drowned him in the swimming pool.'
'Who would do that?' she said.
'Your late husband himself is the best bet. I've got some further information on him by the way. He was a Panamanian who came out of a fairly hard school-'
She interrupted me: 'I know that. Professor Tappinger paid me a visit this afternoon. He told me all about Francis. Poor Francis,' she said remotely. 'I see now that he wasn't entirely sane, and neither was I, to be taken in by him. But what conceivable reason could he have for hurting Roy? I didn't even know him in those days.'
'He may have drowned him to get a hold on Ketchel. Or he may have seen someone else drown him, and convinced Ketchel that it was Ketchel's fault.'
'You have a horrible imagination, Mr. Archer.'
'So had your late husband.'
'No. You're mistaken about him. Francis wasn't like that.'
'You only knew one side of him, I'm afraid. Francis Martel was a made-up character. Did Professor Tappinger tell you his real name was Pedro Domingo, and he was a bastard by-product of the slums of Panama City? That's all we know about the real man, the real life that forced him into the fantasy life with you.'
'I don't want to talk about that.'
She hugged herself as if she could feel a faint chill of reality through her widow's black. 'Please let's not talk about Francis.'
Peter rose from his chair. 'I quite agree. All that is in the past now. And we've had enough talk for one night, Mr. Archer.'
He went to the door and opened it. The sweet night air flooded into the room. I sat where I was.
'May I ask you a question in private, Miss Fablon? Are you calling yourself Miss Fablon?'
'I suppose so. I hadn't thought of it.'
'It won't be `Miss Fablon' for long.'
Peter said with foolish blandness. 'One of these fine days it's going to be `Mrs. Jamieson,' the way it was always meant to be.'
Ginny looked resigned and very tired. 'What do you wish to ask me?' she said softly.
'It's a private question. Tell Peter to go away for a minute.'
'Peter, you heard the man.'
He frowned and went out, leaving the door wide open. I heard him bulling around in the garden.
'Poor old Peter,' she said. 'I don't know what I'd do without him now. I don't know just what I'm going to with him, either.'
'Marry him?'
'I don't seem to have any other choice. That sounds cynical, doesn't it? I didn't mean it that way. But nothing seems terribly worthwhile right now.'
'It wouldn't be fair to marry Peter unless you cared about him.'
'Oh, I care for him, more than anyone. I always have. Francis was just an episode in my life.'
Behind her world-weary pose, I caught a hint of her immaturity. I wondered if she had grown emotionally at all since her father died.
And I thought that Ginny and Kitty, girls from opposite ends of the same town, had quite a lot in common after all. Neither one had quite survived the accident of beauty. It had made them into things, zombies in a dead desert world, as painful to contemplate as meaningless crucifixions.
'You and Peter used to go together, he told me.'
'That's true. Through most of high school. He wasn't fat in those days,' she added in an explanatory way.
'Were you lovers?'
Her eyes darkened, the way the ocean darkens under moving 185 clouds. For the first time I seemed to have touched her sense of her own life. She turned away so that I couldn't look into her eyes.
'I don't see that it matters.'
That meant yes.
'Did you become pregnant by Peter?'
'If I answer you,' she said with her face averted, 'will you promise never to repeat my answer? To anyone, even Peter?'
'All right.'
'Then I can tell you. We were going to have a baby when I was a freshman in college. I didn't tell Peter. He was so young, and so young for his age. I didn't want to frighten him. I didn't tell anyone, except Roy, and eventually Mother. But even them I didn't tell who the father was. I had no desire to be taken out of school and forced into one of those horrible teenage marriages. Roy was pretty let-down with me, on account of the baby, but he borrowed a thousand dollars and took me to Tijuana. He treated me to the deluxe abortion, complete with doctor and nurse and hygienic atmosphere. But after that he seemed to feel I owed him money.'
Her voice was toneless. She might have been talking about a shopping trip. But her very flatness of feeling suggested the trauma that kept her emotions fixed. She said without much curiosity: 'How did you find out about my pregnancy? I thought nobody knew.'
'It doesn't matter how I found out.'
'But I only told Roy and Mother.'
'And they're dead.'
A barely visible tremor went through her. Slowly, as if against physical resistance, she turned her head and looked into my face.
'You think they were killed because they knew about my pregnancy?'
'It's possible.'
'What about Francis's death?'
'I have no theory, Miss Fablon. I'm still groping in the dark. Do you have any ideas?'
She shook her head. Her bright hair swung, touching her cold pale cheeks with a narcissistic caress.
Peter said impatiently from the doorway: 'May I come in now?'
'No, you may not. Go away and leave me alone.'
She stood up, including me in the invitation to leave.
'But you're not supposed to be alone,' Peter said. 'Dr Sylvester told me-'
'Dr Sylvester is an old woman, and you're another. Go away. If you don't, I'll move out. Tonight.'
Peter backed out, and I followed him. She closed and bolted the door after us. When we were out of hearing of the cottage, Peter turned on me: 'What did you say to her?'
'Nothing, really.'
'You must have said something to bring on a reaction like that.'
'I asked her a question or two.'
'What about?'
'She asked me not to tell you.'
'She asked you not to tell me?'
His face leaned close to mine. I couldn't see it too well. He sounded wildly angry and belligerent. 'You've got things turned around, haven't you? You're my employee. Ginny is my fiancee.'
'She's kind of an instant fiancee, isn't she?'
Perhaps I shouldn't have said it. Peter called me a filthy crud and swung on me. I saw his fist arriving out of the darkness too late to duck it cleanly. I rolled my head away from the blow, diminishing its sting.
I didn't hit him back, but I put up my hands to catch a second punch in case he threw one. He didn't, at least not physically.
'Go away,' he said in a sobbing voice. 'You and I are finished. You're finished here.'
31
IT WAS A MORAL HARDSHIP for me to walk away from an unclosed case. I went back to my apartment in West Los Angeles and drank myself into a moderate stupor.
Even so I didn't sleep too well. I woke up in the middle of the night. A spatter of rain was rustling like
