Death Trap (18 page)

This was the same. A slight shifting, a change in the colors of blackness.

Then he turned and spat and looked at me again and said, “Where do you take that needle? Right in the vein?”

“There’s one thing you should know. So you can worry about it, Mackin. There’ll be no execution on Monday.”

“A score for your side? So it’ll be a week from Monday. Do you think that’s a kindness to the kid? It’s a hell of a way to buy a ticket into Vicky’s bed. You must be hard up, fella. This is friendly advice. I don’t hold grudges. Dick does. You pack up and get out or there’s going to be trouble, believe me.”

I had nothing more to say to him. Dusk was beginning to thicken. I went back to the Inn. When I looked back, Billy was sitting next to Paulson on the bench, one hand on his shoulder.

After I had shaved and changed I hunted up Charlie. I had one question for him, and it grew into two. “How is Dick Paulson’s health?”

“I don’t really know. There’s a rumor he has a bad heart. I don’t know how bad it is, or if he’s had an actual attack, but I do remember one lodge thing where we were advised not to initiate him. The lodge dreams up some pretty depressing stuff. Paulson has a lot of dignity. A humiliating initiation might have made him mad. And I hear he’s supposed to avoid getting mad.”

And I thought of my second question. “How well off is he?”

“Damn
well off. He doesn’t live up to it though, so few would think so. He doesn’t have to do his own meat cutting. But he saves plenty by doing it. It isn’t the store so much as the good real estate guesses he’s made. Then he got into scrap as a sideline during the war. Sold his yard out at just the right moment. He’s got five or six good farms I know of. And he’s got a nice fat piece of the new shopping center. He’s doing fine.”

Once you start a train of thought, there are a lot more questions. “Billy Mackin started from nothing. I understand he didn’t make it all himself.”

“Angela had some money. About twenty thousand, I’d guess. Then I think Dick loaned him some when he put up the new building. I don’t know how much or whether he’s paid it back.”

“I suppose you could say Dick has treated him like a son.”

“That’s pretty close. And you’re close to sneering, Hugh. I don’t get it. Billy is—”

“I know. He’s a good joe. You told me.”

“And he’s having a bad time right now.”

“Nobody has said anything at all about Mrs. Paulson. What’s she like?”

Charlie sipped his beer and glanced at the clock, “I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows. You’d have to meet her ten times before you could even come close to remembering her face. I think of her as being about ten shades of gray. Gray hair, dress, face, hands and conversation. I hear that long ago she was good looking and high spirited. You’d never know it. She does a lot of church work. She’s—Hell, Hugh, she’s a zombie. She acts one-tenth alive, and you think that if you yelled boo, she’d keel over.”

“Suppose Paulson has put the lid on her?”

“I wouldn’t figure him as the easiest man in the world to live with. Look at the clerks he’s got. They either get to be mice or they don’t stay.”

“Jane Ann was the one he couldn’t control.”

“I think she was just as tough as he is.”

“One thing more, and then I’ll let you go. After the body was found, did Paulson get sick?”

“He didn’t come back to the store for ten days. They kept it open and they couldn’t get a butcher so they closed the meat department. He looked like hell when he came back. They say it nearly killed him.”

“It could have?”

“If what I hear about his heart is true, it could have. But it didn’t.”

“Then suppose somebody told him about me and told him I was sitting in the park out there on a bench pumping Nancy, and pointed the two of us out and he came storming out and I got lippy with him, that could kill him too?”

“Maybe, if he got mad enough.”

“Suppose that good joe, Billy Mackin, brought him out?”

Charlie looked injured. “Billy is in a better position to know how bad Dick’s heart is. Did this really happen?”

“Just a little while ago. My act didn’t go over with Mackin. He checked me out with Chief Score.”

“Oh?”

“And just rattle this around in your head, Charlie. Maybe my act wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad. So why shouldn’t Mackin have taken me at face value? Why all the extra suspicion?”

He shook his head sorrowfully and clucked his tongue. “You are way, way out in left field.”

“He’s a good joe?”

“He hasn’t got all the background in the world. He bummed around when he was a kid. But he’s bright. Darn it all, Hugh, I know the guy. I’ve been drunk with him. I’ve played poker with him. I’ve served on committees with him. He’ll work like a dog for anything that’s for the good of the town. He knows how to tell a good story. Look, he’s a nice guy.”

“He likes the picture of himself as a pillar of the community. He works hard at it. He—We better skip it.” Charlie stood up. I looked up at him. “I’m told to get out of town,” I said.

“Again?”

“Think I should?”

“I know you won’t, so I won’t waste my breath.”

Facts, guesses and suspicions were all jumbled in my mind. I couldn’t sort them out logically. I wanted to have things in better order before I saw Vicky again. I had half promised I would be out to see her in the evening. I had some solitary drinks and ate a solitary meal. When I tried processes of orderly thought and logical planning I realized the cumulative strain of the past several days, the nervous tension, had impaired my powers of deduction. I wondered if Vicky could help. I would put everything on the table and we would try to sort it out together.

The thing that intrigued me most, more even than my suspicions of the wider scope of Mackin’s motivations, was the strange seizure which had turned Nancy into blinded rigidity. I wondered if this was something that happened to her often. Her father had seemed to treat it as something of no importance. But then I realized that it was entirely possible that he had been unaware of it. He might not have seen how she was from the point where he had shouted her name. By the time he took her arm and pulled her from the bench, she had started to come out of it. It seemed reasonable to suppose that this was not an ordinary thing. It seemed like hysteria. And I knew that if Nancy had been subject to such attacks, it would be known and somebody would have told me—Vicky, Ginny Garson, John Tennant, Don Higel—somebody.

I knew that the persistence of my questioning had driven her into that curious state. And it was related to Mackin.

I was lifting the coffee cup to my lips when I had an idea that fit so perfectly there was practically an audible click. I lowered the cup cautiously back to the saucer. My hand was shaking. I exhaled deeply. It all went with what John Tennant had said—about impressions lodging in the subconscious mind. Something Ginny Garson had said had made practically no impression on me at the time she had said it. Now it seemed important. It was when Ginny had been telling me of Jane Ann’s spirited defense of her sister’s prissiness. Jane Ann had told Ginny, without further explanation, that Nancy had a good reason for being that way. There could be a very good reason, and it could be associated with Mackin. It had to be.

I needed the services of a confirmed gossip, some nosy person who made everybody’s business her business, and coupled curiosity with a good memory. As soon as I thought of the specifications, I remembered the mean and narrow face of Vicky’s landlady, Mrs. Hemsold.

The wind had died and it did not seem as cold. The air was chill and tart and I decided to walk. There were no other pedestrians. Car tires made silk sounds on smooth asphalt. Mrs. Hemsold’s lights were on. I hesitated in front of the house, wondering what possible approach T could use. She would not be willing to talk to me. I could think of no plan, and decided to try to take my cues from her.

She must have heard me come onto the porch because the light went on and the door was snatched open as I reached toward the bell. “Have you come about the apartme—It’s you!”

“Yes. I wondered if you—”

“I have absolutely nothing to say to you, young man. You had better go back to that woman.” She slammed the door hard and the light went out.

I pressed the bell button. I kept my thumb on it for a long time. The door opened just far enough for me to see that she had fastened a chain lock across it, just far enough for me to see a narrow slice of her bitter old face.

“If you aren’t off my porch in ten seconds, young man, I’m going to call the police.”

“I was told you could help me, Mrs. Hemsold.”

“Help you? Help you what?”

I talked rapidly. “I know I could go to Mrs. Paulson, but I’m afraid this is the kind of thing that would upset her.”

“What would upset Myra Paulson?”

“I was told you are a friend and a good neighbor of theirs, Mrs. Hemsold. I know you are a decent and honest woman, Mrs. Hemsold, and you would want to see justice done.”

“I always try to do the right thing, young man. And I do not care to carry on a conversation with you. I saw you with her, carrying on with her. And you can stop beating around the bush. What is it you want?”

I took the gamble. In another moment she was going to slam the door again. “I want to ask you about Nancy Paulson’s trouble.”

“Trouble? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I could hardly believe I’d drawn a blank. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hemsold. I guess you never heard about it.”

“Oh! I know what you mean.
That
trouble. Land, that was, let me see, seven years ago.”

“Do we have to talk through the door? I assure you I’m an honest and reliable person.”

“Why should I let you in my house? And anyway, what does that trouble have to do with you?”

“I’m not very good at making speeches, Mrs. Hemsold. I know that everybody is convinced Alister Landy is guilty. But we all owe a debt to society to try to trace down and eliminate every last shred of doubt. That’s the Christian thing to do.”

“I don’t—Oh, now I see, but that is ridiculous! Do you mean to say that you think the same person could have been responsible? Heavens above, young man, you must be out of your mind.”

“But don’t you see that I can’t know how ridiculous it is until I get the story from somebody who really knows?”

I saw the war between moral indignation, and the desire of a lonely old woman to gossip. It was more skirmish than war. The door closed. The chain rattled and then it swung wide. “You might as well come in. My duty, as I see it, is to keep you from spreading malicious rumors about that sweet child. Now that you’re in, you might as well come all the way in and sit down.”

The old fashioned living-room was spotless. The wood gleamed with oil, wax and many polishings. There was a great abundance of embroidery and needlepoint. She sat in the rocker facing me.

“I want you to understand,” I said, “this is painful to me. I thought a long time before imposing on you. I assure you that I—”

“Nancy is a lovely child and I wouldn’t have her hurt for the world. I’ll tell you about it so that it won’t have to go any farther. You’ll see how ridiculous your ideas are. I’ll never understand how two children of the same parents raised the same way can be so different. Jane Ann was trash. No good at all. Oh, they want to cover that all up now and forget it, but I could tell you some things if I had a mind to. But I’m not one to gossip about my neighbors. I’ve prayed for Jane Ann’s soul. Different as night and day, those two girls. Nancy sings in the church, you know. Mr. Hemsold, before he passed away, was a deacon. He was in the lumber business. I hope, wherever he is, he doesn’t look down often and see me having to rent part of the lovely house he built for me, just to make ends meet. Nancy has such a clear, lovely voice. It’s like an angel singing. You never heard the like. She’s always been a more delicate child than Jane Ann was. Land, you could tell that just by looking at the two of them. It doesn’t seem fair that it should have been Nancy to have that trouble; but when you think about it I guess it’s better she had that trouble than have happen to her what happened to Jane Ann; but I’m willing to say right here and now that Jane Ann was begging for what happened to her. She should have known some men are just beasts that happen to walk on their hind legs. This trouble was all hushed up, you know, and very few people ever heard about it, and some of them are dead, God rest their souls. It was a terrible, terrible thing and many is the afternoon Myra Paulson was over here sitting right there on the couch where you’re sitting, crying her eyes out about it because the poor child was only eleven. It’s a terrible thing to happen to a poor little child and it is God’s blessing she didn’t lose her mind over it—Nancy, I mean. It was on a Labor Day week end. Dick Paulson and Billy Mackin had been working hard that summer building a camp together up at Morgan’s Lake. They had some of the local people up there working on it too, but Dick and Billy got away every chance they had and pitched in. Labor Day is a time, you know, when a lot of the city riffraff get into their old cars and go up to the lakes. When she was tiny Nancy was a great one for wandering off by herself and finding things like flowers and berries and bird feathers and bringing them back for a kind of collection she had. Seven years ago that west shore of the lake wasn’t built up near as much as it is now. I hear it’s getting too built up, with camps practically one on top of the other, but that’s neither here nor there. Nancy wandered off that day and nobody thought too much about it on account of she was always a quiet child and she could amuse herself and she spent a lot of time alone. Well, she didn’t come back for lunch and then Dick and Myra were annoyed and then they got worried. I can tell you that by late afternoon there were an awful lot of folks out tramping through the woods, looking for her and calling out her name. They found her two miles from the camp, back toward the hills, walking around just like she was walking in her sleep. Her clothes were all tore and her throat was bruised something terrible. She didn’t make out she could recognize her own people, and she couldn’t talk or even cry. They knew it was some man did it, and the poor child was just scared witless. The doctors said she’d been choked unconscious and left for dead, and they found it hadn’t happened to her. You know. Like maybe the man heard a noise and got scared off or something. But as far as the effect on her is concerned, the worst might just as well have happened. She’d been such a merry little thing, and it was like she went under a cloud. She lost a whole semester of school, but she made that up. But you know, she wasn’t the same child any more. She turned out scary. The Paulsons wanted it all hushed up, so they put her in a sort of a rest home way over the other side of Warrentown and told everybody she was off visiting Myra’s sister but some of us were let in on the true story. The police worked quiet, and they investigated all kinds of drunks and vagrants they picked up in the lake country, but they couldn’t find the man who did it. She’s a lovely, lovely girl now; but it did make a cloud for her to live under. It is purely God’s blessing that the terror drove all the memory of it right out of her mind. But even so, it left its mark. So you can see, young man, that was a long time ago and a long ways from here that it happened. Anybody who tries to say it was the same man attacked both the Paulson girls is way out of their head, and you can take that for gospel. I don’t agree with what you’re trying to do, and I didn’t want you here in my house, but I felt it was my bounden duty to tell you the truth so you wouldn’t go hollering off on the wrong track.”