Again Peter looked at Etta, and she hadn’t moved, and he realized with a kind of incredulous, weary wonder that she was already thinking beyond the moment of ruin and planning the moves and countermoves of the final deadly game still to be played with the gathering forces of retribution, and his submission was completed by the evidence of her strength.
“He’s buried in the hills,” Peter said dully. “I’ll take you there.”
TRESPASSER
Originally published in Manhunt, September 1957.
She was beautiful in black. Even climbing the hotel stairs, flight after long flight upward, she moved with ease and ineffable grace. Anyone seeing her might have wondered, however, why she bothered to climb the stairs at all. Why she did not, that is, take the elevator. But no one saw her. She was very careful that no one did.
On the floor to which she was climbing, which happened to be the twelfth, she walked with assurance to the numbered door which was her objective. She knocked without hesitation, and the door was opened after only the slightest delay. The man who opened it was neither particularly young nor particularly old, having reached that interim span of years which has, in certain instances, a charm superior to its past or future. He smiled graciously and bowed slightly, bending ever so briefly from the hips. He was extremely handsome, she noted at once, his black hair and thin black mustache neatly trimmed and meticulously groomed, his white teeth flashing in his face. Together, she and he, they made a striking pair.
“Mr. Agnew?” she said.
“You’re an hour early, Mrs. Fenimore,” he said, nodding. “But it’s unimportant. Won’t you come in, please?”
“Thank you.”
She walked past him through a short hall into the sitting room of a small suite, simply and expensively furnished. She could look at an angle through an open door into a corner of the bedroom, and she thought that the rental on the suite, though not exorbitant, was certainly substantial.
“You’re living quite comfortably,” she said. “I understood from our conversation over the telephone that you were desperately in need of funds. Practically destitute.”
She turned to face him as she spoke with a dry inflection of irony, remarking with a faint feeling of admiration, which did not show or significantly modify her predisposition toward him, that he was not in the least disconcerted. He smiled again, ruefully, rather like a philosophical delinquent caught out of hand in mischief.
“I’m anticipating an improvement in my financial condition. A quite considerable sum of cash, to be exact.”
“Really? Isn’t it rather risky to obligate yourself on the strength of a possibility?”
“I’d say that this is somewhat more than a possibility. Probability, I’d say. The truth is, I consider it a certainty. I’m so confident that I’ve even obligated myself for a bottle of very fine brandy. May I offer you some?”
“No, thanks. I’m not particularly fond of brandy.”
“Too bad. A cocktail, then?”
“A cocktail would be pleasant. A martini if you have it.”
“Of course. I hardly ever drink martinis myself, but I’m aware of your partiality to them. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Fenimore, I know quite a great deal about you in general. But we’ll get to that in good time. Won’t you sit down while I mix the drinks?”
“Thank you.”
She sat down on the edge of a deep chair upholstered with some heavy fabric treated to afford additional resistance to stains and burns. Holding her knees primly together, her body erect, she laid her purse on the knees and folded her hands on the purse. Watching him measure ingredients into a shaker, she was poised and perfectly still. The rise and fall of her breasts was barely discernible in the quiet cadence of her breathing. When he brought her martini to her, she took it and nodded her thanks and wet her lips in it and waited. Crossing to a chair opposite hers, with perhaps five feet of gray carpet between, he sat down facing her and crossed his legs and seemed for a moment considering what he should say. Lifting his fragile glass, containing one of the martinis he hardly ever drank, he performed what might have been a subtle salute to her beauty, or possibly to the perfect poise that disturbed him more than he liked to admit or intended to show.
“You are much lovelier than I expected,” he said. “Frankly, I’m reluctant to waste our time with the dull conditions of a business arrangement.”
“Do you concede, then, that it’s a waste of time?”
“Not at all. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“We’ll see. Suppose you state the conditions.”
“They’ve already been stated. I did that over the phone. We have met, I think, to consummate them.”
“Nevertheless, you had better repeat them. I want to be certain where I stand.”
“Certainly. Happy to oblige, of course. You are to hand me fifty thousand dollars with which to pay for my fine brandy that you are not fond of. In return for this reasonable sum, I guarantee my silence regarding a period of your life with which we are both familiar.”
“Are we?”
“I assure you that I know very nearly as much about this regrettable time as you do yourself.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“Surely you don’t want me to give you an account in detail. I’m quite sincere in saying that I’d rather not subject you to the embarrassment.”
“Never mind that. I’ll try to bear it.”
Looking at her across the five feet of space, lifting his glass to his lips again, he was once more aware of genuine admiration for her poise. Also for her beauty. He wished for a second that he could have approached her from a different position, with a different intention. He wished it, for the second, in spite of the fifty thousand dollars and all the brandy it would buy. For another second, following the first, he was uncomfortably incredulous that this sleek woman had
