Маргарет Миллар - The Murder of Miranda

“In the first-aid room?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Grady had locked him in there to teach him not to plug toilets.”

“And while he was being taught not to plug toilets he was learning how to set fire to things.”

“He already knew. Last year it was a bunch of towels on the beach. He was cremating a dead gull.”

Henderson loosened his fingers, which were beginning to ache. No magnetic current had manifested itself, certainly not one that was soothing or curative. He felt the same vague pervasive dissatisfaction. A little here, a little there, life was letting him down. There were plus factors — he had a pleasant apartment and a job with some prestige, his ex-wife had given up her alimony by remarrying, he picked an occasional long shot at the track — but the minuses were increasing. The long shots were getting longer and the neighbors complained about his new stereo system. There were aggravations at work, members with overdue bar bills, Van Eyck’s anonymous letters, and Frederic’s parents, whose passionate quarrels and no less passionate reconciliations — Frederic, Harold, Foster, April and Caroline — posed daily and debilitating problems.

“Obviously Grady showed poor judgment in locking the boy up,” Henderson said. “He should have sent him to me.”

“He sent him to you last week. You sent him back. You told him he should handle situations like that by himself. How can you blame him?”

“Easy. I didn’t lock the little bastard in a closet.”

“I heard you give Grady orders to use his own judgment in the future. Well, the future arrived and he did. Maybe the results weren’t too good, but he tried.”

“You are becoming,” Henderson said, “increasingly transparent. Do you know what I mean, Ellen?”

“No.”

“Let us have a moment’s silence while you think about it.”

Henderson’s office was decorated with pictures of airplanes left over from an aeronautical engineers’ convention. Henderson had hung them himself. He had no interest in planes or engines of any kind. But he liked the pictures because they were non-human. He didn’t have to wonder what the expression in an eye meant, or what a mouth might have been on the verge of saying, or what a pair of ears had heard. Nobody had to wonder what an airplane had done or was going to do next. It went up and came down again.

“Transparent as glass,” Henderson said. “I have been in, what you might call, the people business for twenty-five years. I know them. So let me give you some advice, Ellen. Don’t waste your time on Grady. He has no character, no staying power. Not much of a future, in fact, unless he hits it lucky, and that’s a longer shot than any I’ve ever hit on.”

“Why are you telling me? I don’t—”

“You do. All the girls do. Getting a crush on the lifeguard is part of growing up. But you’re already grown up... Ah well, I suppose it’s too late, isn’t it? Advice usually is.”

In the parking lot south of the club Miranda couldn’t get her car started, and she sent one of the gardeners to bring someone out to help her.

The car, a gift from Neville on her last birthday, bore special license plates, U R 52, and it was as black and cumbersome as the joke itself. She hated it and intended to get rid of it at the first opportunity. But like the house and furniture of the condominium in Palm Springs, the car was considered part of the estate and couldn’t be sold until Neville’s will was probated. “You will be provided with a small widow’s allowance,” Smedler, the lawyer, had said. “In the meantime everything must be kept intact. Shall I explain to you what frozen assets are, Mrs. Shaw?” “No, thank you, Mr. Smedler. I know... ” She knew very well. Hers had been frozen for years.

Grady came out the back door of the club, barefooted but wearing jeans over his swim trunks and a T-shirt with a picture of a surfer printed on it. He seemed surprised to see her. Perhaps this was where his girlfriends waited for him and he was expecting one of them. Or two or a dozen.

“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Shaw.” He smiled, showing teeth that were small and even but not very clean. “The gardener told me some lady wanted to see me. He was right, You are some lady.”

“I didn’t want to... to see you.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I mean, not personally. It’s simply that I can’t start this engine.”

The car was parked in full sun, and its black paint and black leather upholstery had absorbed the heat and turned the interior into a furnace. “I really wanted a light-colored car, Neville, they’re so much cooler.” “Black has more dignity, Miranda.”

She sat, faint with heat and dignity.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Shaw?”

“I... it’s very warm in here.”

“Get out and stand in the shade. Come on, I’ll help you.”

“I can manage, thank you.”

“Leave the key in the ignition.”

She got out and he took her place behind the wheel. The engine turned over on his second attempt. He liked the sound of it, soft, powerful, steady.

“Here you are, all set to go, Mrs. Shaw.”

“What was wrong?”

“You probably flooded it. If it happens again, push the accelerator to the floorboard and let it up slowly. Or if you’re not in a hurry, wait a few minutes.”

“I’m never in a hurry. I have nothing to do.”

She didn’t know why she said it. Neither did he, obviously. He looked puzzled and a little embarrassed, as though she’d made a very personal remark and he wasn’t sure how to respond.

“I meant nothing important,” she added. “The way you have, with your job.”

“There’s nothing important about my job. I put in time, I get paid. That’s all.”

“You save lives. You saved Frederic’s only half an hour ago.”

“He’d have come around eventually. Don’t blame me for saving his life... And as far as the pool is concerned, there hasn’t been a near-drowning, or even a nearly near, since I was hired. Which is fine with me, since I’m not even sure what I’d do if somebody yelled for help. Maybe I’d walk away and let him drown.”

“You mustn’t say that. Someone might take it seriously.”

“Don’t you?”

“Of course not.”

“I hope you’re a good swimmer.”

They’d been talking above the noise of the engine. He reached over and switched it off. Then he got out, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Okay. It’s all yours, Mrs. Shaw.”

“Why didn’t you leave the engine running?”

“Causes pollution, wastes gas. You can start it again when you’re ready to leave.”

They stood beside the long black car, almost touching but not looking at each other, like strangers at a funeral.

She said, “It’s a very ugly car, don’t you agree? Such a lot of bulk and horsepower merely to take someone like me from the house to the club to the market and back to the house. My husband gave it to me on my last birthday. Did you see the license plate?”

“Not well enough to remember.”

“It’s U R 52. Neville did it as a joke so I couldn’t lie about my age. He didn’t mean to be cruel, he adored me, he would never have been deliberately cruel. He simply considered it funny.”

“Next year when you’re fifty-three the laugh will be on him. Hang on to the car for ten or fifteen years and you can have yourself a real chuckle.”

“No,” she said sharply. “I’m going to get rid of it as soon as they give me permission.”

“They?”

“The lawyers who are handling my husband’s estate. Of course, if something happened to the car they’d have to give me permission, wouldn’t they?”