Someone knocked softly, and Peter turned away from the window and went over and opened the door. A man stood in the hall with his hat in his hands. He was short and fat, his belly lapping the waist band of his trousers. He had a round face splattered with freckles and a tiny, sucked-in mouth that looked like a deep dent in a batch of bread dough. He turned his hat around and around by the brim in stubby fingers. His name was Smalley, and he was a detective.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Roche,” he said. “May I see you for a minute?”
“Certainly.” Peter stepped back into the room. “Come in.”
Smalley came into the room and stood waiting, turning and turning his hat, while Peter closed the door and came back past him.
“Won’t you sit down?” Peter said.
Smalley shook his head. “Thanks. I’ll only be a minute.” He looked past Peter and out the window to the opposite wing of the house. His eyes were small and pale, red-rimmed and watery, and every once in a while he knuckled them as if they pained him. “I’ve been talking with your father,” he said.
“Has he finally accepted the fact that it was really Etta?”
“I think so.” Smalley knuckled his eyes, and let them drop to the floor. “I think I convinced him,” he said.
“You’re certain, then?”
“Yes. No possibility of a mistake now. The identification is complete.”
“How’s that?”
“We had her dentist check the teeth. Dr. Norton Foresman. You know him?”
Peter was aware suddenly that he’d drawn his breath and held it. He released it slowly on a long, fading whisper, and the room blurred and faded and slowly returned in a diminishing spiral of dizziness. “Yes,” he said. “I know him. Professionally, that is. I’ve been to him myself once or twice.”
“I see. Well, as I said, he made the identification positive. The insurance will be paid promptly now. I’ve just told your father, the senator, as much.”
“Then there’s no hope at all? That it might not have been Etta?”
“None whatever. I’m sorry.”
“Well, it’s not too great a shock to me. I’ve felt from the beginning that it couldn’t have been anyone else. I’m afraid the old man was holding out pretty grimly, though. How did he take it?”
Smalley turned and turned his hat and scuffed a toe against the rug. “That’s really what I stopped to speak to you about. On the surface, he took it calmly enough. And that’s the trouble. He took it too calmly. Not a normal kind of control, if you know what I mean. He’s withdrawn, drifting out of contact, and that’s a danger sign.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t like to mention this, to frighten you needlessly, perhaps, but I think under the circumstances that I’d better. I’ve seen this sort of thing before, Mr. Roche. I’ve watched it happen.” Smalley lifted his eyes to the light. Behind a thin film, they had a bright, blind look. “I’m thinking of suicide, Mr. Roche.”
“Suicide!”
“Yes. I know it must seem incredible to you. It always does, and maybe in this case it really is, but if you’re wise you’ll watch him for a while. Just keep him under observation.”
“I think you must be mistaken. The old man never struck me as the type who would go off the deep end. Not even over something like this.”
“There’s a breaking point, Mr. Roche. A time when a man feels he’s simply had enough. It comes to all of us, and most of us get past it all right, but a few of us don’t. Well, it’s your affair, of course. I just thought I’d mention it for what it’s worth.”
“I know you mean well. Thanks very much. Will you have a drink before you go?”
“No, thanks.” Smalley put his hat on his head, took it off again, blinked into the light, and turned back to the door. He looked over his shoulder and nodded several times and let himself out into the hall.
Peter stood quietly in the room and listened to an exultant, interior singing of joy and triumph.
How cooperative of the old man, he thought.
How very cooperative of him to make his death and the means of his death predictable.
And time, at last, moved swiftly.
The time was now.
CHAPTER 8.
He waited for her to come. He sat alone in the library where he had first met her, and it seemed a long time ago. For a moment he could see her in the chair by the fire, a soft and sinuous cat with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, smiling at him lazily through a transparent veil of smoke. The vision was so vivid that he had the feeling that it would survive all tests, that if he arose and approached her she would set the glass aside and lift her arms to accept whatever he had to give. He took a swallow of his own drink and looked away toward the draped windows, but she had moved from the chair in the instant of his shifted view and was there ahead of it, poised and provocative against dark green.
Behind him in the hall, rasping across his raw nerves, the front door bell rang. He was on his feet at once, as if he had been propelled physically by the sound, his pulses pounding in his temples. Carefully and slowly, exercising deliberate control he lifted his glass and drained it. Then he set the glass on a table by the bottle that had supplied it and walked with measured, unhurried steps into the hall and down to the door. His sensation was one of gaseous lightness, as if he were
