She looked so upset, he felt sorry for her. Apparently she had especially stocked up for him.
He said, “I like Scotch. But first can I see the letters?”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll fix a drink while you’re looking at them. Why are you so interested in them, anyway? Are you going to write about them in your paper?”
Her tone suggested that she wouldn’t mind. Some out-of-town newsman had missed a mighty chance for a scoop, he thought. Probably she would have agreeably handed the whole stack to the first reporter who asked her for them, if it had occurred to anyone to inquire of her if Bruce Case had ever written her any love letters. Syndicated and published a few at a time, they could have titillated the reading public from coast to coast for a week.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m not interested in them as much as a reporter as I am as an amateur detective. I just like to see everything that has any bearing on the case.”
She looked puzzled, but she didn’t press it. Going over to the writing desk, she pulled open the drawer containing the letters. He sat down.
She carried the stack of envelopes over to the sofa-bed, sat down and laid it on the low cocktail table in front of the sofa. Untying the string, she looked over at him.
“Come over here and we’ll go through them together.”
There was nothing he could do but comply. Rising, he walked over and sat about two feet away from her. She leaned forward to pick up the top envelope, the movement causing the top of her blouse to fall forward so that he glimpsed one rosebud nipple, oddly tiny in the center of its vast white mound.
“They’re all in order,” she said, handing him the envelope. “This is the first one, written about three months after we met. He didn’t write real often, because I had phones both at home and at the beauty shop where I worked, so usually he called if he just wanted me to know he was coming in. He only dropped me a line about once a mouth.”
“I see,” Marshall said, pulling the sheet from the envelope.
She continued to lean forward, her elbows on her knees, and he was conscious of that rosebud in the corner of his vision. Then, to his relief, she not only sat up, but got up as he started to read.
“I’ll fix us a couple of drinks while you’re looking at that,” she said. “We can sip as we go through them.”
“Fine,” he said, finally able to concentrate on the letter.
“On the rocks will be okay.”
She moved on into the kitchen.
Chapter XXII
Like the letter Gail had shown him on Sunday, this one was typed. From its text no one could have told who it was from, who it was to, or where either lived. It was short, merely expressing a few corny sentiments about how much the writer missed the addressee, then mentioning that he would meet her at the usual place on Wednesday night. The letter was addressed to “Honey,” and was signed, “Love from me.” Even the signature was typed.
Gail returned with two old-fashioned glasses, each containing two ice cubes and loaded to the brim with Scotch. She sat down two feet closer to him than before, which placed her thigh right against his.
Glancing at the glasses, he wondered if the woman hoped to get him drunk — or get both of them drunk, since hers was equally full. There must have been four ounces of Scotch in each.
Lifting her glass, she said, “Cheers.”
He raised his, clinked it against hers and took a bare sip. She took a good-sized gulp. When she leaned forward to set down her glass, her left breast pressed into his arm.
“You hardly drank any at all,” she said reproachfully, examining the level of his glass.
“I like to sip my Scotch,” he said.
“Is that the way you’re supposed to drink it? I really don’t know much about drinking. Bruce drank vodka, and I can’t stand the stuff. I got drunk on it the night we met and haven’t been able to face it since. Mostly I just drank ginger ale with him.”
“Let’s look at the rest of the letters,” he suggested.
She insisted on handing him each one individually, since it gave her an excuse to lean forward each time. And each one she urged him to take another sip of his drink. By the time they were halfway through the stack, she had managed to badger him into emptying his glass.
Hers was empty, too, by then. She rose to fix two more.
The early letters merely expressed vague sentiments somewhat short of protestations of love. They were full of such phrases as “I miss you,” and “I want you,” but they carefully avoided the word “love.” That started to appear after about the sixth letter, and thereafter there were constant assurances of his love. In the tenth there was the expressed wish that he were single so that he could proudly show her off to all his friends. The twelfth was the one she had previously shown him, reporting that his wife refused to discuss divorce.
Marshall could almost visualize the gradual pressure Gail Thomas must have exerted to bring about the increasingly passionate avowals. She struck him as the sort of woman who, even though she regarded men as superior creatures and would willingly bow to the will of her man of the moment, would, at the same time, want to envelop him. He imagined her starting, early in the romance, by insisting that if Bruce didn’t love her, they had better part. Not yet ready for that, Marshall supposed he had fallen into the trap and had admitted his love in order to keep her as a bed partner for a while longer. The next step would have been for her to decide to end the affair because “there was no future in it.” Eventually her panting lover, making one small concession after another each time she decided to end the affair, had gotten himself into the position of having promised to divorce his wife and marry her.
Marshall knew the route, because he had once been subjected to this sort of inexorable campaign when he was a senior in college, the year after Betty had left him. He hadn’t had a wife to get rid of, but otherwise the process had been much the same as he imagined Bruce Case had gone through with Gail. One day he had awakened to the realization that the girl he had been chasing solely for the use of her soft white body seemed to consider them engaged. When he tried to back away, she pinned him down with exact quotes of the things he had whispered in her ear under threat of the withdrawal of her favors. He had finally gotten out of it by being blunter than he had ever been before or since.
Bruce hadn’t seemed to mind the envelopment, though. Maybe, in his case, he had actually been in love.
When the blonde returned with fresh drinks of the same caliber as before, she sat so close to him their bodies pressed together all the way from knee to shoulder.
Immediately she insisted on his sampling the new drink. They clinked glasses again, and when she set her glass down, the elastic top of her blouse slipped a little. When she straightened, both rosebud nipples were peeping out above it.
She seemed totally unconscious of the exposed, but he suspected she had stretched the elastic a bit while in the kitchen in order to cause just this effect. He also noted that her short skirt had hiked up halfway to her hips.
He ignored both views to concentrate on the letter.
The second half of the stack was full of vows of undying love and promises of eventual marriage, as soon as the writer could get rid of his burdensome wife. There was nothing, however, to suggest any murderous intent until he got to the last letter. He found it so interesting, he unconsciously lifted his glass and drained it as he read.
From the corner of his vision he was conscious of the blonde’s pleased expression at his sudden bibulousness. She immediately downed her own drink to keep up.
The letter read:
My darling:
I’ve learned that Dell’s Beauty Shop here has a vacancy for a girl, and if you catch the bus here Friday, I’m sure you can get the job. The flat I told you about is still vacant, so you should be able to complete all arrangements the same day. I’d see to it myself, in your name, but in a town this size there would be bound to be talk, so I think I’d better stay out of it altogether. I can hardly wait until you’re so close we can be together for at least a short time every night.