There was a rib roast in the oven; Louise put potatoes in to bake and returned to the sink. At seven o’clock there were footsteps on the stairs and Gerald and Annabelle walked into the kitchen, Gerald immaculately pink and shaven, Annabelle with stone martens slung about her shoulders.
Annabelle said, ‘‘We thought we’d go out for a change, we haven’t been for ages,” and at her shoulder Gerald said amiably, “How about it, Louise?”
Louise glanced doubtfully at the oven. Her back ached from standing at the low old-fashioned sink and the rib roast would keep, but she would have to dress . . . Annabelle flipped her gloves against her palm, and said blandly, “Come as you are ”
As you are. Old sweater and skirt, low-heeled shoes, hands reddened with hot water, hair damp at her forehead where she’d brushed it back with a soapy wrist. And they knew, of course; this was the careless twist of the knife. She said steadily, “No, thanks,” and then, “Oh—not taking my bag tonight, Annabelle? Because I’d appreciate it next time if you’d leave me my glasses.”
Annabelle glanced back over her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said, mockingly contrite. “I’ll remember.
It might have been that evening that made them nervous, because during the next few days Louise began to notice that Gerald was watching her thoughtfully and that Annabelle’s glance slid nervously away from hers.
“They’d set up an intolerable situation,” Louise said, “to force me into walking out of it and giving Gerald a divorce. They didn’t know, either of them, that if you hate someone enough you can bear anything. Annabelle wasn’t used to the country anyway, and I could feel her growing afraid of me and infecting Gerald. So he changed his will,” her gaze met Maria’s, “and he told me about it.”
She had been stunned, she needed time to think. But before she could arrive at any conclusion, Gerald and Annabelle went out for the evening together for the last time.
“She took my alligator bag,” Louise said in a voice that was suddenly thin and faraway, “and I suppose when they got to the garage she remembered about my glasses and wouldn’t go to the trouble of bringing them back. But the bag was the only thing I had that she envied. They’d had cocktails here, and they left at about seven o’clock. It must have been almost midnight before the doctor knocked at the door. I was still up, I was trying to think what to do . .
The town of Chauncy had had three weeks in which to draw its conclusions; Louise had unconsciously protected herself from the full clarity of the situation. When the doctor said gently, “I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for a shock, Miss—er. There’s been a tragic accident. Mr. and Mrs. Mallow were both killed when their car—” she shook her head blindly, once, and said in a whisper, “Mr. and Mrs” and toppled.
Torrant said in a voice he didn’t quite know how to use to this woman, “You haven’t touched your drink, Mrs. Mallow.”
“I don’t want it. Or maybe I do,” said Louise, “to try and explain . . . I was dazed, I couldn’t think at all for a while. The doctor sent a nurse over for a few hours the next day, and she kept calling me Miss Blair. I thought about the humiliation of the truth coming out, and then,” said Louise, her head lifting, “I thought about the money. It was mine to begin with, and what had happened, all of it, seemed like retribution. Gerald had deliberately paraded the woman everybody thought was his wife, and he made it quite easy for me to become Annabelle Blair. I don’t know what made me think I could ever really get away with it.”
It had all seemed simple, however, in the fog of shock. She had the black calf handbag, full of personal identification, which Annabelle had left behind that night; she spent hours learning the signature that would at some point be required. She moved her own belongings into the bedroom Annabelle had occupied, and transferred the other woman’s suits and dresses and furs to the closet in the big double bedroom. Beyond that she did nothing at all, because her role was a passive one.
But there was the cousin she had briefly forgotten, to whom she had written that lonely letter. She knew that Maria had been very young at the time of the wedding and that she herself had changed a great deal, but she was afraid of the handwriting and of what she might have said. She had used the spare key to the apartment and removed the letter.
“I didn’t want you to be involved with—I’m a felon, aren’t I?’” Louise asked Maria. “I suppose I am. I meant to go away when it was all over, abroad, perhaps. . .
She had been completely at sea over Torrant’s mission in Chauncy. She knew by then that Annabelle Blair had been an alley-cat in pedigreed clothing, but the test pilot was still vaguely in her mind and she never thought about murder.
Until Simeon came.
Torrant saw him as Louise Mallow talked. Knocking at the door under the wisteria, winter sunlight bright on his head, t melancholy dark eyes running astoundedly over the woman who opened the door. Deep fluid voice saying after a pause, “Annabelle. My dear, how you’ve changed.”
“The worst of it was,” Louise said, shivering a little, “that he—admired me. When he read about the accident in the papers, he thought Annabelle might be worth looking up again, I suppose, but what he found was so much better. He bargained with me,” said Louise, and covered her face with her hands for the first time. “He said half. I think I knew that it wouldn’t stop there, blackmail never does. And all the time he kept looking for proof of murder, probably to make even surer of me.
