The Blunderer

by Patricia Highsmith

  Kimmel stated that Stackhouse’s alleged actions “disrupted his life,” causing the police to begin investigating his (Kimmel’s) movements on the night of his wife’s murder. It is this, he said, which prompted him to reveal the story of Stackhouse’s October visit at this late date.

  “I am not a vindictive man,” Kimmel said, “but this man is obviously guilty and moreover has ruthlessly disrupted my personal and professional life in an effort to besmirch me with guilt. I say, let justice be done where justice is due!”

  Kimmel’s allegations follow earlier disclosures by the police that Stackhouse was seen and identified at the scene of his wife’s death at 7:30 p.m. October 23, though in his first statements to the police, Stackhouse declared he had been in Long Island the evening of his wife’s death.

  A newspaper story of Helen Kimmel’s murder was found in Stackhouse’s possession on October 29. An admission by Stackhouse that he had torn the story out of a newspaper and kept it in a scrapbook was corroborated by Lieutenant Corby when Editor Grimler of the Newark Sun telephoned him to check on it.

  Lieutenant Corby reminded Grimler that Kimmel himself was not entirely clear of suspicion in his wife’s murder, and that he would not accept responsibility for anything Kimmel said against Stackhouse, unless he personally corroborated it….

  But Corby did corroborate Kimmel in practically everything he said, Walter thought. Corby might have been briefing Kimmel all afternoon yesterday, to make sure he told every fact, to make sure he spoke forcibly enough when he made up his fiction!

  Walter stamped on his starter and turned automatically towards home.

  He found Claudia standing in the kitchen with her coat and hat still on and a newspaper in her hands. She looked stunned. “Myra gave me this on the bus this morning,” she said, indicating the newspaper. “Mr. Stackhouse, I come here this morning to tell you that I’d like to quit—if you don’t mind, Mr. Stackhouse.”

  Walter couldn’t say anything for a moment, only stare at her face that looked rigid and shy and terrified at the same time. He walked towards the center of the kitchen and saw her step back from him, and he stopped, knowing that she was afraid because she thought he was a murderer. “I understand, Claudia. It’s all right. I’ll get your—”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll just collect my shoes out of the closet and a couple of other things.”

  “Go ahead, Claudia.”

  But she turned back. “I didn’t believe it when I heard it from Myra this morning, but when I read it myself—” She stopped.

  Walter said nothing.

  “Then I don’t like these police to question me all the time, neither,” she said a little more boldly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “He told me not to tell you about it—Mr. Corby. But now I guess it don’t matter. I couldn’t stop him from coming, but I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  Slimy bastard, Walter thought. He could see him pumping Claudia of every detail. Walter had wanted to ask Claudia weeks ago if Corby had come to see her. He had never dared to.

  “I never told Mr. Corby anything against you, Mr. Stackhouse,” Claudia said a little frightenedly.

  Walter nodded. “Go ahead and get your shoes, Claudia.” He went to the hall stairs. He had to get his billfold to pay her. He’d forgotten it this morning and gone off with only change in his pocket.

  Walter stopped in the act of taking the bills from the billfold: he imagined he heard an outcry from Clara—shocked and reproachful—because Claudia was leaving them, and through his own fault. For a moment, Walter suffered that familiar sensation of shame, sudden anger and resentment, because he had committed a blunder that Clara was reproaching him for. Then he moved again and ran downstairs with the money and his check book. He made out a check to her for two weeks’ pay and handed it to her with three ten-dollar bills.

  “The tens are just for your good service, Claudia,” he said.

  Claudia looked down at them, then handed the check back. “I didn’t work but four days this week, Mr. Stackhouse. I’ll just take what’s due me and no more. I’ll just take the thirty dollars.”

  “But that’s not quite enough,” Walter protested.

  “This’ll be fine,” Claudia said, moving away. “I’ll be going now. I think I’ve got everything.”

  He couldn’t even give her a reference, Walter thought. She wouldn’t want one, from him. She was carrying a bulging paper bag in her arms, and Walter opened the door for her. She edged away with a real physical fear of him as she passed him. No use offering to drive her to the end of Marlborough to the bus stop, no use saying anything else. He watched her as she descended the slope in the lawn to the road, watched her turn and walk under the row of willow trees. It was hard to realize that he’d probably never see Claudia again. And it was astonishing how much her leaving hurt him.

  Walter closed the kitchen door. He felt suddenly alone and desolate. And this was only the maid. What about the others? What about Ellie? And Jon? And Cliff and his father? And Dick? Walter set about mechanically making his coffee. He wondered if Mrs. Philpott would come this morning, if she would call and make an excuse, or not even call?

  The telephone rang just before nine. It was a toll call, and Walter waited while the quarters dripped in. He knew it would be Ellie calling from Corning. Then Jon’s voice said:

  “Walter?”

  “Yes, Jon.”

  “Well, I’ve seen it.”

  Walter waited.

  “Just how true is it?” Jon asked.

  “The visits are true—most of them. What he says I said—that isn’t true.” Even his voice sounded spent and hopeless, not to be believed. And Jon was silent for a long time, as if he didn’t believe him.

  “What are they going to do to you?”

  “Nothing!” Walter said explosively. “They’re not going to put me in jail or anything logical like that. They haven’t got the facts, anyway. They make no attempt to prove anything. Any man can get up and say anything, that’s their technique!”

  “Listen, Walter, when you cool down a bit, you’d better make a statement and tell them the whole thing,” Jon said in his deep, calm voice. “Tell them whatever you’ve left out and get it—”

  “I haven’t left out anything.”

  “These visits—”

  “There were only three visits, the second with Corby himself who knows every visit I made!”

  “Walter, it seems to me that something new is turning up every week. I’m suggesting that you get it all down in writing and swear to it and prove it.”

  Now Walter heard the coldness in Jon’s drawling words, heard the impatience and the withdrawing.

  “If you’re innocent,” Jon added casually.

  “I suppose you doubt it,” Walter said.

  “Listen, Walter, I’m only suggesting that you tell the whole story instead of parts—”

  Walter hung up.

  He was thinking of what some paper had said: that it was very strange, if Kimmel’s story was not correct, that Stackhouse had chosen to go to an obscure bookshop in Newark for a book he could have got more easily at several New York bookstores.

  Walter got the brandy bottle and poured himself a drink.

  Where did they go with him from here? He could issue a statement to the press, all right. It would be the truth, but who would believe him? The truth was so dull, and Kimmel’s story so spectacular.

  He took Jeff out for a walk around the woods at the end of Marlborough Road. Jeff had stopped watching for Clara, but he was a sadder little dog. Even when Walter played his favorite game of swinging him out on an old rag until Jeff had shredded it completely with his teeth, Jeff’s face never had the cocky, silly look it had used to have when Clara was alive. Ellie noticed it, and had offered to take Jeff if Walter no longer wanted to keep him. But Walter did want to keep him: he tried to take as good care of him as Clara had, give him a good run once a day, and Walter generally fixed his
food himself, mornings and even when Claudia was there. But if something should happen to him, Walter thought, he ought to make sure Jeff went to Ellie, or to the Philpotts.

  He made Jeff’s breakfast of warm milk poured over a piece of buttered toast, and stood watching him eat it. His heel jittered on the linoleum floor, from tiredness. Jeff looked up from his breakfast at the sound, and Walter pressed his heels against the floor.

  Walter heard the telephone.

  It was Mrs. Philpott calling to ask if he would be able to see Mr. Kammerman, the furniture appraiser, right away. Walter said he would. Mrs. Philpott’s still tranquil, polite voice baffled him. Then she said: “I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t come after all, Walter. Something’s just come up that I’ve got to attend to this morning.”

  35

  Walter called the Newark police station from New York. They said that Corby was in Newark, but his exact whereabouts were unknown. Walter went on to Newark.

  It was 1:15. It had begun to rain lightly.

  Corby was not at the police station when he got there. An officer asked Walter his name, but Walter refused to give it. He got back in his car and drove to Kimmel’s bookshop. The shop was closed. There was a long crack in one of the front windows, a crystalline scar in its middle where something hard had struck it, and seeing it, Walter felt a leap of blood lust in himself, glanced on the sidewalk for the brick, but it was gone.

  Walter drove to a filling station, had his gas tank filled, and looked in a telephone book for Melchior Kimmel’s address. He remembered it was not listed, but now he saw a Helen Kimmel entry on Bowdoin Street. The filling station attendant did not know where Bowdoin Street was. Walter asked a traffic policeman, who had a general idea, but when Walter followed it, he could not find Bowdoin. It made him so furious, he had a hard time controlling his voice when he asked a woman on the sidewalk where it was. She knew, exactly. He was four streets off.

  It was a street of frame houses. The number was 245—a small, red-brown two-story house set back from the sidewalk by an extremely narrow strip of neglected lawn with a meaningless fence of low iron pickets around it. All the shades were drawn. Walter looked up and down the sidewalk. Then he got out of his car and walked up the wooden steps to the strip of porch. The doorbell made a shrill yelp. But there was no sound from inside the house. Walter imagined Kimmel was watching him from behind one of the drawn shades. A physical fear crept over him, and his body tensed to fight, but there was no one. He rang the bell again, louder. He tried the door. The corners of the metal knob hurt his hand. It was locked.

  Walter went back to his car, stood by it a moment, feeling his fear turn to a frustrated anger. Maybe they were all at the Newark Sun again. Maybe that was where he should go, and make a statement in his own defence. They probably wouldn’t even print it, Walter thought. He wasn’t to be trusted any more. He would need Corby to back him up, a fine, upstanding, young police detective to corroborate what he said. He swung the car around and headed back for the police station.

  Walter was told that Corby was in the building, but that he was busy.

  “Tell him Walter Stackhouse wants to see him.”

  The police sergeant gave him another look, then opened a door in the hall and went down some stairs. Walter followed him. They went down another hall and stopped at a door where the sergeant knocked loudly.

  “Yes?” Corby’s voice called muffledly.

  “Walter Stackhouse!” the sergeant shouted against the door.

  The bolt slid. Corby opened the door wide, smiling, “Hello! I was expecting you today!”

  Walter came in, his hands in his overcoat pockets, and he saw Corby glance at them as if he suspected he had a gun. Walter stopped suddenly: Kimmel sat in a straight chair, his huge body twisted strangely as if he were in pain. Kimmel stared at him as if he did not recognize him at all. There was only a numbed, naked expression of terror on Kimmel’s face.

  “We are confessing today,” Corby said genially. “Tony has already confessed, Kimmel comes next, and then you.”

  Walter said nothing. He glanced at the scared-looking dark-haired boy in the other straight chair. The room was tile-lined, cold and white and glaring with light. Kimmel’s huge face was wet, either with tears or sweat. His collar was ripped open and his still-knotted tie hung down.

  “Want to sit down, Stackhouse? There’s nothing left but a table.”

  Walter saw that the door was closed with a big sliding bolt on the inside, like the bolts on the inside of refrigerated rooms where butchers work. “I came here to ask you what happens next. I want a showdown. I’m perfectly willing to be tried, but I’m not going to take a bunch of lies from you or anybody—”

  “You’d shorten everything if you’d only admit what you did, Stackhouse!” Corby interrupted him.

  Walter looked at his conceited stance, his scowling, undersized face—little demagogue, safe behind his badge. Suddenly Walter grabbed Corby’s arm and pulled him around, threw his other fist at Corby’s jaw, but Corby grabbed his fist before it landed and yanked Walter forward. Walter slipped on the tile floor and would have fallen, except that Corby kept hold of his wrist and swung him up again.

  “Kimmel’s found out I can’t be touched, Mr. Stackhouse. You’d better find it out, too.” Corby’s bony cheeks had flushed. He moved his shoulders, readjusted his clothes. Then he took off his overcoat and tossed it on the wooden table.

  “I asked you what comes next,” Walter said. “Or is that supposed to be a surprise? Who do you think you are, releasing lies to the newspapers?”

  “There’s not a lie in any paper. Only one possible untruth, which is stated everywhere as uncorroborated and therefore a possible untruth.”

  A hell of a word, Walter thought, untruth. He watched Corby’s lean, arrogant figure circle Kimmel’s chair as if Kimmel were an elephant he had trapped, an elephant not yet dead. Kimmel’s face and head were entirely wet with sweat, though the room was icy. Walter saw Kimmel flinch as Corby passed by him, and he realized suddenly why Kimmel looked so ugly and naked: he hadn’t his glasses. Corby must have grilled him hard, Walter thought, probably all night. And after all Kimmel’s good work at the newspaper offices! Walter’s fists clenched harder in his pockets. Corby was glancing at him every lap he made around the chair. Then Corby said suddenly: “I’ve tried a quiet method with you, Stackhouse. It doesn’t work.”

  “What do you mean, quiet?”

  “Not printing in the papers all that I might have. I wanted you to see the stupidity of concealing what you know to be true yourself. It didn’t work. I’ll have to use pressure. Today’s papers are only the beginning. There’s no limit to the pressure I can put on you!” Corby stood with his feet apart, scowling at Walter. A twitch in one lid of his straining eyes heightened his look of drunken intensity.

  “Even you have superiors,” Walter said. “Maybe I should go and have a talk with Captain Royer.”

  Corby frowned harder. “Captain Royer backs me completely. He’s completely satisfied with my work, and so are his superiors. I’ve done in five weeks what the Newark police couldn’t do in two months when the trail was fresh!”

  Outside of Hitler, Walter thought, outside of an insane asylum, he had never seen anything like it.

  “Tony here,” Corby said gesturing, “has agreed that Kimmel could have left the movie theater immediately after he saw him, at eight-five. Tony even remembers trying to find Kimmel at his house that evening after the movie and Kimmel not being there.”

  “He didn’t—he didn’t say he tried to,” Kimmel protested nervously in a strange adenoidal voice. “He didn’t say he went—”

  “Kimmel, you’re so guilty, you stink!” Corby shouted, his voice rasping in the hollow room. “You’re as guilty as Stackhouse!”

  “I didn’t, I didn’t!” Kimmel said in the pattering, nasal voice, thick with a foreign accent that Walter had never heard in it before. And there was something pathetic in Kimmel’s desperate denials,
like the last twitching of a body in which every bone might have been broken.

  “Tony knows your wife was having an affair with Ed Kinnaird. Tony told me this morning. He’s heard it from all the neighbors by now!” Corby yelled at Kimmel. “He knows you’d have killed Helen for that and for a lot less, wouldn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  Walter watched aghast. He tried to imagine Tony on a witness stand—a terrified, unintelligent hoodlum who looked as if he would say anything he had been paid to say or terrorized into saying. Corby’s methods were so crude, and yet they got results. Kimmel looked as if he were wilting, melting, like a huge gob of grease. Then he said again, in a high voice:

  “I didn’t, I didn’t!”

  Corby suddenly kicked at Kimmel’s chair, and when he failed to kick it from under him, reached down and wrenched the two back legs sideways, so that Kimmel rolled with a thud on to the floor. Tony half stood up, as if he were going to give Kimmel assistance, but he didn’t. Corby shoved Kimmel with the flat of his shoe, and Kimmel slowly got up, with the exhausted dignity of a wounded elephant. Corby’s voice went on and on, exhorting Kimmel to confess, hammering into him that he hadn’t a leg to stand on. Walter knew exactly what Corby was going to say when his turn came: he would go over the visits to Kimmel, he would pretend he believed Kimmel implicitly about the discussion of murder, his confession to Kimmel later, pretend to believe that everybody else believed it, too, and that his position was as hopeless as anyone’s could be. Walter watched Corby gesticulating, coming towards him, rasping out as if to a huge audience: “—this man! This man brought it all down on you, Kimmel! Walter Stackhouse—the blunderer!”

  “Shut up!” Walter said. “You know that I’m not guilty! You said so once, twice, God knows how many times! But if you can invent a spectacular story and win a pat on the head from some stupid bastard above you, then you’ll lie and perjure a thousand times to prove your cock-eyed idea is right!”