“But what are you going to do?” Eddie asked.
“I’m going to tell you,” she told him again. “You just have to trust me, completely.”
“Okay,” he said, but for the first time Eddie knew that he didn’t trust Marion—not completely. After all, he was her pawn; he’d already had the sort of day that a pawn might have.
“I looked at the drawings of Mrs. Vaughn,” he confessed to Marion.
“Merciful heavens,” she said to him. He didn’t want to cry again, but he allowed her to pull his face into her breasts; he let her hold him there while he struggled to say what he felt.
“In the drawings, she was somehow more than naked,” he began.
“I know,” Marion whispered to him. She kissed the top of his head.
“It was not just that she was naked,” Eddie insisted. “It was as if you could see everything that she must have submitted to. She looked like she’d been tortured or something.”
“I know,” Marion said again. “I’m so sorry. . . .”
“Also, the wind blew her robe open and I saw her,” Eddie blurted out. “She was exposed only for a second, but it was as if I already knew everything about her.” Then he realized what it was about Mrs. Vaughn’s smell. “And when I had to pick her up and carry her,” Eddie said, “I noticed her smell—like on the pillows, only stronger. It made me gag.”
“What did she smell like?” Marion asked him.
“Like something dead,” Eddie told her.
“Poor Mrs. Vaughn,” Marion said.
Why Panic at Ten O’Clock in the Morning?
It was shortly before eight on Friday morning when Eddie picked Ted up at the carriage house for the drive to Southampton and what Ted thought would be a half-hour meeting with Mrs. Vaughn. Eddie’s nervousness was extreme, and not only because he feared that Ted would have Mrs. Vaughn on his hands a lot longer than he assumed. Marion had more or less scripted Eddie’s day. Eddie had a lot to remember.
When he and Ted stopped for coffee at the Sagaponack General Store, Eddie knew all about the moving truck that was parked there. The two sturdy movers were drinking coffee and reading their morning newspapers in the cab. When Eddie had returned from Mrs. Vaughn’s—to take Ruth to have her stitches removed—Marion would know where she could find the movers. The movers, like Eddie, had been given their instructions: to wait at the store until Marion came to get them. Ted and Ruth—and the nannies, who’d been dismissed for the day—would never see the movers.
By the time Ted found his way home from Southampton, the movers (and everything Marion wanted to take with her) would be gone. Marion herself would be gone. She had forewarned Eddie of this. That would leave Eddie to explain it all to Ted; that was the script Eddie kept rehearsing on the way to Southampton.
“But who’s going to explain it all to Ruth ?” Eddie had asked. There then crept into Marion’s expression that same aura of distance that Eddie had witnessed when he’d asked her about the accident. Clearly Marion had not scripted the part of the story where someone explains it all to Ruth.
“When Ted asks you where I’ve gone, just say you don’t know,” Marion told Eddie.
“But where are you going?” Eddie asked.
“You don’t know,” Marion repeated. “If Ted insists on a better answer, to anything, just say that he’ll be hearing from my lawyer. My lawyer will tell him everything.”
“Oh, great,” Eddie said.
“And if he hits you, just hit him back. By the way, he won’t make a fist—at worst he’ll slap you. But you should use your fist,” Marion advised Eddie. “Just punch him in the nose. If you punch him in the nose, he’ll stop.”
But what about Ruth? The plans for Ruth were vague. If Ted began to shout, how much should Ruth hear? If there was a fight, how much should the child see? If the nannies had been dismissed, Ruth would have to be either with Ted or with Eddie, or with them both. Why wouldn’t she be upset?
“You can call Alice, if you need help with Ruth,” Marion had suggested to Eddie. “I told Alice that you or Ted might call her. In fact, I told her to call the house about midafternoon—to see if you needed her after all.” Alice was the afternoon nanny, the pretty college girl with her own car. She was the nanny Eddie liked the least, Eddie had reminded Marion.
“You better get to like her a little,” Marion replied. “If Ted kicks you out—and I can’t imagine that he’ll want you to stay —you’re going to need a ride to the ferry at Orient Point. Ted’s not permitted to drive, you know—not that he would want to drive you, anyway.”
“Ted’s going to kick me out and I’m going to have to ask Alice for a ride,” Eddie echoed.
Marion merely kissed him.
And then the moment was at hand. When Eddie stopped at Mrs. Vaughn’s concealed driveway on Gin Lane, Ted said, “You better wait here for me. I’m not going to last a half hour with that woman. Maybe twenty minutes, tops. Maybe ten. . . .”
“I’ll go and come back,” Eddie lied.