Death of a Tall Man (23 page)

One of Martini's inalienable rights was to help Mr. North make cocktails. Here the routine was established. Martha, the maid, brought in ice, glasses, mixer, and gin and vermouth. She put them down on the living-room chest which served as a bar. Martini arrived next, leaping from any convenient position, not quite landing on the glasses. She then awaited Mr. North, meanwhile experimenting to see whether her head still fitted into the mixing pitcher. On such occasions, Mr. North was always commendably prompt.

With his arrival, Martini sat back and watched. She watched with disconcerting intentness and, Mr. North sometimes thought, a rather censorious expression. It occurred to Mr. North, at intervals, that Martini was a conservative; that she thought three-to-one quite dry enough. She had been known to touch Mr. North's hand lightly, remindingly, when he was for the fourth time filling the measuring glass with gin. Once she had succeeded in upsetting the mixing glass and spilling its contents, but this was not unalloyed triumph. Some of the gin wet her right front foot and she departed angrily. She later licked the foot, without pleasure but also, so far as the Norths could determine, without ill effect.

When the drinks were mixed and the glasses filled—very full because the Norths tried to limit themselves to two each, and there was no sense in not making the most of them—it was understood that Martini would leap from the chest top to Mr. North's shoulder. This was always an interesting moment, since if Martini timed it perfectly, so that Mr. North had a brimming glass in each hand, there was almost certain to be spillage. The cause of temperance was thus served. Martini was then privileged to ride—moving now and then as it occurred to her—until Mr. North had given Mrs. North her cocktail and had sat down with his own. The game ended then; Martini was supposed to think of something else.

This evening went as usual. Martha entered at a few minutes after six, according to ritual. Martini entered two seconds later, having taken off from the mantelpiece. She put her head in the mixing pitcher and took it out as Mr. North arrived. Mr. North mixed and poured, took a deep breath for steadiness and reached to pick the glasses up. Then the telephone rang.

Bells excited Martini. The doorbell was best, because there was always a chance that it would lead to an opportunity to catapult herself into the outer hall. But telephone bells were all right too, and demanded attention. A cat could race to the box in the hall which held the bells and sit down and watch it. This telephone bell excited Martini and she took off—unhesitatingly, with grace, with no feeling of responsibility. She knocked over both filled glasses, scratched one of Mr. North's extended hands in her passage, and landed running. Mr. North started convulsively and his right hand hit the vermouth bottle. It tottered and he lunged for it, caught his sleeve on the handle of the mixing spoon and tilted the pitcher against the gin bottle with a sharp crack. Mr. North said, “Damn!” with intense feeling; Mrs. North said, “Teeney!” and then, into the telephone, “Hello.”

“One moment, please,” an operator said. “Here's your party.” Then, on the heels of that, a girl's voice said, “Hello, hello. Is this Mrs. North? Mrs. Gerald North?”

“Yes,” Pam said. “Ouch.” Martini had returned, landing on Mrs. North's shoulder. “That was just the cat,” Pam North said. “Who is this?”

“Deborah Brooks,” the voice said. “In North Salem. Did you hear the radio?”

Her voice was quick and seemed excited.

“What radio?” Mrs. North said. “No, I don't think so.”

“About the man who killed himself,” Deborah said. “The man named Oakes. I just heard it. And I know him and he wasn't—”

And then the voice stopped. It was not as if Deborah Brooks had stopped speaking. There was a crackling noise, and then silence, except for a faint humming. Then, very far away there was a voice, which might still be Deborah's, saying something that sounded like “—had to tell—” Then there was silence again, and this time it was unbroken.

“Hello,” Mrs. North said. “Hello. Hello.”

Nobody answered her. She put the telephone back and looked at it. She looked at Jerry, who was examining the mixing pitcher.

“Not broken,” he said. “But I'll have to start all over. And one glass is. Who was it?”

“Deborah Brooks,” Pam said. “But something happened. And—it sounded important. About Mr. Oakes.”

“What about Mr. Oakes?” Jerry wanted to know.

“I don't know,” Pam said. “She said, ‘he wasn't' and then something happened. I don't know what he wasn't.”

Jerry went on mixing new drinks for a moment. He poured them carefully. Then he turned around.

“She seemed excited,” Pam said. “Do you think we ought to do something?”

Jerry thought and nodded. He said they ought to call her back. Pam started it. It was slow—information, the operator, another operator, a sound as of a telephone ringing far away. But then—nothing. Jerry delivered drinks; Pam sipped and waited. She thought she heard a voice and said, “Hello?” quickly, but nobody answered her. She waited again and then the operator came on and asked what number she was calling. Pam told her. There was another pause.

“I'm sorry,” the operator said, “that line seems to be temporarily out of order. Shall I try again later?”

“I don't know,” Pam said. “Yes, all right.”

She put the telephone back.

“Something happened,” she said.

“Country telephones,” Jerry said, swallowing. “Too much vermouth?”

Pam swallowed.

“Not for me,” she said. “It's not strong at all.”

Jerry smiled. He started to say something and decided against it. The more vermouth, the stronger. That was Pam's belief, amounting in intensity to a faith.

“I wonder what she wanted,” Pam said. “It must have been important. But what was it? What is it that Mr. Oakes wasn't?”

“I don't know,” Jerry said. “I've no idea. Wasn't really Mr. Oakes?”

Pam shook her head.

“Everybody says he was Mr. Oakes,” she said. “They couldn't all be wrong. Maybe—” She paused. Then she spoke in a different tone.
“Jerry!”
she said. “Maybe—‘wasn't the man who was there yesterday.' Do you think?”

Jerry considered it. He lifted his shoulders and let them fall again.

“Nothing to think on,” he said. “Possibly. Maybe ‘wasn't the man who killed Dr. Gordon.' Maybe ‘wasn't the kind of man to kill himself.' Maybe—” He ended it and finished his drink.

“Jerry,” Pam said, “I'm—I'm worried.”

Gerald North put his glass down firmly.

“Listen, Pam,” he said. “We're not going out there to find out. Not tonight. We've just started our drinks and dinner's—”

Pam did not seem to be listening. She looked at the telephone. She reached for it, and dialed. She said, “Lieutenant William Weigand, please,” and waited. Then she said, again, “Lieutenant William Weigand, please,” and, after a moment, “Oh” in a disappointed voice. She listened again. She said, “Well, who is there?” and then, “Can I speak to him, please?”

“Mr. Stein,” she said, then. “This is Pamela North. I want to talk to the lieutenant. Do you know where he is? Or Sergeant Mullins?”

She listened, said, “Both?” and after that, “No, I guess not.” Then she hung up.

“They've gone to North Salem,” she said, and in a moment she was standing. “Jerry! Something's happening!”

“But—” Jerry said, and looked over his shoulder at the cocktail chest. “We've just—”

Martha, the maid, was resigned. She spoke to Martini and said, “Those folks of yours, cat” and Martini looked at her, enquiringly, with round blue eyes. Martha unmade the table; she took the roast out of the oven and put it on a kitchen shelf. Then she looked at Martini. “Even if it is too hot, cat,” she said, and put the roast in the refrigerator. Martini made a low sound in her throat, but it was impossible to tell what she meant. It was probable, of course, that she was protesting the confinement of the roast in a place which she could not—as yet—open single-pawed.

The wind tore at the top of the convertible; clouds hurried across the moon. Far away, to the north and east, there was the flicker of lightning.

“We do pick the damnedest nights for little trips to the country,” Jerry said. “The damnedest nights.”

But there was no mist; the wind took care of that. So they went fast. They did not drive into rain until they turned off the Hutchinson River Parkway and started north.

10

T
UESDAY
, 6:20
P.M. TO
8:45
P.M.

The trees Debbie could see from the study window were bending low before the wind; their small leaves, so newly out, must be hanging on for dear life. But it was too dark to see the leaves, except as a softness on branches which had been, only a few weeks earlier, bare and hard. The window rattled and cool air came in around it. Then there was a flash of light and, some seconds after it, the heavy roll of thunder. Summer was coming back; this was a foretaste of summer. It was like a summer storm.

The rain increased with sudden fury. Big drops splashed against the glass of the window, spotting a thin film of dust. Then it was as if someone, maliciously, had hurled a pail of water against the window. Debbie moved across the room to the window on the side. It was only splattered; she could see out of it across the lawn on the east. Rain was slanting through the air; the air was almost solid with water. Then lightning flashed again, and, for a second after, it seemed to rain harder than ever. Then the rain slackened a little, so that she could see the bending trees along the far'wall. One of them, a poplar, was sending out a rain of its own—a fleecy rain of cotton-supported seeds. But the real rain beat down the cottony particles remorselessly.

The storm was exciting; the world was suddenly tumultuous and unrestrained. Nature had abandoned all the conventions of good behavior and was having a fling. The wind was blowing everything away. There was a kind of savage gayety in the storm; it made Debbie feel excited and almost frightened, and at the same time almost gay. It was like other storms—like the storm she and Dan had been caught in, once, on a golf course, and had run through, wet and uncomfortable, with the rain molding their clothing to them. She had been wearing a thin blouse and slacks, and the soft, wet material of her blouse molded itself to her body and she had been embarrassed and at the same time glad—and had known how she looked, after they found shelter finally, and had not cared. Dan had looked at her and smiled and then, because they were alone—and wet and young and happy—had held her close to him a moment and kissed her, very hard. He had let her go and stood for a moment looking at her and then she had looked down at herself in the wet blouse and said, “oh,” as if she were surprised, and had pulled the clinging material away from her body. She smiled, now, remembering. Always, she thought, I will remember that when there's a storm.

But now Dan was not with her; he was in the storm alone. Perhaps he was under shelter somewhere; surely he was under shelter. But he might merely be walking through it, head down, and if that was it she wished she could be with him. Always, until recently, he had wanted her to be with him; even when he first came home, although from the first he had been strange and nervous. It was only recently, since he had grown so angry because Andy wanted them to wait, that he had taken to going off by himself.

She turned from the window. Nothing would happen to him. A girl could walk through the storm, and nothing would happen except that she would be wet and cold and blown about. She had lived too much in the country to be afraid of the weather—at any rate of spring and summer weather. And Dan was strong and tough, and had been through a lot worse than this; had been through things which made all this fury of nature almost gentle. He would walk through it. Or he would find shelter. He would be all right.

She told herself this, knowing it was reasonable and true. But even while she reassured herself, the gay feeling which the storm, and memories of other storms, had brought, left her. It did not leave slowly, reminiscently. It went quite suddenly and, looking out at the driving rain and the driven trees, she shivered. The storm, instead of seeming an adventure, seemed all at once but another part of the turmoil which was in her mind—the turmoil which had filled the day. Uneasily, unexplainably, she was afraid—afraid for Dan, afraid for herself.

She turned quickly back to the telephone, dialed and listened for the sound which would mean that a light was flashing in front of the local operator. There was no sound. She replaced the telephone, put it to her ear again and listened. The hum which should have been in her ear—the “dial tone” they called it—was not there. There was an odd, subdued scratching sound, and nothing else. The telephone was still dead. But she had told Mr. North and Mrs. North—

Then she stopped, with her hand still on the telephone. Had she told Mrs. North? Or—had Mrs. North heard her? She had talked for a moment, as soon as she had explained herself to Mrs. North, and had told her about the mistake, and then something—the cessation, perhaps, of some sound so familiar that you knew of it only when it stopped—had made her feel that she was alone. Then she had said “Mrs. North? Do you hear me? Mrs. North?” and there had been no answer. While she had been talking, something had happened to the telephone. But how much had Pamela North heard before the telephone went dead?

Debbie realized then that she had merely assumed that her message had been heard, and that this assumption had given her some sort of reassurance. It was not that the message was important, because she was not sure that it was important. It might be. But the thought that she had shared this information—the only information she had which might help—had somehow freed her mind, given her a sense of release. Perhaps it was the beginning of her present doubt, as much as her uneasiness about Dan, which had erased the gayety from her mind.