The Man in the Net (8 page)

He got up from the bed and hurried down to the living-room. The bottle of gin and the bottle of bourbon were still there on the bar-table. Their levels hadn’t lowered. He picked them up, pulled out the stoppers and took a swig from each of them. No, they hadn’t been diluted. She’d had a bottle hidden upstairs. He ran upstairs again and started with a kind of wild concentration to search everywhere. At last, under blankets in one of the drawers of the linen closet, he found a bottle of gin. He pulled it out. It was still half full. She must have drunk at least half a bottle before she left. But—there was another bottle perhaps in the cow-barn?

He stood looking at the bottle automatically and then automatically bent to put it back where he had found it. As he did so, he saw—what was it?—a postcard lying where the bottle had been. He picked it up. It was a view of wooded mountains and a lake. Lake Crawley, Manitoba, Canada. He turned it over. It was addressed to him. His mind functioning clumsily, he read the message. It said:

This is the life. Why don’t you drop those paint brushes and fly up for a few days? Best to Linda …

Bill MacA.

Bill MacAllister. Only just believing it, he looked at the postmark. It had been mailed five days before. Then it must have come, say, three days ago. Linda must have picked up the mail that day and, with her sly, neurotic terror of everything connected with Bill MacAllister, hidden the postcard from him. So she’d known all along that Bill wouldn’t be in New York. She’d known it when he’d thought he had at last won his victory over her; she’d known it when she’d stood by the car. “Promise me one thing, John. If for any reason, Bill isn’t there …” The whole capitulation had been rigged. It had been yet another of her fantastically complex betrayals.

He went back into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed, dropping the postcard on to the floor. He felt exhaustion sliding up through him like the tentacles of some blood-sucking vine. She’d sent him to New York knowing he couldn’t achieve his purpose, and then, now that he had come home—this.

He leaned back against the pillows and lit a cigarette. He knew this was the greatest of the many crises of his married life, the moment for which he should have strength in reserve, but the paralyzing torpor had him in its grip. She’d gone with a suitcase, without the car, and with no money. Or did she have money? Could she have been planning this for months and hiding money away? But where could she have gone? To New York? With him reinstalled at Raines and Raines, earning a big salary, yes. But not this way. Never in a million years. And surely she wasn’t planning to go back to the small town in Wisconsin where she’d been born and where her parents had both died five years ago just after he’d married her. No, not to New York. Not to Wisconsin. Where? Where was there for her to go? Nowhere.

But if she’s mad! he thought. If the tension in her had finally snapped … ! Slashing the pictures, smashing the records, rushing upstairs, packing the suitcase, starting off on foot—going where? Nowhere—thumbing a ride from any car that passed. The panic image of her, mad and wandering around the countryside, brought him a synthetic vitality. He must call the police.

But the “police” in Stoneville was Steve Ritter. There was Linda again, distorting everything, making it impossible. If he called Steve Ritter, if he had to admit to Steve, and through Steve to the whole village, that Linda had slashed his paintings, and run off, insane! Suddenly he thought: What’s the matter with me? Of course she hadn’t gone off like that. She’d gone to one of her “dear, dear friends”, the Carey set. That would be it, of course.

He could see her dramatic arrival at the old Careys’ or the Morelands’.

“Darlings, I’ve done the most terrible thing. How can I begin to explain? I’ve left him. I couldn’t bear it any more. If only you knew … Oh, Mr. Carey … or Oh Roz …”

Yes, that was it. She could even have walked over to the young Careys’ while Vickie was on her way to the station.

He was so certain of it that everything seemed bearable again.

He hurried downstairs and rang the Careys. Vickie answered the phone.

“Hi, John. We’re waiting for you. Come over, both of you.”

“Then Linda isn’t with you?” John was surprised at the steadiness of his own voice.

“With us? Why, no. I haven’t seen her since the other night. As a matter of fact, I was planning to call, but I didn’t get around to it. There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

John thought of the party line. “I’ll come over if I may.”

“Of course, but …”

“I’ll explain when I see you. Vickie, I wonder if you or Brad would call the Morelands and your parents and ask if she’s with them. I’d rather not do it myself after the other night. …”

“I’ll do it right now.”

“Thanks, Vickie. I’ll see you.”

He put down the receiver. If she wasn’t at the Morelands’ or the Careys’, he’d have to tell Vickie and Brad the truth, of course. Although for years now it had become almost second nature to him to cover up for Linda, he knew things had gone far beyond that point. And Vickie and Brad would be all right. At least they wouldn’t treat his confidence as salacious gossip to be spread around as quickly as possible. He was sure of that. Maybe they might help; between them, the three of them might even find Linda before any scandal broke. If she wasn’t at the old Careys’ or the Morelands’ …

But she must be, he thought as he hurried through the kitchen out to the car, because, if she wasn’t at the Morelands’ or pouring out her tale of woe over the Careys’ dining-table, then … Once again the horror image came —the blank, dead eyes in the mad face, the dazed figure wandering at random, clutching a suitcase. He suppressed it and, as he swung the car down the drive, he thought of Steve Ritter. Could what she’d claimed about Steve actually have been true, after all? Could she conceivably have run away with him?
It’s like a disease.
No, she’d even admitted that had been one of her perverse alcoholic’s lies. But, even if it hadn’t been true, Steve Ritter was a staunch admirer, as, for that matter, were most of the people in the village. Perhaps the hostility to which he’d been submitted at the post office had something to do with this. Linda might have been just scared enough that the Carey set would be too sophisticated to swallow whatever story it was she now wanted to be swallowed. Instead she might have “taken refuge” with one of the people in the village and was using them for her audience. It didn’t seem probable—not with Linda’s snobbishness and her desire to be adored but respected by those she considered “beneath” her. But she’d done something. It might just have been that.

Instead of taking the short route to the Careys’ past the Fishers’ empty house and down the hill through the woods, he turned left along the road toward Stoneville. He wouldn’t ask Steve outright. The situation was too delicate for that. But he needed gas. He could stop off at the gas-station and see how the land lay.

The darkness had come. When he reached the little ice-cream parlor about half a mile out of the village, the neon lights were burning inside and the raucous blare of a juke-box sounded. He stopped by the gas pump. It was Mrs. Ritter who came out of the screen door, thin and dowdy with her greyish hair straggling over her forehead. Betty Ritter, soured by her husband’s neglect, old before her time, was the misanthrope of the village. If there was one person in Stoneville who wouldn’t be up on the gossip, it would be Betty Ritter. She filled his gas tank, treating him surlily but no more so than usual. When she came up to the front of the car and started wiping the windshield with a dirty rag, John said:

“Is Steve around?”

“Steve? He just went out on a call. Just a couple of minutes ago.” Mrs. Ritter snorted. “Steve Ritter the Stoneville police officer! That still makes me laugh. There’s only one character ought to be arrested and locked up around here and that’s Steve Ritter. Want me to charge this, Mr. Hamilton?”

“Yes, please.” John felt his nerves tautening. “You mean he’s out on a police call?”

“Don’t ask me. That’d be the day when Steve tells me what he’s up to. Buck was in just now babbling out some story or other about the kids. It was Steve he was telling. I was busy with a customer and didn’t pay much attention. Then the phone rang. Steve answered it and then went off in the car. He took Buck along with him, so I guess whatever it is, at least it isn’t monkey business this time.” Betty Ritter laughed and then, for a moment, paused by the car window, watching him from sardonic, faintly malicious eyes.

“My, you look jittery, Mr. Hamilton. What’s the matter? Got a guilty conscience? Murdered your wife or something?”

HE DROVE through the village. Lights gleamed in the windows of the store. A couple of cars were parked under the huge sugar maples outside the post office. A boy and girl were sitting on the porch of one of the clapboard houses. Someone was standing, smoking a cigarette, by the side of the church near the door to the basement Assembly Rooms where the town meeting was going to be held. When? Tomorrow. His anxiety accelerated by what Mrs. Ritter had told him, John had half expected a scene of unnatural bustle, indicating disaster. But everything was as quiet as usual, as pretty as a Christmas card out of season—New England in summer.

If someone had found Linda wandering on the highway, he told himself, Steve would never have taken Buck with him. The police call couldn’t be anything to do with Linda. It was just a coincidence.

He swung the car past the church, up the hill and down. Soon the north shore of Lake Sheldon gleamed at his right, ghostly grey in the early summer darkness. The sound of the bull-frogs’ croaking vibrated in the air. He could just make out the diving raft the township had put in the year before. The lake! he thought.
It’s a cinch you’ll never find me.
The words from Linda’s note seemed to be blazoned across the windshield in front of his eyes. What if she’d jumped into the lake and killed herself? No, not with a suitcase. Whatever had happened to her, however mad she had become, she wouldn’t pack a suitcase to commit suicide. Or—would she? Was that any madder than slashing the pictures, stamping on the records, typing the note when she’d never typed before and had had to go out to the studio to bring in the typewriter? How could he tell any more what she might or might not have done?

The first anesthesia of shock was wearing off. Sitting at the wheel, his body felt as brittle as glass which the anxiety, fermenting inside him, might at any minute splinter into fragments. To steady himself, he made himself believe that Vickie would have located her. She would have called and Linda would be at the Morelands’ or the old Careys’, weeping probably, full of remorse, the fit of hysteria burned out. “Oh, how could I have done it to him? I don’t know what got into me.”

Soon he had skirted the lake and was driving into the Careys’ gravel parking area. All the downstairs lights in the house were on. As he got out of the car, the door opened.

“Is that you, John?”

He saw Vickie on the threshold. Then she was hurrying toward him. She took both his hands.

“John, dear, isn’t she back?”

He said, “Did you call?”

“Yes. I called Father. She wasn’t there. And the Morelands don’t answer. They must have gone to the movies.”

She was drawing him into the house. In the hall she glanced up at him, her eyes flashing to his face for a second and then flashing quickly away as if whatever she saw was too intimate to be scrutinized.

“You need a drink.” She took him into the living-room. “Brad, fix John a drink.”

All the french windows were open on to the terrace. Brad, who had changed from his city clothes into a sports shirt and slacks, was standing by the bar. He made a drink and brought it to John, his eyes flicking to his and then, like Vickie’s, away. Does it show that much? thought John, taking the drink. It must. It had been the same way with Betty Ritter.

Brad said, “Sit down, John. Sit down.” And, as John sat down on a long sofa, “Vickie called Dad and the Morelands.”

“John knows,” said Vickie.

Brad sat down on the arm of the sofa. Their concern for him, their lack of prurient curiosity and their desire to help were obvious. It returned to John some sense of normalcy. These were sensible, nice people. Once he’d told them, the quality of nightmare would go.

He said, “When I got home, she wasn’t there—and she’d left a note.”

He hadn’t really stopped to think how it would sound when he told what had happened. He was, of course, conscious of the great gulf between the Linda he knew and the Linda the Careys had been presented with, and dimly he realized that somehow the gulf would have to be bridged. But at first he just blurted out what had happened —the note, the slashed pictures, the broken records, the missing clothes and the suitcase. It was only gradually that their reaction began to dawn on him.

It was Brad who broke in first. There was no hostility in his tone; there was no feeling of hostility from either of them. The quality in his voice was one of sheer incredulity.

“But
Linda
, John! Linda writing a note like that, destroying your pictures? It can’t be Linda.”

“She’s so gentle,” said Vickie. “Can you imagine Linda hurting a fly? And she—she loves you so much. You’re her whole life. And your pictures—why, they’re almost sacred to her. She’s said so over and over again.”

“Sure,” cut in Brad. “She was over here the day after the reviews came in on your show. Maybe you didn’t know. I’ve never seen anyone so indignant. To hell with all critics, she said. He’s going to be a great painter. She— she just couldn’t have …”

His voice trailed off. John looked from one of them to the other. They weren’t accusing him of lying. They just couldn’t believe it had happened. And suddenly he could see the Linda he didn’t know, the Linda who moved through a room when he wasn’t there, coming to the Careys’ after the bad reviews, acting the outraged champion of misunderstood genius, and then, in another role, the woman in love. “John—he’s my whole life.” Of course they’d react this way. What he was telling them was just as improbable to them as if he’d said he’d seen old Mr. Carey dancing the mambo naked on the church steps with Betty Ritter.