The Galton Case (25 page)

“So is human life. Don’t forget a man was murdered. We have evidence that Mrs. Sable knew Culligan before he came to Santa Teresa. She was also a witness to his death. Anything she has to say about it may be very significant.”

“Not if her memory of the event is delusional.”

“Does she have delusions on the subject?”

“She has indeed. Her account doesn’t agree with the actual event as we know it. I’ve gone into this with Trask, and there’s no doubt whatever that a thug named Lemberg stabbed the man.”

“There’s a good deal of doubt,” I said. “The Sheriff just took a statement from Lemberg. A Reno gambler sent Lemberg to collect money from Alice Sable, and maybe rough her up a bit. Culligan got in the way. Lemberg knocked him
out, was shot in the process, left him unconscious on the ground. He claims that somebody else did the knifing after he left.”

Howell’s face underwent a curious change. His eyes became harder and brighter. He wasn’t looking at me, or at anything external. The lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth curved and deepened, as if he was being forced to look against his will at something horrible.

“But Trask said Lemberg was undeniably guilty.”

“Trask was wrong. We all were.”

“Do you honestly mean to say that Alice Sable has been speaking the truth all along?”

“I don’t know what she’s been saying, Doctor. You do.”

“But Trenchard and the other psychiatrists were convinced that her self-accusations were fantasies. They had me convinced.”

“What does she accuse herself of? Does she blame herself for Culligan’s death?”

Howell sat over the wheel in silence. He had been shaken, and wide open, for a few minutes. Now his personality closed up again:

“You have no right to cross-examine me about the intimate affairs of one of my patients.”

“I’m afraid I have to, Doctor. If Alice Sable murdered Culligan, there’s no way you can cover up for her. I’m surprised you want to. You’re not only breaking the law, you’re violating the ethics you set such store by.”

“I’ll be the judge of my own ethics,” he said in a strained voice.

He sat and wrestled with his unstated problem. His gaze was inward and glaring. Sweat-drops studded his forehead. I got some sense of the empathy he felt for his patient. Even his daughter was forgotten.

“She has confessed the murder to you, Doctor?”

Slowly his eyes remembered me again. “What did you say?”

“Has Mrs. Sable confessed Culligan’s murder?”

“I’m going to ask you not to question me further.”

Abruptly, he released the emergency brake. I kept quiet all the way to the nursing home, hoping my patience might earn me an interview with Alice Sable herself.

A gray-haired nurse unlocked the front door, and smiled with special intensity at Howell. “Good morning, Doctor. Were a little late this morning.”

“I’m having to skip my regular calls today. I do want to see Mrs. Sable.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor, she’s already gone.”

“Gone where, for heaven’s sake?”

“Mr. Sable took her home this morning, didn’t you know? He said it was all right with you.”

“It certainly is not. You don’t release disturbed patients without specific orders from a doctor. Haven’t you learned that yet, nurse?”

Before she could answer, Howell turned on his heel and started back to his car. I had to run to catch him.

“The man’s a fool!” he cried above the roar of the engine. “He can’t be permitted to take a chance like this with his wife’s safety. She’s dangerous to herself and other people.”

I said when we were underway: “Was she dangerous to Culligan, Doctor?”

His answer was a sigh which seemed to rise from the center of his body. The outskirts of Santa Teresa gave place to open country. The hills of Arroyo Park rose ahead of us. With his eyes on the green hills, Howell said:

“The poor wretch of a woman told me that she killed him. And I didn’t have sense enough to believe her. Somehow her story didn’t ring true to me. I was convinced that it was fantasy masking the actual event.”

“Is that why you wouldn’t let Trask talk to her?”

“Yes. The present state of the law being what it is, a doctor has a duty to protect his patients, especially the semi-psychotic ones. We can’t run off to the police with every sick delusion they come up with. But in this case,” he added reluctantly, “it seems I was mistaken.”

“You’re not sure.”

“I’m no longer sure about anything.”

“Exactly what did she say to you?”

“She heard the sounds of a struggle, two men fighting and calling each other names. A gun went off. She was terrified, of course, but she forced herself to go to the front door. Culligan was lying on the lawn. The other man was just driving away in the Jaguar. When he was out of sight, she went out to Culligan. Her intention was to help him, she said, but she saw his knife in the grass. She picked it up and—used it.”

We had reached the foot of Sable’s hill. Howell wrestled his car up the climbing curves. The tires shuddered and screeched like lost souls under punishment.

S
ABLE
must have heard the car, and been waiting behind the door for Howell’s knock. He opened the door at once. His bloodshot eyes began to water in the strong sunlight, and he sneezed.

“Where is your wife?” Howell said.

“In her own room, where she belongs. There was so much noise and confusion in the nursing home—”

“I want to see her.”

“I don’t think so, Doctor. I understand you’ve been grilling her about the unfortunate crime that occurred on our premises. It’s been most disturbing to Alice. You told me yourself that she shouldn’t be forced to talk about it.”

“She brought up the subject of her own accord. I demand to be allowed to see her.”

“Demand, Doctor? How can you do that? I should make it clear, I suppose, that I’m terminating your services as of now. I intend to hire a new crew of doctors, and find a place where Alice can rest in peace.”

The phrase set up whispering echoes which Howell’s voice cut through:

“You don’t hire doctors, Sable, and you don’t fire them.”

“Your law is rusty. Perhaps you should hire a lawyer. You’re certainly going to need one if you try to force your way into my house.” Sable’s voice was controlled, but queerly atonal.

“I have a duty to my patient. You had no right to remove her from nursing care.”

“From your third-degree methods, you mean? Let me remind you, if you need reminding, that anything Alice has said to you is privileged. I employed you and the others in my capacity as her lawyer in order to have your assistance in determining certain facts. Is that clear? If you communicate these facts or alleged facts to anyone, official or unofficial, I’ll sue you for criminal libel.”

“You’re talking doubletalk,” I said. “You won’t be suing anybody.”

“Won’t I, though? You’re in roughly the same position as Dr. Howell. I employed you to make a certain investigation, and ordered you to communicate the results orally to me. Any further communication is a breach of contract. Try it out, and by God I’ll have your license.”

I didn’t know if he was legally right. I didn’t care. When
he started to swing the door shut, I set my foot against it:

“We’re coming in, Sable.”

“I think not,” his queer new voice said.

He reached behind the door and stepped back with a gun in his hands. It was a long, heavy gun, a deer rifle with a telescopic sight. He raised it deliberately. I looked directly into the muzzle, at the clean, glinting spiral of the rifling.

Sable curled his finger on the trigger, and cuddled the polished stock against his cheek. His face had a fine glaze on it, like porcelain. I realized that he was ready to kill me.

“Put it down,” Howell said.

He moved ahead of me into the doorway, taking my place in the line of fire:

“Put it down, Gordon. You’re not yourself, you’re feeling upset, you’re terribly worried about Alice. But we’re your friends, we’re Alice’s friends, too. We want to help you both.”

“I have no friends,” Sable said. “I know why you’re here, why you want to talk to Alice. And I’m not going to let you.”

“Don’t be silly, Gordon. You can’t look after a sick woman by yourself. I know you don’t care about your personal safety, but you have to consider Alice’s safety. She needs looking after, Gordon. So put it down now, let me in to see her.”

“Get back. I’ll shoot.”

Sable’s voice was a high sharp yell. His wife must have heard it. From deep inside the house, she cried out in answer:

“No!”

Sable blinked against the light. He looked like a sleepwalker waking up on the verge of a precipice. Behind him his wife’s crying went on, punctuated by resounding blows and then a crash of glass.

Caught between impossible pressures, Sable half-turned
toward the noise. The rifle swung sideways with his movement. I went in past Howell and got one hand on the gun-barrel and the other on the knot of Sable’s tie. I heaved. Man and rifle came apart.

Sable thudded against the wall and almost fell. He was breathing hard. His hair was in his eyes. He bore a strange resemblance to an old woman peering out through the fringes of a matted white wig.

I opened the breech of the rifle. While I was unloading it, running feet slapped the pavement of the inner court. Alice Sable appeared at the end of the hallway. Her light hair was ruffled, and her nightgown was twisted around her slender body. Blood ran down over her naked foot from a cut in her leg.

“I hurt myself on the window,” she said in a small voice. “I cut myself on the glass.”

“Did you have to break it?” Sable made an abrupt, threatening movement toward her. Then he remembered us, and sweetened his tone: “Go back to your room, dear. You don’t want to run around half-dressed in front of visitors.”

“Dr. Howell isn’t a visitor. You came to fix it where I hurt myself, didn’t you?”

She moved uncertainly toward the doctor. He went to meet her with his hands out. “Of course I did. Come back to your room with me and we’ll fix it now.”

“But I don’t want to go back in there. I hate it in there, it depresses me. Peter used to visit me in there.”

“Be quiet!” Sable said.

She moved behind the doctor, making her body small as if to claim a child’s irresponsibility. From the protection of Howell’s shoulder, she peered sadly at her husband:

“Be quiet is all you say to me. Be quiet, hush it up. But what’s the use, Gordon? Everybody knows about me and Peter. Dr. Howell knows. I made a clean breast of it to him.”
Her hand went to her breast, and fingered the rosebuds embroidered on her nightgown. Her heavy gaze swung to me. “This man knows about me, too, I can see it in his face.”

“Did you kill him, Mrs. Sable?”

“Don’t answer,” Sable said.

“But I want to confess. I’ll feel better then, won’t I?” Her smile was bright and agonized. It faded, leaving its lines in her face and her teeth bare: “I did kill him. The fellow in the black car knocked him out, and I went out and stabbed him.”

Her hand jerked downward from her breast, clenched on an imaginary knife. Her husband watched her like a poker-player.

“Why did you do it?” I said.

“I don’t know. I guess I just got sick of him. Now it’s time for me to take my punishment. I killed, and I deserve to die.”

The tragic words had an unreal quality. She spoke them like a life-size puppet activated by strings and used by a voice that didn’t belong to her. Only her eyes were her own, and they contained a persistent stunned innocence.

“I deserve to die,” she repeated. “Don’t I, Gordon?”

He flushed up darkly. “Leave me out of this.”

“But you said—”

“I said nothing of the sort.”

“You’re lying, Gordon,” she chided him. Perhaps there was an undertone of malice in her voice. “You told me after all my crimes that I deserved to die. And you were right. I lost your good money gambling and went with another man and now on top of it all I’m a murderer.”

Sable appealed to Howell: “Can’t we put an end to this? My wife is ill and hurt. It’s inconceivable that you should let her be questioned. This man isn’t even a policeman—”

“I’ll take the responsibility for what I do,” I said. “Mrs. Sable, do you remember stabbing Peter Culligan?”

She raised one hand to her forehead, pushing back her hair as if it got in the way of her thoughts. “I don’t remember exactly, but I must have.”

“Why do you say you must have, if you don’t remember?”

“Gordon saw me.”

I looked at Sable. He wouldn’t look at me. He stood against the wall, trying to merge with the wall.

“Gordon wasn’t here,” I said. “He was at Mrs. Galton’s house when you telephoned.”

“But he came. He came right over. Peter was lying there on the grass for a long time. He was making a funny noise, it sounded like snoring. I unbuttoned the top of his shirt to help him breathe.”

“You remember all this, but you don’t remember stabbing him?”

“I must have blanked out on that part. I’m always blanking out on things, ask Gordon.”

“I’m asking you, Mrs. Sable.”

“Let me think. I remember, I slid my hand down under his shirt, to see if his heart was beating properly. I could feel it there thumping and jumping. You’d think it was a little animal trying to get out. The hair on his chest was scratchy, like wire.”

Sable made a noise in his throat.

“What did you do then?” I said.

“I—nothing. I just sat for a while and looked at him and his poor old beatup face. I put my arms around him and tried to coax him awake. But he went on snoring at me. He was still snoring when Gordon got there. Gordon was angry, catching me with him like that. I ran into the house. But I watched from the window.”

Suddenly her face was incandescent. “I didn’t kill him. It wasn’t me out there. It was Gordon, and I watched him from the window. He picked up Peter’s knife and pushed it into his stomach.” Her clenched hand repeated its down-ward
gesture, striking her own soft abdomen. “The blood spurted out and ran red on the grass. It was all red and green.”

Sable thrust his head forward. The rest of his body, even his arms and hands, remained stuck to the wall: