CHAPTER   3.

TOBIAS GARRISON SAID, OFTEN, THAT this canyonside house he lived in was Old-fashioned Modern, which was to say a weird and uncomfortable concoction of half-baked ideas. He said it wasn’t pretty and it didn’t make sense. But Ione liked it.

In the first place, it was hers. Toby had put it in her name, alone, a few years back, because he knew how this would please her. It was also, she felt, an unusual house, unlike other people’s. And it was high. It was above. And if it had flaws, they were, by now, such familiar flaws that they pertained and belonged to her like wrinkles on her own face.

It was a structure of gray stucco and glass with some stone. It crouched like an animal with forepaws on the brink of a precipice, and its body fell off down the chasm. Although it hardly seemed a living thing, with so many cold angles, too much glass. It had not the window eyes, the roof-and-chimney hat, the face of a house at all. If a molten mixture of stucco and glass had spilled there and begun to slide in huge drops over the edge and been arrested and crystallized into cubes, just such a monstrous effect might have resulted.

Since it poured over to the north, the light within was steady, and from most of its glassed openings one saw, looming far over the opposite canyonside, the high mountains. So it did well enough for Tobias, who lived and worked on the topmost level.

Ione didn’t mind the stairs. She liked the hanging spaces. She was not sensitive to its ugliness, and anyhow, by now, on the narrow terraces that followed it downhill, the planting and especially the vines had softened and hidden the worst of its bald, preposterous lines.

It was a fine, big house. Also, it was hers.

Ione stood in the kitchen, which looked off west into the green head of the canyon. Dinner over, Elsie was moving in and out of the dining room, with dishes. Elsie was old, taciturn, comfortable, and settled. Life here in the canyon house ran smooth in the harness of routine, and Ione’s little hands were firm on the reins.

Except, she thought with a trace of anger, when Thone was here.

Still, one needn’t bother with anger. She slipped a teaspoon into the chocolate simmering on the stove to taste and test its temperature. The pills were safe in her left palm with her fingers folded over them.

Thone! What an idiotic name for a boy! Thone, because it was her name. Belle’s name.

The chocolate was not yet hot enough. “Did you rinse the thermos, Elsie?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He was an odd boy, Belle’s son, raised in the Far East, outlandishly. She could hint at this. Her thought wheeled and veered. Tobias would be prostrated. His grief would have to be shielded, of course. So it would be Ione who could touch and guide their impressions to the firm conclusion, suicide. Yes, if she hurried! No doubt Thone wanted to see his father one last time.…

Suicide, of course. It couldn’t appear to be anything else. They weren’t going to know how she felt, any more than they had known last time. And whatever would happen to Thone’s money—Belle’s money—it could never, never come to Ione. Or even, supposing it came to Tobias, it was silly for anyone to imagine this a motive, because, of course, Toby already had plenty of money, and half of what he had was her by law.

Suicide, then. It was a matter of conceiving clearly the necessary impression. Why, for instance, would a young and fairly wealthy man desire to die? Mother’s tragic ending? No, she’d better not touch that. The business of the girl would do. Preying on him … sensitive boy.… She still had a letter the girl had written. She’d reveal it, reluctantly.

It would work out.

And that, she thought, would be the end of it. Not again would this house, or the knit skein of her memories, the web of her plans, the whole rhythmic fabric be torn and shredded. Not again would she feel the life of the house change and fall from her and disintegrate and form again in a pattern of memories she didn’t share. That were not hers at all. But Belle’s. Oh, that gash—that torn-out piece—that would not heal over or finally disappear, until tomorrow.

Why, the minute he came, this Thone of hers, Tobias slipped away into another world. And it was a world all Belle’s. Belle, here in this very house. Her ways. Her methods. No doubt her face, in all these doorways.

Ione thought, I’ll even get Toby to sell the picture, as he sold the rest, once this is over. And the one Thone has! That, too, he’ll sell. That will be all. She will be gone. There will be nothing, no one left, no thing left, to speak of her.

Except Fanny. Fanny, who could enter either world. Well, Fanny didn’t talk when Thone wasn’t here. Oh, it was unfortunate that Fanny had come home with them today. Yes, thought Ione, she must be quick and accomplish her plan, this long imagined plan, tonight, immediately. Before Fanny could see and hear enough of Thone to contradict.… Because there must be that gently guided suggestion of a suicide motive, a suicide mood, seeping through.

“Mmmmmm, see …” she could say, to the police, of course. There would be police, she supposed. A nuisance.

Still, there had been police the other time, too, and it hadn’t made any difference. All had gone well.

She would say that Thone asked her for the sleeping medicine. Asked at her door, late, as they went down to bed. This was safe, because Tobias slept above, here on the top floor, while her room and Thone’s were one flight down. And alone there. Elsie and her husband, Burt, were still a flight lower. Yes, she could safely say it. And it was her own prescription; she would say so. She’d had these pills almost a year. She didn’t share Tobias’ habit of taking chloral. No, these were a barbiturate, not so depressing.

But, in quantity, dangerous.

No, she would not attempt to say she’d given him the envelope. She would describe how she had shaken a few out into his hand and he’d said, “More,” until she’d given them all.

The envelope was in her pocket. She would remember to crumple it up and throw it into the wastebasket in her room. His fingerprints would not be on the envelope, naturally.

Everything must be as natural as possible, under the circumstances.

Elsie must be the one to take the thermos jug down to his room. She herself would not enter that room until morning. Because, naturally, she never did enter it. (Not with Belle hanging there on his wall, she thought parenthetically.)

Now, why would she be going there in the morning? Ah, she’d remember, when they asked this question, how Thone had looked at her oddly, as he took the pills, and asked her, so oddly, to wake him early. She would pretend to see, too late, what was in his mind. That he had wanted her, his stepmother, to be the one. Not to shock his father … not to shock poor Elsie, who adored him … She, Ione, least close to him …

So she would go to his room, early, obligingly, and find him. But first, she would take the thermos jug into his bathroom and wash it out and …

Detail.

It was important to keep the necessary impression clearly in mind or one might overlook details.

She tasted the chocolate again, measured the quantity with her eyes, and nodded. “It’s hot enough, I think, Elsie,” she said fussily. “It mustn’t boil. Will you put about—oh, two cups—into the thermos, please?”

Ione herself turned off the flame, went to look into the icebox. Her voice went on smoothly about leftovers and tomorrow’s problems. Elsie silently measured two cups into the thermos jug.

A little prick of impatience pierced Ione. What were they talking about, in there, in the studio? If Thone was telling them his plans—if, for instance, he were engaged, or looking forward too much—then it wouldn’t wash.

Ah, no, she thought bitterly. They’ll be in the past, yet, with Belle.

Sometimes, as now, if didn’t seem that Belle was really dead.

She thought, and the thought was bitter and very clear, Belle still lives if the child of her body lives in the world anywhere! Child of Belle’s body, and Tobias’ body! Which was mine! thought Ione. She felt herself swell with the old familiar feeling. She, Ione, endured beyond anything. She was founded on a rock and the rock was her own will, and nothing, nobody, could move her. What was hers was forever hers. Forever and ever. Amen. Yes, amen. Time could not wear her brand away. She was not like other people. Belle would see! For ah, when the child was gone, then Belle was finished and wiped away and gone from the world at last!

“Elsie,” she said quietly, “these vegetables from Thursday. Can’t we clear them out?”

“If you’re not going to use ’em.” Elsie took up the sack of refuse, as Ione knew she would, and dumped old vegetables with it, carried it off. Oh, she knew Elsie, knew her grooves and how she ran in them.

Ione lifted the cork of the thermos and dropped in the pills with dainty care. She put the stopper back and dusted her palm. She could hear Elsie slamming can covers out where the refuse went.

If she were quick …! She snatched an empty cream bottle and poured into it a little of the chocolate left in the pan. She moved to the door to the hall and bent over and stood the bottle on the floor in shadow behind a screen. When Elsie came in, Ione had a cup to her lips.

“Very good, Elsie,” she said primly, and set it down. Now Elsie wouldn’t notice that any chocolate had gone. She would think Ione had tasted it from this quickly soiled cup. There was only the bare fleeting unimportant chance that she’d notice a vanished cream bottle. But it couldn’t seem significant.

In the morning, after she’d used it, she’d wash the cream bottle, too, and put it back in some obscure kitchen corner. Detail. The thermos jug must be found innocently stained with undrugged chocolate. And so it would be found. It would be arranged. Quite so.

“Will you put the thermos in Mr. Thone’s room, Elsie, please, and take a clean cup down?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ione, the little chatelaine, moved off into the hall. Elsie’s back could not see her stoop to pick up the bottle. She went down to her own room. It was safe to go down, since the thermos jug was still in the kitchen. The cream bottle would be safest and handiest down there on a shelf in her closet. If the chocolate it held were cold or even soured, it wouldn’t matter. The stopper must be found out of Thone’s thermos jug. Detail.

She threw the envelope into her basket, remembered to do that. She put on a little powder. She felt the good solidity, the pleasing sensation of being in control of her world. As was necessary. Ah, yes, one kept one’s own counsel. One managed. And here on the spinning planet burned one spot of power.… She closed her fingers on her palm. Spin … spin … but I keep … In spite of everything. Yes, in spite of Belle.

When she came into the long studio that lay off to the east along the canyon rim, upstairs, she knew they’d been at it. Talking about her. Because they were silent.

She said, picking up her knitting basket, smiling, “Elsie made you some chocolate, Thone, for later.”

“Why, thanks, Ione.”

What if he weren’t so avid for milk and chocolate as he had been that first visit after the Army? What if he didn’t take any? She put on her glasses. Gold-rimmed, they rode her small nose. Her jolly little face was placid. Ah, well, then, another time.… Lamplight fell on her rosy, busy little hands.

Amanda, driving in the spring dark along Linda Vista, with the Arroyo falling off at her right, felt the lingering sick taste of her departure from home. Didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all.

Still, one couldn’t say, even to so generally swell a mother as Kate, “Mother, I’ve laid eyes on a man and I don’t know why, but I must investigate. I’m attracted, damn it. And I am off, deviously, in a thoroughly snide and female manner, to wangle his acquaintance. To give myself a chance … because I’ve got to know what this amounts to.”

So she’d said it was her art. She’d said this artist was important. She’d held out bait. Maybe if she talked to him about her ambitions, he would discourage her, and Kate would like that. She’d said it was a wonderful introduction and she meant to use it. She’d said she didn’t think it was in bad taste. She’d said he was probably interested in young artists anyhow. He ought to be. He’d looked very nice and kind, she’d said. And really, it wouldn’t take long, from North Hollywood to the hills back of Pasadena. She’d be back early. Tell Gene to wait. “Oh, Mother, don’t be stuffy!”

But Kate hadn’t been stuffy. And it hurt. And Amanda didn’t like it.

But when she thought of where she was going, she was almost unbearably excited. It had been easy to find out where to go. She’d telephoned the galleries and they’d told her.

She rehearsed again her little speech. It wasn’t a speech to be said over the telephone, nor could she make an appointment to say it. No, she must just go, just barge in.…

Take her courage in her hand. Courage? Crust, thought Amanda. Oh, well, blame it on Art. She wanted to paint, ergo, she was a little bit crazy.

The car buzzed on. She looked to her left for the ascending road, found it, and was glad to have to concentrate on coaxing the car up and around the sudden mountain.

She parked as close to the wall as she could. Her palms held a dampness that wouldn’t rub off. She crossed the shallow courtyard, stabbed at the bell. There. Now it was too late to hesitate.