“You mean she enjoyed it.”
“She certainly found it tolerable. She wasn’t kidnapped by white slavers. She could have found a job if she wanted one. She could have come home to Utica, or called up and asked for money. Are you asking if she was a nymphomaniac? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’d be inclined to doubt it. I think she was compelled.”
“How?”
I stood up and moved closer to his desk. It was dark mahogany and looked at least fifty years old. Its top was orderly. There was a blotter in a tooled leather holder, a two-tiered in-and-out box, a spindle, a pair of framed photographs. He watched me pick up both photographs and look at them. One showed a woman about forty, her eyes out of focus, an uncertain smile on her face. I sensed that the expression was not uncharacteristic. The other photo was of Wendy, her hair medium in length, her eyes bright, and her teeth shiny enough to sell toothpaste.
“When was this taken?”
“High school graduation.”
“And this is your wife?”
“Yes. I don’t know when that was taken. Six or seven years ago, I would guess.”
“I don’t see a resemblance.”
“No. Wendy favored her father.”
“Blohr.”
“Yes. I never met him. I’m told she resembled him. I couldn’t say one way or the other, on the basis of my own knowledge, but I’m told she does. Did.”
I returned Mrs. Hanniford’s photo to its place on his desk. I looked into Wendy’s eyes. We had become too intimate these past few days, she and I. I probably knew more about her than she might have wanted me to know.
“You said you thought she was compelled.”
I nodded.
“By what?”
I put the photo back where it belonged. I watched Hanniford try not to meet Wendy’s eyes. He didn’t manage it. He looked into them and winced.
I said, “I’m not a psychologist, a psychiatrist, any of those things. I’m just a man who used to be a cop.”
“I know that.”
“I can make guesses. I’d guess she could never stop looking for Daddy. She wanted to be somebody’s daughter, and they kept wanting to fuck her. And that was all right with her because that was what Daddy was, he was a man who took Mommy to bed and got her pregnant and then went away to Korea and was never heard from again. He was somebody who was married to somebody else, and that was all right, because the men she was attracted to were always married to somebody else. It could get very hairy looking for Daddy because if you weren’t careful he might like you too much and Mommy might take a lot of pills and it would be time for you to go away. That’s why it was safer all around if Daddy gave you money. Then it was all on a cash-and-carry basis and Daddy wouldn’t flip out over you and Mommy wouldn’t take pills and you could stay where you were, you wouldn’t have to leave. I’m not a psychiatrist and I don’t know if this is the way it works in textbooks or not. I never read the textbooks and I never met Wendy. I didn’t get inside of her life until her life was over. I kept trying to get into her life and I kept getting into her death instead. Do you have anything to drink?”
“Pardon me?”
“Do you have anything to drink? Like bourbon.”
“Oh. I think there’s a bottle of something or other.”
How could you not know whether or not you had any liquor around?
“Get it.”
His face went through some interesting changes. He started off wondering who the hell I thought I was to order him around, and then he realized that it was immaterial, and then he got up and went over to a cabinet and opened a door.
“It’s Canadian Club,” he announced.
“Fine.”
“I don’t believe I have anything to mix it with.”
“Good. Just bring the bottle and a glass.” And if you don’t have a glass, that’s all right, sir.
He brought the bottle and a water tumbler and watched with clinical interest as I poured whiskey until the glass was two-thirds full. I drank off about half of it and put the glass down on top of his desk. Then I picked it up quickly because it might have left a ring otherwise, and I made hesitant motions and he decoded them and handed me a couple of memo slips that could serve as a coaster.
“Scudder?”
“What?”
“Do you suppose a psychiatrist could have helped her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she went to one. I couldn’t find anything in her apartment to suggest that she did, but it’s possible. I think she was helping herself.”
“By living the way she did?”
“Uh-huh. Her life was a fairly stable one. It may not look like it from the outside, but I think it was. That’s why she carried the Maisel girl as a roommate. It’s also why she hooked up with Vanderpoel. Her apartment had a very settled feel to it. Well-chosen furniture. A place to live in. I think the men in her life represented a stage she was working her way through, and I would guess that she consciously saw it that way. The men represented physical and emotional survival for the time being, and I think she anticipated reaching a point where she wouldn’t need them anymore.”
I drank some more whiskey. It was a little sweet for my taste, and a little too smooth, but it went down well enough.
I said, “In some ways I learned more about Richie Vanderpoel than I did about Wendy. One of the people I talked to said all ministers’ sons are crazy. I don’t know that that’s true, but I think most of them must have a hard time of it. Richie’s father is a very uptight type. Stern, cold. I doubt that he ever showed the boy much in the way of warmth. Richie’s mother killed herself when he was six years old. No brothers or sisters, just the kid and his father and a dried-up housekeeper in a rectory that could double as a mausoleum. He grew up with mixed-up feelings about both of his parents. His feelings in that area complemented Wendy’s pretty closely. That’s why they were so good for each other.”
“Good for each other!”
“Yes.”
“For God’s sake, he killed her!”
“They were good for each other. She was a woman he wasn’t afraid of, and he was a man she couldn’t mistake for her father. They were able to have a domestic life together that gave them both a measure of security they hadn’t had before. And there was no sexual relationship to complicate things.”
“They didn’t sleep together?”
I shook my head. “Richie was homosexual. At least he’d been functioning as a homosexual before he moved in with your daughter. He didn’t like it much, wasn’t comfortable about it. Wendy gave him a chance to get away from that life. He could live with a woman without having to prove his manhood because she didn’t want him as a lover. After he met her he stopped making the rounds of the gay bars. And I think she stopped seeing men in the evenings. I couldn’t prove it, but earlier she had been getting taken out for dinner several nights a week. The kitchen in her apartment was fully stocked when I saw it. I think Richie cooked dinner for the two of them just about every night. I told you a few minutes ago that I thought Wendy was working things out. I think both of them were working things out together. Maybe they would have started sleeping together eventually. Maybe Wendy would have stopped seeing men professionally and gone out and taken a job. I’m just guessing, that’s all any of this is, but I’d take the guess a little further. I think they would have gotten married eventually, and they might even have made it work.”