"Well, I've got this much," he said, holding up some wood he had gathered. "Shall we try it?" He walked toward the rock they had selected as a shelter for the fire, but Melinda did not follow him. Vic looked back when he got to the rock, and saw her staring down at the quarry. He wondered if she was going to propose a walk down the path to the bottom, and he decided that under no circumstances would he go down. Not that the place made him uneasy, he thought, but that there might be bloodstains and she might notice them. They might not look like rust stains. But at this moment she had no plans. He could tell that from her relaxed, purposeless stance at the rim of the quarry. After a moment she came back toward him and proposed having a drink.
They poured two glasses of iced Scotch and water from the thermos and ate a deviled egg as a canapé. The fire was doing nicely after a stubborn start. It was certainly not warm, but Melinda stoically took off her polo coat, spread it to lie on, and stretched out on the rock facing the fire. She was wearing her old buff-colored corduroy slacks and her old brown sweater that had holes at the elbows. They had forgotten to bring the lap rug, Vic realized. Vic sat down, rather uncomfortably, on the rock to one side of Melinda.
"What did Tony really say to you that day he took a ride with you?" Melinda asked suddenly.
"I told you what he said."
"I don't believe it."
"Why not?"
She was still staring into the fire. "Didn't you take him for a little ride and just dump him somewhere—dead?"
"Dead how?"
"Maybe strangled," she said with surprising calm. "Didn't you dump him somewhere in the woods?"
Vic gave a short laugh. "Good lord, Melinda." He was waiting for the quarry, perhaps, to cross her mind. She might have been going over, now, all the places in the woods where he might have dropped a body. Melinda knew these roads so well. Hadn't she thought of the quarry? Or would she think that he couldn't possibly have caught a big fellow like Cameron enough off his guard to have pushed him over? That was Vic's only explanation of her not thinking of the quarry. "Aren't you getting hungry?" Vic asked. "I'm ready for a piece of chicken."
Melinda dragged herself up to help Vic unload the picnic basket. Roger was very interested in the chicken, but he was not allowed to have any. Vic sent him off chasing a stick. Then he and Melinda—just as he had foreseen—huddled near the fire and chewed their chicken, but Vic wondered if even in primitive times a man and woman whose relationship was more or less marital had ever known such mistrust of each other. The conversation of a few minutes before had not dulled Melinda's appetite for lunch. Vic smiled, watching her concentration on a chicken breast. They talked of buying Trixie a bicycle for Christmas. It was Vic's idea.
Then Melinda said, “You know, Vic, I think you killed Charley and Tony, too—so why not admit it to me? I can take it."
Vic smiled a little, his suspicions confirmed. The purpose of her sweetness and light lately had been to make him believe she was on his side. "And then have you go to the police and tell them I've made a confession?"
"A wife can't testify against her husband, I've heard." "I've heard that she doesn't have to. She can."
"But I just meant—as long as I know it—"
"Is this all you and Wilson can dream up between you?" he asked. "It isn't good enough."
"You admit it, then?" She looked at him, her eyes full of triumph.
"No, I do not," he said quietly, though he felt angry. Or perhaps it was only embarrassment that he felt, for her. He remembered her embarrassing pretense of affection for him the night he had sat in her room. His anger drove him up. He wandered to the edge of the quarry again and looked down.
And there now in the twinkling water, he saw it. It was next to the step where he had pushed Cameron off, parallel with the edge of the step, just where one might have expected the corpse to rise, if it rose. It had risen.
"Coffee, Vic?" Melinda's voice called.
He peered harder, not bending his body because he did not want to arouse Melinda's curiosity, but tensing himself to concentrate all the power of his eyes. One end was lower than the other. It looked rather beige, but that could be caused by the damnable twinkling of the water lightening Cameron's brown tweed jacket. The weight at one end might be the rock in his trousers. At any rate, the chain had come off.
"Don't you want your coffee, Vic?"
He took a last staring look, trying to estimate how conspicuous the form would be to an ordinary person standing where he was, an ordinary unsuspecting person. Anyone seeing it would look twice, however, might even go down to investigate, especially if the Cameron story crossed his mind.
Vic turned slowly. "Coming," he said, and began to walk back.
Though Vic might have proposed leaving almost immediately, in order to hear the radio concert he usually listened to on Sun day afternoons, he felt this would have been a small concession to his anxiety, so he waited until Melinda had had her coffee and a cigarette and suggested leaving herself. They packed the basket together.
They were home by three-twenty-five, and Vic at once turned on the radio in the living room. He heard the throbbing, urgent beat of the fourth movement of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. At least he thought it was the fourth movement. He was in no mood to care whether he was right or not. He found the music somewhat disturbing, but he kept it on.
Before the concert was over, Melinda came out of her room, went out to his car and came in again. "Vic, I left my scarf. I put it under a rock and I guess I forgot it."
"Would you like me to go back for it?" he asked.
"Oh, not now, you're listening to the concert. Maybe you can get it tomorrow on your way to or from work, if you don't mind. Or I will. I kind of like that scarf. I folded it and put it under a rock pretty close to the fire, on the left facing the fire."
"All right, honey. I'll bring it home at lunch." Vic remembered it with the stone weighing it down. It showed how upset he was, he thought, that he had not noticed it when they were packing up everything else.
After dinner that evening, when Vic was reading in the living room, Melinda came in from her room and asked Vic if he wanted a nightcap. Vic said he didn't think he did. Melinda went into the kitchen to fix herself one. On her way back through the living room she said, "You don't have to get that scarf at noon tomorrow, if you don't want to, because I have a lunch date and I won't be in at noon, anyway."
"All right," he said. He wasn't going to ask any questions. She had made at least two telephone calls from her room that evening, he thought.
Chapter 27
The next day, Vic left the printing plant about a quarter of an hour earlier than usual to go home for lunch, though his times for leaving at noon and in the evening were so irregular that no one would have remarked a fifteen-minute difference one way or the other. He drove to the quarry between Wesley and East Lyme. This time he had taken a length of strong rope—clothesline—with him from the garage, and he intended to use one end of it to secure a good-sized rock and the other end to circle Cameron's body under the arms. It was a bright sunshiny day, and Vic did not tarry to have another look at the corpse in the water before he descended the path. He was careful going down, not wanting to tear his trousers on the brush or to scuff his shoes.
Once on the flat, he approached the place slowly, avoiding looking at the corpse until he was almost at the edge of the step.
It was a roll of paper—water-soaked pulp paper frayed at the end and tied in two places that he could see with twine. The surprise, the absurdity of it made him almost angry for a moment. Then he sighed, and the ache that went through his body made him realize how tense he had been.
He looked up at the blue sky and over at the rugged crest of the opposite side of the quarry. Nothing looked down at him but a few trees. He looked back at the roll of paper. One end was lower than the other, and it was about four-fifths submerged. Vic wondered idly what kept it afloat, wondered if it had a wooden spool of some sort in its center. If he had be
en able to reach it with his foot, he would have shoved it out of the corner, but it was just beyond his reach. It had probably been in the quarry for months, drifting here and there with the wind. He moved closer to the edge, and stared straight down at the spot where Cameron had gone off. He could faintly see the horrible-looking step, yards below in the water, and it looked quite pale, as if nothing rested on it.
He turned around and looked for the bloodstains. There weren't any. It was as if another trick had been played on him. Then he saw the slight reddish discoloration between some little stones. What had happened, he realized, was that the rain or the wind had spread quite a bit of limestone dust and little fragments of stone over the stains. Pushing the stones aside with his shoe, he could see the stain now, a streak about four inches long and an inch wide, this one. But it was so pale by this time. Not worth bothering about. He looked around his feet critically. Not a single stain showed except the one he had deliberately exposed. He really might have saved himself a trip down here, he thought. Carefully, using his hand, he brushed the stones and the dust back over the stain that he had uncovered.
"Hi, there!" called a voice, and the other side of the quarry echoed it.
Vic looked straight up and saw a man's head and shoulders above the edge of the cliff, and recognized him almost instantly as Don Wilson. "Hi!" Vic called back. He had stood up. Now he began to walk casually back toward the path that led up, stiff with terror and shame suddenly, because he remembered hearing—less than two minutes ago—a small, very distant-sounding impact which he had decided to ignore, and which he now realized must have been Wilson's car door closing. He might have been prepared if he had paid attention to it, but he had thought it came from farther away than the flat above where his own car was.
Wilson was moving toward Vic along the top, obviously looking for a path. He found it and plunged down. Vic, already on the path at a place too narrow to pass anyone, went back down the distance he had climbed. Wilson was down quickly, skidding and clutching.
"What're you doing?" Wilson asked.
"Oh, taking a walk. Melinda left her scarf somewhere."
"I know. I've got it," Wilson said, holding it up. "What's die rope for?"
"I just happened to find it," Vic said. "Looks practically new." Wilson nodded, looked around him, and Vic saw his eyes fix suddenly on the roll of paper in the water.
"How've you been, Don? How's June?"
Wilson went down on the flat, apparently for a better look. He stopped short as if he, too, were surprised to find it merely a roll of brown paper. Then Vic saw Wilson look down at his feet, trying to see what he had been interested in on the rock. Vic started up the path again. Wilson was Melinda's luncheon companion, Vic supposed, and she had probably asked him to pick up the scarf on the way to Little Wesley. As simple as that. Simple and ghastly.
"Hey!" Wilson called.
Vic stopped and looked back. They had a clear view of each other. Wilson was stooped at the place where Vic had uncovered the stain.
"Is this what you were looking at? These look like bloodstains! I'm pretty sure they're bloodstains!"
Vic hesitated, deliberately. "I thought so, too, but I think they're rust," he said, and started to climb again.
Wilson was trying to trace the stains to the water, Vic saw. "Hey, wait a minute!" Wilson called and walked toward him, his hands in his trench-coat pockets, his upturned face scowling. He stubbed his toe on a rock and came on."What do you know about those stains? Why were you trying to cover them up?"
"I wasn't trying to cover them up," Vic said, and went on climbing.
"Listen, Vic, is this where you killed Cameron? I'm going to have the police take a look at this, you know. I'm going to ask them to take a look in the water. How does that make you feel?" It made him feel naked and vulnerable. He hated presenting his backside to Wilson as he climbed the path. When he got to the top, he saw that Wilson's car was deep among the trees, standing in the lane. Wilson must have recognized his car and deliberately stopped out of earshot to spy on him. "If your car's blocking the lane," Vic said to Wilson as he came up the path, “would you please back it up? Or conic on through?"
Wilson looked confused and angry for a moment, then lurched off in the direction of the lane. It was a minute or so before Vic heard his car start, and he waited a few moments longer to find out what Wilson was going to do, and heard the motor approaching. Vic got into his own car and started it. He was thinking that if he got rid of the other snow chain in the back of his car, the one on Cameron wouldn't be very definitely identifiable. But there was, of course, Melinda, who would be glad to identify it, and who would probably say she could identify it when she really couldn't. Vic moved his car as soon as he could, and gave Don a wave as he went by him.
His one chance Vic thought, was that Wilson might not be able to persuade the police to dredge the quarry. But if the police were convinced that the stains were blood—and, unfortunately, they would be convinced—they wouldn't need any prodding to look in the water. Vic glanced in the mirror for Don's car. He turned off the dirt road into the highway to Little Wesley without seeing it. Don was probably having a hard time getting through the lane.
Wilson would go to the police now, Vic supposed, just as soon as he got to Little Wesley. Vic pictured the police arriving at the house while he was calmly preparing his lunch, perhaps even eating it. He'd try bluffing Wilson again. The police already knew that Wilson was a troublemaker. The police were, after all, on his side. He might be able to discourage the police from going to look at the bloodstains, Vic thought. All it would take would be coolness.
But he knew it wouldn't go like that. The police would take a look at the bloodstains. If they wouldn't, Wilson would inform Cameron's company, or inform Havermal.
Vic did not quite know what to do.
He thought of Trixie. The Petersons would take her, he thought, if anything happened to him. He stopped thinking about that. That was defeatism. Melinda would get her, anyway. That was worse to think about.
But still he did not know quite what to do.
He would go on about his business. That was the only way he could see it.
He had expected Melinda to be gone when he got to the house. Her car was in the garage. Vic got out of his car quietly, without shutting the door, and went into the living room. Melinda was on the telephone in her room, and he heard her trying to end the conversation quickly, because she knew he had come in.
She came into the room, and he knew from her face that she had been talking to Don. Her face was a confusion of surprise, triumph, and terror. Then, as he kept walking toward her, she took a step back. He smiled at her. She was dressed to go out, probably to meet Don at the Lord Chesterfield.
"I've just talked to Don," she said unnecessarily.
"Oh, you've just talked to Don! What would you do without the telephone?" He walked past her into her room, wrapped the wire of her telephone around his wrist and yanked it from the wall box. "Well, now you haven't got one!"Then he crossed the living room to the telephone in the hall and yanked its wire out in the same manner, so hard that the box came off the wall.
Melinda was standing by the phonograph, really cringing against it in an attitude of exaggerated terror, it seemed to Vic, her mouth open and drawn down at the corners like a mask of tragedy. Medea, Mangler of children and castrator of husbands. Fate had overtaken her at last. He almost smiled. What was he doing after all? Walking toward her.
"Vic!"
"What, darling?"
"Don's coming!" she gasped. "Don't do anything to me, Vic!" He struck her on the side of the head. "So Don's coming and who else and who else? Cameron and Charley and all the rest?"
He struck her again.
She reached for the cloisonné vase on the top of the phonograph, and knocked it off. Then he struck her again, and she was on her hands and knees on the floor.
"Vic!—Help!"
Always that cry to other people! His hands closed around
her throat and he shook her. The stupid terror in her open eyes made his hands tighten all the more. Then suddenly he released her."Get up," he said. After all, he did not want to kill her. She was coughing. "Melinda—"
Then he heard a car outside and the last barrier of his anger broke and he threw himself on her. He imagined he saw Wilson's lank figure and scowling face coming in the door, and he put all the pressure he could on her throat, furious because she had made him furious. He could have won, he thought, without her. He could have won without the telephone that had brought Jo-Jo and Larry and Ralph and De Lisle and Cameron to the house: Ralph the mama's boy, Cameron the pachyderm—
There was a shout at the front door, and then Wilson, self-righteous, unsmiling, meddling, was bending over Melinda, talking to her. Her lips had parted. There was a bluish look about her eyelids, or was it mascara? Or an illusion? Vic heard Wilson mutter to the empty air that she was dead, and then following the direction in which Wilson had looked, Vic saw a policeman standing.
"What're you smiling at?" the policeman demanded, unsmiling.
Vic was about to tell him—"At faith, hope, and charity"— when the policeman took him by the arm. Vic stood up, enduring the loathsome touch, which after a moment became comical, like Melinda's panic, with his usual amenableness. Wilson was babbling behind him, and Vic heard the words "quarry" and "De Lisle" and "Cameron's blood," and he kept on walking with the men who were not fit to black his boots. He saw Trixie romping up the lawn and stopping in surprise as she saw him with the policeman, but frowning at the lawn, Vic could see that she wasn't really there. The sun was shining and Trixie was alive, somewhere.
But Melinda is dead and so am I, he thought. Then he knew why he felt empty: because he had left his life in the house behind him, his guilt and his shame, his achievements and failures, the failure of his experiment, and his final, brutal gesture of petulant revenge.
Deep Water Page 26