I Married A Dead Man (28 page)

               
It was she who first saw them, Patrice. They were in the library.

               
Bill and his father, going on ahead, supporting arm about waist, had passed the open doorway obliviously. She had lingered behind for a moment, to give some muted necessary orders.

               
"Yes, Mrs. Hazzard," Aunt Josie 's deputy said docilely.

               
Yes, Mrs. Hazzard. That was the first time she had heard it (Aunt Josie always called her "Miss Pat"), but she would have that now all her life, as her due. Her mind rolled it around on its tongue, savoring it Yes, Mrs. Hazzard. Position. Security. Impregnability. The end of a journey.

               
Then she moved forward and, passing the doorway, saw them.

               
They were sitting in there, both facing it Two men. The very way they held their heads--they were not apologetic, they were not disclaiming enough, for such a time and such a place and such a visit. Their faces, as she met them, did not say: "Whenever you are ready." Their faces said: "We are ready for you now. Come in to us."

               
Fear put out a long finger and touched her heart. She had stopped.

               
"Who are those two men?" she breathed to the girl who had let her in. "What are they doing in there?"

               
"Oh, I forgot. They came here about twenty minutes ago, asking to see Mr. Hazzard. I explained about the funeral, and suggested maybe they'd better come back later. But they said no, they said they'd wait I couldn't do anything with them. So I just let them be."

               
She went on past the opening. "He's in no condition to speak to anyone now. You'll have to go in there and--"

               
"Oh, not old Mr. Hazzard. It's Mr. Hazzard his son they want."

               
She knew then. Their faces had already told her, the grim way they had both sized her up that fleeting second or two she had stood in the doorway. People didn't stare at you like that, just ordinary people. Punitive agents did. Those empowered by law to seek out, and identify, and question.

               
The finger had become a whole icy hand now, twisting and crushing her heart in its grip.

               
Detectives. Already. So soon, so relentlessly, so fatally soon. And today of all days, on this very day.

               
The copybooks were right, the texts that said the police were infallible.

               
She turned and hurried up the stairs, to overtake Bill and his father, nearing the top now, still linked in considerate, toiling ascent.

               
Bill turned his head inquiringly at sound of her hasty step behind them. Father Ha.zzard didn't What was any step to him any more? The only one he wanted to hear would never sound again.

               
She made a little sign to Bill behind his father's back. A quick little quirk of the finger to show that this was something to be kept between the two of them alone. Then said, trying to keep her voice casual, "Bill, as soon as you take Father to his room, I want to see you for a minute. Will you come out?"

               
He came upon her in her own room, in the act of lowering an emptied brandy-jigger from her lips. He looked at her curiously.

               
"What'd you do, get a chill out there?"

               
"I did," she said. "But not out there. Here. Just now."

               
"You seem to be shaking."

               
"I am. Close the door." And when he had, "Is he sleeping?"

               
"He will be in another minute or two. Aunt Josie's giving him a little more of that sedative the doctor left"

               
She kneaded her hands together, as though she were trying to break each bone separately. "They're here, Bill. About the other night They're here already."

               
He didn't have to ask, he knew what she meant by "the other night." There was only one other night for them, there would always be only one, from now on. As the nights multiplied, it would become "that night," perhaps; that was the only alteration.

               
"How do you know? Did they tell you?"

               
"They don't have to. I know." She snatched at his coat-lapels, as though she were trying to rip them off him. "What are we going to do?"

               
" We are not going to do anything," he said with meaning. " I'll do whatever is to be done about it"

               
"Who's that?" she shuddered, and crushed herself close to him. Her teeth were almost chattering with nervous tension.

               
"Who is it?" he asked at full voice.

               
"Aunt Josie," came through the door.

               
"Let go of me," he cautioned in an undertone. "All right, Aunt Josie."

               
She put her head in and said, "Those two men that're down there, they said they can't wait for Mr. Hazzard any more."

               
For a moment a little hope wormed its way through her stricken heart.

               
"They said if he don't come down, they'll have to come up here."

               
"What do they want? Did they tell you?" he said to Aunt Josie.

               
"I asked 'em twice, and each time they said the same thing. 'Mr. Hazzard.' What kind of an answer is that? They're bold ones."

               
"All right," he said curtly. "You've told us."

               
She closed the door again.

               
He stood for awhile irresolute, his hand curled around the back of his neck. Then straightened with reluctant decision, squared off his shoulders, hitched down his cuffs, and turned to face the door. "Well," he said, "let's get it over with."

               
She ran to join him. "I'll go with you."

               
"You won't!" He took her hand and put it off his arm, in rough rejection. "Let's get that straight right now. You're staying up here, and you're staying out of it Do you hear me? No matter what happens, you're staying out of it."

               
He'd never spoken to her like that before.

               
"Are you taking me to be your husband?" he demanded.

               
"Yes," she murmured. "I've already told you that."

               
"Then that's an order. The first and the last, I hope, that I'll ever have to give you. Now look, we can't tell two stories about this. We're only telling one: mine. And it's one that you're not supposed to know anything about. So you can't help me, you can only harm me."

               
She seized his hand and put her lips to it, as a sort of god-speed.

               
"What are you going to tell them?"

               
"The truth." The look he gave her was a little odd. "What did you expect me to tell them? I have nothing to lie about, as far as it involves me alone."

               
He closed the door and he went out.

46

               
As she found her hands leading the way down for her, one over the other, along the bannister-rail, while her feet followed them more slowly, a step behind all the way, she realized how impossible it would have been to follow his injunction, remain immured up there, without knowing, without listening; how futile of him to expect it of her. She couldn't have been involved as she was, she couldn't have been a woman at all, and obeyed him. This wasn't prying; you didn't pry into something that concerned you as closely as this did her. It was your right to know.

               
Hand over hand down the bannister, the rest of her creeping after, body held at a broken crouch. Like a cripple struggling down a staircase.

               
A quarter of the way down, the murmur became separate voices. Halfway down, the voices became words. She didn't go beyond there.

               
Their voices weren't raised. There was no blustering or angry contradiction. They were just men talking quietly, politely together. Somehow, it struck more fear into her that way.

               
They were repeating after him something he must have just now said.

               
"Then you do know someone named Harry Carter, Mr. Hazzard."

               
She didn't hear him say anything. As though he considered one affirmation on that point enough.

               
"Would you care to tell us what relationship--what connection-- there is between you and this man Carter?"

               
He sounded slightly ironical, when he answered that. She had never heard him that way toward herself, but she caught a new inflection to his voice, and recognized it for irony. "Look, gentlemen, you already know. You must, or why would you be here? You want me to repeat it for you, is that it?"

               
"What we want is to hear it from you yourself, Mr. Ha.zzard."

               
"Very well, then. He is a private detective. As you already know. I selected and hired him. As you already know. And he was being paid a fee, he was being retained, to watch, to keep his eye on, this man Georgesson whom you're concerned with. As you already know."

               
"Very well, we do already know, Mr. Hazzard. But what we don't already know, what he couldn't tell us, because he didn't know himself, was what was the nature of your interest in Georgesson, why you were having him watched."

               
And the other one took up where the first had left off: "Would you care to tell us that, Mr. Hazzard? Why were you having him watched? What was your reason for doing that?"

               
Out on the stairs, her heart seemed to turn over and lie down flat on its face. "My God," went echoing sickly through her mind. "Now I come into it!"

               
"That's an extremely private matter," he said sturdily.

               
"I see; you don't care to tell us."

               
"I didn't say that"

               
"But still, you'd rather not tell us."

               
"You're putting words into my mouth."

               
"Because you don't seem to supply us with any of your own."

               
"It's essential for you to know this?"

               
"We wouldn't be here if it weren't, I can assure you. This man of yours, Carter, was the one who reported Georgesson's death to us."

               
"I see." She heard him take a deep breath. And she took one with him. Two breaths, one and the same fear.

               
"Georgesson was a gambler," he said.

               
"We know that."

               
"A crook, a confidence man, an all-around shady operator."

               
"We know that."

               
"Then here's the part you don't. Back about--it must be four years ago--three, anyway--my older brother Hugh was a senior at Dartmouth College. He started down here to spend the Christmas holidays at home, with us. He got as far as New York, and then he never got any further. He never showed up. He wasn't on the train that was to have brought him in the next day. We got a long-distance phone-call from him, and he was in trouble. He was practically being held there against his will. He'd gotten into a card-game, it seems, the night before with this Georgesson and a few of his friends--setup, of course--and they'd taken him for I don't know how many thousands, which he didn't have, and they wanted a settlement before they'd let him go. They had him good, it had the makings of a first-class mess in it Hugh was just a high-spirited kid, used to associating with decent people, gentlemen, not that kind of vermin, and he hadn't known how to handle himself. They'd built him up for it all evening long, liquored him up, thrown a couple of mangy chorusgirls at him in the various spots they'd dragged him around to first--well, anyway, because of my mother's health and the family's good name, there could be no question of calling the police into it, it would have been altogether too smelly. So my father went up there in person--I went along with him, incidentally--and squared the thing off for him. At about fifty cents to the dollar, or something like that. Got back the I.O.U.'s they'd extorted from the kid. And brought him home with us.