“That last picture’s not straight, the one from Golden Girls.”
Rose straightened the picture, brushing off a speck of dust with the sleeve of Ethel’s plaid dress. She said, with a sigh, “Golden Girls. Ah, that was a production. Remember it, Blanche?”
“I remember.”
“Those were the days. I was married to Hamman then, Dwight Hamman. God, what a skunk he turned out to be, a real crook if I ever saw one.”
“You saw more than one,” Mrs. Cushman said pointedly. “And more than saw, too.” From the kitchen below came the sound of the supper bell.
“Chained to the bed. Huh.”
“Morally, I was.”
“Justice ain’t been done.”
But justice was vast, evasive, misty. You could not talk to it, play canasta with it, invite it for a cup of tea. Besides, there was the vague possibility that everyone had indeed suffered enough.
The two women went down the stairs to supper arm in arm, with justice following at a respectful distance.
On the couch in his own parlor Captain Greer was enjoying his after-dinner nap. His stomach was full and his dream was sweet: he had arrested all of them—Rose and Willett and Jack and Ethel and Dalloway and Lora, yes, even Miriam and Frank—and their sad, pleading faces were looking out at him from behind steel bars.
Greer smiled in his sleep.
About the Author
Margaret Millar (1915-1994) was the author of 27 books and a masterful pioneer of psychological mysteries and thrillers. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, she spent most of her life in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband Ken Millar, who is better known by the nom de plume of Ross MacDonald. Her 1956 novel Beast in View won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. In 1965 Millar was the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year Award and in 1983 the Mystery Writers of America awarded her the Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement. Millar’s cutting wit and superb plotting have left her an enduring legacy as one of the most important crime writers of both her own and subsequent generations.
Rose's Last Summer Page 24