“Is anybody with her?”
“I don’t think so. She did have a visitor, but he went home.”
“Who was he?”
The man peered up at my face. “That’s her private business, mister.”
“I expect it was Dean Bradshaw, from the college.”
“If you know, why ask?”
I walked to the back of the court and knocked on her door. She opened it on a chain. Her face had lost a good deal of its rosy beauty. She had on a dark suit, as if she was in mourning.
“What do you want? It’s late.”
“Too late for us to have a talk, Mrs. Bradshaw?”
“I’m not Mrs. Bradshaw,” she said without much conviction. “I’m not married.”
“Roy said you were last night. Which one of you is lying?”
“Please, my landlord’s out there.” She unchained the door and stepped back out of the widening light. “Come inside if you must.”
She closed the door and chained it behind me. I was looking at her instead of the room, but I had the impression of a tastefully decorated place where shaded lights gleamed peacefully on wooden and ceramic surfaces. I was searching her face for traces of a past wholly different from her present. There were no visible traces, no cruel lines or pouches of dissipation. But she hadn’t much peace in her. She was watching me as though I was a burglar.
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid,” she said in a frightened voice. She tried to control it with her hand at her throat. “I resent your barging into my home and making personal remarks.”
“You invited me in, more or less.”
“Only because you were talking indiscreetly.”
“I called you by your married name. What’s your objection to it?”
“I have no objection,” she said with a wan smile. “I’m very proud of it. But my husband and I are keeping it a secret.”
“A secret from Letitia Macready?”
She showed no particular reaction to the name. I’d already given up on the idea that it could be hers. No matter how well preserved her body or her skin might be, she was clearly too young. When Bradshaw married Letitia, Laura couldn’t have been more than a girl in her teens.
“Letitia who?” she said.
“Letitia Macready. She’s also known as Tish.”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“I’ll tell you if you really want to know. May I sit down?”
“Please do,” she said without much warmth. I was the messenger who brought bad tidings, the kind they used to kill in the old days.
I sat on a soft leather hassock with my back against the wall. She remained standing.
“You’re in love with Roy Bradshaw, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t have married him if I weren’t.”
“Just when did you marry him?”
“Two weeks ago last Saturday, September the tenth.” A little color returned to her cheeks with the memory of the day. “He’d just got back from his European tour. We decided to go to Reno on the spur of the moment.”
“Had you spent some time with him there earlier in the summer?”
She frowned in a puzzled way, and shook her head.
“Whose idea was it to go to Reno?”
“Roy’s of course, but I was willing. I’ve been willing for some time,” she added in a spurt of candor.
“What held up the marriage?”
“It wasn’t held up, exactly. We postponed it, for various reasons. Mrs. Bradshaw is a very possessive mother, and Roy has nothing of his own except his salary. It may sound mercenary–” She paused in some embarrassment, and tried to think of a better way to phrase it.
“How old is his mother?”
“Somewhere in her sixties. Why?”
“She’s a vigorous woman, in spite of her infirmities. She may be around for a long time yet.”
Her eyes flashed with some of their fine old iceberg fire. “We’re not waiting for her to die, if that’s what you think. We’re simply waiting for the psychological moment. Roy hopes to persuade her to take a more reasonable view of – of me. In the meantime–” She broke off, and looked at me distrustfully. “But none of this is any concern of yours. You promised to tell me about the Macready person, whoever she is. Tish Macready? The name sounds fictitious.”
“I assure you the woman isn’t. Your husband divorced her in Reno shortly before he married you.”
She moved to a chair and sat down very suddenly, as if her legs had lost their strength. “I don’t believe it. Roy has never been married before.”
“He has, though. Even his mother admitted it, after a struggle. It was an unfortunate marriage, contracted when he was a student at Harvard. But he waited until this summer to end it. He spent part of July and all of August establishing residence in Nevada.”
“Now I know you’re mistaken. Roy was in Europe all that lime.”
“I suppose you have letters and postcards to prove it?”
“Yes, I do,” she said with a relieved smile.
She went into another room and came back with a handful of mail tied with a red ribbon. I riffled through the postcards and put them in chronological order: Tower of London (postmarked London, July 18), Bodleian Library (Oxford, July 21), and so on down to the view of the English Gardens (Munich, August 25). Bradshaw had written on the back of this last card:
Dear Laura:
Yesterday I visited Hitler’s eyrie at Berchtesgaden – a beautiful setting made grim by its associations – and today, by way of contrast, I took a bus to Oberammergau, where the Passion Play is performed. I was struck by the almost Biblical simplicity of the villagers. This whole Bavarian countryside is studded with the most stunning little churches. How I wish you could enjoy them with me! I’m sorry to hear that your summer has turned out to be a lonely one. Well, the summer will soon be over and I for one will be happy to turn my back on the splendors of Europe and come home. All my love.
Roy
I sat and reread the incredible message. It was almost word by word the same as the one Mrs. Bradshaw had shown me. I tried to put myself in Bradshaw’s place, to understand his motive. But I couldn’t imagine what helpless division in a man’s nature, what weary self-mockery or self-use, would make him send identical lying postcards to his mother and his fiancée.
“What’s the matter?” Laura said.
“Merely everything.”
I gave her back her documents. She handled them lovingly. “Don’t try to tell me Roy didn’t write these. They’re in his writing and his style.”
“He wrote them in Reno,” I said, “and shipped them for remailing to a friend or accomplice who was traveling in Europe.”
“Do you know this?”
“I’m afraid I do. Can you think of any friend of his who might have helped him?”
She bit her lower lip. “Dr. Godwin spent the late summer traveling in Europe. He and Roy are very close. In fact Roy was his patient for a long time.”
“What was Godwin treating him for?”
“We haven’t discussed it, really, but I expect it had something to do with his excessive – his excessive dependence on his mother.” A slow angry flush mounted from her neck to her cheekbones. She turned away from the subject. “But why would two grown men collaborate in such a silly letter-writing game?”
“It isn’t clear. Your husband’s professional ambitions probably enter into it. He obviously didn’t want anyone to know about his previous, bad marriage, or his divorce, and he went to great lengths to keep everything quiet. He got off a similar set of European postcards and letters to his mother. He may have sent a third set to Letitia.”