“Why do you need to torture me, Tess? You and I both know she is.”
“Because you’re so damned virtuous. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke — and you don’t understand people who have to.”
“I understand you, Tess. You’re a baby with the devil in you and you’ve never learned to walk.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to leave you.”
“Leave me? You can’t, Peter!”
“I can. It’s the only way I can win. The only thing I can win — aloneness.”
“Aloneness? Peter, I need you! I wouldn’t be anything without you. Peter… Peter… please.”
“Did you ever love me, Tess?”
“Darling, I did. I do! I’ve grown up now and I do.”
“Have you really, baby? Prove it!”
“I will… I lied about Betty… She’s yours, ours.”
“Of course, I belonged to all three of them,” Betty said.
“Anyway, Mother and Daddy came out and got my breakfast and while I was eating we laughed and had fun and Mother looked beautiful and happy.”
“And then, when you got home from school you found Uncle Bob was dead. Didn’t you cry? Didn’t you feel bad? Didn’t you ask why your Daddy killed him?”
“We all cried. We hated to have him dead. But we knew why he was dead. When something’s in your way it has to be removed.”
“Even something you love?”
“You can love something or someone and it can still be in your way.”
“All right. How was Uncle Bob in Daddy’s way? Did he live here? Was it too crowded?”
“No, he boarded down the street. He wasn’t really-truly in the way. Not like a chair you keep falling over all the time or a door that opens in front of your toy chest, so you can’t get at it, or a winter coat that you never wear that’s hanging in front of all the other things you do wear — or a — or a—”
“I get it,” Wallace said shortly. “He wasn’t really-truly in the way, but he wasn’t just-pretend in the way either, or else your Daddy wouldn’t have had to kill him. His body wasn’t in the way, but some of the things he said or did or thought were in the way. In the way of your Daddy’s happiness?”
“That’s right. That’s exactly right.”
“Good. Now, let’s get down to business. How was he in the way of your Daddy’s happiness?”
“He kept winning things.”
“Winning things!” Wallace repeated incredulously.
“Yes. When he and Daddy were young, Uncle Bob won a scholarship. So he went to college.”
“I see. And Daddy didn’t?”
“No. And then, I told you how Uncle Bob won first prize in the art contest. I can’t figure why. It was only some old flowers. Daddy’s picture was better. ‘Death Riding a White Rat.’”
“Good Lord!” Wallace said. “Well, anyway, what else did Uncle Bob win — that your Daddy wanted, I mean?”
“I don’t remember them all. An electric clock once, but we already had one. Anyway, it was more of a feeling Daddy had… Oh, and then a long time ago, there was a girl. At first, I thought it was Mother, until I realized Daddy had won her.”
“Of course,” Wallace said slowly, the wrinkles beside his old eyes hardening into the semblance of rutted stone.
Burns came out of the bedroom holding two pieces of a torn scarf. “I found this, sir.”
“Uncle Bob gave that to Mother,” Betty said, and slid off the Inspector’s lap.
“What of it, Burns?” Wallace’s voice sounded tired and far away.
“It has been torn wilfully.” Burns looked very young as he stood there with the red and blue silk pieces trailing from his hand, and a little worried, because he was afraid he was going to say something presumptuous.
Betty turned the music box over and wound it. Once more the sad little tune rose and descended, through the three weeping phrases, stopped for a moment and then began again, while the doll, its arms outstretched, turned endlessly.
“I’ve been listening to you talk to the little girl,” Burns said, “and I thought you did a fine job of it. I wish I could talk to children that way. But I can’t, because I’m not married or anything and I was an only child and I’ve never had experience with children. They frighten me, to be completely honest about it.”
The lines beside the old Inspector’s eyes softened just a little, or changed somehow infinitesimally from rutted stone to a gentler, more flexible series of wrinkles — a series which might have been started long ago by too much smiling. It was true, he did understand children, having had four of his own. And he did understand young policemen, having had many more than four of them around him. So he said, “What is it you’re trying to tell me, Burns? What’s bothering you?”
“Only this, sir. As I said, I’m not married, and I guess I’m sort of romantic. I’ve been thinking how it would be if you loved a woman and if that woman was — well, partly a child.”
He paused for a long while to let the flush which had come to his face recede, and then he said, “And I’ve been listening to the little girl talk. And somehow she isn’t just like a child. So if the man were sort of a father type and his wife treated him like a parent — if she lied to him and was glad when bad things happened to him, as some children are, I understand, or think they are anyway — well then, if this man had to make a choice, he might choose to protect the woman who was a child rather than the child who was a woman.
“Because the chances are, the woman would always be a child, while the little girl had a chance of growing up into a real woman. And maybe, the man thought that a little unhappiness and experience and responsibility would help the child grow into a better woman. Then too, the child has a whole life ahead of her in which to forget and learn and be happy, while the woman who is a child has only now and not much left of that.”
“I don’t follow you,” Wallace said a little brusquely. “What are you getting at?”
“I guess I’m not making much sense. I’ll try again, though maybe it isn’t even worth the saying. When I found the torn scarf and Betty said her uncle had given it to her mother, it made me wonder.”
Burns stopped short and mopped his forehead, certain he had overstepped the bounds of rank.
The music box ran down and, in the new silence, Burns felt Betty’s eyes on him. He met them for an instant. They were alert, expectant, waiting in a sort of suspended stillness. Strangely, she did not move to rewind the box.
“Go on,” Wallace said. “It made you wonder what?”
“I know you’ve sort of taken it for granted that the man killed his brother,” Burns said apologetically. “But from what Betty said about her mother’s being so happy this morning — it occurred to me that maybe that happiness was jeopardized later. You see, the mother knew that as long as her husband’s brother was alive, her husband would never feel himself to be top man. And her husband had to feel important if they were going to live in that safe, fairy-book world. Then too, maybe if there weren’t another child-adult around — like Betty’s uncle — to show her husband up, she wouldn’t have to drink.”
“It’s all very neat,” Wallace said wearily. “So the husband took her away to protect her at the expense of Betty — because he thought Betty was young enough to throw it off and his wife was too young. But you’re just guessing, Burns. The torn scarf is nothing. She might have torn it in a fit of anger. That doesn’t mean she killed the man who gave it to her.”
“I know, sir. There’s no real proof.” Burns looked across at the child and, for a moment, their eyes clung together across the empty air. “But Betty knows,” he said.