Deep Water

by Patricia Highsmith

  Chapter 11

  Vic's guilt did not materialize. Perhaps it was because there were so many other things to think about and to take care of. Melinda was telling all their friends that she thought Vic had killed Charley, which could have been put down as the result of her shock after Charley's death, except that it went on for three weeks and she became more eloquent about it. And in the house she sulked and snarled at him. She seemed to be brewing some retaliation against him, and Vic did not know what form it would take. Between wondering what Melinda was going to do next and trying to minimize her behavior to her friends, which he did in the most gallant and sympathetic manner, Vic had quite enough to occupy him in his hours away from the printing plant.

  Horace came to see Vic at the plant about three days after the coroner's inquest. For the first few minutes Horace looked over the loose sheets of Greek type that were the day's work, looked at the design that Vic had chosen—not the one Melinda had so carelessly selected—for the cover of the book, but Horace got to the point of his visit before five minutes had passed.

  "Vic, I'm a little worried," he said firmly. "You know what I'm worried about, don't you?"

  Stephen and Carlyle had gone home. They were alone in the pressroom.

  "Yes," Vic said.

  "She's been twice to see Evelyn, you know. Once to see Mary."

  "Oh," Vic said, without surprise. "I think she told me she'd been to Evelyn's."

  "Well, you know what she's saying?" Horace looked embarrassed. "She told Mary she'd said the same thing to you at home." He paused, but Vic did not speak. "I'm not so much interested in that—except that it's a horrible thing to get around town—but what's going to happen to Melinda?"

  "I suppose she'll quiet down," Vic said in a patient tone. He slid one thigh onto the corner of a composing table. A robin's "'Cheep?—Cheep'?" came clearly through the closed window behind Horace. He could see the robin on the sill, the little male robin. It was dusk. He wondered if the robin wanted something to eat or if there was some kind of trouble. Last spring the robin lived with his wife in a nest they had built in a low stone wall just outside the back door.

  "Well, will she? What're you thinking?" Horace asked.

  "Frankly, I was thinking about that robin," Vic said, sliding off the table and walking to the back door. He looked at the still unfinished bread crumbs and diced fat that Carlyle had dropped below the tree that morning. Vic came back. "Maybe he was just saying good night," Vic said, "but last spring we had to chase a snake away from their nest."

  Horace smiled, a little impatiently. "I never know whether you're pretending unconcern or you're really unconcerned, Vic."

  "I suppose I'm concerned," Vic said, "but don't forget I've had it a good many years."

  "Yes, I know. And I don't want to meddle, Vic. But can you imagine Evelyn or Mary," Horace said, raising his voice suddenly, "going around to you and their other friends saying that their husband is a murderer?"

  "No. But I always knew Melinda was different."

  Horace laughed, a despairing laugh."What're you going to do about it, Vic? Is she going to divorce you?"

  "She hasn't said anything about it. Did she say anything to Mary about it?"

  Horace looked at him a moment, almost with surprise. "No, not that I know of."

  There was a long pause. Horace walked about in the space between two tables, his hands in his jacket pockets, as if he were thoughtfully measuring the floor with his steps. Vic, standing up now, took a deep breath. His belt felt loose, and he tightened it one hole. He had been eating less lately, deliberately, and it had begun to show in his waistline.

  "Well—what do you answer her when she accuses you?" Horace demanded.

  "Nothing!" Vic said. "What can I? What can anybody say?"

  The blank surprise came over Horace's face again. "I could answer quite a lot. I could tell her, if I were you, that I'd put up with all I could stand, for years, and that this goes beyond—beyond putting up with. I can't believe that she means it, Vic," he said earnestly. "If she, did, she wouldn't be living under the same roof with you!"

  She wasn't really, Vic thought. Horace's fervor embarrassed him. "I don't know what to make of it, Horace, I really don't."

  "Has it ever occurred to you that she might really be—a bit off, Vic? I'm no psychiatrist but I've had a chance to watch her over the years. This goes beyond self-indulgence or the fact that she's spoiled!"

  Vic caught the note of hostility in Horace's voice and something rose in him automatically, rose to defend Melinda. It was the first time Horace had expressed his dislike of Melinda. "I don't think it's going to go on, Horace."

  "But this is something that can't be undone later," Horace protested. "Nobody's going to forget this, Vic. And I think the whole town knows by now that she's accusing you. What kind of a woman is she? I don't see why you put up with it!"

  "But I've put up with so much," Vic replied with a sigh. "I suppose it gets to be a habit."

  "A habit to torture yourself?" Horace looked at his friend with a tortured concern.

  "It's not that bad. I can take it, Horace. So don't worry. Please." Vic patted Horace's shoulder.

  Horace let his breath out in a dissatisfied way. "But I do worry."

  Vic smiled a little, went to the back door and locked it. "I'd like to ask you to come to the house for a drink—"

  "Thanks," Horace interrupted in a negative tone.

  "All right," Vic said, smiling, but he again felt the creeping embarrassment, the shame, because Horace had turned against Melinda.

  "Thanks, not now, Vic. Why don't you come over to see us? I know Mary'd like to see you."

  "Not tonight, I think. I'll take a rain check. Be sure to give Mary my regards, though. How's the pear tree looking?" "Oh, better. Much better," Horace said.

  "Good." Vic had given them some of his own fungicide concoction to spray on their pear tree because its leaves had started to develop red-brown spots.

  They strolled out to their cars, talking about the likelihood of rain that evening. There was a hint of autumn in the air.

  "We would like to see you soon, Vic," Horace said before he got into his car.

  "You will," Vic answered, smiling. "My love to Mary!" He waved cheerfully and got into his car.

  Melinda was in the living room when Vic got home, sitting on the sofa with a magazine.

  "Good evening," Vic said, smiling.

  She glanced up at him sullenly.

  "Can I fix you a drink?" he asked.

  "Thanks, I'll do it."

  Vic had washed up and put on a clean shirt in his own room before coming into the house. He sat down in his favorite armchair with the newspaper. It was strange, and rather pleasant, to feel no desire for a drink at seven o'clock. He had not had a drink in three days. It made him feel secure and self-sufficient somehow. He was aware of a placidity that seemed to surround him, to show itself in his facial expression, while within he felt a steely hardness, a not entirely unpleasant tenseness whose components he did not really know. Hatred? Resentment? Fear? Guilt? Or was it simply pride and satisfaction? It was like a core in him. Another question was, had it always been in him or was it something new?

  Melinda came in with her drink "Trixie's bringing home stories now," she announced.

  "Where is Trixie?"

  "She went to a party at the Petersons'. Janey's birthday. She should come home with some fine stories tonight."

  "Am I supposed to go and get her or is Peterson driving her hack?"

  "He said he'd deliver her at about seven-thirty," Melinda replied, collapsing on the sofa so hard that her highball almost spilled.

  Her movement blew a roll of gray dust into view under the sofa. Vic looked at it with amusement.

  "I believe I'll do some vacuuming before dinner," he announced pleasantly.

  Melinda's incongruously brooding, sullen face made him smile all the more. He got the vacuum from the hall closet and plugged it into the wall by the phonogr
aph. He whistled as he worked, enjoying the swift disappearance of the dust rolls under the sofa, of the square of fine dust that he had found when he moved the armchair. He enjoyed, too, the strain of his muscles as lie performed the humble, domestic chore of vacuuming his living room. He drew his stomach in, did deep knee bends to reach tinder the bookcase, stretched up tall to get the top of the curtains with the brush appliance. He liked exercise when he did something useful with it. He'd tackle the windows tomorrow, he thought. They'd needed washing for months. He was still vacuuming when Charles Peterson arrived with Trixie.

  "Hello!" Vic called out to him in the car."Won't you come in for a minute?"

  Peterson looked as if he didn't want to come in. Behind his shy smile, Vic sensed his unease. But he was coming in. "How're you this evening?" he asked as he approached the door.

  Trixie had run past Vic into the living room, clattering a noisemaker that she had acquired at the party.

  "We're fine," Vic said. "Can I offer you a beer? Some iced tea? A drink?" It was a fine picture that he and Melinda made, and Vic knew it: he in his shirt sleeves, vacuuming the living room, and Melinda on the sofa with a highball, not even looking particularly tidy in her cotton blouse and skirt and her sandals and no stockings.

  Peterson looked around a little awkwardly, then smiled. "How're you, Mrs. Van Allen?" he asked, a little fearfully, Vic thought.

  "Very well, thank you," Melinda said, with a contortion of her mouth that was supposed to pass for a smile.

  "These kids' parties—" Peterson said, with a laugh. "They really take more out of you than grown-ups' parties." He had a New England drawl in his a's.

  "You can say that again," Vic said. "How old is Janey? Seven?" "Six," Peterson said.

  "Six! She's tall for her age."

  "Yes, she is."

  "Won't you sit down?"

  "No, I'll be going on, thanks." Peterson's eyes were drifting everywhere, as if he could read in a corner of the room, in the disarray of magazines on the cocktail table, the real explanation of the Van Allen scandal.

  "Well, Trix looks as if she had a good time. Probably the noisiest one there." Vic winked at her.

  "I was not!" Trixie yelled, still talking at the top of her voice as she probably had at the party to make herself heard above twenty other screaming six-year-olds. "I've got something to 'tell—you'," she said to Vic, on a note calculated to pique his curiosity.

  "Me? Good!" Vic whispered enthusiastically. Then he turned 10 Peterson, who was making his way to the door. "How're the Hydrangeas doing?"

  Peterson's face lit with a smile. "Oh, they're fine. A little droopy for a while, but they've picked up fine now." He turned around. "Good night, Mrs. Van Allen. It's nice to see you."

  Vic smiled."Good night, Charley." He knew Peterson's friends called him Charley, and that it would please him if Vic called him that rather than "Mr. Peterson."

  "Good night," Peterson said. "See you again."

  It struck Vic that Peterson's smile was more genuine than when he had arrived.

  "My goodness," Vic said as he came back into the room. Couldn't you say good night to the man?"

  Melinda only looked at him slurringly.

  "Not very good for your public relations." He put his hands on his knees and leaned toward Trixie."And couldn't you say good night and thank you?"

  "I said all that at Janey's house," Trixie replied. She looked quickly at her mother, then beckoned to Vic to come into the kitchen with her.

  Melinda was watching them.

  Vic went with Trixie. Trixie pulled his head down to her and whispered roaringly in his ear, "Did you really kill Charley De Lisle?"

  "No!" Vic whispered, smiling.

  "Because Janey says you did." Trixie's eyes were shining with eagerness, with a pride and excitement ready to be released in a yell or a hug if Vic should just say that he had killed Charley.

  "You're a 'wild' one!" Vic whispered.

  "Janey said the Wilsons came over to see her mother and dad, and the Wilsons think you did it."

  "'Do' they?" Vic whispered.

  "But you didn't?"

  "No, I didn't," Vic whispered. "I didn't, I didn't."

  Melinda came into the kitchen. She looked at Trixie—the bored but intense look that held not a jot of anything that could be called maternal. Trixie didn't react to it at all. She was used o it. "Go to your room, Trixie," Melinda said.

  Trixie looked to her father.

  "All right, honey. Go," Vic said, tickling Trixie under the chin. "You don't have to talk to her like a flunkey, do you?" he said to Melinda.

  Trixie went off with her head up, pretending affront, but she would forget it in a matter of seconds, Vic knew.

  "Well," Vic said, smiling, "what's up?"

  "I thought you ought to know that the whole town's wise to you."

  "Wise to me. What do you mean? They all know I killed Charley, I suppose."

  "They're all talking about it. You ought to hear the Wilsons."

  "I 'feel' as if I have heard the Wilsons. I don't care to hear them." Vic opened the refrigerator."What've we got for dinner?"

  "There's going to be—there's going to be a public uproar about you," Melinda said threateningly.

  "Led by you. Led by my wife." Vic was getting some lamb Ili chops out of the freezing compartment.

  "Do you think nothing's going to happen? You're wrong!"

  "I suppose Don Wilson saw me drowning De Lisle in the swimming pool. Why doesn't he speak up about it? What's the use of all this murmuring behind people's backs?" He got out some frozen peas. Peas, a big salad of lettuce and tomato, and the chops. He didn't want a potato, and he knew if he didn't put potatoes on, Melinda wouldn't.

  "Do you want to bet I don't do something?" Melinda asked. He glanced at her, noticing again the circles under her eyes, the painful strain of her eyebrows. "Darling, I wish you wouldn't keep on like this. It's useless. Do something. Do something constructive, but don't worry around the house all day—torturing yourself," he added forcefully, borrowing a phrase from Horace. "I want to see you with circles under your eyes."

  "Go to hell," she murmured, and went back into the living room.

  It was a simple phrase, "Go to hell," certainly unoriginal and more or less vague, but it always disturbed Vic when he heard it from Melinda, because it could mean so many things—not always 'that' she was at a loss for anything else to say, though sometimes it meant that, too. He knew that evening that she was planning something: Collusion with Don Wilson? But of what kind? How? If Don Wilson had really seen anything the night of the Cowans' party he'd have said so before now. Melinda wouldn't be keeping quiet anything of importance that he had told her.

  Vic went back and finished his vacuuming with a zest. Melinda was a challenge, and he rather relished it.

  He fixed the entire dinner, including applesauce with an egg-white beaten into it for dessert. Trixie had fallen asleep in her room, and Vic did not awaken her, assuming that she had probably eaten more than enough at the Petersons'. Vic was very cheerful and talkative during the meal. But Melinda was thoughtful, she really did not attend to everything he said, and her inattention was not deliberate.

  About ten days later, at the beginning of the month of September when the bank statement came in, Vic noticed that over a hundred dollars more than usual had been withdrawn, by Melinda, of course. Some of her checks made out to "cash" were among the canceled drafts—one for $125—but there was no check with any addressee that would give him a clue as to what she had used the money for. He tried to remember if she had bought any clothes, anything for the house. She hadn't, that he knew of. Ordinarily he would not have noticed an excess of a hundred dollars in their monthly budget, but because he was so wary now of Melinda's actions he supposed he had examined the bank statement with more than the usual care. The $125 check was dated 20 August, more than a week after De Lisle's funeral in New York (which Melinda had gone to New York for), and Vic did not think it could h
ave been for flowers or for anything to do with the funeral.

  Vic thought it possible that she had hired a private detective, so he began to look around for a new face in Little Wesley, a new face that might betray a particular interest in him.

  Chapter 12

  September was a quiet month, as far as social events went. People were busy getting a cellar floor repaired, cleaning out drainpipes, checking their heating systems in preparation for the winter, and corralling the workmen to do all this, which sometimes took a week. Vic was called to Wesley by the MacPhersons to pass judgment on an oil stove that they intended to buy. And Mrs. Podnansky had a dead squirrel in her well. She didn't use the well for anything except decor, and it was not that the water had to be clean, but the floating squirrel upset her. Vic got it out with one of his old butterfly nets attached to a rake handle. Mrs. Podnansky, who had been angling for it with a bucket on a rope for days before she called him, she said, was all aflutter with gratitude. Her nervous, rather sweet face lighted up and she had looked for a few moments on the brink of making him a little speech—a little speech about her confidence in him and her affection for him in spite of the talk around the town, Vic supposed—but all she finally said, in a mischievous tone, was: