“Oh no,” said Annabelle, smiling and hard. “It’s kind of you to be concerned, but I’m quite all right.”
“Nonsense,” said Torrant over his shoulder, and walked across the slushy brown-and-white lawn to the front door, soberly recounting the tale of an acquaintance who had just recovered from pneumonia. Annabelle Blair wanted to order him off her property; it was there in her set, quietly furious face. She didn’t dare. She took out her key and opened the door.
The living room with its seaweed wallpaper had an almost cellar-like darkness after the sun and snow. It was, Torrant thought, glancing briefly about him, an appropriate place in which to live a shadow life. Behind him Annabelle Blair said stiffly, “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to put on some dry shoes.”
“While you’re doing that, I’ll get a fire going. And,” said Torrant, because this was the woman who had mentioned Simeon’s name after highballs at the Starks’, “can I get you something to drink? You look chilled.”
“I am cold,” murmured Annabelle after a brief hesitation; she sounded as though she had argued something with herself. “No, I’ll get it, Mr. Torrant . . .”
She was back almost at once with a decanter of sherry and glasses. She poured them both and lifted hers; she met Torrant’s eyes and something seemed to click into place behind her own. She lowered the glass and set it down with an odd finality. “My shoes,” she said. “I really must change them,” and went out of the room and up the white staircase.
Close, Torrant thought regretfully. It was good sherry, dry and subtle, so subtle that she didn’t dare trust herself with it. He set down his own glass and crossed to the fireplace. There were half-consumed logs there, and in the Dutch oven he found stacked newspapers and kindling and more logs. How provident she was . . .
Again and unrelatedly, a small teasing question poised itself at the edge of his mind. He left the hearth, wondering, trying to track it down, and went rapidly across the room to the desk in the corner.
There was no sound at all from the stairs. The desk flap came down noiselessly, on pigeonholes with a few neat papers. He pulled one out at random, a letter to Gerald Mallow from Village Queen Enterprises, full of cautious legal phrases and dated January fourth. Another: a receipted bill for turning on the water at 707 Vanguard Street. Nothing here that wasn’t safe and proper—and Annabelle Blair had been gone a long time for a woman changing her shoes. Was she hoping to find him at the desk?
Torrant went back to the hearth, examined his groundwork critically and held a match to it. The newspaper flared, the kindling he had interlaced among the logs began to crackle. And here was something he hadn’t seen before, a brown-edged paper tucked under the andirons, the remains of a handwritten letter. The signature was there, bitten off at the corner: “Loui—”
Torrant bent forward intently and stretched a hand toward the base of the flames. A poker shot over his shoulder, nudging the logs and sending up a small explosion of sparks, pushing the half-burned letter carelessly into the heart of the fire. Behind him Annabelle Blair said mockingly, “What a good idea this was after all. But—don’t bum yourself, Mr. Torrant.”
He straightened, noticing on the way that she wore sponge-soled slippers, soft and silent. And she had managed another change while she was upstairs; she was no longer trapped and angry but quietly sure of herself. He wondered what was up there; it crossed his mind for the first time that it might be interesting to see. Through Maria Rowan, perhaps, or Paulette Kirby, who had trunks stored in the attic.
He said deliberately, “Just getting warm,” and stood aside. “You’d better, too. You can’t be too careful, Miss Blair. It’s a tricky time of year.”
“It is, isn’t it? But I’m really quite careful,” said Annabelle Blair softly, and then excused herself as a telephone began to ring in another room. “More sherry, Mr. Torrant? Mr. Mallow found it excellent . .
Torrant gave her ten seconds and went soundlessly after her. She had gone through the small front hall but not up the stairs. He reached the hall and looked past a white door that was not quite closed, beyond which Annabelle’s voice sounded in monosyllables. It was another living room, a front parlor, probably, but somehow startling: the two-inch opening showed him a vivid slice of burgundy-red paint.
“No,” said Annabelle guardedly, somewhere behind the door. “I know, but I can’t talk now . . . yes. Yes, I’ll be here.”
The receiver went down. Torrant was back in the square dark living room, strolling idly forward, when the door across the hall swung wide on a white-windowed red wall and a strong breath of paint. Head-high beside the window was a splash of pale blue, like a surprised and peeping eye. Torrant said mildly, “Painting?”
“The red was Mrs. Mallow’s idea,” said Annabelle. She walked past him and stood staring out at the willow grove, her back turned. “I find it rather difficult to five with, but Mrs. Mallow liked things—gay.”
Torrant watched the hands she had forgotten, knotted and white and strong. He said slowly, “You hated Louise Mallow, didn’t you?”
A full minute went by. The willows moved in the wind and let in a few reluctant shards of light. The convulsed hands loosened gradually until they hung sedately at the sides of the shapeless
