Lady in the Lake(26)

Dear Mr. Corwin,

I am Madeline Schwartz, the woman who found the body of Tessie Fine. As a result, I feel connected to you, for better or worse. You were the last person to see her alive, I was the first person to see her dead . . .



She walked to the main post office to make sure it would be delivered as soon as possible.

It never occurred to her that he might not write her back because men almost always did what Maddie wanted them to do. Almost.





The Suspect





The Suspect



The first letter comes with a photograph of her. She looks like a nice lady. She wants to know my side of the story. She’s interested in me. In me.

I didn’t really confess, you know. I just stopped talking after they arrested me. What was I going to say? The aquarium sand, the fact that people knew she had gone into the store—what could I say? I said I was done, refused to talk anymore, and when they finally let me make a phone call, I didn’t waste it on a lawyer. I called my ma, knowing she would make the arrangements, that she would want to take care of everything. She told me I was stupid, but I’m used to that. The morning of that day that everything happened, she had told me I was stupid. She told me I was stupid almost every day.

But she doesn’t mean it. She just gets easily frustrated, my ma. She’s high-strung. She has to take pills. It was a hard life, my father being gone and her having to raise a kid like me. I wasn’t good at much. I wish I could tell you that I loved my job at the store, that I was one of those people who liked fish and snakes, because that seems like something a smart guy would say. I was a guy who needed a job. The man who owned the store needed someone who could work Saturdays because they did good business on Saturdays. Jews aren’t the only people who buy fish and snakes, he said. I can’t keep my doors open if I don’t open Saturdays. And everyone will know you’re not a Jew.

I don’t know what it means not to look like a Jew. I have red hair and blue eyes and very pale skin, although no freckles. If you had to guess, you’d probably say I’m Irish, but our name is actually from Spanish, although we’re not Spaniards, obviously. My ma says that there really aren’t that many red-haired Irish people, that it’s just that Irish people tend to be redheaded more than other people. My ma is smart. That’s why she gets frustrated with me. I can’t blame her.

I’m not slow, though, or retarded. I’m just not as smart as my ma, but she’s very smart. She could have been anything she wanted to be, if she had been a man. Instead, she married a man who wasn’t really good enough, a bum who ran out when I was little. Anyway, that’s another reason I think I wrote to the lady who wrote me. I wanted to show that I wasn’t a retard. And it was just a lady, writing me. I didn’t know she would show my letter to anybody.

Plus, I didn’t really tell her anything. In fact, I told her that I couldn’t talk to her or anybody, that my lawyer was very firm on that. Yes, it looked bad that the girl had been in the shop, but that didn’t prove I did it. I locked up at five. Anything could have happened after I left. The back door had been jimmied.

All I tell her is that I met the girl and she was rude to me. I was having a bad day. My ma and I had a fight that morning. It was so stupid. Our fights are always stupid. That day, I think she was mad at me for leaving only two eggs. She said you couldn’t really get a good scramble from two eggs and I said, I’ll make you two fried, and she said she didn’t want fried or poached, she wanted scrambled and two didn’t fluff up enough. Next thing you know, we were screaming our heads off at each other. That’s how we fought. Like cats and dogs, like Andy Capp and Flo, we screamed at each other and she said I couldn’t have the car to get to work that day, I’d have to walk in the rain.

Trudging to work, I knew she would feel bad when I got home. She would apologize, bring me a towel for my hair, dry my shoes so they wouldn’t end up stiff and out of shape from the long walk. She would make me tea and we would eat our dinner on trays together. We fought a lot, but we always made up. But until we make up, I always feel out of sorts, as if the world isn’t quite right. That’s why I yelled at the girl, told her to get out of the store. She must have come back, later. Maybe she broke in, up to some mischief, and someone followed her. That’s what I think happened, and that’s all I told the lady who wrote me. Okay, I told her about the army, too, the things they did to me there.

Like I said, I’m not as smart as my ma. That lady used me. A pretty lady put her picture inside a letter, said we had something in common, that I was the last person to see Tessie Fine alive and she was the first person to see her dead, and that bonded us. I wasn’t so dumb that I fell for that. I wrote, No, the last person to see Tessie Fine alive was the person who killed her and that wasn’t me. But I still said too much, and none of it privileged, as my lawyer and Ma kept yelling at me when it came out.

But then the lawyer calmed down and said, Maybe it’s a gift, after all. Maybe I can use this. Ma was mad at first. She said, “No one’s going to say my Stephen is crazy.” But the lawyer changed Ma’s mind pretty fast.





May 1966





May 1966



Maddie dressed carefully for her visit to the Star. Her instincts told her that this was an occasion to present as her old self. Gloves and a hat, even though the weather was finally warm. How odd she looked this way, how unlike the person she knew she was now. But her shorter skirts and dresses, the bright colors she had taken to wearing—these would not make her look serious. She had to convey seriousness, a sense of purpose.