Deep Water Read Free

had the real murderer—then driving back to Little Wesley the same night, giving as an alibi, in case anybody had ever asked him for one, that he had been watching a movie in Grand Central at the time Mal had been murdered, a movie that he would actually have seen, of course, at some other time.
           "Victor-r?" Mary Meller bent' down toward him. "What're you pondering?"
           Vic slowly stood up, smiling. "Not a thing. You're looking very peachy tonight." He was referring to the color of her dress.
           "Thank you. Can't we go and sit down in some corner and you talk to me about something?" Mary asked him. "I want to see you change your seat. You've been there all evening."
           "The piano bench?" Vic suggested, because it was the only spot in sight where two people could sit next to each other. The dancing, for the moment, had stopped. He let Mary take him by the wrist and draw him toward the piano bench. He felt that Mary didn't particularly want to talk to him, that she was trying to be a good hostess and chat with everybody, and that she had left him to the last because he was rather difficult at parties. Vic didn't care. 'I have no pride', he thought proudly. He often said it to Melinda because it irritated her.
           "What were you talking to Mrs. Podnansky so long about?" Mary asked him when they had sat down.
           "Lawn mowers. Hers needs sharpening, and she's not satisfied with the job Clarke's did for her the last time."
           "So you offered to do it, I'll bet. I don't know what the widows of the community would do without you, Victor Van Allen! I wonder how you have 'time' for all your good deeds!"
           "Plenty of time," Vic said, smiling with appreciation in spite of himself. "I can find time for anything. It's a wonderful feeling."
           "Time to read all those books the rest of us keep postponing!" She laughed. "Oh, Vic, I hate you!" She looked around at her merrymaking guests, then back at Vic. "I hope your friend Mr. Nash is having a good time tonight. Is he going to settle in Little Wesley or is he just here for a while?"
           Mr. Nash was no longer having such a good time, Vic saw. He was still standing by himself, brooding at a figure in the rolled-up carpet near his feet. "No, he's just here for a week or so, I think," Vic said in an offhand tone. "Some kind of business trip."
           "So you don't know him very well."
           "No. We've just met him." Vic hated to share the responsibility with Melinda. Melinda had met him one afternoon in the bar of the Lord Chesterfield Inn, where she went nearly every afternoon around five-thirty more or less for the express purpose of meeting people like Joel Nash.
           "May I say, Vic darling, that I think you're extremely patient?"
           Vic glanced at her and saw from her straining, slightly moistening eyes that she was feeling her drinks. "Oh, I don't know"
           "You are. You're like somebody waiting very patiently and one day—you'll do something. Not explode exactly, but just—well, speak your mind."
           It was such a quiet finish that Vic smiled. Slowly he rubbed at an itch on the side of his hand with his thumb.
           "I'd also like to say, since I've had three drinks and I may not have such an opportunity again, that I think you're pretty wonderful. You're 'good, Vic'," Mary said in a tone that meant he was good in a biblical sense, a tone that betrayed a little embarrassment at having used such a word in such a sense, and Vic knew she was going to ruin it by laughing at herself in another few seconds. "If I weren't married and you weren't, I think I'd propose to you right now!" Then came the laugh that was supposed to erase it all.
           Why did women think, Vic wondered, even women who had married for love and had had a child and a fairly happy married life, that they would prefer a man who demanded nothing