It did. All of a sudden she became anxious to help me.
19
IT PROVED UNEXPECTEDLY DIFFICULT TO GET THE BODY down to the boat. Even when he was struggling and alive, Mathews had seemed lighter than he did as dead weight. In addition it was too dark out to see where we were going, for there was no moon. Twice during the short trip Helen stubbed her bare toes on rocks, fell to her knees and dropped Mathews’ legs, nearly jerking me off balance.
We were both panting and covered with perspiration when we finally got him settled in the bottom of the boat.
“You bring any matches?” I asked.
Helen shook her head.
That necessitated my first trip back to the cottage. I had Helen seated amidship and was just getting ready to shove off when I noticed two lights on the water three or four-hundred yards north of us. I hadn’t taken into consideration the possibility that there might be other night fishermen out tonight, but it now occurred to me that we’d be in a fine fix if another boat came close enough to see into ours.
I made another trip to the cottage for a blanket to throw over the corpse.
Then, finally, we were away from shore. I lit the Coleman lantern and started the outboard motor. I would have preferred to move in darkness but was afraid that an unlighted boat might attract more attention than our light.
At slow speed I headed offshore and south, away from the two stationary lights to the north. Some five hundred yards south on the far side of the lake I spotted a lighted cottage. I headed toward it.
We hadn’t moved fifty yards when a gasoline lantern suddenly flared fifty feet ahead of us on our own side of the lake.
Then a voice called, “Hey, Mathews! That you?”
In panic I glanced toward the small boat that was just leaving shore. But I was relieved to see that I couldn’t make out the appearance of either occupant, despite the bright glare of their lantern. It followed that they couldn’t make us out clearly, either.
“Who is it?” I whispered to Helen.
“John Blake, our nearest neighbor,” she whispered back. “And probably his oldest son.”
“What did your husband call him? John or Blake?”
“By his first name, usually.”
“Hey, Mathews!” the voice repeated, and the boat headed toward us.
Slightly revving the motor to hide the tone of my voice, I shouted above the noise, “Hi, John. Bet I land one before you do.” Then I threw the throttle wide and sped away.
We ran into no one else crossing the lake. When we were even with the lighted cottage, I cut the motor in the center of the lake, which left us about a hundred yards from either shore.
“Sure you can swim a hundred yards?” I asked Helen.
She merely nodded.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s capsize it.”
Cautiously I moved until I was seated on the gunwale, then motioned for Helen to follow suit. She moved just as cautiously, and her added weight caused that side to tip until water began to drip over the edge.
I rocked forward gently and Helen rocked in rhythm with me. On the back rock quite a lot of water was shipped.
“Now!” I said.
Together we threw all our weight forward, then backward, and the boat upturned. When I came to the surface, Helen’s head bobbed up within three feet of me. Off to one side I saw the whiteness of Mathews’ upturned face slowly sink beneath the surface. If Helen saw it, too, I couldn’t tell because I couldn’t make out her expression in the darkness.
Treading water, I asked, “You all right?”
She blew water from her mouth, gasped, “Yes.”
“Then start screaming,” I said. “Then swim for that lighted cottage. Phone me at my apartment when things quiet down.”
With a strong but quiet stroke I headed back toward the Mathews cottage.
Before I was a dozen yards away, Helen began to cry for help. By the time a searchlight near the lighted cottage went on and began to sweep the water, I was a good fifty yards away. I had to dive once, when the probing beam threatened to touch me, but then it picked up Helen and the overturned boat and stopped searching.
I looked back to see a boat leave shore and Helen begin to swim toward it.
No one spotted me during my long swim back to Helen’s cottage, though a couple of boats speeding toward the cries for help passed not very far off. Twenty minutes after capsizing the boat I was dressed, had my bag packed, not forgetting the coiled rope I had left in the bathroom, and was headed for my car. By midnight I was safely back in Raine City in my own apartment.
Lying on the pillow of my bed I found a note reading:
Sunday, 10:00 P.M.
Stopped by on the off-chance that you might have gotten home by now. Hope you don’t mind my using the key you gave me to get in. If it wasn’t for work tomorrow (not to mention my mother) I’d have left a little surprise in your bed for you to find when you walked in. (Me) Hope you caught some fish. See you tomorrow.
Love,
Esther
I was a little irritated that she had used the key without a specific invitation. I had no desire to have her, or any other woman, popping in unannounced whenever she got the whim. I made a mental note to get it from her the next day.
Crumpling up the note, I tossed it in the bathroom waste basket.
Monday morning I picked up a paper on the way to work. The news of Mathews’ drowning was reported on the front page.
It was only the man’s social importance that got his death front-page treatment, however, for the story was routinely handled. It simply reported the drowning as a boating accident and added that Mrs. Mathews had nearly drowned in the same upset. There was no hint that the death might have been anything other than an accident.
The plant was buzzing with the news when I arrived. In the parking lot, in the halls, going up to my floor on the elevator, I heard employees talking of nothing else.
Esther was the first one I spoke to about the drowning. When I reached her desk, she had the morning paper spread out in front of her.
“Morning, Esther,” I said. “You’ve read about it, huh?”
She looked at me and smiled a little wanly. “Terrible, wasn’t it, Tom? I wonder how Mrs. Mathews feels. And—” She decided not to finish the sentence.
“And Gertie Drake?” I provided helpfully.
She flushed. “I think we ought to forget that now.”
“We can, but I doubt that the plant gossipers will,” I said cynically. “They’ll have a field day speculating how Gertie is going to take it. Who will take over his post, do you suppose?”
“I doubt that anyone will for the time being. There will have to be a board meeting, and they can’t hold that until Mrs. Mathews is available. It hardly seems likely she’ll be interested in attending meetings for a while.”
I said idly, “I suppose one of the vice presidents will move in as acting president meanwhile.”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “But it hardly seems necessary. I mean—”
When her voice trailed off, I said with a sour grin, “You mean he was only a figurehead, anyway, so things will run as smoothly without him.”
“That’s an awful thing to say!” she said in a shocked voice.
“Just because he’s dead?” I inquired. “I’m sorry he’s dead. I think he could have done me a lot of good. You should be sorry, too, because his death may lose you your snap job. But it would be hypocrisy for either of us to pretend we thought he was a functioning executive.”
“Well, it seems sort of sacrilegious to say it out loud,” she said in a low tone.
I grinned at her. The convention that no ill should be spoken of the dead has always struck me as rather ridiculous. I had felt no respect for the man alive, and I felt no compulsion to pretend any now that he was dead. My conscience didn’t even bother me for making him dead. Since he had been planning to murder his wife, I had managed to convince myself that my act had been in her defense.
<
br /> The argument had some holes in it, but in deference to my peace of mind I had no intention of examining them.
“Do you think you will lose your job?” I inquired.
“I don’t know. For the time being I suppose they’ll just let me continue to sit here. When the board appoints a new president, it will be up to him whether he wants to keep me or get someone new. Maybe he’ll bring along his own secretary. I’m not going to worry about it. Did you find my note?”
“Uh-huh. I got home about midnight. Why didn’t you leave the key while you were there?”
She looked a little abashed. “You’re mad because I came in when you weren’t there, aren’t you?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But I need that key back. I can’t get in my own back door when I want to. I’ll take it now.”
“I switched purses,” she said. “It’s in my bag at home.”
“Well, don’t forget to bring it in tomorrow,” I said in an irritated tone. “I want it back.”
“All right, Tom,” she said soothingly. “I won’t forget.”
I moved on toward my office.
About ten o’clock I phoned the stenographers’ pool for Norma Henstedder.
Norma was tied up temporarily and didn’t come in until about ten thirty.
“Good morning, Mr. Cavanaugh,” she said in a funereal voice. “Isn’t it awful about Mr. Mathews?”
I agreed that it was an unfortunate tragedy.
After seating herself, carefully adjusting her skirt to conceal her knees and opening her stenographer’s notebook, she said, “I feel so sorry for Mrs. Mathews.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her and she blushed.
“Your emotions show, Norma,” I said dryly. “You feel sorry for Gertie Drake, too, don’t you?”
“Oh, no, sir,” she denied vehemently. “Why should anyone feel sorry for her? She had no right to him.”
Her tone suggested that Gertie had gotten what she deserved, which was a little hard on George Mathews.
I said, “I suppose the scandalmongers are having a ball over how Gertie is taking it. How is she, incidentally?”
“She didn’t come in today, sir.”
Of course she wouldn’t have come in, I thought. She was probably home crying her eyes out.
I felt a little sorry for her. She would have to suffer her grief alone. There was no one she could turn to for sympathy. No one would offer her condolences. She might even draw public censure if she dared to display any grief.
For, as Norma had said, she had no right to George Mathews.
20
BY TUESDAY THE PLANT STARTED TO GET BACK TO NORMAL. Having been only a figurehead boss, Mathews’ absence failed to disrupt operations in the slightest, old Lyman Schyler’s team of assistants carrying on as efficiently as usual. Aside from a little speculation as to who would inherit Mathews’ title of company president, discussion of his death pretty well died down.
For a few minutes a buzz of conversation swept the plant when word was circulated that Wednesday would be a half holiday, so that those employees who wished could attend Mathews’ funeral. But the news hardly created a work stoppage.
From Norma Henstedder I learned that the diehard gossipers were still discussing Gertie Drake, though. The girl hadn’t come to work on Tuesday either. Norma, who had no sympathy whatever for Gertie, had a theory as to why.
“After all her bragging, she just can’t face us girls,” she said. “She made such a big thing of being Mr. Mathews’ girlfriend, and now that he’s gone, she’s got nothing to lord over the rest of us. She’s just an ordinary file clerk again.”
Apparently it didn’t occur to Norma that plain grief might be keeping the girl at home. Or maybe she just refused to credit a fallen woman with normal human emotions.
I asked, “Has anyone telephoned to check on her?”
Norma looked surprised. “I don’t think anyone would want to do that,” she said virtuously. “I mean, everybody knows why she’s absent.”
It was an odd situation, I thought. Ordinarily someone from the office would have phoned to inquire why an employee hadn’t shown up for two mornings in a row. But I suppose her immediate superiors assumed she wanted to be alone with her grief and couldn’t decide just what action to take. So they compromised by taking none.
As had become my habit, I didn’t leave my office until about ten after five on Tuesday in order to avoid Esther on the way out. But this time I found her waiting next to my car in the parking lot.
“Hi,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Are you trying to avoid me, Tom?” she asked bluntly.
“Of course not,” I protested. “What put that idea in your head?”
“You haven’t phoned me in over a week. Except for yesterday, you rush right by my desk in the morning unless I stop you. You wait until you know I’ve gone to lunch before you leave your office. And the same thing after work.”
“You’re developing a persecution complex,” I said with a smile.
“Am I, Tom? Or are you trying to give me a gentle letdown? If you are, I want to know right out. I don’t want to keep making a fool of myself.”
It was a perfect opportunity to end it once and for all. I had been avoiding Esther instinctively, without really examining my motives. Now I realized it was because I didn’t want to risk arousing Helen’s jealousy. Helen had made it quite plain that she wouldn’t put up with a second philandering husband. And after committing murder to get myself a rich wife, I didn’t want to endanger the whole setup by playing with another woman.
Still, I was quite fond of Esther. Fonder of her than I was of Helen, really. I found myself in the position of wanting to eat my cake and have it, too. Since it wouldn’t be discreet to begin seeing Helen publicly for at least a couple of months, it would be nice to have a cuddly little playmate like Esther temporarily in reserve.
Helen would probably choose to live a rather cloistered life for a few weeks, I thought, because her conscience would make her want to convince the public that she was grief stricken. It was extremely unlikely that she would appear in public at night. And since no one knew that Helen and I were even acquainted, it was completely unlikely that anyone would mention to her that I was seeing Esther. I could always dump Esther at a later date, but why do it before it was absolutely necessary?
I said, “I’m up to my ears in my job, Esther. I guess I haven’t been very attentive. Suppose we go to the funeral together tomorrow?”
“Big deal,” she said sarcastically. “I hardly see you for a week and a half, then you invite me to a funeral.”
“We both have to go,” I said patiently. “All the executives are expected to show, and as Mathews’ private secretary you certainly can’t get out of it.”
The invitation suddenly seemed to strike her as funny, for she burst out laughing. “All right, Tom. We’ll go to the funeral together. You planning to buy me lunch first, or shall we meet at the mortuary?”
“I’ll come by your desk to pick you up at noon,” I told her. “I not only plan to buy you lunch, but entertain you all afternoon after the funeral and buy you dinner in the evening.”
“Now you’re beginning to make it sound a little more interesting,” she said with a grin. “So long as the funeral’s only a preliminary.”
I wasn’t worried about Helen seeing me with Esther at the funeral because she would assume it quite natural for a couple of company employees to attend together.
When I picked Esther up at noon the next day, she left her own car on the company lot and we both went in mine.
The funeral was scheduled for two p.m. at a place called the Henderson Funeral Home. We got there about a quarter to.
There was a large audience because Raine City society had turned out en masse and so had the company executive force. Only a smattering of employees other than executives showed up, however, most of them taking advantage of the half holiday for their own purposes. I didn’t see Norma Henstedder there,
or Gertie Drake, either. Esther and I found places at the rear of the room.
Esther whispered, “Gertie isn’t here, is she?”
I merely shook my head. I had wondered if the girl would show, but I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t. It would only have heightened her grief to have to sit anonymously in the audience and watch Helen receive the usual deference accorded the chief mourner.
Helen was seated up front, of course. She sat between a middle-aged man and woman whom I took to be relatives. Before the service, friends and acquaintances went forward to offer condolences. I skipped this courtesy, since as far as anyone knew, Helen and I had never met. As Mathews’ secretary, Esther felt she should go forward, though.
When she rejoined me, she said in a low voice, “She seems to be taking it awfully hard I guess she really loved him.”
I didn’t make any reply, but I had the cynical thought that Helen must be putting on a good act.
When the service was over and the immediate family filed past us up the center aisle, I began to wonder if it was just an act. Helen, wearing a severely cut summer-weight suit of dark blue with a matching hat and veil, was supported on either side by the middle-aged man and woman she had been sitting with. Her face was gray and drawn, and her eyes had the dried-out look of having been drained of every tear that was in her. She moved like a sleepwalker, leaning heavily on the man for support.
I felt vaguely uneasy. Her thoughts were supposed to be on me instead of on her dead husband. But if her grief was assumed, it was the best bit of acting I ever saw off a stage.
Esther and I didn’t go to the cemetery. At two thirty we found ourselves outdoors again with half the afternoon still before us.
“What now?” I inquired.
Esther glanced up at the sky. It was a warm day but a trifle overcast.
“We could go to the beach,” she said reflectively. “But it looks as though it might rain. Maybe we’d better spend the afternoon indoors.”
“Name your bar,” I said.
She gave me a sidewise look. “I was thinking of your apartment.”
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