“It’s all nonsense,” Margaret said. It seemed to her that the air in front of her eyes had become suddenly thick and solid, so that it rippled. “Henry couldn’t commit a murder. He can’t even commit a robbery. He’s tried. He just fell over drunk, and they had to get us to make him dry out somewhere.”
“I wonder,” Elizabeth said. “If I had to answer truthfully, I don’t think I’d say that Henry couldn’t ever commit a murder. There’s a lot under the surface of Henry. Most of it isn’t too pleasant.”
“You can’t honestly believe the police are right,” Margaret said. “You can’t think that Henry is this, this whatever—Plate Glass Killer.”
“No,” Elizabeth said, “I certainly don’t think he’s that.”
Margaret felt better. The air had stopped shimmering and warping in front of her eyes. “There, then,” she said, “it was a mistake. It’s just a matter of making sure we stop the mistake before it does any more damage. I think it was very wrong of that judge not to let Henry out on bail. It made it look as if Henry is dangerous.”
“Maybe Henry is dangerous,” Elizabeth said, “even if he isn’t the Plate Glass Killer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe Henry—well. There was the problem the last time they arrested him. They didn’t arrest him just because he happened to be around at the time. They searched his room. They had that peculiar pile of underwear.”
Margaret flushed. She could remember the day the police had come to search Henry’s room even though Henry hadn’t stayed in it for weeks. It had been beyond embarrassing even to have the police in the house, even with their own lawyers present. Then to have had to stand there while they came up with a dozen women’s panties in one of Henry’s drawers—well, that was—that was something.
“Margaret,” Elizabeth said.
Margaret came back from wherever it was she was. It really was as if the air was changing around her, becoming solid, becoming a place.
“The Plate Glass Killer doesn’t take his victims’ underwear,” she said. “You know that as well as I do. Even the police know that.”
“There’s still the question of what they were doing in Henry’s drawer, in this house.”
“Maybe that silly Conchita put them there herself,” Margaret said. “Oh, I hate these women who come from South America. They’ve got no sense, and they’ve got no sense of proportion. Maybe she was absentminded and put them there by mistake.”
“Her own underwear? Two pairs of it were her own. And what about the rest? They weren’t mine or yours. They weren’t Conchita’s.”
“You have no way of knowing if they were Conchita’s or not,” Margaret said. “Oh, why do we have to bring all this up again? Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?”
“It’s going to get worse,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t see why,” Margaret said. “They can’t possibly hold him. They’ve got no evidence. Not real evidence. Even the blood was just—well, you know—just a mistake. Because he saw the woman there on the ground and tried to help her, and he got blood all over himself while he was doing it; and then people on the street saw what they thought was a homeless man all covered with blood, and it all got out of hand from there.”
“Do you really think Henry touched that woman because he was trying to help her?”
Margaret wished very much that she could end this conversation and go somewhere. She could go up to her own room and have tea brought in and sit by herself for the rest of the afternoon, looking through the albums of photographs she was the only one who cared about anymore. She didn’t have anything up there that could disturb her, no television, no radio, no computer, no newspapers. Even Elizabeth didn’t come into her room anymore.
“I have to go lie down,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”
“It’s barely noon.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m exhausted. And I’m—it’s all her fault, you know. It is. That woman’s. I’ve tried and tried to understand what Father was thinking when he married her, and I just can’t get it.”
“I get it,” Elizabeth said wryly.
Margaret flushed. “It couldn’t have been that, could it? When that’s what men want they don’t marry it, they just use it and throw it away when they’re done. Nobody would have begrudged him something like that. I wouldn’t have. Mother had been dead a very long time.”