Widow's Web

by Ursula Curtiss

  She was a strange playmate for Annabelle Blair—or, all things considered, was she? She opened the beer debonairly; her very back looked vital and amused. Torrant said, pouring his, “Speaking of maids, did the Mallows inquire about one when they bought the house?”

  He sat tense under Mrs. Kirby’s surprised and concentrated stare. When she didn’t answer at once he said gently, “It’s a big house. And with Miss Blair along in a secretarial capacity, no matter what developed in that line later . . . Mrs. Mallow doesn’t sound like a woman used to doing her own housework.”

  Simeon’s sardonic comment on the cleaning of the hotel rug on the night Gerald Mallow was stricken, the neatly stacked newspapers and kindling and logs in the Dutch oven in that shadowy old house . . . it was a contradiction of character that had been bothering him all along. Mrs. Kirby narrowed her eyes and said abstractedly, “It wasn’t a maid, it was a cleaning-woman.”

  “But they did get one?”

  “Yes, for a week or two. Let me see . . . There’s no employment agency around here, you know, so it’s just a matter of jotting down the names of available women as we get them, in case clients are interested. Hold on and I’ll get my list.”

  She hadn’t, Torrant noticed, asked him why he cared; was she bemused and automatic, or did she know without being told? She was back almost at once, wearing a pair of shell-rimmed glasses that gave her a startlingly severe air, flipping the pages of a loose-leaf notebook.

  “It’s here somewhere, I remember making a note . . . Yes. Mrs. Sarah Partridge, Locust Street. But,” said Mrs. Kirby thoughtfully, “she didn’t stay. I thought Mrs. Mallow would have a fit over the phone, and I don’t suppose Annabelle liked it much either, being next in line for the job, but Mrs. Partridge left anyway.”

  Torrant thought that she said it with a faint admiration. No one knew a house and its inhabitants better than a cleaning-woman; no one else had such unparalleled opportunities for hearing scraps of conversation, noting habits and attitudes, gauging the temper of a place . . . He said baldly, “Didn’t Mrs. Partridge like it there?”

  “Cleaning-women don’t like it anywhere,” said Mrs. Kirby practically, “though I must say I wouldn’t have worked for Mrs. Mallow for a minute. But it wasn’t that with Mrs. Partridge. A sister of hers lost her husband, I think—something like that—and she went down to Connecticut or somewhere to help out.”

  “You wouldn’t have the name?”

  “My dear man,” said Mrs. Kirby soberly, “at the moment I barely have a pulse.”

  “But Mrs. Partridge must have had other relatives here.”

  “Oh, I daresay,” said Mrs. Kirby, and sighed loudly and pushed the shell glasses to the end of her nose while she peered. “Recommended by . . . here we are, Mrs. Joseph Watts, something Templeton Road. Another sister, I think.”

  “Thanks,” said Torrant, standing, “you’ve been very helpful,” and carried away with him the memory of a shrewd and suddenly dubious gaze.

  Mrs. Watts, a mournful candle-colored woman in her fifties, was reluctant to part with her sister’s address in Connecticut; it took Torrant half an hour to undo her fixed impression that he was a tax man. He got the address at last and with relief, because Sarah Partridge was all at once very interesting indeed.

  Had Gerald Mallow been afraid of his wife—or of his secretary? The changing of his will could have been a sop in the face of a threat, a temporary gesture made unexpectedly permanent by his death. Mrs. Partridge wouldn’t have answers, but she would certainly have impressions—and she appeared to be the only person in a position to have studied the Mallow household at close range.

  If she were anything like the wary Mrs. Watts, he wouldn’t be able to get what he wanted over the phone. Torrant frowned intently over that all the way back into the center of town. He was still frowning when he shut himself into a booth at the back of the drug store and put in a person-to-person call to Mrs. Sarah Partridge in Lynnfield, Connecticut.

  Maria Rowan smiled mechanically as she left Simeon at the restaurant door. She felt, walking out into the sunlight, as though she were clothed lightly in ice.

  It wasn’t only outrage at the suggestion that Louise had tried to kill Gerald Mallow; it wasn’t the unspoken corollary that he had altered his will in self-defense. There was something even deeper than that, a bewildering sense of shock.

  She found that she had been thinking of Gerald as careless and roving and a trifle sly, of Louise as a shy but courageous woman, lonely at times in spite of her marriage—and she couldn’t have been more wrong.

  During that long lunch with Simeon, Gerald had emerged as a big man, blond, fresh-complexioned, a successful broker and a fond husband. Oh, there had been peccadilloes in the course of twelve years, Simeon said, shrugging; women found him attractive and he was almost boyishly susceptible to admiration. But they were flirtations and fleeting, because he loved his wife.

  And Louise? Not the faintly pathetic creation of Maria’s mind but a poised and self-assured woman, dark-haired and slender, with a skin still creamy and the slight unknowing arrogance that comes from being cherished. Allowing for Simeon’s cool and unconcealed dislike of her, the Mallows had not been people whom you pitied or puzzled over or tried to understand. They had been attractive, successful, sure of themselves and each other.

  But not at the end, after they came to Chauncy. Louise hadn’t been sure of herself when she wrote that oddly fumbling letter to Maria; she had been tentative and disturbed, reaching out instinctively to someone in her own background. Had she also been a little frightened?

  That wasn’t hindsight, because the letter had been a reproach even at the time. And Annabelle Blair had thought it so significant that it had to be destroyed at once.

  Maria did her shopping preoccupiedly: toothpaste, something to read, cigarettes, eggs—she would begin to crow if she ate many more dinners contrived of eggs. The afternoon was turning faintly blue and there was a knifing cold on the air when she got back to the apartment on Vanguard Street.

  A can of Vichyssoise was working its way out of the bottom of her grocery bag, to be followed shortly by eggs. Maria, intent on that, was as startled by the voice from the opposite lawn as though a tree had spoken.

  Annabelle Blair said, “Miss Rowan? I wonder if you’d mind coming over, when you get rid of your things?”

  She had turned on lamps in the dark stiff living room, but the light on the curling green-brown pattern of the walls only made it look, Maria thought, like seaweed warmed over. She had an instant’s pity for Annabelle Blair, shut up alone in this house of shadows. Remembering why the woman was alone, she hardened again.

  Annabelle said pleasantly, “Is everything all right in the apartment, Miss Rowan?”

  “It’s very comfortable.”

  “Mr. Pym called me—I understand you had some trouble about the key.”

  And Mr. Pym, Maria thought bitterly, had seemed so nice. She said, “I lost it, I’m sorry to say. As I’d brought Mr. Pym all the way out here, it seemed simpler to start all over again with new locks.”

  “What a pity I wasn’t home. I might,” said Annabelle blandly, “have been able to find you another key. Not that it matters. I’ve been thinking about your—about Mrs. Mallow’s will, Miss Rowan. It must have been made years ago. From something your cousin said,” the strong white fingers began to move slidingly against folds of black wool, “I understand that she had begun to think about you during the last few months. I believe you said there was a letter?”

  “Yes,” Maria said, deliberately repeating the past tense, “there was a letter.”

  The other woman ignored the faint emphasis of that. “I’m sure that only the confusion of coming here, and getting the house in shape, kept your cousin from making some sort of small provision. I thought,” said Annabelle Blair, her voice going suddenly level and businesslike, “perhaps a thousand dollars?”

  CHAPTER 9

  MARIA KNEW LATER what she should have do
ne. She should have taken the offer at face value and appeared dissatisfied with it; she might have found out then how important it was to Annabelle Blair, in terms of cold cash, that she be bought off and dismissed. Above all, she should not have shown her own hand.

  But she was still stinging from the frightening suggestion that Simeon had made in that beautiful voice, and she said instantly, “Oh, no. Thank you for thinking of it, but—no.” Annabelle’s face stayed composed. She went on looking at Maria, who had stood up impetuously, and said, “You mustn’t run off. Won’t you have tea? The kettle’s just boiling . . .”

  As though they had been talking about the weather, and there had been no bribe offered and refused. Annabelle went out of the room like any busy hostess, and Maria was startled to find herself still standing there rigid, holding her bag and one glove. She had left the other with the bag of groceries beside the sink in the apartment, or dropped it during her struggle with the escaping soup—it had been, she thought, suddenly tired, a one-glove land of day.

  “Cream?” said Annabelle affably, returning with a small tray. “Sugar?”

  She looked positively hospitable now, handing across the steaming cup in response to Maria’s “Neither, thanks,” and smiling anxiously. She said, “This may taste a little new to you, it’s a Japanese blend. Mrs. Mallow was quite fond of it, and it’s spoiled me for ordinary tea.”

  She waited expectantly. Maria reached for her cup and stopped instinctively as the door knocker sounded. Annabelle looked briefly annoyed; she murmured, “Who . . . ?” and after a moment’s hesitation went to answer it.

  It was Torrant. Maria felt sharply released from a spell; she realized how muted the whole house was, how bound about in shadow and secrets, when she heard the casual brusque voice in the little hall. “Hello, Miss Blair. I was driving by, and I thought I’d—” He was suddenly in the doorway of the living room, looking directly at her, saying, “Oh, there you are, Maria.”

  Nothing about that to make her stomach drop precipitately away, as though she had been lost and then found again. Maria clasped her hands in her lap and regarded them absorbedly. And Torrant said amiably to Annabelle Blair, “I thought you’d like to hear the good news. Your cleaning-woman is coming back.”

  There was a tiny complete silence, more noticeable than a sound. Then Annabelle Blair said politely, “I don’t believe it could be the same person. The cleaning-woman we had here has moved away to Connecticut.”

  “But she’s planning a visit to Chauncy—we are talking about Mrs. Partridge, aren’t we?” inquired Torrant, still amiable. “She’s arriving on the noon train tomorrow, according to her sister here in town. With a little persuasion you might get her to help out for a few days.”

  To Maria it sounded like elaborate nonsense—surely a woman living alone, and particularly a woman who left her house as seldom as Annabelle Blair, couldn’t be in dire need of a cleaning-woman’s services.

  But Annabelle was saying slowly, “Yes, I suppose I might.” Maria glanced away from the intent and whitened face, and reached for her teacup.

  She was bewildered by what happened then. Torrant’s hands swooped down and caught her own, the right one a fraction of an inch away from the cup’s handle; she thought for a dizzying instant that the cup was going to go. Then he pulled her to her feet with a light and practiced motion. He said, smiling, “I may be vague about names but I never forget a cocktail date—and you did ask me, remember?”

  Maria freed her hands quietly. She said good-by to Annabelle Blair, whose face looked queerly mottled, and found her arm slipped through Torrant’s at the door. She didn’t understand any of this; she was stiff with resentment at being used so briskly for Torrant’s own ends, and at his cool assumption that she would be a good girl and respond on cue.

  The white door closed behind them. Two steps away from it in darkness, Maria moved free. She said crisply, “I suppose there was a point to all that?”

  “Yes,” said Torrant, equally crisp, and crossed the street at her side. He was, Maria realized astoundedly, very angry.

  He entered the garage with her in silence, striking a match to find the wall switch. “I think I’d better come up with you for a few minutes, if you don’t mind. For one thing, Miss Blair will be watching to see if I do. For another, I’d like to talk to you.”

  Maria nodded, set completely adrift by his tone, and led the way upstairs without speaking. She turned on lamps and the long vivid room grew up around them, dismissing a little of the chill.

  Torrant closed the door and leaned against it and looked at her thoroughly, as though he were a psychiatrist and she an interesting new patient. He said at last with elaborate gentleness, “When you were little, did your parents ever tell you about taking candy from strangers?”

  Maria stared back at him, flushing. She said impatiently, “Oh—” and stopped dead.

  This time the silence was longer. It contained Annabelle’s sudden affability as she poured the tea, her explanation that it might taste strange, her annoyance at the sound of the door knocker.

  “You’re obviously here because you aren’t satisfied about your cousin’s death,” Torrant said, still patient, “and Miss Blair, being no fool, is well aware of it. If she’s what you think she is, didn’t it occur to you that she might be a rather risky companion for tea? She seemed disappointed when we left.”

  Not disappointed, thought Maria, remembering. Furious and somehow balked, her skin wearing the mottled look of concealed passion. Her own face stayed hot. Part of that was shock at the thought of what might have been attempted in that sombre living room across the road; most of it was humiliation at standing here like a child under the biting tolerance of Torrant’s questions.

  The kettle, boiling just then, as though Annabelle Blair had drawn up two alternatives. The bribe, and after that, without the slightest reaction to its refusal, the invitation to tea . . .

  Torrant looked disconcertingly into Maria’s mind. “What were you talking about, just before I knocked?”

  But she had the point now, and she would not be scolded for this further naïvete. “Nothing,” said Maria shortly, and turned away to light a cigarette. “But I thought you were a friend of Miss Blair’s?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then that business about the cleaning-woman . . . ?” Torrant crossed the room to the kitchenette alcove and stood directly in front of the window, letting himself be seen by any watcher outside. He said, “Mrs. Partridge worked for the Mallows for a week or ten days, and was in the house for a couple of hours every day. I think she worries Miss Blair, and for reasons I won’t go into now I want her worried. For that matter, I don’t think she likes my coming up here with you like this. People are apt to match notes.”

  Maria ignored the disarming air of that. She said with faint triumph, “If that’s true, wasn’t it rather foolish to tell Miss Blair exactly when Mrs. Partridge was arriving?”

  “If she were going to be on that train. But she’s coming tonight. I gathered from her tone that she liked your cousin.” And, it crossed Maria’s mind to wonder where she had picked up the impression, other people hadn’t.

  “The earliest train she could catch will get her to Boston at a few minutes after seven. I told her to take a taxi from South Station and meet me at the Grotto for dinner at about eight. What I wish you’d do,” said Torrant, sounding abrupt, “is come along too. If Mrs. Partridge liked your cousin she’d talk more freely to you. Besides which,” he added reflectively, “you’re another woman.”

  Thank you, thought Maria. She said, “All right.”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven, then?” Torrant looked briefly doubtful, as though he were about to say something else, and then he nodded and opened the door and went out.

  The temperature had dropped sharply. It was much the same kind of road, Torrant reflected, that Gerald Mallow must have driven on, deceptively smooth and even under the hard skin of ice left behind by the thaw and the sudden freeze
. It was a surface that needed the maximum of driving attention, but he kept remembering Annabelle Blair’s eager face, glimpsed through the window, and moments later, Maria’s hand reaching out for her teacup.

  Harmless? Possibly, but he was still edgy with reaction and annoyed at himself for the sharpness of it. If Maria Rowan chose to wander about like a child, bumping into the dangers of this particular world, it was no responsibility of his. The trouble, he supposed dryly, lay in the fact that she was not a child. And that without even trying, by some elusive cut of feature or quality of gaze, she exerted some mysterious claim, as though her safety belonged in his hands.

  If he hadn’t lost his head, going so sharply cold at the sight of that lamplit domestic scene in Annabelle’s living room, he would have knocked over Maria’s teacup and soaked his handkerchief in it for analysis . . .

  The Renault, which had been behaving like a normal car all day, lost speed, coughed once, and died slyly around a curve. Torrant gave it a moment and tried the starter without result; it had a fixed air of never moving again. He got out and walked around it once, thwartedly, because on this black stretch of road, without a flashlight, its trouble would remain invisible. After an interval of waiting, he succeeded in flooding the engine.

  He had promised Mrs. Judd that he would take good care of the Renault; he hadn’t realized the Job-like patience involved. He had never felt seriously like kicking a car before. He smoked part of a cigarette, measuring in his mind the length of the walk to Mrs. Judd’s and his own opening phrases when he arrived, and then he. threw the cigarette away and gave the car one last chance. As though it had concluded its private joke, the motor responded instantly.