“But there must have been a box.” Elizabeth met Maire’s and said with firmness, “Candy always comes in a box. Or a bag.”
She waited. Jeep said ponderingly, “Where box, Mama?” and Maire thought it over and went to investigate the toy chest. She said very positively, “It was just in there, just like that.”
Just like that—spilled carelessly there, glittering and gay to catch a child’s eye at the time of day when they picked up their toys with reluctance and returned them helter-skelter to the chest. Elizabeth was carefully bright. “Then someone must have come into your room and left them there for a surprise. Who could that have been?”
“Daddy,” said Jeep promptly.
“No, not Daddy. Who else has—”
“Mama,” said Jeep with an air of fond finality.
“No. Maire, who else has been—?”
The door opened and Noreen came in, her face clearing at the sight of the children sitting alertly up in their beds. “Are they all right, Mrs. March? Do you think they’re coming down with something?”
“A light attack of bon-bons,” Elizabeth said, rising. Because the children were watching and listening she kept her voice friendly as she said, lifting the foils out of the chest, “Ever seen these around before?”
She didn’t hear the first part of Noreen’s reply. Staring down at the papers in her own cupped palms, she was suddenly aware that she herself had seen them, or something very like them, not long ago . . . where? When?
“—some kind of chocolates,” Noreen was saying with a worried air. “And they look—expensive, don’t they? The children must have found them while I was hanging the laundry—I left them here with their books and told them to start picking up their toys. But where did they come from?”
“That,” said Elizabeth lightly, “is the mystery.” She kissed the children and went to the doorway. “They’re overdue for bed as it is, so let’s talk about it later . . .”
But it was Oliver she talked to first. Constance was starting dinner, and Oliver stood motionless at a window in the living-room, staring out into the dark. His back looked grim. At Elizabeth’s entrance he said without turning, “They’d done their birthdaying ahead of time, I gather. What was it, did you find out?”
“These.” Elizabeth showed him the crumpled foils. “I’ve a feeling I’ve seen this brand somewhere before—have you?”
Oliver gave them a short glance. “No. Where in the name of God did they get them?”
Inside Elizabeth a brief astonishment turned to anger. She said evenly, “We’ll probably figure it out a little sooner if you don’t swear at me,” and tossed the papers into the fireplace.
“Yes. Sorry,” said Oliver, his tone matching her own. “It isn’t serious, he doesn’t know what a birthday’s all about anyway. But —there’s this. Nobody knows where the stuff came from, nobody saw them eat it. Do you, for instance, know what they’re doing even half the time—does anybody?”
“If you mean, is somebody at their side every waking instant, no, certainly not,” said Elizabeth, stung. “It might be done with one child, if you didn’t mind turning out a little marionette, but it can’t be done with two.”
“I thought that was what Noreen was here for.”
“Noreen’s very good and very capable, and when the children aren’t with her they’re with me. Neither of us is a police matron, however, and there are things to be done in the house. She was hanging up the laundry, I gather, when—”
“Of course, that’s right—you were busy with Steven Brent.”
A small shocked silence fell. Somewhere beyond it Constance closed the oven door with a bang, and Noreen tiptoed in the upper hall. Elizabeth and Oliver stood staring at each other, heads flung back, anger like a tightwire strung between them. A moment passed that way before Elizabeth said slowly, “Oliver,” and stopped and then started again. “Sooner or later, we’ve got to—”
Noreen came down the stairs and paused in the doorway. About to speak, she glanced uncertainly at Elizabeth and then at Oliver, and turned and went silently into the kitchen. Constance appeared in the dining-room, brisk and aproned. “What a pity about the children—but they’ll have their cake tomorrow.”
Nobody answered her. Sleet touched the windows. Oliver opened his newspaper, rattling it, and observed savagely into the folds, “What a rotten night.”
“Vile,” said Elizabeth stonily.
How long had it been since she went to bed and to sleep, as simply as that? The process was very involved now; it meant the uncomfortable aloneness with Oliver, the polite query as to whether the other intended to read, the attempt at oblivion. After that, the cigarette, the staring thoughts, the sleeping pill which had lately grown into two.
Elizabeth lay in the dark and listened to Oliver sleeping. The vague dread that she had first become aware of a month ago was taking a more definite shape. It was now a pair of hands. Tearing the roses, as though they hadn’t been able to resist the beauty and the perfection, or the gesture they represented. Patiently practicing with a pen—how many sheets of paper, in what quiet room, had been covered with “Sarah E. Bennett” and “Elizabeth March”? Opening over a child’s toy chest, to spill out a shining jumble of rich forbidden candies.
Hands she had looked at countless times, and hadn’t really seen because they were the hands of someone she trusted.
The trouble with Seconal was that somewhere between the second one and morning, she could shrink and dwindle while the hands swelled and grew and played with her life at their own vicious leisure.
But the checks, thought Elizabeth, grasping at tangibles, unable to live too long with the hands; something will
