“He was restless, Mr. Crees. He couldn’t seem to stick to anything. He couldn’t stand being shut up in an office. He tried to sell things, but without much luck. I don’t understand that part. He could be very persuasive, very likable. We never had enough money. I’d saved a little, but it all went. We didn’t have accident insurance or hospitalization. I owe my sister and brother-in-law over two thousand dollars. I haven’t any idea of how I’m going to repay them.”
He looked at her with remote, cool admiration. “You’re a remarkably plausible woman, Mrs. Talbott.”
“I’m not lying. You can check with his employers. All of them.”
“I have. This habit of his of disappearing for days at a time didn’t help him in his work.”
Beth looked down at her hands. “He wasn’t faithful to me,” she said flatly.
“You believe he went off with other women?” There was a chiding note in his voice.
“That was the only possible explanation. He’d never tell me.”
Crees gave a patient sigh. “Let’s talk about the night of the accident, then.”
“What has this got to do with income tax?”
“I believe you may know how it ties in, Mrs. Talbott.”
“I don’t see how. He’d been away for three days. I’d given up phoning police and hospitals when he disappeared. It just made me look ridiculous. There wasn’t any money in the house. I borrowed ten dollars from my sister to tide me over. Our credit was no good at the stores.” Crees made a sound suspiciously like a snort. Beth looked up at him sharply, and then went on. “He drove up at night in a borrowed car. He seemed very excited. In good spirits, I guess. He’d been drinking. He said he had a new job, and I was to pack and come along on a trip with him. I told him I’d decided to leave him. He told me everything was going to be all right. I guess — I wanted things to be all right again. I can remember going out to the car with my suitcase. It was raining hard. He said we had one stop to make. And I can’t remember anything else. I can’t even remember getting into the car.”
“That’s convenient, Mrs. Talbott.”
“I don’t like your tone of voice. I’m not a criminal or a liar, Mr. Crees. You can ask the doctors. They’ll tell you that a skull fracture can wipe out all memory of the hours preceding the accident. With some people it wipes out months and years. They say it may come back slowly, or all at once, or never. They call it ‘traumatic shock.’ ”
He leaned back in the chair, put the tips of his thick white fingers together. “And the rain had begun to freeze on the pavement. Roger Talbott lost control of the car on the Valley Turnpike and struck a tree, killing himself instantly. Now you are the survivor. The long-suffering wife who had lived in respectable poverty, borrowing money, trying to make ends meet.”
“Don’t talk to me that way!”
Crees leaned forward. “I suppose you don’t know a thing about that car? You don’t know Roger Talbott purchased it for forty-three hundred dollars in cash in Boston last year, using the name of Horace Taylor. You don’t know he got new plates for it this year. You don’t know he was keeping it here in Thrace, in an out-of-the-way garage, using it for his periodic trips. Please don’t tell me you know nothing about that automobile, Mrs. Talbott.” His words struck her like small sharp stones.
“It... was a borrowed car,” she said, her voice trembling.
Crees sighed again. He took a small notebook out of his pocket, slapped it softly against the back of his hand. “I want you to understand, Mrs. Talbott, that your position is untenable. To maintain it, you will have to convince the court that you did not know your husband was making over a hundred thousand dollars a year. You will have to deny that you knew why he took those misleading jobs that permitted him to move around the city freely. You will have to convince the court that the pair of you weren’t running for cover when you had that — poorly timed accident.”
“Running for cover? Like criminals?”
“That is the word I would use. But the bureau isn’t interested in the legality or illegality of the source of income. It is only interested in complete and proper tax returns.”
“I can’t seem to talk to you, Mr. Crees. Could some other man come here? Someone who would listen to me?”
“This has been assigned to me,” he said. “Mrs. Talbott, let me give you some well-meant advice. You can be sent to prison. You’re young, but it would be a mistake to think you could serve time and then come out and retrieve your savings. Serving a sentence does not cancel out the monies owed. You’d find it impossible ever to spend that money. I’ll be lenient with you. The bureau will settle for a sum of two hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars. I have reasonably accurate figures on the total income and outlay, and that should leave you a nest egg of twenty-odd thousand.”
The figures were so monstrous as to be almost meaningless. Beth repeated the total blankly. She began to laugh, felt a rising wave of hysteria, and clamped her hand over her mouth quickly.
Crees looked steadily at her. “Please don’t think, Mrs. Talbott, that this is something that can be delayed indefinitely. We’re ready to move — and we intend to move quickly.”
“Please, please,” Beth said, trying to break through that wall of formal officialdom. “Stop hammering at me!”
“We’ve contacted your doctor, Mrs. Talbott. He says that another ten days to two weeks should see you fit enough to answer a summons. If you intend to stick to your present attitude, you’ll no doubt wish to employ the best legal talent available.” He permitted himself a small, quick smile. “And you’ll need talent, Mrs. Talbott. Good day.”
After he had gone, Beth, feeling trembly and exhausted, repeated as much of the conversation as she could remember to Marian. Marian sat on the couch beside her and gasped at the proper moments.
Until the accident there had not been much warmth between the sisters. Beth had always felt that Marian somehow envied her, in spite of the worry of being married to Roger. When Beth had been desperately in need of a small loan, Marian had seemed to take an oddly twisted pleasure in granting it, as though it helped ease that curious envy. Even as children they had not been close. Marian — gay, pretty, extroverted — had managed to evade most of the work around the household.
But this accident had apparently brought out in. Marian all the warmth hitherto concealed. Their relationship was better than ever before.
While Beth recounted what Crees had said, she saw the avidity with which Marian listened and found herself wondering whether Marian had found the capacity to be generous not out of love, but rather out of the satisfaction of seeing Beth humiliated. She rejected the thought immediately and felt ashamed at having even considered it. After all, she knew she would do the same for Marian were their roles reversed, and do it gladly.
“It’s insane!” Marian said.
“But if they are right about that car, if they can prove it, where on earth would Roger have got the money for it? Money for that sort of car was as impossible for Roger to get as the huge sum Mr. Crees spoke of.”
Marian lit a cigarette, frowning. “So, being logical, if he could have got the car, he could have got the rest of the money.”
Beth struck her knee with her fist in an angry, impatient gesture. “He’s supposed to have bought the car last year. We lost our home last year. He would have been able to save it.”
“For heaven’s sake, we’re talking nonsense. We all know Roger was just a big, good-natured good-for-nothing — I’m sorry, honey.”
“That’s all right. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I was going to leave him, you know.”