Free The Silver Falcon by Evelyn Anthony Page A

room.
    â€˜Twenty-two,’ he said. ‘She’d just married my father. I’d like to have this, Isabel.’
    â€˜Of course,’ she said. The silence was awkward. He seemed tense and odd; he kept staring at the picture.
    â€˜You loved her very much, didn’t you,’ she said quietly.
    â€˜I guess I did.’
    â€˜Charles told me she committed suicide,’ Isabel said. ‘What a terrible thing. He’d never talk to me about it.’
    â€˜No,’ Richard said. ‘I guess he wouldn’t. Let’s go down. I feel like a drink.’ He draped the green cloth over the picture. ‘Thanks. It’s the only thing in the house I really wanted. If you don’t mind I’ll get it crated up and sent to England.’
    They spent the evening quietly; Tim phoned to say that one of Charles’s most valuable two-year-olds had colic and he didn’t want to leave the yard. Richard watched the television and Isabel read. It was a best-selling novel concerned with the sex life of Washington senators, and she had been enjoying it. That night she couldn’t concentrate. The wistful, lovely face of the dead woman kept blurring the page. Suicide. Instability, emotional or mental breakdown. The seeds of tragedy were sown when she sat for that picture, even at twenty-two.
    She glanced up and saw Richard Schriber’s face. He wasn’t watching the screen or even aware of the programme. The same look of grim intensity was there that she had seen in the attic. Charles wouldn’t discuss what had happened and nor would he. The dead woman had been buried and the portrait banished out of sight. She wished she hadn’t gone to find it with him.
    When Joan Graham was indignant her neck broke out in red blotches. As a girl, facing the ordeal of dates and dances, she was embarrassed by the ugly nervous patches on her throat. She was very angry that December day.
    â€˜Three weeks after the funeral,’ she said, ‘and he’s still there! It’s the talk of the neighbourhood! How could she, Andy? Hasn’t she any idea how people round here feel?’
    â€˜I don’t think she cares,’ her husband said.
    â€˜And look at the way she’s treated you! It makes me boiling mad – after all you did for that family –’
    â€˜She doesn’t know about that,’ he answered.
    â€˜Why didn’t you tell her?’ his wife said. He looked up at her sharply.
    â€˜Don’t be a damned fool. She isn’t one of us. She’s the last person in the world I’d want to know. You shouldn’t even talk about it.’
    â€˜But I think about it,’ Joan Graham said. She came and sat beside him. She loved him and admired him. In her view he was always coming to the rescue of people far less worthwhile than he was. He worked very hard, and he made do with so much less than everyone else, with their big houses and cars and money behind them. Her damnfool father-in-law had gambled till there was very little left for his family. By comparison with most of their friends the Grahams were poor. ‘I think about what you did for Charles, and whatever you say, he should have made it up to you!’
    â€˜You don’t put a price on friendship,’ her husband said.
    â€˜Deep down,’ Joan said, ‘I never really trusted her. She took all of you men in with that English way, but she didn’t fool me. I said to myself when I heard he was going to marry her, he’s making a fool of himself over a young girl. Old enough to be her father, and she took advantage of his vanity – I know, I know,’ she lifted her hand as he started to protest. ‘You won’t have me say he was vain, but you know he was vain as a peacock! Having a young wife to show around was just his ticket – it’s the only time Charles’s judgement failed him: when it came to women. First Frances and then this one. My, Andrew