'What did he say?'
He looked off over my shoulder, searching his mind for the right words.
Finally he said, 'He told me that there was a sudden moment of awful clarity when he saw her face. He said it was as if he had been given a glimpse of the Devil and knew only that he must destroy, destroy.'
'I see.'
'Without absolving my son, Mr. Scudder, I nevertheless hold Miss Hanniford responsible for the loss of her own life. She snared him, she blinded him to her real self, and then for a moment the veil slipped aside, the blindfold was loosed from around his eyes, and he saw her plain. And saw, I feel certain, what she had done to him, to his life.'
'You almost sound as though you feel it was right for him to kill her.'
He stared at me, eyes briefly wide in shock. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'Never that.
One does not play God. It is God's province to punish and reward, to give and to take away. It is not Man's.'
I reached for the doorknob, hesitated. 'What did you say to Richard?'
'I scarcely remember. There was little to be said, and I'm afraid I was in too deep a state of personal shock to be very communicative. My son asked my forgiveness. I gave him my blessing. I told him he should look to the Lord for forgiveness.' At close range his blue eyes were magnified by the thick lenses.
There were tears in their corners. 'I only hope he did,' he said. 'I only hope he did.'
Chapter 8
I got out of bed while the sky was still dark. I still had the same headache I'd gone to bed with. I went into the bathroom, swallowed a couple of aspirins, then forced myself to put in some time under a hot shower. By the time I was dry and dressed, the headache was mostly gone and the sky was starting to brighten up.
My head was full of fragments of conversation from the night before. I'd returned from Brooklyn with a headache and a thirst, and I'd treated the second more thoroughly than the first. I remember a sketchy conversation with Anita on Long Island-the boys were fine, they were sleeping now, they'd like to come in to New York and see me, maybe stay overnight if it was convenient. I'd said that would be great, but I was working on a case right now. 'The cobbler's children always go barefoot,' I told her. I don't think she knew what I was talking about.
I got to Armstrong's just as Trina was going off duty. I bought her a couple of stingers and told her a little about the case I was working on. 'His mother died when he was six or seven years old,' I said. 'I hadn't known that.'
'Does it make a difference, Matt?'
'I don't know.'
After she left I sat by myself and had a few more drinks. I was going to have a hamburger toward the end, but they had already closed the kitchen. I don't know what time I got back to my room. I didn't notice, or didn't remember.
I had breakfast and a lot of coffee next door at the Red Flame. I thought about calling Hanniford at his office. I decided it could wait.
The clerk in the branch post office on Christopher Street informed me that forwarding addresses were only kept active for a year. I suggested that he could check the back files, and he said it wasn't his job and it could be very time-consuming and he was overworked as it was. That would have made him the first overworked postal employee since Benjamin Franklin. I took a hint and palmed him a ten-dollar bill. He seemed surprised, either at the amount or at being given anything at all besides an argument.
He went off into a back room and returned a few minutes later with an address for Marcia Maisel on East Eighty-fourth near York Avenue.
The building was a high-rise with underground parking and a lobby that would have served a small airport. There was a little waterfall with pebbles and plastic plants. I couldn't find a Maisel in the directory of tenants. The doorman had never heard of her. I managed to find the super, and he recognized the name. He said she'd gotten married a few months ago and moved out. Her married name was Mrs. Gerald Thal. He had an address for her in Mamaroneck.
I got her number from Westchester Information and dialed it. It was busy the first three times. The fourth time around it rang twice and a woman answered.
I said, 'Mrs. Thal?'
'Yes?'
'My name is Matthew Scudder. I'd like to talk to you about Wendy Hanniford.'
There was a long silence, and I wondered if I had the right person after all.
I'd found a stack of old magazines in a closet of Wendy's apartment with Marcia Maisel's name and the Bethune Street address on them. It was possible that there had been a false connection somewhere along the way-the postal clerk could have pulled the wrong Maisel, the superintendent could have picked the wrong card out of his file.
Then she said, 'What do you want from me?'
'I want to ask you a few questions.'
'Why me?'
'You lived in the Bethune Street apartment with her.'
