The Blunderer

by Patricia Highsmith

  She looked at him a moment, and Walter wondered if she believed that was all, though there was really not the least doubt in her face now. “Have you had anything to eat?” she asked.

  Walter couldn’t remember. He didn’t answer, only looked at her. A lump was growing in his throat, like panic, like terror. He didn’t know what it was. He suddenly wished he was married to Ellie, had married her right after Clara’s death, and in the next moment was ashamed of wishing it.

  “I’ll fix you some scrambled eggs. There’s nothing here but eggs.” She went into the kitchen. “Why don’t you take a nap? We’ll have coffee and eggs in fifteen minutes.”

  Walter continued to sit upright on the sofa. It was unreal to him, the way she took it. Even his not being at the show tonight. An idea that she might be pretending, before she cut him off from her with one fell swoop, made the atmosphere even more unreal.

  “Do you know you’re getting too thin?” Ellie asked as she worked in the kitchen. “Can’t you remember to eat occasionally?”

  He said nothing. He put his head back and closed his eyes, but sleep was far from him now. After a few minutes he got up to help her put dishes on the coffee table by the sofa. They ate scrambled eggs with toast and marmalade.

  “We’ll have a nice day tomorrow,” Ellie said. “Let’s not let anything spoil that.”

  “No.” They were going to have Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant near Montauk and then drive around, probably walk along a beach somewhere, which Ellie loved to do.

  After he had eaten, Walter felt too tired even to smoke a cigarette. His arms and legs were heavy, as if he had been drugged. He could hardly feel Ellie’s fingers pressing his hand as they sat on the sofa.

  “Can I stay here with you tonight?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, as if he had asked her many times before.

  But they sat there for a long while before they moved to put dishes away and to open the sofa which made a double bed.

  Coward, Walter said to himself. Walter Stackhouse, a coward and a bastard.

  Walter only lay in her arms and she held him as if she did not expect him to make love to her. But towards dawn, after he had slept for a while, he did. And it seemed more than the first time, better than the first time, and more desperate also, because Walter was afraid it was the last time, and Ellie’s intensity made him imagine that she knew it, too. Walter had a vision of a little window. It was a beautiful little square window, just out of his reach, filled with light blue sky with a suggestion of green earth below.

  33

  Dick and Pete jumped up to help him, but there was nothing they could do except stand there while he bent over the basin, retching.There was not even anything in his stomach except the coffee he had drunk for breakfast, but the retching lasted ten minutes or so, and it was too constricting for him even to tell Dick and Pete to go back to Cross and forget him. And as he bent there, staring at the pale green porcelain of the little basin, listening to the symphonic ringing in his ears, Walter told himself he was sick of the job Cross had for him and Dick to do, bored and sick of it, and that it was one of the last jobs they’d ever do at the office and what was the use in reacting like this? But Walter knew he was sick because he was expecting the call from Kimmel at 11:30, when the forty-eight hours would be up.

  “Where’d you have that turkey yesterday?” Dick asked him, trying to sound cheerful, patting him on the back.

  Walter did not try to answer. He’d been going to tell Kimmel to go to hell, to do his worst. Now he hadn’t the guts to stand up. His clothes stuck to him with sweat. Dick had to help him to the leather sofa in the corner, and if not for the cold towel over his face, he thought he might have fainted.

  “Think you’ve got a touch of ptomaine?” Dick asked.

  Walter shook his head. He was aware of Cross’s swarthy, pouchy face looking over his shoulder from his desk, looking annoyed. You go to hell, too, Walter thought. Walter finally stood up and said he would try to pull himself together in his own office.

  “I’m very sorry,” Walter said to Cross.

  “I’m sorry,” Cross said crisply. “Go home if you’re not feeling well.”

  Walter got the bottle of Scotch from a lower drawer of his desk and took a pull on it. It made him feel slightly better.

  He left the office around 10:30.

  It was five to twelve when he got home. The house was empty. Claudia would have left at eleven. Walter wondered if Kimmel had called before eleven and spoken to Claudia.

  Walter went directly to his study and got out his portable typewriter. He tried to move briskly, though he was still weak and shaking. He addressed a letter to the Administration Department of Columbia Law School, and wrote that he was opening a law office for small claims clients in Manhattan, and that he would like two or three senior students to work as his assistants on various day shifts. He asked that a notice be posted on the bulletin board of the school, so that any students interested could get in touch with him. His thoughts did not come out smoothly, and he had to retype the letter.

  In the middle of the typing the telephone rang.

  Walter answered it in the hall.

  “Hello, Mr. Stackhouse,” Kimmel’s voice said.

  “The answer is still no.”

  “You are making a great mistake.”

  “I’ve talked to Corby,” Walter said. “If you add anything to what I told him, Corby’s not going to believe you.”

  “I’m not interested in what you told Corby. I’m interested in what I tell the newspapers.You should be, too.”

  Through Kimmel’s dead calm Walter heard his resentment because his game had been spoiled. “They won’t believe you. They won’t print it.”

  Kimmel gave a hooting laugh. “They’ll print everything I tell them, as long as I hold myself responsible for it—which I shall do with pleasure. Don’t you want to change your mind for a mere fifty thousand dollars?”

  “No.”

  Kimmel was silent, but Walter kept holding the phone, waiting. It was Kimmel who finally hung up.

  Walter went back to his letter. Even his hands were weak and damp with sweat, and he had to type very slowly. He added another paragraph, feeling a little insane, like the crackpots who put ads in newspapers to sell an estate they haven’t got, or offering to buy a yacht they can’t afford:

  I am especially interested in securing a few serious students, young men who would otherwise not be able to acquire practical experience so early in their careers and who would prefer this kind of work to the more tedious and impersonal tasks they would be given if they took jobs as junior lawyers in bigger law firms.

  I should appreciate an acknowledgment of this letter at your convenience.

  Yours sincerely,

  WALTER P. STACKHOUSE

  He gave the address and telephone of Cross, Martinson and Buchman as well as the address of the new office in Forty-fourth Street, where he and Dick were supposed to be by Tuesday. Walter had discussed with Dick the advisability of hiring a couple of law students to help out in the office, and Dick had thought it a good idea. Now it seemed to Walter that he had written the letter today in order to have anybody at all in the office with him, as if he knew that the next time he saw Dick, Dick was going to tell him he wasn’t going into partnership with him.

  Walter drank a straight Scotch, and felt better so quickly he knew that the therapeutic effect of the liquor was purely mental. Well, mentally, hadn’t he decided he didn’t care any more, Wednesday night sitting in his car outside Newark police station? That he felt so weak physically was an accident today, he thought. What the hell if Kimmel got his crazy story printed? It was one more lie, that was all. He’d already weathered so many lies: why he was at the bus stop, why he had the Kimmel clipping, why he had gone back to talk to Kimmel in his shop. Well, now he was going to hear why he had come to Kimmel’s shop the first time, and he’d weather this one, too. When the crazy custodians of justice came to seize him—finally�
��they would find him hard at work in a law office on Forty-fourth Street. Maybe alone. He took a second large drink.

  Then he went into the kitchen and found a can of tomato soup in the cupboard, opened it, and put it on to heat. The kitchen was silent except for the purring of the gas flame. Walter stood there, waiting, and finally began to walk up and down the floor to break the silence. Then he heard Clara’s steps upstairs and he stopped abruptly. It was getting his brain, too. He’d actually heard her steps, as clearly as if they had been a little rill of music—six or seven steps.

  Walter realized he was standing half way up the staircase, staring at the empty hall. Did he expect to see Clara? He didn’t even remember starting up the steps. When he went back to the kitchen the tomato soup was boiling over. He poured some into a bowl and began to eat it at the kitchen table.

  He heard Clara’s voice, uttering little shadowy whispers. He cocked his head, listening, and the more he concentrated the more definite it seemed that he did hear them, though they were not distinct enough for him to be able to hear what she was saying. They were sibilant phrases, laughing phrases, as if he were overhearing her as she played with Jeff. Or as she really had talked to him a few times in the first months they had lived in this house. Jeff was curled up in the living-room in a chair, Walter knew. If there were anything to the sounds, Jeff would—

  Walter stood up. Maybe he was going insane. Maybe it was the house. He ran his fingers through his hair, then quickly went to a window and threw it open.

  He stood there, trying to make himself think, decide, remember, remember Clara here, and the times they had been happy here, before it was too late to remember, and after a few crazy, agonized seconds, realized that he wasn’t thinking at all, wasn’t even feeling anything except confusion.

  He went to the telephone and dialed the Knightsbridge Brokerage number. Its familiarity to him was pleasant and terrifying. It was as if Clara were alive again. The phone rang and rang, and Walter knew it meant the Philpotts had not opened their office today, but he let it ring about fifteen times before he gave up.

  He called Mrs. Philpott’s home number. Mrs. Philpott was in, and he told her he wanted to sell the house right away. He said he could easily be out by Monday, and he would see about selling some of the furniture tomorrow. The transaction would be very simple, she said: the Knightsbridge Brokerage would buy the house for 25,000 dollars.

  “It just happens,” she said, “that I’ve a man coming tomorrow to do some appraising—a furniture appraiser in particular. Suppose I come over with him tomorrow morning? Will you be home around noon?”

  “I can be here at noon,” Walter said.

  “I know about such things as furniture appraising. I don’t want you to get cheated,” she said with a laugh.

  That afternoon Walter began to sort out the things he would give to Claudia. His father and Cliff might be willing to take some of the living-room furniture, Walter thought. He should answer his brother’s letter. It had come ten days ago—the third or fourth letter from Cliff since Clara’s death—full of such brotherly affection and Cliff’s shy, roundabout sympathy that Walter had been touched almost to tears over it. But he hadn’t answered.

  He went upstairs and began to put all the linens out on the bed, but he got discouraged after a few minutes and decided to wait until Claudia came that evening so she could help him.

  He started to call Ellie to tell her he was selling the house, actually went to the telephone, then changed his mind. He decided to drive to Benedict to mail his letter to Columbia. He got into his car and drove to Benedict.

  Then it was 3:12. He debated parking the car somewhere and taking a long walk in the woods. Or going home and getting drunk all by himself. Ellie was gone by now. She would have started off for Corning around two to visit her mother, and she would be gone overnight. But they had newspapers in Corning, too, of course. Ellie might see it tonight, certainly by tomorrow morning. He wondered if he would ever see Ellie again. He whipped the car around and headed for New York. He was going to do what he wanted to do, wait around in Manhattan for the evening papers to come out. He would put the car somewhere and walk, anywhere. He had always loved to walk in Manhattan. Nobody looked at him, nobody paid any attention. He could stop and stare into shop windows at rows of glistening scissors and knives, and feel like nothing but a pair of eyes without an identity behind them.

  He went, and walked, and waited. He drank brandies and cups of coffee, and walked some more. But the story was not in the papers by 10 p.m. For hours he had been debating calling Corby and asking him to stop Kimmel, swallowing his pride and begging Corby to stop him. In between his debates with himself his pride would suddenly soar, and he would take an arrogant, desperate attitude of not caring. Corby as a savior was an absurdity, anyway. He’d be on Kimmel’s side about this. Or rather, he’d back either of them, whichever one was trying to accuse the other.

  There was another edition around midnight. Walter waited for it, and still there was nothing in it about him. Walter began to wonder if Kimmel was not going to tell the newspapers after all. Or was Kimmel sitting in some room in Newark, waiting for a telephone call from him, saying that he had changed his mind?

  Or was Corby beating up Kimmel again tonight? Kimmel perhaps hadn’t had time to tell the newspapers. But Walter couldn’t imagine Corby detaining him if he had such an important mission.

  Walter stood on the corner of Fifty-third Street and Third Avenue, looking up at the old elevated structure over his head, wincing as a taxi’s brakes shrieked. The glare of light in the Rikers’ shop beside him hurt his eyes. As he looked up the dark tunnel under the elevated a bus slid silently towards him with headlights like the eyes of a monster. Walter shivered.

  He was in hell.

  34

  He lay awake, listening for the feathery impact of the paper striking the front door. The paper generally came at a quarter to seven. By then he hadn’t heard it, and he went downstairs, turned the front door light on to see the steps. The paper had not come. He went back upstairs and got dressed.

  The paper had arrived when he started out from the front door. Walter looked at it by the hall light.

  NEWARK MAN TELLS OF PLANNED MURDER

  OF BENEDICT WOMAN

  Nov. 27—An amazing story—with nothing but a pencil-written order for a book and a tortured man’s grim and earnest statements to back it up—was unfolded late last night in the offices of the Newark Sun. Melchior J. Kimmel, owner of a bookshop in Newark, stated that Walter Stackhouse, husband of the late Clara Stackhouse of Benedict, Long Island, came to his shop two weeks before Mrs. Stackhouse’s death in October, and asked him pertinent questions about the murder of his own wife, Helen Kimmel….

  Walter stuck the paper under his arm and ran out to his car. He wanted to get the other papers, all of them, at once. But he put the light on in his car and glanced at the solid double-column box again.

  “I was horrified,” Kimmel stated, “I started to turn the man in as a criminal psychopath, but on second thoughts decided to wash my hands of the whole thing. In view of later developments, I bitterly regret my cowardice.”

  Walter started his car. It was still almost dark, and his headlights fell on Claudia walking towards him on Marlborough Drive. Walter saw her step quickly to the edge of the road, and he felt she shied away from him more than from his rushing car. He wondered if she had seen it yet, or had talked to the woman she sometimes rode with on the bus.

  He drove to Oyster Bay and stopped at the first newsstand. He saw it on the front pages of two New York papers. He bought all the morning papers and took them back to his car. He began to read them all at once, skipping over them, looking for the worst.

  The body of Helen Kimmel was found in the woods near a bus stop in Tarrytown, New York, on August 14. The body of Clara Stackhouse was found at the bottom of a cliff near Allentown, Pa., on October 24. Police, who listed the death of Mrs. Stackhouse as a suicide, have not commented o
n the Kimmel story as yet.

  NEWARK BOOKDEALER ASSERTS STACKHOUSE “PLANNED”

  MURDER OF WIFE AT BUS STOP

  The New York Times account was not very long but it amounted to plain accusation of murder, with Kimmel’s statements cushioned by “alleged … according to Kimmel … Kimmel attested …”

  A New York tabloid had a very long account with a photograph of Kimmel talking vociferously with raised finger, and a picture of the order slip with his own name very legible on it. And the date.

  Melchior Kimmel, forty, impressively huge with alert brown eyes behind the thick-lensed glasses of a scholar, told his story in rolling phrases and with a thundering conviction that made his statements hard to disbelieve, said Editor Grimler of the Newark Sun….

  The conversation about the murder occurred, said Kimmel, after Stackhouse (a lawyer) had placed an order for a book called Man Who Stretch the Law. Kimmel produced the dated order for the book to substantiate his statement. Kimmel stated that Stackhouse appeared to assume he (Kimmel) had killed his wife Helen, and said that he intended to kill his own wife by the “same method,” that is attacking her during a rest stop on a bus trip.

  The Kimmel account goes on to state that Stackhouse proposed to follow the bus in his own car, speak to his wife during the rest stop, and persuade her to a secluded spot where he could attack and kill her without being seen, a method Kimmel says Stackhouse appeared to assume he, Kimmel, had used.

  “This,” Kimmel charged yesterday, “is what Stackhouse did.”

  Kimmel further asserted that Stackhouse came to see him again on November 15, in order to make a “maudlin apology” and to confess his guilt in the murder of his wife. Stackhouse, who denies any part in his wife’s death, Kimmel said “suffers under a psychotic fixation on me.” Kimmel hinted at frequent visits from Stackhouse, which he said he “did not want to go into.” The November 15 visit of Stackhouse was confirmed by Lieutenant Lawrence Corby, Philadelphia Police Homicide Squad detective, who has been investigating the Kimmel and Stackhouse cases for the past several weeks.