How Like an Angel

by Margaret Millar

  He heard a car in the distance and raised his head to listen and to watch for it. A couple of minutes later it was visible on the road into camp, a blue and cream Ford Victoria with a man at the wheel. There was no one else in the car and no camping equipment strapped to the roof or piled in the back seat. Richard noticed these details automatically, without being especially curious. It was a few moments before he realized he had seen the car before. About a week ago it had been pulling away from the curb in front of his own house when he had returned home from the Y. When he went in­side, he found his mother in the kitchen, white-faced and silent.

  FOURTEEN

  She saw Quinn getting out of the car and she said to Sally in a carefully casual voice, “Why don’t you go and find Rich­ard? Supper won’t be ready for another half-hour. You could collect more pine cones so we’ll have some to gild for Christmas.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?” The girl glanced thoughtfully at Quinn approaching from the road. “So you can talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it about money?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

  Money, or lack of it, was a key word in the O’Gorman household, and the children had learned to respect it. Sally walked briskly away in search of her brother and pine cones.

  Martha turned to face Quinn. She stood at rigid attention like a soldier confronted with a surprise inspection. “How did you find me? What do you want?”

  “Let’s call this a friendly visit.”

  “Let’s not. I can put up with your hounding me personally, but why do you have to bring my children into it?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s the way things worked out. May I sit down, Mrs. O’Gorman?”

  “If you feel you must.”

  He sat on one of the benches attached to the redwood picnic table, and after a moment’s hesitation she walked over to the other bench and sat down, too, as if she were agreeing to a kind of truce. It reminded Quinn of the last time they had met, in the hospital cafeteria. Then, too, there had been a table between them, and that table, like this one, had been invisibly loaded with questions, doubts, suspicions, accusa­tions. Quinn would have liked to brush them all off with his hand and start over again. He knew, from the hostility on her face, that she did not share this feeling.

  He said quietly, “You’re not obliged to answer any of my questions, Mrs. O’Gorman. I have no official authority to ask them.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “You can, in fact, order me off the premises.”

  “The premises belong to the county,” she said with a vague gesture. “You’re as welcome as anyone else on public camping grounds.”

  “You like this place?”

  “We’ve been coming here for many years, since Sally was born.”

  The statement caught Quinn by surprise. He had assumed that Martha O’Gorman had begun coming to the campsite after her husband’s disappearance. As it was, she had merely continued a practice started years before. It fitted in with what he already knew about her character: she was still trying to carry on her life, as much as possible, in the same way as she had before O’Gorman disappeared or died, as if, by re­peating the pattern, she could magically invoke O’Gorman’s spirit.

  Quinn said, “Then your husband was familiar with the surrounding area, the river and so forth?”

  “He’d explored every inch of the river—both rivers—a dozen times, as I have.”

  She looked as though she was daring him to make something of it. Quinn didn’t have to, the point was already made. If O’Gorman had planned his own disappearance, his plans had been based on knowledge of, and perhaps experiments on, both rivers involved.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re wrong.”

  “Am I?”

  “My husband was murdered.”

  “A week ago you were claiming he died in an accident, you were very sure of it, in fact.”

  “I’ve had reason to change my mind.”

  “What reason, Mrs. O’Gorman?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t trust you,” she said bluntly, “any more than you trust me. That’s not very much, is it?”

  Quinn was silent for a minute. “I don’t know exactly how much it is, Mrs. O’Gorman. I only know I wish it were more. On both sides.”

  “Well, its not.”

  She got up and went over to the grill and removed the ribs from the heat. They were almost as black as the charcoal they had been cooked over.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve ruined your dinner, Mrs. O’Gorman.”

  “You haven’t,” she said crisply. “Richard’s like his father, he has to have all meat burned so it’s less likely to remind him of—well, the source of it. He loves animals, as Patrick did.”

  “You’re sure now that your husband’s dead?”

  “I was always sure of that. It was how he died that I couldn’t make up my mind about.”

  “But you have recently, in fact just this week, decided he was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you told the authorities?”

  “No.” There was a brief flash of temper in her eyes. “And I’m not going to. My children and I have suffered enough. The O’Gorman case is closed and it will remain closed.”

  “Even though you have evidence to reopen it?”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “A conversation I had this afternoon with George Hay­wood’s mother,” Quinn said. “Mrs. Haywood can’t resist an extension phone when other people are on the line.”

  “Well.”

  “Is that all you have to say, well?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Mrs. O’Gorman, it’s not good enough. If you’ve received concrete evidence of the murder of your husband, it’s your duty to hand it over to the police.”

  “Is it really?” she said with an indifferent shrug. “I guess I should have thought of that before I burned it.”

  “You burned the letter?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Both Mr. Haywood and I thought it was the most practical course to take.”

  “Mr. Haywood and you,” Quinn repeated. “How long have you been asking for, and following, George’s advice?”

  “Is that any of your business, Mr. Quinn?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “What way?”

  “I want to find out what the competition is because I think I’ve fallen for you.”

  Her laugh was brief and brittle. “Think again, Mr. Quinn.”

  “Well, I’m glad I amuse you, anyway.”

  “You don’t. I’m not amused, I’m amazed that you’d consider me naive enough to swallow such an obvious line of flattery. Did you expect me to believe you? Did you imagine I’d be so swept off my feet that—”

  “Stop it,” he said sharply.

  She stopped, more from surprise than because he had or­dered her to.

  “I made a statement, Mrs. O’Gorman. Be amused, amazed, or anything else, but I’m sticking by it. Now you can forget it, if you like.”

  “I think we’d both better forget it.”

  “All right.”

  “You—well, you confuse me. You’re so unpredictable.”

  “Nobody’s unpredictable,” Quinn said, “if someone takes the time and trouble to predict him.”

  “I wish you’d—we’d stop talking personally like this. It upsets me. I don’t know what to think any more.”

  “Well, don’t ask George. His advice hasn’t been too good up to now. Was it his idea to burn the letter?”

  “No, my own. He agreed with me, because he thought the
letter was merely a hoax or a bad joke. He didn’t take it seri­ously the way I did.”

  “Who wrote it, Mrs. O’Gorman?”

  She stared up at the sky. The sun was beginning to set and its golden-red rays were reflected in her face. “There was no signature and I didn’t recognize the handwriting. But it was from a man who said he’d murdered my husband five years ago last February.”

  She looked as though she would burst into tears at the least sign or word of sympathy, so Quinn offered none. “Was it a local letter?”

  “No. The postmark was Evanston, Illinois.”

  “And the contents?”

  “He said he’d just been informed that he had cancer of the lung and before he died he wanted to make peace with God and his conscience by confessing all his sins.”

  “Did he give the actual details of the murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “And his motive?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  She shook her head slowly, wincing as if the movement pained her. “I simply can’t tell you. I’m—ashamed.”

  “You weren’t too ashamed to call George Haywood and invite him over to see the letter.”

  “I needed his advice, the advice of a man of experience.”

  “John Ronda’s a man of experience. He’s also a good friend of yours.”

  “He’s also,” she said grimly, “the editor of a newspaper and an incurable talker. Mr. Haywood isn’t. I was sure I could trust his discretion. I had another reason, too. Mr. Haywood knew my husband. I thought he could evaluate the charge made against him in the letter.”

  “The charge against your husband, you mean?”

  “Yes. It was a—a terrible thing. I couldn’t believe it, of course. No wife could, about her husband. And yet—” Her voice, which had been barely more than a whisper, now faded out entirely.

  “And yet you did, Mrs. O’Gorman?”

  “I didn’t want to, God knows. But for some time before my husband’s death I’d been aware of a darkness in our lives. I kept trying to act as though it didn’t exist. I couldn’t force myself to turn on the lights and find out what the darkness was hiding. Then this letter came and the lights were on, whether I wanted them to be or not.” She rubbed her eyes, as if to rub away the memory. “I panicked and called George Haywood. I realize now that it was a mistake, but I was desperate. I had to talk to someone who’d known Patrick and worked with him. A man. It had to be a man.”

  “Why?”

  Her mouth moved in a bitter little smile. “Women are easily fooled, even the smart ones, perhaps especially the smart ones. Mr. Haywood came over to the house right away. I guess I was hysterical by that time. He acted very calm, though I had the impression he was quite excited under­neath.”

  “What was his opinion of the letter?”

  “He said it was a lot of hogwash, that every murder attracts false confessions from emotionally disturbed people. I knew that was true, of course, but there was something so real and poignant about the letter, and every detail of the murder was correct. If the person who sent it was disturbed, then the dis­turbance certainly hadn’t affected his memory or his ability to express himself.”

  “It often doesn’t.”

  “I even considered the possibility that Patrick was alive and had written it himself. But there were too many discrepancies. First of all, it wasn’t his style. The envelope was addressed to Mrs. Patrick O’Gorman, Chicote, California. Patrick would surely have remembered his own street and house number. Then, too, the writing wasn’t Patrick’s. He was left-handed and wrote with an extreme slant towards the left. The handwriting in the letter slanted in the opposite direction and it was very awkward and childish, more like a third-grader’s than a grown man’s. But the overwhelming reason Patrick couldn’t have written the letter was the accusation against him. No man would admit such a thing about himself.”

  “Did the writer claim to have known your husband well?”

  “No. He’d never seen him until that night. He was a hobo who’d been camping out by the river. When the weather got too bad he decided to move on to Bakersfield. He was stand­ing on the side of the road waiting to hitch a ride. Patrick stopped and picked him up. Then Patrick—oh, my God, I can’t believe it, I won’t!”

  Quinn knew she did, though, and no amount of tears would wash away the belief. She was weeping, almost without sound, her hands covering her face, the tears slithering out between her fingers, down her wrists, into the sleeves of her denim jacket.

  “Mrs. O’Gorman,” he said. “Martha. Listen to me, Martha. Perhaps Haywood was right and the letter was a sadistic joke.”

  She raised her head and stared at him, looking like a forlorn child. “How could anyone hate me that much?”

  “I don’t know. But a twisted person can hate anyone, with or without reason. What was the general tone of the letter?”

  “Sorrow and regret. Fear, too, fear of dying. And hatred, but not directed against me. He seemed to loathe himself for what he’d done, and Patrick for making him do it.”

  “Your husband made an improper advance, is that what you’ve been trying to say, Martha?”

  “Yes.” It was hardly more than a sigh of admission.

  “That’s why you burned the letter instead of showing it to the authorities?”

  “I had to destroy it, for the sake of my children, myself—yes, and for Patrick’s sake, too. Don’t you see that?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “There was nothing to be gained by going to the police, and everything to be lost. A great deal’s been lost already, but it’s my own private personal loss, and I can stand that as long as my children are protected and Patrick’s good name is kept intact. As it will be. Even if you went to the police and told them everything I’ve said this afternoon, they couldn’t do a thing. I would deny every word of it, and so would Mr. Hay­wood. I have his promise. The letter never existed.”

  “I suppose you realize that suppressing evidence about a murder is very serious?”

  “Legally, I guess it is, but that doesn’t concern me right now. It’s funny, I’ve always been a law-abiding citizen but at the moment I couldn’t care less about the legal technicali­ties. If a murderer goes unpunished because of me, I won’t regret it. Too many innocent people would be punished along with him. Justice and the law don’t always amount to the same thing—or are you still too young and starry-eyed to have found this out?”

  “Not young,” Quinn said. “Definitely not starry-eyed.’“

  She was studying him intently, her face grave and a little sad. “I think you’re both.”

  “That’s your privilege.”

  “You’d like me to go running to the police, wouldn’t you?”

  “No. I just—”

  “Yes, you would. You really believe that when the law demands an eye for an eye, that’s what it gets. Well, you’re wrong. The mathematics involved becomes amazingly intricate and somehow the law ends up with a dozen eyes. Six of them are not going to belong to me and my children. If necessary, I would swear on a stack of Bibles in front of the Supreme Court that no letter concerning my husband’s death was ever delivered to me.”

  “Would George be willing to do the same?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he’s in love with you?”

  “You seem to have romance on your mind,” she said coldly. “I hope it’s just a phase. No, Mr. Haywood is not in love with me. He happens to view the situation in the same light as I do. Whether the letter was a hoax, as he believes, or the truth, as I do, we both agreed that it would be disastrous to publicize it. And that’s exactly what handing it over to the police would have meant, so I burned it. Do you want to know where I burned it? In the incinerator in the backyard, so that e
very single ash of it would be blown away by the wind. It exists now only in the mind of the man who wrote it, and Mr. Hay­wood’s, and my own.”

  “And mine.”

  “Not yours, Mr. Quinn. You never saw it. You can’t be sure there ever was such a thing. I could have invented it, couldn’t I?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I wish I had invented it. I wish—”

  Whatever wishes she had were blown away by the wind like the ashes of the letter. Even though she was looking at Quinn he had the feeling he was invisible to her, that her eyes were focused on some point in the past, some happier and more innocent place than this.

  “Martha—”

  “Please, I don’t want you to call me Martha.”

  “It’s your name.”

  She raised her head. “I am Mrs. Patrick O’Gorman.”

  “That was a long time ago, Martha. Wake up. The dream’s over, the lights are on.”

  “I don’t want them to be on.”

  “But they are. You said so yourself.”

  “I can’t bear it,” she whispered. “I thought we were so happy, such a happy family. . . . And then the letter came and suddenly everything turned to garbage. And it was too late to clean it up, get rid of it, so I had to pretend, I must go on pretending—”

  “Pretend yourself right into a butterfly net. I can’t stop you. I can warn you, though, that you’re making too much of everything. Your life didn’t change from moonlight and roses to garbage just because O’Gorman made a pass at another man. It was always some moonlight, some roses, some garbage, like anyone else’s life. You’re not a tragic heroine picked out for special glory and special disaster, and O’Gorman wasn’t a hero or a villain, just an unfortunate man. You told me the last time we talked that you were very realistic. Do you still be­lieve that?”

  “I don’t know. I—I thought I was. I managed things so that they worked out.”

  “Including O’Gorman.”

  “Yes.”

  “You knocked yourself out covering up O’Gorman’s mis­takes and weaknesses. Now that you’ve come to realize you knocked yourself out for nothing, you can’t face it. One min­ute you stick your chin in the air and announce proudly that you’re Mrs. Patrick O’Gorman, and the next minute you’re squawking about garbage. When are you going to reach a compromise?”