Vanish in an Instant Read Free Page B

newspaper and away again.
    â€œWell, Paul.” They shook hands briefly.
    â€œI’m glad you got here all right.” He had a very deep warm voice and he talked rather slowly, weighing out each word with care like a prescription. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you—Mother.”
    â€œYou don’t have to call me Mother, you know, if it makes you uncomfortable.”
    â€œThen I won’t.” He laid his hat and trench coat across a chair and put his medical bag on top of them. But he kept the newspaper in his hand, rolling it up very tight as if he intended to use it as a weapon, to swat a fly or discipline an unruly pup.
    Mrs. Hamilton sat down suddenly and heavily, as though the newspaper had been used against her. The light from the rattan lamp struck her face with the sharp­ness of a slap. “That paper you have, what is it?”
    â€œOne of the Detroit tabloids.”
    â€œIs it . . .?”
    â€œIt’s all in here, yes. Not on the front page.”
    â€œAre there any pictures?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œOf Virginia?”
    â€œOne.”
    â€œLet me see.”
    â€œIt’s not very pretty,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better not.”
    â€œI must see it.”
    â€œAll right.”
    The pictures occupied the entire second page. There were three of them. One, captioned Death Shack , showed asmall cottage, its roof heavy with fresh snow and its win­dows opaque with frost. The second was of a sleek dark-haired man smiling into the camera. He was identified as Claude Ross Margolis, forty-two, prominent contrac­tor, victim of fatal stabbing.
    The third picture was of Virginia, though no one would have recognized her. She was sitting on some kind of bench, hunched over, with her hands covering her face and a tangled mass of black hair falling over her wrists. She wore evening slippers, one of them minus a heel, and a long fluffy dress and light-colored coat. The coat and dress and one of the shoes showed dark stains that looked like mud. Above the picture were the words, held for question­ing , and underneath it Virginia was identified as Mrs. Paul Barkeley, twenty-six, wife of Arbana physician, al­legedly implicated in the death of Claude Margolis.
    Mrs. Hamilton spoke finally in a thin, ragged whisper: “I’ve seen a thousand such dreary pictures in my life, but I never thought that some day one of them would be ter­ribly different to me from all the others.”
    She looked up at Barkeley. His face hadn’t changed ex­pression, it showed no sign of awareness that the girl in the picture was his wife. A little pulse of resentment began to beat in the back of Mrs. Hamilton’s mind: He doesn’t care—he should have taken better care of Virginia—this would never have happened. Why wasn’t he with her? Or why didn’t he keep her at home ?
    She said, not trying to hide her resentment, “Where were you when it happened, Paul?”
    â€œRight here at home. In bed.”
    â€œYou knew she was out.”
    â€œShe’d been going out a great deal lately.”
    â€œDidn’t you care?”
    â€œOf course I cared. Unfortunately, I have to make a living. I can’t afford to follow Virginia around picking up the pieces.” He went over to the built-in bar in the south corner of the room. “Have a nightcap with me.”
    â€œNo, thanks. I—those stains on her clothes, they’re blood?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhose blood?”
    â€œHis. Margolis’.”
    â€œHow can they tell?”
    â€œThere are lab tests to determine whether blood is hu­man and what type it is.”
    â€œWell. Well, anyway, I’m glad it’s not hers.” She hesi­tated, glancing at the paper and away again, as if she would have liked to read the report for herself but was afraid to. “She wasn’t hurt?”
    â€œNo. She was drunk.”
    â€œ Drunk