It was a theory that fitted well with Annabelle’s peculiar talents, and Torrant regarded it with pleasure while he dressed. If it weren’t for one small but vital point—
You could plant ideas only in a mind that was ready for them; Annabelle had been successful with Martin because of his ingrained dread of lingering illness. Had Gerald Mallow been ready in his own way, had he already begun to fear his wife? Torrant found that he was eyeing his own face shrewdly in the mirror. He left the room and went downstairs and out into the brilliant dripping morning.
He had breakfast at the cafe and was irritated to find himself looking again for Maria Rowan. She wasn’t there; she was, he discovered half an hour later, leaning against the garage on Vanguard Street, squinting in the sun and talking amiably to a small bald man in a Mackinaw who was working busily on the lock.
Torrant put the Renault against the bank in front of the Mallow house and gazed across the street at black lettering on the faded tan sedan parked there: Joseph Pym, Locksmith, 76 Rockland Street, Chauncy, Mass., Tel. 848. Mr. Pym was evidently finishing up. He closed the garage door and tried a key which opened it instantly; he said something to Maria Rowan and disappeared inside the garage. He was back again a minute later, handing her something with a flourish and wagging his finger playfully. She smiled and paid him and he climbed into the car and drove off.
Torrant was out of the Renault by then and across the street. He said cheerfully, “Good morning. Get locked out?
“I lost my key. Somewhere,” said Maria, smiling but guarded, “there are a number of keys I’ve lost.
The new lock glittered goldenly in the sun. Torrant gave it a flickering side-glance; so did Maria. She said, “I didn’t want to bother Miss Blair . . . If you’re looking for her, by the way, she went out a little while ago.”
With Simeon? The gray convertible had been gone when Torrant took out the Renault. He said as though it didn’t matter, “Was she walking? I might pick her up ” and Maria nodded, indicating Vanguard Street’s course away from the town. “I think you’d find her in that direction.”
Something about her, voice or mouth or disturbing eyes, held irony. And she was still, Torrant knew, measuring him. What was it about her that both annoyed and attracted him, and set him seeking her face in restaurants? She didn’t seem like someone he had barely met; she felt, because he supposed it was a matter of impact, unique and very personal. Which was nonsense, of course; everybody was unique.
He avoided to himself the knowledge that very few semi-strangers touched the personal consciousness that was under everybody’s conventional surface. Standing in the sunlit snow, meeting Maria’s level and ironic eyes, he said brusquely, “Thanks, I’ll try it,” and walked back to the Renault.
New locks, new keys; did that mean anything more than jitters? Torrant dismissed it and gave his attention to the curving road. It began to climb a hill; he passed a farmhouse advertising eggs, a gaunt old Victorian wreck that might have advertised bats, a little red house looking jaunty in the snow. He came upon the cemetery at the hilltop with a jolt, wondering if this were the cause of Maria Rowan’s irony.
Yes, because there was Annabelle Blair threading her way out among the headstones, her head primly down, her hands black-gloved—after, presumably, a visit to the Mallow graves. She hadn’t seen the car, halted in the shadow of the cemetery pines, and as she drew near the iron gate she lifted her head. Torrant watched her steadily in the few seconds of grace be’ fore she would turn out through the gate and come upon the Renault; he wondered what childhood image it was that her expression brought back so sharply. Something domestic and comfortable in its proper setting, but all wrong in a cemetery.
He placed it just as she reached the gate. It was the face of his efficient aunt, who at the first sign of an approaching storm would descend into the cellar to review the emergency supplies and reappear again looking as Annabelle Blair looked now, serene, complacent, reassured.
The light eyes blazed for an instant when she saw him; Torrant thought with satisfaction that she was beginning to be afraid of him. Then the icy control took over again and she answered his greeting with a short “Good morning,” and began to walk by.
“Let me give you a lift,” said Torrant promptly. “I’m on my way back anyway, so unless you’re ashamed to be seen in this vehicle—”
“Thank you, but I enjoy walking.”
“But you’re wet,” said Torrant, gently implacable, and put a hand on her arm. He felt the flesh contract instantly, as though she had read his mind and found the harsh instinct for violence there. He said, “Really, Miss Blair, you mustn’t —expose yourself,” and she glanced at him and walked around the front of the car and got in without speaking.
Torrant turned the Renault neatly in a spray of slush and started down the hill. He said presently that Martin had gotten some magnificent effects with snow, not the usual frozen-brook-and-birches treatment but closeups you felt you could plunge your hands into. “There must have been a tremendous amount of stuff for you to go through afterwards. Were you able to get any help on that?”
He was thinking as he spoke of Phil Stark, who had arranged the sale of Martin’s cameras and equipment and who hadn’t trusted Annabelle. But she said casually, “No. His
