Read Online The Listening Walls by Margaret Millar - Free Book Online Page A

prove?”
    â€œNothing definite. He just thinks you’re not telling the truth.”
    â€œThe truth about what?”
    â€œEverything. I warned you, he’s simply not rational.”
    â€œThat’s a quaint way of putting it. The man’s a maniac.”
    â€œOnly where Amy is concerned.”
    â€œIsn’t that enough?” Rupert pounded the desk with his fist in a half-conscious imitation of Gill. “Ever since Amy and I have been married he’s been trying to break us up. He’s been sitting around hoping I’d beat her or chase other women or turn into a lush or a drug addict, any­thing. Anything at all, just so Amy would leave me and climb back into the family nest like a goddamn baby bird. Well, he’s half succeeded. She’s left me, but she didn’t head back for the nest.”
    â€œShe hasn’t left you, Rupert. Not really. I—I read the letter.” She flushed slightly and twisted one of the rings on her plump fingers. “Gill asked me to read it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œHe wanted my opinion about whether it made sense—female sense, as he called it—and about whether I thought the handwriting was, well, authentic.”
    â€œAnd was it?”
    â€œOf course. I told Gill the handwriting was unmistak­ably Amy’s. Only . . .”
    She paused, working at the ring again as if it had shrunk in size and was hurting her. It was the diamond Gill had given her twenty years ago. Amy had still been in the nest then, baby bird Amy, featherless, formless, her mouth constantly open not because of hunger, bird-style, but because of a bad case of adenoids. The adenoids had been removed, feathers grew, wings developed; but there’d been no place to fly until Rupert came along. Helene remembered Amy’s wedding day more clearly, and more happily, than her own. Bye bye, blackbird.
    â€œOnly what?” Rupert said.
    â€œHe didn’t trust my judgment. Yesterday he took the letter to a handwriting expert, a private detective named Dodd.”
    Rupert leaned forward, mute with shock. From Borowitz’s office next door came the spasmodic coughing of the adding machine. Business as usual, Rupert thought, Borowitz feeding figures into the machine and coming up with answers. And a few blocks away, in another office, Gill was coming up with answers too, only there was something the matter with his machine, a loose screw. “What,” he said finally, “does he think has happened to Amy?”
    â€œHe’s not thinking, he’s feeling, don’t you see that? None of his ideas makes sense. That’s why I came here, to warn you. Also because I’m worried, I’m worried sick. It’s not good for Gill’s health to have these ideas.”
    â€œIt’s not good for mine either, obviously. Tell me some of these ideas of his.”
    â€œYou won’t get mad again?”
    â€œI can’t afford to. The situation’s too serious.”
    â€œAll right then. He said last night he’s not sure Amy ever came home at all.”
    â€œThen where is she?”
    â€œStill in Mexico.”
    â€œDoing what?”
    â€œDoing nothing. He thinks—no, I don’t mean thinks, I mean feels. He feels she’s dead.”
    Rupert didn’t even look surprised. The surprises were over, he knew now Gill was capable of anything. “A psychiatrist would have a ball with that one. Has he man­aged to feel how she died?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOr when?”
    â€œDuring the week that you were down there.”
    â€œSo I went to Mexico City,” Rupert said, sounding very detached, “and killed my wife. Did I have any particular reason?”
    â€œMoney. And Miss Burton.”
    â€œI wanted to inherit Amy’s money and marry Miss Bur­ton, is that it?”
    â€œYes.” She had managed to work the ring off her fin­ger. She sat now with it in her lap, not