"Well, she hasn't come to see Mary again," Horace said, with a trace of defiance. "You know, I don't think Evelyn'll ever get over that—from Melinda.'
"I'm sorry," Vic said.
Horace patted Vic on the shoulder. "I had a hard time with Mary. It's for your sake she agreed to come here tonight, Vic."
"I wish everybody would try to forget it. I suppose that's too much to expect. Maybe in time."
Horace made no reply.
They went back into the living room. Melinda, her tension hardly decreased by alcohol, nervously proposed opening the champagne that Carpenter had brought, but Mary protested that she should save it, so the champagne was not opened. Nobody wanted an after-dinner highball. The Mellers got up to leave at a quarter-past ten, an hour earlier than they might have left, Vic thought, if Mary had been completely comfortable with Melinda and if Carpenter had not been there. Carpenter left when the Mellers did, thanking Melinda and Vic profusely. He drove off in his own car, a dark-blue two-door Plymouth, which he had modestly told Vic he had recently picked up secondhand.
"Don't you think he's loafing on the job?" Vic asked Melinda as they were standing at the front door.
"What job?" she asked quickly.
Vic smiled a little, and he could feel that it was not a very nice smile. "Maybe you can tell me."
"What do you mean?" Then retreating hopelessly, "Who?" "Mr. Carpenter."
"Oh. I suppose he—Well, I get the idea he's at Kennington most of the time."
"Oh," Vic said, subtly mocking. "I just thought he was managing to spend an awful lot of time around us."
Melinda went to the cocktail table and began to collect the cups and saucers. Vic got the tray from the kitchen to make things go faster. There were a million things to put away in the kitchen. Vic donned an apron and took off his wristwatch in preparation for washing the dishes. He said nothing else that night that would indicate to Melinda that he thought Carpenter was a private detective. Melinda was bright enough to know that he would have picked up the slightest clue Carpenter offered, but she was not bright enough to know that Carpenter had already offered a few.
"Happy birthday, darling," Vic said, taking a package with the red-and-white striped paper of the Bandana shop from the lower part of a cupboard.
"Another present?" Melinda said, her face relaxing, almost smiling with surprise.
"I hope it fits."
Melinda opened the package, took out the white angora sweater, and held it up."Oh, Vic, just what I wanted! How did you know?"
"I live in the same house with you, don't I?" Then, for no particular reason, he went up to her and kissed her on the cheek. She did not draw back. She simply might not have felt it. "Many happy returns."
"Thank you, Vic." She looked at him oddly for a moment, one eyebrow trembling, the tense line of her mouth hovering between a smile and grimness, as uncertain as her own mind.
Vic looked back at her, aware that he hadn't the least idea what she was going to do or say next, and aware with a sudden self-disgust that his own expression—his blandly lifted brows, his staring, unsurprisable eyes, his mouth that conveyed nothing except the fact that it was closed—was false and despicable. His face was a mask, and at least Melinda's was not, not at this moment. Vic tried to smile. Even that did not feel sincere.
Then Melinda looked somewhere else, moved, and it was gone.
In his bed that night Vic thought about the conversation with Horace. He felt that he had said exactly the right thing: if it transpired that Carpenter was a detective, Vic could say that he realized it all along, that it didn't bother him, and it would be a particularly gallant attitude to display in regard to Melinda, his wife, who had hired the detective against him. If Carpenter was not a detective, he had not shown stupidity in assuming that he was. Vic had not noticed a bulge under his jacket again, not after that first meeting. But there was still the two or three hundred out of their bank account, unexplained. Evidently Melinda was paying for him slowly.
As Vic slipped into sleep, the antagonism rose slowly in him against Melinda, almost involuntarily, wraithlike, groping like a wrestler for a hold. It rose in him as something habitual might force its way to the surface—the habit of falling asleep while lying on his back, for instance, as he was now—and before he was completely asleep he realized all this and let it glide smoothly over the surface of his mind, like any ordinary, not very vigorous thought that one thinks just before falling asleep. It was as if she wore a label, "My Enemy," in his mind, and his enemy she was, beyond the reach of reason or imagination of change. The wraithlike antagonism in his mind found an imaginary grip and tightened, and he turned a little in bed and was asleep.
Chapter 15
From the birthday party onward it was as if Harold Carpenter had decided to make an abrupt change of tactics. He began to see more of Melinda and less of the two of them together. This happened in a matter of three or four days after the party. Melinda spent two of those four afternoons with Harold, and took pains to tell Vic so. Vic showed not the least interest. He did, however, say:
"I don't care how much you see him outside of the house. don't want you to ask him here again."
Melinda stared at him, shocked. "What's
