Vanished (15 page)

John Taylor stood up then and walked her slowly out of the room, and she thanked him again for the warning about what he was going to have to tell Malcolm. She turned and looked at John Taylor for a last moment, with a worried frown. It was all so confusing. “Do you really think he'd do a thing like that? Charles, I mean.” It was hard to believe. He had always been wild and uncontrolled but not like this …she couldn't believe he would really take Teddy. Did he hate her that much then? It was hard to imagine.

“I don't know.” Taylor was honest with her. “I wish I knew the answer.”

She nodded, and went back to the chaos in the main living room. Malcolm was standing there, looking grim, with an FBI man on either side, and she introduced him to John Taylor.

“I've been waiting to see you,” Malcolm growled, seemingly unimpressed by Taylor.

“I've been out talking to some people about the case.” His eyes never looked once at Marielle. He knew better than that. But he also wasn't sure, as he watched Malcolm, that he disagreed with Delauney. There seemed to be no warmth toward Marielle, no visible support, only Malcolm's own concern, and his grief at losing his only son. Instead of asking for John's help, he demanded that he find him. “We're all set for a possible ransom request, sir,” John Taylor said with a respect he didn't feel. In fact, he had already decided, he didn't like him.

“So am I,” Malcolm said. “The U.S. Treasury Department is sending us marked notes this morning.”

“We'll have to be very careful how that's handled.” It had been a disaster in the Lindbergh case, and John didn't want anything going wrong this time. “I'd like to speak to you this afternoon, if you have time.” John wanted to know if there was anyone he suspected, or was afraid of. And as he had with Marielle, he wanted to see him alone, but he also wanted to give Marielle time to tell him about Charles Delauney.

“I'll see you now,” Malcolm said with a frown. He had slept in the car coming up from Washington, and he was more rested than either Marielle or John Taylor.

“I'm afraid I have some other matters to attend to first.” If nothing else, he wanted to get back to his office and shower and shave, have another stiff cup of coffee, and take some time to think about what they were doing. The truth was, they had no leads at all. All they had was Charles, and the fact that the driver had admitted that morning that someone had called him a few weeks before and offered him a hundred dollars if he'd choose that particular night to go out with Edith. He had figured the joke was on them anyway, because they'd been planning for ages to go to the Irish Christmas dance in the Bronx, so it was no effort for him. But the hundred had arrived in a plain envelope at the back door the week before, and he'd thrown the envelope away and spent the cash, and never given it another thought. He said he hadn't recognized the voice on the phone, except that they'd had an accent, what kind of accent he wasn't sure, maybe English, maybe German. He insisted he couldn't remember. But even if Delauney had taken the child, he wouldn't have done it himself. And supposedly the week before, he hadn't seen Marielle, and didn't know she had a child … or did he? Was it all a clever plan? Had he been watching her for weeks? Months? Had he been getting news of her while he was in Europe? Had he planned his revenge for years? It was hard to make sense of it, there was so little to go on, and it was still way too early. But why hadn't the driver been suspicious of the call? It could have meant a robbery was being planned or an attack on Malcolm or Marielle. But it was clear to John Taylor that the driver didn't care about his employers.

Malcolm looked annoyed that Taylor wasn't ready to speak to him just then, and just so he understood who he was dealing with, he mentioned his trip to Washington again. But Taylor understood perfectly. The message was, do it right, do it now, do it my way, or you're going to regret it. The trouble was, Taylor wasn't that kind of man. And he wasn't about to take any pressure from Malcolm.

“I'll see you this afternoon, sir. Say around four?”

“That'll be fine. I assume your men know how to find you, if a call comes in before that?” It was a very gentle slap in the face, an inference that he was “disappearing.”

“Of course.”

“Very well. Is there anything you can do with those vultures on our front doorstep, by the way?”

“I'm afraid not. They all think they're out there defending the First Amendment. We can back them up a little bit though, get them away from the house. I'll have my men see to it.”

“See that you do,” Malcolm said with a stern look, instead of “thank you.” Taylor left them then, as Malcolm looked down at his wife and muttered, “I don't like him.”

“He's a nice man. He was very kind to us last night.” She didn't tell him how kind, but it had made a lasting impression on her, in the absence of her husband.

“I'd be more impressed if he found your son. You might keep that in mind, Marielle.” As though she could forget it. She wondered why he was being so cruel to her, except that she knew he was upset, and somehow he seemed to feel that it was all her fault. Or was she just imagining it? Was she feeling responsible again, as she had for Andre and her baby girl? Was everything always going to be her fault? It was that that usually set off the headaches, that and the terrible helplessness she always felt when things went wrong and she couldn't change them. But she couldn't allow herself to think of that now, couldn't allow herself to think of what might be happening to Teddy. She had to be strong. And she knew that before John Taylor returned that afternoon, she had to tell Malcolm.

“Could we go upstairs for a little while?” She looked nervously at her husband, and he glanced at her with a strange expression, as though she had propositioned him and he couldn't believe it. “I have to talk to you.”

“This isn't the time.” He tried to brush her off, he wanted to return the German ambassador's call. He was touched that he had called him.

“Yes, it is. Malcolm, it's important.”

“Can't it wait?” But he could see from the look in her eyes that she meant it. She was surprising him actually. For a woman who seemed to go weak at the knees whenever life became even slightly difficult, she seemed to be holding up remarkably well in this crisis. She looked tired, of course, and pale, but she seemed calm and reasonable, and other than the pathetically trembling hands he had noticed at once, she seemed to be controlling her emotions. What he hadn't seen was the terrible scene in the boy's room only that morning, the crying that seemed to have no end as she held his teddy bear to her and felt terror rise in her throat every time she thought of her son. But she was fighting it, because she knew she had to. If she didn't, she would panic and collapse completely.

“Malcolm, will you come upstairs with me?” She was insistent.

“All right, all right. I'll be there in a moment.” She waited for him in her dressing room, because she didn't know where else to be, and she paced the small room while she waited. She didn't know where to start, or what to say, and she wished she had forced him to listen before she married him, but he hadn't wanted to hear it then, and now he had to.

He came up half an hour later, just as she was ready to go downstairs looking for him. But finally he appeared, and he seemed huge in the small room, as ha took a chair, and looked at her with obvious irritation.

“All right, Marielle, I don't know what you can possibly want to talk about now. I hope it's important, and has something to do with Teddy.”

“It might. I hope it doesn't,” she said quietly, sitting on a small settee across from him. It was odd how far away from him she felt, how distant they were, even in this crisis. In fact, suddenly, it seemed worse than ever. “It has to do with me. And I think it's important. Years ago, when we were getting married, I told you that there were things about me you might not like, and you said that everyone had a past and it wasn't important. You felt it was best left untouched, but I felt I owed it to you to tell you.” She sighed and had to fight for air again. All of this was so difficult that she always seemed to have trouble breathing. But she knew she had to tell him. And this time he had to listen. “Do you remember?” she asked him softly, and for a moment, his eyes gentled. Maybe he was only in pain, she told herself. Perhaps the shock of losing Teddy was so great that he could offer Marielle no comfort, just as she and Charles had been unable to comfort each other nine years before. Sometimes when the common agony is too great one can only struggle alone. She wondered if that was what was happening now, and it wasn't that he held her responsible after all. But she had to go on now.

“I do remember,” he answered her. “But what does that have to do with what is happening now? Or with Teddy?” There was a look of accusation on his face and she forced herself to ignore it.

“I don't know. I'm not sure. But I must tell you what I do know.” She took a breath and went on, unaware of how beautiful she was. “My father told his closest friends that I had had a youthful flirtation and gone a little mad when I was eighteen and we were on the Grand Tour. And then he told everyone that I'd decided to stay on and study in Paris. Well, some of that was true but very little. I had much more than a flirtation. I ran away, I eloped, with Charles Delauney. I'm sure you must know his father.” Malcolm nodded. He had known him, better than he had known her own. He was a crusty old man, but a smart one, with a huge fortune. But he had never met the son. They said he was a renegade of the worst sort, a writer. And he'd run off to the war when he was fourteen or fifteen, and after that he'd stayed in Europe. Old man Delauney said he was no good, and that was all he'd heard, but now he looked stunned at Marielle's confession. “I married him when I was eighteen, and by the time we came back from our honeymoon and my parents wanted to have the marriage annulled, I was pregnant. So they went home, and I stayed. The marriage was never annulled. And we had a little boy …” She had to fight back tears as she said it. After all these years, to tell the story twice in one day was almost more than she could bear. But she knew she had to tell him. Teddy's disappearance made it all different. “His name was Andre,” she gulped again, “and he looked a little like Teddy, except that he had very black hair, instead of blond hair like you.' She tried to smile, but Malcolm said nothing. He was not finding the recital amusing. And she knew that, for Malcolm, she had to keep it to the facts. He didn't have to know how much she loved him, or how desperately she had loved Charles, or how terrible it had been when Andre died. He just had to know that he did, and that Charles had seen Teddy and gone crazy. He had to hear this from her so he didn't think she was protecting Charles. The only one she wanted to protect now was Teddy. And Malcolm had to hear everything if they were going to find him.

“He died when he was two … in Switzerland. I was pregnant with another child, and that baby died too.”

Malcolm looked desperately uncomfortable for a moment.

“How did they die?”

“Andre drowned.” She squeezed her eyes shut and fought for composure, but unlike John Taylor, the night before, Malcolm Patterson did not approach her. “He ran onto the lake … it was frozen …and he fell through …with two little girls. I saved them.” Her voice was almost a monotone as she went on, trying not to see his face again, trying not to feel his icy face next to her own as she tried to blow life into him, trying not to smell the same powdery flesh she had loved so much …just like Teddy …and if Teddy died too …how would she survive it? She fought to go on as Malcolm watched her. “I couldn't reach him. He was under the ice.” It was a breathless whisper, and then her voice grew stronger again. It was like climbing a mountain just telling him and the air seemed to be getting thinner and thinner and thinner. “Charles always held me responsible for it. He felt it was my fault, because I wasn't watching him. I was, but I was talking to someone …the mother of the two little girls …she said it wasn't my fault, but I suppose it was. And Charles thought so too. He was skiing that day, and when he came back, he tried to kill me … or maybe not …maybe he was just so out of his mind with pain …anyway, I lost the baby. I probably would have anyway, because of the icy water. I had jumped in to get Andre.” Malcolm nodded, mesmerized by the horror of her words, and in spite of himself, his face had gone pale as he listened. “Charles always felt that I had killed both of them, that it was my fault that we lost them. And I …I …” Her voice trembled and she couldn't go on as she bowed her head, and then looked at him, her face filled with anguish, her eyes filled with a horror he could never know and no one would ever take from her. “I suppose you could say I had a nervous breakdown. I was in a hospital … a clinic … a sanatorium … for more than two years. I was twenty-one when it happened, and I tried to kill myself several times.” She had decided to tell him all of it. He had a right to know now, and there could be no more secrets. “I didn't want to live, without Charles and my babies. I did everything I could to die, and they did everything they could to save me. I never saw Charles during that time …or actually I only saw him once during that first year. He came to tell me my father had died, a few months after Andre. They say the shock of the Crash killed him, and I suppose it did …they didn't tell me that my mother killed herself six months later. I suppose without Daddy, and without me …” Her voice trailed off, and Malcolm understood her meaning. “They didn't tell me that for another year, and by then, I suppose I was better. They said I had to go finally, that I had to go back out in the world and live with what had happened. That it wasn't my fault, that I wasn't responsible, and if Charles still felt it was, then it was something that he had to work out for himself.” She took another breath and seemed a little calmer as she looked unseeingly out the window. “He came to see me once at the end before I left, and he told me how sorry he was, that he had been out of his mind with pain, that it wasn't my fault, and he hadn't meant it. But I could see in his eyes that he did mean it, that he still believed I had killed his children. I still loved him.” She looked back at Malcolm honestly. “I always had, but I knew that if I stayed with him, I would always feel guilty. It would always be between us. I couldn't go back to him. I had to be alone. So I left the hospital, and came back to the States, and that was the last time I saw him. And then I met you,” she sighed, “and you were so good to me. You gave me a job, and you did so many things for me. You took care of me, and you were always so kind to me. And we got married. I never really wanted to get married again. I didn't think it would have been fair to anyone … I had so much on my conscience. But you seemed not to mind …and …” She felt suddenly guilty. “I had no one …and I was so frightened sometimes. And you made me feel safe … I thought I could be good to you too …and maybe make you happy.” She lowered her eyes then, thinking of when Teddy had been born, and the tears began to slide down her face again. She had given him a lot to absorb in a single moment. “I was so happy when Teddy was born.”