“Worried to death.”
“Does that mean you intend to talk this over with your minister?”
“I don’t know. He’s a very wise...”
“This is a delicate situation, Miss Burton. Undoubtedly your minister is a man of wisdom and good will, but are you sure you want still another person to hear the rumor?”
“What do you mean, still another?”
“Mrs. Brandon knows. And the detective, Dodd. Gerda Lundquist too, probably, since she’s now working for the Brandons.”
“They can’t know anything,” Miss Burton said shrilly. “There’s nothing to know. It’s just a vicious rumor. I’ll deny it.”
“Can you?”
“Yes, I can. There isn’t a word of truth in it!”
“Not one word?”
She shook her head back and forth in silent pain.
“Miss Burton, suppose I told you there is some truth in it, that it’s not just a rumor?”
“No. No! Don’t tell me anything!”
“All right.”
He watched the tears slither out between her fingers and roll down her skinny wrists. She won’t explode now, he thought. She’ll just make a lot of noise and fizzle out.
She was a crying woman, not a bomb any more. He took a long deep breath and crossed the room toward her.
“Miss Burton — Pat.”
“Don’t come near me! Don’t tell me anything!”
“I said I wouldn’t. But you’d better stop crying now. Your eyes swell up when you cry.”
“How — how do you know?”
“I remember when you came to work after your mother’s funeral. Your eyelids were like blisters, and they stayed that way all day. You looked very funny.”
Slowly she took her hands away from her face. He was smiling down at her, so gently and affectionately that her heart gave a sudden thrust against her chest wall like the kick of a fetus.
He said, “You don’t want Borowitz suspecting you’ve had an emotional upset. If he sees that you’ve been crying he’ll ask questions. You have no answers.”
“I have — no answers.”
“You’re tired. Sit there quietly for a minute while I call a cab for you. Will you?”
“Yes.”
“And no more tears?”
“No.”
He called the cab from the phone in the kitchen, remembering the last time he’d called one, on a Sunday evening almost three weeks previously. He’d put in the order for a cab, and then three minutes later, according to plan, he’d canceled it. The cab company would have a record of the address and the cancellation. He didn’t know how long the company would keep such a record. Long enough, he hoped, for Dodd to find out about it; so far he was finding all the wrong things, like a retriever bringing back the decoys instead of the dead ducks. No, it was the other way around....
When he returned, Miss Burton had stopped crying but she still looked moist and disheveled.
“You’d better straighten up a bit,” he said. “You know where the bathrooms are.”
She blushed at the word, which seemed suddenly intimate and full of meaning.
“We don’t want the cab driver getting curious about your appearance,” he added. “You’ll be picked up, by the way, at the northwest corner of Cabrillo in ten minutes. I thought it would be more discreet than having him come here. Incidentally, discreet is a good word for you to remember.”
“I never ever had to be discreet before,” she said painfully. “I never ever had anything to hide before.”
“Have you now?”
“I–I don’t — know.”
“If you don’t know, you’d better act on the assumption that you have.”
“I feel so confused.”
“Try not to let it show.”
“How can I help it? How can I go to the office tomorrow morning like nothing has happened?”
“You’ve got to,” he said. “You have no choice.”
“I can quit. Maybe under the circumstances, it would be better if I quit.”
“Do you realize what will happen if you do? Mr. Brandon will immediately assume that I’m setting you up in a love nest, with my wife’s money.”
She shrank inside the yellow coat as if it were a hiding shell, a protection from the terrible intimacy of such words as love nest.
“I’m trying to help you, Miss Burton. But you have to help yourself too. And me. We’re in this together.”
“No,” she whispered. “We’re not. We’re not in anything together. I haven’t done anything, said anything. I’m innocent. I’m innocent!”
“I know you are.”
“But I’ve got to prove it. How can I prove it?”
“By keeping control of yourself. Don’t discuss me or my personal affairs with anyone. Don’t answer questions, don’t volunteer information.”
“Those are all don’ts. What can I do?”
“The best thing would be to hurry up and get out of here. Now go and wash your face and comb your hair.” The words were brusque but he spoke them in a kindly, almost paternal tone, and she reacted like an obedient child.
In the bathroom off the kitchen she washed her face and dried it on the only towel hanging on the rack. She knew it must be Rupert’s towel and when she pressed it against her forehead and her hot cheeks she wanted to cry again, just stand there for a long time and cry.
He was waiting for her in the kitchen, wearing his topcoat and a fedora. His skin looked gray under the fluorescent lights. “I’ll walk you to the corner.”
“No. You must be tired. You should go to bed.”
“I don’t want you walking along a city street alone at midnight.”
“Is it midnight?”
“Later than that.”
Outside, the fog was dripping from the eaves like rain. They walked side by side, as far apart as they could get on the narrow sidewalk, self-consciously avoiding personal contact. But the contact was there, invisibly bridging the space between them. Miss Burton could feel it as she had felt it in the bathroom, pressing Rupert’s towel against her face. She was exquisitely aware of every movement he made, every breath he took, the stride of his long legs, the swing of his arms, the sighs that seemed to be words which mustn’t be said. What words, she thought, and do I want to hear them?
She spoke to hide her thoughts. “It’s so — quiet.”
“Yes.”
“Funny, I feel so noisy inside.”
“Noisy in what way?”
“Gongs. Gongs are clanking.”
He smiled slightly. “I’ve never heard gongs. Thunder, though. Lots of that.”
“I guess everybody has their own personal noise inside.”
“I guess they do,” he said. “Your cab’s waiting.”
“I see it.”
“Here’s five dollars to cover your fare.”
She felt that by accepting the money she was accepting more than her taxi fare, but she didn’t argue, didn’t even hesitate. He put the five-dollar bill in her outstretched hand. It was the only physical contact they’d had all evening.
He returned to the house and, for the dozenth time that day, he reread the letter that had accompanied the silver box.
Dear Rupert:
I wish to thank you and Amy for the beautiful wreath, and you for the note of condolence. The funeral was very quiet, and though Wilma would have called it oversentimental, we found it satisfying. Perhaps, as Wilma always claimed, funerals are barbaric affairs, but they are a custom and a convention, and in times of stress we lean on custom and convention.
I hope that Amy has recovered from the shock by this time. It was unfortunate that she had to be a witness, or that anyone had to be. But Wilma may have planned it that way — she could never do anything in private, there always had to be an audience, whether it was an applauding one or a hissing one. Her other attempt at suicide, after her first divorce, was undertaken in the bathroom of a friend’s house while a large party was going on. None of us there felt we could have prevented what happened, so Amy must not feel that she could have prevented it...