Lady in the Lake(82)

“Well of course not. They’re determined to make a liar out of him, if you ask me. They rejected the insanity plea, said he doesn’t meet the standard, when he’s clearly crazy. So he keeps saying what they want to hear, but it’s never good enough. I hate to say it, but—he was never very bright, my Stephen. It was such a disappointment to me. I went to Woodlawn High School and made straight A’s.”

Maddie widened her eyes as if this were a singular achievement.

“His father’s genes were—not what I thought they would be. Not at all. Then he left us. It was almost a relief. But I see him every time I look at Stephen. How odd to have married a redhead when I don’t care for them at all. I think it was because I was scratched by a ginger tabby when I was small. My family was very well-to-do.”

Maddie let the woman talk and talk and talk, although she quickly despaired of the idea that Mrs. Corwin would ever say anything relevant. Her voice was bizarrely hypnotic—squeaky, yet low in volume. It was like trying to listen to a mouse. A garrulous mouse.

After a very confusing story about her father’s golfing at Forest Park—“We could afford a private club, but he was very egalitarian, when you are truly to the manor born, you don’t worry about such things”—Maddie tried to jump in.

“You know, they still think your son had an accomplice. If they could find that person, it would give your son leverage. Or the accomplice would have leverage. That’s how it was explained to me.”

“Stephen didn’t even have friends, I find it hard to believe he could find anyone to help him.”

“He called here, right? The afternoon of Tessie Fine’s murder?”

The woman pursed her lips. All her life, Maddie had heard the phrase and failed to understand it, but she saw it now, the way Mrs. Corwin’s thin lips snapped together.

“How did you come by this information? Have the police been telling their tales?”

Maddie remembered she must be careful about referencing the police. “A little bird told me. A little bird from C & P.” Then, gently, almost as if she were offering an apology: “It was you, wasn’t it, Mrs. Corwin? Who helped Stephen?”

“Does my boy talk to you?”

“What? No, never. I mean, he wrote me a couple of letters last spring but stopped speaking to me after they were published.”

“Yes, he wrote to you. And that’s why he’s in this fix. There was no accomplice. He had the car that day. I don’t know why he keeps lying about that. He did something very bad and he has to face up to it. It’s not really his fault. The experiments—”

“At Fort Detrick.”

“Yes.” She looked at the plate. “I’m going to get you some cookies to take home, Miss Schwartz.”

“Mrs.” Maddie wondered if she still was that, or would continue to be. She was going to be divorced soon. What did people call divorced ladies? At any rate, there would be a new Mrs. Milton Schwartz. Ali, whatever that was short for. It had to be short for something.

Mrs. Corwin returned from the kitchen with a white cardboard bakery box, tied with red-and-white string. “Oh, I couldn’t take so many—” Maddie was saying as she brought a hand up in protest, only to have Mrs. Corwin insistently thrust the box toward her. It felt almost as if the woman had tried to punch her in the midsection with the box, only to drop it. Why was the box red now? How had paint gotten on the box?

A steak knife, she saw it now in Mrs. Corwin’s tiny fist. It was not large, but it was large enough. The woman made a second ineffectual pass, this one at Maddie’s chest. She managed to block her hand, to grab her wrist and twist it, so the knife clattered to the floor. Mrs. Corwin screamed in pain. Why are you screaming when I’m the one who’s stabbed? Maddie thought. She was experiencing a sensation wholly new to her—a supercharged energy, a clarity of thought. She was aware that she should be in pain, but there was no actual pain.

Beneath the screams were words, sputtered, hissing words. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was being kind, helping him put that girl out of her misery. I’m trying to be kind to you.”

Oh lord, the mother had instructed him. Was it possible that she had even—

“Just like the chickens on Auntie’s farm, just like the chickens on Auntie’s farm, what was the big deal? Easier than the chickens because the chickens run from you, before and after.”

Given enough time, the woman would kill her, Maddie did not doubt it. She had to get away, but how? Could she run? She felt as if she could. She felt as if she could run, climb mountains, do whatever she had to do to survive.

To her amazement, the first thing she chose was to box the woman’s ears and shout in her face: “Naughty!” Where was the phone? Was there a phone? Of course there was a phone, Stephen Corwin had called his mother from the fish store that day.

She pushed the older woman away with tremendous force, hard enough to knock her flat on her back, and bolted for the kitchen, where she shoved a chair beneath the doorknob and dialed 0.

“Send the police, send police,” she panted. “A woman is trying to kill me.” They asked for the address and she went blank, then remembered it. Even as she spoke, she was rummaging through the drawers, looking for a knife of her own. “A knife,” she told the operator. “She stabbed me with a knife.”