Маргарет Миллар - Vanish in an Instant

Barkeley went toward the washroom. There was no lock on the door, only a hole where the lock had once been.

“Virginia.”

He pushed the door open slowly. Virginia was standing motionless at the washbasin looking at herself in the cheap dust-smeared mirror above it, both fists clenched against her abdomen as if to ease a cramp. The mirror, and the lump over her eye distorted her features.

“I’m ugly,” she said. “Look at me. You never knew that before, how ugly I am.”

“It’s a bad mirror.”

“Is it? Is it really?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head back and forth in a slow melancholy way. “No, that’s not right. I can’t blame the mirror. It’s too easy.”

“You never do anything easy,” he said. “You run too fast and stumble. Then other people have to pick you up off the ground.”

“Is that why you came — to pick me up off the ground?” She smiled, and the ugly girl in the mirror smiled too, her face doubly distorted. “Well, don’t bother. I like it here on the ground. Me and Hearst, a couple of flops. Maybe the two of us should just keep on going west together.”

“You wouldn’t get very far.”

“Would you send the police after me?”

“I’m afraid I’d have to.”

“Because of Claude.”

“Yes.”

She reached out her hand and with her forefinger traced an x in the dust on the mirror, then a whole row of x’s. “Do you think I killed him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you ask my mother? She’ll tell you. She knows everything. You and my mother would make almost as good a pair as Hearst and I. She knows everything, and you never do anything wrong. Wonderful combination, isn’t it? Unbeatable. I can’t beat it anyway and I’ve quit trying. I can’t keep up with all you nice virtuous people who never do anything wrong, who never even feel like doing anything wrong!”

He caught her by the shoulders and turned her around so that she had to look at him instead of the ugly girl in the mirror. “Where did you get the idea that there are only white saints and black sinners in this world?”

She stared at him, mute and suffering.

“It’s an impossible standard to live by, Virginia. It doesn’t leave any room for ordinary human mistakes.”

“Like Claude?”

“Like Claude.”

Her mouth began to tremble uncontrollably, as if the muscles around it had been stretched too tight and suddenly snapped like elastic bands. “I never — I wasn’t anything to him. My mother won’t believe that. She says she does, she always says she trusts me and has faith in me, but I know it isn’t true. The way she looks at me, always expecting that I’ve done something, that I’m bad. And the awful part is I can’t help feeling that she’s right, that I am bad. It’s been like that ever since I can remember.”

“You’re not bad,” he said. “And I believe you. Whatever you say about Margolis, I believe you.”

“Do you, honestly?”

“Yes.” He was conscious of the passage of time, of the three people waiting for him in the next room, but he didn’t want to leave. In the whole year of his marriage he had never understood Virginia’s nature so completely, or felt closer to her than he did now in the sordid little washroom.

“If Claude was alive,” she said, “I could prove we were just friends, just putting in time together. I didn’t have anything else to do, and Claude was waiting for someone to come back, so we both had lots of time to waste.” She rubbed the lump on her forehead vigorously with her fingertips. It seemed to Barkeley that the gesture, like so many of Virginia’s gestures and actions and words, was a self-punishment.

“Does your head hurt?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Then don’t rub it like that.”

“Was I rubbing it? I didn’t mean to.”

He took both her hands and held them tightly in his. “Who was Claude waiting for?”

“A woman. Lily Margolis told me about her first. Lily came to the house one day and said she wanted to do me a favor by telling me that Claude was in love with another woman. She started out calmly enough but then she got carried away by her own words and began calling me names. I was afraid Carney or someone in your office would hear her, so I put my hand over her mouth to stop her. I guess her version of it is different, but that’s what really happened — I was scared and embarrassed, and I had to shut her up. Carney heard everything, of course,” she added with a trace of bitterness. “She always does. She said if I didn’t behave myself she was going to write and tell my mother. Carney doesn’t like me. She pretends to. She’s like my mother, she pretends all the time. That cheerful act of hers — that kindly tolerance — it’s all a front.”

He didn’t agree or disagree, and after a time she began talking again:

“Later on I asked Claude if it was true that he’d been in love with someone for a long time and he said yes, it was true but the woman had left him and he was afraid that this time she wasn’t coming back. We didn’t quarrel about it or anything like that. I even felt sorry for him. I know how it is to wait for someone who doesn’t come.”

“Have you waited very often for me, Virginia?”

“You know I have.”

“I always came, though. The next time you wait, remember that.”

“I’ll remember. I promise.”

“Come on, Virginia. We’re going home now.”

“Please. I can’t face it.”

“You’ll have to.”

“I don’t know what will happen. What will they do to me? What will they do to my mother?”

“I can’t answer that.”

He held the door open for her and she walked slowly past him, one hand pressed against the lump on her forehead as if it was an excrescence of evil that would shrink under the pain of atonement.

The room was one Meecham had never been in before, in the rear of the Barkeley house. It was small and square and almost empty. There were no books, no pictures, and the only furniture was a fluorescent lamp and a davenport with a matching chair that needed reupholstering. The window was a wall of glass that in the daytime looked out on the hills behind the town, but now at night reflected only the room itself, and the mother and daughter sitting at opposite ends of the davenport, like strangers. They were both staring at Meecham as if they expected him to introduce them to each other. He wondered if he could, if he knew the right combination of words that would mean, this is Virginia and this is Rachel Hamilton.

“I wanted to talk to you both privately,” Meecham said. “It’s your right and privilege to consult a lawyer before making any official statement.” Neither of the women seemed to be listening, but he continued anyway. “Mr. Hearst has already told me what he knows: that Loftus didn’t leave his apartment on Saturday night, that he, Hearst, came to you with this information yesterday evening, and you, Mrs. Hamilton, agreed to hire him as your chauffeur provided that he kept the information to himself. Is that right?”

Mrs. Hamilton spoke through stiff dry lips. “You know it is.”

“Why did you agree?”

“I didn’t want the case reopened.”

“Why were you certain that Hearst was telling you the truth?”

“I... well, I just believed him, that’s all.”

“You had good reason to believe him,” Meecham said. “You’ve known almost from the beginning that Loftus was innocent.”

She didn’t reply.

“Whose idea was it to leave for California?”

“Mine.”

“You thought you’d get away and stay away and that would be the end of the whole business?”