And when the gifts and surprises were not judged to be adequate by Stephen's young men, there were either terrible scenes or the theft of things they saw in the house. That came to a head with a handsome young man named William Walton, who said he was an actor.
She went to Stephen and told him she was sure that his friend, William Walton, was stealing things, and Stephen told her, almost hysterically, that she didn't know what she was talking about. When she insisted that she knew precisely what she was talking about, he said some very cruel things to her. She told Stephen that the next time something turned up missing, she was going to the police.
It did and she did, and the police came and did nothing. When Stephen heard about her calling the police, there was another scene, ending when she told him he had two days to find someplace else to live.
Stephen had moved out the next day. She had come down the stairs as he was putting his suitcases out and he had seen her.
"I'm sorry it's come to this, Stephen," she said.
He had looked up at her with hate in his eyes.
"Get fucked!" he had shouted. "You crazy goddamn bitch, get fucked! That's what you need, a good fuck!"
He's beside himself, she decided, because I told him to get out and because he knows that I was right, that his William Walton doesn't really like him for himself and really is stealing things. As long as he could pretend he wasn't stealing things, he could pretend that William Walton liked him for himself.
She had turned and gone back upstairs and into the gun room and wept. The gun room had been her father's favorite place, and now it was hers.
What Stephen had said, "Get fucked," now bothered her. Not the words but what they meant.
Why haven't I been fucked? I am probably the only thirty-fouryear-old virgin in the world, with the possible exception of cloistered nuns. The most likely possibility is that I am not so attractive to men so as to make them really try to overcome what is my quite natural maidenly reticence. Another possibility, of course, is that my natural maidenly reticence has been reinforced by the fact that I have encountered very few (unmarried) men who I thought I would like to have do that to me. Or is it "with" me?
And there is another possibility, rather disgusting to think of, and that is that I am really like Stephen, a deviate, a latent Lesbian. Otherwise, wouldn't I have had by now some of that overwhelming hunger, to be fucked, so to speak, that all the heroines in the novels are always experiencing? Or, come to think of it, some women I know have practically boasted about? Why don't my pants get wet when some man touches my arm-or paws my breast?
Realizing that she was slipping into depression, which, of late, had meant that she would drink more than was good for her, she resolved to fight it.
She took out a bottle of the port her father had liked so much and taught her to appreciate, and drank two glasses of it, and not a drop more, and then left the gun room, carefully locking it after her.
In the next two days there were more thefts of bric-a-brac and other valuables, and she called the police again, and again they did nothing.
So she got in her car and drove downtown to see Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, one of the senior partners in the law firm of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester in the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building. Colonel Mawson wasn't there, but another senior partner, Brewster C. Payne, of whom, she remembered, her father had spoken admiringly, saw her.
She told him what was going on, of the thefts and the break-ins, and how the police had been absolutely useless. He tried to talk her into moving out of the house until the police could get to the bottom of what was happening. She told him she had no intention of being run out of her own house.
He told her that Colonel Mawson and Police Commissioner Czernick were great friends, and that as soon as Colonel Mawson returned to the office, he would tell him of their conversation and that he felt sure Colonel Mawson would get some action from the police.
The very same day, late in the afternoon, Harriet Evans, the gentle black woman who-with her husband-had been helping them run the house as long as Martha could remember, came upstairs and said, "Miss Martha, there's another policeman to see you. This one's a captain."
Miss Martha Peebles received Captain David Pekach, commanding officer of the Highway Patrol, in the upstairs sitting room. She explained the problem all over again to him, including her suspicion that Stephen's "actor" friend was the culprit. He assured her that the entire resources of the Highway Patrol would from that moment guarantee the inviolability of her property.
Somehow in conversation it came out that Captain Pekach was not a married man. And she mentioned her father's weapons, and he expressed interest, and, somewhat reluctantly, she took him to the gun room.
When he showed particular interest in one piece, she identified it for him: "That is a U.S. rifle, that is to say, a military rifle, Model of 1819-"
"With a J. H. Hall action," Captain Pekach interrupted.
"Oh, do you know weapons?"
"And stamped with the initials of the proving inspector," he went on. "Z. E. H."
"Zachary Ellsworth-" Martha began to explain.
"Hampden," Captain Pekach concluded as their eyes met. "Captain, Ordnance Corps, later Deputy Chief of Ordnance."
"He was born in Allentown, you know," Martha said.
"No. I didn't know."
"There are some other pieces you might find interesting, Captain," Martha said, "if I'm not taking you away from something more important."
He looked at his watch.
"I'm running late now," he said.
"I understand," she said.
"But perhaps some other time?"
"If you like."
He gestured around the gun room.
"I could happily spend the next two years in here," he said.
He means that. He does want to come back!
"Well, perhaps when you get off duty," she said.
He looked pained.
"Miss Peebles, I'm commanding officer of the Highway Patrol. We're trying very hard to find the man the newspapers are calling the Northwest Philadelphia serial rapist."
"Yes, I read the papers."
"I want to speak to the men coming off their shifts, to see if they may have come up with something. That will keep me busy, I'm afraid, until twelve-thirty or so."
"I understand," she said. Then she heard herself say, actually shamelessly and brazenly lie, "Captain, I'm a night person. I rarely go to bed until the wee hours. I'm sure if you drove past here at one, or even two, there would be lights on."
"Well, I had planned to check on your property before going home," he said. "I've stationed officers nearby."
"Well, then, by all means, if you see a light, come in. I'll give you a cup of coffee."
After five minutes past one that morning Martha Peebles could no longer think of herself as the world's oldest virgin, except for cloistered nuns, perhaps.
And her father, she thought, would have approved of David, once he had gotten to know him. They were very much alike in many ways. Not superficially. Inside.
Martha knew from the very beginning, which she placed as the moment, post coitus, that he had reached out to her and rolled her over onto him, so that she lay with her face against the hair on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, feeling the firm muscles of his leg against hers, that David was the man she had been waiting forwithout of course knowing it-all her life.
Captain David Pekach drove directly from the meeting in Staff Inspector Peter Wohl's office at Bustleton and Bowler to 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill. He parked his unmarked car in one of the four garage stalls in what had been the carriage house behind the house, then walked back down the drive to the entrance portico.