A Fox Inside by David Stacton

watched her mother come on down the stairs. Lily was in no hurry. She paused on the fourth step, looking at both of them with what was supposed to be composure. She gave a short grunt.
    “Who would help you but me?” she asked softly. “And I don’t have to help you, you know.”
    “Oh, yes, you do.”
    Lily’s manner was that of a trainer with a dog. “Do I? Suppose I washed my hands of it? Suppose I did?”
    “You wouldn’t dare.”
    Lily waved her hand irritably and came down the rest of the stairs. “Luke, you’d better stay with her until I get back.” She didn’t bother to wait for an answer, but marched firmly out of the door. For once decision seemed to be an effort for her, and her eyes were sad. They heard her drive off with an irritated authoritarian clash of gears.
    Maggie stood irresolute and then walked briskly into the living-room. He shut the front door and when he joined her found her sitting by the fireplace, smoking and looking thoughtfully into space. The clock seemed both very loud and very slow.
    “It’s probably the best thing to do,” he said uncomfortably . “She’s right about that.”
    She glanced at him but did not speak.
    “What is it, really?” he asked.
    “What is what?”
    “This is no time to play games,” he said. “You might lose one. Have you thought of that?”
    “Yes, I’ve thought of that.”
    “Then what is it?”
    “It’s a lot of things,” she said. “It always has been a lot of things. I guess it’s always going to be.”
    “That isn’t very helpful. I only came to help you, Maggie. You know that, don’t you?”
    “I don’t know what I know,” she said.
    “It’s not Charles. I know it’s not Charles.”
    She looked up at him. “I can’t be alone with her. You don’t know what she’s like.”
    “You don’t know what a scandal can be like, either,” he told her.
    “What scandal?” she asked sharply.
    The obliviousness of it made him blink. “Charles.”
    “I don’t want her to do anything else to me, Luke. I daren’t be alone with her. She isn’t the way she looks at all.” She seemed somehow relieved.
    “I can’t stay in the house, Maggie.”
    “No, I suppose not.”
    He did not like the way she said it. He had no intention of abandoning her. He did not want her to feel that she had been abandoned. He stared at her, baffled. It occurred to him that he did not know her very well, after all.
    There was a tap on the door and the maid came in with the papers. She was bright-eyed and avid, and she tried to peer over his shoulder at Maggie. He soon got rid of her, but it made him realize how right Lily was.Maggie was in no condition to face up to that kind of scrutiny.
    He spread the papers out on the coffee table. They were extras and the ink was still wet on them. At first she sat hunched up away from them, not saying anything. But then she edged closer to him on the sofa and took his hand. He squeezed hers, but it was impersonal and tense.
    There were three papers, two tabloids and the conservative Chronicle. There was a big smeared photograph of the house at Bolinas, taken from the beach, with a diagram of what one of the scandal sheets called “the death room”. There were dotted lines from the chair to a Maltese cross marking the place where the body had been found. There was an old photograph of Maggie, probably taken after her coming-out party, or at college, and one of Charles, looking alive and self-confident. One of the papers called him a prominent socialite, one a society lawyer, and the third a business man. The conservative Chronicle had a photograph of the “death room” taken by flash-bulb. They did not call it murder, but they clearly hoped that it was one. Maggie looked down at the papers for a long time, but without touching them.
    “What on earth do they mean by ‘socialite’?” she asked.
    “They mean you have money.”
    “It’s horrible,” she said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
    There was no