“I am the key,” he said impatiently.
“Oh,” she said, disappointed that she wasn’t going to be able to finish watching the program. “I am the lock.”
“Get up, Mrs. Vicker.”
She struggled out of the chair.
Fat old cow, he thought.
“What do you need?” she asked pleasantly.
“I’ll need this room for a while,” he said, walking to the desk which held her private telephone. “Don’t disturb me.”
“Am I to leave?”
“Yes. Now.”
She looked wistfully at the round maple table beside her armchair. “May I take my box of candy?”
“Yes, yes. Just get the hell out of here.”
Pleased, she snatched up the candy. “I’m as good as gone. As good as gone, Mr. Deighton. You take your time here. I won’t let anyone disturb you.”
“Mrs. Vicker.”
“Yes?”
“Go to the kitchen.”
“All right.”
“Eat your chocolates if you want.”
“I will.”
“Listen to your radio, and wait in the kitchen until I come to see you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that completely clear?”
“Certainly. Certainly. I’ll do just what you say. See if I don’t. I’ll go straight out to the kitchen and eat my chocolates and listen-”
“And close the door as you leave,” he said sharply. “Leave now, Mrs. Vicker.”
She shut the parlor door behind her.
At the desk Salsbury opened his briefcase. He took from it a set of screwdrivers and one of the infinity transmitters-a small black box with several wires trailing from it-that Dawson had purchased in Brussels.
Smart, he thought. Clever. Clever of me to bring the IF. Didn’t know why I was packing it at the time. A hunch. Just a hunch. And it’s paid off now. Clever. I’m on top of the situation. Right up there on top, in control. Full control.
Having carefully considered his options, algebraic even when he was so recently returned from the edge of panic, he had decided that it was time to hear what Paul Annendale was saying to the Edisons. There were a dozen miniature glass swans lined up across the top of the desk, each slightly different in size and shape and color from the one that preceded it. He brushed these figurines to the floor; they bounced on the carpet and clinked against one another. His mother had collected hand-blown figurines, although not swans. She favored glass dogs. By the hundreds. He crushed one of the swans under his heel and imagined that it was a glass dog. Curiously satisfied by this gesture, he connected the infinity transmitter to the telephone and dialed the number of the general store. Across the street no telephone rang at the Edison’s place. Nevertheless, every receiver in the store, as well as in the family’s living quarters above the store, opened to Salsbury’s ear.
What he heard in the first couple of minutes broke down the paper-thin wall of composure that he had managed to rebuild since the murder. Buddy Pellineri, in his own half-literate fashion, was telling Sam and Jenny and Paul about the two men who had come down from the reservoir on the morning of August sixth.
Rossner and Holbrook had been seen!
However, that was neither the only nor the worst piece of bad news. Before Buddy had reached the end of his story, before Edison and the others had finished questioning him, Annendale’s daughter arrived with the bucket full of bloody rags. The damned bucket! In his haste to clean up the kitchen and hide the corpse, he had shoved the bucket under the sink and then had completely forgotten about it. The boy’s body wasn’t all that well hidden-but at least it wasn’t in the room where the murder had occurred. The damned bloody rags. He had left evidence at the scene of the crime, virtually out in plain sight where any fool could have found it!
He could no longer afford to spend hours formulating his response to the events of the morning. If he was to contain the crisis and save the project, he would have to think faster and move faster than he had ever done before.
He stepped on another glass swan and snapped it to pieces.
4
1:10 P.M.
A PEAL OF THUNDER rumbled across the valley, and the wind seemed to gain considerable force in the wake of the noise.