MARKS CHECKED WITH THE men staking out Mather’s apartment building on Perry Street. Not hide nor hair. A second day’s mail now crowded the box. He called the chairman of Mather’s department at Central University. The chairman himself was at that hour taking Mather’s class in the Victorian novel. He called Louise Steinberg. She had not heard from Mather.
“That morning when he broke down at the Bradleys’ and ran out—what caused it? What did he say to Janet, or she to him? You were there, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but they didn’t say anything. They just stood there and when Janet turned away, he broke down. But, Dave …”
“Yes?”
“Eric called her that same night.”
“The night before last,” Marks said. “What time?”
“It must have been close to midnight. I wasn’t going to call her to the phone, but she was still up …”
“Did you hear what was said by either of them?”
“No. Janet took the call in the bedroom and by the time I got back to the kitchen to hang up the phone they were already off the line.”
Suggesting one thing, Marks thought: a date to meet, and presumably a place. “Louise, I asked you yesterday morning …”
“I know, but you asked me if I’d seen him. And it was in the church. I couldn’t very well run after you when I thought of it.”
“I don’t always get across,” Marks said, as angry with himself as with Louise. “Where can I reach Mrs. Bradley now?”
“I can give you the flight number,” Louise said.
He was waiting at the ramp when Janet came off the plane. She was a moment recognizing him. “Lieutenant Marks,” he said.
“I remember now,” she said, and allowed him to take her suitcase. She had no other luggage. Her dark blue suit, the white blouse fluffy at her throat, became her as few widows could claim of their weeds.
“There are some questions I need to ask you. I can drive you home meanwhile.” Then, because she said nothing and he felt some commiseration, not too lugubrious, was indicated, he added: “You must be tired.”
“I’m … nothing,” Janet said, but smiled at him. A gracious lady, Marks thought, which was perhaps the most deceptive of feminine characteristics. He had known some mighty gracious bitches in his day.
He decided to tell her on the way into the city of Dr. Corrales, the fiasco he had seemed to make of the police case. He dwelt as little as possible on the weapon aspect. It could not be avoided altogether. The name was in no way familiar to Janet. “I’m reasonably sure Peter did not know him either. Peter was apolitical, you know. He had been in school when it was considerably less than fashionable. Too many of the scientists he admired got bogged down—and hurt.”
Which attitude, Marks thought, made Bradley the better instrument for the plotters. Marks opened the glove compartment of the car and took out Corrales’s picture. Janet looked at it carefully.
“I’ve never seen the man to my knowledge,” she said, and for him returned the framed photo to the compartment.
Marks said: “The picture in your book, Mrs. Bradley, the woman on the stoop looking down at the child?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a terrific picture.”
“Because the subject herself was,” Janet said. “She was a girl in trouble.”
“You talked with her?”
“Oh, yes. I gave her twenty dollars, supposedly for allowing me to use her picture. It made it easier for her to accept it.”
“Did she tell you the trouble she was in?”
“It was not hard to guess,” Janet said. “It was in her eyes, the way she looked—wanting the child.”
Marks thought for a moment. Then he asked: “How did you happen to be there?”
“I was following the child wherever he wandered—photographing him—with his mother’s permission. By that time he had become so accustomed to me, he no longer noticed.”
“Where did he live, Mrs. Bradley?”
“On Eighteenth Street near Second Avenue.”
“And he wandered all the way to Eleventh Street?” Marks said.
Janet looked at him, not understanding.
“Dr. Corrales’s clinic is on Eleventh Street.”
Janet shook her head. “I simply don’t get the connection. The picture I assume you’re talking about was taken on Eighteenth Street, no more than a half-block from the child’s home.”
“… No clinic there, no doctor’s office?” Marks was trying now to dislodge his own fixed idea.
“I couldn’t say positively,” Janet said, “but I’m fairly certain. It was an ordinary tenement house like most of the buildings in that block.”
“I could have sworn I saw a sign in the background of your picture,” Marks said.
Janet, twisting round in the seat, getting on her knees, opened her suitcase on the back seat. “Louise had the quaint idea I’d want the book with me.”
A moment later she had it open to the page in question. Marks pulled off the road to look at it. A little square of reflected sky shone in the window behind the girl. Plainly it was not a sign: it had simply become one in his imagination.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Marks said after a bit, “if the fixed idea has ruined more people than it’s improved.”
Janet smiled. “That sounds almost un-American.”
Not until they drove up to her house did he put the important question. He asked it with no particular emphasis, but watched closely to see her reaction: “Have you heard from Eric Mather in the last day or so?”
Janet hesitated, then with a faint uplift of her head—pride? defiance?—she said: “I saw him in Chicago last night.”
“He should not have left New York,” Marks said quietly. “Do you know where I can reach him?” There was no urgency in his voice, and having met Janet at the ramp of the plane he knew she had not seen the New York papers.
“At his own apartment or the University. He returned by the first flight this morning.”
Or so he had told her he was doing, Marks thought. “Was he in Chicago—because of you?”
Janet tried to be as honest as she could. “I think that’s possible, Lieutenant, but I am not sure.”
Marks got out and opened the door for her, then got her suitcase from the back seat. Louise was waiting at a discreet distance, standing in the vestibule doorway.
Janet offered Marks her hand. The handshake was brief, its pressure light. She insisted on taking her own suitcase.
“You have my sympathy,” Marks said.
She looked at him sharply, startled. Then she turned to meet Louise who was running down the steps, her arms open. If the words, spoken rather late to have reference to her husband, might in any way forewarn her of further shock ahead, Marks was satisfied. That Mather had made the trip to confide, to confess himself to her, the detective could easily believe. But if that were so, he could not believe that Janet Bradley would now conceal it.