Nothing More than Murder (15 page)

D
riving home in the rain, with my guts kind of knotting and unknotting, I thought about Elizabeth and how goddamn unfair it was that I had to do all the dirty work on a deal she’d really started.

I hadn’t hired Carol. I never would have brought her into the house. Maybe I wasn’t too satisfied with married life, but it never occurred to me to do anything about it. It was Elizabeth who had brought her in. It was just one more stupid thing she’d done that I had to be the fall guy for.

About a year after she’d had her miscarriage I went home one afternoon and some dame was in the living-room with Elizabeth. I stuck my head in the door to say hello, and she and this woman both looked kind of embarrassed. And then Elizabeth laughed and told me to come in.

“This is Mrs. Fahrney, Joe,” she said. “Mrs. Fahrney is connected with the children’s protective society.”

“Oh?” I said, wondering if she had a kick on some of the shows I’d been playing. “That must be very interesting work.”

“Well—it is,” said the dame, glancing at Elizabeth.

And Elizabeth laughed again.

“We may as well tell him,” she said. “He’ll have to sign the papers, anyway.”

“The papers?” I said.

“I was keeping it for a surprise, dear. We’re going to have a son. The sweetest little boy baby you ever—”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean you want to adopt someone else’s kid?”

“Not someone else’s, Joe. Ours. Perhaps I should have told you sooner, but—”

“I guess you should have, too,” I said. “I guess you might have saved this lady a trip out here if you had. Any time I have any kids of my own I guarantee I’ll feed ’em and take care of ’em and do everything else I’m supposed to. But I’m not spending my dough and my time on other people’s brats. I don’t want any part of ’em.”

Elizabeth sat biting her lip, looking down at the floor. This woman got up and walked over to her.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wilmot,” she said. “I’ll run along now.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t mean all that. If she wants to adopt this—boy, it’s all right with me.”

“But it isn’t all right with me,” she said, looking straight through me. “Good-bye, Mrs. Wilmot.”

And she sailed out the door without giving me a chance to reason with her.

I tried to explain to Elizabeth how I felt. A kid is always a hell of a big expense and we just couldn’t spare the dough from the show. And, anyway, how could you tell what you were getting into when you take a kid out of an orphans’ home?

All Elizabeth would say was, “I understand,” and she didn’t understand at all.

Well, no one can say I’m not human, and I was kind of ashamed of the way I’d acted. I suppose she did get lonesome around the place by herself, and when she got a cat I didn’t say a word. I don’t like cats. They demand too much attention. If you’re trying to read or eat or no matter what you’re trying to do a cat will butt right in on you. Short of killing them, there’s no way of keeping them from rubbing against your legs or jumping into your lap or just bothering you in general.

I didn’t say a word, though. When it got to where it bothered me too much I’d just go to my room and lock the door.

I guess it finally got on Elizabeth’s nerves, too, because she gave it away to someone. I never asked who and she didn’t say. I was just satisfied that it was gone.

About six months later she bought a dog—a tan-and-white collie pup. And I didn’t say anything about that, either, but I never knew a minute’s comfort at home until she got rid of it. I can’t stand dogs. I mean, I can’t. And if you’d been on the bum as much as I have, you’d know why.

Well, so that brings us up to Carol. And I know what you’re thinking—it’s what I thought at first—but it’s not the case. She didn’t take Carol as a substitute for the cat or dog. She didn’t treat her half as good as she’d treated either one of them.

I’ve already told you how she didn’t even give her a decent feed the first night she was there. That’s just a sample of the way she acted toward her. And it didn’t get me anywhere when I jumped her about it.

“Really, Joe, you amaze me,” she said, sort of smiling down her nose. “How can you possibly be interested in the welfare of a girl like that? I’m already willing to admit it was a mistake to bring her here.”

“Well, she’s here,” I said, “and she’s going to stay. And we’re going to treat her decent, too.”

“Are we?”

“All right, don’t, then,” I said. “But if you won’t do anything for her yourself, don’t stand in my way.”

“I won’t,” she said, still smiling. “That’s a promise. I won’t stand in your way at all.” And that was the way it ended.

All that was ever done for Carol was done by me. I hadn’t lied to Appleton about that. But it was Elizabeth that brought her into the house in the first place. I don’t know why, unless it was just another one of her ways of getting my goat, and I don’t know that it matters.

All I know is that Carol coming there is what started all the trouble, and that it was left to me to clean it up.

There was one thing that still puzzled me and always had—the money. The way Elizabeth had argued about a split. The way she’d kept telling me I’d be sorry if I tried to get out of sending her the insurance dough.

The people who really care about money are those who lack something without it, and Elizabeth had always felt just as complete and respectable and important without a dollar as she had with a pocketful. She’d been saving and thrifty, sure, but that was more habit than anything else. She’d proved a hundred times over that money didn’t mean a thing to her.

When she’d first begun to make an issue of it I thought she was just trying to put a spoke in my wheel, to make it harder to settle the problem between her and Carol and me. And right up until the last, I guess, I was expecting her to say, “All right, have your Carol and everything else. I’d scrub floors before I’d take a penny from you.”

That would have been Elizabeth’s way of doing things, and maybe I would have taken her up on it and maybe I wouldn’t have. The point is that she did just the opposite—something that just didn’t fit in with her character. And now when it mattered least of all, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

I remembered how insistent Carol had been on sending Elizabeth the money herself, and the answer to that one popped into my head and made me shiver. She hadn’t intended sending it. She’d have burned it up first. She hated her enough to do that, to risk getting us all in trouble just to take one final punch at Elizabeth.

It had to be the answer, because I never wrote even a business letter if I could get out of it and I sure wouldn’t have written Elizabeth after we were all washed up. It was a standing joke around the house, my not writing to anyone. At least it had been a joke back in the beginning, back during the first year that Elizabeth and I were married.

We were awfully cramped for dough that year. We had good prospects and I knew we’d pull out in the long run, but I was trying to do too many things at once and we ran short. It got so bad that I even considered closing down for a while and going back to driving film truck. But right at the time when things looked darkest this old uncle of Elizabeth’s died back East, and everything was jake. He left her twenty-five hundred dollars, enough to clear up the mortgage on the Barclay home with a thousand left over.

Well, I took her down to the train when she started back to collect, and while we were waiting on the platform she asked me to send her a dollar.

“Send you a dollar?” I laughed. “What’s the idea? Here, I’ll give you—”

“No, I want you to send it to me, Joe. I know that’s the only way I’ll hear from you.”

“Oh, now,” I said. “I don’t think I’m that bad. I’ll drop you a card.”

“Oh, but you are that bad,” she said. “Send me the dollar or you’ll be sorry when I come back.”

She was kidding, you know, like newly married people will. But I thought if it meant that much to her I’d play along. And that was the cause of two of the worst weeks I’ve ever spent in my life.

I am careful about money; a businessman has got to be. I’d double-checked the hotel address where Elizabeth was supposed to be staying, and I put a five-day return on the envelope when I mailed it. And then, through some kind of mix-up, it came back to me, and the envelope was stamped
Not known here
.

Scared? Worried? Brother!

I didn’t know where else to write. I knew she was supposed to be at the address I had. And, of course, she thought I’d broken my promise so she didn’t write me, either. She finally broke down and sent me a wire, and I sent her one, and—and that was the end of it.

But until I heard from her I was imagining all sorts of things. I’d about halfway decided that she must be dead…

I
used to know a drunk years ago, a booker at one of the film exchanges in the city. He was one of those God-awful, noisy, messy drunks; the worst of the worst kind. And do you know something? That guy couldn’t stand the sight of another drunk. It wasn’t any pretense. He actually hated ’em. He’d walk six blocks to keep from passing one on the street.

I was thinking about him, and wondering why I was thinking about him, as I turned into the lane toward home. Then, as I drove into the yard, another funny thing popped into my mind—the tag line on an old joke.
It’s not the original cost but the upkeep.

There it is. Make anything you want to out of it.

After I’d shut off the motor I sat in the car for a moment, pulling myself together; thinking—trying to think—what a hell of a mess Carol had got me into by going to work for us. Then, I rubbed the gun in my pocket, wiped the sweat off my hand, and got out.

I went up the steps.

I crossed the porch and opened the door.

As far as I could see, there from the hall, everything was just like I had left it. The shades were drawn. The furnace was still ticking away, throwing out warm waves of heat. The lights were…

“Carol,” I called. “Carol!”

And every light in the place went out.

I stood where I was, paralyzed; too shocked to move. And the air from the furnace didn’t seem warm anymore. It got colder and colder. It brushed against my face like the draft from an icebox. Somehow I got my foot behind me and kicked the door shut. As an afterthought, I turned the key in the lock and put it in my pocket.

I called her one more time. “Carol!”

There wasn’t any answer.

It wasn’t the storm, then. She’d pulled the switch. She’d done it without even waiting to see what Web had wanted, or what I was going to do about it. And she’d been nagging me about not trusting her!

I was sore and relieved at the same time. It made things easier.

I started to strike a match, but caught myself. She’d see me first; and she hadn’t turned out those lights for the fun of it. She was sure I’d put her on the spot. Or, maybe, she’d guessed that I could never feel safe as long as she was alive. Anyway, she was playing for keeps.

I don’t know whether I’ve described the layout of our house or not. There’s a hall extending from the front door to the kitchen. On the left, as you go in, is the living-room. The dining-room is across from it, on the right.

I went down the hall on tiptoe to the living-room, and eased the drapes apart. My eyes were getting used to the dark, and I could see a little. Not much, but a little. The outlines of the furniture; shadowy blotches on the wall where pictures hung.

The living-room looked empty, and I decided it must be. The master light switch was in the kitchen. She hadn’t had time to move far from it.

I tried to figure out which way she’d go. Up the hall toward me, or through the door into the dining-room? Or would she still be there in the kitchen?

I started down the hall. And stopped.

A door had creaked. The door connecting the dining-room and kitchen. She was coming around that way. Getting behind me.

I pivoted and crept back to the dining-room. I slid through the portiers, holding my breath.

The door creaked again as it was opened wider. Now I could see a black oblong as it was opened all the way.

I could see a shadow, a crouched blur upon the black.

I touched the trigger of the automatic.

The explosion was almost deafening, but I heard her scamper back into the kitchen. I heard one of the chairs go over. I eased forward again, not seeing too well because of the flash of light from the shot. At the door into the kitchen I dropped down on my hands and knees and started to crawl across the threshold.

It was a minute or two before I saw her, her shadow against the far wall. I waited until I was sure, until I saw it edging toward the spot where the hall door would be. Then, slowly, I began rising to my feet.

I was too slow for her. In a split second the door banged open. Crashed shut.

I stood up, panting, sweat pouring from my face. I felt my way along the wall to the switch box.

The cover was open, as I’d known it would be, and the switch was pulled. I pushed it back into place, blinking my eyes as the lights went on. I locked the back door and put the key in my pocket. I waited, looking upward.

Listening.

At last I heard it. The squeak of a bedspring. I started to tiptoe out of the kitchen, then stopped again. She’d have to come out of her room. It wouldn’t look right to break the door down.

I began to whistle to myself, as I thought it over. And then I started to whistle louder, loud enough for her to hear me and just as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

I tramped up the stairs, and knocked on the door of her bedroom.

“Carol!” I called. “Are you asleep?”

There was no answer, but the bed creaked again. In my mind I could see her sitting there, huddled as far back as she could get. Staring at the door.

I let out an embarrassed laugh. “Did you hear all that racket I was making? The light switch dropped down and shut off the current. I thought there was a prowler in the house.” I laughed again. “Guess I’d be shooting yet if my gun hadn’t jammed.”

I
could
own a gun. She couldn’t be sure that I didn’t.

I heard—I thought I heard—a faint sigh of relief. A scared, doubtful sigh.

“Get dressed, Carol. We’ve got to get out of here. Right away, tonight.”

There wasn’t any kind of sound this time; nothing I could identify. But she seemed to be asking a question.

“Do you hear me, Carol?” I knocked again. “We’ve got to beat it. They’ve found out about the woman you hired. They haven’t got the straight of things, but they know enough. They’re going to open the grave in the morning. As soon as they find out it wasn’t Elizabeth, we’ll be sunk. They’ll run Elizabeth down, and she’ll squawk, to save her own neck. The whole thing will be pinned on us.” I banged harder on the door.

“Come on! We can be a long ways from here by daylight. Open the door and I’ll help you pack!”

She didn’t answer. It dawned on me that she probably couldn’t. She was too frightened, too scared of what her voice might tell me.

But she had got up. She was standing. And now she was coming to the door.

Afraid, yes. Scared as hell. But more scared not to.

I raised and leveled the gun. My hand was shaking, and I gripped my wrist with my other hand and steadied it.

The key grated and clicked in the lock. The doorknob turned.

Then the door flew open, and just as it did I squeezed the trigger.

There was one long, stuttering explosion. And then it was all over.

And through the smoke I saw Appleton grinning at me.