"Well, I'm glad Melinda talked to Mary," Horace said. "It made Mary feel a lot better. She wants so much to like you both, Vic."
"I know"
"She can't feel quite the same about Melinda yet—but I'm sure it'll come."
"I hope so. Good to see you, Horace!"
They lifted a hand to each other and started for their cars. Vic whistled on the way home. He didn't know how long Melinda's beatitude would last, but it was nice to go home and find dinner started, the living room straightened, to get a pleasant hello and a smile.
Chapter 25
The third of December was Vic's birthday. Vic hadn't thought of his birthday until November 29, when he was calculating the day an order of sepia inks should arrive, and then he put his birthday out of his mind again, because he had heard no mention of it around the house. Two or three birthdays of his, in the past 'few' years, had gone unnoticed except by Stephen and Carlyle, who always remembered and gave him a present, either singly or together. On December 3, Stephen gave him a large and costly book of eighteenth-century English engravings, and Carlyle a bottle of brandy, which Vic opened at once and sampled with him.
Then when Vic walked from the garage into the living room that evening, Melinda and Trixie and the Mellers greeted him with a roaring "'Happy Birthday!'". The table was aglow with candles, and there was a big pink-and-white cake on it with little pink candles to the number, Vic supposed, of thirty-seven. He pocketed the sleeping snail that he had just found on the garage doorjamb as he came in. There was a heap of presents at one end of the sofa.
"My goodness!" Vic said. "How'd you people get here? Fly?"
"I picked them up so you wouldn't see the car when you came in," Melinda told him. She was wearing a very feminine and fetching black dress with black lace at the shoulders.
"And you'll have to deliver us," Horace said. "That means I can drink all I want to tonight. We've already started, I'm afraid, but we'll brim the glasses again and drink your health."
They all sang a chorus of "Happy Birthday, Dear Vic" to him with lifted glasses, and Roger barked all through it. Even Roger was sporting a red ribbon tied to the back of his collar. Then came the presents. Melinda handed him three tied-together boxes from Brooks Brothers, each of which contained a sweater—one a mustard-colored coat sweater, one blue and red, which was an Italian import, and the third a white tennis sweater with a red stripe. Vic adored good sweaters. He was touched to the point of feeling a lump in his throat that Melinda had given him three. Horace gave him an electric razor, with the remark that he had been trying to convert him for years from his straight-edged razor and that he thought the only way was to put an electric razor in his hands. Then from Trixie an ebony brush and a comb, and from Roger a woolen tie. Mary gave him a latest edition of a carpenter and woodworker's manual, a book Vic was never without, though he hadn't bought this edition.
"I wonder if I should give him his other present now or after dinner?" Melinda asked the Mellers anxiously.
The Mellers said to give it to him now, and Melinda went to her room and came back with a large box wrapped in gold paper. She set it down on the floor.
"I wasn't sure how it works, so I had it at the back of my closet in the dark," she said.
Horace laughed. He and Mary obviously knew what it was and watched him expectantly as he unwrapped it and opened the corrugated box inside.
It was a Geiger counter complete with headphone, probe, and shoulder strap. There were even ore samples. Vic was speechless, delighted. He went to Melinda and put his arm around her.
"Melinda—thanks," he said, and pressed his lips against her cheek.
When he glanced at the Mellers, they were regarding him and Melinda with satisfied smiles, and Vic felt at once self-conscious and a little silly. Out of character, perhaps that was it. Because Melinda was out of character. She was acting, just as he had used to act, deliberately displaying an emotion or an attitude that was unlike the emotion or attitude he felt within himself. He and Melinda had essentially exchanged attitudes, Vic felt, since now he believed that his behavior was truer to what he really felt than he had allowed it to be in years, and that Melinda was pretending her good will.
During the dinner—squabs, mashed potatoes, braised endives, and watercress salad—he tried to relax and really not to think, because he was groping in his mind for clues, for leads, as a man in a dark room that he has not been in before might grope for a light pull, knowing the light pull exists yet having no idea where. He was hoping that the aimless play of his brain might brush against the reason for Melinda's goodness. After De Lisle's death her decorum had been for the public, but this was for him. She was thoughtful and polite to him when there was nobody around to see her. But of course the public reaction to the second murder—it startled him a little that he called it "murder" in his thoughts now—had been different, too. There had been a great deal more suspicion of him in regard to De Lisle than to Cameron. He had had it lucky that Havermal had been such an unpopular fellow. Havermal's story of the romance and intended elopement of Melinda and Cameron, therefore, had been considered
