An Air That Kills (15 page)

“Not ones leading over the top of the cliff.” Lehman turned to Aggie, who was bouncing all over the place. “Be a good lass and stay out of the way. In fact, how about you going back and waiting in the car?”

“But I haven't showed you anything yet.”

“You've shown me quite a lot more than I expected.”

“Tell me what.”

“Well, stand still a minute. See these marks here? They were made by the tires of an automobile, a new one and a heavy one, my guess is a Lincoln or a Cadillac. Now where do they lead?”

“Nowhere. They just stop.”

“Exactly. They just stop.”

Lehman walked to the edge of the cliff and Miss Barabou followed him, wide-eyed and nervous. “What does it all mean?”

“It means there's a car down there, perhaps with people in it.”

“People.
But we've got to do something right away, help them . . .”

“I'm afraid it would be too late. The marks aren't fresh and the water's deep.”

“Perhaps you're being too pessimistic. It could be that some people just stopped here for a look at the view and went on again. That's more likely than . . .”

“There's no sign that the car turned around.”

Miss Barabou's hand moved to her throat. “I'll—I'd better take Aggie back to the car.”

But she stood peering down at the water below, as if she hoped to distinguish the outlines of a car, the contours of people. The glare of sun on water dazzled her eyes and she stumbled back half-blinded.

Lehman caught her by the arm. “Watch it. That's a long fall.”

“Yes.”

“It's a city car, I'll bet you that.”

“How can you tell?”

“Around these parts a person driving an expensive car would still be using snow tires at this time of year. The kind of winters we have up here, we need them. But in a city where the roads are kept clear, snow tires wouldn't be necessary.” He paused. “I wonder.”

“You wonder what?”

“What makes a person drive over a cliff.”

Lehman drove Miss Barabou and Aggie back to school and left them there with instructions to say nothing to anyone. Then he called the Provincial Police and returned to the cliff. Three police cars were waiting for him when he arrived, as well as the resuscitation squad of the local fire station, all ready to go into action.

No action was necessary.

Two barges, sent down from Meaford with winches and dredging equipment, located the car in twenty feet of water just below the cliff where Lehman had found the tire tracks. The car was barely damaged, the windows and windshield were unbroken, and Ron Galloway was still inside, fastened snugly to the driver's seat by his safety belt.

FOURTEEN

Ralph Turee returned to his office from his eleven o'clock seminar feeling hungry and exhausted. He had got up too early for sufficient rest and too late for breakfast. Harry had spent the night at his house and the two men had talked until after three in the morning. Talked and talked and settled nothing beyond what was already settled—Galloway was missing, and Thelma was waiting for him to come back and claim her as his future wife.

He sat down at his desk and was unpacking the lunch Nancy had made for him when the door opened and Nancy herself appeared.

Turee looked up in surprise. It was not a rule that Nancy should stay away from his office during working hours, but her visits were so infrequent that she looked strange in the surroundings, like a new graduate student perhaps, or some­one who'd lost her way in the corridors and merely stopped by for directions. She was a small pretty woman with a round cherubic face and rather short sturdy legs—“practical” legs, Turee called them, in contrast to what he considered her impractical mind. She was wearing her new violet-colored Easter suit, which meant that the occasion, whatever it might be, was important.

He rose and kissed her briefly on the forehead by way of greeting. “How did you get here?”

“Took a cab.”

“A
cab.
My God, Nancy, I told you we're short of money this month after those Easter outfits you bought for the kids and . . .”

“Save your lecture. This is an emergency.”

Her tone rather than her words stopped him. “Has one of the kids been . . .”

“Nothing like that. Esther called. She wants me to spend the rest of the day with her.”

“Why?”

“Ron's been found.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

Something inside Turee that had been stretched tauter and tauter like a violin string broke suddenly with a twang. Along with a dozen other sensations he felt a sense of relief that the suspense was over. Ron was, in a way, now safe; safe from Esther's cold scorn, and Thelma's demands, and Harry's reproach, and the ridicule of the world. “How did it happen?”

“He drove off a cliff into the bay, somewhere not too far from the lodge. He had the convertible with the top down. Esther said the policeman who came to tell her said Ron mightn't have been found for days, or weeks even, if he hadn't had his safety belt fastened.” Her lower lip projected childishly and began to tremble. “I don't know, there's some­thing so f-f-funny about that, Ron was always p-playing it s-s-safe.”

“Don't cry.”

“I can't help it.”

“All right then.” He watched with detachment while she dabbed at her eyes, wondering for the hundredth time at what peculiar things roused a woman's emotions. The fact that Ron drove over a cliff to his death didn't seem to bother her as much as the safety belt being fastened. “Ron did it intentionally?”

“Yes. Esther had a letter from him this morning—he'd posted it Saturday night in some little town up north. She told me about it on the phone.”

“And?”

“Well, this will come as a great shock to you, Ralph, but—well, Thelma's pregnant. By Ron. It's incredible, utterly incredible, he and Harry were such good friends. I can't
believe
it. Can you?”

He turned away deliberately, without answering.

“You don't even seem surprised, Ralph. You mean you
knew?
All along? And you didn't tell me?”

“We'll go into that another time.”

“But you . . .”

“How is Esther taking it?”

“I don't know. She sounded calm enough. She seemed anxious for me to come and stay with her, though, so I will.”

“Good girl.”

“I couldn't very well refuse. Oh yes, and I've made arrange­ments with Mrs. Sullivan to go and meet Janie's school bus. The other kids are big enough to look after themselves for a while.”

“They won't have to. My last class is a two o'clock. I'll be home before four.”

“No, dear, you won't.”

He looked exasperated. “What the hell does that mean, no-dear-you-won't?”

“I've been thinking it over. Somebody has to tell Thelma. It wouldn't be humane to let her hear on the radio or read it in the newspaper. Someone has to drive to Weston and tell her in person.”

“Meaning me.”

“You're the logical one. I thought of Harry, but it's so difficult locating him when he's on the job going from office to office. Besides, having Harry tell her wouldn't be very­—well, delicate, would it? So that leaves you.”

“Obviously.”

“You don't mind very much, do you?”

“I mind like the very devil.”

“Someone has to do it. I'd
volunteer, but I don't
trust myself. I'm angry with her, bitterly angry, I couldn't even pretend any sympathy.”

“Can I?”

“No, but you can
feel
it,” she said earnestly. “You're much kinder than I am about human frailties.”

When he reached Weston it was five o'clock and his nerves were rubbed raw by traffic tensions and anticipation of his errand. At the very outskirts of the city he was still thinking up excuses to turn around and go back, or to call Bill Win­slow or Joe Hepburn and pass the buck to one of them.

Though it was still bright and sunny, the blinds were al­ready drawn on the windows of the square red-brick house where Thelma lived. Turee had to ring the doorbell half a dozen times before Thelma finally appeared.

Freshly scrubbed, without make-up, and with her long fair hair combed straight back, Alice-in-Wonderland style, she ap­peared younger and more vulnerable than Turee remembered her. Although he had talked to her on the telephone, he hadn't seen her since the last time the fellows had gathered at Harry's house a month ago, and on that occasion, as on other similar ones, she'd been unobtrusive and efficient, quietly refilling glasses and passing sandwiches, more like a good maid than the mistress of the house. Looking at her now, Turee tried to recall whether at any time during that night she'd paid special attention to Galloway, whether hands had touched briefly, or significant glances had passed back and forth, or knowing smiles been exchanged. The only incident Turee could think of happened late in the evening: Galloway had dropped and broken his glass and Thelma had cleaned up the mess. No one thought anything of it at the time, no one saw anything significant or symbolic in Thelma's kneeling docilely at Galloway's feet, picking up the pieces of glass and blotting the carpet with paper towels. Galloway had not offered to help. He'd seemed, in fact, stunned by the accident, as if he'd broken some valuable crystal by Steuben instead of an ordinary tumbler from the dime store.

“Hello, Ralph.”

“Hello, Thelma. How are you?”

“Fine. I think, fine.” She was carrying a man's blue and white striped shirt and a threaded needle. “Come in, won't you? I'm just sewing.”

The three lamps in the living room were turned on but the room still looked gloomy, and the atmosphere was cool and damp as if the place had been shut up all day and used as a refuge by someone hiding from the sun or the neighbors.

Thelma sat on the chesterfield beside a pile of men's clothes, socks and shirts and undershorts. “Harry called at noon. Thanks for letting him spend the night with you.”

“He's welcome to stay any time. The kids are crazy about him.”

“Oh.”

“He likes them, too. He doesn't even mind them climbing all over him at six-thirty in the morning. That's a true test.”

“Is it?”

“My own opinion is that Harry would make a very fine father. He's got all the . . .”

“You're wasting your time,” she said, flatly and finally. “Harry is not the father of my child. I couldn't possibly go on living with him, pretending that he was. If that's what you're suggesting.”

“I'm not merely suggesting, I'm strongly urging you to reconsider. Harry and I talked it over last night. He's willing, he's actually eager to assume responsibility for the child. He loves you, Thelma.”

“I know that. But I don't love him. And if I had to con­tinue living with him under such false pretenses I might grow to hate him. No child should be brought up in a house of hate as I was. No, Ralph, don't argue. The future is settled.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Oh, there'll be a lot of talk, a lot of scandal, but it will blow over. Then Ron and I can move somewhere else and start a life of our own.” She spoke quickly, glibly, as if she had said these exact words to herself many times, per­haps because she believed them, perhaps because she was merely trying to believe them. “You don't mind if I go on sewing, do you? Harry's coming for his things after be finishes work and I want them to be in order. He won't have anyone to look after him for a while.”

“For a while?”

“He'll get married again some day . . . I know he thinks his love for me is unique and undying and so on, but I under­stand Harry pretty well. Some nice woman will come along and give him the kind of life he wants.”

“You've given him the kind of life he wants.”

“He's easily satisfied. I'm not.”

“You put up a good front.”

“I have my pride. Oh, I guess you think that word sounds peculiar coming from me, but what I said is true. I couldn't very well go around telling people like you and Nancy that I was bored and lonely sitting around this house all day, knowing the future would be exactly the same. The only person I ever told was Ron. He told me things too—that Esther was smarter than he was and he was always embarrassed when they went out together and she dominated the conversation and everything. He said it made him feel as if he were her idiot son whom she dragged along out of duty.”

It was, to Turee, a rather bizarre picture of the Galloways' relationship, and yet he realized instantly that it showed some true colors and some bold, clear lines.

“I told him he needn't fear anything like that from me, I'm not very smart. Or if I am, nobody's ever mentioned it.”

Suddenly she put down her sewing and flashed him a glance so sharp and direct that he blinked trying to meet it. “What are you doing here, Ralph? You're usually home by this time. I know you and Nancy eat early because of the children. Did you just come to hear me chatter?”

“No.
.
”

“I knew as soon as I opened the door and saw you, I knew there must be a reason. An important one. Is it about Ron?”

“Yes.”

“If it were good news you'd have told me right away. So it's bad news. How bad?”

“He's dead.”

“You're not—there can't be any mistake?”

“No.”

She bunched forward until her forehead rested on her knees and stayed there motionless, as if she'd lost the will to move. Street noises seeped in through the cracks of the windows and streaks of light past the edges of the drawn blinds. Turee wished he were outside with the noise and the light, instead of in this room where everything seemed to have died, not even a clock ticked or a fly buzzed.

Thelma spoke finally, her voice muffled by the folds of her skirt. “The car.”

“What about the car?”

“He had an accident?”

“There is reason to believe,” Turee said cautiously, “that the act was intentional.”

“What reason?”

“He posted a letter to Esther before he died.”

“To
Esther.”
Her head snapped up like a puppet's jerked by a string. “Not to me. Why not to
me?
Why not to me? I'm the one who loved him. I gave up everything for him, my home, my husband, my good name, and I'd have given up anything more I had. Why not to me? Why not . . . Oh God, I can't stand it. Ron, Ron, Ron. Oh God, come back, Ron, come back. Don't leave me alone. I'm scared. I'm scared.”

“Thelma. Please.”

“Ron, Ron, Ron darling. Oh, my God!”

She kept on moaning, her teeth pressed into her lower lip until the blood began to run, as if she were consciously inflicting mutilation on herself as punishment. Presently the metallic taste of the blood made her cough, and the moans turned into a fit of coughing. She held one of Harry's shirts against her mouth to stifle the sound. When she put it down again it was stained with blood and tears, and Turee thought what a sharp piece of irony it was that Harry, who had done nothing against anyone, should have to sop up the tears and wipe off the blood.

“Let me fix you a drink, Thelma.”

“No!”

“Well, perhaps Harry has some pills lying around that will help calm you down a little.”

“Pills!” She spat the word into the center of the room as if she were aiming at an invisible cuspidor. “Harry has a million pills lying around. Go take them all as far as I'm concerned.”