"What was your part in the murder?"

"I was simply there. And it wasn't a murder,properly speaking. Deloney was killed in self-defense, virtually byaccident."

"This is where I came in."

"It's true. He caught us in bed together in hispenthouse."

"Did you and Letitia make a habit of going to bedtogether?"

"It was the first time. I'd written apoem about her, which the college magazine printed, and I showed it to her inthe elevator. I'd been watching her, admiring her, all through the spring. Shewas much older than I was, but she was fascinating. She was the first woman I everhad." He spoke of her with a kind of awe still.

"What happened in the penthousebedroom, Bradshaw?"

"He caught us, as I said. He got agun out of the chest of drawers and hit me with the butt of it. Tish tried tostop him. He beat her face in with the gun. She got her hands on it somehow,and it went off and killed him."

He touched the lid of his right eye, andnodded toward the old woman. She was watching us from the corner, from thedistance of her years.

"Mrs. Deloney hushed the matter up,or had it hushed up. You can hardly blame her, under the circumstances. Orblame us. We went to Boston, where Tish spent months in and out of the hospitalhaving her face rebuilt. Then we were married. I was in love with her, in spiteof the discrepancy in our ages. I suppose my feeling for my own mother preparedme to love Tish."

His hooded intelligence flared up in hiseyes so bright it was half-insane. His mouth was wry.

"We went to Europe on our honeymoon.My mother put French detectives on our trail. I had to leave Tish in Paris andcome home to make my peace with Mother and start my sophomore year at Harvard.The war broke out in Europe that same month. I never saw Tish again. She fellsick and died before I knew it."

"I don't believe you. There wasn't time for allthat."

"It happened very rapidly, as tragedy does."

"Not yours, it's been dragging on for twenty-twoyears."

"No," Mrs. Deloney said. "He's tellingthe truth, and I can prove it to you."

She went into another room of the cottageand came back with a heavily creased document which she handed me. It was anacte de décès issued in Bordeaux and dated July 16, 1940. Itstated in French that Letitia Osborne Macready, aged 45, had died of pneumonia.

I gave it back to Mrs. Deloney. "You carry thiswith you wherever you go?"

"I happened to bring it with me."

"Why?"

She couldn't think of an answer.

"I'll tell you why. Because your sister is verymuch alive and you're afraid she'll be punished for her crimes."

"My sister committed no crime. Thedeath of my husband was either justifiable homicide or accident. The policecommissioner realized that or he'd never have quashed the case."

"That may be. But Constance McGee andHelen Haggerty weren't shot by accident."

"My sister died long before either ofthose women."

"Your own actions deny it, and theymean more than this phony death certificate. For instance, you visited GilStevens today and tried to pump him about the McGee case."

"He broke my confidence, did he?"

"There was nothing there to be broken. You're notStevens's client. He's still representing McGee."

"He didn't tell me."

"Why should he? This isn't your town."

She turned in confusion to Bradshaw. Heshook his head. I crossed the room and stood over him:

"If Tish is safely buried in France,why did you go to such elaborate trouble to divorce her?"

"So you know about the divorce.You're quite a digger for facts, aren't you, quite a Digger Indian? I begin towonder if there's anything you don't know about my private life."

He sat there, looking up at me brightlyand warily. I was a little carried away by the collapse of his defenses, and Isaid:

"Your private life, or your privatelives, are something for the book. Have you been keeping up two establishments,dividing your time between your mother and your wife?"

"I suppose it's obvious that I have," hesaid tonelessly.

"Does Tish live here in town?"

"She lived in the Los Angeles area. Ihave no intention of telling you where, and I can assure you you'll never findthe place. There'd be no point in it, anyway, since she's no longerthere."

"Where and how did she die thistime?"

"She isn't dead. That French deathcertificate is a fake, as you guessed. But she is beyond your reach. I put heron a plane to Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, and she'll be there by now."

Mrs. Deloney said: "You didn't tell

© Alexander Sviyash, 2009