with the urge to run pell-mell to the head of the street, but she forced herself to a pace resembling a woman, say, strolling home after an evening of cards with friends. Lights were on. People were home. At any moment, she expected to be accosted, expected to see a blaze of lights from around the corner as the police arrived to see what Jonathon’s car was doing parked by the cemetery. There was nothing. She had, all without planning, hit the magic hour, after families had withdrawn into their houses, before dogs had been walked for the night.
The car was where she had left it. It took her two tries to open the door, her hand was shaking so. She started the ignition, backed into the street, and drove up Burgoyne, headed for Route 100, the road out of town. She was taking Jonathon home.
Chapter 35
Monday, April 3
You think my mother killed my father.” It wasn’t a question. Mrs. Marshall looked at Russ with all the dignity of her seventy-odd years. “That’s impossible.”
“There’s no way we’re going to be able to prove it to the satisfaction of the law,” he said, his voice gentle. “But based on what physical evidence there is and the facts developed in the case file-”
“If she had been a suspect, the police would have investigated her. No one other than a few filthy-minded gossips ever suggested she had anything to do with my father’s disappearance.”
Russ tapped the old green police file. “She was investigated. To a degree. The police chief at the time, Harry McNeil, saw her house and talked to her neighbors. Her story was that her husband had left after a fight and she never saw him again, and there wasn’t any evidence to contradict her.”
“Well then.” Norm Madsen spread his arm across the back of Mrs. Marshall’s chair. “There you go.”
Russ shook his head. “McNeil was laboring under some disadvantages, not the least of which was a mind-set that made it hard for him to imagine a woman murdering her husband and vanishing his body.”
“Wait a minute. Wasn’t this the era of Bonnie and Clyde and Ma Barker and all those female gangsters?” Clare crossed her arms over her chest.
“Sure. Women could be murderous. Bad women. But the general perception of females was still that of the gentler, finer sex. Jane Ketchem, a law-abiding, churchgoing mother, fit the bill.”
Clare arched her eyebrows at him.
“McNeil questioned her once, in her own home, two days after Jonathon vanished. She could have cleaned up all signs of an altercation by then.” He twisted slightly, facing Mrs. Marshall. “If this had happened today, we’d have taken the wife down to the station and interrogated her. We’d search the house with the assumption that the wife had done it, dusting for fingerprints, scraping for fibers, looking for traces of blood and bone. We’d spray with Luminol to look for cleaned-up bloodstains. Technology that wasn’t dreamed of in 1930.”
Clare opened her mouth to speak but closed it again.
“What you’re saying is that my mother got away with it because she got kid-glove treatment from the police.” For the first time, Mrs. Marshall’s voice held something other than stiff indignation.
He nodded.
She sat for a moment. “My mother was the most moral woman I knew,” she said finally.
“None of us can know what happened that night,” Russ said. “Your mother may have been an abused wife who snapped. She may have been defending herself. It may all have been a tragic accident that she felt she had to cover up.” He leaned forward until he caught her eyes with his. “I’m so sorry. I only hope you’ll find some comfort in finally knowing what became of your father.”
“My father,” she said. She turned to Clare. Her scarlet lipstick was the only slash of color in her pale face. “Will we be able to-can we have a funeral service for him?”
“Of course,” Clare said.
“How long until I can have his body back?” Mrs. Marshall asked Dr. Dvorak. He glanced at Russ.
“I’d like to wait a few days,” Russ said. “There are a few police departments going through their old records, just in case. Once I hear from them, Emil can release the remains to you.”
“Do you have any other questions I can answer?” Dr. Dvorak said.
Mrs. Marshall looked down to where her handbag sat in her lap. “I think… I’d just like to go home now. If I have any further questions-”
“Call me at any time. Please.”
Everyone got to their feet as Mrs. Marshall did, Russ yanking on his crutches, Dr. Dvorak pushing himself up with his cane. Clare had time to twist behind Mr. Madsen’s back and mouth, “I’ll call you later,” at Russ before joining the general exodus up the hallway and out of the morgue.
In the Lincoln, in the backseat as wide and comfortable as a sofa, Clare edged forward until her shoulders were jammed between the front seats. “How are you doing?” she asked Mrs. Marshall. “You’ve just been handed an awful lot to deal with.”
Mrs. Marshall shook her head. “I feel like I’ve been looking at an Escher picture. You know him? Etchings of people walking along impossible stairs?”
Clare nodded.
“You think you’re looking at birds, and all at once you realize you’ve been looking at fish. That’s what it feels like.” She looked over at Norm Madsen. “You knew my mother. You were her attorney, for heaven’s sake. Could you ever have imagined her murdering anyone? Let alone her husband?”
Mr. Madsen took his time before answering. “People can do surprising things, Lacey.”
Clare thought of what he had said to her after the emergency vestry meeting that started her whole involvement with Jane Ketchem.
“She never…” Mrs. Marshall peered more closely at her old friend. “She never said anything to you about it?”
Mr. Madsen actually tore his gaze from the road and looked at her. “Good Lord! Of course not.”
She sagged back into her seat for a second and then stiffened again. She twisted to face Clare. “Do you remember what Allan said, that day we went to tell him? About my mother?”
“He said you had no idea what the clinic had meant to your mother.”
“Do you think he knew? Do you think she told him?” She pressed her spindle-fingered hands against her sunken cheeks. “Oh my God, what if he knew what happened to my father all these years and he never told me!”
Clare rubbed her knuckles against Mrs. Marshall’s arm. “Even if he had some sort of knowledge of your father’s death, I’m sure the only reason he would have kept quiet was to protect your feelings. He must have known how much you loved your mother. He wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to tarnish her memory for you.”
Mrs. Marshall closed her eyes for a moment. “All these years, I thought he had left me. I thought my father abandoned me.” She opened her washed-blue eyes, and Clare was struck by how much the pain of the very old looked like the pain of the very young. Vulnerability, and disbelief, and nowhere to hide from it.
“But he didn’t. He was taken away, but he didn’t leave me. All this time, I thought…” She blinked, and the tears spilled down her cheeks and collected in the soft folds of her skin. “He used to tell me he loved me, when I was a little girl. And for years now, years, I didn’t believe him. But he was telling the truth. All those years.” She pressed her hand against her mouth. “He didn’t leave me.”
When Clare reached her office, it was to find Lois with a handful of pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT slips. “If anyone sends you clippings, make sure I get a copy for the parish scrapbook,” Lois said, handing them over.
“Sure,” Clare said. “It’ll make good reading for the next priest. Kind of a what-not-to-do list.” There was one from a
