Fogarty went on, “Did you see anyone else there?” He still seemed to be making small talk, an act that filled Amy with wry amusement.
“No. No one.” She was surprised to find that her mind had skipped back, a double-take, to search out the figure of Cunninghan’s almost invisible secretary, the gold-haired girl, the camouflaged piece of office equipment whose single flash of interest had been at the mention of Mrs. Schneider’s name. “And I can see you’re going to try to pump me about what Cunninghan said, so I’ll tell you. He doesn’t want any newspaper publicity on it—you’ll understand why. And you couldn’t print it without proof, anyway. He had a confession, supposedly signed by Tzegeti, that he’d been blackmailing a woman patron of the Picardy Club. The theory is that Tzegeti started by rifling cars on the lot, then decided to make further use of names and addresses he obtained that way—and this woman had lost money there and didn’t want her husband to know. She tried to kill herself. I saw the signed confession. Since I’m not an expert on handwriting, I couldn’t swear it was genuine. But Cunninghan displayed it with an air of conviction.”
“You’re sophisticated enough to know that a lawyer’s chief stock in trade is to be convincing.” Fogarty was frowning at her. “Anyhow, let me guess at the rest of the story. Schneider is supposed to have run across this material just before he was bumped off. Right?” He laughed at her look of surprise. “It’s obvious. It’s going to pin the Schneider murder on Tzegeti all over again. Perhaps they think you’ll inform the police and that the evidence will be called for.”
The pup was rattling and bouncing in his box, excited by the loudness of Fogarty’s voice.
“The one thing Cunninghan and his employer—that’s Mrs. Schneider—won’t want to result from the murders on the train is a doubt cast on the outcome of the Tzegeti trial. You can see that. Mrs. Schneider has her insurance and her gambling club, all nice and cozy. No, she won’t want that applecart upset.”
“You’re saying then,” Amy decided slowly, “that the murderer on the train intended to cast such a doubt.”
Fogarty shook his head impatiently. “We don’t know why Tzegeti was killed, nor why your husband had to go with him. Excitement? Sheer funk and being rattled? I don’t cotton to that. The rest of the affair has the look of cold-blooded planning. Fear that Tzegeti might talk at last? Maybe. Revenge for the previous killing of Schneider? Somehow I didn’t think that anyone loved Schneider that much. The more I think about it, the more the idea of the missing journal intrigues me. No one knows what Tzegeti put into it.” He paused, waited as if for Amy to speak, to acknowledge that Mrs. Tzegeti had betrayed the diary’s whereabouts. “What seems oddly obvious is the quickness of the repair job now being done. The case against Tzegeti is being shored up, reinforced, made to hold water again. This evidence Cunninghan showed you—doesn’t it seem to come in at just the right moment? And its gathering must have taken some little time, and I wonder just when that gathering began.”
Of course, Amy thought, if the material regarding the would-be suicide, the confession, and all of that had been put together just before the deaths of Tzegeti and her husband in the train, one would need look no further for their murderer. Someone in the Schneider-Wyse-Cunninghan orbit had done the job, either directly or by hire. She remembered the newness of the folder, and Cunninghan’s explanation. He had been quick and smooth, saying that the evidence was to be filed under completed business, put out of the way and forgotten, in other words. She nibbled a nail. The pup stood on his hind legs and tried to lick her hand, lying on the edge of the box.
“You’re thinking about that end of it,” Fogarty said.
“Yes.” She explained about the folder, and what Cunninghan had offered as an excuse.
“I’d like to see it.” He kept looking at her, his eyes bright.
She said levelly, “He’s not a fool. Anything of importance in that office will be under lock and key.”
“I wonder if that particular folder . . .” He let his voice die, and his gaze seemed to grow secretive. “I don’t suppose you’d want to take a chance with me.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” She wondered at the preposterous suggestion. She was, after all, the widow of a policeman—though the chief didn’t think she remembered it. She couldn’t go burglarizing places . . . In the midst of this she recalled Mrs. Tzegeti’s words about the whereabouts of the diary. The little handle. She would not get into that house by police permission. She’d have to do a little burglarizing on her own.
“You’re coming along?” Fogarty asked quickly.
“No. I said not.”
“I was watching your face and I thought I caught a glint of daring.”
“You didn’t.” He was sharp but he was not a mind reader. She was eager now for him to leave. She wanted to plan the business of getting into the Tzegeti place. “But you’re a reporter,” she soothed Fogarty, “and you’d be excused for breaking in, where I wouldn’t be. I’d give Cunninghan’s place a try if I were you.”
“You would?” It seemed to her that under the eager, polite mask of his face something else lurked. A mischief she didn’t like. A taunt, a threat. She reached into the box to ruffle the pup’s ears. He was tiring now, getting sleepy. He yawned, showing the tiny teeth, the rolling pink tongue. He fell on his side and stayed there, eyes drooping, tail beating in slow time.
I’ll take the pup with me, Amy thought. I’ll pretend, if anyone asks, that I expect to find Elizabeth at her house, and that the dog is a gift for her. She looked up to find Fogarty’s gaze on her; she had the feeling that he suppressed an inner laughter that was somehow directed at herself.
“Let me know if you find anything useful,” she urged.
“I’ll do that.” He stood up and rubbed at the untidy red hair and put on his hat, tugging the brim down. There were unexpected hollow shadows around his eyes, under his cheekbones. The amusement seemed to have faded; the hard, tough expression had settled around his mouth. “I may get a surprise.”
“It depends on what you’re looking for,” she said.
“Yes, doesn’t it?”
“We aren’t hunting the same thing, are we?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He squatted on his heels beside the box, reached in to rub the pup’s back. He was quite close. When he turned to look at Amy, she saw the hard green eyes in their thick short lashes with almost a sense of shock—he examined her face as though something were printed on it. Then she felt his hand close over her own on the edge of the box.
She jerked her hand loose and sprang to her feet, aware of the hot flush that burned her cheeks. “I think you’d better go.”
Then she saw what had happened. He’d slipped sidewise, losing his balance, and the grab at the edge of the box hadn’t been impudence, or worse, but an instinctive motion to right himself. He got his heels evenly under him and rose. There was a moment of silence.
She wouldn’t look at him now, nor admit that she’d been wrong. She moved so that the box was between them. “Good night.”
He didn’t answer. He turned and walked out of the house without looking back.
The early morning was quiet and sunless, thick with fog. There were wet patches under the dripping hedges. The smoke from the chimneys of the small foreign-looking houses drifted low, mingling with the fog; and from somewhere Amy caught the smell of an early breakfast cooking—not the expected bacon-and-eggs but some rich mixture of sausage, boiled and steamy, and something else that might be cabbage. She wrinkled her nose. Polack—as Fogarty would say—or whatever. Then she remembered, with sudden self-rebuke, Mrs. Tzegeti’s stuttering efforts to make herself understood, the loneliness that looked out of her eyes, the monstrous big bed that may have made her feel, at the end, that she was dying at home. Being a stranger in a strange land must baffle and frighten the bravest. The wish to belong had to fight the ridicule heaped on speech, dress, food.
The pup was staggering around on the car seat, trying to keep upright. Amy ru
bbed the soft black fur. “That’s where prejudice starts,” she told him, seeing from the corner of her eye how his ears lifted at her voice. “When we can’t stand smelling anything but a duplicate of our own breakfast. See?” He answered by getting her coat sleeve in his mouth. She had to slow down and use both hands to untangle his teeth.
She parked in front of the Tzegeti house, got out quickly, picked up the pup, and went through the hedge gate to the front door. She tried the knob. The door was locked, as she had expected it to be; but she had brought a collection of old keys with her. The catch was a simple one. The fourth key worked it. She opened the door and went in.
The light was dusky, the air chilled. In the gloom, the new white washing machine took on the luster of an oversized pearl in a black velvet setting. Amy moved through to the bedroom. The little handle—some small drawer, she thought; that’s what Mrs. Tzegeti was trying to say in her limited English. The bed was stripped. She thought for a moment that perhaps some of the neighbors had come in to clean, to remove the bedding in which Mrs. Tzegeti had lain dying, but then she saw it, all in a heap against the wall, beside it a pile of stuffing from the mattress.
The pup whined, twisting under her arm. She put him down and walked slowly toward the bed. The still air held cotton dust suspended—someone had worked at tearing up the bed with rapacious haste. The corner had a cupboard in it, a mahogany monster to match the bed. A riot of stuff peeped from the half-shut drawers.
She stood quiet to listen. The pup had his neck stretched, snuffing the heap of bedding against the wall. From some other room—the kitchen, perhaps—came the tick of a clock, a loud busy-body sound.
If Tzegeti’s journal had been hidden here, it was gone now.
Amy went back into the living room. The vigil light under the crucifix had burned out, the clump of roses had softened in death. Amy went on to the next room. She hadn’t seen this part of the house before. To her left was the kitchen with a black iron stove, a plain table, and three chairs. To the right was the girl’s room. Amy saw the narrow cot, the disarray of clothing on the floor, and she was aware of sudden heat. There hadn’t been much here in the way of wearing apparel, but what there was had a clean starched look—before it had been draggled on the floor. Unexpectedly she got a hint of malice, of evil.
She was standing there in the tiny hall when a shadow drifted across the kitchen window, a faint darkening of the fog pressed against the pane. Amy heard the door rattle; she remembered with irony her careful work with the keys. The back door was unlocked. It swung inward with a faint squeak.
She backed into Elizabeth’s room, stood behind the door with her eye to the crack. Fogarty came into the line of sight and stood swinging his hat. “I took the liberty of moving your car,” he said. “You don’t want anyone to know you’re here looking for that diary.”
The pup waddled in to be petted; Fogarty lifted him, stroked the soft black ears. “Hi, you!”
She came out from behind the door. Irritatingly, Fogarty didn’t display any surprise or sign of greeting, but just took her being there for granted. She added up Fogarty’s little score in her mind: he’d planted the idea of an illegal search, of course, pretending he wanted to see the folder in Cunninghan’s office and letting her get the bug from that. She’d been a fool to fall for it. He’d read her like a book.
His eyes had settled past her to the mess on Elizabeth’s floor. “Did I interrupt something?”
She bared her teeth. “You think I did that?”
He shrugged aggravatingly, walked in, poked at the mussed clothes, and looked at the dresser, where a thin cotton scarf and a cheap plastic mirror and comb were thrown in a heap. He picked up something and let it dangle. Amy saw that it was a rabbit’s foot, and she remembered the fad the young girls had had a few months past of wearing the things on a chain around their necks. Somehow it brought the girl here, and Amy looked at the scuffed clothes and felt again the sense of heat.
Fogarty wandered out, past Amy, to the living room. He put the little dog down and went around poking at things. He lifted the lid of the tub on the washing machine. “Looks new.”
“It is. They were going to take in washing.”
“They’d probably have gone broke.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Amy remembered her advice, the girl’s gratitude, the unspoken confidence that she and her mother would make their way by labor in a strange world.
Fogarty walked into Mrs. Tzegeti’s bedroom. He didn’t appear to be searching his way, so Amy judged that he had been here before. Last night, she thought, and he had expected her to come here as soon as he had gone. She said, “Do you think they found it?”
He glanced back at her. “Do you?”
“Since I didn’t know where the diary was, in the first place, how could I know if it were missing?”
Fogarty frowned, knitting the dark red eyebrows into a thatch. “I can’t buy that.”
“I don’t give a damn whether you buy it or not.” She was suddenly oppressed by this house, by Fogarty’s attitude of accusation. The dark, and the dim smell, and the rakish disarray added up to something mean and horrible. She watched while Fogarty went over to the vigil light under the crucifix and lit it, and she thought, That didn’t occur to me. I wasn’t smart enough to light up the little core of this shabby house, the simple thing that gave it dignity and faith. She turned her head swiftly, feeling the tears sting. He always makes me in the wrong. It seemed to her then that hate crackled between them.
But Fogarty’s tone, when he spoke, was quiet and conciliatory. “Didn’t Mrs. Tzegeti try to tell you anything at all?”
“She muttered something. I don’t know what it means.” He waited, but Amy wouldn’t go on. There seemed a stubborn lump, hot and sick, under her ribs. She wanted Fogarty to go.
“You sure have had it in for me since the first minute we met,” he said reflectively. “I guess waking you up in the middle of the night wasn’t such a smart trick. There isn’t ever going to be anything but enmity.”
“There is just one decent thing that you might do. Not just for me, though it would please me very much. For the sake of truth. For decency.” She waited, seeing his face turn, the look of inquiry on it. He really didn’t know what she meant. He had no insight, no understanding. She went on clearly, “You could write the real story of what happened to Robert Luttrell. You could print the truth about the murders in the train.”
The vigil light threw a flickering reflection up one side of Fogarty’s face. One eye glowed like a jewel in the shadow cast by his high cheekbone. But his expression was tired, remote—not quite human, she thought. An automaton of the press looking at one of its victims. He didn’t care what happened to the memory of Robert Luttrell.
“He’s being buried tomorrow,” she finished. She turned to the wall.
“I know that.” Fogarty came over, pulling out a handkerchief. It smelled of antiseptic, the impersonally sterile odor left by a public laundry. He wadded it, pushed it into her hand, and then walked away. She heard his footsteps circle the room, pausing here and there; then they faded in the direction of the kitchen. All at once it occurred to her that he might be going as she had wished, really leaving her here. She rubbed her eyes, grabbed the pup, and went to the small hallway.
Fogarty was in the kitchen. He had a bunch of canisters, paper sacks, and cereal containers lined up on the sink. He was exploring some pancake flour. He gave her a glance, a short one. She had expected some cynicism, wry amusement, even dislike. But the impression she got was of inner disdain, self-deprecation. He said, “I’m just passing time. The journal wouldn’t be here in this stuff. Tzegeti hid it better than that.” He let some white beans run out into his hand, dumped them back. “Look. About your husband. It might not be the time, just now, to break out with everything we have.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure you and the Tzegeti kid are in the clear.”
“That’s silly.”
> She gave him the handkerchief and he was stuffing it into his pocket when there came an interruption, a soft step on the back porch.
CHAPTER NINE
FOGARTY SAID, “Company coming!” The next moment he pulled Amy soundlessly into the living room, then hurried on to Mrs. Tzegeti’s room—he searched the place with a look like a hunting dog’s, then went to the corner where the big mahogany wardrobe cast its shadow. “Let’s try it here.” He pushed her against the wall. The pup crawled higher in her arms and licked her face. She felt somehow ridiculous, offended. She jerked the pup down. The pup grunted and Fogarty put a finger to his lips.
Light, hesitating steps came into the living room. There was a long pause. Amy judged that the newcomer was a woman. She wondered if the woman were looking at the vigil light, casting its beam over the dead roses and the crucifix. Then she heard a sound which she identified as the replacing of the lid of the washing machine. A silly place to look. Amy tried to crane her neck out; Fogarty frowned at her.
The steps went round the other room, pausing as Fogarty had done, then approached the door of the bedroom. A wild urge rose in Amy to walk out, to face whoever it was; this was silly, childish, and they were going to look cheap when they were found.
Someone came into the room. Flattened in the shadows, Amy studied the figure which stood with its back to them. There was a tantalizing familiarity to the slight neat form, the skirt and jacket of smoky wool, the gold suède gloves, the shining bright hair.
The woman went to the heap of bedding and bent over it, then kicked the mattress stuffing with her high-heeled pump. The golden hair swung past her face; she brushed at it, and Amy had a glimpse of profile. This was Mr. Cunninghan’s secretary, the girl who matched herself to his soft-black-and-gold color scheme. In this shabby grim room she was curiously a cipher, something removed from the context which gave it meaning. She kicked again at the lumpy stuff which had come out of the wrecked mattress; her movement was purposeless, desultory. Either she hadn’t made up her mind where to begin or she was here in idle curiosity, looking the place over. She went to the bed and tugged up the flattened remains of the mattress and peered down through the springs. Then she dusted off the gold gloves by brushing her hands together. She inspected her clothes as if suspicious that there might be dust on them too.
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