“I think the letter was intended for Mrs. Brant.”
“You said it was addressed to Mrs. Oakley.”
“Jessie Brant and the Oakley girl, Mary Martha, are best friends. According to Brant, they’re inseparable, which no doubt involves a lot of visiting back and forth in each other’s houses. Mary Martha’s a tall girl for her age, a trifle overweight, and inclined to be cautious. The writer of the letter wasn’t describing Mary Martha. He, or she, was describing Jessie.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“I can be sure of two things. Mary Martha’s at home with her mother and Jessie isn’t.”
Gallantyne stood in silence for a minute. Then he picked up the letter, refolded it and put it in his pocket. “We won’t tell anybody about this right now, not the parents or the press or anyone else.”
(20)
Howard Arlington woke up at dawn in a motel room. Seen through half-closed eyes the place looked the same as a hundred others he’d stayed in, but gradually differences began to show up: the briefcase Virginia had given him years ago was not on the bureau where he always kept it, and the luggage rack at the foot of the bed was empty. When he turned his head his starched collar jabbed him in the neck and he realized he was still fully dressed. Even his tie was knotted. He loosened it but the tightness in his throat didn’t go away. It was as if, during the night, he’d tried to swallow something too large and too fibrous to be swallowed.
He got up and opened the drapes. Fog pressed against the window like the ectoplasm of lost spirits seeking shelter and a home. He closed the drapes again and turned on a lamp. Except for the outline of his body on the chenille bedspread, the room looked as though it hadn’t been occupied. The clothes closet was empty, the ashtrays unused, the drinking glasses on the bureau still wrapped in wax paper.
He couldn’t remember checking into the motel; yet he knew he must have registered, given his name and address and car license number, and paid in advance because he had no luggage. His last clear recollection was of Virginia standing in the Brants’ patio saying she didn’t want a child any more: “We no longer have anything to offer a child.... How cruel it would be to pass along such an ugly thing as life. Poor Jessie. ... She will lose her innocence and high hopes and dreams; she will lose them all. By the time she’s my age she will have wished a thousand times that she were dead.”
He’d quarreled with Virginia and he was in a motel. These were the only facts he was sure of. Where the motel was, in what city, how he’d reached it and why, he didn’t know. He spent so much of his life driving from one city to another and checking in and out of motels that he must have acted automatically.
He left the room key on top of the bureau and went out to his car. On the front seat there was an empty pint bottle of whiskey and a hole half an inch wide burned in the upholstery by a cigarette. Fact three, he thought grimly, I was drunk. He put the bottle in the glove compartment and drove off.
The first street sign he came to gave him another fact: he was still in San Félice, down near the breakwater, no more than four miles from his own house.
The lights in the kitchen were on when he arrived. It was too early for Virginia to be awake and he wondered whether she’d left them on, expecting him home, or whether she’d forgotten to turn them off. She often forgot, or claimed to have forgotten. Sometimes he thought she kept them on deliberately because she was afraid of the dark but didn’t want to admit it. He parked his car beside hers in the garage, then crossed the driveway and walked up the steps of the back porch. The door was unlocked.
Virginia was sitting at the kitchen table with the big retriever lying beside her chair. Neither of them moved.
Howard said, “Virginia?”
The dog opened his eyes, wagged his tail briefly and perfunctorily, and went back to sleep.
“At least the dog usually barks when I get home,” he said. “Don’t I even rate that much anymore?”
Virginia turned. Her eyes were bloodshot, the lids blistered by the heat of her tears and surrounded by a network of lines Howard had never seen before. She spoke in a low, dull voice.
“The police are looking for you.”
“The police? Why in heaven’s name did you call them in? You knew I’d be back.”
“I didn’t. Didn’t know, didn’t call them.”
“What’s going on around here anyway? What have the police got to do with my getting drunk and spending the night in a motel?”
“Is that what you did, Howard?”
“Yes.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Why should I have to prove it?”
She covered her face with her hands and started to weep again, deep, bitter sobs that shook her whole body. The dog rose to a sitting position and put his head on her lap, watching Howard out of the corner of his eye, as if he considered Howard responsible for the troubled sounds.
He blames me for everything, Howard thought, just the way she does. Only this time I don’t even know what I’m being blamed for. Did I do something while I was drunk that I don’t remember? I couldn’t have been in a fight. There are no marks on me and my clothes aren’t torn.
“Virginia, tell me what happened.”
“Jessie—Jessie’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Nobody knows. She—she just disappeared. Ellen took her a glass of water about ten o’clock and that’s the last anyone saw of her except—” She stopped, pressing the back of her hand against her trembling mouth.
“Except who?” Howard said.
“Whoever made her disappear.”
Howard stared at her, confused and helpless. He wasn’t sure whether she was telling the truth or whether she’d imagined the whole thing. She’d been acting and talking peculiarly last night, standing in the dichondra patch saying she was a tree.
She saw his incredulity and guessed the reason for it. “You think I’ve lost my mind. Well, I wish I had. It would be easier to bear than this, this terrible thing.” She began to sob again, repeating Jessie’s name over and over as if Jessie might be somewhere listening and might respond.
Howard did what he could, brought her two tranquilizer pills and poured her some ice water from the pitcher in the refrigerator. She choked on the pills and the water spilled down the front of her old wool bathrobe. Its coldness was stinging and shocking against the warm skin between her breasts. She let out a gasp and clutched the bathrobe tightly around her neck. Her eyes were resentful but they were no longer wild or weeping.
“So the police are looking for me,” Howard said. “Why?”
“They’re questioning everyone, friends, neighbors, anyone who knew—who knows her. They said in cases like this it’s often a relative or a trusted friend of the family.”
“Cases like what?”
She didn’t answer.
“When did she disappear, Virginia?”
“Between ten and eleven. Ellen tucked her in bed at ten o’clock, then she took a sleeping capsule and went to bed herself. Dave was out looking for you. Ellen said she’d locked the back door but when Dave came back it was unlocked. He checked Jessie’s bedroom to see if she was sleeping. She was gone. He searched the house, calling for her, then he woke Ellen up. They came here to our house. We looked all over but we couldn’t find Jessie. I called the police and Dave set out for Mary Martha’s house, using the path along the creek that the girls always took.”
“Kids have run away before.”
“The only clothes missing are the pajamas she was wearing, a bathrobe and a pair of slippers. Besides, she had no motive and no money.”
“She had the twenty dollars I gave her the other night.”
“Why, of course.” Virginia’s face came alive with sudden hope. “Why, that would seem like a fortune to Jessie. We�
�ve got to tell—”
“We tell no one, Virginia.”
“But we must. It might throw a whole new light on everything.”
“Including me,” Howard said sharply. “The police will ask me why I gave the kid twenty dollars. I’ll tell them because I was sore at you and wanted to get back at you. But will they believe it?”
“It’s the truth.”
“It might not strike them that way.”
She didn’t seem to understand what he was talking about. When he spelled it out for her, she looked appalled. “They couldn’t possibly think anything like that about you, Howard.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a respectable married man.”
“Coraznada State Hospital is full of so-called respectable married men.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his neck. “Did the police question you?”
“Yes. A Lieutenant Gallantyne did most of the talking. I don’t like him. Even when I was telling the truth he made me feel that I was lying. There was another man with him, a Mr. MacPherson. Every once in a while they’d put their heads together and whisper. It made me nervous.”
“Who’s MacPherson?”
“Dave said he’s a lawyer.”
“Whose lawyer?”
“Mrs. Oakley’s.”
“How did Mrs. Oakley get into this?”
“I don’t know. Stop bullying me, I can’t stand it.”
She seemed on the verge of breaking up again. Howard got up, put some water and coffee in the percolator and plugged it in. After a time he said, “I’m not trying to bully you, Virginia. I simply want to find out what you told the police about last night so I can corroborate it. It wouldn’t be so good—for either of us—if we contradicted each other.”
She was looking at him, her eyes cold under their blistered lids. “You don’t care that Jessie has disappeared, do you? All you care about is saving your own skin.”
“And yours.”
“Don’t worry about mine. Everybody knows how I love the child.”
“That’s not quite accurate, Virginia,” he said quietly. “Everybody knows that you love her, but not how you love her.”
The coffee had begun to percolate, bubbling merrily in the cheerless room. Virginia turned and looked at the percolator as if she hoped it would do something unexpected and interesting like explode.
She said, “Where did you go after you left the Brants’ last night?”
“To a liquor store and then down to the beach. I ended up at a motel.”
“You were alone, of course?”
“Yes, I was alone.”
“What motel?”
“I don’t remember, I wasn’t paying much attention. But I could find it again if I had to.”
“Ellen told the police,” she said, turning to face him, “that you were jealous of my relationship with Jessie.”
“That was neighborly of her.”
“She had to tell the truth. Under the circumstances you could hardly expect her to lie to spare your feelings.”
“It’s not my feelings I’m worried about. It is, as you pointed out, my skin. What else was said about last night?”
“Everything that happened, how we quarreled, and the funny way you talked to Jessie as if you were half-drunk when you only had two beers; how you tore off in the car and Dave tried to find you and couldn’t.”
“I didn’t realize what loyal friends I had. It moves me,” he added dryly. “It may move me right into a cell. Or was that the real objective?”
“You don’t understand. We were forced to tell the whole truth, all of us. A child’s life might be at stake. Gallantyne said every little detail could be vitally important. He made us go over and over it. I couldn’t have lied to protect you even if I’d wanted to.”
“And the implication is, you didn’t particularly want to?”
She was staring at him in incredulity, her mouth partly open. “It still hasn’t come through to you yet, has it? A child is missing, a nine-year-old girl has disappeared. She may be dead, and you don’t seem to care. Don’t you feel anything?”
“Yes. I feel somebody’s trying to make me the goat.”
Between four and seven in the morning Ellen Brant slept fitfully on the living-room couch beside the telephone. She’d dreamed half a dozen times that the phone was ringing and had wakened up to find herself reaching for it. She finally got up, washed her face and ran a comb through her hair, and put on a heavy wool coat over her jeans and T-shirt. Then she went into the bedroom to see if Dave was awake and could hear the telephone if it rang.
He was lying on his back, peering up at the ceiling. He turned and looked at her, the question in his eyes dying before it had a chance to be born. “There’s been no news, of course.”
“No. I’m going over to the Oakleys’. I want to ask Mary Martha some questions.”
“The lieutenant will do that.”
“She might talk to me more easily. She and her mother freeze up in front of strangers.”
“What’s it like outside?”
“Cold and foggy.”
She knew he was thinking the same thing she was, that somewhere in that cold fog Jessie might be wandering, wearing only her cotton pajamas and light bathrobe. Biting her underlip hard to keep from breaking into tears again, she went out to the garage and got into the old Dodge station wagon. The floorboard of the front seat was covered with sand from yesterday’s trip to the beach. It seemed to have happened a long time ago and in a different city, where the sun had been shining and the surf was gentle and the sand soft and warm. She had a feeling that she would never see that city again.
She backed out of the driveway, tears streaming down her face, warm where they touched her cheeks, already cold when they reached the sides of her neck. She brushed them angrily away with the sleeve of her coat. She couldn’t afford to cry in front of Mary Martha, it might frighten her into silence, or worse still, into lying. She had seen Mary Martha many times after an emotional scene at home. The effect on her was always the same—blank eyes, expressionless voice: no, nothing was the matter, nothing had happened.
Mary Martha answered the door herself, first opening it only as far as the chain would allow. Then, recognizing Ellen, she unfastened the chain and opened the door wide. In spite of the earliness of the hour she was dressed as if for a visit to town in pink embroidered cotton and newly whitened sandals. Her pony-tail was neat and so tightly fastened it raised her eyebrows slightly. She looked a little surprised to see Ellen, as though she might have been expecting someone else.
She said, “If you want my mother, she’s in the kitchen making breakfast.”
“I prefer to talk to you alone, Mary Martha.”
“I’d better get my mother’s permission. She’s kind of nervous this morning, I don’t know why. But I have to be careful.”
“She hasn’t told you anything?”
“Just that Mac was coming over with a soldier and we were all going to have a chat.”
“A soldier?”
“He’s a lieutenant. I’m supposed to remember to call him that so I’ll make a good impression.” Mary Martha looked down at her dress as if to reassure herself that it was still clean enough to make a good impression. “Do you want to come in?”
“Yes.”
“I guess it’ll be all right.”
She was just closing the door when Kate Oakley’s voice called out from the kitchen, “Mary Martha, tell Mac I’ll be there in a minute.”
“It’s not Mac,” the child said. “It’s Jessie’s mother.”
“Jessie’s—?” Kate Oakley appeared at the far end of the hall. She began walking toward them very rapidly, her high heels ticking on the linoleum like clocks working on different time schedules, e
ach trying to catch up with the other. Her face was heavily made up to look pink and white but the gray of trouble showed through. She placed one arm protectively around Mary Martha’s shoulders. “You’d better go and put the bacon in the warming oven, dear.”
“I don’t care if it gets cold,” Mary Martha said. “It tastes the same.”
“You mustn’t be rude in front of company, lamb. That’s understood between us, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Off you go.”
Mary Martha started down the hall.
“But I want to talk to her,” Ellen said desperately. “I’ve got to. She might know something.”
“She knows nothing. She’s only a child.”
“Jessie’s only a child, too.”
“I’m sorry. I really am sorry, Mrs. Brant. But Mary Martha isn’t supposed to talk to anyone until our lawyer arrives.”
“You haven’t even told her about Jessie, have you?”
“I didn’t want to upset her.”
“She’s got to be told. She may be able to help. She might have seen someone, heard something. How can we know unless we ask her?”
“Mac will ask her. He can handle these—these situations better than you or I could.”
“Is that all it is to you, a situation to be handled?”
Kate shook her head helplessly. “No matter what I said to you now, it would seem wrong because you’re distraught. Further conversation is pointless. I must ask you to leave.” She opened the heavy oak door. “I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Brant, but I think I’m doing the right thing. Mac will talk to Mary Martha. She feels freer with him than she would with you or me.”
“Even though he has a policeman with him?”
“Did she tell you that?”
“I figured it out.”
“Well, it won’t make any difference. Mary Martha adores Mac and she’s not afraid of policemen.”
But the last word curled upward into a question mark, and when Ellen looked back from the bottom of the porch steps, Kate was hanging on to the oak door as if for support.
The Fiend Page 20