Unsuspected

by Charlotte Armstrong

All of a sudden she knew how. Rosaleen had never been one to talk about herself or to confide romantic details. Yet Mathilda had always known that somewhere in the back of Rosaleen’s life there was a man she planned to marry someday. Tyl sat down to brood, to think back. She could remember only an impression. This man was an old playmate. A childhood friend, a relative, even—some kind of cousin. It was no flaming romance, but one of those comfortable things. She could remember no name.

  Francis? Well, then, Francis thought Rosaleen hadn’t killed herself. That was the whole thing. And Jane was in it, too, somehow or other. Certainly, Jane was in love with him. Of course she was. It was perfectly obvious that they were partners. Was Jane a kind of second-string sweetheart?

  “Never mind,” Jane had said. “He’s nothing to you.” Nothing to me, thought Mathilda, and what am I to him? Someone to be used in his schemes? She felt herself in a little glow of anger. Schemes against Grandy. Of all people in the world, dear, kind, lovable Grandy, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, wouldn’t even hurt your feelings if he could help it.

  Surely she knew him best All Grandy’s ways, the splendid difference of the way he lived. An amateur of living, he called himself. Lover of life. Oh, he had taught them so much. He’d sent them to carefully chosen schools, but their real education had been in the summers with Grandy. And the world would be stale without him to teach them where its flavor lay.

  Why, they wanted to make him out a monster. They wanted to say he was wicked, scheming, unfeeling. Grandy? Grandy, who didn’t care about money or any of the stupid material things, who loved, above all, beauty and good food and good talk and ideas. Who believed in the love of these things.

  The thought came like a stray. Grandy’s fabulous bathroom had cost quite a penny. The love of some kinds of beauty was rather expensive. No, she wrenched at her thoughts. She was off the track. Love. Human love. Grandy believed in love. But he didn’t know it when he saw it, said some cynical thing inside her head. He thought Oliver meant security to her. She rubbed her aching forehead.

  Someone knocked softly at her door.

  “Come in.”

  “Tyl, darling.” And there he was.

  Mathilda looked up, startled. There he stood, Grandy himself, his white hair ruffled, as it almost always was, his rather large feet turned out just a little, like the frog footman. His fat little tummy on his thin frame, his big-knuckled hands, his beak of a nose and his sharp black eyes watching her.

  She saw him briefly, just in a flash, quite unadorned by her affection. She saw the man standing in her door. She knew he was alert and watchful, and she knew she was not sure, at that moment, of his love. Because she thought of a spider.

  “Are you just sitting there?” he asked wonderingly. “Anything troubling?”

  Mathilda swallowed. “Headache,” she said.

  “Ah, too bad.” His sympathy was rich and easy for that voice of his. Her heart began to pound. She heard the voice for the first time as a musical instrument played by a mind.

  “I won’t bother you, sweet. Lie down, eh? There’s just the one thing. Yesterday, Francis—”

  “Yes?” Her voice shook more than she’d intended.

  “Francis showed me a document,” he said a little wearily and sadly, “that purported to be your will.”

  “I know,” she said. Her shoulder ached where she pressed it into the back of the chair.

  “You know, dear?”

  “I mean, he showed it to me, Grandy,” she said a bit impatiently. She turned all the way around in the chair and pulled her knees up the other way.

  “Another forgery,” he sighed.

  “Yes.”

  The black eyes were watching. They were noting her downcast eyes, the nervous interlacing of her fingers. They weren’t missing anything. She felt like a bug on a pin. She wanted to squirm and hide, to get away. She bent her head and began to cry.

  “Darling.” He was very near.

  Suddenly, she knew the safest place was nearer still. She wept against his shoulder. She could hide her face there.

  “What is the trouble?”

  She said, “Grandy, I don’t know. The whole thing’s so confusing.”

  He held her off a little, trying to see her eyes. But she kept them hidden.

  “I thought you were confused last evening, sweetheart Tyl, what are you trying to tell me?”

  “The trouble is,” she wailed. “I do— I did—somehow or other remember that minister, Grandy! It’s as if I’d seen him before, in a fog or something!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said in a moment. “Poor child. And it’s been bothering you all the while? You are shaken. That’s it, isn’t it? Now, you mustn’t worry. You really must not.”

  She felt, in spite of his words, that he was vague. Could he be doubting her, after all? She got hold of her handkerchief and drew away, drying her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It really doesn’t mean anything. I really do know that none of what he said was true.”

  “Of course, you do,” Grandy agreed. But his eyes filmed over somehow, and Mathilda had a wild, fantastic, fleeting impression that he was wondering what to do with this self-doubt of hers; not wondering how to dispel it, but how to use it some way.

  “Duck, you do not remember writing out any such document as that will, do you?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no, I never did.” He was standing there, looking a bit hurt. She thought she understood. She said, “Oh, Grandy, I’ll make another one. I—”

  She caught the tiny folding down of flesh at the corner of his eye, the merest trifle of satisfaction.

  He said petulantly, “Tyl, you know I want to hear nothing about your money.”

  “I know,” she breathed. But she did not know. She was not sure. The fear was in her veins again, running in a swift thrill from a sinking heart. She did not finish the sentence that had been interrupted. She did not go on to say, “I already have made another will, silly, so we needn’t worry about the finest forgery in the world.” She didn’t say it.

  Grandy moved across the room. For one awful second, she thought she had spoken and told him, and then forgotten her own words. She thought her memory had skipped a beat or at least that he’d read her mind. Because he crossed to the little bookshelf and took a book down.

  “What a disgraceful collection,” he murmured. “My dear, such unfit stuff in this room. I must find you something better.”

  She was beside him swiftly. “Oh, no. I love Lucile,” she said, taking it gently out of his hands. “It’s so stuffy and there’s a Mathilda in it. And it puts me to sleep.”

  He chuckled.

  “Oh, Grandy,” she said. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him how foolish she’d been, to confess and get it off her soul and be free, where she stood, with no disloyal fear on her conscience. She suffered a complete reaction. The pendulum had swung. Afraid of Grandy! Absurdity of all time! Impossible!

  “Now you will tell me the real trouble,” he purred, surprising her.

  “It’s Francis,” she murmured.

  She hadn’t meant to turn her head away or to say that name. She held Lucile in her hands still.

  “If anything has happened,” she murmured again, “we’d feel so cheap.”

  “Darling, you are absolutely right!” cried Grandy. “Of course you are! We must take steps, eh?”

  “Yes,” she said in utter relief.

  “Of course we must,” said Grandy. “That’s only decent, isn’t it? For all his sins, Francis was a guest in this house. Yes, I think we must be sure he is not lying in a ditch somewhere. That’s what you mean?”

  “Oh, Grandy, darling,” said Tyl, “you do understand everything!”

  Jane’s door closed with a little click. They saw Jane in the hall with her blue jacket on over the gingham dress and the little blue cap on her head. She looked quaint and young.

  “May I go out for a little while, Mr. Grandison?” she said humbly. “Please, if you don’t need m
e?”

  “My dear, of course,” he beamed. “Unless it is something I can do for you. I’ll be downtown a little later.”

  “No, I don’t think you can, sir,” said Jane primly.

  “Take the time you need, my dear,” said Grandy kindly. “Oh—er—this business about Francis. Tyl thinks we must ask the police to search for him.” Jane’s face didn’t change much. “In case, you know,” said Grandy, “he is hurt or dead.”

  Jane said woodenly, “Of course.”

  Then she smiled her pretty smile. Her pretty lips formed their pretty thanks. Her feet tripped off. They heard her going down the stairs, not too fast.

  But Mathilda knew she flew as one who from the fiend doth fly. She, herself, stood in a backwash of fear. Jane’s fear.

  Grandy went off to telephone. Mathilda felt disloyal. She felt guilty and soiled. She ought to have told Grandy about Jane. She fidgeted. She went downstairs. Grandy was in the study. The mailman was at the door. She went and opened the door and said, “Good morning.” He put a sheaf of letters in her hands.

  She said, “Will you do something for me, Mr. Myer? If anything should happen to me, will you look in a book of poetry called Lucile? It’s on a shelf in my bedroom.”

  His mouth dropped open.

  “And don’t mention what I’ve said to anyone,” she warned, and smiled and closed the door. He stood on the step outside for some time, but at last he went away.

  She pulled at her fingers with nervous anxiety. Now she felt disloyal. And guilty. And soiled. But why? What was it now? She mustn’t trust Francis. He’d said so himself. She shook her head angrily. She was only doing what he had suggested because she didn’t trust him.

  Besides, he isn’t here, she thought, and she sat down and covered her eyes.

  27

  The police were going to check hospitals and all that, and send out a missing-person alarm, Grandy had told her comfortably. It meant that there would be an eye out for Francis for miles around. They would find him, he’d said confidently. Grandy had gone off in his ramshackle car, wearing his old brown hat jauntily.

  But Mathilda, waiting alone in the long room downstairs, was not satisfied and far from confident. She wished Jane would come back, or that she knew where Jane was, so that she could go there. There were so many questions Jane could answer. Oliver was in the house, and Mathilda wished he’d go away. He was upstairs and any minute he would probably appear and perhaps he’d want to hash things over. She wished he wouldn’t She wished she weren’t alone, but she wished it weren’t Oliver who would probably come to keep her company. She wished—wished— She didn’t know exactly what it was she wished or what she was waiting for. Vaguely, she was waiting for some word, some news. Did she expect them to find Francis in a hospital? Did she expect them to find him at all? What if they did?

  She tried to think, tried to clarify. There were two opinions about the disappearance of Francis. One, that he had run away deliberately, having failed to do whatever he had been attempting to do here. Two, that he had been prevented by violence from getting to the police by someone who didn’t want him to get to the police. And, of course, there was a third possibility, which took in all the normal suppositions, that he had been taken ill, he had been in an accident.

  She realized that it was the normal kind of disappearance that the police would be able to check, and would be attempting to check now—sudden illness, accident, sudden death. They would also be covering the possibility that he had gone away voluntarily, in which case he wouldn’t be hurt at all, but they would find him someday. Through their teletype system, his description, persistent vigilance.

  But the possibility they would not cover, and, moreover, had no machinery for covering, was that he had met with malicious violence. For if he had been hidden away, they were not searching in the right kind of place or looking deep enough or close enough, she thought.

  She was huddled in the corner of a sofa, as if the room were cold. If only Jane would come back. If only Oliver would come downstairs and not talk, but do something. If only the police would send somebody and start here. If only she could tell someone these thoughts, so that something would be done. She didn’t think Grandy had made it clear. Grandy didn’t suspect violence.

  She began to shiver uncontrollably. She thought, I’m freezing. Jane’s words came back to her, “Frozen up, just stuck, just letting things happen.”

  Mathilda uncurled herself and sat up. This was paralysis. She rejected it. She would not wait.

  A little later, she was walking down Grandy’s drive. The bus for downtown passed within two blocks of Grandy’s house. This was one of the city conveniences of which he boasted. The nearest bus stop was obvious. Tyl had no choice to make. She knew this was the way Francis must have come yesterday morning.

  She wore her short fur jacket and a little black hat. There was a strong spring breeze blowing her black skirt around her pretty legs. She stood there at the bus stop with her eager, forward-leaning look, and she had no trouble with the bus drivers. They were all glad to lean out as she hailed them, and listen to what she had to say. “Can you remember Thursday morning—yesterday morning? Can you remember if a tall man with dark hair and dark eyes, a youngish man, got on your bus that morning?”

  “What time, about, miss?”

  “I’m not sure. About ten, I think.”

  “Lots of people get on and off, miss.”

  “Oh, I know, but try to remember. He would be wearing a gray coat, I think.”

  “Not much to go on, miss. Lots of men—”

  “Yes, yes, but try! It was at this stop. I’m sure of that. And yesterday morning. Just yesterday. His eyes were dark. His eyebrows— But I guess he wouldn’t have been smiling.”

  “Sorry, miss. Don’t think I can help you.”

  “How many drivers are there on this route?”

  “Six, miss.”

  “Thank you.”

  She tried again with the next driver and the next. The fourth man sucked his lip and said, “What do you want to know for?”

  “Oh, because he was going somewhere, and he never got there, and I’ve been wondering.”

  The driver said, “Maybe I got your man. A fellow that changed his mind.”

  “He … did?”

  “Yeah, yesterday morning. Tall, you say?”

  “Tall, dark.”

  “I wouldn’t wanta say he was dark. I wouldn’t have noticed. But there was a tall fellow in a gray coat waiting here, only he didn’t get on.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No. Just as I was pulling up, a fellow comes up behind him—friend of his, I guess. So he turns around and goes off with the other guy. Gets in his car, see? The other guy notices him and picks him up. Happens all the time. People getting a lift. That help you any?”

  “He went off with a friend?” said Mathilda incredulously.

  The bus driver thought she was a stunner. “Listen, miss, I only said he was a friend. How do I know? All I know is, this guy didn’t get on my bus. He was waiting for the bus, see, but he don’t get on, on account of this other guy.”

  “Did you notice the other guy?”

  “Gosh.” The driver pushed at his cap. The passengers were shuffling in their seats. He couldn’t chat any longer. “I dunno. Nothing special I can remember. But they got in this D.P.W. car.”

  “What’s that?”

  The door began to wheeze shut “D.P.W.! Department of Public Works!” he shouted at her. The bus moved off.

  D.P.W. D.P.W. Mathilda stood on the empty corner and looked around her. Houses here were set in fat lawns, far apart, well back from the street. Nobody was about or would have been.

  Wait, there was someone across the street. A gardener doing some spring pruning. She ran across. She fetched up the outer side of the hedge and the man stopped his work.

  “Please, were you working here yesterday?”

  “Nah.”

  “Oh,” she said, disappointed. She turn
ed away.

  “Whatsa matter, lady?”

  “I only wondered if you’d seen a certain car,” she said. “But if you weren’t here—”

  “I was over at Number Sixty-eight,” he said, and spat.

  “Where?”

  “Over there.” His thumb showed her the neighboring lawn. “I work there Thursdays. Here Fridays.”

  “Oh, then maybe you did see it! There was a car with D.P.W. on it. Yesterday morning.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and spat again.

  “You saw it!”

  “Sure I saw it.”

  “Did two men get in?”

  “Yeah.” There was something curious and yet reserved in his glance, as if he could tell her something if she had the wit to ask, but would not offer it.

  “One of the men was waiting for the bus?”

  “I couldn’t say about that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I want to know where—which way did the car go?”

  He pointed.

  “That way?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did it go straight on? Did it turn?” She thought, I’ll never be able to do this. This is hopeless.

  “Turned left on Dabney Street,” he told her surprisingly.

  “Oh! Oh, thank you!” She started to run, stopped, looked back. “Was there anything—anything more you noticed?”

  A curtain dropped in his interested eyes. “Nah, I didn’t notice anything,” he said.

  But she thought, He did. There was something about it, something queer.

  She thanked him again and walked briskly in the direction of the Dabney Street corner. Now what to do? Now, ought she to call the police? Tell them about that car? Surely they could trace all cars so marked. Those cars must belong to the city. She ran back again.

  The gardener hadn’t begun to clip yet. He was just standing there, looking after her.

  “One thing more,” she gasped. “It was a car from this town? I mean it was the D.P.W. here?”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s right.” He pulled his disreputable hat down and began to work his clippers very fast, moving around a shrub with the deepest concentration on his task.

  Mathilda started down the street again. At Dabney Street, she turned left, as had the car with Francis in it. That is, the car she thought Francis had been in. It seemed probable that he’d been in it. At least, it was possible. She walked a few paces, out of the gardener’s sight at least. And then, at a loss, she stood still.