It took a countless number of small details finally to arouse distrust in Mr. Petersen.
In the beginning, there was the roast chicken. Mrs. Hansen, who once more ruled the kitchen, came to him in great distress.
“Mr. Petersen!” she cried, “It’s gone! The whole thing! A beautiful whole roast chicken I put into the ice chest with my own hands this very morning.”
“Tramps,” he suggested, “or Michael. Don’t worry. Go and buy another.”
And that marked the beginning. After that she missed something almost every day, and it nearly made her insane. She never talked of anything else; to Mr. Petersen, to Mrs. Petersen, to her own husband, or even to Sandra.
“It isn’t tramps,” she insisted. “There I’ve never stirred out of my kitchen the whole morning, and that loaf of bread’s gone!”
She could not make anyone realise the magnitude of it, the hair-raising mystery. Minnie took the attitude that Mrs. Hansen must be and was mistaken; Mr. Petersen suspected Michael. The poor woman was desperate.
“All the years I’ve been here!” she moaned, “and never a bit of trouble like this!”
She was not superstitious, but the mystery began to terrify her; bread, meat, fruit, all sorts of things, vanished utterly, and with regularity. She considered Minnie grossly careless to take so little interest; the more she saw of her, the more she despised her, anyway. On her return, Minnie had turned everything over to her, never so much as ordered a meal. She offended further by always sitting upstairs, just rocking or embroidering there in the bedroom, in a bedraggled wrapper, with her hair in an untidy knot, until late in the afternoon, when she made a supreme effort, dressed herself and went out for a walk.
Her appearance shocked Mrs. Hansen immeasurably, her brazen disregard for her “condition,” her unsuitable clothes. Her treatment of Sandra, too. Such unwisdom she had never seen. The child was ailing half the time with colds and coughs; she was forever getting her poor little feet wet, and going about for hours in that way; she ate nothing, she moped, she was badly dressed, her hair was never taken care of, but fell over her face in a silky tangle, she didn’t get nearly enough sleep. Mrs. Hansen did what she could for her, incurring Minnie’s relentless hatred.
“I can’t see how you stood that odious, interfering woman so long,” she said to Petersen. “As soon as I’m well, she’ll go, I can promise you!”
He tried to defend Mrs. Hansen, but with no success. And she, on her part, made as many veiled insinuations against her mistress as she dared. Mr. Petersen was not comfortable.
One evening he was sitting reading in his library while Minnie lay on the sofa with closed eyes and little Sandra was playing at his feet, talking in a low voice to her dolls. It was after nine; Mrs. Hansen had long ago cleared up and gone home to the new cottage—one of Mr. Petersen’s—which her husband had bought upon Minnie’s arrival. The house was quiet; there was for the moment a little peace, and Mr. Petersen was enjoying it. Then came a rap at the back door. He was surprised to see Hansen.
“Could I have maybe one, two minutes?” he asked solemnly.
“Of course!” said Mr. Petersen. “Come in! We’ll sit down in the kitchen, not to disturb Mrs. Petersen. Now! What’s wrong?”
Hansen took a chair in a manner combining Socialistic equality with the politeness due to a much richer man.
“It’s this way,” he said, “my wife she is badly upset about this business.”
“What business?” Mr. Petersen enquired with a sinking heart, surmising another miserable disturbance between the two women, an unusually bad one if their men had to be dragged into it.
“Losing all these things. She thinks maybe you begin to suspect her.”
Mr. Petersen’s face flushed.
“Nonsense, Hansen!”
“Nonsense all right,” said Hansen, with slow obstinacy. “But that’s what she thinks. First one thing, then another is every day going.”
His English grew more and more halting, but he wouldn’t for worlds have used his and Mr. Petersen’s native tongue. They must under all circumstances preserve the illusion of being Americans.
“For ten, twelve years you know us now, Mr. Petersen,” he went on. “All the same, this is a queer business and my old woman she doesn’t like it. She thinks maybe very soon you begin to suspect her.”
“But I tell you I’d never suspect her,” Mr. Petersen insisted.
“The Missis could.”
“Nonsense!” he said again, but he made no impression upon the stolid Swede—nor upon himself.
“Anyway, Mr. Petersen, I want to pay you any time you are thinking my wife is taking something. Any time you would think she got a chicken or what, you just tell me, Mr. Petersen, and I pay you.”
“But I tell you I’d never think so.”
“Maybe sometime you could, Mr. Petersen.”
Mr. Petersen understood what he meant.
“Here you are with a new wife, and what she thinks you’re going to think before long,” was what Hansen’s tone implied, and he resented the implication. They talked a long time about it; neither gave an inch. Hansen’s parting words were:
“Remember, I pay you any time, Mr. Petersen!”
And Mr. Petersen’s:
“Nonsense!”
Nevertheless, he felt obliged now to consider this thing seriously. He sat alone in the kitchen and reflected until bed time, but couldn’t reach any sort of conclusion. Mrs. Hansen was absolutely above suspicion, unless she had suddenly gone mad, and that he couldn’t accept. Sandra never wanted food, and anyway, she would have been discovered. Michael had no opportunities, tramps couldn’t remain invisible, stray dogs wouldn’t rifle the apple barrel, wouldn’t and couldn’t be so nicely discriminating. His mind dwelt upon Minnie, he remembered things he had read or heard about morbid cravings for certain things to eat, about temporary mental derangements.... But that idea filled him with such alarm and uneasiness that he refused to consider it. He evolved a diabolic dog, actually invented excuses for it....
The very next day he found out, quite by accident. He was going to lunch at the Eagle House with a rather important client and he hurried home to put on a clean collar and his cherished white flannel trousers, worn only on semi-official occasions. Minnie was taking a bath, so he didn’t even call out to ask her where his things were. She wouldn’t have known anyway. He was accustomed to searching patiently for every article when it was required.
He went through his own bureau drawers and his own closet in vain; then he went to look in Minnie’s appalling wardrobe.
On the shelf there, lying on a piece of newspaper, behind her best hat, lay half a cold leg of lamb.
A corpse could scarcely have terrified him more. In a panic he seized his cap and rushed out of the house as he was; and Minnie never knew he had been home at all.