Michael Collins - Night of the Toads

An older woman answered my ring. ‘Yes?’

She was small and motherly, thickened by years of routine daily round in a simple, accepted world. She was dressed now in a suit, on her way out, and her hair was dyed dark. She looked at my missing arm.

‘Mr Theodore Marshall?’ I asked.

‘Theodore?’ She paused. ‘Is it about his theatre?’

‘About Anne Terry.’

‘Anne? Well, come in then.’

Brisk, she led me into a square living room that looked as if it had been there a long time. Clean and pleasant, but with the dusty feeling that comes from age, wear and little change. She sat down, perched on a couch with her handbag on her lap.

‘Well, tell me’ she said. ‘You’ve found her? Where was the silly girl? You’re police?’

She made me think of Ricardo Vega again, of his age. Five, maybe ten years older, the woman looked like Vega’s mother. The will inside a person again. This woman content, even insistent, to be old and comfortable like the heavy, styleless furniture of the room. Only the dyed hair struck a false note. From the hair, and the outdoor suit, I judged she worked.

‘A private detective,’ I said. ‘We haven’t found Anne as far as I know.’

‘Private detective? Then you’ve come to ask Theodore more questions? I assure you my son told all he knew.’

‘People remember later,’ I said. ‘New questions.’

I had the feeling of being interrogated, screened before I could see some dignitary. My business was being analysed, and found not sufficiently urgent.

‘He’s tried to remember anything. We’re both worried, of course. Perhaps if you came back later?’

‘Time could be important, Mrs Marshall.’

She accepted the name. So Theodore Marshall lived with his mother. It didn’t fit my image of him, but, then, what image could I have yet? All his clothes at Anne Terry’s apartment-a home away from Mother? The rent right in both places?

‘But he’s asleep, you see?’ Mrs Marshall said. ‘He’s hardly slept since he heard about Anne. He had an accident last week, quite serious. Now I must go to work.’

I didn’t want to push too hard, but, ‘If I could-’

An inner door opened in the kitchen beyond the living room where the windows overlooked a rear courtyard and the walls of tenements across the yards. Theodore Marshall came out, his fingers automatically straightening his thick hair. In person he was taller and thinner. He wore narrow black slacks custom-made to his slim hips, a silky blue-and-white cotton shirt Ricardo Vega would admire, a sky-blue silk tie, and cuff links of sky-blue stones. A man who liked good clothes-so much that he napped in them. Mrs Marshall’s eyes showed that Theodore Marshall admiration began at home. Maybe only love.

‘I heard, Ma,’ he said. He had a soft, pleasant voice, eager now. ‘You’re a private eye? Can you find Anne? I mean, like, you were hired? Mr-’

‘Dan Fortune. Sarah Wiggen hired me.’

Suprise arched his pale face. He had an unhealthy pallor, and his eyes up close were very pale hazel-the impression of dark eyes coming from sunken eye sockets with dark circles. I had seen faces like his on gamblers who worked tensely in smoky rooms far from the sunlight, and who lay awake nights full of schemes. Like Anne Terry, Marshall had the look of a man who burned his candle at all ends. At least from what I could see of his normal face. I couldn’t see too much. One eye was badly bruised and puffed almost shut. His lips were split, swollen. His nose looked thick and scabbed, and a bandage covered his left ear and part of his cheek. There was a thickness under the silky shirt that had to be bandaged ribs. He saw me staring.

‘Stupid trick,’ he said wryly. ‘Doing the pipe lights at the theatre. Ladder went over, I landed off the stage in the pit. Damn near a hospital job.’

‘You’re surprised Sarah Wiggen hired me?’

‘Sure as hell I am. Not that it isn’t damned sweet of Sarah, but, Christ, I didn’t figure she’d care that much.’

‘Please, Theodore,’ Mrs Marshall said.

He grinned, punched her lightly on the arm. ‘Come on, Ma, I’m a big boy.’

She smiled like a girl. She liked it, her boy’s buddy charm. I realized that it was his swearing she was clucking over, and that it was a standard game with them. They seemed to have a nice relationship. I wondered what Mr Marshall had been like-dull and solid, probably, a quiet man.

‘Sarah and Anne didn’t get along?’ I asked. Sarah Wiggen had hinted at the same thing, but had at least implied that the aloofness was all on Anne’s side.

‘Well,’ Marshall grinned, even blushed. ‘Sarah and me, I, we had a thing for a while. Before I met Anne, you know? We were in the same class a while, me and Sarah. Scene class.’

‘Sarah’s an actress, too?’

‘Was, not now. Quit it. Got some mother-hen job in some kind of residence hall for females.’

‘You and Sarah?’ I said. ‘Then Anne came along?’

‘Bingo, that’s it. We had the same ideas, you know?’

His voice, still soft and pleasant, jerked and jumped like a spastic. Nervous: voice and body. His strange, light eyes were hard to really see, elusive. I saw in them, vaguely, that same self-awareness I had seen in the action pictures of him at the theatre, a small fear that seemed part of him. Not for now, always; as if he lived every day a little afraid. I remembered a very young second mate on a Liberty ship during the war whose eyes had been like that when we entered the war zone. Not afraid of the submarines in themselves, but afraid every day that something would happen to the skipper and first mate, leaving him. A man in over his head on nerve he didn’t really have.

‘You’re nervous,’ I said. ‘Worried about Anne?’

‘That,’ he said, nodded. ‘Maybe more worried without her, you know? She’s cut out, ditched the theatre and all?’

‘You know any reasons she would ditch it?’

‘Not a one.’

‘Nothing? Friends, plans, troubles?’

‘Who knows, you know? I went over on Friday like usual. She wasn’t home. No word before or since. I never see her on weekends, of course. That’s her time with the big sports, money work. Sarah says she talked about going down home, but not to me she didn’t.’

‘You had big plans for your theatre,’ I said. ‘Plans that cost money. Could that be part of her disappearance?’

‘Plans? Hell, we’re not even sure of the next show.’

Mrs Marshall objected, ‘Perhaps you didn’t have big plans, Theodore, but I know Anne did. Why, I’ve heard her talking about them here. It worried me for you. She’s too ambitious.’

‘Knock it off, Ma,’ Marshall said. His voice was curt. ‘Pipe dreams; pie-in-the-sky. Anne and her big dreams. All fog, you know?’

‘Dreams can be trouble,’ I said. ‘Money and influence, is that what she was after?’

Marshall nodded. Mrs Marshall wan’t even listening to me. Her eyes were for her boy.

‘She’s too old for you, Theodore,’ she said.

His pale eyes looked to the ceiling for help. ‘For Christ sake, Ma, I’m four years older than Anne.’

‘She’s a mature woman. You’re still a boy,’ she said.

‘That’s swell, thanks. A boy who lives off his mother, right? Go to work for me, Ma. Work your ass off!’

She flinced, but her voice was calm. ‘That’s hardly called for in front of a stranger.’ She looked at me. ‘Theodore doesn’t like me to work, especially not at night. I’m not fond of it, but the theatre is demanding. He works much too hard, really. He has his odd-hour job, though I’m against that. He shouldn’t waste time on money work without future. Still, the job pays for his clothes, and appearance is vital in the theatre. Of course, I wish Theodore wanted a more solid career, but a career is useless if it isn’t what a man wants. Theodore must have his chance, and you get nowhere with half measures. Now is the time he has to think only of his goal. I’m really quite selfish, you see. Investing for my old age when he’s rich.’