Standing on the stoop, staring warily into the shadow-hung kitchen, she thought: ‘What if one of them comes back home and finds me in there?
Go ahead, she urged herself. You better go inside before you lose your courage.
I’m scared. They killed Mark.
You ran away this morning. Are you going to run away again? Are you going to run away from everything that scares you, from now until the day you die?
She walked into the kitchen.
Glass crunched underfoot.
When she reached the electric range where the murder had taken place, she stood quite still, poised to flee, and listened closely for movement. The refrigerator and the upright freezer rumbled softly, steadily. The clock-radio hummed. A loose window rattled as a gust of wind rushed along the side of the house. In the living room a grandfather clock, running a few minutes late, solemnly chimed the third quarter of the hour; the note reverberated long after the pipe had been struck. The house was filled with noises; but none of them had a human source; she was alone.
Having broken the law, having violated the sanctity of another person’s home, with the first and most dangerous step already taken, she couldn’t decide what to do next. Well . . Search the house. Of course. Search it from top to bottom. Look for the body. But where to begin?
At last, when she realized that her indecision was an outgrowth of the fear which she was determined to overcome, when she realized that she was desperately afraid of finding Mark’s corpse even though she had come here to do precisely that, she began the search in the kitchen. There were only a few places in that room where the body of a nine-year-old boy might possibly be concealed. She looked in the pantry, in the refrigerator, and then in the freezer, but she uncovered nothing out of the ordinary.
When she opened the cabinet beneath the sink, however, she saw a bucket full of bloody rags. Not rags, really. Dish towels. They had used the towels to clean up, had thrown them in the bucket-and then apparently had forgotten to destroy the evidence. She picked up one of the cloths. It was wet, cold, and heavy with blood. She dropped it and gazed at her stained hand.
“Oh, Mark,” she said sadly, a bit breathlessly. A pain rose from deep inside of her, filled her chest. “Little Mark . . . You never ever hurt anyone. Not anyone. What they did to you. What an awful thing they did to you. Why?”
She stood up. Her knees felt weak.
Find the body, she thought.
No, she told herself.
You came here to find the body.
I’ve changed my mind. Find the body? No. No, that’s just… too much. Much too much. Finding him.. . Mark.. . with his skull cracked open . . . and his eyes rolled back in his head .
and dried blood all over his face . . . Too much. Even strong girls can’t deal with everything in life. Even strong girls have their limits, don’t they? This is mine. My limit. I can’t go looking . . . all through the house . . . just can’t . .
Beginning to cry, beginning to shake, she picked up the bucket and left the house.
At 12:45 Salsbury carried his briefcase down from his room and went to the parlor.
Pauline Vicker was sitting in the largest of the three armchairs. She was a heavyset woman in her early sixties. Fluffy gray hair. Ruddy complexion. Double chin. Merry eyes and a nearly constant smile. She had the archetypal grandmother’s face, the model for grandmothers’ faces in storybooks and movies. Her bare feet were propped up on a hassock. She was eating candies and watching a television soap opera.
From the doorway he said, “Mrs. Vicker.”
She glanced up, chewing a caramel. She had some trouble swallowing. Then: “Good afternoon, Mr. Deighton. If you’ve a complaint about your room or anything-do you think perhaps it could wait just a bit, a few minutes-not longer than that mind you-just until this show ends? It’s one of my favorite shows and-“