against her, and she had looked down at them as he snapped the picture. Her hands were touching their silky, dark heads.
'No… no… no… no…!' Now her body arched in pain. Unsteadily she reached out her hand, and it hit the coffeepot, knocking it over. She drew it back, only dimly feeling the searing liquid that splattered on her fingers.
She had to burn the paper. Michael and Missy musn't see it. That was it. She'd burn the paper so that no one could see it. She ran to the fireplace in the dining-room. The fireplace… that wasn't cheery and warm and protecting any more. Because there was no haven. there never could be a haven for her. She squeezed the paper together and reached unsteadily for the box of matches on the mantel. A wisp of smoke and a flame, and then the paper began to burn as she stuffed it between the logs.
Everyone on the Cape was reading that paper. They'd know… they'd all know. The one picture they'd surely recognize. She didn't even remember that anyone had seen her after she'd cut her hair and dyed it. The paper was burning brightly now. She watched as the picture with Peter and Lisa flamed, and charred and curled. Dead, both of them; and she'd be better off with them. There was no place to hide for her… or to forget. Ray could take care of Michael and Missy. Tomorrow in Michael's class the children would be looking at him, whispering, pointing their fingers.
The children. She must save the children. No, get the children. That was it. They'd catch cold.
She stumbled to the back door and pulled it open. 'Peter… Lisa…' she called. No, no! It was Michael and Missy. They were her children.
'Michael. Missy. Come here. Come in now!' Her wail heightened to a shriek. Where were they? She hurried out to the backyard, unmindful of the cold that bit through her light sweater.
The swing. They must have gotten off the swing. They were probably in the woods. 'Michael. Missy. Michael! Missy! Don't hide! Come here now!'
The swing was still moving. The wind was making it sway. Then she saw the mitten. Missy's mitten, caught in the metal loops of the swing.
From far off she heard a sound. What sound? The children.
The lake! They must be at the lake. They weren't supposed to go there, but maybe they had. They'd be found. Like the others. In the water. Their faces wet and swollen and still.
She grabbed Missy's mitten, the mitten with the smile face, and staggered towards the lake. She called their names over and over again. She pushed her way through the woods and out on to the sandy beach.
In the lake, a little way out, something was glistening below the surface. Was it something red… another mitten…Missy's hand? She plunged into the icy water as far as her shoulders and reached down. But there wasn't anything there. Frantically Nancy clutched her fingers together so that they formed a strainer, but there was nothing – only the terrible numbing cold water. She looked down, trying to see to the bottom; leaned over and fell. The water gushed into her nostrils and mouth and burned her face and neck.
Somehow she staggered up and back before her wet clothes pulled her down again. She fell on to the ice- crusted sand. Through the roar in her ears and the mist that was closing in front of her eyes, she looked into the woods and saw him – his face… Whose face?
The mist closed over her eyes completely. Sounds died away: the mournful cackle of the sea gull… the lapping of the water… Silence.
It was there that Ray and Dorothy found her. Shivering uncontrollably, lying on the sand, her hair and clothes plastered to her head and body, her eyes blank and uncomprehending, angry blisters raised on the hand that clutched a small red mitten to her cheek.
CHAPTER SIX
Jonathan carefully washed and rinsed his breakfast dishes, scoured the omelet pan and swept the kitchen floor. Emily had been naturally, effortlessly neat, and years of living with her had made him appreciate the intrinsic comfort of tidiness. He always hung his clothes in the closets, put his laundry in the bathroom hamper and cleared up immediately after his solitary meals. He even had an eye for the kind of detail that his cleaning woman missed and after she left on Wednesdays would do small jobs like washing canisters and bric-a-brac and polishing surfaces that she'd left cloudy with wax.
In New York he and Emily had lived on Sutton Place on the south-east corner of Fifty-fifth Street. Their apartment building had extended over the F.D.R. Drive to the edge of the East River. Sometimes they had sat on their seventeenth-floor balcony and watched the lights of the bridges that spanned the river and talked about the time when they'd be retired at the Cape and looking out over Maushop Lake.
'You won't have Bertha in every day to keep the wheels spinning,' he'd teased her.
'By the time we get up there, Bertha will be ready to retire and I'll break you in as my assistant. All we'll really need is a weekly cleaning woman. How about you? Will you miss having a car pick you up at the door any time you want it?'
Jonathan had answered that he'd decided to buy a bicycle. 'I'd do it now,' he'd told Emily, 'but I'm afraid some of our clients might get upset if the word was around that I arrived at work on a ten-speeder.'
'And you'll try your hand at writing,' Emily had prodded. 'I sometimes wish you'd just taken a chance and done it years ago.'
'Never could afford to, married to you,' he'd said. 'The one-woman war against recession. All Fifth Avenue stays in the black when Mrs Knowles goes shopping.'
'It's your fault,' she'd retorted. 'You're always telling me to spend your money.'
'I like spending it on you,' he'd told her, 'and I have no complaints. I've been lucky.'
If only they'd had even a few years up here together… Jonathan sighed and hung up the dish towel. Seeing Nancy Eldredge and her children framed in the window this morning had vaguely depressed him. Maybe it was the weather or the long winter setting in, but he was restless, apprehensive. Something was bothering him. It was the kind of itch he used to get when he was preparing a brief and some facts just didn't jibe.
Well, he'd get to his desk. He was anxious to start working on the Harmon chapter.
He could have taken early retirement, he thought, as he walked slowly into his study. As it turned out, that was just what he had done anyway. The minute he lost Emily, he'd sold the New York apartment, put in his resignation, pensioned off Bertha and, like a dog licking its wounds, had come here to this house that they'd picked out together. After the first bleak grief, he'd found a measure of contentment.
Now writing the book was a fascinating and absorbing experience. When he'd gotten the idea for doing it, he had asked Kevin Parks, a meticulous free-lance researcher and old friend, to come up for a week-end. Then he had outlined his plan to him. Jonathan had selected ten controversial criminal trials. He'd proposed that Kev take on the job of putting together a file of all available material on those trials: court transcripts; depositions; newspaper accounts; pictures; gossip – anything he could find. Jonathan planned to study each file thoroughly and then decide how to write the chapter – either agreeing with the verdict or rejecting it, and giving his reasons. He was calling the book Verdict in Doubt.
He'd already finished three chapters. The first was called 'The Sam Sheppard Trial'. His opinion: not guilty. Too many loopholes; too much suppressed evidence. Jonathan agreed with the Dorothy Kilgallen opinion that the jury had found Sam Sheppard guilty of adultery, not murder.
The second chapter was 'The Cappolino Trial'. Marge
Farger, in his opinion, belonged in a prison cell with her former boy-friend.
The just-completed chapter was 'The Edgar Smith Trial'. Jonathan's view was that Edgar Smith was guilty but deserved his freedom. Fourteen years constituted a life sentence today, and he had rehabilitated and educated himself in a grisly cell on Death Row.
Now he sat down at his massive desk and reached into the file drawer for the thick cardboard folders that had arrived the previous day. They were labelled THE HARMON CASE.
A note from Kevin was stapled to the first envelope. It read:
Jon, I have a hunch you'll enjoy getting your teeth into this one. The defendant was a sitting duck for the prosecutor; even her husband broke down on the stand and practically accused her in front of the jury. If they ever
