There was such a sudden sharp intensification of her pleasurable pain that she almost whimpered, and she thought at the same time, with incongruous detachment, that it was odd that he should have the capacity to make her feel that way, for he was not an exceptional young man at all. He was, in fact, rather dull at times, and incited her at once to exasperation and tenderness.
Seeing her approach, he started to rise, but she slipped so quickly into the chair across from him that he was no more than half up when she was entirely down. He resumed his seat after remaining a moment half risen, as if he were fighting an impulse to leave at once, and she took one of his hands and held it lightly on the table.
“Darling,” she said, “have you been waiting long?”
“No. Just a few minutes.”
“Have you had a drink?”
“Not yet. I was waiting for you.”
“That was nice of you. You are always so nice. What shall we have? Martinis?”
“I suppose so. We always do, don’t we?”
He gave the order to a girl who was waiting for it, and after the Martinis had been mixed and brought, Mrs. Dearly looked at him fondly — and wondered why she was here looking at him at all. His face in repose, boyishly handsome beneath a falling lock of dark hair that seemed contrived, was like a cheap air-brush portrait by an inferior artist in which all other features were subordinated to a sulky mouth. Douglas was, in fact, an inferior artist himself, an instructor in an art school, and she had met him almost six months ago when she had gone to the school to learn to paint in water colors, for which, as she quickly learned, she had no talent whatever. This knowledge — and Douglas — were all she had acquired from the effort.
Sipping her Martini and speaking over the thin edge of glass, she said, “What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Nothing much. Nothing of consequence.”
“Are you working on something remarkable?”
“I’m not working on anything at all. It’s impossible.”
“Darling, are you still feeling guilty about Cal? If only you could understand what a waste your guilty conscience is. You have done him no harm, and neither have I, and we have done each other a great deal of good.”
“I doubt that Cal would think so.”
“Oh, nonsense. Cal doesn’t think about it one way or another. While you are sitting here making yourself miserable, he is at home this instant as happy as can be, digging in the flower gardens and mowing the grass.”
“You make everything sound so simple and acceptable.”
“Because it is. You must learn to accept things as they are and without complicating them in your mind.”
“Well, it’s not so easy to accept your going on indefinitely as Cal’s wife.”
“You must be patient, darling. Something will work out for us eventually — perhaps sooner than you think. In the meanwhile, let’s have another Martini before I go.”
“Why must you go so soon?”
“Something to do at home — but it’s really too tiresome to talk about.”
Her second Martini, which was consumed slowly to the sound of strings, proved a considerable challenge to her resolution to go home; but she went, nevertheless, about 4:30. The traffic was heavy on the streets, crippling the Jaguar, which could not get free to run until the last few miles-so that it was five when she pulled into the driveway behind a car which sat there, blocking the way to the garage.
Mrs. Dearly, mildly annoyed by the trespasser, got out of the Jaguar and walked around the house to the rear; but there was no sign of Cal or anyone else. She went into the house through the kitchen, and there in the hall which ran forward from the kitchen to the front entrance was a short man in a dark blue suit, a stranger with an odd little potbelly like a melon held in position by his belt; and this man had obviously come out of the living room to meet her, as if he had become, by some strange trickery in her absence, the master of the house and she the stranger.
“Mrs. Dearly?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Who are you?”
“My name is Dickson. Police.”
“Police? What on earth are you doing here? Where is my husband?”
“You had better talk with Lieutenant Hardy about that. He’s waiting for you in the living room.”
He half turned and gestured toward a doorway, still with that curious implication of inviting her to be his guest. She walked past him into the living room, where another man was standing in the middle of the room with his back to a bank of windows bright with the late afternoon sun. He was even shorter than the man who had called himself Dickson — a thin, consumptive-looking man of indeterminate age in a wilted seersucker suit.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Dearly,” he said. His voice was as wilted as his suit, and perfectly supplemented by a languid, hesitant gesture of his right hand, its middle and index fingers stained by the smoke of countless cigarettes. “I’m Lieutenant Hardy. Sorry to intrude.”
The apology was hollow, a mere concession to form. For a moment Mrs. Dearly had a terrifying feeling of helplessness, of being swept into a play of forces she could not control, and at whatever cost she was compelled to assert herself in a way that would restore her position and assurance.
“Your car is blocking the drive,” she said. “Please be good enough to move it.”
“Certainly.” His right hand moved again, seeming to gather in Dickson. “Go move the car, Dickson, and drive Mrs. Dearly’s back to the garage.”
“The key is in the ignition,” Mrs. Dearly said. “Have you ever driven a Jaguar?”
“I’ll figure it out,” Dickson said.
He went out, and Mrs. Dearly turned back to Hardy.
“Perhaps now, Lieutenant, you’ll explain why you are here. And I would like to see my husband, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. He isn’t here.”
“Where is he? Has something happened to him? Tell me at once.”
“I had hoped to break it to you a little more gently, but I see that I can’t. The fact is, your husband is dead.”
“Dead? Did you say — dead?”
She moved to a chair and sat down with an effect of excessive care, as if moving and sitting had become all of a sudden a precarious business. She sat erect in the chair, her back unsupported, her eyes staring past Hardy through a bright pane of glass behind him into the side yard beyond the drive.
She was oddly sensitive in that moment to the details of sight and sound, and she noticed that the yard had been partly mowed, the power mower standing at rest on the clean line dividing the clipped and shaggy grass. She heard the rich roar, quickly reduced, of the Jaguar in the drive.
“Are you all right?” Hardy said.
“Yes, thank you. I’m quite all right.”
“Would you like me to tell you about it?”
“I think you had better.”
“Well, there isn’t much to tell, when you come right down to it. Our only witness is your neighbor on the west, Mr. Winslow, and he didn’t really see anything much. He was upstairs in a room on the second floor of his house this afternoon about two or two thirty, he couldn’t be exact, and he looked out the window and saw your husband reclining in one of those canvas sling chairs on your rear terrace. He said your husband had been mowing the grass, and Winslow assumed, naturally, that he had merely taken a break to rest and cool off, which was probably true. It’s been a pretty hot day, as you know.