The Wycherly Woman Read Online Free

girls seemed to think so. You can talk to her roommate Dolly Lang about that, and other things. Dolly’s a good girl, you can count on her to tell you the truth as far as she understands it.”
    “Is Dolly in the building?”
    “I think so. Would you like me to call her?” She started to get up.
    “In a minute, thanks. What does Dolly have to say about her?”
    Mrs. Doncaster hesitated. “I think I’ll let Dolly speak for herself. We don’t entirely agree.”
    “What’s the point of disagreement?”
    “Dolly thinks she meant to come back. I don’t. If she meant to come back, why didn’t she come back? Because she didn’t want to, that’s my opinion. This place wasn’t good enough for Miss Wycherly. She was constantly complaining about the facilities, objecting to perfectly sensible regulations. She wanted something fancier and freer.”
    “Did she say so?”
    “Not in so many words, perhaps. But I know the type. The first thing she did when she moved in was tear out all my good drapes, and put in her own. Without even asking permission.”
    “That sounds as if she meant to stay, and to come back.”
    “That isn’t what it means to me. It means that she was thoughtless—a spoiled rich brat who cared for nobody!”
    The ugly phrase hung in the room. A vaguely appalled expression crept over Mrs. Doncaster’s face, changing the hard mouth and transforming the eyes. They went to the pictured face on the piano with something approaching shame, or even fear. She said to the smiling oblong moustache, not to me:
    “I’m sorry. I’m all upset, I’m not fit to talk to man nor beast.” She got up and moved to the door. “I’ll call Dolly down for you.”
    “I’d just as soon go up. I want to see the apartment, anyway. What number is it?”
    “Seven, on the second floor.”
    I faced her in the narrow doorway. “Is there anything important you haven’t told me about Phoebe? About her relations with men, for example?”
    “I hardly knew the girl. She didn’t confide in me.”
    Her mouth closed like a mousetrap, not the kind that would ever cause the world to beat a path to her door.
    I went up the outside stairs to the second floor. Behind the door of number seven, a typewriter was stuttering. I knocked, and a girl’s voice answered wearily:
    “Come in.”
    She was sitting at a desk by the window, with the heavy drapes closed and the reading-lamp on. A small rabbit-shaped girl in a bulky white Orion sweater and blue slacks. Her eyes were blurred with what was probably thought, and her legs were twisted around the legs of her chair. She didn’t bother to disentangle them.
    “Miss Lang? I’d like to speak to you. Are you busy?”
    “I’m horribly busy.” She tugged at her short dark bangs, miming advanced despair, and gave me a quick little ghastly smile. “I have this Socio paper due at three o’clock this afternoon and my semester grade depends on it and I can’t concentrate my quote mind unquote. Do you know anything about the causes of juvenile delinquency?”
    “Enough to write a book, I think.”
    She brightened. “Really? Are you a sociologist?”
    “A kind of poor-man’s sociologist. I’m a detective.”
    “Isn’t that fabulous? Maybe you can tell me. Is it the parents or the children who are responsible for j.d.? I can’t make up my quote mind unquote.”
    “I wish you’d stop saying that about your quote mind unquote.”
    “Is it boring? My apologies. Do you blame the parents or the children?”
    “I don’t blame anybody, if you want an honest answer. I think blame is one of the things we have to get rid of. When children blame their parents for what’s happened to them, or parents blame their children for what they’ve done, it’s part of the problem, and it makes the problem worse. People shouldtake a close look at themselves. Blaming is the opposite of doing that.”
    “That’s good,” she said enthusiastically. “If I can only get it into the right language.”