“It was an accident,” he repeated. “Regret is all you should feel, not guilt.”
He had seated himself on a sofa near her chair. Getting up, she came over to sit next to him and laid her head on his shoulder.
“Hold me for a minute,” she said. “Please don’t kiss me. Just hold me.”
Putting his arm about her, he drew her against him and gently stroked her hair. He could feel her heart beating against his chest. After a time she sighed.
“Have you always hated me for what I did to you?” she asked.
“Of course not. I was hurt at the time, but time heals all wounds, they say.”
“You never married. And I always sensed that you still felt something for me when we ran into each other over the years. Didn’t you stay away from marriage because of me?”
“I suppose I was a little gun shy,” he admitted.
“You must know why I married Bruce so suddenly. I imagine the whole town was counting.”
He shifted a trifle uncomfortably.
“I don’t know if I was in love with him or not,” she said. “We met at a Bryn Mawr dance and he gave me a rush. I was flattered because he was the only older man who had ever shown me attention. I was only nineteen, remember, and he was twenty-five. It wasn’t just a shotgun marriage. He had asked me to marry him and I was considering it before I learned I was pregnant. That seemed to take the decision out of my hands, so we eloped.”
He felt a momentary resurgence of the old bitterness. “How long had you been sleeping with him?” he asked a trifle roughly. “I was still getting love letters up to the day I heard of your elopement.”
“Please,” she said against his chest. “I was still in love with you. Don’t you think it’s possible to love two people at the same time?”
That stopped him, since he had experienced a guilt feeling over the same question earlier that night. Before he could frame any reply the doorbell rang. Hurriedly she pulled away from him. He rose to answer.
It was the men from the mortician.
Chapter V
The sun was rising when Marshall got home. As he plodded tiredly up the stairs his parents’ bedroom door opened and his father peered out.
“What was the trouble?” Jonas asked.
“Betty Case accidentally shot her husband,” Marshall said.
He moved on to his own room, but left the door open. Jonas, barefoot and in pajamas, quietly closed his and his wife’s bedroom door so as not to disturb his wife and trailed his son across the hall.
“Is he dead?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” Briefly Marshall explained to his father what had happened.
When he finished, Jonas frowned. “The poor girl shouldn’t be left alone at a time like this. She doesn’t have a living relative left in town since her parents died, does she? What’s the matter with Emmet Derring? He should have insisted on sending his wife over.”
“Betty says she’ll be all right,” Marshall said.
“Nonsense,” Jonas said in his crispest executive-editor tone. “I’ll get your mother up and you can run her out there.”
When he used that tone there was no point in arguing with Jonas. Deciding he wasn’t going to get any more sleep, Marshall showered and shaved while his father went to rout his mother out of bed.
Sylvia Marshall was dressed and all ready to go when he came downstairs. However, she didn’t quite seem to understand who it was that she was expected to offer solace to.
“Elizabeth Case, dear,” Jonas said with enormous patience. “You know the Cases. Bruce was in law partnership with Henry Quillan.”
When Sylvia continued to look puzzled, her son offered, “Betty Runyon, Mom.”
“Oh,” Sylvia said with an enlightened expression on her face. “She married that nice young lawyer with no family background.”
“Now you have her identified,” Jonas said approvingly. “That same nice young lawyer is the one she accidentally shot.”
“How awful,” Sylvia said with compassion. “Betty Runyon is such a sweet girl. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”
It was six thirty a.m. and quite light by the time Marshall and his mother got to the old Runyon place. But the big houses at Rexford Bay were all set well back from the road and were screened by trees so that the houses couldn’t be seen from the road. Therefore Marshall and his mother couldn’t see what was occurring on the roof until they drove down the long driveway, parked in front of the porch and got out of the car.
Sylvia looked upward and said, “Whoever is that on the roof?”
Peering in the direction of his mother’s gaze, Marshall saw Betty, in slacks and a sweater, kneeling on the front slope of the roof, examining the metal pipe of an air vent.
Betty saw them, too. Waving to them, she walked up to the roof peak and disappeared down the rear slope.
“Who do you suppose that was?” Sylvia asked.
“It was Betty, Mom.”
“Betty Runyon? Why is she climbing around on roofs?”
“Let’s go see,” Marshall said, taking his mother’s elbow and steering her around the side of the house to the rear.
Betty was climbing down a ladder when they reached the back of the house. Lightly dropping the last few feet to the ground, she brushed her hands together and smiled at her visitors.
“You didn’t have to come back, Kirk,” she said. “Hello, Mrs. Marshall.”
Sylvia took her by the shoulders and kissed her. “I’m so sorry about your trouble, dear. I’m going to stay right here with you until things are organized again.”
“Thanks, but it’s really not necessary. You’re welcome, of course.”
“Then it’s settled,” Sylvia said. “I have to stay. Jonas said to.”
Despite herself Betty couldn’t avoid an amused smile. “We wouldn’t dare disobey Mr. Marshall. Of course you’ll stay.”
“Whatever were you doing on the roof?” Sylvia asked.
“Looking for more evidence that the cat burglar was actually here last night. I found it.”
“What was it?” Marshall asked.
“There’s a short length of rope tied to an air vent directly over the hall window where the screen was cut. The shot must have put him into such a hurry to escape that he cut the rope instead of taking time to untie it.”
Marshall wondered why she couldn’t have waited for the police to discover the rope. Perhaps, despite her earlier complaint that she was unable to feel guilt over the accident, she was now beginning to develop some guilty feeling and had found it necessary to convince herself beyond any doubt that the cat burglar had actually been there.
He said, “Does Bud know what happened yet?”
Betty’s expression turned worried. “He’s still asleep. I’ve been mulling over what to tell him. I suppose the kindest thing is to tell him the truth at once, instead of letting him eventually hear it from some playmate.”
“Who’s Bud?” Sylvia asked.
“Her son, Mom. Bruce Case, Jr. You know him.” He turned back to Betty. “Are you up to telling him?”
“I don’t want anyone else to. Don’t you think I ought to tell him at once exactly what happened, Kirk? I mean, instead of just vaguely talking about an accident and having him find out later that I shot his father?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of courage.”
“He might not forgive me if he learned what happened from someone else. He may not anyway, but I think there’s a better chance if I’m frank with him right from the start.”
“I’m sure he won’t blame you,” Sylvia said, giving Betty a pat on the arm. “As I remembered him, he’s an awfully nice boy.”
“Suppose we go inside and let Mom drum up some breakfast,” Marshall suggested.
“All right,” Betty agreed. “Bud will be waking up any time now.”