the little graveyard. âWe all loved Phoebe so much.â
âIâm sure. Iâve never had children.â
âNor I. My wife didnât want any. Rose didnât much care for the country here. Actually, she didnât much care for me, I think, and the proximity to Mother. Mother can be, as you might guess, a formidable person. But she never interfered, never. Itâs just her presence. She can move us about, you know.â
There was no resentment in his tone. Melrose could well imagine Marion Winslow âmoving them about.â
âOne day I woke up,â continued Ned, âand she was gone. I donât know where; she had talked about the States, about Canada. But she didnât bother leaving a note. So I donât know where, do I?â
âWhere have you gone to . . .?â Melrose could not help but think of the poem.
Ned looked from the graves to the wall to the sky. âThere was another man, Iâm sure. Didnât even know sheâd been seeing him. Didnât even know him. Thatâs how blind a poet can be.â
âOr how blind a wife can be.â Ned Winslow gave him the impression of a man whoâd accepted the past as nothing but a missed train on a wasted journey; he would stand on the platform or travel through life with his cases empty.
Melrose had been carrying the small book of poems in his pocket and drew it out. He thumbed through the pages until he came to the poem David had mentioned.
âItâs very old-fashioned, as David says. Rhyme, meter, quatrains.â
âThere is something to be said for what you call âold-fashioned.â Here it is.â Melrose read:
âWhere have you gone to, Elizabeth Vere,
Far from the garden, the blossom, the bole?
Rain glazes the stream â â
Melrose looked off toward a small stream partly shrouded in ice that meandered close to the garden wall. âIt sounds like this place. Was it meant for someone in particular?â He returned the book to his pocket.
Ned stood looking off toward the grove of beeches, frowning. âA writer never really knows who he means, does he? Perhaps that really is blindness, not to know.â He changed the subject. âIf you knew David, youâd know itâs impossible for him to have strangled that girl. Anyway, thereâs no reason, no motive. Ivy mustâve been killed by a mugger, someonelike that. Wouldnât you think that the obvious answer?â
Ned Winslow looked at him as if Melrose were a magician who just might pull the right rabbit out of the hat. âIf that were the case, the killer certainly didnât want much. There appears to be no motive.â
âThereâs none with David, either. He had no motive.â
Melrose thought of what Jury had told him of the women, Sheila Broome and Ivy Childess. â âThen glided in Porphyria ââ â
Ned reached out to pull a weed from between the stones of the wall. âThatâs an odd allusion. If youâre thinking of David as a Porphyriaâs lover type ââ Ned laughed. âBelieve me, he hadnât any passionate attachment to Ivy Childess.â He turned those molten umber eyes on Melrose. âAnd what about Porphyria herself?â
âPorphyria? She struck me as being rather pathetic.â
âShe struck me as being a bit of a tramp,â said Ned, with a smile.
13
âW THAT is the matter with you, Dolly? Youâve been in a sulk â well, not that perhaps â on edge, more, ever since you came here.â And as Kate set the cup of tea and a toasted tea cake before her sister, she wondered once again why Dolly had come. Her visits up to now had been in the spring or summer, especially summer, the clement weather and quieter ocean allowing her to show off her near-perfect figure. âJob? Man? What?â
Dolly looked up at her sister. âNothingâs wrong. Iâm just
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