“I suppose you realize that suppressing evidence about a murder is very serious?”
“Legally, I guess it is, but that doesn’t concern me right now. It’s funny, I’ve always been a law-abiding citizen but at the moment I couldn’t care less about the legal technicalities. If a murderer goes unpunished because of me, I won’t regret it. Too many innocent people would be punished along with him. Justice and the law don’t always amount to the same thing—or are you still too young and starry-eyed to have found this out?”
“Not young,” Quinn said. “Definitely not starry-eyed.”
She was studying him intently, her face grave and a little sad. “I think you’re both.”
“That’s your privilege.”
“You’d like me to go running to the police, wouldn’t you?”
“No. I just—”
“Yes, you would. You really believe that when the law demands an eye for an eye, that’s what it gets. Well, you’re wrong. The mathematics involved becomes amazingly intricate and somehow the law ends up with a dozen eyes. Six of them are not going to belong to me and my children. If necessary, I would swear on a stack of Bibles in front of the Supreme Court that no letter concerning my husband’s death was ever delivered to me.”
“Would George be willing to do the same?”
“Yes.”
“Because he’s in love with you?”
“You seem to have romance on your mind,” she said coldly. “I hope it’s just a phase. No, Mr. Haywood is not in love with me. He happens to view the situation in the same light as I do. Whether the letter was a hoax, as he believes, or the truth, as I do, we both agreed that it would be disastrous to publicize it. And that’s exactly what handing it over to the police would have meant, so I burned it. Do you want to know where I burned it? In the incinerator in the backyard, so that every single ash of it would be blown away by the wind. It exists now only in the mind of the man who wrote it, and Mr. Haywood’s, and my own.”
“And mine.”
“Not yours, Mr. Quinn. You never saw it. You can’t be sure there ever was such a thing. I could have invented it, couldn’t I?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I wish I had invented it. I wish—”
Whatever wishes she had were blown away by the wind like the ashes of the letter. Even though she was looking at Quinn he had the feeling he was invisible to her, that her eyes were focused on some point in the past, some happier and more innocent place than this.
“Martha—”
“Please, I don’t want you to call me Martha.”
“It’s your name.”
She raised her head. “I am Mrs. Patrick O’Gorman.”
“That was a long time ago, Martha. Wake up. The dream’s over, the lights are on.”
“I don’t want them to be on.”
“But they are. You said so yourself.”
“I can’t bear it,” she whispered. “I thought we were so happy, such a happy family... And then the letter came and suddenly everything turned to garbage. And it was too late to clean it up, get rid of it, so I had to pretend, I must go on pretending—”
“Pretend yourself right into a butterfly net. I can’t stop you. I can warn you, though, that you’re making too much of everything. Your life didn’t change from moonlight and roses to garbage just because O’Gorman made a pass at another man. It was always some moonlight, some roses, some garbage, like anyone else’s life. You’re not a tragic heroine picked out for special glory and special disaster, and O’Gorman wasn’t a hero or a villain, just an unfortunate man. You told me the last time we talked that you were very realistic. Do you still believe that?”
“I don’t know. I... I thought I was. I managed things so that they worked out.”
“Including O’Gorman.”
“Yes.”
“You knocked yourself out covering up O’Gorman’s mistakes and weaknesses. Now that you’ve come to realize you knocked yourself out for nothing, you can’t face it. One minute you stick your chin in the air and announce proudly that you’re Mrs. Patrick O’Gorman, and the next minute you’re squawking about garbage. When are you going to reach a compromise?”
“That’s no concern of yours.”
“I’m making it my concern, as of now.”
She looked a little frightened. “What are you going to do?”
“Do? What can I do?” he said wearily. “Except wait around for you to get tired running from one extreme to another. Maybe eventually you’ll settle for something worse than paradise but better than hell. Do you think it’s possible?”
“I don’t know. And I can’t talk about it here, now.”
“Why not?”
“It’s getting dark. I must call the children.” She stood up. The movement seemed uncertain and so did her voice. “I... will you stay for supper?”
“I’d like to, very much. But I’m afraid the timing’s wrong. I don’t want to be presented to your children as a surprise intruder on their camp-out. This place belongs to you and them and O’Gorman. I’ll wait until I can offer a place the three of you can share with me.”
“Please don’t talk like that. We barely know each other.”
“When we last met, you told me something I believed at the time. You said I was too old to learn about love. I no longer believe that, Martha. What I think is that, until now, I’ve been too young and scared to learn about it.”
She had turned away, bowing her head, so that he could see the white nape of her neck that contrasted with the deep tan on her face. “We have nothing in common. Nothing.”
“How do you know?”
“John Ronda told me something about you, how you lived, where you worked. I could never adjust to such a life, and I’m not foolish enough to think I could change you.”
“The change has already started.”
“Has it?” Her mouth smiled but her voice remained sad. “I said before that you were starry-eyed. You are. People don’t change just because they want to.”
“You’ve had too much trouble, Martha. You’re disillusioned.”
“And how does one go about getting re-illusioned?”
“I can’t answer that for anyone else. I only know it happened to me.”
“When?”
“Not long ago.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure how.” He could remember the exact moment, though, the pungent smell of pine, the moon growing in the trees like a golden melon, the stars bursting out all over the sky like popping seeds. And Sister Blessing’s voice, tinged with impatience: “Haven’t you ever seen a sky before?” “Not this one.” “It’s the same as always.” “It looks different to me.” “Do you suppose you’re having a religious experience?” “I am admiring the universe.”
Martha was watching him with a mixture of interest and anxiety. “What happened to you, Joe?”
“I guess I fell back in love with life, I became a part of the world again after a long exile. The funny thing is that it happened in the most unworldly place in the world.”
“The Tower?”
“Yes.” He stared at the last faint glow in the sky. “After I left you last week, I went back to the Tower.”
“Did you see Sister Blessing? Did you ask her why she hired you to find Patrick?”
“I asked her. She didn’t answer, though. I doubt if she even heard me.”
“Why? Was she sick?”
“In a sense, yes. She was sick with fear.”
“Of what?”
“Not getting into heaven. By hiring me, by having anything to do with me in fact, she’d committed a grave sin. Also she’d withheld money from the communal fund and the word ‘money’ to the Master is both sacred and dirty. He’s a queer man; compelling, forceful, and quite insane. He has a strangle hold on his flock, and the smaller the flock becomes, the more desperate the strangle hold gets and the more extreme his proclamations and edicts and punishments. Even his old followers, like his own wife and Sister Blessing, show signs of restlessness. As for the younger ones, it’s only a matter of time until they escape from the Tower.”