“Well, he has put us in a vulnerable position. What are we going to do about him?”
“Don’t worry about Buddy. I know how to handle him. What’s more important is what we’re going to do about Madelaine.”
“Whatever it is, it will have to be done quickly. She’s going away in a few days.”
“For good?” Maggie queried.
“Until spring. She intends to have a divorce when she returns.”
“Really? That would be too bad.”
“Yes, it would. It would be disastrous.”
“Are you calling from home? Is she there now?”
“She’s upstairs asleep,” Brad informed her. “She’s under sedation.”
“You mean she’s taken something to make her sleep?”
“That’s right.”
“Will she sleep soundly for quite a long time?” Maggie asked, sudden eagerness in her voice.
“For hours. Until morning at least.”
The wire sang softly again between them, the murderer humming, and each of them knew what was in the other’s mind, although neither expressed it directly — the understanding of what must be done now or never, thanks to Buddy, the necessary disposition of Madelaine which might, even tomorrow, be too late to be any longer necessary or beneficial.
“Did you say you’re going to some kind of meeting?” Maggie asked.
“Yes. A departmental faculty meeting.”
“When are you going?”
“The meeting’s for eight. I’ll leave here a little earlier.”
“Will you be late returning?”
“Some of us will stop off somewhere for coffee and a snack,” Brad told her. “It’s routine. I’d guess that I won’t be home before eleven. Possibly after.”
“Maybe it would be helpful if I were to call on Madelaine while you’re gone. Do you think so?”
“I did think so, but now I’m not sure. What about Buddy?”
“Nothing about him. He’ll be sorry for the trouble he’s caused, and I know how to prevent him from causing any more.” Maggie’s voice was grim and controlled.
“He’ll certainly suspect the truth,” Brad warned.
“I doubt it. He’s too stupid. I keep telling you not to worry about him.”
“Nevertheless, perhaps we’d better wait a while.”
“Perhaps. If you want to lose everything that you might otherwise have. After you have given her time to make different arrangements about her money, there will be little purpose, as I see it, in doing anything whatever.”
“Are you sure you can manage it?” Brad asked nervously, a cold sweat starting from the skin of his forehead.
“Of course I’m sure. I can manage practically anything I set my mind to. There’s simply no use in talking about it. You do as I say, and I’ll do the rest.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Simply leave the house dark and the back door unlocked. You had also better leave something for me to use. Leave it just inside on the floor. A hammer or something. It will be necessary to avoid making noise. Besides I don’t believe I’m strong enough to manage without using something.
“Good God!” Brad exclaimed. “It sounds horrible when you put it like that.”
“Well, it isn’t exactly pleasant when you face up to it, but I don’t see why you should be so squeamish when I’m the one who will do all the work,” Maggie told him with a terrible and frightening practicality.
“All right. I suppose it must be done. I’ll do as you say.”
“Good. As you see, there’s hardly anything for you to do. You must try very hard, however, not to seem nervous or disturbed at your meeting. It might be recalled as odd in view of what will be known later.”
“I’ll do my part all right.”
“Of course you will. I’m sure you’ll behave admirably. But now we must stop talking. You will need to leave soon to get to your meeting. Good-by, darling.”
Brad said good-by and hung up. His hands were shaking again, and he laced the fingers together to stop the shaking. It was almost seven-thirty-five, and he would have to hurry.
15
The night was cold and overcast. The dead moon reflected the light of the hidden sun sporadically and briefly in the intervals between black cumulus clouds. The thin light filtered, such times, through a rough lacery of bare branches to form tremulous patterns of shadow on the concrete walk.
Maggie’s flat heels on the same walk were barely audible in brisk tempo to Maggie’s own ears. Her shadow, when the moon was out, fell across the patterns of shadow. Through her teeth, a companionable hiss, she whistled off-tune the Londonderry Air.
She crossed an intersection, and there ahead was Brad’s house, the middle one of three on that side of the street from corner to corner.
Houses were not built close together, of course, in a fine residential area, and it suited Maggie’s purpose tonight that they weren’t. The lots were deep, moreover, with high hedges between houses for privacy, and the more privacy there was, she thought, the better.
She passed the house, slowing her pace slightly. At first she thought it was completely dark, but then she saw through a small pane set high in the front door that a dim light was burning in the lower hall. No others were visible up or down.
Passing the boundary hedge, she quickened her pace again, her flat rubber heels picking up their previous tempo. Less than a minute later, at the next corner, she turned left to the alley that divided the block, then left again without hesitation into the alley and down it to a rear gate, set in a rough stone wall, that opened into the Cannon back yard.
Through the gate, she found herself on a flagstone walk. She went up the walk toward the rear of the dark house. Midway, in an interval of thin light when the moon broke free, she noticed to her left, in the center of a circular dais of ground, a concrete basin with a kind of stone bowl on a pedestal standing up in the middle.
The basin was a fish pool, obviously, although there was neither water nor fish in it now, and the stone bowl was actually part of a fountain, which was now dry. She had always admired pools and fountains, and she stopped for a moment or two on the flagstone walk to observe this one. It was easy to imagine how pretty it would be in a summer night when the moon and stars were near and warm in an uncluttered sky and the light struck smaller stars from the flowing fountain and the overflowing bowl.
She could even hear the slight, musical ripple of water falling in drops into the basin. She stopped whistling through her teeth to listen to the music, but then the moon was overtaken by another cloud, and the fountain went dry again, and the music stopped. Moving on up the flagstone walk, resuming her off-key hissing of the Londonderry Air, she reached a door to a back porch at the head of three steps. Quickly she went up the steps and inside.
Across the porch was a door to the kitchen. At this door, Maggie hesitated for the first time, as if the way hereto had been familiar but was strange from here on, so that she had to stop and study and recall directions.
She was, in fact, hesitating because she was reluctant to test a sudden depressing conviction that the door would be locked. If it were locked, it would mean that Brad had changed his mind in fear and guilt, and then there would be nothing left for her to do but turn and go away and give up for good and all the last hope of everything she had so carefully planned.
She had again stopped whistling in the brief period of her hesitation. Now she reached out and turned the knob all at once, to get it over with. The door swung silently inward, and she slipped through into the dark kitchen with a sigh of relief.
She lowered her body carefully in the darkness, bending at the knees and holding herself erect from the hips. With one gloved hand she groped blindly near the floor where the jamb met it, and her fingers touched and grasped something hard and round, like a handle.