Deep Water (20 page)

       Vic left Carpenter and Melinda alone for a few minutes while he changed his shirt and put on a dark suit, then he returned and took Melinda's present from his jacket pocket and gave it to her.

       Melinda opened it after a nervous, apologetic glance at Carpenter. Then her expression changed. "Oh, Vic! What a watch!"

       "If you don't like it, they'll take it back and you can change it for something else," Vic said, knowing she would like it.

       Carpenter was watching both of them with a pleasant face.

       Melinda put the watch on. It was a dress watch of gold set with little diamonds. Melinda had ruined her old watch by going into the Cowans' pool with it one night, two or three years ago, and she had been wanting a dress watch ever since.

       "Oh, Vic, it's just beautiful," Melinda said, her voice softer than Vic had heard it in many, many months.

       "And this," Vic said, drawing something in an envelope from his other pocket. "It's not really a present."

       "Oh, my pearls!"

       "I just had them restrung," Vic said. Melinda had broken them about a month ago, throwing them at him in an argument. "Thank you, Vic. That's very nice of you," Melinda said subduedly, with a glance at Carpenter as if she feared he might have been able to guess why the pearls had needed restringing.

       Carpenter looked as if he were guessing, Vic thought. He might have been even more amused if he had known that while Vic was crawling around on the floor picking up the scattered pearls Melinda had kicked him.

       The Mellers arrived with a rotary broiler for Melinda, the kind that worked by electricity in the kitchen. The Mellers knew they had an outdoor broiler that used charcoal. Mary Meller gave Melinda a kiss on the cheek, and so did Horace. Vic had seen Mary when she had been warmer toward Melinda, but still it was a fine performance for Carpenter, he thought. Carpenter seemed to be keeping his eyes open especially for the social relations that night, how the Mellers behaved to him and how they behaved to Melinda. There was no mistaking the fact that the Mellers were friendlier toward him than toward Melinda.

       During the cocktails Melinda kept getting up to go to the kitchen, and Mary asked if she could help in any way, but both Vic and Melinda declined her help.

       "Don't think about it," Vic said. "Stay here and enjoy your drinks. I'm butlering tonight." He went into the kitchen to take care of the crucial problem of getting the duck from oven to platter. They lost the apple out of the duck's posterior, but Vic caught the ball of fire in midair and deposited it, smiling, on top of the stove.

       "Oh, Christ," Melinda muttered, ineffectually waving the carving knife and the honing stick "What 'else' can happen?"

       "We can burn the wild rice," Vic said, checking in the oven. It didn't seem to be burning. He picked up the apple on a large spoon and started to put it back in the duck.

       "I'm not even sure it belongs there—in a duck," Melinda groaned.

       "I don't think it does. Let's leave it out."

       "There's such a gap there," Melinda said miserably.

       "Don't think about it. We'll put some wild rice around it."

       Together they organized the duck, the wild rice, the peas, the hot rolls, the watercress salad. But the salad dressing wasn't made. Melinda always liked Vic to make the dressing, and besides, he had seven varieties of homegrown herbs in little labeled boxes to go in. He used the herbs in varying combinations.

       "Don't worry about anything," Vic said. "I'll put everything back in the oven, and the dressing'll be made in a flash!" He slid the silver platter with the duck back into the oven, left Melinda to put the other dishes on top of the oven, then made the salad, crushing the garlic and salt together in the bowl while he added vinegar; then he put in the herbs—one, two, three different kinds—with his left hand while he stirred constantly with his right. "Nice of you to have the watercress all washed," he said over his shoulder.

       Melinda didn't say anything.

       "I hope Harold isn't expecting to begin with snails," Vic said. "Why should he?"

       "He said he liked them. To eat, I mean." Vic laughed.

       "Did you tell him it'd be like eating your own flesh and blood?"

       "No. I didn't. Well, the salad's ready Would you like to go and alert the guests?"

       Horace and Carpenter were deep in a conversation and were the last to come to the table. Horace looked troubled, Vic saw. Melinda was in a state of petrified anxiety as to whether everything tasted all right or was hot enough, and hardly got a word out for the first quarter of an hour. Everything did taste all right, and the dinner went along well enough. It was not quite as a dinner among old friends should have been, but that may have been partly due to Carpenter's presence. Vic noticed that Horace did not attempt to talk to Carpenter at the table. From Carpenter's sculpturesque, immobile, pleasant features, Vic could learn nothing. Except that it was interesting that he and Melinda said so little to each other. It suggested to Vic that they had been together earlier in the day. Carpenter spent most of the dinner listening.

       They had their coffee in the living room. Horace strolled to a front window and stood looking out. Vic was watching him when lie turned around finally, and Horace made him a sign to come over. Vic went. Horace opened the front door and they walked out on the lawn.

       "He's not at Columbia University, that fellow in there," Horace began immediately "He doesn't know anybody at Columbia. He seems to know one name—the head of the Psychology Department, but he's never heard of anybody else there." Horace was frowning.

       "I didn't think he would," Vic said quietly.

       "I don't mean he didn't 'try' to sound as if he knew what was going on at Columbia, but I know enough about the Psychology Department there to know he's faking the whole thing. Is he one of Kennington's outpatients, did you say?"

       Vic put his head back and laughed loudly into the empty night air. "No, Horace. I said he was doing research there toward a thesis." "Oh. Is it true?"

       "Well—I don't really know if it's true, considering what you've just told me."

       Horace lit a cigarette impatiently, but refrained from throwing the match on the lawn. "I don't like him. What's he up to?"

       "Search me," said Vic, pulling up a few grass blades, holding them up against the pallid circle of the moon. It occurred to him that he should try some offset printing with grass blades, leaves, maybe a razor-cut cross section of a clover blossom. It would be very effective in Brian Ryder's book of poems, Vic thought. So many of his poems had allusions to plants and flowers.

       "Vic—"

       "What?"

       "What's he up to? Don't tell me you haven't thought about it. Is he interested in Melinda?"

        Vic hesitated. "I don't think so," he said indifferently. Might as well tell the truth when one could.

       "He's trying something with this school business, that's certain. He didn't even make any excuses, such as having been at another school most of the time so he didn't know Columbia well. He stuck to Columbia—floundering. But floundering very slickly, if you know what I mean."

       "You've got me, Horace. I don't know what he's up to." "And staying in De Lisle's house. Didn't Melinda arrange that?" "She recommended the house to him," Vic conceded. Horace thought for a moment. "It'd be interesting to know if he knows Don Wilson."

       "Why?"

       "Because I think he might. He might be a friend of Don's." "What do you mean? Hauled up here as a kind of spy?" "Exactly."

       Vic knew Horace had gone that far. He wanted to see if Horace had thought he might be a detective. "I don't think he's met Don. At least, the last time I asked Melinda she didn't think they knew each other."

       "Maybe they do know each other and that's why they're keeping apart."

       Vic chuckled, "You're about as imaginative as Wilson."

       "All right, maybe I'm all wrong. I think he knows 'something' about psychology. But he's not all he says he is. I'd just like to know his motives. How long is he going to be up here?"

       "I gather about another month. He's making a pilot test of schizophrenic treatment over at Kennington."

       "I'd be interested to know just what kind of pilot test," Horace said cynically "I know Fred Dreyfuss over there. I can easily find out."

       Vic made a sound indicating that he didn't consider it of much importance.

       "How is Melinda these days?" Horace asked.

       "Fine, I suppose," Vic replied, feeling himself stiffen in the old automatic defense of Melinda before the world, though he knew that Horace wanted to know if she was still accusing him of killing Charley. If Horace wanted to know how Melinda was, he had seen her all evening.

       "Well, she hasn't come to see Mary again," Horace said, with a trace of defiance. "You know, I don't think Evelyn'll ever get over that—from Melinda.'

       "I'm sorry," Vic said.

       Horace patted Vic on the shoulder. "I had a hard time with Mary. It's for your sake she agreed to come here tonight, Vic."

       "I wish everybody would try to forget it. I suppose that's too much to expect. Maybe in time."

       Horace made no reply.

       They went back into the living room. Melinda, her tension hardly decreased by alcohol, nervously proposed opening the champagne that Carpenter had brought, but Mary protested that she should save it, so the champagne was not opened. Nobody wanted an after-dinner highball. The Mellers got up to leave at a quarter-past ten, an hour earlier than they might have left, Vic thought, if Mary had been completely comfortable with Melinda and if Carpenter had not been there. Carpenter left when the Mellers did, thanking Melinda and Vic profusely. He drove off in his own car, a dark-blue two-door Plymouth, which he had modestly told Vic he had recently picked up secondhand.

       "Don't you think he's loafing on the job?" Vic asked Melinda as they were standing at the front door.

       "What job?" she asked quickly.

       Vic smiled a little, and he could feel that it was not a very nice smile. "Maybe you can tell me."

       "What do you mean?" Then retreating hopelessly, "Who?" "Mr. Carpenter."

       "Oh. I suppose he—Well, I get the idea he's at Kennington most of the time."

       "Oh," Vic said, subtly mocking. "I just thought he was managing to spend an awful lot of time around us."

       Melinda went to the cocktail table and began to collect the cups and saucers. Vic got the tray from the kitchen to make things go faster. There were a million things to put away in the kitchen. Vic donned an apron and took off his wristwatch in preparation for washing the dishes. He said nothing else that night that would indicate to Melinda that he thought Carpenter was a private detective. Melinda was bright enough to know that he would have picked up the slightest clue Carpenter offered, but she was not bright enough to know that Carpenter had already offered a few.

       "Happy birthday, darling," Vic said, taking a package with the red-and-white striped paper of the Bandana shop from the lower part of a cupboard.

       "Another present?" Melinda said, her face relaxing, almost smiling with surprise.

       "I hope it fits."

       Melinda opened the package, took out the white angora sweater, and held it up."Oh, Vic, just what I wanted! How did you know?"

       "I live in the same house with you, don't I?" Then, for no particular reason, he went up to her and kissed her on the cheek. She did not draw back. She simply might not have felt it. "Many happy returns."

       "Thank you, Vic." She looked at him oddly for a moment, one eyebrow trembling, the tense line of her mouth hovering between a smile and grimness, as uncertain as her own mind.

       Vic looked back at her, aware that he hadn't the least idea what she was going to do or say next, and aware with a sudden self-disgust that his own expression—his blandly lifted brows, his staring, unsurprisable eyes, his mouth that conveyed nothing except the fact that it was closed—was false and despicable. His face was a mask, and at least Melinda's was not, not at this moment. Vic tried to smile. Even that did not feel sincere.

       Then Melinda looked somewhere else, moved, and it was gone.

       In his bed that night Vic thought about the conversation with Horace. He felt that he had said exactly the right thing: if it transpired that Carpenter was a detective, Vic could say that he realized it all along, that it didn't bother him, and it would be a particularly gallant attitude to display in regard to Melinda, his wife, who had hired the detective against him. If Carpenter was not a detective, he had not shown stupidity in assuming that he was. Vic had not noticed a bulge under his jacket again, not after that first meeting. But there was still the two or three hundred out of their bank account, unexplained. Evidently Melinda was paying for him slowly.

       As Vic slipped into sleep, the antagonism rose slowly in him against Melinda, almost involuntarily, wraithlike, groping like a wrestler for a hold. It rose in him as something habitual might force its way to the surface—the habit of falling asleep while lying on his back, for instance, as he was now—and before he was completely asleep he realized all this and let it glide smoothly over the surface of his mind, like any ordinary, not very vigorous thought that one thinks just before falling asleep. It was as if she wore a label, "My Enemy," in his mind, and his enemy she was, beyond the reach of reason or imagination of change. The wraithlike antagonism in his mind found an imaginary grip and tightened, and he turned a little in bed and was asleep.

Chapter 15

From the birthday party onward it was as if Harold Carpenter had decided to make an abrupt change of tactics. He began to see more of Melinda and less of the two of them together. This happened in a matter of three or four days after the party. Melinda spent two of those four afternoons with Harold, and took pains to tell Vic so. Vic showed not the least interest. He did, however, say: