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  But he might, he thought, invite them to lunch at the Maples. That in itself would be rather odd, since it was unprecedented, and since he had seen them the day before and in fact, three days before that. And not previously in a month or more. If only he could think of a good excuse. He tried to. The only thing that occurred to him was that he might ask advice on the purchase of a home freezer but that he almost at once rejected as preposterous. The Misses Monroe were not, to put it as mildly as possible, people one asked about mechanical devices. Nonetheless, the bottom had to be got to. Momentarily, he wondered whether Harry might not have a solution. But he asked too much of Harry.

  How I fuss over things, Walter Brinkley reflected, and became a man of action. He looked up the telephone number of “Monroe, Misses, the,” and dialed it and, when answered, said, “Elvina?”

  It was Martha. But she did as well, being—or was that really Elvina?—a year or two the older and hence the one to make decisions. “Why Walter!” Miss Martha said, on being asked. “How nice. We’d love to.” She did not even seem particularly surprised. I waste too much time mulling things over, Walter Brinkley thought, after he had replaced the telephone. Probably it is better to do things first and wonder why afterward, like other people. He went downstairs, where Harry was polishing silver (it being Wednesday) and said that he was taking the Misses Monroe to the Maples Inn for lunch.

  “You are?” Harry said, too startled to say “You is?” He made up for it. “Yas suh!” he said, which was going rather far even for Harry Washington. Worriedly, Walter Brinkley hoped that his taking the Misses Monroe out to lunch, instead of having them here to lunch, would not hurt Harry’s feelings. Harry took pride in his cooking, and his pride was justified. “You have so much to do on Wednesdays,” Brinkley said.

  “Yes suh,” Harry said, and then, “Are the police making any progress?”, speaking as one resident of North Wellwood to another, about the thing uppermost in all minds.

  “I don’t know,” Brinkley said. “Unless—we turn out to be wrong about Old Ash.”

  “I’ll be surprised,” Harry said. “Very surprised. So will everybody.” By the last he meant, and Brinkley knew he meant, all those of North Wellwood with whom Professor Brinkley, and others of pinkish skin, would not have social contact—except, of course, at the annual dinner of the N.A.A.C.P. The “everybody” of Harry Washington’s term knew, Brinkley suspected, a good deal more about North Wellwood than he himself did. Their reported opinion was reassuring.

  “A little psychotic,” Harry said, of Ash Adams. “Senile dementia, probably. But harmless. You wants I should drive you, professor, suh?” (Protean was the word for Harry; a word, anyway.)

  “No need,” Brinkley said and when, at a little after noon—the appointment was for twelve-thirty, but the Misses Monroe would almost certainly be early—Brinkley left for the village, he drove himself, in an M.G., which he drove rather rapidly and with something like professional competence.

  The Maples Inn had a parlor—a parlor every inch a parlor. The Misses Monroe were waiting in it. They wore silk dresses and little hats with flowers and each wore a glove on her left hand and carried the other glove in it.

  “So nice of you, Walter,” Miss Elvina said and Miss Martha said, “So very nice.” Whereupon, Walter Brinkley was conscious of some inward embarrassment, almost guilt, since he had an ulterior motive, if only he could think what it was. And the sweet old things—

  “A sherry,” Miss Martha said, at the table in the dining room, on being pressed. “A very small sherry.” She had taken off both white gloves, and placed them in her lap. So had Miss Elvina. “A sherry would be very nice,” Miss Elvina said. “But you must have whatever you usually have,” Miss Martha said. “We know how men are,” Miss Elvina said, achieving, Walter Brinkley thought briefly, perhaps the greatest exaggeration of recent times.

  The sherries came. Brinkley’s martini came.

  “We understand,” Miss Martha said, holding her glass delicately (but without, of course, extended fingers), sipping from it gently, “we understand that she was quite—unclothed.”

  “Oh dear,” Miss Elvina said. “We did hear that, Walter.”

  Walter Brinkley had supposed they would come to it quickly; he supposed that, throughout North Wellwood, people were coming to it quickly. He had not, however, supposed that they would come from precisely that direction. He realized at once, however, that any other direction of approach would hardly have occurred to the Misses Monroe. First things first, of course.

  “Well,” Brinkley said, “she was sun-bathing. In a secluded place. On her own land.”

  “The Adams land, really,” Miss Martha said. “But it does come to the same thing, I suppose. So tragic.”

  Brinkley was momentarily distracted by the word “tragic,” which he feels should be used to describe only events great in dimension. He pulled himself back.

  “So difficult,” Miss Elvina said, “so very difficult, isn’t it, to think of such a thing occurring in North Wellwood? Mrs. Lambert says that, already, the inn has had several requests for reservations. From reporters.”

  “Well,” Brinkley said—how often, in chatting with the Misses Monroe, he found himself beginning sentences with “well”!—“such things happen in many places, Elvina. I suppose we can’t hope to be excluded.”

  “But,” Miss Martha said, “in North Wellwood, Walter.”

  “But you know, dear,” Miss Elvina said, “there was poor Mr. Woodbridge.”

  Mr. Woodbridge, Walter Brinkley remembered after a moment, had recently hanged himself in his garage. Miss Martha was not, however, taken aback.

  “The poor man,” she said. “But—not really North Wellwood. Not really. He had an apartment in New York, you know, dear.”

  If this was to come to anything, was to ease the nagging in his mind, it would, Brinkley decided, have to be guided. The difficulty was, of course, that he did not know in what direction.

  “As for that,” he said, “Mrs. Wilkins had lived here only a short time. She and her cousin, the poor child. She’s very upset, you know.”

  “We must,” Miss Martha said to Miss Elvina, “send flowers. That is—I suppose—” The pink tissue of her still-pretty face crinkled in thought. “I suppose one does?” This was to Brinkley, who found himself puzzled, also. Flowers to a house of death, certainly. But, did that cover murder? It was a point he had not previously had cause to consider.

  “Well,” he said. “Perhaps when funeral arrangements have been—” He let it drift away. “The cousin,” he said. “Dorcas Cameron. A very sweet child. She was sun-bathing in the same place Monday and it seems that Old Ash Adams—spied on her. And, said unpleasant things.”

  “We did hear that,” Miss Martha said. “Who was it told us, dear? And that Miss Cameron blames herself for not reporting him to the authorities. But I’m sure poor Ash would not harm anyone.”

  “So was I,” Brinkley said. “I told her that. We may be wrong about him, I’m afraid.”

  “Ash?” Miss Elvina said, with obvious surprise. “Only an absent-minded elderly man. One grows a little that way as one grows older, I’m afraid. But—the Adamses are a very fine old Wellwood family, Walter.”

  “Well,” Brinkley said, “perhaps a little more than absentminded, Elvina. But, it is difficult to imagine anything of this kind. I agree to that.”

  “Someone from outside,” Miss Martha said. “Oh, the special, I think.” The last was to the waiter. “Yes,” Miss Elvina said. “The special, please.”

  The special was chicken blinis, and it was very good. And Mrs. Lambert, who operated the inn, had once told Walter Brinkley that, when she looked out the window and saw the garden club ladies coining, she sent word at once to the kitchen to put the blinis on. “Lamb chops, please,” Brinkley said, “and—perhaps another sherry?” The last was to the Misses Monroe, who looked at each other. “So delicious,” Miss Martha said. “A very small one.” “So delicious,” Miss Elvina said. �
�Two sherries and a martini,” Walter Brinkley said. “From outside, Martha?”

  “I’d think so,” Miss Martha said, and Miss Elvina nodded her head, associating herself. “So many new people. From so many places, really. It’s all quite changed since our father’s day. Coming down from Brewster in a carriage. It took rather a long time, of course.”

  “From so many places,” Miss Elvina said. “Chicago and places like that. I understand that Mrs. Wilkins and her cousin are from the Middle West. Not that it matters at all, I suppose.”

  “We mustn’t be provincial, dear,” Miss Martha said. “Whatever will Walter think? But of course, it is true. The old Farmer place—out on the Ridgefield Road, you know—the people living there now are French. Actually, Walter. Something to do with perfumes, I understand.”

  “Well,” Brinkley said—how sadly often, indeed, he was using the soft wedge of the word “well”—“well, President Roosevelt once started a speech before the D.A.R. with ‘fellow immigrants.’” He immediately wished he had said something else.

  “Dear Walter,” Miss Martha said, her tone making allowances. “Very amusing, I’m sure. But—wasn’t it in rather doubtful taste? Particularly since the Roosevelts are, after all, quite an old family.”

  Which had, Brinkley thought, been rather the cream of the jest, and so intended. But this time he did not say what he thought. He said, “We must expect change, of course,” which seemed safe enough. Sherries arrived, and a martini. A man with a camera swinging around his neck looked into the dining room. What he saw appeared to fill him with morose thoughts. He withdrew, probably toward the taproom. The press, Walter Brinkley decided.

  “—from Maryland,” Miss Elvina was saying when his thoughts returned. “She’ll find the climate rather difficult, I’m afraid. Do you remember poor Mr. Bingham, dear? And the ice storm? Mr. Bingham was from Louisiana, Walter.”

  “I,” Miss Martha said, “have always found our climate very bracing. Quite probably Mrs. Craig will also. She seems quite nice. Younger than Paul, of course. But I’m sure she’ll fit in perfectly.”

  It was none of this, obviously; this was getting him to the bottom of nothing. Almost certainly, his impression that the nagging had started after he talked on the sidewalk to the Misses Monroe was without value. Walter Brinkley continued with his martini. Then he thought of something.

  “All the same,” he said, for once avoiding “well,” “ice storms can be very unpleasant. With the power failing and that sort of thing. The freezer stopping.”

  At least, they had talked about a Deepfreeze in front of the A. & P. Not, so far as he could recall, about anybody who had come from Louisiana.

  “We thought of that,” Miss Martha said. “And—you know what we did, Walter? We had a generator installed. To make electricity, you know.”

  “Although,” Miss Elvina said, “at our ages—”

  Buying groceries to last a week. A home freezer. What else had they talked about in front of the A. & P.? They finished drinks. The waiter returned with chicken blinis and lamb chops. They tasted.

  “Delicious,” Miss Martha said. “Mrs. Lambert has such a good chef.”

  His cocktail party?

  “They made the canapés Saturday,” Brinkley said. “Did rather well by us, I thought.”

  “Such a lovely party,” Miss Elvina said, making Walter Brinkley feel as if he had been fishing. “So many interesting people. So nice to see—”

  If he had been fishing, as he supposed he had, Walter Brinkley found his net filled, since the Misses Monroe remembered the party with much pleasure and in very considerable detail. Walter Brinkley listened carefully, thinking that this might well be it. He listened through lunch, and through coffee after it, and until he saw the Misses Monroe—“So sweet of you to have us, Walter.” “Such a really friendly thought”—into their ancient Rolls and got himself into his M.G. Then he examined the net.

  The result was depressing. If there had been anything in the net, it had got out through the mesh. That’s what my mind is, Walter Brinkley thought. My mind’s a mesh.

  VIII

  THERE HAD BEEN reporters; a good many reporters. “It’s up to you, naturally,” Heimrich had told her, but then had added that it would, probably, be better if she got it over with. It had taken time to get it over with, since the reporters were difficult to satisfy and the photographers, it had seemed, would never be satisfied at all. Alan had been with her—Alan frowning, his eyes cold. It had been he who, finally, said that enough was enough. They had made her memories come back, since they were skilled at that, and wanted that. She had lived again—and for a moment had swayed, standing beside Alan—through the discovery of Caroline’s stricken body. She had said that, yes, the old man, Ash Adams, had said things—dreadful things—when he stood on the edge of a circle of sunlight and stared at her.

  “You thought he was a psychopath?” one of the reporters had asked and she had nodded and said, “Yes. I guess so,” and then quickly, before she was asked, “Really I thought he was just a—a strange old man. Everybody seemed so—” But she stopped without finishing.

  “Just one more,” a photographer said. “Put your arm around her, lieutenant.”

  “You,” Alan Kelley said, “can go to hell.”

  “Naughty,” the photographer said, and took a picture of Alan Kelley glaring at him. He said, “Just a job, lieutenant.”

  “Far as I can make out,” one of the reporters said, “nobody seems to know just where her husband was when it happened. That right, Miss Cameron?”

  “He was—” she said.

  Lieutenant Howard Nelson lent a hand then, as he had promised.

  “Commander Wilkins was carrying out his duties,” Lieutenant Nelson said, in a firm voice.

  “Think of that now,” one of the reporters said. “Just think of that. What duties?” Lieutenant Nelson looked hurt.

  It had gone on for some time; it had not, she realized, gone especially well. But there was no way, now, for anything to go well. And, in time, it had ended and the reporters had gone away, and the photographers. And Lieutenant Nelson had looked at his watch and left the terrace—where it had all been going on, because that was the way the photographers wanted it—and gone inside and used the telephone. He had come back and said, “Just took off from Chicago. Had to fuel up,” and was speaking of the airplane which was bringing Admiral Jonathan Bennett to the place where his daughter had been killed. Then he had said he would be seeing them, to which neither Dorcas nor Alan said anything, and got into his Volkswagen and hopped away in it.

  Then for an hour—almost an hour—things seemed to stop. They sat on the terrace in the shade of a big ash tree, and everything stopped, and her mind stopped. It was as if a film, transparent yet impenetrable, were between her and the stopped world—the sunlight on the grass seemed dimmed, as her mind was dimmed. Alan looked at her and there was worry in his eyes, and he seemed close and yet incredibly far away.

  “You ought to eat something,” he said once, and the prosaic words came from a great distance and she said, first, “What?” and then, without waiting for him to say the words again, “No, I don’t want anything.”

  Then, after a time, she said, “I did mean to tell her. But everybody said he was just a harmless old—” And she did not finish, because it was not worth while finishing, and because there was the film between her and everything, even Alan.

  He said something. This time she really did not hear at first.

  “Other people,” he said, “knew about this place you sunbathed in?”

  “Oh,” she said, “I don’t know. Does it make any—”

  “Dorcas,” he said. “Wake up, Dorcas.”

  “I suppose so,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell anybody?”

  “I don’t know;” she said. “Who?”

  He repeated it. “Anybody.” He waited a moment. He said, “Listen, Dorcas,” and she said, “I’m listening.”

>   “I don’t think it was the old man,” Alan Kelley said. “Listen to me. I don’t think Heimrich does. I think somebody came into the house and took the gun and—found her. At the place.”

  “Why?” she said. “What had Carry done to anybody?”

  The reporters had been over that, and now they came full circle. Had Caroline Wilkins had any enemies? Anybody who hated her? Had threatened her? And, of course, she had had none. Heimrich had, at some time—sometime before he went off with the sergeant—asked the same thing, but as if it were only a formality to ask; almost as if he were reading a question from an established list of questions. Nobody had hated Caroline Wilkins. She had been sunny and gay and a good many had loved her, and none hated.

  “That’s it,” Dorcas said now. “Don’t you see that’s it? That we have to admit that’s it? She wasn’t shot as—as a person. As Carry. Just as—as a sinful thing. Don’t you see?”

  “No,” Alan said. “I don’t see. And, you don’t see. Had you mentioned this place? The place where you sun-bathed? Think, Dorcas.”

  “I don’t—” she began, and then she did remember. It was trivial; it would have no meaning. Because the old man she should have warned against—

  “Go on,” he said. “You’ve remembered something.”

  Somebody at Professor Brinkley’s party had said something about her tan; said it was a wonderful tan for so early in June; asked if she had brought it back from Florida or somewhere. And she had said—she remembered now having said—that she and Carry had found a wonderful place to sun in, and had got a very early start and had said, “A place down back of the house. Secluded. With trees around it like a screen.” And she thought, too, that she had said they called it “the place.”

  He leaned toward her. And now, it seemed, the film had thinned; it seemed now that she might reach through it.