Open Secrets: Stories (Vintage International) by Alice Munro

Author:Alice Munro [Munro, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307814616
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-12-20T16:00:00+00:00

“Police,” said Lawyer Stephens now. “Police. Who should gone to see.”

The husband spoke. He said, “We didn’t know if we should ought to do that or not.” He had both hands on the table, fingers spread, pressed down, pulling at the cloth.

“Not accusation.” Lawyer Stephens said. “Information.”

He had talked in that abbreviated way even before his stroke. And Maureen had noticed, long ago, how just a few words of his, spoken in no very friendly tone—spoken, in fact, in a tone of brusque chastisement—could cheer people up and lift a weight off them.

She had been thinking of the other reason why the women stopped going to visit Mr. Siddicup. They didn’t like the clothes. Women’s clothes, underwear—old frayed slips and brassières and worn-out underpants and nubbly stockings, hanging from the backs of chairs or from a line above the heater, or just in a heap on the table. All these things must have belonged to his wife, of course, and at first it looked as if he might be washing and drying them and sorting them out, prior to getting rid of them. But they were there week after week, and the women started to wonder: Did he leave them lying around to suggest things? Did he put them on himself next to his skin? Was he a pervert?

Now all that would come out, they’d chalk that up against him.

Pervert. Maybe they were right. Maybe he would lead them to where he’d strangled or beat Heather to death in a sexual fit, or they would find something of hers in his house. And people would say in horrid, hushed voices that no, they weren’t surprised. I wasn’t surprised, were you?

Lawyer Stephens had asked some question about the job at Douglas Point, and Marian said, “He works in Maintenance. Every day when he comes out he’s got to go through the check for X-rays, and even the rags he cleans off his boots with, they have to be buried underground.”

When Maureen shut the door on the pair of them and saw their shapes wobble away through the pebbled glass, she was not quite satisfied. She climbed three steps to the landing on the stairs, where there was a little arched window. She watched them.

No car was in sight, or truck or whatever they had. They must have left it parked on the main street or in the lot behind the Town Hall. Possibly they did not want it to be seen in front of Lawyer Stephens’ house.

The Town Hall was where the Police Office was. They did turn in that direction, but then they crossed the street diagonally and, still within Maureen’s sight, they sat down on the low stone wall that ran around the old cemetery and flower plot called Pioneer Park.

Why should they feel a need to sit down after sitting in the dining room for what must have been at least an hour? They didn’t talk, or look at each other, but seemed united, as if taking a rest in the midst of hard shared labors.

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