The Dishonest Murderer Read Free

tonight.” For no reason, no explicable reason, the words entered into, became part of, her anxiety. She lifted the receiver again.
    A man’s voice she did not think she had ever heard before was speaking.
    â€œâ€”to you,” she heard the voice say. “What we’ve got begins to make it look like there was something to it. But it’s up to you, Admiral. He’s going to be your son—”
    â€œThat’s all,” her father cut in. “That’s enough. I’ve told you what I want. I’ll expect your bill.”
    â€œSure,” the other voice said. “Sure, Admiral. Whatever you say.”
    â€œGoodbye,” the admiral said. She heard the click of his replaced receiver.
    She put the telephone back in its cradle and stood for a moment without moving. She stood erect, as her father had taught her, her square shoulders high, her slim body motionless in the moulding golden dress. She looked at nothing; saw nothing. She could feel a kind of tightening in her mind. Her mind seemed to be tightening, almost quivering, under repeated, inexplicable, tiny blows. It was as if something were flicking at her mind, something invisible were stinging it.
    â€œGoing to be your son—” Son-in-law, the man must have been going to say when her father, his voice firm with authority, sharp with impatience, cut him off. Bruce—it was, again, something about Bruce. “Probably there’s nothing to it,” her father had said. That had been something about Bruce. The shambling man seen from the car window—but that could not have been Bruce Kirkhill.
    Something was happening to the day, the last day of the year; something was happening to her, to the order of things, to tranquility. It had been a day like any other day, with the difference that it, more than most, had slanted upward toward the evening, toward the party and the drinking in of a New Year; toward the party which was, tacitly only, for her and Bruce. It was to be the first party for both of them, for them as a unit.
    There had been the not arduous responsibilities of a hostess with an adequate staff, in an apartment more than adequate to any probable party. There had been lunch at the Colony with Celia, and Celia’s young, happy excitement about almost everything, and Celia’s admiring eyes. Remembering the way Celia looked at her, Freddie smiled faintly, her shapeless anxiety momentarily lessened. Anyway, it was going to be fine with Celia; Celia’s admiration of this not too much older woman who was to be her step-mother was evident and undisguised. Celia might have been eight, instead of eighteen, when she looked at Freddie Haven. Sometimes it was almost embarrassing. No one, Freddie thought, and least of all I, can be what Celia thinks I am.
    There had been the luncheon, which was pleasant, and the tea at Aunt Flo’s, which was not unpleasant. Tea had meant sherry, with an alternative of scotch, and The Benefit had been rather thoroughly discussed, according to democratic procedures. (This meant that Aunt Flo, and the Dowager Admiral, had been duly authorized to do what they would have done anyway: take matters into their firm and capable hands. The meeting had, as was inevitable, been less that of a committee than of a staff. That it even so much as authorized was a pleasant, gently absurd, fiction.)
    And then this slow disintegration of the day had set in; this uneasiness had begun. It was, Freddie thought, like one of those morning moments when you awakened, lay contentedly for a little time and then became conscious of a vague dissatisfaction, as if you were already in the shadow of some impending disappointment. Such things meant nothing. The feeling vanished when you remembered some tiny thing—you were committed to an engagement which promised badly; you had undertaken to do something which, now, you did not want to do. This anxiety was hardly sharper than that passing