy of an evening was sitting close to her radio, Jane wasn’t surprised when she said, “No, dear, I didn’t. Do you want to come in and sit for a moment? You look all out.”
Jane heaved a sigh that might have been catching her breath. “What time is it?”
Mrs. Creighton stepped back from the door and peered at a large cuckoo clock looming on the wall. “It’s just about nine o’clock.”
“I’d better be getting back. My girl’s at home alone. Maybe I’ll bake some cookies for when he comes back.”
“A peace offering.” Mrs. Creighton smiled, wrinkling up her whole face. “That’s a nice idea.”
“Good night, Mrs. Creighton. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“You’re never a bother, dear. Send your little girl over tomorrow. I’ve made cross buns, and she can eat her fill.”
Jane thanked her, went down the walk, along the sidewalk, and up her own walk to her front door, where the light still shone from “Jonathon” ’s departure. She didn’t have any time to waste.
She dashed upstairs and pulled one of her warm wool dresses right over her housedress. She rolled an extra pair of woolen stockings on and pulled her winter boots from the closet. Downstairs, she retrieved her hat and gloves from the box bench beside the front door and stuffed her hair under her beret. She paused at the kitchen stove, stirred up the fire, and laid three more logs in before turning down the damper. There should still be living embers there if she made it home before daybreak.
She went out onto the back porch, but instead of exiting through the privy, she went down the stairs into the yard. It was black and hushed. She gave her eyes a moment to adjust before trekking to the bottom of their yard, scrambling over the low fence, and making her way between two small stables almost identical to their own.
She stepped out onto Wharf Street with her heart choking off her throat. Her legs and back and arms shook with the urge to run pell-mell to the head of the street, but she forced herself to a pace resembling a woman, say, strolling home after an evening of cards with friends. Lights were on. People were home. At any moment, she expected to be accosted, expected to see a blaze of lights from around the corner as the police arrived to see what Jonathon’s car was doing parked by the cemetery. There was nothing. She had, all without planning, hit the magic hour, after families had withdrawn into their houses, before dogs had been walked for the night.
The car was where she had left it. It took her two tries to open the door, her hand was shaking so. She started the ignition, backed into the street, and drove up Burgoyne, headed for Route 100, the road out of town. She was taking Jonathon home.
Chapter 35
Monday, April 3
You think my mother killed my father.” It wasn’t a question. Mrs. Marshall looked at Russ with all the dignity of her seventy-odd years. “That’s impossible.”
“There’s no way we’re going to be able to prove it to the satisfaction of the law,” he said, his voice gentle. “But based on what physical evidence there is and the facts developed in the case file-”
“If she had been a suspect, the police would have investigated her. No one other than a few filthy-minded gossips ever suggested she had anything to do with my father’s disappearance.”
Russ tapped the old green police file. “She was investigated. To a degree. The police chief at the time, Harry McNeil, saw her house and talked to her neighbors. Her story was that her husband had left after a fight and she never saw him again, and there wasn’t any evidence to contradict her.”
“Well then.” Norm Madsen spread his arm across the back of Mrs. Marshall’s chair. “There you go.”
Russ shook his head. “McNeil was laboring under some disadvantages, not the least of which was a mind-set that made it hard for him to imagine a woman murdering her husband and vanishing his body.”
“Wait a minute. Wasn’t this the era of Bonnie and Clyde and Ma Barker and all those female gangsters?” Clare crossed her arms over her chest.
“Sure. Women could be murderous. Bad women. But the general perception of females was still that of the gentler, finer sex. Jane Ketchem, a law-abiding, churchgoing mother, fit the bill.”
Clare arched her eyebrows at him.
“McNeil questioned her once, in her own home, two days after Jonathon vanished. She could have cleaned up all signs of an altercation by then.” He twisted slightly, facing Mrs. Marshall. “If this had happened today, we’d have taken the wife down to the station and interrogated her. We’d search the house with the assumption that the wife had done it, dusting for fingerprints, scraping for fibers, looking for traces of blood and bone. We’d spray with Luminol to look for cleaned-up bloodstains. Technology that wasn’t dreamed of in 1930.”
Clare opened her mouth to speak but closed it again.
“What you’re saying is that my mother got away with it because she got kid-glove treatment from the police.” For the first time, Mrs. Marshall’s voice held something other than stiff indignation.
He nodded.
She sat for a moment. “My mother was the most moral woman I knew,” she said finally.
“None of us can know what happened that night,” Russ said. “Your mother may have been an abused wife who snapped. She may have been defending herself. It may all have been a tragic accident that she felt she had to cover up.” He leaned forward until he caught her eyes with his. “I’m so sorry. I only hope you’ll find some comfort in finally knowing what became of your father.”
“My father,” she said. She turned to Clare. Her scarlet lipstick was the only slash of color in her pale face. “Will we be able to-can we have a funeral service for him?”
“Of course,” Clare said.
“How long until I can have his body back?” Mrs. Marshall asked Dr. Dvorak. He glanced at Russ.
“I’d like to wait a few days,” Russ said. “There are a few police departments going through their old records, just in case. Once I hear from them, Emil can release the remains to you.”
“Do you have any other questions I can answer?” Dr. Dvorak said.
Mrs. Marshall looked down to where her handbag sat in her lap. “I think… I’d just like to go home now. If I have any further questions-”
“Call me at any time. Please.”
Everyone got to their feet as Mrs. Marshall did, Russ yanking on his crutches, Dr. Dvorak pushing himself up with his cane. Clare had time to twist behind Mr. Madsen’s back and mouth, “I’ll call you later,” at Russ before joining the general exodus up the hallway and out of the morgue.
In the Lincoln, in the backseat as wide and comfortable as a sofa, Clare edged forward until her shoulders were jammed between the front seats. “How are you doing?” she asked Mrs. Marshall. “You’ve just been handed an awful lot to deal with.”
Mrs. Marshall shook her head. “I feel like I’ve been looking at an Escher picture. You know him? Etchings of people walking along impossible stairs?”
Clare nodded.
“You think you’re looking at birds, and all at once you realize you’ve been looking at fish. That’s what it feels like.” She looked over at Norm Madsen. “You knew my mother. You were her attorney, for heaven’s sake. Could you ever have imagined her murdering anyone? Let alone her husband?”
Mr. Madsen took his time before answering. “People can do surprising things, Lacey.”
Clare thought of what he had said to her after the emergency vestry meeting that started her whole involvement with Jane Ketchem. She was the only woman who could ever scare me. And the fact that she’s dead doesn’t make me any less scared.