Grandy kissed her. He went out. The door fell softly closed. She stood quite still a moment. It's all right. It's all right. Of course, it's all right. She slipped off the rosy robe. Grandy believes me. Mathilda brushed her teeth very thoroughly and vigorously. She put herself to bed with great decision and firmness. It was almost as if she had to prove she was firm and unshaken.
Grandy's beautiful bathroom, a bubble of glass and luxury, had been designed and built for him by one of his famous friends, an architect of the modern school. It had been installed for some four years. Before that, Grandy had for his own the bath between his room and the garden room, which bath now served the garden room alone. The connecting door to Grandy's room had been locked and forgotten.
So it was that Jane, sitting in the dark with her eye to the faintest crack at the edge of her own door,k where she had just not quite closed it, saw Grandy come out of Mathilda's room, the gray room, go up toward the front of the house and enter his own place. She did not see him come out again, as indeed he did not, for she watched until dawn.
But Althea, gargling her throat, heard his tapping on the locked and bolted door.
“Grandy?”
“Slip the latch, chickabiddy. Are you decent?”
Althea slipped the latch. “I'm decent,” she said sulkily.
He stood in the half-open door, looking at her with a worried frown. “Oliver?”
“Oh.” Althea slashed at the rack with her towel. She had a white satin negligee pulled tight around her hips. The wide sleeves were embroidered in silver. "We had a fight. A regular knock-down, drag-out."
Tm so sorry" said Grandy. "So sorry, dear."
"Hell get over it," she said. She looked angry to the point of tears.
"Was it because of Francis?"
"Such stupid nonsense!" cried Althea.
"He thought-"
"I don't know what he thought, but I can guess. Just because I wouldn't tell him what we were talking about."
"But why not, chicken?" Grandy moved in a little, all benevolence, all loving concern.
"I might have told him if he hadn't been so nasty." She sniffed. "Oliver gets on a high horse and he's just unbearable."
"Then it wasn't a secret?"
“I don't know," she said thoughtfully. A funny cruel little smile grew on her sulky face. "You know, Tyl's a sly one."
"Tyl?" Grandy showed his innocent surprise.
"Francis didn't tell me much," she said, "but he's all upset." She turned away to reach for her lotion. Grandy didn't move. "Such a lot of jealous nonsense!" she stormed. "So Oliver's gone of for the night, and let him! It'll do him good! After all, if Francis wanted me to talk to him, why shouldn't I? Francis isn't very happy."
"Why shouldn't you, indeed?" murmured Grandy mildly. "But you're upset now, chickabiddy, and you mustn't be. It spoils your pretty face."
Althea looked into the mirror.
"Better sleep " said Grandy gently. "Better try to sleep it all away."
"I know," she said. She turned to him repentantly. "Oh, Grandy, you're such a sweet—"
"I want you to sleep well," he said, petting her. One hand on her silver hair, he reached in his pocket with the other. "Some of your little pills, darling? They'll help you."
"Yes," she said. "Grandy, sometimes Oliver's so stupid."
"There," he said. "There. There are these little adjustments."
She took the pills childishly, a lot of them. He held the glass of water for her. She turned to dry her lips. "I hope I don't dream."
Grandy went around the sides of the glass with a towel slowly. He put the glass in her hand. Automatically, she set it in its place.
"Latch the door, chickabiddy. Sleep well." His beaked, beaming face, alight with loving-kindness, remained in the door a brief moment.
"You, too, Grandy," said Althea affectionately. She flicked the latch.
Grandy slept well enough. Jane s head ached where she rested it against her door. Francis, in the garden, was cold. Mathilda had dreams. Oliver, down at the country club, couldn't sleep at all. Althea slept and dreamed no more.
Chapter Seventeen
The sudden and unexpected death of Althea Conover Keane, caused by an overdose of sleeping tablets, was called an accident Tom Gahagen was handling the case himself. He had them all together in Grandy's study, late that morning. All. that is. But Jane Moynihan, who had gone off to New York early. She had been on her train before Oliver came home. It was, of course, Oliver who came home in the morning and, finding it impossible to waken his wife by pounding on the locked bedroom door, had got in
through a window finally, and found what there was of her.
Grandy sat behind his desk, and Mathilda's heart ached for him as, indeed, it also ached for poor white-faced Oliver, for poor Althea, for the dreary day, for herself, for everything. Grandy's hands shaded his face and he kept looking down at the polished wood, too desperately sad to raise his eyes, even to answer questions.
In this privacy, Gahagen at first said he assumed it was suicide. There was the fact that she had locked herself in, locked the hall door after Oliver when he had left her, about midnight The connecting bathroom door to Grandy's room was bolted, and had been for years. She was securely locked in. She had wanted to be alone. The stuff she had taken was available there in her medicine cabinet. Althea had been fond of dosing herself. Locked in alone, obviously she took the stuff herself.
Added to this was her note. "Darling. Forgive me, please do," it read, and it was signed boldly with her big sprawling "Althea," of which the last two letters trailed off insolently, as if she assumed it wasn't necessary to be legible. Everyone would know.
A sad and cryptic little note, it was. Francis had found it on the floor, after Oliver had got in through the window and cried out and opened the door, and Grandy had rushed in to stand by the bed and look down at her. In all the confusion, Francis had seen the paper fluttering at Grandy's slippered feet, stirred, no doubt, by the breeze of his passing.
"Now, I'm mighty sorry," Gahagen said, "but I've got to ask you if anybody knows why she'd have wanted to do a thing like this?" The silence fell in a chunk, as it did here, in this unnaturally sound-proofed atmosphere. "What did she mean— 'Forgive me?"
Tyl thought, But that was what she always said. She remembered Althea's easy, charming "Forgive me's." Something she, herself, could not say at all. The phrase sounded to Tyl, in her own mouth, pretentious and wrong. For Althea it had been so easy. "Forgive me for not telephoning yesterday." "Forgive me for splashing your dress." "Forgive me for not listening." Gahagen wouldn't know how trivial a matter could call out that phrase. She felt too heavy to make the effort to tell him so.
"Who's the note meant for?" he was insisting. "Who's 'darling'?"
Oh, anybody, thought Tyl. Everybody.
Grandy answered as if he tolled a bell. "Surely she meant 'Forgive me for what I am about to do.' God help me, I was afraid."
"Afraid?"
"I don't like to say this now. Yet it's all I can think of. It obsesses me. I had a warning "
"What do you mean, Luther?"
"Premonition. The house felt wrong. She was not right. Not herself." Grandy took off his pince-nez and rubbed his nose. The homely gesture punctuated his talk. It was as if he'd made a homely gesture to reassure himself.