Tough Cop. John Roeburt

at her eyes was not the fruit of his forties.

      “How bad is it?” he prompted.

      “It’s a mess,” she said, accepting him as a confidant.

      “Father a completely bad actor?”

      “Yes.”

      “A tyrant, eh?”

      “Much worse than a tyrant.” She hesitated, and there was a look of revulsion in her eyes that haunted his imagination. He picked at the bits she had told him, and brought them closer to his thinking. Reviewing them, they seemed little against the violent emotional currents in the girl. Domineering fathers, like possessive mothers, were a commonplace. The iron fist and the silver cord—as a policeman he’d encountered both more often than not.

      He looked at her doubtfully, at a loss, and then his imagination leaped. Much worse than a tyrant, she had said, with revulsion showing in her eyes. He looked at her searchingly, watched shame flushing her cheeks.

      “What do you do, if anything?” he said after a long, awkward moment.

      “I dance.”

      “Ballet?”

      She nodded. “Modern. The Graham School.”

      “Professionally?”

      “I hope to, ultimately.”

      “Live home?” Devereaux smiled. “Shut me up any time you like.”

      “I live home.”

      “Why not make a break, keep house on your own?”

      She drew a long breath. “I can’t.”

      “You mean,” Devereaux pressed, “your father won’t allow it?”

      “Yes. My father won’t allow it,” she said, and her tone told him clearly of bonds and bondage. He waited through a short silence, hoping her bursting need to talk would prevail. He was right. She said, “If he is my father.”

      “Don’t you know?” Devereaux exclaimed.

      “No. I mean, I don’t know”—she fumbled for words—“I don’t know for certain that he is.”

      “But what makes you think that he’s not?”

      “It’s something vague.” A hand moved nervously to her face. “It’s what he is, the feeling I have about him. I don’t feel him to be my father.”

      Devereaux said impatiently, “Is there something actual that makes you doubt this man is your father?”

      “Just impressions.” Her hand moved as if brushing something impeding her vision. “Impressions only.”

      Devereaux regarded her critically. There were strong suggestions of irrationality, even hoax, but the emotional distress was real, and the girl had breeding and intelligence. Intelligence, unmistakably. It was in her face and speech and manner.

      “I take it, then,” Devereaux said, accepting her as rational and believable, “that there is no infancy-to-now association with him in your recollection. This man, your father, is something recent in your experience?”

      “Yes.” She smiled weakly. “Or is it no? He is recent —comparatively, that is. And I have no real infancy recollection of him.”

      “When did you first become aware of him as your father?”

      “When I was ten. From then on, all through my school life, there were visits, gifts, vacations away with him. But always estranged, never close. In a family sense, I mean. Then, last year, he brought me home to live with him.”

      “You boarded out through your school years?”

      “Yes. Through school and finishing school.”

      “And absolutely no recollections of him prior to your tenth birthday?”

      “No. Earlier, I merely knew of him, but vaguely.”

      “How did you know of him?”

      “From teachers in school, I suppose. From an occasional letter read to me.”

      “Didn’t you wonder about it? Kids, even in tender years, have a strong interest in where they came from, a great curiosity about whom they belong to.”

      She shook her head. “I didn’t wonder about it. Not consciously, anyhow.” Her face clouded. “Not having a home, in the true sense, I found my adjustment in the school, in my teachers. I remember believing that all children belonged to their schoolmistress and teachers, and to the school itself. I think I believed it quite normal to have a father in some shadowy somewhere who wrote letters and sent occasional gifts.”

      “And when you were ten, he came out of his, ah, shadowy somewhere, emerged as an identity, a person?”

      “Yes. He appeared suddenly, just before my tenth birthday.”

      “Did you accept him as your father then?”

      “Yes.”

      “Affectionately, glad for a parent?”

      She was remembering. “No. At first I resented him, I think. Later, I became afraid of him.”

      “Why?”

      “He had a way of staring at me, a frightening way of looking at me coldly and critically, as if I were a purchase he had to make up his mind about.”

      “He gave you this feeling every time you met?”

      “Until my fourteenth birthday. After that, he changed. I could feel the change.”

      Devereaux prompted gently, “As if he’d decided to make the purchase?”

      She smiled at him gratefully and nodded her head. “His attitude became fanatically possessive. He transferred me to another school, a more expensive one, and began to shower me with fine clothes, costly presents.”

      “And these attentions didn’t bring you closer to him?”

      “No. If anything, I resented him more, became more afraid. The clothes were far too grown-up, too sophisticated, for my age. I was fourteen, and there were negligées, gowns made by Parisian couturières. I felt indecent in them, and finally burned them in the school incinerator when my teachers began to look strangely at me, when my classmates began to whisper about me.” She shuddered, and her voice seemed to shrink. “There were imported perfumes when I was fifteen. And with every birthday there were hideously gaudy shoes with higher heels than before. I remember monstrous six-inch spikes that came on my sixteenth birthday.”

      Devereaux interrupted the disturbing memories. “And these things made you suspect that he wasn’t really your father?”

      “Does it sound like what a father would do?”

      “Not the, er, usual father. What about your mother? Know anything about her?”

      She shook her head. “He says she ran off when I was a baby, and was never heard from since. Before my tenth birthday, I had some attachment for a woman who ran a private home for waifs. I lived with her for a while, somewhere in the outskirts of a city, before I was placed in boarding school.”

      “Remember her name?”

      “I remember her as a Mrs. Jennings,” she said doubtfully.

      “Can’t remember the whereabouts of that private home, I suppose?”

      “No. But I’ve seen Mrs. Jennings. Anyhow, I think it was Mrs. Jennings.”

      “Where?”

      “Visiting my father. About a week ago.”

      “Did you speak to her?”

      “No.