She sounded like an algebra student quoting a formula which she was just learning how to apply.
“Do you know Isobel well?”
“I’ve known her for a long time. That isn’t quite the same thing, is it? Her first husband, Ronald Jaimet, was Mark’s cousin, and incidentally one of his best friends. Mark is a very family-minded man, and naturally we saw a good deal of the Jaimets. But Isobel and I were never close. I always felt she envied me my position as Mark’s wife. Ronald was a decent-enough fellow, but he was nothing but a high-school teacher. He was one of those dedicated souls. Perhaps his diabetes had something to do with it.”
“Do you know anything about his death?”
“Not much. He had an accident in the mountains. Mark was with him at the time. Why don’t you ask Mark?”
“Mark isn’t available. Or is he?”
“No, he’s not here. According to Isobel, he’s gone up to Tahoe.” She leaned toward me, and her clothes emitted a gust of perfume. “Just what is the situation up there, Mr. Archer?”
“I haven’t been in touch with it today. They’re searching for Harriet, of course. She was last seen there, and a bloodstained hat belonging to her was found in the water. I found it myself.”
“Does that mean she’s been killed?”
“I keep hoping it doesn’t. All we can do is hope.”
“You think Harriet’s dead.” Her voice was low and dull. “Did Burke Damis kill her?”
“He says he didn’t.”
“But what would he have to gain?”
“Not all murders are for profit.”
We sat in close silence, listening to each other breathe. I was keenly aware of her, not so much as a woman, but as a fellow creature who had begun to feel pain. She had lost her way to the happy ending and begun to realize the consequences of the sealed-off past.
“You came a long way to ask me a few questions, Mrs. Hatchen. I’m sorry I can’t give you better answers.”
“It isn’t your fault. And it wasn’t just to ask questions that I came back. I heard from Harriet, you see. It brought home to me–”
“You heard from Harriet? When?”
“Yesterday, but please don’t get your hopes up. She wrote the letter last Sunday, before this thing erupted. It was a very touching little letter. It made me see myself, and Harriet, in quite a new light.”
“What did she have to say?”
“I can’t repeat it verbatim, though I must have read it a dozen times on the plane. You can read it yourself if you like.”
I turned on the overhead light. She rummaged in her leopard bag and produced a crumpled airmail envelope. It was addressed to Mrs. Keith Hatchen, Apartado Postal 89, Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico, and had been postmarked in Pacific Palisades the previous Monday morning at 9:42. The envelope contained a single sheet crowded with writing. The first few lines slanted up to the right; the rest slanted down increasingly, so that the concluding lines were at a thirty-degree angle from the bottom of the page.
Dear Mother,
This is a difficult letter to write because we’ve never talked to one another as woman to woman (all my fault) and it was stupid and childish of me to leave without saying good-by. I was afraid (it seems I’m always afraid of something, doesn’t it?) you would disapprove of me and Burke, and that I couldn’t bear. He’s my moon and stars, my great brilliant moon and my cruel bright stars. You didn’t know I had such feelings, did you? Well, I do. I love him and I’m going to marry him, I don’t care what Mark says. When I’m with him I feel quite different from my ordinary sad shy self (alliteration’s artful aid!) – he’s a Prince, a dark Prince, who fits crystal slippers on my Cinderella feet and teaches me to dance to music I never heard before – the music of the spheres. When he touches me the dead cold world comes alive, dead cold Harriet comes alive.
That sounds like gibberish, doesn’t it, but believe me I mean every word of it, but I will try to write more calmly. I need your help, Mother. I know I can count on you, in spite of all the wasted years between us. You have known passion and suffered for it – but here I am going on again like a nineteenth-century romance. The point is, we need money and we need it right away if we are to get married. Burke is in some sort of trouble (nothing serious) and I should never have brought him back to this country. We plan to fly to South America – keep this under your hat! – if we can get the money, and you are the only one we can turn to. Mark is no help at all. He hates Burke, I even think he hates me, too. He says he’ll hire detectives to stop the wedding! Since he is one of the controllers of Aunt Ada’s trust, I can’t do anything in that direction until I’m twenty-five. So I am asking you to lend me five thousand dollars till January. If you will do this please have it ready for me and I will get in touch with you when we reach Mexico. We have enough money to reach Mexico.
Dear Mother, please do this. It’s the only thing I’ve ever asked of you. It’s the only thing I ask of life, that Burke and I have a chance to be happy together. If I can’t have him, I’ll die.
Your loving daughter,
Harriet.
I folded the letter along its creases and tucked it into the envelope. Mrs. Hatchen watched me as if it was a live thing which I might injure.
“It’s a strangely beautiful letter, isn’t it?”
“It didn’t strike me in quite that way. I’m not too crazy about some of the implications. Harriet wasn’t thinking too well when she wrote it.”
“What do you expect?” she said defensively. “The poor girl was under great strain. She’d just had a fearful battle with her father – Isobel told me something about it. Harriet was fighting for everything she holds dear.”
“So was Campion. Everything that he holds dear seems to be five thousand dollars.”
“Campion?”
“Campion is Burke Damis’s real name. He’s in jail in Redwood City at the moment. What about the five thousand dollars, Mrs. Hatchen? Would you have been willing to lend it to her?”
“Yes. I still am, if she is alive to use it. I brought it with me. Keith and I went into Guadalajara yesterday afternoon and took it out of the bank. It’s part of my settlement from Mark, and Keith had no real objection.”
“I hope you’re not carrying it around.”
“It’s in the safe at the hotel.”
“Leave it there. Harriet certainly won’t be needing it. I don’t believe it was her idea, anyway.” I turned to look at her under the light. “You’re a generous woman, Mrs. Hatchen. I took you for something different.”
“I am something different.” She narrowed her eyes and drew down the corners of her mouth. “Please turn off the light and don’t look at me. I’m an ugly old woman, trying to buy back the past. But I came back here about fifteen years too late. I had no right to leave Harriet. Her life would have turned out better if I’d stayed.”
“You can’t be sure of that.” I switched off the light, and noticed that all the lights in the Blackwell house had gone out. “Do you mind telling me just why you left Mark Blackwell? Did it have anything to do with Isobel?”
“No, he wasn’t interested in her. He wasn’t interested in any woman, and that includes me.” Her voice had become harsher and deeper. “Mark was a mother’s boy. I know that sounds like a peculiar statement to make about a professional military man. Unfortunately it’s true. His mother was the widow of the late Colonel, who was killed in the First War, and Mark was her only son, and she really lavished herself on him, if ‘lavish’ is the word. ‘Ravish’ may be closer.
“She spent the first years of our marriage with us, and I had to sit in the background and watch him dance to her tune, playing skip-rope with the silver cord. It’s a common story – I’ve heard it from other women, in and out of the service. You marry them because they’re idealistic and make no passes. The trouble is, they stay that way. Mark was like a little boy in bed. You’ll never know the contortions I had to go through to get a child. But we won’t go into that.