Tightrope Walker (22 page)

“An eight-place setting.”

This was very nice indeed: not many people in my neighborhood can afford even a four-place setting all at once, they buy a dish or two at a time. An eight-place setting came to thirty-five dollars, of which my profit was seven-fifty. “Come in by all means,” I told him, opening the door wider.

He nodded and walked inside. I knew I’d seen him before and I wondered if he worked in the neighborhood and passed the shop frequently. The most conspicuous feature about him was his glasses, which were round,
steel-rimmed, and very large; and his clothes, which were conservative and well cut, with a gleam of gold at the wrist. Otherwise he was literally colorless, with that parchment-pale skin that older men have who rarely see the sun, a pair of thin lips, and a short, fleshy nose. But somewhere I’d seen him before. “I’ll be only a minute,” I told him. “I’ll just open up the case and make sure there’s been no breakage.” I added anxiously, “You do realize it will be thirty-five dollars plus tax?” As soon as I said this I realized how stupid I sounded; he looked like a man who could afford antique willow ware or Limoges or expensive hand-crafted pottery. I deserved the faintly amused look he gave me as he reassured me that he did indeed know the price.

I hauled the case out from under the rear shelves, reached for the stubby penknife hanging from its hook and knelt beside the case. As I slit open the top of the carton I suddenly realized that I’d not seen this man on Fleet Street.

I didn’t think I’d seen him in Trafton, either.

I associated that face—those large round glasses and the attaché case—with a background of wooden benches.

This was puzzling: wooden benches. I closed my eyes and hoped that something else would swim to the surface. Wooden benches. A feeling of haste and sadness, too. A face noticed. Other faces. And wooden benches.

I’d been alone. Or had I?

I bent over the dishes, my fingers exploring the china. “Nothing broken,” I called cheerfully over my shoulder, and tucked the ends of the carton back in place. “She’s all yours,” I added.

Where had I encountered wooden benches lately, and why was I so sure that it had been lately? And then I thought,
It had something to do with Joe. Joe was with me.

I picked up the case and half turned to look at the
man again. He didn’t see me. He had quietly walked over to the door where he was clearly outlined against the white shade that I pull down every evening, with
CLOSED
printed on the street side. Now I saw him reach out and touch the lock, and as I heard it quietly snap—with that crazy
ping!
sound they make—I caught my breath. There had been wooden benches at the Blue Harbor airport in Maine, and that was where I’d seen him; he’d followed us into the waiting room looking conspicuously out of place with his attaché case, conservative business suit and large steel-rimmed glasses. I’d watched him with amusement and after that, I remembered, I’d kissed Joe goodby, driven back to unit 18 and then to Hannah’s house and the box room, after which … but here my thought stopped. My heart almost did, too; it was the sound of the lock that did it. Once before I’d heard a lock snap unexpectedly, in Hannah’s box room, and now I had the suffocating feeling that I had just met the person who had turned that lock, too.

I didn’t hang up the penknife on its hook; I slipped it instead into my pocket.

Amelia
, I thought,
remain calm.

Amelia
, I told myself sharply,
don’t panic, the life you save could be your own.

Except he wouldn’t dare to try anything here, whoever he was, surely not in the middle of a city, on a busy street.…

Oh no?
sneered a part of my mind.
He’s just locked the door, hasn’t he? The two of you are quite alone and no one in Trafton knows you’re back. He wouldn’t find a better chance in a million years, would he?

The telephone
, I thought,
somehow I’ve got to get to the telephone.

I pretended that I’d neither seen nor heard him lock the door. I strolled toward the counter and toward the
telephone behind it with a bright false smile on my face and the case of dishes in front of me like a shield. As I neared the counter I saw his attaché case lying there and I saw the letters stamped on it in gold: H. Holton.

Hubert Holton. I had a nearly overwhelming urge to scream but I took my hysteria and shoved it deep inside of me—it was like stuffing something away in a dufflebag—where I could feel it turning in the pit of my stomach but fueling me in a more disciplined way. I said calmly, “I believe Mr. Georgerakis still has these dishes on sale at 20 per cent off. I’ll just give him a ring and ask—”

“No,” he said with equal calm. “I’ve no time for that.”

I lifted the case and threw it at him across the six or seven feet that separated us but there was nothing slow about his reflexes, he ducked and the case hit the floor with a thud and a crash of broken china. Before I could reach the telephone he picked up the long scissors lying across the dry goods and cut the telephone wire. Following this he brought a small, businesslike gun out of his pocket and leveled it at me.

“All right,” he said evenly, “how did you know?”

“I noticed you in Maine, at the Blue Harbor airport,” I told him.

He nodded. “Quite a remarkable young woman.”

So I was remarkable; that was pleasant to hear but not from him. “And you’re Hubert Holton.”

“You’re also a trouble-maker,” he pointed out in his soft, precise, emotionless voice, “and I don’t appreciate trouble-makers.”

“No,” I said, watching him, “two murders
can
be embarrassing.” I shouldn’t have said that, of course, because until that moment I don’t suppose he was aware of how much I knew, but I wanted to fling much more than a case of dishes in his face.

He blinked at that, and his voice sharpened. “What led you to Anglesworth? I’ve checked, and so far as I can discover you never knew Hannah Meerloo, or Jay, or Nora. What prompted this idiotic excursion of yours into the past?”

I countered, “First tell me how you heard I was making that excursion.”

He shrugged. “Mrs. Lipton phoned me—I was in Augusta—and told me that you and a young man, driving a very distinctive van, had visited her to ask about Danny’s witnessing Mrs. Meerloo’s will in 1965. She thought it might be worth a few dollars to her. I thought it worth attending to personally, and with not many motels open yet I soon found your van parked at the Golden Kingfisher Motel, and of course the name of your shop here was on the side of the van. After that I followed you to Mrs. Morneau’s house and then to the airport, and then—” He stopped and added harshly, “And Jay had a hysterical phone call yesterday from Nora telling him about your visit.”

“You mean telling you that I’d survived,” I said softly. “You left out your attempt to kill me in Carleton, Mr. Holton.”

“So I did,” he said smoothly. “As I say, a quite remarkable young woman, and now I’d like to hear what took you to Maine in the first place.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Mr. Holton, because I don’t like people who try to kill me and I’d prefer to let you always wonder how I knew about Hannah. You goofed, you know.”

“I do not,” he said coldly, “ ‘goof,’ as you phrase it.” He looked at me as if he were assessing a balance sheet, weighing deficiencies and possibilities. “What you fail to understand, my dear Miss Jones,” he said, as if delivering a lecture to a class of backward students, “is that not even the police would be interested in such
ancient deaths. I think you’ve forgotten—if you ever knew—that there’s such a thing as a statute of limitations.”

“Oh?” I said. I hoped it wasn’t true. I refused to believe it was true. “Then why are you so—uh—upset?”

“Because your nuisance value is considerable,” he pointed out, “and I simply cannot allow you to jeopardize Jay’s chances of being elected to the U. S. Senate. I’ve worked too hard.”

“
You’ve
worked too hard?” His eyes were like cold gray marbles behind his glasses but his manner was calm; it was difficult to realize that although we were skirting the issue we were really talking about my death.

“Of course,” he said, surprised by my obtuseness. “I waited a long, long time to find Jay, and I’ve taught him everything he knows. He’s young, he’s only beginning, there’s no limit to how far he can go in politics.”

I stared at him. “You killed Hannah for
that
?” I said incredulously. “A woman with more talent, imagination and intelligence than that precious Tuttle of yours could ever have?”

He shrugged off my naïveté as if it were a mosquito: impatiently. “She was only a woman,” he said contemptemptuously. “And you show a tiresome interest in the past that doesn’t become a person of your age,” he added, “For myself it’s the future that matters, not the past past.”

I blurted out, “Why didn’t Jay marry Nora?”

I swear that he looked shocked by my question.
“Marry?”
he repeated. “But my dear Miss Jones I had no intention of letting him marry Nora, it was money he needed, a grubstake one might say. He didn’t have a dime, and I had only a professor’s modest salary. Jay needed money for clothes, meeting the right people, for entree into the cliques that matter.”

I must have looked just as shocked as he had looked a moment ago. I said, “But Nora had money, and Nora loved him.”

He smiled forgivingly. “One does not sell a personality like Jay Tuttle’s so cheaply, Miss Jones. Nora’s inheritance, once taxes were paid, was not so large as you might assume. With money of his own Jay could do much better, and he did. Before the year ended I was happy to see him safely married to Senator Plumtree’s daughter Janet, and I can assure you that an heiress to the Plumtree Pharmaceutical fortune, and the prospects of a father-in-law in Washington, made Nora look very small-league and provincial.”

I simply gaped at him, wordless, and then I gasped, “You arranged it!”

“But of course,” he said silkily. “The Plumtrees had always summered in Maine, and I made a point of meeting them in 1964.”

“My God,” I whispered, and then I flung at him bitterly, “I’m surprised you let Nora go on living with all she knew about you both.”

His lips tightened. “Only at Jay’s insistence,” he said. “The one time he—but it has always been a mistake, and it’s not one I plan to repeat now, Miss Jones. You will be shot beside your cash register—”

He means I’m really going to be killed
, I thought.
Me.

He made a soft tch-tch sound in his throat. “A pity, that. You can see what a nuisance you’re proving to me, but I appreciate your telling me this.” He gave me his first real smile; his teeth were expensive, too. “A few more deaths will scarcely be noticed among all the muggings and robberies these days but it does seem a bore. Kindly move to the cash register now.”

“Kindly?” I echoed, and I laughed, I couldn’t help it. I mean, he was going to kill all of us and it seemed a bore? “
Kindly
move to the cash register?” I repeated.

He gave me an impatient glance and I saw that I was reacting like a human being and this was tiresome to a man who thought and performed like a machine, like a computer that turns people into figures on a balance sheet. I think it was this that shocked me even more than his announcing that I was going to be shot beside the cash register, for it’s compassion that makes gods of us.

He gestured with his gun. “Over,” he said, and when I didn’t move he came to get me.

He could have shot me from where he stood but he was obviously a perfectionist, wanting things precisely right for the police. His computer mind must have written its own kind of scenario, planning distance and powder burns, and this rigidness was his first mistake because I was waiting for him with my fingers curled around the penknife, my anger as cold as steel now. Just as he reached for my arm I lifted the penknife out of my pocket and plunged it into his gleaming white shirt. It was a small knife, scarcely an inch in length, but his reaction gave me two seconds to get away. He yelped in pain.

I knew I wouldn’t have a chance if I ran for the street door, I’d be shot before I unbolted the lock. I headed instead for the stairs; one bullet hit the wall behind me as I raced up them two at a time. I passed the door to my apartment, opened the one leading to the roof, closed it behind me and ran up the narrow stairs, unbolted the steel door at the top and plunged out on the flat graveled roof of my building.

It was a shock to discover that it was almost dark. I didn’t pause. I raced across the gravel, dodging chimneys and apertures, and pulled myself up to the neighboring roof, three feet higher, where I checked the steel door leading down into this building: locked, of course. Over my shoulder I saw Holton’s head silhouetted
against the sky as he climbed over the parapet behind me. I turned and jumped down to the next roof and stopped to examine the trap door here. No luck. I ran toward the edge of the third roof and abruptly came to a halt. I was facing an alleyway wide enough to park a car and too broad to jump. My escape was blocked. I was trapped.

Fifty feet below me traffic passed in a steady stream; I shouted but no one heard. I turned and saw Holton scrambling down from the roof I’d just left and I could feel my adrenalin glands pouring out fight-or-flight screams, and my heart thudding mercilessly. There were two broken pieces of brick lying near me; I picked them up and hurled one at the empty window across the alley. The sound of breaking glass was muted, no more than a small whimper in the night—or was it I who whimpered?—but no one came to the window.

I turned, grasping the one fragment of brick left me, and faced this man who had already killed twice.

He was walking toward me slowly, still breathing heavily from the climb but he was confident now and smiling faintly in the dusk, the gun in his hand pointed at me. I had two choices: I could climb over the parapet and leap to my death on the street fifty feet below me or I could stand here and be killed on the roof by Hubert Holton. In that moment I looked clearly and sanely into death and I was no longer afraid, I was angry.