Ed McBain - Like Love

“Next month.”

“When next month?”

“On the sixteenth.”

“Why that particular day?”

Mrs. Tomlinson shrugged. “Is something wrong with that day?”

“No, nothing at all. But was there a special reason for picking the sixteenth?”

“I never stuck my nose in my daughter’s business,” Mrs. Tomlinson said abruptly. Carella and Hawes exchanged a quick glance.

“But yet you’re certain about the date,” Hawes said.

“Yes. She told me she would leave him on the sixteenth.”

“But you don’t know why the sixteenth?”

“No,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. She smiled suddenly. “Are you going to bully me, too?” she asked.

Carella returned the smile. Graciously, he answered, “No, certainly not, Mrs. Tomlinson. We’re only trying to get the facts.”

“I can give you all the facts,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. “The first fact is that my daughter didn’t commit suicide. That you can count on.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know my daughter. She was like me. She loved life. Nobody who loves life is going to take her own life, that’s for sure.”

“Well,” Carella said, “all the indications…”

“Indications! Who cares about indications? My daughter was vital, energetic. People like that don’t commit suicide. Look, it runs in the family.”

“Energy?” Hawes asked,

“Energy, right I’ve got to keep moving all day long. Even sitting here, I’m beginning to feel fidgety, would you believe it? There are nervous types of women, you know. I’m one of them.”

“And your daughter was another?”

“Absolutely. Always on the go! Vital! Energetic! Alive! Listen, do you want to know something? Shall I tell you how I am in bed?”

Carella looked at Hawes uncomfortably.

“When I get in bed at night, I can’t sleep. All that energy. My hands twitch, my legs,

I just can’t sleep. I take pills every night. Only way I can relax. I’m like a motor.”

“And your daughter was that way, too?”

“Positively! So why take her own life? Impossible. Besides, she was going to leave that bully. She was going to start a new life.” She shook her head, “This whole thing stinks. I don’t know who turned on that gas, but it wasn’t Margaret, you can count on that.”

“Maybe it was Barlow,” Hawes suggested.

“Tommy? Ridiculous.”

“Why?”

“Because they were going to get married, that’s why. So would either of them turn on the gas? Or leave a stupid note like the one in the apartment? ‘There is no other way!’ Nonsense! They’d already decided on another way.”

“Now, let me get this straight, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said, “You knew your daughter was seeing Tommy Barlow.”

“Of course I knew.”

“You didn’t try to discourage it?”

“Discourage it? Why the hell would I do that?”

“Well… well, she was married, Mrs, Tomlinson.”

“Married! To that bully? That was a marriage? Hah!” Mrs. Tomlinson shook her head. “She married Michael when she was eighteen. What does a girl of eighteen know about love?”

“How old was she now, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

“Almost twenty-one. A woman. A woman capable of making up her own mind.” She nodded. “And what she decided to do was to leave Michael and marry Tommy. As simple as that. So why should she kill herself?”

“Are you aware, Mrs. Tomlinson, that your daughter told her husband she was coming to visit you on the day she died?”

“Yes.”

“Did she do that often?”

“Yes.”

“In effect, then, you alibied her, is that right?”

“Alibied? I wouldn’t call it that.”

“What would you call it?”

“I would call it two sensitive women helping each other against a bully.”

“You keep referring to Mr. Thayer as a bully. Did he ever strike your daughter?”

“Strike her? I’d break every bone in his body!”

“Threaten her then?”

“Never. He’s a boss, that’s all. Believe me, I was glad she planned to leave him.”

Carella cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable in the presence of this big woman who thought of herself as a small woman. He was uncomfortable in the presence of this mother who condoned her daughter’s adultery.

“I’d like to know something, Mrs. Tomlinson.”

“What’s that?”

“Michael Thayer said he called you after he saw your daughter’s picture in the newspaper…”

“That’s right.”

“… and asked you whether she was here.”

“That’s right.”

“Mrs. Tomlinson, if you approved of your daughter’s relationship with Barlow, if you disliked Michael so much, why did you tell him she wasn’t here?”

“Because she wasn’t.”

“But you knew she was with Barlow.”

“So what?”

“Mrs. Tomlinson, did you want Michael to know what was going on?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why did you tell him the truth?”

“What was I supposed to do? Lie and say Margaret was here? Suppose he asked to speak to her?”

“You could have invented some excuse. You could have said she’d stepped out for a minute.”

“Why should I lie to that louse? Anything he got was coming to him!”

“What do you mean?”

“The divorce, I mean, Margaret leaving him.”

“Did he know she planned to leave him?”

“No.”

“Did she tell anyone else about this divorce, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

“Certainly. She was seeing a lawyer about it.”

“Who?”

“I think that’s my daughter’s business.”

“Your daughter is dead,” Carella said.

“Yes, I know,” Mrs. Tomlinson said.

And then, for no apparent reason, Carella repeated, “She’s dead.”

The room, for the space of a heartbeat, fell silent. Up until that moment, even though Mrs. Tomlinson had been in the midst of funeral preparations when they’d arrived, even though the conversation had most certainly dealt with the circumstances of their visit, Carella had had the oddest feeling that Mrs. Tomlinson, that Hawes, that he himself were not really talking about someone who was utterly and completely dead. The feeling had been unsettling, a persistent nagging feeling that, despite references in the past tense, despite allusions to suicide, they were all thinking of Margaret Irene Thayer as being alive, as a girl who was indeed about to leave her husband next month to begin a new life.

And so, his voice low, Carella repeated, “She’s dead,” and the room went silent, and suddenly there was perspective.

“She was my only daughter,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. She sat on the sofa that was too small for her, a huge woman with flat feet and big hands and lustreless green eyes and fading red hair, and suddenly Carella realized that she was truly tiny, that the furniture she’d surrounded herself with was bought for a small and frightened woman lurking somewhere inside that huge body, a woman who really did need gentleness and tenderness.

“We’re very sorry,” he said. “Please believe that.”

“Yes. Yes, I know. But you can’t bring her back to me, can you? That’s the one thing you can’t do.”

“No, Mrs. Tomlinson. We can’t do that.”

“I was looking at all my old pictures of her yesterday,” she said. “I wish I had some pictures of Tommy, too. I have a lot, of Margaret, but none of the man she was going to marry.” She sighed heavily. “I wonder how many pills I’ll have to take tonight,” she asked. “Before I can sleep. I wonder.”

In the silence of the living room, a small porcelain clock, delicately wrought and resting on a small inlaid end table, began chiming the hour. Silently, Carella counted the strokes. One, two, three, four. The echo of the chimes faded. The room was still again. Hawes shifted his position on the uncomfortable caned chair.