Маргарет Миллар - Do Evil In Return

“Think it over.”

“I’ve thought.”

“The trip will do you good,” Easter said. “Fresh air, etcetera.”

“There’s fresh air here.”

“But the Oregon fresh air is said to have therapeutic qualities for nervous women — a sort of gaseous Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.”

The door chime pealed. “I’ve never been nervous in my life and my doorbell’s ringing.”

“I hear it.”

“So if you’ll excuse me...”

“I will, but I don’t want to.”

“Thank you for the invitation.”

“Keep thinking it over,” Easter said, and hung up. As she was going towards the door it occurred to her that Easter’s invitation was oddly coincidental with Dr. Blake’s offer to take over her practice for a few days. There was no connection, of course, but it worried her. She wondered about Easters motives, whether he was falling in love with her as he pretended, or whether he thought she knew more about the case than she had told him.

Before she opened the door she glanced out of the little window at the top and saw that her caller was Lewis.

For a moment he looked to Charlotte like someone she had once known well and hadn’t seen for years. His face was grim, his mouth a tight bitter line. There were dark gray circles under his eyes like smudges of soot.

“Hello, Charley.”

“Lewis... Lewis, are you ill?”

“No.” He kissed her on the cheek; his breath smelled of brandy.

She withdrew from his embrace, holding him at arms’ length so that she could see him better. “You haven’t been drinking too much, or anything?”

“I am not ill and I haven’t been drinking.” He crossed the room and flung himself wearily into the red leather chair. He was wearing the hat and topcoat he’d had on the previous night when they’d met on the breakwater. He leaned his head against the back of the chair and the hat slid off and rolled on the floor. He didn’t seem to notice. “At least I’ve been drinking only enough for medicinal purposes, to keep me from strangling my wife.”

The words jarred her. “You mustn’t talk like that.”

“If I didn’t talk it I might just go ahead and do it... Have you seen the papers?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the same girl, the one who came to you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry for the girl, and sorry you had to be mixed up in it.” All during dinner Gwen had talked about it: “Oh, the poor child, how lonely she must have felt! I know so well what loneliness is. Sometimes when you’re not here, Lewis, when you stay away in the evenings for hours and hours , I almost feel like — like killing myself .” Gwen, sitting across the table from him, an animated little doll with the big dogs pressing their noses moistly against her arm begging for attention, for a scrap of meat He had felt a murderous rage, a terrible desire to stop those white fluttering hands, that gentle voice: “ That poor, poor girl. Think how the man must feel who got her into that condition .”

He covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. Charlotte sat on the hassock at his feet. “I tried to call you this afternoon at the office.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“I know.”

“I went to a movie.”

“I didn’t think you ever went to movies,” she said, half lightly.

“I don’t. I was tired. I thought I’d go to sleep from boredom, but I didn’t... I need some sleeping pills, Charley.”

“I have a couple of Nembutals I can give you.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

She brought the capsules out of the medicine chest in the bathroom. “Don’t take them until about twenty minutes before you go to bed.”

“All right.”

“Lewis, is anything the matter?”

“Not a thing.”

“I’m glad, Mr. B.”

He looked very surprised, and pleased. “You haven’t called me that for a long time. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“I love you, Miss K.”

“Darling, it’s nice to see you smiling again.”

“I’m out of practice.”

“I know. Things will be better for us someday, wait and see.” She gave him a cigarette and lit it for him, feeling happy that she was able to help him when he was tired. Her own tiredness was nearly gone. “I’m taking the rest of the week off, Lewis.”

His hand tightened on her arm. “Sudden, isn’t it?”

“The chance came up. I thought that I’d take a little trip in the car, perhaps.”

“A trip where?”

“Oh anywhere. You know I’ve always liked driving to new places.”

He hadn’t taken his eyes off her, hadn’t even blinked. “New places such as where?”

“Well, I haven’t seen much of Oregon,” she said. “They say it’s very nice in the summer.”

“Who says?”

“I though perhaps...”

“Stop that thought-perhaps business. Your mind’s made up. It always is. Where are you going in Oregon?”

“Ashley.”

“Where the girl lived?”

“Yes.”

“Haven’t you gotten into enough trouble already?”

“Please, darling...”

“Don’t go,” he said. “Don’t go, Charley.”

“I want to. I feel that I should.”

“Why should you? It’s none of your affair.”

“The police are going.”

“Police?”

“I want to get there first. I don’t like the lieutenant in charge of the case, Easter.”

“I know him,” Lewis said. “He’s a troublemaker.”

“He rang me up tonight and asked me to go with him to Ashley and talk to Violet’s sister. I refused. I think he was trying to set a trap for me. I know I haven’t done anything, but the feeling is there that in some obscure way I’m deeply implicated in Violet’s death.”

“Don’t go, Charley,” he said again.

“But I want to. I’m not afraid of Easter. I’m just curious.”

“Just curious. Oh God.”

“Besides, driving rests me, the trip will do me good.”

“It might do us both good. A world of good.”

He got up. When he leaned over to pick up his hat from the floor he staggered slightly, and she wondered if he had had more to drink than he admitted, or if he was simply exhausted.

He kissed her at the door, a long kiss that seemed to Charlotte to be sad and bitter. She felt suddenly like weeping.

“Good-bye, Charley. Good-bye, darling.”

“Lewis, you’ll take care of yourself?”

“Of course. Have a nice time.”

“Wait. Lewis, if you don’t want me to go, if you have a reason...”

“Reason?” he repeated. “No. No reason except that I’ll miss you.”

“I hope you will.”

“Good-bye, Charley.” The words had an air of finality, as if he never expected to see her again.

The door closed.

She left the following morning long before sunrise. For the first hundred miles she drove along the coast where the road meandered like a concrete river following the curves of the sheer, barren cliffs, blanketed by fog. As the sun rose it swallowed the fog, leaving only a few undigested wisps hiding in the hollows and dips of the road.

The highway turned suddenly inland beyond the reach of the sea, where the heat lay thick over the fertile valley. Here the barren cliffs seemed remote and Charlotte could hardly imagine them only a few miles away from this sudden profusion of growth: acres and acres of silver-green lettuce — greengold, the farmers called it — and groves of oranges too huge to look real and miles of fat tomatoes reddening on the vines.

But the valley ended with the same finality as the cliffs. The road ascended, and the area of the redwoods began, trees so high, so ancient, that their origins dazed the imagination. There was a clearing where the trees had been ruthlessly cut down and hauled away, and from here Charlotte could see two mountains to the northeast, their snowy caps untouched by changes in the weather or by the footprints of men. It was as if nature — and the department of highways — had collaborated to give the tourist the whole scope of California in a few hundred miles.