Маргарет Миллар - Vanish in an Instant

“One of the Detroit tabloids.”

“Is it...?”

“It’s all in here, yes. Not on the front page.”

“Are there any pictures?”

“Yes.”

“Of Virginia?”

“One.”

“Let me see.”

“It’s not very pretty,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better not.”

“I must see it.”

“All right.”

The pictures occupied the entire second page. There were three of them. One, captioned Death Shack, showed a small cottage, its roof heavy with fresh snow and its windows opaque with frost. The second was of a sleek dark-haired man smiling into the camera. He was identified as Claude Ross Margolis, forty-two, prominent contractor, victim of fatal stabbing.

The third picture was of Virginia, though no one would have recognized her. She was sitting on some kind of bench, hunched over, with her hands covering her face and a tangled mass of black hair falling over her wrists. She wore evening slippers, one of them minus a heel, and a long fluffy dress and light-colored coat. The coat and dress and one of the shoes showed dark stains that looked like mud. Above the picture were the words, held for questioning , and underneath it Virginia was identified as Mrs. Paul Barkeley, twenty-six, wife of Arbana physician, allegedly implicated in the death of Claude Margolis.

Mrs. Hamilton spoke finally in a thin, ragged whisper: “I’ve seen a thousand such dreary pictures in my life, but I never thought that some day one of them would be terribly different to me from all the others.”

She looked up at Barkeley. His face hadn’t changed expression, it showed no sign of awareness that the girl in the picture was his wife. A little pulse of resentment began to beat in the back of Mrs. Hamilton’s mind: He doesn’t care — he should have taken better care of Virginia — this would never have happened. Why wasn’t he with her? Or why didn’t he keep her at home ?

She said, not trying to hide her resentment, “Where were you when it happened, Paul?”

“Right here at home. In bed.”

“You knew she was out.”

“She’d been going out a great deal lately.”

“Didn’t you care?”

“Of course I cared. Unfortunately, I have to make a living. I can’t afford to follow Virginia around picking up the pieces.” He went over to the built-in bar in the south corner of the room. “Have a nightcap with me.”

“No, thanks. I... those stains on her clothes, they’re blood?”

“Yes.”

“Whose blood?”

“His. Margolis’.”

“How can they tell?”

“There are lab tests to determine whether blood is human and what type it is.”

“Well. Well, anyway, I’m glad it’s not hers.” She hesitated, glancing at the paper and away again, as if she would have liked to read the report for herself but was afraid to. “She wasn’t hurt?”

“No. She was drunk.”

“ Drunk ?”

“Yes.” He poured some bourbon into a glass and added water. Then he held the glass up to the light as if he was searching for microbes in a test tube. “A police patrol car picked her up. They found her wandering around about a quarter of a mile from Margolis’ cottage. It was snowing very hard; she must have lost her way.”

“Wandering around in the snow with only that light coat and those thin shoes — oh God, I can’t bear it.”

“You’ll have to,” he said quietly. “Virginia’s depending on you.”

“I know, I know she is. Tell me — the rest.”

“There isn’t much. Margolis’ body had been discovered by that time because something had gone wrong with the fireplace in the cottage. There was a lot of smoke, someone reported it, and the highway patrol found Margolis inside dead, stabbed with his own knife. He’d been living in the cottage which is just outside the city limits because his own house was closed. His wife is in Peru on a holiday.”

“His wife. He was married.”

“Yes.”

“There were — children?”

“Two.”

“Drunk,” Mrs. Hamilton whispered. “And out with a married man. There must be some mistake, surely, surely there is.”

“No. I saw her myself. The Sheriff called me about three o’clock this morning and told me she was being held and why. I wired you immediately, and then I went down to the county jail where they’d taken her. She was still drunk, didn’t even recognize me. Or pretended not to. How can you tell, with Virginia, what’s real and what isn’t?”

“ I can tell.”

“Can you?” He sipped at his drink. “The sheriff and a couple of deputies were there trying to get a statement from her. They didn’t get one, of course. I told them it was silly to go on questioning anyone in her condition, so they let her go back to bed.”

“In a cell? With thieves and prostitutes and...”

“She was alone. The cell — room , rather, was clean. I saw it. And the matron, or deputy, I think they called her, seemed a decent young woman. The surroundings aren’t quite what Virginia is used to, but she’s not suffering. Don’t worry about that part of it.”

“You don’t appear to be worrying at all.”

“I’ve done nothing but worry, for a long time.” He hesitated, looking at her across the room as if wondering how much of the truth she wanted to hear. “You may as well know now — Virginia will tell you, if I don’t — that this first year of our marriage has been bad. The worst year of my life, and maybe the worst in Virginia’s too.”

Mrs. Hamilton’s face looked crushed, like paper in a fist. “Why didn’t someone tell me? Virginia wrote to me, Carney wrote. No one said anything. I thought things were going well, that Virginia had settled down with you and was happy, that she was finally happy. Now I find out I’ve been deceived. She didn’t settle down. She’s been running around with married men, getting drunk, behaving like a cheap tart. And now this, this final disgrace. I just don’t know what to do , what to think .”

He saw the question in her eyes, and turned away, holding his glass up to the light again.

“I did what I could, hired a lawyer.”

“Yes, but what kind? A man with no experience.”

“He was recommended to me.”

“He’s not good enough. Virginia should have the best.”

“She should indeed,” he said dryly. “Unfortunately, I can’t afford the best.”

“I can. Money is no object.”

“That money-is-no-object idea is a little old-fashioned, I’m afraid.” He put down his empty glass. “There’s another point. If Virginia is innocent, she won’t need the best. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed. I have to keep early hours. Carney showed you your room, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Make yourself at home as much as possible. The house is yours,” he added with a wry little smile. “Mortgage and all. Good night, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“Good night.” She hesitated for a split second before adding, “my boy.”

He went out of the room. She followed him with her eyes; they were perfectly dry now, and hard and gray as granite.

Red-faced farmer , she thought viciously.

In the summer the red bricks of the courthouse were covered with dirty ivy and in the winter with dirty snow. The building had been constructed on a large square in what was originally the center of town. But the town had moved westward, abandoned the courthouse like an ugly stepchild, leaving it in the east end to fend for itself among the furniture warehouses and service stations and beer-and-sandwich cafés.

Across the road from the main entrance was a supermarket. Meecham parked his car in front of it. Its doors were still closed, though there was activity inside. Along the aisles clerks moved apathetically, slowed by sleep and the depression of a winter morning that was no different from night. Street lamps were still burning, the sky was dark, the air heavy and damp.