He glanced at his wife.
She said, “I’m Vivian Carter. We have no children. We’re not married legally, although a ceremony was performed in Mexico about ten years ago.”
I said to Alftmont, “Tell me about that divorce case.”
“What about it?”
“All about it,” I said.
He placed the tips of his fingers together and said, “To begin with, my first wife, Mrs. Lintig, was swept into the hectic swirl of social change which came with the war. There was an emotional backwash which resulted in a breakdown of the conventions. There were—”
I held up my hand, palm outward, giving him a traffic officer’s stop signal, and said to the woman, “Suppose you tell me.”
She said, easily and naturally, “I was an office nurse for Dr. Lintig. I fell in love with him. He didn’t know anything about it. I made up my mind he’d never know. I was perfectly willing to let Amelia — Mrs. Lintig — have the position of wife and the affection of her husband. I asked only crumbs — the chance to be near him, and I kept very much in the background.”
Dr. Alftmont nodded vigorously.
“I wanted to serve him, to be where I could help. I was young and foolish. I know the answer to that one now, but I didn’t twenty-one years ago. Oakview was in the throes of a boom. New people were coming in. Money was plentiful. There was, as Charles has said, a period of hectic change. Amelia went for it in a big way. She started drinking heavily and became a leader of the younger set. The standards of that social set were different from anything which had ever been known before. There was drinking, petting, and — and brawling. Charles didn’t like it. Amelia did.