In Hilary’s room, she sat in the little green-painted rocker and drank her coffee, waiting bracedly for the conversation to open on Mrs. Foale. Instead, Hilary worked her way broodingly through her breakfast, only pausing now and then to regard Margaret with an unnerving lynx-like stare. Had she recognized Philip in the snapshot, after all? Had Philip and Cornelia been so unguarded as to mention, in her hearing, anything of Margaret and the past?
Margaret bore it while she smoked a cigarette; then, standing with her empty cup, she said brightly, “What’s the matter, Hilary? Something on your mind?”
“No,” said Hilary, dropping her lashes. “Who came last night?”
Margaret’s heart gave a thump. “Nobody.”
“Somebody kept ringing the doorbell.”
“Oh, that. That was someone looking for another address on this street.”
“But you kept telling them to go away.”
“I was very busy,” said Margaret, and bent her face concealingly over the tray on Hilary’s lap. “Finished?”
The rag she had used to wash the flagstones was an unrecognizable twist of black when she went out to look; nevertheless, the same driving urgency that had propelled her then made her scour the yard for all the leaves and wind-driven scraps of paper she could find and light a second fire. The rag sank into fragility, then into ash. No one could ever tell, now, that she had scrubbed a man’s blood off the porch, deliberately destroying evidence of—
No. That was only in her own mind. The Southwest was not the tame and civilized East; you had only to read the newspapers to know that quarrels were still settled quite frequently with knives or guns. That was open battle, not the dark and secret process that murder suggested. In any case, the man on the porch had probably only been wounded.
Intolerable to think anything else. That he had swayed this time because he was dying, that some bewildered instinct had led him to seek help in a house where he had been used to receiving money, that Margaret had driven him back into the night to die by himself.
Another, colder thought touched her. Suppose that at this minute, while she stood here in warm light under a sky that seemed tangibly blue, he lay somewhere quite near her, unaware any more of light or sky?
Stepping as carefully as though she had heard a whir of rattles in the grass, Margaret began to search the grounds. The garage, first, piled with sealed cartons belonging to Cornelia and Philip, boxes and roped trunks of Mrs. Foale’s. Then around the house, under pear and apple trees to where the walled front lawn ran lengthwise to taller trees at either end. She had no eye for the neglected gardens, the jonquils budding hopefully in the midst of drifted leaves and twigs and last year’s brown stalks. She looked for worn dungarees, a big-brimmed hat, a slender olive hand—and they weren’t here.
At least . . . there was one more place to search, or rather, two: the twin concrete-lined pits, perhaps four feet deep, that flanked the gate on the inside of the adobe wall. Margaret had no idea of their function, but either one would be a certain trap for feet weaving off into the dark.
The first held only dead leaves, twigs, and two ancient newspapers still in their tight cylindrical fold. She caught her breath at the second, but the piece of blue cloth was a wind-whipped fragment, faded and rotting.
It would be dreadful if he came back, after that parting gesture of fury. It would be worse if he did not. When the doorbell rang at ten o’clock Margaret’s nervous fingers dropped a glass shatteringly into the sink, but the shadow cast on the door curtain was a woman’s.
It was Elizabeth Honeyman with news of Mrs. Foale.
Nine
MRS. Foale had settled down abroad, at least for the time being, and wanted any accumulated mail and her address book forwarded as soon as possible.
Perhaps because Margaret had invoked her so often, any actual utterance by Mrs. Foale seemed as unreal as speech from a statue, or a flutter of wings from the beaded peacocks on the mantel. She said after a surprised little pause, “I don’t think there’s any mail except a postcard . . . here it is. I imagine you’d know where she keeps her address book.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t. In her bedroom, I should assume,” said Elizabeth Honeyman, sounding annoyed. The color in her thin carven face was high and uneven. Anger because Isabel Foale had left her “trust,” irritation at doing errands, or something else? At Margaret’s glance she turned sharply away, appearing to inspect the crystal seagulls on the desk for dust or cracks. “Perhaps she’s going to write people at last . . . if you wouldn’t mind taking just a quick look? It’s green leather, and” she gestured “about this big.”
From the things left in the closet, Mrs. Foale had apparently used the room that Hilary now occupied. Margaret went down the hall, opened the door, closed it behind her, put a warning finger to her lips as Hilary opened her mouth, and began to pull open drawers.
“What are you looking for?” demanded Hilary in a penetrating whisper.
“Sshh. Mrs. Foale’s green address book.” Too late, she realized the folly of that.
“What does she want it for?”
“Addresses,” said Margaret tersely. “Sshh.”
“If she’s all the way over there, why does she want addresses of people all the way over here?”
“Because she does. Hilary, are you absolutely sure you haven’t seen it?”
Hilary’s look of wistful chagrin was answer enough in itself. The book was nowhere in the room, and after a second’s rebellion Margaret crossed the hall into her own bedroom. She was not going to turn the house inside out for either Mrs. Foale or Miss Honeyman, but if Lena had found the address book lying about, chances were she would have put it in
