The Progress of Love

here, whom he visited as a child. Both dead now, the aunt and uncle, but the place must have held pleasant memories for him. And it was cheap; this was surely a cheaper house than they could have afforded. They meant to spend their money travelling. No children.
    She didn’t call; she didn’t halt again. She climbed the stairs and didn’t look around as she came up; she faced straight ahead. Ahead was the bathroom, with the door open. It was clean and empty.
    She turned at the top of the stairs toward the Weebles’ bedroom. She had never been upstairs in this house before, but she knew where that would be. It would be the extended room at the front, with the wide window overlooking the street.
    The door of that room was open.
    Peg came downstairs and left the house by the kitchen, the utility room, the side door. Her footprints showed on the carpet and on the linoleum tiles, and outside on the snow. She closed the door after herself. Her car had been running all this time and was sitting in its own little cloud of steam. She got in and backed out and drove to the police station in the Town Hall.
    “It’s a bitter cold morning, Peg,” the constable said.
    “Yes, it is.”
    “So what can I do for you?”
• • •
    Robert got more, from Karen.
    Karen Adams was the clerk in the Gilmore Arcade. She was a young married woman, solidly built, usually good-humored, alert without particularly seeming to be so, efficient without a lot of bustle. She got along well with the customers; she got along with Peg and Robert. She had known Peg longer, of course. She defended her against those people who said Peg had got her nose in the air since she married rich. Karen said Peg hadn’t changed from what she always was. But after today she said, “I always believed Peg and me to be friends, but now I’m not so sure.”
    Karen started work at ten. She arrived a little before that and asked if there had been many customers in yet, and Peg said no, nobody.
    “I don’t wonder,” Karen said. “It’s too cold. If there was any wind, it’d be murder.”
    Peg had made coffee. They had a new coffee maker, Robert’s Christmas present to the store. They used to have to get take-outs from the bakery up the street.
    “Isn’t this thing marvellous?” Karen said as she got her coffee.
    Peg said yes. She was wiping up some marks on the floor.
    “Oh-oh,” said Karen. “Was that me or you?”
    “I think it was me,” Peg said.
    “So I didn’t think anything of it,” Karen said later. “I thought she must’ve tracked in some mud. I didn’t stop to think, Where would you get down to mud with all this snow on the ground?”
    After a while, a customer came in, and it was Celia Simms, and she had heard. Karen was at the cash, and Peg was at the back, checking some invoices. Celia told Karen. She didn’t know much; she didn’t know how it had been done or that Peg was involved.
    Karen shouted to the back of the store. “Peg! Peg! Something terrible has happened, and it’s your next-door neighbors!”
    Peg called back, “I know.”
    Celia lifted her eyebrows at Karen—she was one of those who didn’t like Peg’s attitude—and Karen loyally turned aside and waited till Celia went out of the store. Then she hurried to the back, making the hangers jingle on the racks.
    “Both the Weebles are shot dead, Peg. Did you know that?”
    Peg said, “Yes. I found them.”
    “You did! When did you?”
    “This morning, just before I came in to work.”
    “They were murdered!”
    “It was a murder-suicide,” Peg said. “He shot her and then he shot himself. That’s what happened.”
    “When she told me that,” Karen said, “I started to shake. I shook all over and I couldn’t stop myself.” Telling Robert this, she shook again, to demonstrate, and pushed her hands up inside the sleeves of her blue plush jogging suit.
    “So I said, ‘What did you do when you found them,’ and she said, ‘I went and told the police.’ I said, ‘Did you scream, or what?’ I said didn’t her legs buckle, because I know mine would’ve. I can’t imagine how I would’ve got myself out of there. She said she didn’t remember much about getting out, but she did remember closing the door, the outside door, and thinking, Make sure that’s closed in case some dog could get in. Isn’t that awful? She was right, but it’s awful to think of. Do you think she’s in shock?”
    “No,” Robert said. “I think she’s all