The doctor chewed at his lower lip and his scowl deepened. “Carl wouldn’t have told you.”
“No. The cleaner was here a little while ago.”
“He told you the whole story?”
Morgan shook his head. “All he said was that my benefactress had shot her husband to death here in this very house. He seemed quite elated about it. At least one of his customers has distinguished herself in the realm of higher dramatics. You can’t say that about everyone. But tell me, Doctor, were you in on the Wilson affair?”
The doctor said stiffly, “No. I was the family physician, but I was not in on the affair, as you put it. It was an accident, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. An accident, you say? Now you’re ruining everything. How did it happen?”
The doctor glanced at his watch and sighed. “Sorry, but I don’t have the time. However, you can read all about it right here. Mrs. Wilson has a leather-bound scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings of the tragedy. She keeps it in the study. Ask Carl to bring it to you.”
Morgan squinted narrowly at the doctor, not quite sure he had heard right. “You mean to tell me she keeps a scrapbook about her accidental killing of her own husband?”
“That is correct I have tried for years to get her to destroy it. She refuses. Frankly, Mr. O’Keefe, I have known Irene since she was a child, but I must admit I don’t understand her. But then,” he sighed, “none of us ever really understands another person.”
Morgan said, “I do. I’m beginning to understand you only too well. I think you’re strictly a society doctor and you can probably guess what that means in my dictionary.”
Dr. Rigsby gasped, and then roared, “By God, but you’re impertinent!”
Morgan laughed. “Not impertinent, Doctor. Impertinence implies a lack of due respect of the humble toward his superior. Of the two of us, therefore, only you could be the impertinent one.”
The doctor gasped again, spun about on his heel and slammed the door as he went out. Morgan scratched his head and wondered, Now, why did I do that? The doctor was probably a nice old slob. He shrugged and forgot the incident.
Carl came into the room with his first full-course meal, and Morgan devoured it with a ravenous appetite. After having eaten he knew that he would sleep well, so decided against asking Carl for the scrapbook that night. And as long as he still knew little or nothing about what had taken place, he could make up all sorts of dreams and fantasies that would help him to sleep and stave off the depression that was normally his at that point.
He remained by the windows until it was dark, and then, as his lids began to droop, he got into bed. He heard the door open softly and turned his head to see Irene Wilson standing in the shaft of light at the doorway. She asked softly, “Are you awake, Mr. O’Keefe?”
“I just got into bed.”
“Oh. I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, nothing important, really. I just wanted to see how you were doing. Carl said that you were in such good spirits—”
He chuckled softly and said, “Forget it. Would you like to kiss me good night, Mrs. Wilson?”
“I’m afraid I don’t—”
“On the other hand, maybe you’d better not. That gown you’re wearing may inspire the rise of something loftier than my mind.”
She gasped and slammed the door. Morgan rolled over on his side and went to sleep.
Irene started angrily down the hallway, but as she came opposite a gilt-framed full-length mirror she stopped for a moment to stare at her reflection. Contrary to what most men thought of all women, Irene did not clothe herself simply to attract men. Prior to Jay Wilson’s death, she had made some effort to buy the things he liked and that were attractive to him and to other men, but since the tragedy she had had no desire to attract any man, and so bought her clothes only with an eye to what was currently fashionable. She frowned and pivoted before the mirror and for the first time realized that the cocktail gown she was wearing, though simple, was indeed cut so well and fitted her so perfectly that it revealed every line and curve of a very good figure. She was annoyed and thought of changing to something else, but there wasn’t time. As she walked away from the mirror, though, she looked back once and the ghost of a smile appeared in her dark eyes.
She passed the darkened living room, which was rarely used because of its size, and went on to the softly lighted study to arrange the vases of flowers a florist had delivered that afternoon. The study was a large, outsized room that had once been the formal dining room. It was long and narrow, with a massive wall of plate glass at one end that looked north over the necklace lights of the Golden Gate Bridge. A fairly large bar, complete with sink and hidden refrigerator, had been built into one wall and elaborately stocked. There was also a large desk in a corner, book shelves, a tall, glass-faced cabinet for filing purposes and a grouping of chairs that had come from the original library. Otherwise the room looked not at all like a study and was decorated and furnished as a living room.
The upstairs, where the master bedrooms and guest rooms were located, had been left intact, but since the deaths of her parents and her subsequent marriage to Jay Wilson, Irene had made a number of changes on the main floor. Thomas Tinsley, Irene’s father, a man who had enjoyed living in the grand manner, had built the house for large-scale entertainment as well as for gracious living. The kitchen wing, in fact, was equipped to handle anything from a pair of boiled eggs to a banquet for two hundred. During his life it had often been pressed to its utmost capacity and beyond.
Irene sighed as she thought of how those days had been. She had been an only child and had arrived late in the lives of her parents, so that she knew them only as middleaged and then as elderly people. It was almost as if she had been raised by her grandparents. She had been a spoiled, arrogant, domineering child. She had been shielded so carefully that she was almost in her teens before she realized there were other people in the world who did not sit down to a formal dinner with fifty or sixty guests at least once a week.
Her world was the world of wealth and fashion and the great people who wined and dined at the Tinsley mansion. Opera stars and senators and state governors occupied the guest rooms. There were winter weeks at Palm Springs and golf events at Pebble Beach and every summer quick flights to Europe and leisurely returns on the plush liners. It came to an end in 1941 when the Tinsley yacht went off course in a heavy Pacific fog, struck a reef and went down off Point Sur. Irene’s parents were lost, along with her father’s partner, Jeb Wilson, and Wilson’s wife. The following year Irene married Jay, the younger of the two Wilson sons, and for the first time in her life had to cope with reality.
Now she bit her lower lip and walked over to the windows to look out at the lights of the great bridge. She had failed, she knew; it was not Jay who had failed. He had tried to understand her unreasonable demands and her snobbish arrogance and he had tried to exercise patience with her, but he had been young, too, and his tolerance was limited. In the end, he had begun drinking heavily and staying out late at night and then rowing with Irene every following morning. If Jay had not been killed that summer they would have been divorced anyway, before the year ended.
She heard the door chimes, but knew that Carl would be on hand and remained where she was. When Frank and Glenna Wilson entered they had to walk the full length of the room to be greeted by Irene. Glenna’s amber-green eyes narrowed and the hatred that was never far from the surface danced into view. She was positive that Irene had deliberately made them walk that far. But she touched a cheek to Irene’s, forced a smile and stepped aside as Irene shook hands with Frank.
They