“People always do. This is Giles’ last furlough before he goes overseas.”
“I know,” Edith said tragically. “I know it’s a terrible thing to have it spoiled like this. But couldn’t you wait just a few days? Perhaps Lucille will be back then.”
“I don’t care a damn about Lucille,” Polly said. “I never have. The only way I’ve been able to live in the same house with her was to ignore her, not to let her spoil things for me. Well, she’s not going to spoil them now.”
Giles tried not to listen to the two women. He looked down at his hands, hardly recognizing them as his own he felt so unreal and formless. He seemed to be moving through a nightmare, without the power to wake up and without the strength to protect himself against the dim shapes of danger. Sometimes the house was like a box and he was alone in it and on the ceiling of the box there were shadows without cause and the walls moved slightly, in and out, as if the box were breathing. Sometimes he stopped to listen to it, and he heard his own breathing, surely it must be his own, but it sounded as if someone were breathing along with him in rhythm that wasn’t quite perfect.
When he went into a room it always seemed that someone had just left it. The air was stirring, and the door quivered.
“She’s been very good to you,” Edith was saying shrilly. “You shouldn’t talk like that about her in front of Giles.”
“I talk the way I want to. I don’t fake things.”
“Nobody listens to me in this house! I won’t have it! I forbid you to be married until we find out about Lucille.”
“I don’t need permission,” Polly said. She turned her back, but Edith’s voice clawed at her ears.
“What do you know about Giles? What do you know s about him?”
“I guess there isn’t much to know,” Giles said, and attempted to smile. “I mean, I realize how queer it looks that Mrs. Morrow should disappear the day after I arrive. But I assure you...”
“You must be crazy, Edith,” Polly said in a cold flat voice. “It’s bad enough that Giles should have to be here at such a time, without being accused by you.”
“She said he reminded her of someone,” Edith cried, flinging herself violently into this new idea. “You can’t tell about people, you can’t believe anyone, you can’t trust...”
Her voice snapped. She turned abruptly and ran out of the room, the sleeves of her dress fluttering. She looked like a great flapping bird with broken wings.
“Giles.”
“Yes?”
“Let’s get out of here. Now. Tonight.”
“Can we?”
“No one can stop us. We’ll just leave. Giles, go up and pack. We can go to a hotel.”
“All right.” The ceiling of the box seemed to open and clear cool air rushed in. “All right, we’ll just leave.”
“Oh, Giles.”
The telephone in the hall began to ring.
“It surely looks like her,” said Miss Betty Flack. “It surely does. But I can’t be sure. I mean if it’s important, with the police in it and all, then I can’t be sure.” Miss Flack handed back the photographs and added thoughtfully, “But it surely looks like her.”
Over Miss Flack’s platinum curls Bascombe and Sands exchanged glances.
“What I mean is,” said Miss Flack with an elegant gesture, “I think it’s her, all right. She came in just when I was closing the shop up and wanted to know if I did hair-cutting. Well, naturally I do, though my real specialty is cold waves:”
“You cut her hair?” Sands said, gently guiding Miss Flack’s mind back from the cold waves.
“I gave her a feather cut. Did you see For Whom the Bell Tolls? Well, like that. The girl in it, I mean. Mrs. Smith, she said that was her name, she didn’t seem to care how I cut it, just sat there holding her purse. I noticed her shoes were wet and I like to make a little joke now and then with my customers, so I asked her, laughing-like, if she’d been in swimming down at the lake. She didn’t think it was funny,” Miss Flack said, adding fairly, “Maybe it wasn’t.”
“Didn’t she say anything at all?” Sands asked.
“Just about how cold it was. I surely felt sorry for her with such a. flimsy little coat on. She was such a lady, if you know what I mean, and so sort of desperate looking. I thought to myself at the time, maybe her husband drinks or something.” Miss Flack had another of her thoughtful pauses. “He certainly looked as if he drank.”
“Oh,” Sands said, and Bascombe’s hands twitched as if they wanted to get around Miss Flack’s throat and choke something out of her. “Her husband came with her?”
“Not exactly. I mean, I don’t know if he came with her, but when she went out I stood at the door getting a breath of fresh air and I saw this man waiting across the street. Mrs. Smith stopped and talked to him for a minute and then she walked ahead and he followed her. I remember thinking to myself at the time, isn’t it a caution what women marry sometimes. She was so tall and handsome and he was just a little fellow.”
“A little fellow,” Sands said, and thought back sixteen years to the last time he’d seen Andrew Morrow. Morrow was about six foot three. Even making allowances for the fact that the light had been dim and Miss Flack’s memory was of the vague and romantic order, Sands was sure that the man Mrs. Morrow met across the street had not been her husband.
It was easy enough to check. Sands asked Miss Flack for a telephone and while he was sitting in the booth looking in the directory for Morrow’s number, he heard Miss Flack tell Bascombe that she herself was single, had a half-interest in the beauty parlor and liked great big men.
Sands dialed.
The door into the hall was still open and Polly and Giles heard Della answer the phone and then trot down the hall. A minute later Andrew came to the phone. They heard him say, “Hello. Yes, this is Dr. Morrow.”
“Well,” Polly said sharply, “do we listen or do we talk? Or do you go up and pack?”
“I will if you want me to.”
“If!” Polly said bitterly. “Oh, well, nothing like a telephone ringing for breaking up moods, is there, Giles?” She clenched her hands and began to swear in an undertone. “Damn, damn, damn, damn.”
Andrew’s voice crept into the room. “Sands? No, I’m sorry I don’t think I do remember. Sands.” A pause, a change of tone. “Oh. Oh, yes.” He cleared his throat. “I’m... I’m very glad you were able to... to get that far. S-sunnyside? No, I was at home. The maids were frightened and called me home from the office. Will you hold the line, please?”
Gray-lipped, he came to the door of the living room and shut it without saying anything.
“It’s the police,” Giles said. “I suppose they’ve found out something. I... Polly, what’s the matter?”
Her shoulders were shaking and a film had spread over her eyes like ice over a river.
“Giles, it’s that man, it’s that same one. Sands. He came with a lot of men and I could see them from my window going over the snow. Parts of it were like red slush.”
“I don’t understand...”
“One of them, Sands, came in the house and sat over there, in that chair. He just sat and looked at us, at Martin and me, for a long time. Martin kept laughing. I don’t know why, but he kept on laughing and laughing.”
She rose unsteadily and walked across the room and stood in front of Mildred’s portrait. For a minute the implacable brown eyes stared into the mild and vacuous blue eyes.
Giles looked after her, puzzled. “Who is that?”
“My mother.”
“Oh.”
“She was quite young when she died.” Polly turned around. Her face was hard and merciless. “Probably it’s just as well. She was the type who would have run to fat.”