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they don’t stay. I should have stuck with my first husband.” Her eyes were far away and long ago. “He treated me like a queen but I was young and foolish. I didn’t know any better than to leave him.”
    We listened to the water under the house.
    “Do you think Chuck went away with this girl you call his daughter?”
    “I doubt it,” I said. “How did he leave here, Mrs. Gerhardi? By car?”
    “He wouldn’t let me drive him. He said he was going up to the corner and catch the L.A. bus. It stops at the corner if you signal it. He walked up the road with his suitcase and out of sight.” She sounded both regretful and relieved.
    “About what time?”
    “Around three o’clock.”
    “Did he have any money?”
    “He must have had some for the bus fare. He couldn’t have had much. I’ve been giving him a little money, but he would only take what he needed from me, and then it always had to be a loan. Which he said he would pay back when he got his book of experiences on the market. But I don’t care if he never pays me back. He was nice to have around.”
    “Really?”
    “Really he was. Chuck is a smart man. I don’t care what he’s done in the course of his life. A man can change for the better. He never gave me a bad time once.” She made a further breakthrough into candor: “I was the one who gave him the bad times. I have a drinking problem. He only drank with me to be sociable. He didn’t want me to drink alone.” She blinked her gin-colored eyes. “Would you like a drink?”
    “No thanks. I have to be on my way.” I got up and stood over her. “You’re sure he didn’t tell you where he was going?”
    “Los Angeles is all I know. He promised I’d hear from him but I don’t expect it. It’s over.”
    “If he should write or phone will you let me know?”
    She nodded. I gave her my card, and told her where I was staying. When I went out, the fog had moved inland as far as the highway.

chapter
8
    I STOPPED at the motel again on my way to the Bradshaw house. The keyboy told me that Alex was still out. I wasn’t surprised when I found his red Porsche parked under the Bradshaws’ hedge beside the road.
    The moon was rising behind the trees. I let my thoughts rise with it, imagining that Alex had got together with his bride and they were snug in the gatehouse, talking out their troubles. The sound of the girl’s crying wiped out the hopeful image. Her voice was loud and terrible, almost inhuman. Its compulsive rhythms rose and fell like the ululations of a hurt cat.
    The door of the gatehouse was slightly ajar. Light spilled around its edges, as if extruded by the pressure of the noise inside. I pushed it open.
    “Get out of here,” Alex said.
    They were on a studio bed in the tiny sitting room. He had his arms around her, but the scene was not domestic. She seemed to be fighting him, trying to struggle out of his embrace. It was more like a scene in a closed ward where psychiatric nurses will hold their violent patients, sometimes for hours on end, rather than strap them in canvas jackets.
    Her blouse was torn, so that one of her breasts was almost naked. She twisted her unkempt head around and let me see her face. It was gray and stunned, and it hardly changed expression when she screamed at me:
    “Get out!”
    “I think I better stick around,” I said to both of them.
    I closed the door and crossed the room. The rhythm of her crying was running down. It wasn’t really crying. Her eyeswere dry and fixed in her gray flesh. She hid them against her husband’s body.
    His face was shining white.
    “What happened, Alex?”
    “I don’t really know. I was waiting for her when she got home a few minutes ago. I couldn’t get much sense out of her. She’s awfully upset about something.”
    “She’s in shock,” I said, thinking that he was close to it himself. “Was she in an accident?”
    “Something like that.”
    His voice trailed off in a mumble. His look was inward, as if he was