There was nothing new after the handkerchief, but Hilary had pencilled something on the facing page in warily light, almost invisible writing. Margaret bent closer and read: “Letter in l out w.”
The lock on the bathroom door clicked. When Hilary came in Margaret was sliding a fresh case over the pillow and turning back the sheets; the scrapbook was on the bedside table. “Jump in,” said Margaret, falsely bright, “and after I take your temperature I’ll get us some lunch.”
Letter in l out w. Add “l”, cross out “w” in some sort of written code Hilary had hatched up? No, Hilary would never waste her time on anything so childish as codes. She was staring straight ahead of her like an image, the thermometer all but swallowed between her compressed lips, and Margaret glanced rovingly around the room. Everything seemed in order, the bureau drawers closed as she had left them after her search for Mrs. Foale’s address book, the closet door innocent, the flowered linen curtains straight and unstirring although the sunlight was warm and one window was open.
“You have another minute to go,” Margaret said lightly. “I’ll be right back.”
Rapidly, silent as a thief, she went out the kitchen door and around the house until she was under Hilary’s south window, the one whose screen had been unlatched by Hilary the night before. (How had she forgotten that?) The window looked deceptively low-set from inside the room; the construction of the house made it a good six feet to the curved adobe sill. Margaret did not have to search far. Dried leaves had drifted about in the night, but with the sun overhead the shadow of the house was wiped out and she saw the wink of gold at once.
It was a lipstick case, not very new, and empty, only a shell of gilded metal. Margaret fitted the top back on, dropped it into her pocket, and entered the house as cautiously as she had left it. Hilary’s temperature was a little under 102, but it wasn’t time yet for either aspirin or capsule. Margaret put the thermometer away and took the lipstick case out of her pocket. She said very casually, “Is this what you threw out the window last night?”
Hilary communed suspiciously with herself and nodded.
“Where did you find it?”
“In the piano.”
“Oh,” said Margaret thoughtfully. It didn’t occur to her to doubt the truth of this. Hilary had never lied directly to her; like a conscientious adult, she had taken refuge in evasions and confusing half-statements. “Whereabouts in the piano?”
“Well, I happened to hit a key one day and it sounded sort of quavery, so I opened up that little part that lifts up—I thought I could fix it,” said Hilary virtuously, “and there was this lipstick.”
“And what was in it?”
“Nobody would put anything in an old lipstick,” said Hilary deprecatingly.
“Hilary, I happen to know there was a letter in it. What did you do with it?”
If she had not been so tense, Margaret could have laughed at Hilary’s jaw-dropped expression: the look attributed to undercover agents who are presented, in a scorned underling, with the superior they have been ordered to contact. After a long pause Hilary said, “I threw that out the window, too. It isn’t nice to read other people’s mail.”
For which Margaret could read: “I thought I heard you coming and I was afraid to be caught with it.” However much earlier Hilary had found the lipstick, she hadn’t discovered its significance until moments before Margaret had opened her door the night before; otherwise she would have had it safely stowed away somewhere.
Margaret went on fixing her with a compelling eye. “But you saw who the letter was to.”
“Mrs. Foale.”
“Dear Mrs. Foale, or Dear Isabel?”
If Hilary noticed this lapse from virtue she didn’t show it. “Dear Isabel. Can I have scrambled eggs for lunch?”
“In a minute. Who was the letter from?” Adults glanced automatically at signatures, but did children? Yes. At least Hilary had. For the first time since Margaret had seen her, a cool little bathrobed figure in the doorway of the hall, she was visibly shaken, not far from defiant tears, at something that bothered and bewildered any eight-year-old. But all she said was, stonily, “I don’t know. Some man.”
Margaret knew from that, there was no need to say pressingly, “Philip?” She wouldn’t have in any case. Apart from Hilary’s sensibilities (remarkably bouncy), what if Cornelia knew all about Philip’s affair with Mrs. Foale and the two of them had been putting up an airy front for her, Margaret?
In that case, if she gave any more emphasis to it, Hilary would go back to her parents—in the unlikely event that they ever came for her—full of Philip’s involvement with Another Woman, Margaret’s black suspicions, any embroidery that occurred to her. The Revertons, in the manner of close friends, would hardly keep this to themselves. Philip’s deception might easily get back to the home office in New York, cause irremediable gossip, earn her a well-deserved bitterness in every quarter.
Unconsciously, Margaret had arrived at a landmark. The bare possibility in her mind now was not that there might be something wrong, but that everything might still be all right.
What to do, apart from scrambling eggs for Hilary? Keep her head, obviously; remember that in spite of the peculiar slyness of the snapshot of Philip which Hilary had found tucked away among the books in the library and the letter concealed in a lipstick case, the whole rather ugly situation might be only that.
But, looked at in this
