'Earl had a great respect for Luke Deloney,' the woman was saying, 'even if Luke did have his human failings. He was the one who made good for all of us in a manner of speaking. His death hit Earl real hard, and he started drinking right after, seriously I mean. I'm worried about Earl.' She reached across the table and touched the back of my hand with her dry fingertips. 'Do you think he'll be all right?'
'Not if he keeps on drinking. He ought to survive this bout. I'm sure he's being well taken care of. But Helen isn't.'
'Helen? What can anybody do for Helen?'
'You can do something for her by telling the truth. Her death deserves an explanation at least.'
'But I don't know who killed her. If I did I'd shout it from the housetops. I thought the police were after that man McGee who killed his wife.'
'McGee has been cleared. Tish Macready killed his wife, and probably your daughter as well.'
She shook her head solemnly. 'You're mistaken, mister. What you say isn't possible. Tish Macready--Tish Osborne that was--she died long ago before either of those tragedies happened. I admit there were rumors about her at the time of Luke Deloney's death, but then she had her own tragedy, poor thing.'
'You said 'Tish Osborne that was.'
'That's right. She was one of Senator Osborne's girls--Mrs. Deloney's sister. I told you about them the other night when we were driving down here from the airport, how they used to ride to hounds.' She smiled faintly, nostalgically, as if she had caught a flash of red coats from her childhood.
'What were the rumors about her, Mrs. Hoffman?'
'That she was carrying on with Luke Deloney before his death. Some people said she shot him herself, but I never believed that.'
'Was she having an affair with Luke Deloney?'
'She used to spend some time in his apartment, that was no secret. She was kind of his unofficial hostess when Luke and Mrs. Deloney were separated. I didn't think too much about it. She was already divorced from Val Macready. And she was Luke's sister-in-law after all, I guess she had a right to be in his penthouse.'
'Did she have red hair?'
'More auburn, I'd say. She had beautiful auburn hair.' Mrs. Hoffman absently stroked her own dyed curls. 'Tish Osborne had a lot of life in her. I was sorry to hear when she died.'
'What happened to her?'
'I don't know exactly. She died in Europe when the Nazis ran over France. Mrs. Deloney still hasn't got over it. She was talking about her sister's death today.'
Something that felt like a spider with wet feet climbed up the back of my neck into the short hairs and made them bristle. The ghost of Tish or a woman (or a man?) using her name had come to the door of the house in Indian Springs ten years ago, more than ten years after the Germans overran France.
'Are you certain she's dead, Mrs. Hoffman?'
She nodded. 'There was quite a writeup in the papers, even the Chicago papers. Tish Osborne was the belle of Bridgeton in her time. I can remember back in the early twenties her parties were famous. The man she married, Val Macready, had meat-packing money on his mother's side.'
'Is he still alive?'
'The last I heard of him, he married an Englishwoman during the war and was living in England. He wasn't a Bridgeton boy and I never really knew him. I just read the society pages, and the obituaries.'
She sipped her cocoa. Her look, her self-enclosed posture, seemed to be telling me that she had survived. Her daughter Helen had been brighter, Tish Osborne had been wealthier, but she was the one who had survived. She would survive Earl, too, and probably make a shrine of the study where he kept his liquor in the roll-top desk.
Well, I had caught one of the old ladies. The other one would be tougher.
'Why did Mrs. Deloney fly out here?'
'I guess it was just a rich woman's whim. She said she wanted to help me out in my time of trouble.'
'Were you ever close to her?'
'I hardly knew her. Earl knows her better.'
'Was Helen close to her?'
'No. If they ever met each other, it's news to me.'
'Mrs. Deloney came a long way to help out a comparative stranger. Has she given you any particular help, apart from changing hotels?'
'She bought me lunch and dinner. I didn't want her to pay, but she insisted.'
'What were you to do in return for the free room and board?'
'Nothing.'
'Didn't she ask you not to talk about her sister Tish?'
'That's true, she did. I wasn't to say anything about her carrying on with Luke Deloney, or the rumors that went around about his death. She's very sensitive about her sister's reputation.'
'Abnormally sensitive, if Tish has really been dead for over twenty years. Who weren't you supposed to mention these things to?'
'Anybody, especially you.'
She drowned her nervous little giggle in the remains of her cocoa.
chapter 31
I went out into the grounds of the hotel. The high moon floated steadily in the sky and in the ornamental pools of the Spanish garden. There was yellower light behind the shutters of Mrs. Deloney's cottage, and the sound of voices too low to be eavesdropped on.
I knocked on the door.
'What is it?' she said.
'Service.' Detective service.
'I didn't order anything.'
But she opened the door. I slipped in past her and stood against the wall. Bradshaw was sitting on an English sofa beside the fireplace in the opposite wall. A low fire burned in the grate, and gleamed on the brass fittings.
'Hello,' he said.
'Hello, George.'
He jumped visibly.
Mrs. Deloney said: 'Get out of here.' She seemed to have perfectly round blue eyes in a perfectly square white face, all bone and will. 'I'll call the house detective.'
'Go ahead, if you want to spread the dirt around.'
She shut the door.
'We might as well tell him,' Bradshaw said. 'We have to tell someone.'
The negative jerk of her head was so violent it threw her off balance. She took a couple of backward steps and regrouped her forces, looking from me to Bradshaw as if we were both her enemies.
'I absolutely forbid it,' she said to him. 'Nothing is to be said.'
'It's going to come out anyway. It will be better if we bring it out ourselves.'
'It is _not_ going to come out. Why should it?'
'Partly,' I said, 'because you made the mistake of coming here. This isn't your town, Mrs. Deloney. You can't put a lid on events the way you could in Bridgeton.'
She turned her straight back on me. 'Pay no attention to him, George.'
'My name is Roy.'
'Roy,' she corrected herself. 'This man tried to bluff me yesterday in Bridgeton, but he doesn't know a thing. All we have to do is remain quiet.'
'What will that get us?'
