I paddled around the lake a while, peering overside like a fisherman trying to smell out some good bass. But I wasn’t looking for bass. I was looking for the girl I had killed and thrown overboard in this lake, and I didn’t see her—which was good.

Back to shore, then, and I felt good—numb, in a way, but good. I felt sorry for Peggy, but in the long run I figured she was better off this way. I could never have married her, anyway.

A couple of days later I went back to the city, feeling tanned and refreshed and clean. I wasn’t expecting trouble. Peggy hadn’t had any relatives, she said, and no one knew she was coming with me on this trip. The reservation at the cabin had been in my name alone. The return half of her round-trip ticket had been burned and now lay in a jar of ashes at the bottom of the lake. It was too bad I couldn’t brag about it, but it certainly looked like I’d committed a perfect crime. Peggy Armour had just vanished, and no one would miss her, no one would ever find her body. Perfect.

That’s what I thought. Until I got back to the city and found how wrong I was.

Helen gave me the big welcome-back treatment. I almost thought she was genuinely glad to see me. Naturally, Berril was in the house when I got out of the cab and came in—he had been going through some of her father’s documents with her, he said—and he asked me if I’d enjoyed my vacation.

“Very much,” I said.

“You look good,” Berril said. “As if you got a weight off your back. You’re looking very relaxed, Mr. Foster.”

“Thanks,” I said casually. I wondered if Berril was hiding something back of those innocent-sounding words. Well, I wasn’t going to give him an inch of help. And I suppose I did look as if I had a weight off my back. A slim 110-pound weight that was at the bottom of an Adirondack lake, very naked and extremely dead.

* * *

Things went along well a day or so. Helen was nicer to me than usual, and the fellows at the office kidded me about my vacation. I felt good.

I hardly even missed Peggy. I knew I was going to miss those afternoons at her place after a while—but on the credit side of the ledger was the other stuff I had lost: the worrying about whether Helen would ever find out, the careful nervous inspections I had to give myself before entering our house, the sweat of transferring money to Peggy, the tension involved in waiting to find out whether or not she was pregnant.