Biers for Two

I wondered how it had set with her, with Darlene, when she’d found that Glenville’s money was tied up under the administration of his uncle. It probably hadn’t been too big an obstacle when she wanted a new mink. As long as it was male, Darlene would find her way over any obstacle — though old Uncle Roland must have been her toughest problem to date. He was wily and a cruel, hard-boiled business man.

I cut the motor, drifted the boat to the pier. I didn’t see any sign of her anywhere. No sign of any kind of life at all. The whole, desolate countryside was so silent that when a jaybird chattered in a nearby thicket suddenly, I jumped.

I stood on the pier a moment, staring up at the lodge. Its windows, set behind the wide, rambling porch like eyes under heavy, beetling brows, stared blankly back at me.

No smoke from the chimney, no movement. Nothing except the growl of water under my feet.

Maybe, I thought, she was taking a nap.

I wiped off my face, pushing the handkerchief in my hip pocket, and started up the hill toward the lodge. The tall shade trees were wide umbrellas over me. The breeze beneath them was cool. But I was sweating, and my pulse was a little thick and fast in my throat. I hated her for still having that effect over me, but I could never make the hatred strong enough.

I was pretty close to the house when I first heard it. The soft sound of sobbing. That stopped me in my tracks for a second. She’d said over the phone that she was alone, that she would be alone, but she was sobbing in a horrible kind of way, as if somebody had done something terrible to her.

I pushed my way up to the front porch. Through the wide, open doorway I could see her slumped in a chair. She heard me, and her head rose from her palms, slowly, gradually, streaked with tears. She knew how to create an effect, all right.

“John!” she said breathlessly. She was rising, still with those slow, gradual motions. Then she rushed across the living room, flung herself against me, twining her arms around my neck. I could feel her trembling.

“John, you came! I thought you’d never get here!”

“Take it easy! What’s wrong?”

She looked up at me, so damned trusting and little-girlish and helpless I wanted to curse at her, because I’d seen the act before.

She said in a small voice, “John, something awful has happened! I’m so glad you came — you’ve got to help me!”

I looked over her shoulder. I saw a thirty-eight revolver lying on the table beside the chair in which she’d been sitting.

“I was afraid, John. I was sitting there with the gun beside me in case he came back. He didn’t have guns like you usually find around a place like this — Glenville never did any hunting, you know. But isolated as the place is, he kept a pair of revolvers around.”

I moved farther into the room. She was clinging to my arm. “What is this?” I said. “This talk about guns? This wondering if he would come back? If who would come back.”

“Glenville.” She started sobbing again.

“You’d better tell me what’s happened, Darlene.”

She sank weakly into a chair. I didn’t try to hold her. She stared at an open doorway across the room. “Glenville shot him,” she said. “Glenville shot his uncle Roland.”

A clutching stillness for a moment, then. A stillness that made a vacuum of my skull, with my pulse hammering inside of it. I turned woodenly, crossed the room to the open doorway.

It was a bedroom. The early afternoon sun slanted in the window, a pale rose-burst of light I didn’t see him at first. I moved into the room edgily.

He was lying on his back over beyond the bed, a big, fat, bald mound of dead blubber. I had to dose my eyes for a second on Roland Grayson’s death. He had been shot just above his left cheekbone.

I went back to where she was sitting. She was reaching hungrily for a cigarette. I needed one just as bad myself.

“I thought you were alone,” I said. “When did it happen?”

“Right after I phoned you. Glenville must have guessed I’d come here. John — I... I hated him! He was weak and sniveling around his uncle. He never did a thing in his life that took any manhood. I used to think Glenville had an aristocratic face. It wasn’t. It was just weak.

“I... I was going to leave him, John. I couldn’t stand him any more. I love you, darling.”

She stood up, slipped her arms about my neck. She was wearing her tears like jewels. She knew how to do that, too.

“I remembered the times we used to have, John. You’re a lawyer. You could have got me a divorce, couldn’t you, darling?”

“Go on,” I said.

“Glenville and Roland came here to the lodge. They took the long way, around the mountain road. I decided it was as good a time as any to tell him, John. When I said I was leaving him, Glenville went to pieces. He said it was all Roland’s fault. Roland had tied up his money and wouldn’t give him enough to care for a wife, decently. As if I wanted only his money! Roland, he said, stuck to him like a leech, living his life for him, giving him no freedom.