Vanish in an Instant (17 page)

“Now, Lily,” Loesser protested. “Now I suggest that you let bygones be bygones.”

She ignored him. “Virginia is your client, I understand, Mr. Meecham?”

“She was.”

“Did she mention me?”

“She said she had met you.”

“
Met
me? That's a laugh. Yes, indeed, she met me. We had quite a charming brawl before I left for Lima.”

Loesser looked extremely uncomfortable. “I wouldn't say it was a brawl exactly.”

“It was a brawl. She called me a liar and tried to slap me and pull my hair, and I held her wrists so she couldn't. I'm quite strong.”

“Tennis,” Loesser explained. “Plenty of . . .”

“George. I wish you'd go home.”

“I know you do,” he said grimly. “But I'm not going. You're tired and emotional and you may stick your neck out without meaning to.”

“It's my neck.”

“It was Claude's too.”

Her face looked a little sick under its healthy sunburn. “What a—a terrible thing to say.”

“Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but damn it, Lily, you won't pay any attention unless I . . . Anyway, I'd forgotten that's where he was . . .”

Meecham interrupted. “We're not getting anywhere.”

“We would, if George would go home.”

“I'm not going home,” Loesser stated.

“Well, then keep quiet.” A pulse in Mrs. Margolis' tem­ple had begun to beat hard, moving rhythmically under her skin. “I didn't intend to quarrel with Virginia. I went to her house out of a sense of duty. I knew she was going out with Claude because my maid Rose saw them together at one of those juke-box places outside of town. Rose goes to Dr. Barkeley for allergy shots and she recognized Vir­ginia right away. So I—went to see her.” She fidgeted with her plain gold wedding ring, slipping it over the joint of her finger and back again. “I told her the truth, that she was wasting her time on Claude because he was keeping another woman, had been keeping her for years, perhaps before we were ever married. Years and years,” she re­peated. “The silly girls like Virginia were just cover-ups. He took them dancing or out to dinner. But he was never seen with
her
. She was his—his real love.”

Her control was slipping down like a zipper under too much pressure.

“His real love. Isn't that funny? That a man like Claude could actually love one woman all those years? I used to lie
awake and wonder, what did she look like, what did she have that I didn't have, what did they talk about . . .”

“Now, now, Lily,” Loesser said. “You have no proof at all that Claude knew this woman for a long time or even that he was keeping her. You've always had a wild imagina­tion where Claude is concerned. It's possible that the two of them were merely good friends.”

Mrs. Margolis' mouth curved in an ugly little smile. “Old school chums. That's a brilliant idea, George.”

“Well, damn it, my own impression of Miss Falconer is that she's a highly respectable woman.”

“You've met her?” Meecham said.

“Yes, in a way. It happened accidentally about two months ago. I went into Hudson's at lunch time to pick up a book for my wife. I saw Claude standing at the glove counter and went over to say hello, thinking that perhaps we might have lunch together and I'd have a chance to talk to him about Lily. He didn't come into town often and when he did he avoided me. He knew what I thought of his behavior, especially this latest business involving Vir­ginia Barkeley.”

Mrs. Margolis was leaning toward him with a rapt ex­pression on her face like a small girl who had never tired of hearing the same story and wanted it repeated, word for word.

“I didn't realize, of course, that Claude had anyone with him until it was too late for me to retire gracefully. He in­troduced the woman to me as Miss Falconer. She was a tall, rather common-looking woman about Claude's own age. I knew Lily had been thinking for some time that Claude had a steady mistress, but I couldn't believe it was this Miss Falconer. She wasn't the type and, besides, Claude didn't act embarrassed or anything.”

Mrs. Margolis made a sound of contempt. “Claude wouldn't have been embarrassed if he'd been caught making love to her on the steps of the city hall. You can't em­barrass a moral imbecile.”

“At least give him credit for some sensibility. As I said before, I had the impression that he and the woman were old friends. They were very much at ease with each other and . . .”

“So are lovers.”

“Yes, but Miss Falconer doesn't suit the role very well. She's not young or attractive. She's a good ten years older than you are, Lily, and not nearly so pretty.”

“Thank you,” she said heavily. “Thank you very much, George.”

“Well, I mean it. She's just an ordinary woman.”

“Ordinary. That's all you ever say about her. How can you tell whether she's ordinary or not? And it isn't what she
is
that's important—it's how she made Claude feel. That's what falling in love must be, meeting someone who makes you feel good, who fills a need for you.” She looked down at her own shadow on the floor. “I never found out what Claude's need was.”

Loesser went over and patted her shoulder. “It wasn't your fault. He may have had some sort of glandular imbalance.”

“Glandular imbalance.” She began to laugh. “That's marvelous. Glandular imbalance.”

“I must say I don't see anything particularly funny about it.” He turned his back on her and addressed Meecham: “Well, that's the story. I told Lily about meeting Miss Falconer and Lily immediately drew her own conclusions as women always do, and decided to leave town for a while. Before she left she went to see Virginia Barkeley. You know the result of that.”

Meecham nodded. “Yes.”

“I'm not sure you do,” Mrs. Margolis said.

“There was a brawl, you claimed.”

“That was one result. The other result was that Claude was killed.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I haven't been taken in by the confession of an unbalanced man with a guilt complex. I know who killed my husband, and George knows it and . . .”

“Leave me out of this,” Loesser said.

“They had Virginia in jail, right where she belongs. Why didn't they keep her there?”

“They couldn't,” Loesser explained with weary pa­tience. “She was held for questioning as long as they could hold her, for forty-eight hours. After that they had to charge her or let her go. Naturally they let her go because Loftus proved that he committed the murder.”

“Proved, George? Proved?” She chewed the word as if it was a stick of sharply flavored gum. “A lot of things can be proved that aren't true, and a lot of things that are true can't be proved. I can't prove that my husband kept a woman called Miss Falconer for years, but I know he did, the same as I know that Loftus was lying. Why did he lie? Because he was insane? Or for money? Or both? You knew him, Mr. Meecham, George told me you knew him. Why did he lie?”

Meecham looked at the bowl of apples on the table. “There's no evidence that he was paid, or insane or lying.”

“No evidence but common sense. Tell me, Mr. Meecham, weren't you surprised when Loftus came for­ward with his story?”

“I wasn't expecting it,” Meecham said. He remained un­certain of the degree of his surprise, though he remembered the scene vividly, Loftus half-hidden behind the hedge, his hair whitened by the falling snow. “
I've died a thousand times from fear
,” he had said. “
A thousand deaths and one would have been enough. A great irony.
” The words turned over in Meecham's mind like stones in a river.

“Someone was expecting it, someone wasn't surprised,” Mrs. Margolis said. “Why should she be? She paid him for it. She bought that confession the way you go into a butcher shop and buy a pound of baloney. And that's what she got, baloney! She bought that con—”

“For God's sake, be quiet, Lily.” Loesser was beginning to sweat. “You don't realize the seriousness of what you're . . .”

“I will not be quiet. I have a right to my opinion.”

“Keep it an
opinion
, then.”

“Very well. In my
opinion
, Virginia Barkeley killed my husband in a jealous rage. It's a common motive, and for a woman like her, I suppose, a strong one. She has an uncon­trollable temper, everyone knows that.”

“Allegedly,” Loesser said.

“All right,
allegedly
!” she shouted. “She was
allegedly
angry and jealous and she reacted against Claude the way she reacted against me the day I told her about Claude and Miss Falconer. She attacked him as she attacked me. According to my
opinion
! Damn you, George.
Damn
you. I
won't
keep modifying everything, qualifying every­thing.”

“You're on safe ground as long as you're damning me,” Loesser said. “So go ahead.”

But Mrs. Margolis had turned to Meecham again. There was a glassy glare in her eyes, as if she was burning up with a fever of rage and resentment that had been slowly, for years and years, infecting her system. “She was there in the room, wasn't she? Do you think she could have slept through a murder? How quiet is a murder? Do you think Claude wouldn't have fought back if a stranger came at him with a knife?”

“There was no evidence of a struggle,” Meecham said.

“That's what I'm talking about. There was no evidence of a struggle because there was no struggle. Claude was taken unawares. Not by a stranger like Loftus. By someone he trusted, someone he thought was just fooling with the knife. Claude was a big man. He could have torn Loftus apart. Can you expect me to believe that he just stood there and let himself be killed?”

“The attack was quick,” Meecham said, “and your hus­band had been drinking quite heavily. So had Virginia. In fact, her blood alcohol concentration was so high it's doubt­ful that she had sufficient strength and co-ordination to use the knife.”

Mrs. Margolis swallowed hard, her hand against her throat. “I have no proof, nothing. But I feel in my heart that she killed him. I don't know how, but she's responsi­ble.”

“In your opinion,” Loesser said.

“In—in my opinion.” She rubbed the throbbing pulse in her temple.

“You're tired out, Lily. Why don't you have a nice hot supper with the children and then go to bed?” He added, to Meecham, “She was up all night on the plane—ran into a storm in the South.”

“I understand.”

“Naturally, she doesn't see things in their proper per­spective. I myself am convinced that Loftus gave a perfectly straightforward account of the affair and then killed him­self in remorse. Don't you think so, Meecham?”

“It seems reasonable,” Meecham said, though he didn't agree with either Loesser's oversimplified version or Mrs. Margolis' personal and over-imaginative one. The truth lay somewhere between the two extremes like an uncharted island between two shores. Meecham hoped that someday it would be found, by star and compass, or by blind luck. “Did you tell the Sheriff about your suspicions, Mrs. Mar­golis?”

“I intended to. George wouldn't let me. He said it would cause trouble.”

Loesser flushed. “Confound it, Lily, what I meant was that you'd do yourself and the children a lot more harm than Virginia—more publicity, more scandal. You've got to consider not just your own feelings but the children. They're the real unfortunates in this rotten business.”

“I've been a little unfortunate myself,” she said dryly. “So was Claude.”

And a great many others, Meecham added in silence. Lit­tle ones and big ones: Gill who might lose his job, Miss Falconer who had lost a lover, and Loftus who had lost everything. The Garinos, Dr. Barkeley, Mrs. Hearst, cold and bitter in her grief, Loftus' mother buying darkness by the quart, and Virginia herself watching the trains go past.

Then he thought of the snow-lady he'd seen at the en­trance gate with the icicle in her heart, and he wondered if Loesser wasn't right, after all—that the children were the real unfortunates. They would carry their scars longer, and with bewilderment, and in inaccessible places.

Loesser accompanied him to the front door. He seemed more at ease now that the interview was over and all statements had been properly qualified as opinions and allegations. “I hope you haven't taken Lily too seriously, Meecham.”

“No.”

“The tragedy's knocked her off-balance, but she'll right herself. You know how most women are, their emotions are direct and clear like Scotch. There's no hangover. In a few months she'll have forgotten about Virginia and Miss Falconer and all the rest of them.”