CHAPTER 3
THE TELEPHONE for Gerald Mallow, Inc., in St. Louis had been temporarily disconnected.
Torrant, sitting on the edge of his bed the next morning, stared blankly ahead of him as this information was delivered liltingly into his ear. For an uncomfortable instant he had a vision of Annabelle Blair, quiet, mockingly aware, glancing back over her shoulder as she cut the threads that would lead him to her. He shook off the vision at once, knowing that she could not possibly be aware and that the single flashing image was the result of another edgy night, and hours of wondering.
Was this thing really his business, after all? Was he, in returning from the turmoil of Korea to the sudden quiet of civilian life, unconsciously seeking windmills to tilt at? He had argued that with himself through the darkness and a number of cigarettes; he fell exhaustedly asleep and his own conclusion woke him.
Murder—or willful destruction, call it that-had to be somebody s business. Looking at it and then walking away was not only countenancing evil, it was giving it a small admiring bow. And if he had felt obligated by friendship to inquire about Martin’s widow, and in the inquiring had stumbled upon a set of murderous discrepancies, then the obligation became that much more binding.
With the receiver at his ear, and Long Distance repeating impatiently that Gerald Mallow’s telephone had been disconnected, Torrant asked about a listing for Annabelle Fennister or Blair, and because he had asked without much hope was surprised to hear the operator saying presently, “I have an Annabelle Blair at 400 Willow Street. Would that be your party? The number . .
Torrant wrote it down, because it was another piece of surface identity, and waited tautly while a telephone rang lazily across the miles. He would destroy his own purpose if he made himself known; on the other hand, with a bitter sense of the fruitless time already elapsed, he had to be sure that this was the woman he wanted, and that she was there, before he went to St. Louis.
The drawling line clicked suddenly into life. A woman’s voice said, “Hello?” and then, impatiently, “hello, who is this, please?”
The operator said tardily, “Ready with St. Louis.”
Torrant said warmly, “Annabelle?”
The snow began at about four o’clock that afternoon, a soft and tentative fall that, with the dropping temperature and the rising wind, seemed like the outer fringe of something else. At a little after six, when Torrant arrived in a town twenty-five miles south of Boston, the snow had stopped, but the wind still spun it about in cold little webs on the lighted street.
He didn’t feel the wind as he headed toward the frosted windows of a newspaper store; he felt as though he had caught a thread Annabelle Blair hadn’t severed quite completely enough. In response to his assertions that he was an old and valued friend, her landlady had informed him that Miss Blair— Miss, so she had wiped Martin completely out of her past-had departed several weeks ago on a business trip with her employer and his wife. She hadn’t left a forwarding address, but the landlady had happened to overhear her mention the town of Chauncy, Massachusetts, as her destination.
For all his travels Torrant had never been in Chauncy before, or heard of it; it was the kind of town you thought you had reached the outskirts of and discovered miles later that you had passed through. But the newspaper store windows looked promising, and he went in.
It was a tiny place, full of a warm idle quiet when he closed the door on the rattling wind. A navy-coated girl with her back to him at the reprint rack didn’t turn at the sound of the door, but the proprietress emerged from a back region, a small woman, majestically fat, with the blandest eyes Torrant had ever seen on anything but a Siamese cat.
Buying cigarettes and a Boston newspaper, he didn’t waste time inquiring about a hotel or a boarding-house; pinpoint places like Chauncy did not have either. He said instead, pocketing his change, “Is there anyone in town who takes in roomers?”
“Roomers?” repeated the proprietress, and a comer of Tor-rant’s eye saw the girl at the magazine rack turn her head. “For how long?”
“A week anyway, possibly longer.” Torrant went on watching the round face, and saw with mild interest the sliding glance she gave the girl. The glance didn’t seem to communicate anything, it seemed more speculative.
“Mrs. Judd generally has a room or two vacant,” said the proprietress, and began to issue directions. Torrant thanked her, picked up his suitcase and walked to the door. With his hand on the knob he turned his head with deliberate suddenness and caught the girl by surprise.
She was still watching him over the upturned collar of the navy coat. There was nothing coy about the direct olive-gold gaze; she looked as coolly challenging, Torrant thought, as a housewife X-raying peaches. He gave her a small sardonic nod and opened the door and went out into the wind again.
Mrs. Judd’s house was on a quiet side street five blocks from the center of the town; Mrs. Judd herself was a thin and frantically nervous woman who looked as though a sudden loud noise would cause her to disintegrate. She led Torrant through a shadowy front hall and up three flights of stairs, each landing growing successively chillier. Heat might rise in most houses, Torrant reflected, following Mrs. Judd’s well-sweatered back, but in this one it appeared to have settled permanently in the cellar.
The three bedrooms on the top floor were all vacant. Torrant took the one on the corner with its own inside bath, paid Mrs. Judd for a week and received a house key in return. Mrs. Judd, thrusting her lavender hands inside her sweater sleeves, hoped that he would find the room comfortable. At the door she said timidly, “Have you friends in Chauncy, Mr.
