A Light in the Window (53 page)

The fog was dense, the afternoon was cold, and her plane was late.

He drank coffee in the terminal café that was the size of his bedroom closet and stared out the window, searching the skies. “Heavy weather in Charlotte,” they told him at the flight counter. “It’s going to be an hour, maybe two.”

He read an abandoned newspaper, checked his urine, jotted sermon notes on the back of a napkin, paced the floor, and observed the reading material of a few desultory air travelers. Grisham, Clancy, and Steel seemed to win, hands down.

The fog had turned to rain when the Fokker commuter descended, two and a half hours behind its scheduled arrival.

He watched her come through the door and down the steps of the plane as an eager airline attendant thrust an umbrella over her head.

He felt that some connection had been broken, as if he might have to start all over again to know her, and that she was walking toward him as if from a very great distance.

Holding on to an airline umbrella with one hand, he helped Cynthia into the front seat, put Violet’s crate on the back seat, and piled luggage into the trunk.

His feet were soaked. Who had known the skies were going to give way, when all had been sunshine and birdsong in Mitford at noon?

He returned the umbrella to the desk and dashed to the car.

“Blast,” he said, sliding under the steering wheel. The faintest scent of wisteria greeted him.

“Thank you, Timothy.”

“For what?”

“For waiting. For coming at all. For getting drenched into the bargain.”

“My pleasure.” he said, trying to mean it.

As they neared Mitford, she grew silent and rummaged in her purse.

“Oh, no!” she said.

“What is it?”

“My house key! It was on the key ring I left in the apartment. Oh, no.”

“Don’t worry. I have your key, remember? That’s how I got in to find the lights at Christmas.”

“Thank heaven!” She sank back against the seat and smiled at him.

He was struck by her warm presence and the way she looked in the purple wool suit the color of hyacinths.

Although their conversation hadn’t flowed like wine, he felt better—consoled, somehow.

But he couldn’t find her key.

She sat in the kitchen with Violet howling in the crate and Barnabas going berserk in the garage while he searched his bureau drawers. He had meant to put the key on his key ring but had never done it, and he kicked himself for the stupid way in which he managed to lose important things. He wouldn’t even think about the brooch, not now, for it was all too much.

He went back to the kitchen. “You’re not the only one who can’t find your house key. I put it in the bureau drawer, and it’s simply not there.” He switched on the burner under the tea kettle and sat down across the table from her.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

Violet howled. He heard Barnabas lunging against the door from the garage to the hallway.

“Perhaps one of your windows isn’t burglar-proof?”

“I never lock the windows on the side toward your house, because I raise them so often in summer.”

“Then I could use your stepladder—mine isn’t high enough to reach—and we’ll have you in your house in no time.”

“Wonderful! I shall make all this up to you, somehow.”

“Don’t even think about it. Let’s have a cup of tea first, shall we?”

“I’d love a cup of tea! And do you have a bit of milk for Violet?”

“If Dooley hasn’t downed the whole gallon,” he said, foraging through the refrigerator.

He left Cynthia with tea and a plate of shortbread, and Violet with a dish of milk, to fetch his slicker that was hanging in the garage.

As he stepped back into the hall, he heard voices in the kitchen.

“H’o.”

“Hello. I’m Cynthia from next door.”

“Meg Patrick.”

“Yes, well ...”

He heard the refrigerator door open and shut. His cousin was probably dressed in that moth-eaten chenille robe and those scuffs that were out at the toe. He shuddered to think.

“Are you ... enjoying your visit?” Cynthia asked.

“Right-o. Very pleasant, all the comforts. And such a thoughtful man, my cousin.”

“Yes, he is that. Are you ... close cousins?”

“Actually not. Third. Although in Ireland, third cousins often become very close, indeed—it’s not unusual for them to marry.”

“Really?”

“My own mother married her third cousin.”

“I see.”

“Well, cheerio.”

“Cheerio.”

He stepped into the kitchen as his cousin stomped up the stairs, and he saw that Cynthia’s eyes were wide with a kind of wonder.

He was rummaging in the kitchen handy drawer for a chisel and hammer when the phone rang.

“Would you answer, please? Just tell them I’m busy and I’ll call back.”

He could hardly wait to lug that blasted stepladder out of her basement and drag it around her house in the pouring rain, looking for a burglar-friendly window.

“Hello?” said Cynthia.

“Hello-o-o, is the man of the house in?”

“He’s busy now. May he call you back?”

“Just tell him Edith is home and dying to have the little chat we talked about the other evening. Perhaps over dinner. Why doesn’t he ring me later? Tell him I can have my car sent down ... anytime.”

“Oh?”

“You must be the little house help I hear so much about.”

Cynthia slammed the receiver on the hook.

“Good heavens,” she whispered, turning a scorching shade of red. “I hung up on her. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Who was it ... exactly?”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into me, I ... I’ve never hung up on anyone in my life, and now I’ve done it twice in a row.”

He slowly put the hammer in one pocket.

“It was Edith,” she said. “That woman in the Lincoln.”

He put the chisel in the other pocket.

“They’re positively queuing up for you.”

There was a very odd look on her face. Was she going to burst into tears or throw something at him? He stood unprotected in the middle of the floor. “Queuing ... up? he croaked.

“First your so-called cousin who seems to have moved in permanently, and thanks for never telling me she’s a raving beauty! And now this ... this
Edith
who says she’ll send her car down for you anytime, so you can have the little chat you’re so looking forward to. I’m terribly sorry you had to fetch me from the airport, as it has clearly taken you away from a very demanding social schedule.”

She grabbed Violet’s crate and flew out the door and down the steps before he could gain any locomotion whatever.

“Cynthia! Where are you going?” he shouted from the back door. The rain was not only steady, it was pouring.

She turned around and glared at him, already drenched. “To a place where people are honest and decent and tell the plain truth instead of lies!”

“I hope this Valhalla isn’t next door, because you can’t get in.”

She looked abashed for a moment. “Then I’ll live in my car!” she yelled and dashed toward the hedge.

He had gotten as far as his back stoop when it hit him.

He couldn’t use her stepladder to find a point of entry because her stepladder was in the basement and the only way to get to the basement was through a door in her hallway.

If he were a drinking man, he would have a double Scotch. On the rocks, and make it snappy. What was his brain made of these days? He couldn’t seem to think straight for five minutes in a row.

The option was to break out a basement window. But could he then get through the door at the top of the basement stairs and into her hallway? If he remembered correctly, she liked to keep that door locked.

Could he even get that leviathan ladder of hers through a basement window, if he managed to crawl through, himself? Didn’t he remember seeing the windows when he hauled Violet out of the coal chute, and weren’t they unusually narrow?

A locksmith. That was the answer.

But when he called the only advertised locksmith in the area, there was a recording. He left a halfhearted message for the smith to call him back and hung up, feeling mold beginning to form under the slicker.

He splashed through the hedge toward the far side of the little yellow house, passing her garage on the way. He saw the dim outline of her head in the driver’s seat of the gray Mazda.

Meg Patrick a raving beauty? The very thought boggled his mind. Had she worked so hard in New York that her eyesight was failing?

The basement windows were not only too narrow to push the ladder through, they were far too small for him to crawl through.

He went into the garage, dripping, and knocked on her car window.

She rolled it down halfway.

“Hello, is this Miss Coppersmith’s residence?”

“It is,” she said, unsmiling.