She said flatly, “What a peculiar thing to say. Just because she had everything—clothes and furs and a man who’d have gotten the moon for her if she wanted it—doesn’t mean I hated her, Mr. Torrant. Mrs. Mallow was part of my job.”
But the hatred was there in every line of her. It made an ugly mixture with her visit to the cemetery and the damp clinging snow on her coat where she had knelt, and that quiet triumph as she neared the gate.
“You’ll have to excuse me now, I have an appointment,” she said in the same, level voice, and moved toward the door as she spoke. Torrant picked up his coat, coldly exultant, as anxious to be out of here as she was to have him go.
Because he knew now that his weapon lay with the Mallows, that he could only pay his obligation to Martin through the man and woman with whom Annabelle Blair had dealt so recently. Martin had been dead a year, but the Mallows were, so to speak, a new kill. What he had to do now was clothe the names with flesh and identity, and uncover the track of the hunter—the quiet constant deadly presence they hadn’t thought about.
And he knew what it was, the tiny persistent point that had been bothering him.
CHAPTER 8
THE BLACK IRON real-estate sign creaked lazily in front of Paulette Kirby’s house. The tubbed evergreens at the door moved in the melting wind, unbuttoning the last of the snow with small wet noises. Torrant, who had just removed his finger from the bell, thought that there had been another and suspended sound from inside the house. He waited briefly, and went back to the car with the feeling that Mrs. Kirby’s bold arched face was watching him from behind a curtain.
He would start, then, with where the Mallows had ended.
The convertible stood out like an orchid in the weedy lot behind Earnshaw’s garage, the obvious choice because it was the only garage in Chauncy with a towing service. Torrant shook his head unconsciously as he gazed at it; it had been a beautiful mechanism and it looked almost humanly wounded in its bent chrome and slivered glass and crumpling of pale blue metal.
The mechanic beside him made a sympathetic noise. “Ain’t she sweet,” he said reflectively. “Damage not as bad as it looks, either—that’s the way it goes. Orders are to scrap her, though.”
“Orders?”
The mechanic nodded and spat a respectful distance away from the blue convertible. “Lady up at the house called Mr. Earnshaw the day after the crash and told him she wanted it scrapped right away. We been kind of busy lately and haven’t got to it yet.”
Torrant strolled casually closer. He circled the car and put his head in at the completely shattered driver’s window. Most of the damage seemed to be on that side, the door buckled, the fender crushed back—and Gerald Mallow had died first. He was glancing over the cream and red interior when, at the opposite window, the mechanic muttered and thrust in a proprietary arm.
The glove compartment hung open, and he closed it with a snap. He said ruefully to Torrant, “‘Kind of a popular car today. Had a guy in earlier this morning, friend of Mr. Mallow’s, looking her over. Couldn’t hardly believe it, he said, when he got the news.”
Nothing in the car, of course; anything of interest would have come to light at the time. But Simeon had opened the glove compartment to see for himself . . . Torrant joined the mechanic and began to walk back through the sodden lot. He said casually, “Driving on ice, wasn’t he?”
“Driving on Scotch,” said the mechanic succinctly, and shrugged. “So they say. Bartender up at the Grotto, where they were that night, is a cousin of my wife’s, and he says Mr. Mallow was putting away a lot. Mrs. Mallow was getting kind of nervous but he wouldn’t listen to her. I guess they were on the way home when he skidded and wrapped the car around an elm.”
Alcohol and darkness and an icy road—everyday tragedy, or a clever mask for murder? The Grotto: Torrant filed the name in his mind. He was surprised and a little angry at the doubt that had filtered into his mind at the mechanics summing-up. But there was no doubt at all about her part in Martin’s death, and again this time she had stood to gain financially . . .
It was a little after twelve-thirty. He took himself off to a preoccupied lunch, and had just let himself out the restaurant door when he nearly collided with Maria Rowan and, at her shoulder, Simeon.
Lunching together—and why not? Torrant greeted them with the firm smile of sudden bad temper; he had to remind himself that this cool olive-eyed girl was quite capable of taking care of herself and no concern of his. When Simeon presented her cousin as a would-be murderess, she would undoubtedly take it in stride. He said, checking his own turn away, “Oh, by the way, I did find Miss Blair this morning.” Simeon’s tired gaze swung alertly. Maria said, “So I noticed,” with no inflection at all. Torrant said pleasantly, “Keep away from the hot turkey sandwich, it’s really Turkish towelling,” and left them.
The Renault was outside but he walked the four long blocks to Paulette Kirby’s house, because it took that long to wipe Maria Rowan’s face out of his mind and he wanted it free for the other face, still blank, that ought to be there. It was a face that must exist, according to everything he had heard of Louise Mallow.
“Why, it’s Mr. Torrant,” said Mrs. Kirby suavely after his second ring. “Do come in, by all means.
