“Don’t answer it,” ordered Dickens flatly.
“I have to.” It took all her courage to start rapidly toward the doorway as if there could be no possible interference, administering automatic little thumps to Rosie, who had gotten water up her nostrils and was coughing and spluttering. “I told the hospital to call me at any hour and that I’d be waiting. They’ll think it’s very odd.”
She knew that this was absurd—at any large institution shoulders would simply be shrugged; they had done their best—but her fast lie had produced in Dickens a greed to learn that Mrs. Balsam was safely dead. It flashed clearly across his face in the split second before he wheeled out of the kitchen, his previous prohibition turned into sharp purpose. “Make it quick,” he said over his shoulder, “and watch it.”
In the living room, the other man stared tensely as Amanda picked up the receiver, trying wildly to think of a signal in case this should be Justin. “Hello?”
“Miss Morley?”
“Yes.” It was a woman’s voice, crisp, authoritative, surely heard before at some unidentifiable point.
“This is Saint Swithin’s Hospital—” Oh, God, thought Amanda in real horror. I’ve done it, I’ve killed Aunt Jane—“and although we don’t usually do this I’m calling because Mrs. Balsam is agitating herself so about a message she wants you to have. She can’t speak, you understand, but she managed to print a few words.” Dickens had edged so close that Amanda felt and twitched away from his body heat, but he needn’t have; the nurse’s voice had a carrying quality—and her little pause was obviously for sounds of gratification. “That’s wonderful,” said Amanda with difficulty. “What—was the message?”
Because it was impossible not to ask; Dickens had the means to force her to call back, and the essential damage was already done. He was listening tightly and— again that somehow dreadful tune-in—sending out not alarm but a rigid fury.
“Actually, for you to stay away from her house,” said the nurse, and added apologetically, “I wouldn’t take that personally, if I were you, but she certainly feels strongly about it at the moment.”
The words seemed to bounce off the walls. “Tell her I understand,” said Amanda, staring with fixity at her Christmas tree, “and that everything is—” in spite of herself her voice went uneven “—under control, and I’ll be in to see her in the morning.” She could do at least that much for Mrs. Balsam, who had made such a desperate and ironic effort to protect her—or was she, in staking claim to a small piece of the future, doing it partly for herself?
She put the receiver down in the kind of silence which might explode if someone lit a match. It came to her with a rush of astonishing bitterness that where she ought to have been rejoicing at what had to be an improvement in her aunt’s condition she had in fact thought, Why? Why now?
And Dickens had to be looked at, sooner or later. Amanda stepped away and turned her head deliberately. He had either recovered from his rage or slid into a deeper one, because although his gaze drove at her like blue sleet he showed his white teeth at her in an oblong smile. So,” he said almost pleasantly, and let his contemplation rove down to her feet. “Better put on some boots or something, you may be doing a little walking.’ His glance touched Rosie, who, Amanda realized with sudden dread, was raising her hand uncertainly to her mouth. “Leave her here.”
Very briskly, as if the mere fact of motion could sidetrack the disastrous notion dawning in the child’s head, Amanda set her down in the small armchair beside the telephone table. She could not be allowed to cry, because Dickens’ new civility was not really that at all and he was now under a new pressure. Amanda started out of the room, and Rosie said piteously but with the beginnings of determination, “Where my raggie?”
It was the one thing about which she was not so much difficult as impossible. The fraying strip of cloth was guarded in the Lopez household like the family jewels, laundered by hand so that it should not join an occasional sock in some mysterious limbo created by the washing machine—and it was back at Mrs. Balsam’s house.
“I’ll get it for you,” said Amanda.
In her bedroom, lighting a cigarette with the smoke-allergic murderer in mind, she was glad of this challenging diversion; it kept her from thinking about what was going on in the living room. Dickens didn’t care how wet her feet got. He was now faced with the fact that Mrs. Balsam was alert and aware, and, provided with a detailed description of him, would take her pencil and print his name.
. . . She had a very pale pink linen scarf, but as Rosie was given to putting her talisman in her mouth the texture would be unacceptable. The satin binding on her white wool blanket was also white, but it would have to do. With her nail scissors, hands tending to shake, Amanda severed an approximating length, tied two knots in it close to one end so that it bore some resemblance to the tangled original, and crumpled it instinctively into her pocket as fast, hard footsteps crossed the front hall. When Dickens appeared in the doorway she was tying one low fur boot.
“I didn’t tell you to take all night about it ”
There was a near-intimacy about his sharpness, but for just a flash there had been something in his gaze so frightening that to keep herself from identifying it Amanda said the first thing that came into her head. “He’s making you do this, isn’t he? You don’t even seem to like him very much.”
In the telephone booth there had been too little space for him
