IT WAS NINE O’CLOCK in the morning when the detective put her down at the corner a few doors from her sister’s. There was no use rousing Mr. Robinson’s curiosity about Mr. Tully by having him drive her up to the door. She climbed the front steps, noticing a half dozen cigarette stubs stamped out there, something Mag would not tolerate if she were herself. Mrs. Norris’ heart beat the drum of alarm. She thrust herself forward with determination and tweaked the doorbell.
Mr. Robinson came through the hall from the kitchen in his shirt sleeves. He needed to open his mouth twice before he could say anything. Then he honeyed her with sweet talk.
“I want to see my sister, Mr. Robinson. That’s all I ask.”
“Dear Annie, ask anything you like.” He drew her in the door and steered her down the hall with him, very neatly keeping her from entering the living room.
“Will you have a cup of tea with me first, and we’ll go up together and wake her?” Mr. Robinson took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands vigorously—a very nervous habit, Mrs. Norris thought.
“I’ll wait if she’s sleeping,” she said, and in the kitchen sat down to the tea he had been brewing as she came to the door. If all was not well, it would give her the sense of the house to see more of it, she thought, for somehow it was changed from when last she had been there.
“You look a bit peaked yourself, Annie. Have you not been sleeping?”
“With my eyes open, Mr. Robinson,” she said.
He threw back his head and laughed so that the roof of his denture showed. She cast her eyes down, and stirred her tea; the man was acting daft.
“Excuse me a minute, Annie,” he said, and slipped out the door into the front hall again.
She was of half a mind to follow him, but there was no sense in getting panicked. She drank the strong tea, and listened to the clock tick. The other morning Mag was out for a walk at eight, now she was still abed at nine. And the brief glimpse Mrs. Norris had got of the living room revealed the look of an all-night party, or at least occupancy by too many people. Aye, that was the whiff she got, stale smoke, cigars. She could remember it in the old days when the politicians would gather round Mr. James.
She took her teacup to the sink. A yellowed saucer showed where Mr. Robinson had had his breakfast, for she had noticed a bit of egg on the back of his hand where he had wiped his mouth on his way to admit her. She looked about now for eggshells, and found them in the garbage bucket. One egg only. But of course, Mag was still asleep.
The urge to know the truth became irresistible. She went out into the hall and up the stairs. He was in the living room, on the phone with someone. She could hear the rumble of his voice, but no words. He had shut the door. She could see the open bedroom door from the top step, the double bed gaping where someone had risen from sleep there.
“Mag?” she said softly.
No answer at all.
She went to the guest room then, for if Mag were ill, it was best to sleep alone. But the bed was as neat there as a walking stick. She hurried along then to Mag’s sewing room at the other end of the upstairs. A studio couch, she remembered there, and the morning sun. She opened the door after ever so light a tap. Mag’s sewing dummy stood fully dressed in a summer frock. It gave Mrs. Norris such a turn she let out a little moan and retreated into the hall. She had her hand on the railing to go downstairs, when Mr. Robinson spoke from the master bedroom.
“Are you sure you conducted a thorough search, Annie?”
She walked into the bedroom, her hands on her hips. “Where is my sister, Mr. Robinson?”
He was sitting on the corner of the bed, a bitter smile on his face. Suddenly he leaped to his feet and to the closet door. “Did you look in here?” he cried, flinging open the door.
Only a dress hung loose. After the start she had got from the dummy, Mr. Robinson’s intended bit of cruelty was not even a bad joke. It left her unaffected.
“I’m warning you. I’ll go to the police when I go out of this house if I don’t see Mag.”
“Where, where is the trusting friendship, Annie, that made us paragons among warring in-laws? Did I tell you Mag was up here? I did not. You leaped to your own conclusion. Come downstairs now. I’ll put on my coat and we’ll go up together. She spent the night with our next-door neighbor. The doctor has given her pills, you see, and I’d to entertain some customers here… Well, if she’s awake she’ll tell you, and if she’s sleeping, you’ll sit by her side and be her first waking vision.”
Mrs. Norris went down the stairs with sodden humility. Either she was a great fool, or he took her for one—and she must be, not to know which was the case herself.
She was introduced to Mrs. Anders, who then put her hand on Mr. Robinson’s arm. “She slept the night through like a baby.”
Little she knew of babies, Mrs. Norris thought, if she was of the opinion they slept the night through. But there was Mag sitting up, a bed jacket about her shoulders, and a tray in her lap, and her eyes lighting up for a minute when she saw her sister.
“Look who I brought with my morning kiss, love,” said Mr. Robinson, leaning over his wife, and whispering whatever else he had to say in her ear.
The light was gone from her eyes when he moved from between the women.
“Sit down, Annie,” Mag said, more whining than ever. “I’m a bit weak from nerves, that’s all.”
“I was worried,” Mrs. Norris said.
“Oh, and wasn’t she, love? She was of the opinion I’d done away with you.”
“He’s very good to me, Annie,” Mag said.
Mrs. Anders, a big woman, bounced into the room with a cup and saucer. “You’ll have some tea from your sister’s pot, Mrs. Norris.”
Her own nerves were already jangling from the cup she had had at Mr. Robinson’s, and she declined. The gesture, she thought, was made to show her that Mag’s tea was tea and nothing else. They were trying to be wonderful tranquilizers, the lot of them. But when Mag gave her the tray, and remarked that she thought it was time she got up and dressed, Mrs. Norris had very little choice but to accept things as she saw them instead of as she had imagined them.
“I’m much obliged to you, Mrs. Anders,” Robinson said, and then to Mrs. Norris. “You’ll help her over if she needs it, I’m sure, and have a fine day together the two of you. I’ll be at the shop if you want anything, Annie. Here’s my card with the phone number.”
Syrup ran no smoother than he did, but for the life of her she could not bring herself to apologize for mistrusting him. She looked at his card when he was gone:
Printing—old style and new
Quicker than you can say
Jack Robinson
493 Front St., Brooklyn, U.S.A.
Main 3-6718