She shook her head. 'He knew all along. She told him from the jump. It was very brave of her, and it turned out to be the absolute right thing to do, because it didn't bother him and otherwise there would have been that secret between them. He was a pretty worldly guy, as it turned out. He was fifteen or twenty years older than Connie, and he'd been married twice, and while he'd lived all his life inMassillon he'd traveled a lot. He didn't mind that she'd spent a few years in the life. If anything I think he got a kick out of it, especially since he was taking her away from all that.'
'And they lived happily ever after.'
She ignored that. 'I had a couple of letters from her over the years,' she said. 'Only a couple, because I never get around to answering letters, and when you don't write back people stop writing to you. Most of the time I would get a card from her at Christmas. You know those cards people have made up with pictures of their children? I got a few of those from her. Beautiful children, but you would expect that. He was a good-looking man, you can see that from the newspaper photo, and you remember how pretty Connie was.'
'Yes.'
'I wish I had the last card she sent. I'm not the kind of person who keeps things. By the tenth of January all my Christmas cards are out with the garbage. So I don't have one to show you, and I won't be getting a new one next month because—'
She wept silently, her shoulders drawn in and shaking, her hands clasped. After a moment or two she caught hold of herself, drew in a deep breath, let it out.
I said, 'I wonder what made him do it.'
'He didn't do it. He wasn't the type.'
'People surprise you.'
'He didn't do it.'
I looked at her.
'I don't know a soul inCanton orMassillon ,' she said. 'The only person I ever knew there was Connie, and the only person who could have known she knew me was Philip Sturdevant, and they're both dead.'
'So?'
'So who sent me the clipping?'
'Anybody could have sent it.'
'Oh?'
'She could have mentioned you to a friend or neighbor there.
Then, after the murder and suicide, the friend goes through Connie's things, finds her address book, and wants to let her out-of-town friends know what happened.'
'So this friend clips the story out of the paper and sends it all by itself? Without a word of explanation?'
'There was no note in the envelope?'
'Nothing.'
'Maybe she wrote a note and forgot to put it in the envelope.
People do that sort of thing all the time.'
'And she forgot to put her return address on the envelope?'
'You have the envelope?'
'In the other room. It's a plain white envelope with my name and address hand-printed.'
'Can I see it?'
She nodded. I sat in my chair and looked at the picture that was supposed to be worth fifty thousand dollars. Once I'd come very close to emptying a gun into it. I hadn't thought about that incident in a long time. It looked as though I'd be thinking of it a lot now.
The envelope was as she'd described it, five-and-dime stuff, cheap and untraceable. Her name and address had been block-printed in ballpoint. No return address in the upper-left corner or on the back flap.
'New Yorkpostmark,' I said.
'I know.'
'So if it was a friend of hers—'
'The friend carried the clipping all the way toNew York and put it in the mail.'
I stood up and walked over to the window. I looked through it without seeing anything, then turned to face her. 'The alternative,' I said, 'is that someone else killed her. And her kids. And her husband.'
'Yes.'
'And faked it to look like murder and suicide. Faked a call to the cops while he was at it. And then waited until the story was printed in the local paper, and clipped it, and brought it back toNew York and put it in the mail.'
'Yes.'
'I guess we're thinking of the same person.'
'He swore he'd kill Connie,' she said. 'And me. And you.'
'He did, didn't he.'
