End in Tears Read Online Free PDF

his face and his voice shook. “Peace! I can’t remember what that was. A long long time ago. Maybe not since I married Diana. No fault of hers, I’m not saying that, no fault of hers at all. Amber—well, she got pregnant and that was terrible, a terrible shock. She had the baby and brought it home for us to care for. For Diana to care for. That’s what it amounted to.” His lip trembled, and he took a deep breath before continuing. “Diana had to leave her work at the studio. But all that was nothing, nothing, to this. How am I going to bear the sight of him now? He looks so like her. He looks like her when she was a little girl.”
    Wexford thought Marshalson was going to begin sobbing, but he made a tremendous effort to control himself, breathing deeply and laying his head against the gray-and-white cushions. His eyes closed, he said, “I’m sorry. I’ll get a grip on myself. The friends—ask Diana. Diana will know.”
    â€œYou came out to look for Amber, sir,” Burden said. “Why was that?”
    Marshalson shook his head, not in denial but perhaps in sorrow. “I never slept well while she was out. Never. And I was right not to sleep, wasn’t I? It wasn’t needless worry, as Diana said, was it? It was all justified.”
    â€œPerhaps it was, sir,” Burden said. “but what did you hope to achieve by going out in the street at—five, was it?—at five in the morning?”
    â€œI don’t know. Things you do at that hour are irrational. I thought I might see her getting out of that boy’s car. Time means nothing to them at that age. They don’t get tired. I thought I might walk her home, take her arm, my princess, my poor little angel…”
    Burden said what Wexford felt he wouldn’t dare to say or wouldn’t, at this stage, have the ruthless single-mindedness to say. “Did you go out into the lane earlier? Did you go out at two, say, or three?”
    If George Marshalson understood the purport of Burden’s questions, he didn’t show it. “Only once,” he said. “I only went out at five. I’d walked about the house earlier, I’d seen her bed was empty, but I only went out at five…” A sob cut off his last words.
    Out in the hallway, Wexford looked around for signs of life. One of the doors, pale wood, flush and with a stainless steel tube handle, was ajar. From behind it Wexford suddenly heard the child’s voice saying, “Mama, mama.”
    The words “they pierce my heart” came into his head and he told himself not to be a sentimental fool. He pushed the door wide open and went in, Burden following. Brand, who seemed to gain more walking skills by the hour, as children of his age do, turned around from the window where he was standing and, disappointed, repeated his sad mantra: “Mama, mama.”
    Diana Marshalson was sitting on the floor amid wooden toys, a fluffy dog on wheels, a welter of colored bricks. “I hope it won’t go on. I mean, I hope he’ll forget her, for his own sake.”
    Wexford waited to hear some show of sympathy for the little boy and sorrow for his mother, but none came. Brand dropped onto all fours and crawled toward her, his expression puzzled. It looked as if she would take him in her arms and comfort him, but she didn’t. She got up.
    â€œDo sit down. What can I do for you?”
    They were in a kind of study with a desk, a filing cabinet, a computer on a work station, but soft furniture too, upholstered in pale gray and orange tweed. The single glass door through which Brand had been looking, hoping to see his mother, gave on to a large garden, mostly lawn and shrubs. The excessive heat of the past weeks had turned the grass the yellow of California hills.
    Burden asked Diana Marshalson the question he hadn’t cared to repeat to her grief-stricken husband.
    â€œI only know her friends by their